Wiskaria

  The two prisoners were brought before the Lord, bound at the hands, and thrust to their knees before him. He looked down at the pair, the rough hewn edges of the ancient desk offsetting the understated elegance of his office. The prisoners, for their part, merely looked back at the aged figure before them.

“Karzent and Wisendon,” the Lord began. “Fomenting rebellion amongst your fellow slaves again?” Many would have quailed before this gaze, but these two, frequent visitors to this august presence, did not. “It has become apparent that the standard punishments are no impediment to the two of you, so I believe something different may be in order. We may even be able to get some use out of you.” The Lord smiled at this last.

The prisoners exchanged a look. Nothing that pleased the Lord boded well for them and their fellows.

The small band crouched at the lip of the ridge overlooking the valley. They had started on this adventure with ten, but now there were only eight, as two of their number now shared a common grave with the fell beast that had ended them. It had been distasteful to most of the band, but those in charge had decided that mere slaves deserved no better.

Karzent lowered the spyglass and handed it over to Wisendon. “I don’t see anything living, but some of the markings are fresh.” Wisendon looked through the glass, but not having the tracking skills of his partner just nodded in agreement. “I’ll go tell their Highnesses.” Wisendon snorted, but kept looking through the glass.

Karzent scrambled down the backslope, to where the horses and pack animals waited, along with Karzent’s minders. Despite her comment, the two minders were not royalty, but they were pure bloods, sent to mind their half breed slaves and make sure of their completion of mission. The slaves had not slipped blades into their backs, despite many opportunities, as the two did have their uses, and the mission was grim enough to require all the help they could get their hands on.

“We are there,” Karzent announced.

“And? Speak up, slave.”

“There’s something there, the signs are clear.” Karzent was used to being addressed as such, and had long stopped reacting to it. “Not sure how many, but it does not look like more than two or three.”

“Well, let us go see.” They deigned to dismount and climb the hill. Karzent would have demanded they keep low, approach the top below the brow and but peek over the top of it, but she was more than sure that whatever resided below had either already detected the band, or had no need of forewarning.

The castle was ancient, a legend and a nightmare. Built into the side of a now inactive volcano by the tyrants that once ruled the entire land, its current resident or residents were purported to have cast them down, long ago when the flow of lava had stopped and the fields of fire had died to ember and then to ash. Even though it had been generations, the area was still a blight in the heart of the land, for all who traveled through it were never seen again. All expeditions to find the missing never returned themselves. Eventually all of the surrounding city states learned to avoid the area entirely, counting the extra travel time spent going around a small price to pay.

Built to massive, nay gigantic proportions, the defensive works of the keep dominated the landscape. The lush greenery feeding off of the plain of volcanic residue would have overwhelmed and hidden works built by the smaller races, but here the towering giants of the forest just served to show how massive the walls and towers truly were. Even surrounded by the undisturbed vegetation of generations, it dominated the landscape.

“Should we wait until night?” asked Wisendon. They all looked to Karzent, her years of experience tracking and hunting in the wild making her a natural leader of the band.

“No point,” she answered immediately. “Whatever is down there already knows we’re here.” She turned down the hill towards the horses. “Or they don’t care.”

It was nothing more than luck that had saved them. The tyrant at the heart of the fortress had let the party come deep into his lair and played with them for most of a day, all the while killing them one at a time. Only when Karzent and Wisendon were left did he stop the games, and confront them directly. The dark giant, his skin covered in runes of power, was ancient beyond measure. The last of his tribe, they had defeated the former masters of the keep and enslaved them. They had lost control of the once great kingdom the previous masters had, but they cared not. Their slaves had served them as long as they could, but their new masters, more powerful than they had even imagined, ground their entire tribe to dust, and then themselves had succumbed to the vagaries of time. Until there was just one left.

He had gloated as he chased them, telling them of the vast expanse of history he and his tribe had been witness to. How insignificant the half-breeds were, how only because he had nothing to occupy his time and had no one else to speak to in a long while was he deigning to speak with such lower beings. One does not hold conversations with rats, one merely kills them, do they not? Karzent’s arrows and blade had bounced off the steel-like hide. Wisendon’s best magics slid off of the giant like so much water. The rest of the party, slave and master alike, their efforts had been similarly futile. He had laughed, time and again, at their impotence, and continued to hound them in and around buildings built at a scale almost beyond their comprehension.

In the end, age and luck, bad luck, had done the tyrant in. Karzent had managed to trip the tyrant and it had fallen against an aging wall, and its protective spells, weakened by time, had reacted with the monster’s own runes, bringing enough weight down to crush the tyrant. The last of the party, they had not survived without wounds of their own. Only by searching the body of the fallen giant and drinking deeply of several healing draughts they had found did they manage to survive. They both had lost parts of themselves, but they still lived and huddled in the still ruins to gather themselves.

“We won,” said Wisendon, his remaining eye closed against the pain. “But for what? So our pure blood masters can expand their control and grind us further under their heels?”

“Yes, Wis, that’s exactly why I came here, to lose half my leg and watch you hover near death just so that goblin’s dung heap of a Lord can clamp down on trade with the south even more,” Karzent said. They were tucked into a corner of a long cold hearth, many times the size of the shacks they and their fellow slaves enjoyed back home. A small fire crackled before them, the wood hacked off of a chair that had towered above them both. “Though I have to admit, watching that monster squish those two uppity bastards like so many mice under his sandal, that was almost worth all of this.” They were quiet for a little while. “What do you suggest we do, Wis? We barely made it here with ten of us, and everyone had all of their legs and hands.”

“Don’t forget eyes,” said Wisendon. “The hand was bad enough, but at least I don’t appear to need it to manipulate magic.”

“I’m sorry, Wis, I am,” said Karzent, and sat silently for a long, miserable while. “You know, we could just build a home here. If we didn’t tell anyone all the giants are dead, who’d come looking for us here? We could settle down, stop the constant moving, raise a family…”

“Karz, I’ve told you, while our people live under the lash…”

“...of pure-blood hatred and oppression, you do not have the time nor the interest in any type of relationship,” Karzent quoted at Wisendon, having heard the sentiment far too many times. “I know, but I’m on the old side of middle-aged, Wis, and a girl won’t wait for…”

“Wait,” he said, “what did you say about building a home here?”

“We could build a house here. Only we know the giants are all dead, and since everyone avoids the area out of fear, we’d get at least a couple of years alone. Just you and me and...” She stopped and looked at him intently. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Wis?”

“I think you’re right,” he said, his eye open and staring intently at the ceiling of the hearth, many feet above him. “I think we could build a home here.”

The journey back had been harrowing, but they made it, and more importantly, without running into any of their masters or their minions. They slipped into the slave slums and word spread quickly through all of the camps, for fear of their masters catching word from one of their many spies. The word was such a shock to the community that several such spies revealed themselves in trying to run to their masters, a boon to the slaves as it allowed them to eliminate those leaks and gain more time. The slower, more careful spies were too cautious, and by the time the slaves made their move, it was too late.

The slaves revolted, along with many of their former guards. Even in a land of slave and master, many of the so-called masters were treated not much better than the slaves they guarded. They escaped into the night, half of the land on fire and in chaos, Karzent and her fellow trackers obscuring the trail and misleading the pursuers in many different directions. Tens of thousands of slaves, from the old to the newborn, all vanished into the wilderness.

They could have left years ago, generations ago, but they had nowhere to go to. Bastard half breeds of two proud races, unwanted by one and enslaved by the other, they had tried going to the other races in the surrounding lands, but beyond weapons and equipment, supplied more to twist the nose of their masters than out of a sense to help them with their plight, no one was willing to open up their own lands to these unwanted children. Now, with an entire fortress, the most recent owner dead at the hands of their own with no one else the wiser, they had that somewhere to go, somewhere to call their own. And took it they did.

The fortress, built to the scale of giants three times the size of its new occupants, had been crafted by masters of stonework and magic, protective energies woven into the near seamless stonework to make it as indestructible as anything else worked by mere mortals. As such, the new inhabitants could not alter the structure, they had not the skill nor the equipment to rework the bones of the fortress, bring it down and build it back to suit their size. So they left the stone as it was, and built everything else to their scale. Hallways became two story dorms and apartment blocks. Kitchen ovens became smithies and forges. Extra steps added onto every staircase made them accessible, while the unused portions of the stairs were used for market stalls. The mighty forest that had grown up in the nutrient rich volcanic ash was quickly cleared, first to provide lumber for all of the projects, and second to provide planting area to grow crops. Used to the hard labor under the lash of their former masters, the people worked even harder to build and grow what was now theirs.

The delegation from the Lords Under the Mountain entered into the grand hall of the new nation. The hall had been built into the old inhabitant’s own great hall, but with so much extra space, much of the upper areas of it and the sides of the hall were being walled off and made into offices and apartments. The delegation was met by the council of the new city state and quickly escorted into the feast hall for a welcoming meal. The grizzled head of the delegation’s guard excused himself from the meal, and with two of his guards left the hall for one particular, newly-built apartment overlooking the hall. He knocked and stood with his hands tucked into the belt under his prodigious gut.

“Yes?” asked the face behind the door.

“I would like to talk with the Lady Karzent and the Lord Wisendon, if they are not indisposed,” the grizzled veteran said pleasantly.

“I’m sorry, they don’t live…” he tried, before the man before him snorted and gently, but inexorably, moved him and the door out of the way and walked into the cozy domicile. The man attempted to protest but stopped when a voice from the next room stopped him.

“Let them in, Lenet.”

Lenet bowed the grizzled veteran in, while he motioned for his own men to stand in the hall outside.

“Stay here, boys, I’m sure if they wished me harm, you couldn’t stop them anyway,” he smiled at his men and motioned for Lenet to accompany them. “You too, kind sir, I hold no harm in my heart for your master nor your mistress, and I assure you they will have no trouble from me, as I don’t wish to perish anymore than you do.” Lenet bowed at the grizzled man’s sincerity, and left. When Lenet had secured the door behind them, he walked into the next room to find a very pregnant Karzent reclined, with her foot and jewel-bedecked wooden leg propped up.

“Lady Karzent, I presume?”

“I’m not a Lady of anything, in this nation or the next,” she said, her eyes peeking out from under a damp cloth. “The council runs things, we did our part, igniting the revolution and bringing our people here, and they honor us by letting us work for our new country.” 

“Nor am I a Lord,” said Wisendon, coming down the staircase, “but you are, aren’t you? Not some mere guard from the Under Mountain, are you?” Wisendon stopped behind his wife and began to massage her shoulders.

“You have me there,” he said, setting his bulk down gently upon a plain, but comfortable chair. “May I? The wife and I have ten of our own, adopted more than a few, and have more grandchildren and great-grandchildren than I care to think about, and even starting to get some great-great-grandchildren.” He began to massage her remaining foot and ankle, his massive callused fingers gentle on the swollen appendage. “But you are correct, I am no mere guard. I am Hlerzod.”

“Hlerzod? One of the Five Lords Under the Mountain?”

“Aye, that I am,” he continued to massage, even though both Wisendon and Karzent had stopped and stared with intent. “Let the delegations talk and look pretty to each other, I wanted to come out here, see this new nation for myself.”

“But, your Lordship…” began Wisendon.

“Please, if you both are neither Lord nor Lady, then here, in this time, I am not Lord anything either,” he smiled, continued to knead away. “We Under the Mountain, we may live in darkness, surrounded by those who hate us, inwardly focused on our mine works and projects, but we hear things even still. You are bastard children unwanted by both of your parent races, except to be slaves to your former masters. Your leaving has crippled one of the largest and oldest countries, upset trade, and nearly started three separate wars. The whole western half of the continent is in an uproar thanks to your little revolution, which is the only reason no one has shown up to see exactly how impenetrable this ancient fortress really is.”

“We just wanted to be our own people, have our own place,” Wisendon said. “It’s been almost ten generations since any ‘slaves’ were born due to infidelity between the races. My parents, Karzent’s parents, almost every parent of the half-children in this place were half-breeds themself. We aren’t bastards, merely Master Hlerzod, we are a new race, a new people that have bred true. We are not mules, unable to reproduce, we are a people!” Wisendon’s face was suffused now, the fervor that fired the entire revolution shining through.

“It matters not whether or not you are a race, not-a-Lord Wisendon,” Hlerzod said, “that is not the question. No, the question at the heart of the matter, is whether or not you are a country and can remain a country.” He stood, slapping at his vast belly. “Can the other nations trust you, can they count on you, to keep and hold any treaties with you a generation from now? Two generations? Three generations? Three years? Three months?” He paced around the room, studying the items the pair had gathered over the years. “It’s not that we, the other countries around you, that we care not for your plight, but we have our own problems and issues and enemies, and the most any of us can do is sit back and watch.” He turned to the pair. “Well, most of the countries in the area can only watch. We Under the Mountain can possibly do more than just watch, but you can’t expect us to sacrifice our own country, own safety and stability, just to prop yours up. We can provide instructors and weapons to build up your army and defenses, markets to trade your goods for, and I think, most importantly, someone to recognize your legitimacy, confirm to the whole continent that you are indeed a nation in your own right.” He sat again and looked at the two younger leaders.

“I don’t know which promises any of us can give you, sir,” Karzent said, “all we can do is try.”

“Well, you have a better start than I did,” Hlerzod said. “What? That surprises you, that I struggled and had a start? How do you think I became one of,” and here his voice swelled, “The Five Lords Under the Mountain?” He smiled at that. “No, I certainly was not born into it, and while it seems a long time to you and yours, it has not been all that long when me and mine moved and settled a new mine away from our home shafts.”

“What now? Where do we go from here?” Wisendon asked after a few moments of silence.

“I go back to acting like a guard, for form’s sake, and once my delegation returns home, the Five Lords will decide to extend you the copper nugget of friendship.” Hlerzod stood, creaking and groaning, and slapped his ample belly. “We may not be able to keep you safe, but for nothing else, tweaking your former masters’ collective noses is worth the help we can give. And,” he continued, “we need every friend we can get. It doesn’t hurt that this will open trade with you and your very skillful craftsmen, but will also open up another trade route and byway to us. Until you two killed the tyrant in this keep, we had despaired of ever using the old lava tubes on this side of the peak.”

“Pretty quiet trip up into our deepest basement, was it?” The delegation had indeed come up into the lowest levels of the keep, as the original builders had tapped directly into a lava flow underneath their keep, possibly to use the lava in their workings, or to commune directly with fire elementals who had lived in the volcano. As both the volcano and the original builders were long dead, the current occupants did not know for sure, but the lava tubes underneath the dead volcano proved to lead almost directly to the caverns of the Under Mountain.

“Pretty quiet, aye,” Hlerzod said, rubbing his face, “and it will get quieter still the more we travel it and clean it up. There are a few chasms that we will need to fortify to keep the very deep ones from using, especially now that they don’t have the tyrant of the keep to fear.”

“That’s what my trackers told me,” said Karzent. “Do you really think we have a chance?”

“My dear lady,” Hlerzod said, smiling, “if any of us have a chance of giving our children, and their children, and their children, a better world than the one we were born into, it is you, here.” He paused, thoughtful for a moment. “By the by, what are you going to call it, this new country of yours?”

“They want to call it Wiskaria, for Wis and me, but…”

“Wiskaria, hmmm. Yes, I think you should let them give you that honor. It may just serve as a warning to not attempt to enslave your people ever again.”

WISKARIA: LAND OF BASTARDS AND HALF-BREEDS

When I originally wrote about Wiskaria, I had just grown tired of always finding that half-elves (long my favorite race, pretty much thanks to Weis and Hickman’s Tanis Half-Elven) were the bastards, the unwanted children of the world, despised by most and ignored by the rest. I wanted these half-breeds to have their own place in the wider world, and roughly at the same time that was percolating through my brain, another idea of a city built into the ruins of a castle built into the ruins of a giant’s castle was also rustling through my subconscious (too many sources to cite them all here, though Terry Pratchett - the Nomes books and the Carpet People - comes immediately to mind), and Wiskaria was born.

I kept the history above as vague as possible so that you could pick just about any half-breed race to be the base Wiskarian, any race to be their new allies Under the Mountain, and modify the rest of the background as you see fit. In my version of Wiskaria, the people are half-elves, who have recently escaped their elven slavemasters, and settled halfway between the elven lands and the human lands. The humans, of course, care little for the half-elven slaves, mostly because the half breeds have been slaves for so long, their human parents have all died out and they have been breeding true amongst themselves for several generations now. Once they are free, they settle in the now abandoned castle, former center of a fairly large fire giant kingdom that had fallen, after the volcano had gone dormant and deprived the fire giants of a lot of their power, to the depredations of a tribe of rune giants. The rune giants (yes, completely stolen from Pathfinder, you're welcome Paizo) in turn had slowly died out over the centuries, until the last one fell to Wisendon and Karzent. The Five Lords Under the Mountain are dwarves that have recently (in their terms) settled a new mine under the mountain range the castle’s cinder cone is a part of.

D&D 5e Lessons Learned 1 - Starting a New Group

 I do not know about you, but I had an excellent weekend. The weather was pretty nice, in the 60s and 70s for the most part, which was great considering we were in the 90s for most of the previous week. And of course the big one for a gaming geek blog - I started up my new D&D 5e campaign. Finally! As you have read here, I have been trying for months, MONTHS!, to get my own schedule open enough to start a campaign, enough interested folks to come together who could meet on the appointed day and time, and surprisingly, repair enough of our dining room chairs that we could seat everyone at the table. Yes, my campaign was being held up by carpentry and upholstery, of all things. I mean, look at this gorgeous fabric the wife and I had lying around (we used to be medieval recreators, and had bought this fabric many years ago for that hobby, and it has been laying around, unused, ever since) and I love the chainmail rings pattern it has (yes, that is European 4-in-1), thought it would be perfect for medieval fantasy gamers to sit upon. My Cyberpunk Red and Savage Worlds groups will just have to suffer with non-setting appropriate upholstery.

But we had our first session! I was excited and impatient all last week, and the appointed hour finally rolled around... and everything went well. I have two of the six players from my last D&D campaign in this one, one who has been playing for the past couple of years a variety of systems, and another one who had never played until they joined my last game. At 10th level no less, he got thrown into the deep end, but rolled well with it, and is enjoying the instructional nature of this new adventure I am currently running (more on that in a second). We also have three folks who have been a part of my Team Yankee 6mm Escalation League, one gentleman who has been playing and GM'ing D&D and various other RPGs for about as long as I have, another gentleman who has tried D&D a few times in the past but most of his experience is with tabletop wargames, and a lady that has never played any tabletop RPGs ever. Last to the group is someone I had never met before, but had responded to a plea for players for the new game, and while he does not have as much experience as I do, it is still a pretty impressive history with the game and various others. I was hoping that we would get some newer players in, as I have been feeling a bit rusty and have a great intro adventure that is great for newer players and DMs, or for us more experienced players to knock off the rust. But I got a few new players and some more experienced players. {shrug} You take what you can get and run with it. Oh, and not only was one of the chairs sporting the very appropriate chainmail pattern, I made sure to be wearing my "I'm such a D&D nerd" shirt I got from Shirt WOOT!, and the shirt was appreciated as well. Now I just have to reupholster five other chairs. 

Anyway, the game, as I am sure you did not stop by to hear me brag about my awesome chair upholstery or shirts. We did not have a Session Zero, as we were playing through a fantastic intro adventure that came with pregenerated characters, and it is aimed at being instructional, so we jumped straight in. I got this adventure from my favorite game blogger, the Angry GM (his blog can be found over there on the upper left of this page), and had even helped fund it when I backed his gaming instruction manual Kickstarter, the book Game Angry and have been itching to use it ever since it came out. The adventure module is The Fall of Silverpine Watch, which is how I think you should teach folks how to play D&D - it starts with the roleplaying aspects of the game, gets them invested in the setting and the world, then introduces them to the crunchier aspects of the game, slowly. While I love D&D for its tactical combat (yes, we used 15mm minis on a 1/2" gridded board), this is first and foremost a game about telling stories and the players interacting with each other as their characters. And the adventure is a good adventure by itself, it has an interesting story with clues for the players to find to reveal what occurred before the characters arrived on the scene. Seriously, if you have newer players or are a newer GM yourself, run this adventure (it's free! no, really, those of us who bought the book put in enough in the Kickstarter this is free to everyone, not some illegal download from the darkest reaches of the internet), you will thank me later for it.

Because we ran Silverpine Watch and pre-gens, we did not have a Session Zero. I am not as in love with Session Zero as a lot of modern gamers are, but they do have their uses. I am going to be frank and honest here - I played for a couple of decades and while we had Session Zeroes from time to time, we never called them that, we were just talking about the game we wanted to play. We definitely did not talk about our "safety tools" or creating a "safe space" where we listed out our "trigger words" beforehand to make sure we did not offend anybody, yet in many players' minds, that is what a Session Zero is for. You want to virtue signal to the Woke nation, have a "biggest victim" contest amongst your snowflakes, go ahead, it is your game. My game, I am not going to pander to anyone's phobias or kinks, we are going to act like adults, and if you act the asshole and offend me or another player, I am going to call you on your shit. Anyway, we did not have a Session Zero because we did not need one. I do suggest you have one in your own group, if for nothing else then to let your players talk amongst themselves while they roll up new characters, let them figure out how the party got together in the first place. For us DMs, use your Session Zero to relay to the players what your upcoming campaign is going to be, is this a funny campaign full of slapstick and bard songs about naughty sex acts (yes, I'm looking at you, Legends of Vox Machina, you funny effing cartoon) or is this a super serious affair? Are you going to do lots of talky-talky, with intrigue and well-rounded NPCs, or is it going to be combat-combat-combat-FRAY-FRAY-FRAY!! What house rules do you have? What setting are you using? That kind of thing, not whatever the hell the snowflakes have decided a Session Zero should entail. I will say if you are worried someone will break your precious "social contract", this is the time to lay out what exactly that document contains so no one is left guessing on where the boundaries are.

We did have a few lessons we all picked up. Our wargame experienced yet new-to-RPGs player figured out very quickly that outside of combat, RPGs are all about interacting as your character with everyone else's characters or the NPCs. The experienced players at the table had quickly established their characters' personalities and were interacting, which was a good example for this newer player of what to expect during the adventure. My lesson is that, especially in an intro adventure like Fall of Silverpine Watch, you want to slow down and take as much time as possible whenever you roll dice. Oh, there is a tree across the road, what do you do? Do you Help your fellow PC? Are you adding a skill into that roll? What skills are applicable? How does Advantage (from the aforementioned Help) work? In other situations, how does Disadvantage work? How do opposed checks work? Especially in combat, you as the DM need to take as much time as possible with your new players so they can learn all the nuances of 5e combat - Movement, Action, Reaction, Bonus Action. Advantage/Disadvantage. Spellcasting. Initiative. 

One funny occurrence - our newest player, at least to the group, had to leave early and had not brought his dice or PHB, and when I asked for a roll, he looked a little lost. I immediately offered a bag of d20s, and he declined, thinking I was offering my personal dice, a huge taboo amongst many players - YOU DO NOT TOUCH SOMEONE ELSE'S DICE!! At least, that is the belief, personal dice are sacrosanct and not to be shared, touched by anyone else, or even looked at funny, else all the Luck contained therein shall scamper off into the Feylands, never to be seen again. I cannot say truthfully that I do not believe in this at all, as I literally changed my dice in recent tabletop wargame when the first set rolled multiple 1s, and I do not even DM D&D with my personal playing dice. Instead, I have purchased multiple sets of dice and a Chessex Pound-O-Dice that I use as my DM dice and loaners to my players. Anyway, after explaining that these were not my personal dice and merely my DM dice that are for sharing as well as my DM rolls, this player happily grabbed a die out and rolled. 

Okay, enough ranting on that. Some lessons being learned on everyone's part, and lots and lots of rust getting knocked off. Next session we will finish up the intro adventure, and then I think we will slide into a mini Session Zero and let everyone make up characters for Lost Mine of Phandelver, the original 5e official intro adventure. I got the Starter Set at Walmart of all places, could not pass it up when I ran across it, and I want to play it some time. If nothing else, it will be a great learning tool for these new players on how to create a character from scratch, as I will not be using the pre-gens included with the set. Plus, I do not want to dump this group, new as they are, straight into my Eberron campaign. Nor myself, just so many moving parts to consider and keep track of, and I am not talking about the combat. As I described it to a friend recently, Eberron is to medieval fantasy as Futurama meets Cyberpunk is to science fiction - nigh dystopic setting with an almost universal apathy from everyone who resides in the world. Usually in medieval fantasy, where the general populace is very invested in the outcomes of your average adventuring party's latest delve, in Eberron, the general populace kind of glance over to see that indeed there is a horrible mess going on, and once they have verified that there is no easy money to be made from the kerfuffle, shrug and go back to their lives. This makes for a very complex social setting, as even in Sharn, deep in Breland, there are so many factions operating in the city, with interests both inside and outside the nation. I do not want my players, old hands and new players alike, to be overwhelmed by both the rules of the game and complex setting we are going into. But we will see after our next session where the party stands and I will decide at that point if we are going into LMoP or straight into Eberron. Until then, I hope you get the chance to join up with your friends and roll some dice.

Lessons Learned 25

The great plague smothering the land was easing its grip, a cure had finally been developed, and our brave adventurers could once again delve the depths of dungeons that did not allow for the mandated six feet of separation. Yes, my weekly D&D 5e group is finally playing again. Mostly in person, even. We had tried, at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak here in the States, to continue our campaign over Roll20 and Discord, but they just did not work for us. I am by no means disparaging those two applications, in fact, I encourage any DM and party who is looking to game online to use them, it is that my party could not make them work. Well, one of my players who is technologically and financially challenged could not make it work (you can fix or overcome most technology-related problems by throwing more money at it), and as I was not going to run the campaign without him, we decided to do something else. That something else was letting one of the other players run a short campaign online for those who could make Roll20 and Discord work. It was entertaining but short, and per what Seth Skorkowsky said, when a player offers to DM you, their DM, you let them do it. 

But here we are, most of the group was already constantly in contact with the public due to our jobs anyway, the incidence rate is fairly low due to (lack of) population density in the area, and except for one player who has some health concerns and was isolating even harder than everyone else (and another who is having marital issues) who joined us online via an old cellphone and Discord video chat, we are now gaming in person once again. Except when players miss games and we have to cancel. Or they forget to check with their human resources department and their new scheduled days off are not on the days they thought they were going to be. Or when my own work schedule drastically changes the day before the game due to coworker incompetence and I have to cancel. Or one player skips sleeping for a few days to play a videogame and has to cancel. 

Which brings me to the Lesson mentioned in the title of this post - you will never find a group of your friends who all have the exact same schedule or who will not have life interrupt from time to time. I have never, NEVER, played or DM'd in any group where attendance was 100%. If you have - and games that last exactly one session do not count - then I and every other grognard out there envies you, that is the rarest of the rare. Not that I am berating my or any other players (or DMs, we are merely human too) out there, as you have to admit that as fun as it is we are still just playing a game and more important things exist in our lives. Even my employer, who pays me so I can afford my mortgage and car payment, does not get me 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year - I call in sick and take vacations and holidays just like everyone else does. The players are going to miss, the DM is not going to be prepared for every session - shit happens! 

The lesson, if you have not figured it out, is that you need a plan for players who miss. Or if you as the DM misses. Because chances are, from session to session, someone is not going to make it to the game. It will most generally not be the same player/DM (unless they are done playing and cannot quite bring themselves to admit it to the group), which is a relief and makes the infrequent absentees bearable (most of the players and DMs out there) but makes the habitual ones grind your teeth in frustration. What then, dear reader, should one do? As hinted at by my slips of vulgarity, I spent many years in the United States Army, and they have a saying you, as a DM, should take to heart - Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome. What was your first plan? Everyone's plan changes upon meeting the enemy (or getting punched in the teeth, however you prefer that saying), and you need a backup plan, as well as an alternate to the backup, and enough gumption to throw all of the above out on its ear and just plain wing it when required. Oh yeah, and enough talent to not only follow the new plan, but make it work.

What has worked for me is stubbornness - my current D&D group WILL make it to level 20 or their PCs will die trying. And I have outright replaced 2 of the starting players in the group, welcomed one of those back when he replaced his own replacement, tried out 3 other players that just did not mesh with the rest of the group, and added 3 more players that appear to be doing well. Plus did everything I could to keep the group together during a global pandemic that, admittedly, did not get to the level of "zombie apocalypse", darn the luck. One of the biggest things I have done from the beginning is that the players leave their character sheets at my place (where we hold our sessions), and if they cannot make a session, they have to "adult" up and let me know ahead of time who is playing their character. And if their PC dies while they are not present, it still counts. Scheduling is the other big hurdle, and sometimes all you can do is have everyone, including yourself as DM, list out when they are free to play a session. Once you have the list, sometimes the only option you have is what fits best into the most participants' schedules, and you have to be enough of an adult and look at your friend, even if they are your favorite player, and tell them it just is not going to work for this campaign, hopefully they will be available in the future. The game must go on, and when it cannot continue in its current form, sometimes the only option is to start fresh, keep only the players that really show they want to be there, maybe try a new campaign setting, or even a new game entirely, and try again. You never know, you could end up running your game for just one session before restarting from scratch (got a movie quote about that, more in a moment) or you could run it for the next 40 years. The movie quote, by the way, is about bands, and I cannot seem to find the scene by itself, but it is very appropriate to RPG groups. The scene comes from That Thing You Do, the one starting and directed by Tom Hanks from the '90s about a band of young gentlemen in the late '50s/early '60sand their hit rock song. Our protagonist, the drummer of the group, finds himself talking to his hero, a jazz pianist, who has been in the music industry for a very long time. The drummer complains that his band is breaking up, but they have this hit record and song, to which the wise veteran replies, "some bands I've been in, one album is too many". Well, for some of your groups out there, one game session may be one game session too many, and they immediately dissolve. Hell, I myself have tried to get groups together that dissolved before they got through character creation and Session Zero! But you will not know for sure until you have at least tried. Do not beat yourself up if it does not work, bit you have to at least try.

Not so much a lesson, but some other things I wish to share. Just as we were gearing up to play in-person again, WotC released Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (TCoE). My impression of it so far is that it suffers the same issue as Xanathar's Guide to Everything (XGtE) - if it really covers "everything", why would we need any other books? But here we have TWO tomes with similar names claiming "everything"? The goofy name aside, I do like most of TCoE, and am actively using several items from it - sidekicks and group patrons. To be honest, when I started my current campaign almost 3 years ago, I also invented (or thought I had) group patrons. The wife and I several more years before starting the campaign had watched the BBC's recent reinvention of The Musketeers. When we watched it, I was struck that this certain unit in the military answered directly to their ruler, got missions and support from the government, and in return said government got to restrain them from being too excessive. The perfect thing to fight murder-hoboism, I thought. I talked about this, briefly, nearly a year ago when the Eberron campaign setting book came out, the first appearance of patrons to D&D 5e, officially. It took me a while, but recently I realized that what I had done in my own game was give my players a patron. Here I was, thinking at how clever I had been, but the folks at WotC are keeping up with all of us out here in TV Land. 

Sidekicks have also been of great use. Long before TCoE came out, my party went a little "awaken" crazy, and ended up with a badger bartender (who I ruled got a little extra juice in the awakening and also got a little anthropomorphized in the process, but as the badger is not joining the party on the adventures, I deemed it was fine for story purposes), the cleric's giant boar mount, and a dire wolf the ranger insisted on saving after the party almost killed it (did kill 13 of its packmates and its former master... how long does the "charm" portion of the awaken spell last again? 30 days? that should be fine). The party is already 11th level, so while the rules for sidekicks normally only allow creatures/NPCs up to 1/2 CR, I allowed the "big pig" and the wolf to be made sidekicks, just reduced their hit dice pool to match what would normally be given to a 1/2 CR sidekick at level 11, but left everything else alone. Yeah, these two have more special abilities than your average 1/2 CR creature, but at this level, it is not going to make much difference. For the boar, I went with the "warrior" sidekick, as our cleric is not one to shy away from melee combat and also the boar is very not-stealthy, having her own barding. For the wolf, even though it is a "large" creature (a wolf roughly the size of a horse), I decided to go just a bit sideways and went with the "expert" sidekick. Yes, the "expert" is more like a rogue, but it is also more like a ranger, with the tracking and stealth, and the pack tactics special ability of the dire wolf interlocks well with the coordinated strike feature of the "expert". The party has not had much time with their new sidekicks, but I can already tell they are looking forward to getting good use out of the pair. Check out both sidekicks and group patrons in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, I know my party is enjoying both of them.

How to Properly Do a D&D Movie/Show

They appear to be making yet another D&D movie, and I think they are going to make a hash of it. Again. Let us be honest - D&D has done well as a RPG (duh), many novelizations and comic books (but not all of them), but has been laughable at best in theaters and well, the best cartoon they did last aired in 1985. I have said in the past that WotC, instead of trying to make their own D&D movie, would be better served to buy the rights to whatever generic or even lightly branded medieval fantasy movie that is about to come out, and just change the names of places and people to fit any of the many D&D campaign settings. They could have done it with the 2018 version of Robin Hood. It did not seem to have much in common with the standard Robin Hood mythos, aside from some of the names. It also seemed to be full of magic and anachronistic technology and fashion that made no sense for a Robin Hood retelling, so it is not too big of a stretch to see that WotC could alter the script to names from one of their many campaign settings, slap some Spock rubber ears on a few of the actors to make "elves", some beards on short actors for "dwarves", and rename it to, "D&D, the Bandit's Journey", or something vaguely cool like that. It would not do any worse than the actual movie did ($100 million budget, and only $86 million worldwide gross? not a real barn burner, was it?) and if the WotC writers tightened up the plot at the same time they were changing names in the script, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the movie would have actually been successful and made money. I would say it does not appear they are doing any of that, but we know so little about what the new movie contains that I cannot really say much about it. Oh, Chris Pine is reported to be the lead actor, and I have enjoyed his work elsewhere, so it has that going for it.

What? You know I am right, if the setting is medieval fantasy, change some of the names and it is totally a D&D movie. I see that look on your face, you do not believe me, but I, ahem, Mr Matt Colville DM extraordinaire shall prove you wrong.

Yes, if you paid attention, that was Matt describing the most popular geeky movie franchise of the late '90s/early '00s, Lord of the Rings, as a D&D campaign. Also to explain the difference between different styles of D&D games. As long as the story is good, the plot vaguely makes sense, and the characters have a chance to exhibit growth, then it does not matter which exact story you tell. Yes, Tolkien's works pre-date D&D, even influence it heavily enough that the Tolkien estate sued TSR back in the day, but you have to admit that The Lord of the Rings trilogy would have worked just as well with different names for the characters and places. So it makes for a crappy D&D campaign, but still it was more entertaining to watch than The Hobbit trilogy. No, I am not going to link those two, if you have not seen either or do not know what I am talking about, stop reading this, go watch the movies, read the books, and then you can come back. You must be at least this nerdy to participate in this blog.

I would say that the folks behind the upcoming D&D movie are doing any of that, but as I do not actually know what they are doing or even planning on doing, I am not going to say that. Instead I am going to tell you what I would do if I were in charge, as if I had any chance of the folks at WotC listen to any of my advice. Better chance of winning the lottery. Which reminds me I need want to buy some lottery tickets, but no, Powerball and Mega Millions are not high enough as I type this. Anyway, this is what I would do for a D&D movie. First, I would make it a series on one of the streaming platforms. Movies are too constricted, too bland and safe, especially after the COVID (well, eventually after we will be able to go back to theaters to watch them), so I would do a series for the long term value and I would go streaming because that is where you folks, my people, my fellow nerds and geeks, where we watch our entertainment these days. Second, if we are going to go so far as to brand this thing D&D, instead of just making another generic medieval fantasy show, let us really show folks what D&D is all about - you show the players and DM playing the game and then every so often flip over to the action in the game so it is not just another live play show. Wait, what? Yes, you have two complete casts, one that is playing the story like it was an actual game of D&D, complete with jokes and table banter, and another, different cast in full costumes and CGI effects and fancy set pieces, the works, acting out the story the first cast is playing in their game. Oh, and the first cast is doing voice-over for everything the second cast is saying. 

Let me explain this a bit further - the first episode starts out in media res, our action cast in their medieval fantasy finery battling some level monsters (goblins or kobolds, whatever you would normally encounter at level 1 or 2), but the voices do not seem to match up with the characters, and maybe even one or more of the characters is being voiced by the opposite gender. The characters defeat the whatevers and a new voice suddenly starts describing what appears before the characters, and then a whip cut over to a bunch of geeks (the voices we heard coming out of the fantasy hero mouths just a moment ago) gathered around a table, playing D&D. The new voice from the voice over is the, duh, DM. Of course, someone tells a joke at the dramatic moment, which is the reason for the whip cut, the table breaks up laughing and now the audience is pulled into the fun. We watch the players for a bit, the DM calms everyone down, and we flip back to the live action group acting out the new scene. This way you have both halves of what you want from a D&D movie - the medieval fantasy schlock with cool fight scenes and special effects, the story and character development you have always wanted from one of these but never really got, and you also get to see what playing the game with your friends is like.

I just realized that what I described was Harmonquest, Dan Harmon's animated, D&D-as-therapy show that is hilarious and popular with "the youths". For the most part my idea is very similar, but there are some key differences. The biggest is that the cast stays the same, and this will not be played out in front of a live studio audience, sitcom style. Other differences lie in that my D&D show will be scripted, live action for the adventure scenes, and while still containing humor (you have to have a good laugh around the table to have a good D&D game) it will be a much more serious tone overall. 

Now for casting - I think WotC needs to cast big name voice actors like John DiMaggio and Kari Wahlgren who are known for doing voice acting but not known for doing live performance acting. Like the cast of Critical Role before they did Critical Role. Why not just cast them? Because you want to use the good ideas from that show, but not merely recreate it (and they are already doing a Critical Role cartoon that hot Kickstarted for millions of dollars). So you get voice actors who are recognizable by their voices but not their faces, and they are your DM and players of the show. For the "action" cast, you hire all those stunt women and men, like Zoë Bell, who rarely act as themselves but are in great shape and can do all the fight choreography. I like this setup because you still have the names that the very interested fans will recognize, and since this will be a series on streaming, the production team can save themselves some money, as the name draw just is not necessary. Though I did recently see the new Jumanji movies, and it was kind of neat to hear the action cast (Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, etc) mimic the real world cast (the kids, Danny DeVito, etc). But then you have to pay for double the cast, as they found out between the 2 newest Jumanji movies - you have to have recognizable names and voices to mimic with your "action" cast, otherwise it just does not land as well as you hoped it would. 

Which brings us, of course, to the story, and the biggest question all of the previous D&D-based movies have SPECTACULARLY failed on - what exactly is the story of D&D? The answer, of course, is that there is not one singular story for D&D, there never has been, and there never will be. I am not the only one who believes this to be true, and Jerry Holkins is as big a D&D nerd as you can find, so that article is not about how much he hates D&D. Well, that is all then, guess we are done. What? No? Fine. As you well know, everyone thinks of something different when they hear the term Dungeons & Dragons, usually their favorite gaming party during their most epic of adventure arcs or campaigns. And yes, I intended to emphasize that the party is more important than the plot of the campaign, because admit it, in your memories, your friends (ie: the party) ARE more important. Which is why I want to have a cast specifically made to show the DM and the party so we can tell that story and relate to the non-fans how special the relationship around a TTRPG usually is for those involved. Also why I want to script the whole show, as you can often get good table chemistry from any bunch of nerds playing D&D, but from non-players who are voicing lines for the "action" cast, well, it is far easier to feed them the lines so they sound like they are veteran players, have great table chemistry, and easier to match lip flaps with the "action" cast if you are not improvising all your lines at the same time. Then what story do I give to the "action" cast? More accurately, which classic D&D campaign would I have the party play and the action cast act out? Because that is what you need for the action cast - a classic D&D campaign that is recognizable to the fans but still gives a little of everything found in the game to those who do not know (combat, exploration, negotiation, stealth, high adventure, the works). There are plenty to choose from - Against the Giants, Keep on the Borderlands, The Spider Queen - and even plenty that were created for or from novels - any of the Drizz't books or the entirety of the sprawling Dragonlance novels spring immediately to mind. However, the one I have in mind is not as popular in the current player zeitgeist, but I think that would enhance it for the show - the grognards who remember it would be stoked to see it, the younger players would enjoy learning about it from the show, and it has plenty of dungeon crawling and political intrigue. I am talking about the original adventure path, The Shackled City. 

First, a little explanation of what an adventure path is and where they originated from. Near the end of the 3.5 edition of D&D, WotC got a little tired of doing their Dragon and Dungeon magazines (actually, I think it was more towards the end of 3rd edition and the transition to 3.5, but the timing is not important) and one of their biggest users of the Open Gaming License (OGL), Paizo Publishing, offered to take over those magazines for WotC. And they did a fantastic job with them, handling them like champs for many years. Eventually WotC took the magazines back from Paizo (and then killed the magazines, of course) right around the time they released 4th edition. Paizo, having already made plenty of their own products for 3rd/3.5 decided to double their bet and tweaked what they already had published to make their own medieval fantasy RPG, Pathfinder. Which is similar enough to 3rd/3.5 that most players consider Pathfinder (at least 1st edition Pathfinder, but that's a different story) to be D&D version 3.75. Before all of that, though, while they were still doing Dungeon magazine, they came up with the idea of the adventure path - it is not a small series of adventures, but a large one, set to tell a longer story and let your players take their characters from level 1 all the way up to 20. Paizo got so good at adventure paths that they became the main selling point (at least in my mind) of Pathfinder. And Shackled City was the first one. 

There are some caveats. The biggest is that Shackled City appears to be not the greatest, story-wise, as it is far more focused on the dungeon crawling and the lore surrounding the plot is not shared well with the players. I have never played it, so I cannot give you my opinion of it, but I do not see this as a huge problem. Even though it was written by the Paizo folks, the campaign still belongs to WotC as their intellectual property, so they can use whatever bits of it they want and change the rest to tell a more interesting story. In fact, as WotC has already transformed many classic adventures to the new(ish) 5e rules, they could improve the adventure path and release it alongside the show. That is called "synergy", right there. You should also remember that the main draw of this D&D series is not the action scenes, but the interaction of the party members, so whatever adventure they are following is really the sideshow next to the main attraction.

There you have it folks, my grandiose, self-indulgent plan for how I would do a D&D movie/streaming series. Now to wait for the royalty checks to come pouring in. Any second now.

One last thing before you go, if you are fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (and RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic), as well as a fan of Red Letter Media, you should check out RLM's commentary track for the original D&D movie. It is really more of a director's commentary style of track rather than the classic MST3K style, but still very fun.

Lessons Learned 24

The following happened months, MONTHS I say, ago. In the before times, and then global pandemic hit and we have not played in my campaign since. Maybe after the first of the year we will see the first of several vaccines come out, and we will finish this thing up. Excuse me if I have forgotten anything, or the details have become muddled, but I have been busy in the interim.

The party got to dabble in the sandbox, and then I railroaded them right into the giants' lair. After their last adventure, a side quest where I let them choose which path to take, I once again used their affiliation with the government to go where I wanted them to go. For those of you not following all of that, in my desire to fight "murderhobo-ism" I tied the party to a paramilitary organization at the very beginning of this campaign, which makes them be responsible to their local government and which also lets me guide the group from time to time. This adventure is the classic Against the Giants, originally published all the way back in 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, but lovingly updated to 5e by Wizards of the Coast and published in Tales from the Yawning Portal. Unlike the two other arcs of this campaign, which I stole whole-cloth from 3rd edition and had to modify to 5th as we played (usually before each session, but sometimes as we were playing them out), this arc has already been translated for me, by professionals! 

There is, however, still much preparation that I have had to do for this arc, and the party is not past the first of three parts of the adventure. I highly encourage you to read Fiddleback's (of GM Word of the Week fame) review, I guess you would call it, of this particular module, Fiddleback vs Against the Giants. If you are planning on running this series of adventures, heed the man's warning and prepare your butt off. I will let you read what Master Fiddleback wrote for yourself, but I do want to relay some of the things I had to do to get the first third of this arc running smooth. 

One moment while I digress on my use of the word "master" just now. I did not use it, as has become anathema to the liberal left snowflakes, in the manner of "master and slave". Yes, slavery was (still is) abhorrent, and GitHub was right in discontinuing the term "master" as it was traditional to call the orginating code "master", and the subsequent code "slaves". However, not every use of the word master is about slavery. My use of the word master just now refers to a master craftsman (craftsperson, fine, PC bullshit, grumble grumble), as in apprentice, journeyman, master. Good on GitHub for dropping it, but not every other usage of the word should be abandoned, unless it directly reflects back to slavery. My buck fifty on the matter.

The first thing I realized in setting up this adventure is the broad scope of monsters and NPCs in this one fort. The original creators (quite possibly Master Gygax himself) did not want you to get bored by running into the same monster over and over, so there are numerous different monsters and NPCs. There was no way I could keep track of them all trying to flip between the pages of the Monster Manual, so I wrote all of their stats onto 3x5 note cards. I am not kidding, there is like 30 separate monster types and NPCs in just the first third of the adventure. Now, you do not have to hand write them onto note cards, you could compile them onto a couple of pages and print them out. However you do it, do something and do not try to reference the books mid-session, as you will slow everything down as you flip back and forth betwixt all the different baddies.

Speaking of monsters, the adventure gives you the positions of all of the said monsters inside this two level fort at one specific time. Making sure your party reaches the fort at that time is easy, but after that, the players could decide to do something other than kick open the doors and commence to rolling for initiative. My party scouted the fort from the shadows, and then withdrew to discuss options, then snuck back in the next night to assassinate the head giant, after most of the giants went to bed. Totally throws the whole lot of baddies into a spin and suddenly what is in the book is no longer correct. Time passes, the monsters and NPCs, if you want this to be realistic, move to different parts of the fort and go about their different routines doing different things at different parts of the day in different areas of the fort. No, the adventure does not tell you what these routines are or where any of the baddies are at any other time of day, you have to decide as the DM what these routines are and where the monsters are at throughout the day. You will want to do this before your players and their characters arrive at the fort, as you will be too busy directing the scene to figure all of this out on the fly. For my session prep, I charted out where everyone was at and what they were doing at various parts of the day - in the deep of night after the feast, during the morning, then the afternoon, and finally early evening just before the feast. You do not have to go that detailed, or you may decide to go even further, whatever works for you. I did make the decision that until the party did something to interrupt it, the feast described in the adventure module would reoccur every evening at roughly the same time, just so I would not have to reinvent that particular wheel. 

Beyond all of that, the adventure is, and has been since the first edition, very vague on many of the particulars - how do the PCs get the job? where are these giants' strongholds exactly? how does the party travel to these locations? how do some of the non-automatically evil giants react to the party? what will drive off each band of giants, also known as what is their breaking point? For most of these questions, like how does the party travel to the hill giant fort, I have let the players figure it out. For these kinds of questions, as long as the party has not made an obvious bad decision, they will automatically succeed, but they still feel powerful and their actions and decisions have an effect on the world. For the other questions, you as the DM have to figure this stuff out ahead of time. Or during play. Like I had no idea my party would go straight to assassinating the hill giant chief, but they did and they managed to pull it off. Did this drive away the other giants? No, I decided on the spot, but it did create a bit of a power vacuum, and as a result there is some infighting that the PCs could take advantage of. Some folks will see this lack of concrete information on every aspect or possibility as a failing by the adventure's author, but I think you cannot possibly cover down on EVERY eventuality in the scenario, you as an author can only do so much on any product, and there has to be a point where you say "enough is enough", end it and publish it. Take it as a challenge to improve your DM'ing skills, and try not to whine about it too much.

Not really a lesson learned, but a funny story in and of itself - my party has a fascination with the Awaken spell. At the beginning of the previous arc of the campaign, the party traveled to the ranger's tavern (we used Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign book for some downtime options, and the ranger built a tavern, the druid built a sacred grove and herbal shop, and the paladin, as the party's leader, oversaw the construction of their guild's chapterhouse) and one of the party joked they were going into the ranger's personal bedroom and stealing his badger. "How do you know he has a badger," I asked, "and that he keeps it in his bedroom?" "He's a ranger," came the reply, "don't they all have a badger in their bedrooms?" So I rolled Luck (I just use percentile dice and kind of guesstimate what the likelihood of anything happening is, and just roll with it), and rolled very, very high. So the party finds a badger in the ranger's bedroom... which they then proceeded to die pink, shave all it's fur off except for a mohawk, put a bikini on (another roll, this badger is female), and then the druid gets the bright idea they should Awaken the poor thing. Which they did, and then gifted a spare Headband of Intellect no one in the party was using (obviously). Said badger, now wearing a very nicely tailored suit, runs the ranger's tavern while the ranger is off on adventures with the party. Also the badger was given a lot of marijuana (the druid and ranger were the biggest pot dealers in this particular corner of the empire, and after they made friends with the myconids at the end of the last campaign arc, are also now the biggest 'shroom dealers) which helped soothe the badger down after the whole "shaved and dyed pink" thing. 

But it does not stop there. The party's newest member is a dwarven cleric who came with his own giant boar to ride around on. What did the party do after the dwarf got to trusting the rest of the party? They Awakened his boar. Then the ranger, whose family has a fascination with wolves and werewolves, managed to make a dire wolf his loyal pet after nearly killing it, definitely killing its former master, and bringing said wolf back from the brink of death. Which the party then Awakened. But no extra Headbands of Intellect for what I have been playing as the party's new peanut gallery. Think Waldorf and Statler from The Muppet Show, except they each weigh half a ton, are the size of a horse, only have an INT of 6, and could maul you at their leisure. I am dreading what they will Awaken next, but also fascinated at the same time, like a train wreck you just cannot tear your eyes away from.

That is all for this post. Sorry for the delay, but the COVID has kept me and the family busy. My group is still playing online when we can get manage to get together, but it has not been as regular as any of us would like. Hope you and yours are doing well and surviving the pandemic.

Good Story, Bad Game

The party, newcomers to the adventuring life, had answered the summons by the village, and had trekked into the dark caverns to clear out the bloodthirsty goblins residing therein. Triumphant but still battered, the party returned to the village to find the local lord had finally deigned to show up with his retainers. The party didn't care, they had taken the job from the village overseer, and the overseer was who the party was expecting payment from, not this lordling that couldn't be bothered to take care of his villeins properly. 

Yet the lord had other ideas. Embarrassed that he had been proven to be lacking in attending to his sworn duties, he had gathered all of his warriors and rushed to the village to find the adventurers had already performed the necessary extermination. Now here they were about to receive gold that should be going to him in the form of taxes, as this was his land, after all. This was a feudalistic society, not some anarcho-syndicalist commune. The lord ordered his retinue to seize the gold and any other treasure the party had gotten from the goblins. The adventurers protested, but they were very much outnumbered, and not high enough level to matter, so they handed over the villagers' gold and the mere pittance of coins they had gotten from the goblins. Oh, and the +1 dagger the rogue had found on the body of the head goblin. 

"This is fantastic!" thought the lord. "My men didn't have to fight anything, the goblins are gone, and I still got my taxes. Plus this beautiful dagger! Isn't the next town over complaining about orcs?" And so the lord, laughing up his sleeve, mentioned the orc problem of the next village over in passing to the adventurers. He would wait a few days, and then follow them with his war host, see if he could arrive in time to repeat the act.

All of the above is an idea I had recently on something to inflict on my D&D party, I have not actually done that to them yet. Having been a medieval recreator and studied our actual history, I could see some feudalistic lordling doing that to a party of D&D adventurers. Let the adventurers take care of your monster problems, that's less wear and tear on the folks that you have to buy healing potions for, but adventurers aren't covered by your health insurance, now are they? And isn't there some quote about teaching a man to fish so you can beat him up to take his fish everyday?

So why not make your game more "realistic" and do this too them? As the title of this article suggests, the above makes for a great bit of fiction, and while we DMs are "telling a collaborative story with the help our players", that doesn't mean this story makes for a fun or interesting game. By having the lord be more powerful than the party and basically telling them to hand over their hard won booty or die, you have stolen their agency and killed any desire in them to adventure further. That is, unless your ultimate goal was to have the party deal with this lord, this is not a good dose of realism to inflict on your party. Which would make an interesting game - how is the party dealing with little Lord Fontleroy? Outright killing him? Political assassination by going to his Baron/Count/Duke/the Queen? Peasant revolt? What are they doing afterwards, taking the lord's place themselves or giving it to a peasant or one of the lord's old retainers? - but only one time and only if the party themselves are interested in playing along with it.

Just a quick idea I had. Sorry for the long hiatus, been very busy since the beginning of the 'Rona, as my business turns out to be critical, and also my job as well. Looking to finish up several other drafts I have had bubbling on the back burner for a while, and will be posting them soonish.

Old School Tips and Tricks

I was discussing with the newest player to my table the other day some ideas for his character and was reminded that hardly any of my players have been alive as long as I have been playing tabletop RPGs, much less playing them for nearly as long. Part of my job as a long time gamer and specifically as their experienced DM is to help all of them play the various games better with lessons learned from past campaigns. I mean, it is not something you as a player should expect from every one of your DM/GM/Referee/Storyteller/Whatnots as part of the unwritten social contract between gamers and DMs, but as an experienced and long-time gamer turned DM, I feel for me this is something I should have been paying attention to since Day One. In my game, we are at the end of a side quest which will bring the party up to level 11 and ready for the next major arc of the overarching campaign (campaign goal - get the party to 20th level and have fun while getting there), so I figured now is a good time to review how I as the DM am doing with the players, how my players are doing both from my perspective and their own, have a bit of downtime activities, and impart some "wisdom". Really these are just tricks us old time grognards used to make the games we played more palatable, well before the time of the internet, 3d printers, and pocket computers (what we call "cell phones", far different than what we called cell phones around the time that Wizards of the Coast bought D&D from TSR and released 3rd edition), and for as cheap as possible because we were all broke, minimum wage workers. Also, as the COVID-19 "isolate in place" orders are about to lift in our state/county/city, it will be nice to get out of our various houses, see our friends in person and away from voices over the internet.

Before I get into this, do not mistake me, I am not bemoaning the modern technology that we are enjoying. I am very much busy enjoying my 3d printer (currently down for maintenance, but most recently working on modular bar pieces) and the use of such technology as Discord and Roll20 to play online during the COVID isolate in place orders, Google Drive and Docs to share files with the group as well as gather files for the campaign, and all the various free bits of software, both from WotC and 3rd party designers. However, some of these technologies can become very expensive - the 3d printer addiction will likely outstrip the rest, only because my video gaming addiction meant I already have an expensive gaming rig for that addiction and not necessarily for tabletop RPGs - both in software and hardware and may not be for every party. The free and paid character creators and sheets from D&D Beyond, for example, work very well, but unless you are able to spend quite a bit of money on a tablet, the sheet is way too slow at accessing information for comfort at a gaming table. Plus, you lose something in muscle memory when you create something digitally versus writing it onto paper. As such, these tips and tricks are not for every group (they may not even be for my own group, we will find out soon), but have worked well for me in the past.

The following is for my D&D 5e campaign, but I have used many of these in other tabletop RPGs, and most of these are for the players as well as the DM. For everything that I purchased for this week's presentation to my players, I went to WalMart and priced everything there, as I wanted to try and get the most common prices across the US, though you may find these cheaper elsewhere, like at Staples or Office Depot, or even online at Amazon.

The first and probably most relevant to modern technology is fine tip dry erase markers (found at WalMart for $4.74 for 5 in a variety of colors). I say that these are the most relevant to modern technology as dry/wet erase boards are far more available and prevalent than they were 20 years ago. In fact, back when 3rd edition first came out and I first ran into this idea, we did not have dry erase markers, they were called overhead projector markers (still are) as there were not any dry erase boards but schools had been using overhead projectors for decades. Dry erase markers are fantastic for both the party and the DM, as the DM can create a map board with some plexiglass (which can get a bit expensive for the larger sheets, but cost can be offset by having your players chip in to a party fund) and poster boards. You tape the poster boards to the back of the plexiglass after you mark out your 1 inch (or whatever, I am considering a 1/2 inch grid and utilize 15mm minis instead of 28/32mm heroics to get more room for maneuver in my battles) with a simple yard stick and a permanent marker on the poster boards. In the picture below, you can see some of my 3d printed walls and terrain bits on my own 1 inch grid board.

these have all been painted by now, and look fantastic

The dry erase markers are great to quickly mark out any terrain or pertinent information that I do not have a model or miniature or marker for. Note that I use regular chisel tip markers on my battle map, just to cover more area quickly, but the fine tips work well for certain applications and should be your first purchase over the chisel tips. The other use of the dry erase markers, more pertinent to the players and why I said that fine tips should be your first purchase is character sheets. Now, I am not saying your players should use the dry erase markers directly on their character sheets, but in addition to the markers, they need to invest in some sheet protectors. I found, on my little WalMart expedition, a pack of 20 economy sheet protectors for $0.88. Since each player is only going to need a few each, this pack is enough for my party, at least for their current characters. Once the players have their regular character sheets filled out (the stock ones direct from WotC are good looking enough, and if no one in your group has a computer and printer to print them off, someone can do it from work, or the party can pitch in and have a bunch printed up at your local Staples or Office Depot, or even most public libraries offer print for pay services) with pencils, they slip them into the sheet protectors and use the dry erase markers on the outside of the sheet protectors to record temporary information - current and max HP, Death Saves, any temporary buffs or debuffs to skills or stats or any other characteristic, XP gains, and even keep track of spells cast and material components consumed. Once you get to the end of the game session, the players simply pull out their sheets and write down anything they need to know for the next game session. I am kicking myself for forgetting this one, as my players' sheets look atrocious, with notes and markings and even eraser rub holes, to the point that I have printed up pristine new sheets for everyone and part of next session will be them transferring their characters to the new sheets. And I have a ton of dry erase markers floating around that I have been using specifically with this campaign, so not doing this before now is doubly frustrating for me.

Speaking of pencils, I provide to my players BIC Matic Grip Mechanical Pencils that I get in bulk from the local Sam's Club. This could be something your group pitches in for, as they are used by the whole group. You do not have to buy that specific brand, but I have been using them for multiple decades with great success, and if you do have a bulk store account, can be had for not a lot of money per pencil. I suggest a mechanical pencil, as you do not have to worry about providing sharpeners, but if you want to go with something more reusable than the BICs I shared above, you can find nice ones and refills for both the leads and the erasers easily enough. I find the BICs write well, erase well, and last quite a long time, but when they run out of lead or eraser, I do not feel I wasted my money throwing it away and grabbing a new one.

Next up is something to keep said sheet protectors in. Currently I keep all of the character sheets at my house so that if any of the players do not make a game, we can pass off their character to someone else to keep the game going. To that end, I had a mess of manila folders leftover from other uses at my house and gave one to each player to hold their sheets, and even stapled in the crit/fumble charts and the initiative chart we use in the game. However, I really should have listened to Seth Skorkowsky and started the campaign with each player having their own 3-ring binders that I had prefilled with paper and sheet protectors and other info. During my trip to WalMart, I found the cheapest option which has no inside or outside pockets, merely some plastic front and back covers and the requisite 3 rings to hold onto punched items. These run $0.88 and will suffice for the very economically-minded gamers out there, and they do not take up a bunch of room. However, even going up to a half inch binder with cardboard covers and extra pockets inside and out will only run you $2.64 apiece. You do not need much more than about half an inch ring size, as anything more than that and you will want to clean out old, unneeded information. I am upgrading my players this next session, but this could easily be another group purchase to further defray the costs for each of the individuals.

Of course, if you have a 3 ring binder, just holding some character sheets in it seems a bit of a waste of space. That is why I am also recommending that, as a player or a DM, you put in some filler paper, preferably college ruled, which I found 150 page packs for $0.82. Why regular notebook paper? Easy, you take notes on notebook paper. After the basic rulebook for whatever system you are playing and your character sheet for that game, having something to take and keep notes on is probably the most important item in your inventory. And yes, I am including dice in that equation, you can always borrow dice from someone else at the table, or I have even played in games where the group could afford exactly one set of dice and so the game master rolled for everybody. Yet having somewhere other than merely the back of your character sheets to write notes will mean you are better prepared to play the game - what is the name of the NPC quest giver? the local ruler? the big bad? what is the name of the city/kingdom/area you are in? what was that rumor(s) we heard in the tavern again? how much gold are we getting to save the son/daughter of the local important person? what was that cryptic poem carved into the front door of this dungeon? Note paper is there to take notes, and you should definitely be taking notes in any RPG, even in one shot adventures. A couple of years back, before I joined the group that morphed into the group I am running games for, I was jones'ing for a game bad enough that I went and played a game at my friendly local gaming store's (FLGS) Adventurers League night. I do not have anything against the Adventurers League, in fact I think it is a fantastic idea and if I had more time in my life, would probably offer to run AL night at my FLGS. Anyway, I show up, having taken a gaming hiatus pretty much from the introduction of 3.5 through 4th edition D&D, and run a one shot with a pregenerated character they handed me that night. I ran across that character sheet a week or so back, and the back of the character sheet, the blank part of it, is full of notes, little drawings of maps, a puzzle we ran into in the dungeon, and that was from a gaming session that lasted 3 hours. Plus, writing something down manually means you retain it better than if you just type it into your phone, tablet, or computer (and far better than just trying to remember whatever). Notes, while not often discussed when people talk about tabletop RPGs, turn out to be very important.

Speaking of notes, the next thing you should add to your brand spanky new 3-ring binder is some graph paper (which I found also at WalMart, 80 pages for $1.76). Very much old school, but I think graph paper is very useful for dungeon-crawl type medieval fantasy RPGs. Now, not every player at the table needs to map out the dungeon to the exact dimensions, but it would behoove at least one player to be the party cartographer and do so. Have you been to every room on this level, cannot locate the way forward, and is there an odd empty space between a couple of the rooms? Chances are there is a secret door in one of those rooms that you have not located, but you only notice that if you really pay attention to the dungeon cartography. Is it 100% required in any game? No, but having the tools available, and especially for under $2, makes this a good addition to any player's toolkit. All of you game masters out there, should definitely be practicing their map creation skills. You do not have to be Dyson Logos, but if you want good tactical combat, you should at least learn by messing around with graph paper. Yes, there are plenty of good graphing programs for free on the internet, but there is something about physically drawing out a dungeon (or an abandoned warehouse in the combat zone, if you are playing Cyberpunk 2020) that ties you to it and makes it your own.

The next bit of old school trickery I am passing along is to suggest you pick up some 3x5 index cards (sorry, cannot locate a link, but a 300 count of ruled ones I got at Wally World for a mere $1.44) and a box to keep them in (also a WalMart purchase, for $1.88). This trick comes from the days before products like The Deck of Many's many products, there just was no company two decades ago offering anything like their monster, spell, or weapon decks. And I am not saying that, if you find them affordable, you should not use their products, but for many a player who is trying to game on a budget or as inexpensively as possible, a stack of 3x5 index cards and a box to hold them in (for less than $3.50) is the way to go. Even if you do purchase any of The Deck of Many's products, or any of their competitor's products for that matter, there are many things you can (and should) do with index cards. The new edition of D&D, 5e, is far simpler than previous editions, but there are still many powers and abilities each character earns as they play the game. Let us take probably the simplest class, the one almost every player tries at the beginning, the fighter. Level one they have a Fighting Style and the Second Wind ability. Level two, they get Action Surge. Level three they choose a Martial Archetype, which gives them an ability at 3rd, 7th, 10th, 15th, and 18th levels, which could simply be an ability at the named levels or spells and an ability or different maneuvers, three to start with, plus the aforementioned abilities. They get an Extra Attack at 5th, 11th, and 20th. And finally, they get the Indomitable ability at 9th level, which improves at 13th and again at 17th. That is a lot of things to keep track of, and while writing them all down on the character sheet (front and back, let us be honest) is one thing, but if you write each ability, each maneuver, each spell down on a card of its own, by hand, not only will the muscle memory help you remember each of those things. Plus you have the reference for each of those to hand and you do not have to go digging in the Player's Handbook each time you want to do something. Not only do index cards allow you quick reference, but having the physical cards allows you to keep track of your abilities and whatnot. This ability refreshes after a short rest - after you use it, flip it over and, since you have written "Refreshes after short or long rest" on the back, you know that after the party has a short rest, you flip it back over to the front and you can use it again, because that reminder is right there. For the game masters out there, and I am as guilty of not doing this (before now) as anyone else, use your 3x5 cards to track your NPCs, your side quest rumors, your treasure hoards (if you prepare those for your big bads beforehand), your big bads, your scratch built monsters, and you can even find 3x5 cards with grid lines on them to do pieces of maps or even geomorphs. I think Jim Murphy has some of the best ideas for index cards and their use by game masters, you should watch it here. I may even get a fancy wooden box for my index cards if I do them up correctly.

My last suggestion for players and game masters alike are Post-It Flags (found at WalMart for $2.88). Everyone should have at least the basic rulebook for whatever game they are playing - the PHB for D&D, the core rulebook for Cyberpunk 2020 - and a good way to reference your books is to use these little plastic flags to mark sections in the book. Here is my own PHB, all flagged up.

This has been marked for what I, as the DM, need for my game, so this may not be the markings you need for your game. Maybe you are a player that is playing a dwarven cleric, so you would mark the dwarf race entry, the cleric class entry, the equipment entry, and then each of your often used spells. You may be a fighter or some other character who uses the movement rules a lot and so you mark those sections specifically. You can mark your books however you want to. And yes, I know I spent the last section talking about using 3x5 index cards instead of referencing the books, but it never hurts to have the source material to hand. Especially if you are a DM, you will need these little beauties, all of the sections and tables in odd places in the Dungeon Master's Guide, all the different sources and bits of information from the published adventure you are either running or stealing from, and all the bits from Xanathar's Guide you are allowing your players to use (but not the ones they dare not touch, or face your wrath).

There you go, for roughly $10 ($15 if you go fancy on some of the items) you can improve your game. Adopt some of them, or none of them, but thinking about how you can improve your game from either side of the screen is always a good thing. Remember, if you and everyone else is having fun, then you are doing something right.