Preparation is among the most valuable tools at the disposal of a good dungeon master. It can help at every level of the game—encounters, both random and planned, quick reference to NPCs, pivotal plot points, and overall cohesion. There are times, though, when it is possible to over prepare, to the point where it can become an active detriment to your game.

Overpreparation is a fairly common pitfall for novice dungeon masters, though sadly not exclusive to them. It can occur when the DM wishes to present a smooth experience, or when he or she has a vision of an epic storyline in mind and wants to ensure that the players get to experience it just as it was initially imagined. The players are herded along, often more by stick than carrot, and sometimes even accompanied by a DM-controlled member of the party who will ensure that they stay on track by varying degrees of forcefulness—essentially a parole officer to make sure the players don’t get “lost” along the way to the next plot point.

This kind of DMing behavior is colloquially known as “railroading”, since the players are essentially on a fixed path from point A to point B without any chance of meaningful diversion from that path—much like a train cannot run where there are no rails. In short it negates the role of the players in the story and relegates them to being passive spectators to the DM’s vision of the plot. While there is nothing wrong with telling a story, the idea at the core of a roleplaying game is that everyone gets a chance to participate, and railroading diminishes or removes the ability of the players to do so.

One difficulty in avoiding railroading your players is that many of the techniques and intentions that lead to the adventure being “on rails” are simply misapplications of perfectly valid methods of DMing a game. It is entirely possible to have a DMPC who does not overshadow or direct the players, for example, or to have a grand and epic plot for your campaign without cutting out your players ability to meaningfully contribute to the outcome.

The main trick is to remember not to become overly involved in your preparations, or to prepare so thoroughly that you lose the flexibility to adapt to new ideas. The 4th Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide advises saying “yes” to your players as much as possible, or at worst “yes, but”, rather than saying “no.” This is very good advice to keep in mind, within limits—sometimes you will want or need to say “no” for the good of your game. If you are inclined to say no, though, pause for a moment and determine why that’s your immediate reaction—and if it’s simply a knee-jerk response, you may want to change it to a conditional yes.

Another thing to avoid is lengthy periods of description or dialogue where the players are left listening to you talk. In many ways, a good DM talks as little as possible at the table, leaving the players in control. This advice is often difficult to grasp for novices, especially when working from pre-written adventures, since there is a tendency in those to run a paragraph or two of scene-setting flavor text. It can be very evocative to have such description, but again remember that the role of storyteller is only a part of the DM’s job, and is secondary to ensuring that your players are having fun. If your group loves the descriptions as you set the scene by all means, be as flowery as you like, but keep an eye on their body language. If on the other hand their attention begins to wander when your narrations run past a few sentences, keep the descriptions functional and brief, detailing only what they need to understand directly to function. If they want to know more, they will ask, and that’s when it’s generally better to describe in more detail.

The DMPC is a touchy issue. Some groups are more accepting than others of these characters, but there’s always the possibility that the DMPC will be viewed as a babysitter or warden, regardless of your intentions with the character. In general it’s easiest to avoid using them altogether, neatly sidestepping the problem. If you do decide to have an NPC accompany your group, consider making him or her a noncombatant or placing control in combat into the hands of one of the PCs and letting them run the character as a companion. No matter what, make certain that any advice or directions given by the character are suggestions at best, and that they will never overshadow the PCs role as the stars of the campaign. There is little more frustrating for a player than to fight against a seemingly impossible battle only to have an NPC appear to save the day through DM fiat.

Above all, remain flexible and remember that everyone makes mistakes. If your campaign begins a little rough, that’s fine—better to be rough than to be too restrictive. By the same token, it’s never too late to relinquish some of the control back to the players, if you HAVE been railroading. And the ultimate truth of gaming—as long as you’re having fun, you’re doing all right—still stands. If your group is satisfied with your game, don’t fret too much that you’re railroading them. Don’t assume, though, that simply because nobody is complaining it means nobody is unhappy. As I have repeated many times, communication with your players is key to making sure everyone is satisfied.

There are a lot of RPG blogs on the Internet, but two in particular stand out, in my opinion.

Kobold Quarterly is a Dragon-style magazine with a website full of new content. KQ frequently publishes articles to its website when there isn’t enough room in the print edition.

The latest interesting article at KQ is I Was a Gen Con Spy For TSR, an article from a TSR employee who was employed to spy on Gary Gygax at Gencon.

Critical Hits is one of the longest-running major D&D blogs. It has acquired some very well-known writers in the past year, including former WotC employee Chris Sims and Chatty DM from Musings of the Chatty DM. Just yesterday they acquired Logan Bonner, a recent WotC layoff who worked on D&D 4th edition.

Critical Hits recently posted an insightful article titled A DM’s Look at D&D Essentials, and Chris Sims’ 4E related Minions Are Spice.

Hello everybody!

My name is Thilo, but you probably know me from some boards and my rampant reviewing under the screen name Endzeitgeist. Lou has been so kind as to offer me an account on his blog to post my reviews and make a general nuisance out of myself.

I plan to post a best-of of my reviews here and do whatever else should be required of me. Apart from selling my soul, that is. Been there, done that. ;)

I'll start my humble series of posts here by answering a question that might be interesting in these turbulent times:

Is it possible to start a new PFRPG campaign, without designing everything by one's self, not resort to fan-sites AND pay exactly $0.00 for it?

Turns out it is!

Here's the rules: The supplements have to be high-quality, easy to implement and must be stand-alone in the sense that they don't require you to buy more products. (An incentive with sequels and stuff like that is okay, though, as long as the story itself is self-contained.)

So grab your seat and join the ride, here's a mini-series on free quality RPG products.

What do you need apart from the rules to start a campaign? Bingo, a setting. Or at least a mini-setting.

Creighton Broadhurst's company Raging Swan Press, has exactly what you're looking for:

The Lonely Coast is a nifty little campaign setting that details a remote, harsh wilderness somewhat reminiscent of an old Scottish or Cornish old-world atmosphere and serves as a nice backdrop for  a beginning campaign.You get a small area with its own flair to serve as a backdrop and that is not yet tied to any campaign setting, which leaves you free to expand to a published or homebrew setting later on. For those of you already familiar with my review of The Lonely Coast: Feel free to skip ahead! For the other guys and gals, here are the facts:

The Lonely Coast is a 33 page pdf.

One page front cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page OGL, 1 blank page after the front cover and 3 pages of credits. That leaves 26 pages of material.

We get 11 pages of beautifully written, evocative descriptions of the region, painting a rough borderland with a nice, dark old-world touch to it. It's hard to pin down exactly what makes this chapter so atmospheric, but it really draws you in.

After that, we get 2 Appendices.

The first one features the following:
- A new race, the Half-Goblin. Complete with two ready-to-use statblocks, a lore section and all necessary information to use the race. (2 pages)
- A new creature, the shadow wolf. (1 page)
- 3 new (albeit generic) gods (1 page)
- An introduction on how to read statblocks to help novice gamers (1 page)

Appendix 2 features 5 encounters for the road, all with description text, stats and everything you need to run it. (9 pages)

Production values: The pdf contains a map of the lonely coast, 7 pieces of beautiful b/w-art and is very well-formatted. I didn't notice editing glitches, typos or the like. It should also be noted, that the file is also very printer-friendly: If you don't print out the largely black front and back covers, you'll need next to no ink/toner.

Conclusion:
Being an introduction to the easy-to-drop-in location of Raging Swan's modules and supplement, this pdf does a remarkable job of walking the edge between ease of implementation into a given setting and conveying it's very own atmosphere: Your new campaign can only profit from it. 
It's b/w-art is beautiful and something to show off to your players.
Oh yeah, of course it's FREE. It's very hard to beat free stuff, especially if the quality is as high as in this pdf. It's high-quality, it's free, I rate it 5 Rudi'i. 

Go check it out on Paizo.

Downloaded it? All right. That means we now have a free mini-setting to set our first adventure in. Stay tuned for the next installment, where I will present to you a nice old-school adventure to satisfy your DM-needs and challenge your players. For free! 

That being said, I hope you enjoyed my ramblings. I'm open to feedback - after all, that's the only way to improve. ^^

See you around,

Endzeitgeist out.

Jeff Rients on why morale rules are important:

“I probably don’t need to tell you how big a difference that simple rule can make in play. Far fewer fights are to the death. Smart PCs will boldy strike large groups of scaredy-cats, alpha-striking one poor bastard in hopes of spooking the rest. And since 1gp = 1xp, you still get most of your experience even if the DM is a stingy bastard who holds back points on routed (as opposed to killed) foes.”
— Jeff Rients, more morale, please

Random encounters are a time-honored tradition in RPGs. When a party of adventurers goes gallivanting across the countryside, or through a stretch of otherwise empty dungeon, or wandering aimlessly through a city, one way for the DM to keep the game from becoming a rather bland travelogue is to throw in random encounters. At the same time, this idea can be difficult for a DM who prefers to be more carefully prepared for his or her game sessions, with combat encounters typically being more carefully planned set-pieces—random encounters don’t always fit into their world view. Today we will discuss a secret that will help you make more memorable random encounters if you already use them, or may help convince you to start, if you don’t.

Some encounters are more random than others. To put it more clearly, random need not be synonymous with unplanned.

Sure, it’s easy enough to write a random encounter chart with nothing more than a group of enemies as each entry, and sometimes that’s enough—if your party is exploring a dungeon, for example, you don’t have to worry about coming up with the features of the area on the fly, since they will be dictated by the environment and the room the PCs are in at the time. For those with more of a mind for preparation, though, you might think of some unusual scenarios that could be explored within the dungeon but don’t fit into the main theme—perhaps something that adds extra flavor fitting your campaign world, or even that introduces or advances a minor subplot in some way, but is not necessary to see it completed. If your setting features the spirits of the dead heavily, for example, your players could randomly encounter the ghosts of a group of slain adventurers in a section of dungeon that they have already cleared out, perhaps gaining insight into the history of the place, or a quest to communicate news of their demise to their loved ones.

For a countryside encounter table, though, you may want to invest a bit more time into your random encounter design. Instead of simply having a bandit attack, you could have your players stumble across an old abandoned windmill that bandits have converted into a base, and play out the combat in and around the windmill. You might have a group of gnolls harassing a family of peasants on the road, and the party might earn extra rewards for successfully defending the poor folks. And again, you might use it as an opportunity to flesh out your setting a bit more for your players.

It’s also definitely worth keeping in mind that an encounter doesn’t invariably need to lead to combat. You might include such entries as friendly travelers—traders or adventurers, hunters or local farmers. You could include strange noises, phantom lights, or ghostly visions of events long past, or any other atmospheric element you like. You could also include events that play out more along the lines of skill challenges—a young hoodlum cutpurse makes off with one player’s money pouch, and the players must engage in a chase to catch the little rascal, perhaps, or they stumble across a mysterious chest or door locked with a combination of magic and mechanics, holding some treasure within if only they can figure out how to open it.

A bit of preparation can obviously make random encounters much more entertaining and flavorful, then, but they are not without their own inherent problems, at the same time. One such problem arises in the form of experience rewards. If you run a large number of random encounters without considering the affect it will have on your experience totals it is possible that your players may outlevel the main adventure you have planned simply through wandering around aimlessly. You can avoid this in a number of ways—planning to include a certain number of random encounters as part of the total adventure experience, budgeting random encounters to a smaller total of experience share, limiting the number of combat encounters included on the table, or simply fudging experience in general.

Another potential problem is that you may prepare a number of encounters that go unused. This is alleviated somewhat by the ability to lift unused encounters and drop them wholesale into later adventures—assuming that they are not explicitly tied to the location of the current adventure—and by avoiding overpreparation. It’s not necessary to prepare dozens upon dozens of encounters at any given time, especially if they are intended for use as random encounters. You will still want to make the main focus of your design the encounters that you can be sure your group will get a chance to see.

Random encounters can be great fun, and a bit of preparation can go a long way in making them feel more connected, both to the specific adventure and to the world as a whole. Care in preparation can avoid most of the larger pitfalls associated with them, and proper use of these elements can make your world feel broader and more alive—like there are things happening independent of your player characters, without taking the spotlight away from them.

We live in a culture that is rich in media. Novels, comic books, movies, video games, television shows, and more—it is a constant stream of entertainment for those who want it. There may be times when your group wants to roleplay in an established universe—to explore the same worlds that the heroes of your favourite novels or movies have their adventures in. Sometimes, others have had the same idea and have adapted a system (or created one) to allow just that. Other times it will be left to you to do this work—or it may be that you like the setting but not the system associated with it. Alternately, perhaps you have a favourite adventure that was written for a system other than the one you play in.

The first step is to consider the basic assumptions of the setting you are adapting your game from, and work out how you will fit them into your game. Magic may work vastly differently. Harry Potter and his friends use magic quite differently from the way it is shown in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, and neither one is particularly well fit to the way D&D’s magic system functions—to say nothing of something like Xanth. Games like Final Fantasy, rather than elves and dwarves, have characters from bizarre races—unique to their particular iteration of the series in most cases, moogles aside. Gamebooks—Lone Wolf, or Fighting Fantasy—are typically designed as single-player experiences, and are frequently limited in options compared to a tabletop game, and rife with “gotcha” instant death choices. None of this is necessarily an insurmountable obstacle, but it is important to consider before you begin.

Next it is important to consider how rich the setting is for adventure. Some worlds are well fleshed out and deeply detailed, sufficiently to allow a wide variety of adventures to take place quite apart from the canonical ones by the original authors. On the other hand, there are settings that show only enough of the world to give backdrop for the story being told, and nothing more really exists beyond those scant few details. These settings can be more difficult to adapt, since they require much more fleshing out on the part of the DM to be usable, and often require a large amount of conjecture and guess-work to fill in the blanks. It may not be worth trying to adapt the setting rather than create your own if there is a dearth of setting detail in the original source material—you may wish to let your players know that the original work was amongst your inspirations, but that your setting is merely similar and not a full adaptation.

In a richer setting it may be worth deciding how much of the source material to use. For something like Star Wars, for example, there is a huge amount of verbiage dedicated to detailing every bit of setting minutiae, and in spite of the best intentions of all involved, not all of it necessarily fits that well together—there are certainly confusing contradictions present in several cases. (While Star Wars has had several RPG lines, it remains a valid example of setting richness for the purposes of illustrating this point.) Being selective can help reduce this confusion for your players, but one must always be clear about which elements of the setting are being used and which discarded up front to ensure that your players expectations match your own. Another issue can arise if there is material being released on a regular basis that introduces new setting elements—especially if the new content contradicts material you created to fill in gaps while you waited. Decide ahead of time how you will handle such contradictions and communicate to your players. An easy way to avoid this is to be clear that your starting point is based on the existing material and anything produced later will be included only if it does not contradict what your game has established to be true.

Once you have assessed how suitable the source is for adaptation, both in terms of mechanics and volume of material, there is one final question before you set about the task of adapting it to your game of choice—how much staying power will it have for your group as an RPG setting? If you’ve just watched the latest fantasy blockbuster movie and want to play a game based on the setting that’s great, but if you won’t still feel that way in two months then it’s probably not worth the effort of fully adapting the setting. On the other hand, if your players all played the same gamebooks as kids—Fighting Fantasy, for example—and you want to set your game on Titan and revisit favourite locations from the books as new adventurers, then you’ll probably be able to maintain interest in it for a good while. Again, this should not be taken as a suggestion not to play in the short-term adaptation, but rather to tailor the amount of effort you put into converting the setting to the amount of time you’ll spend playing it.

Playing in established worlds, or adapting existing material to new systems, can be a great timesaver and can be great fun for DM and players alike, for bringing forth feelings of nostalgia or fondness for the setting. It can be an interesting exercise in mechanical design—a part of the topic admittedly not covered in this article, simply because the scope is far too large. As with everything, though, communicating clearly to your players is essential, so they understand the rules of the adaptation—familiarity with the setting will do a great deal to enhance their comfort with the game, but at the same time if something doesn’t work the way they expect it to that will be jarring. Overall, it can be an interesting and exciting way to liven up a game, even for a few short sessions.

Creating a calendar for your campaign world is simple enough, and lets you track the passage of time in your game, following things like the phases of the moons or the passage of seasons, as well as adding a good deal of flavor through the names of days and months. To really flesh out a calendar, though, you need to create a variety of holy days, feasts, and festivals celebrated by the people in your campaign world. These can provide plenty of color to your setting, as well as potential plot hooks or interesting backdrops against which to set a session.

The first step to designing a holiday is to decide on the reason for the celebration. As usual we can draw on real world holidays for inspiration. There are myriad reasons behind the celebrations and observances that exist, but they can generally be grouped into certain categories. In many cases the nature of the celebration will also help determine the timing of the event, or at least suggest a possibility or two for when it can fall in the year.

• To honor or commemorate an individual or group – In many countries, holidays exist in honor of particular individuals or groups. Rulers and heroes are the most common, but in some cases celebrations exist to mark the failure or capture of particularly reviled criminals or traitors. Often these celebrations fall on the birthday or anniversary of the death of the individual in question, but occasionally they are remembered on the anniversary of a particularly momentous event in their lives.
• To commemorate an event – Sometimes it is not the heroes who are remembered, but the event itself. Military victories or the end of a long and devastating conflict might be observed, as might successful revolutions or the unification or founding of a new kingdom. More dramatic events, such as magical or natural disasters that shaped the world, might also be commemorated. Typically these celebrations fall on the anniversary of the event they are meant to remember.
• To mark the passage of time – Many holidays exist to celebrate the passage of time. The beginning of a new year, the first day of spring, or the completion of the harvest are all fairly common festival observances. Others might include solstices and equinoxes, or other seasonal markers. The timing of these kinds of festivals is fairly self-evident.
• To celebrate life itself – In a world where survival is a struggle, it can be important to make time to simply take joy in being alive. Festivals dedicated to love, children, family, or even to remembering those who have died are all possibilities for this kind of celebration. Sometimes a party needs no more excuse than chasing away despair.
• Fantastic or supernatural reasons – When detailing the feasts or celebrations of a fantasy setting it only makes sense that there would be fantastic reasons behind some. Perhaps there is a certain day of the year upon which the barriers between realms vanishes, allowing the spirit world or fey to interact directly with the natural world. Perhaps a strange celebration is actually an ancient and long-forgotten ritual that, if it is not performed, will cause the bonds holding an ancient evil to dissolve or some other disaster to occur. Or perhaps the celebration is based on folk tales and beliefs, and makes little sense to outsiders but is treated with utmost respect and gravity by the locals…
• Religious observances – Religious holy days can include any of the above reasons and more. Perhaps there are specific articles of the faith which must be observed—on the seventh day of each month, the faithful must witness the rising of the sun while engaged in prayer, perhaps. Other observances can include periods of fasting or abstinence, and may require forgiveness or absolution, either of one’s own trespasses or those of one’s neighbors. Religious observances need not be austere and somber affairs, however—many can and should be full of as much zest and joy as more secular affairs.
• Military observances – There are several examples of celebrations to honor the veterans or the fallen who have given their lives in defense of a nation or an ideal. Other celebrations with a martial tone could include parades or tournaments to improve morale. Tournaments get the added benefit of being an outlet for pent-up aggression and offering a chance to demonstrate skill and training—as well as providing a goal to work towards for that same training each year.

Once you have decided why and when a festival or holiday is being held, the next step is to determine how it is celebrated. Parades, wild parties, somber rituals, great feasts, tournaments, quiet gatherings of friends, or full blown festival merriment are all possibilities. The festival does not even need to be observed in the same way from place to place—one country may celebrate the harvest with a great deal of drinking, dancing, and merrymaking while the neighboring country offers humble prayer and quiet thanks for their continued good fortune to the gods or spirits of the harvest. Perhaps a festival for children lets them run amok without needing to listen to their elders for an entire day, ending at sunset. A festival for the dead could be somber and mournful, or a lively remembrance of their time among the living. Don’t forget to include a bit of magic into the mix. Maybe those who died during the previous year inhabit the bodies of friends and family for the day to take care of unfinished business—but what if a normally harmless and amusing festival where old grandmothers get one last dance with their dear departed husband in the body of their grandson suddenly turns violent as some strong spirit decides to thirst for revenge?

Where the festival is celebrated and by whom is also important. Very few celebrations are observed throughout the world. Perhaps the characters stumble into a small hamlet and encounter a holiday observed only by the villagers there; alternatively they might have heard of a grand tournament in a distant city held yearly with a fantastic prize for the victors and travel there specifically to take part.

Finally, if you want to make the festivals into an important part of your game, you need to communicate their existence to your players. If you have already created a calendar for your setting you can simply note the festival days on it and provide brief descriptions of those that are widely observed; this will allow the players to see that something noteworthy will happen on that day and hopefully pique sufficient interest for them to want to investigate. Even if you have not already created a full calendar, it’s easy enough to simply have a few NPCs talking about the upcoming festivities, or beginning to work towards setting them up in advance. Make your festivals memorable and lively, and they’ll be a fun addition to your campaign.

For some time I've spent my spare hours (such as they are) on writing a toolkit to help GMs jazz their games with zingy narrative sauce. Important design principles behind this little work include:

1. GMs are very busy people.
2. Players and GMs are very creative people.
3. RPGs are better and easier to run when everyone shares their ideas and desires.
4. Good collaborative creativity is hard.

Among other things my book contains lots of little tips for running collaborative design sessions, mostly garnered from attending countless writing workshops, reading books on creative collaboration, and being lucky enough to collaborate with many talented, creatively clear and strong authors on more than one RPG project.

Recently I've begun experimenting on...er...play testing portions of "my little book" with the players in my home campaign. Twice now I've put them through the part that helps GMs and players co-author, in one sitting, the campaign setting in which their adventures will take place. Invariably a short shared setting makes life easier on the GM, long-term, and informs the player's characters with all sorts of rich, connected detail.

I thought I'd share the most recent result of the process with all of you. It's a bit long, but you might find it interesting. For the Paizo-minded among you, we'll be playing the Pathfinder RPG. I plan to convert Paizo's Legacy of Fire AP then adapt it to fit. Without further ado, may I present...

ASHIDAL – KINGDOM OF JUNGLE AND SANDS

SUMMARY
In the outrageously wealthy desert and jungle kingdom of Ashidal, aasimar rule over a numberless melange of races and peoples, many claiming to be the original inhabitants of the surrounding desert or jungle, others but recently and mysteriously arrived. Its aasimar rulers aside, Ashidal is known for the Eye of Life, an inexplicable frozen wasteland smack in the middle of the deepest desert, maintained by forces unknown against all reason, in defiance of even the greatest magical arts. From the heart of this baffling arctic zone juts the Eye: an active, slowly smoldering volcano buried to the neck in snow and ice.

The Eye of Life cornerstones Ashidal’s great wealth, as the kingdom’s merchants mine this geographic anomaly for water, selling neighboring kingdoms everything from irrigation to ice chips. Ice mining in the Eye is a dangerous occupation. Strange never-tamed tribes haunt the Eye’s frozen extent, while fearsome monsters wander from its smoking volcano to terrify caravans and mining stations alike.

THREATS Many forces threaten the kingdom of Ashidal. Shambling clan-herds of perh – ogreish and pugnacious lizard-centaurs the size of elephants – wander the border between desert and jungle, a common threat to small settlements and merchant caravans. Luckily, a perh rampage is easy to stop. Perh clans hold but one leader. Eliminate the bull perh of a herd and all the remaining monsters fall into a frenzy of killing to determine their new leader. Recently, rumors circulate of perh groups working together and ignoring this pattern. Most dismiss such rumors out of hand, but some villages now hire mercenaries or adventurers for protection, while merchant caravans have doubled their guards of late.

More than perh clans menace the trade of Ashidal. In the desert the sounds and vibrations of travel always attract sand tentacles, thorny carnivorous vegetation as thick as a human torso. Denser near oases, these mindless vines prove a constant threat to unwary travelers, even wiping out whole caravans. Legends speak of deep desert tribes who practice the “soundless step,” a way to walk through the thickest tentacle-infested zones unscathed, though this remains unconfirmed.

Dangers to trade do not end with the desert. Within the economically crucial Eye of Life giant starving reptiles, clearly ill suited to the frozen wastes, frequently attack caravans and camps. Some of these creatures, reputedly the size of small houses, even strike from the air.

However, the clockwork raiders remain the threat most pervasively feared throughout Ashidal. These strange construct war-bands sweep into villages and cities at random, wreaking destruction. Sometimes they wipe out a whole village, other times a single building. Survivors report that wounded or damaged raiders – a rare occurrence – disassemble into smaller creatures who continue either to attack or are absorbed into other damaged raiders, healing them. While the raiders' attacks are infrequent and unfocused, their very infrequency make them all the more terrifying. Clockwork raiders could strike anyone at anytime for any reason. Ashidalans attribute a wide variety of natural disasters to these uncommunicative beings. An oasis disappears in the sands? The clockworks did it. A city building catches fire or disappears? The clockworks did it. Eat your tubers or the clockworks will get you.

Recently, refugees from far away kingdoms have filtered into Ashidal. They carry tales of woe and destruction, often conflicting and inchoate. Yet according to Ashidal’s border caliphs and sultans, a pattern emerges: refugees report impossibly vast tribes of filthy, pale-skinned, axe-wielding barbarians overrunning lesser kingdoms. Of course, wiser heads note the defeated always over-report the size of their conquerors. Moreover, uncivilized skin-wearing nomads might tumble small and distant principalities, but clearly the mighty economic power of Ashidal need not fear such exaggerated tales.

Unbeknown to all but the most astute border rulers and ice merchants, the advance guard of just such a barbarian horde has begun raiding caravans traveling to and from the Eye of Life. In response, savvy rulers and merchant princes recruit mercenary armies or outright impress commoners into their armies, acts which greatly alarm the Sheik of Sheiks in Dagha. Tensions mount, somnolent aasimar rivalries intensify almost to open conflict, and civil unrest cannot lie far behind.

GOVERNMENT AND LAW
Ashidal is a large kingdom, strictly governed by an ethnically homogeneous oligarchy of aasimar merchant-sheiks. In theory a Sheik of Sheiks rules her fellow aasimar from the capital city of Dahga; however, the aasimar desert lords so frequently assassinate and replace the Sheik of Sheiks, it proves anyone’s guess who will sit the golden throne of Dahga month-to-month.

Despite a culture of hospitality, the aasimar rulers of Ashidal are a strict lot; perhaps because outside the boundaries of Ashidal, the world more often enslaves aasimar for their beauty than it elevates them. In Ashidal only pure aasimars may rule, carrying with them the rights of high justice wherever they go. Sworn to uphold the legal edicts issuing from Dahga, aasimar sheiks are infamous for political corruption and bribe taking. In fact, bribery among Ashidalan elites approaches an art form. Your words must prove diplomatic, courteous, and artfully filled with rationalizations designed to grant the bribed sheik plausible deniability; however there are few laws you cannot bribe a sheik to break.

There are exceptions. As a sign of their dominance only pure-blooded aasimar, clerics of the aasimar pantheon, or a non-aasimar with a specific exemption from a sheik, caliph or sultan may wield a sword openly in Ashidal. Additionally, the aasimar strictly regulate magic within urban centers: no unlicensed wizards or sorcerers and no spells above third level. Technically you must be licensed to practice magic anywhere within Ashidal. In practice everyone looks the other way when adventurers’ spells slay monsters in the dangerous desert, jungle or arctic wastes.

Moreover, almost without exception, the aasimar pverlords remain deeply concerned with keeping their bloodlines pure. Most aasimars consider breeding with non-aasimars an abomination. They treat such half-breeds with disgust, even outright persecution or enslavement. The reason behind their hate for half-breeds remains a mystery, especially considering aasimar are themselves half otherworldly.

Finally, acutely aware of the subject status of aasimar outside of Ashidal, no sheiks put their personal interests above the principle of aasimar-only rule, nor risk the strength and well-being of Ashidal as a kingdom. Beyond that, as the saying goes, “The desert dust blows as it will and no man can command the storm.”

NEIGHBORS
Ashidal’s neighbor across the sea is called Cecia. Cecia is a loosely knit confederation of sea-faring island principalities, larger by sheer population than Ashidal, but not as wealthy. Cecians live their lives so enmeshed with the sea Ashidalans derogatorily nickname them “gillies,” as if they secretly had gills. By and large, the Cecians remain favorably disposed to Ashidal, their largest trading partner. Ashidalans both fear and admire Cecians for their shipbuilding and fishing skills, their far-ranging trade network, and their sharp negotiating. As the saying goes, “The only thing sharper than a gilly’s gutting knife is his nose for a trade.”

On land, the deep desert to both the East and South of Ashidal harbors warlike nomadic tribes of various races. Some claim these nomads are fair in a trade when you know how to approach them, while others claim the deep desert peoples are nothing but thieves and child-stealers. By and large these tribes appear ambivalent to Ashidal, and their true numbers are unknown. As a people the nomads are famed and feared for their sword skills. Their almost legendary sword dance is a wonder of athletics and martial accomplishment.

In the largely unexplored and unclaimed jungles to the North and Northeast, along the deep and turbulent Maza River, strange tribes live among the debris of a lost and bloody civilization. On the edge of sheer barbarism, they spend their days fighting gorillions, jaguars and crocodiles for dominion of ruins far beyond their skills to maintain, let alone build. While occupying a region smaller than Ashidal as a whole, the natives of the jungle often propound at great length on the vast power and extent of their ancient civilization. They explain ad nauseum how it rightfully rules Ashidal, and how they in particular, being the only civilized beings about, rule the jungles. That they advance these claims in barely intelligible tongues even as they strip the flesh from your leg for the cooking pot, worship animal totems, and shatter each others' heads on the steps of vine-covered ziggurats seems to matter not a jot to their communal delusions. Nonetheless, the great treasures buried within the jungles haunted ruins continues to attract adventurers of all stripes. They come searching for potent artifacts, unusual spells, piles of gold, and jewels the size of eggs. Those who venture into the jungles and return speak in whispers of tribes further in, tribes more mindless and barbaric still, whom even the cannibals and blood-shamans fear.

INTERNAL POLITICS
Within Ashidal, a variety of Power Groups vie with each other and with the ruling oligarchy. The Power Groups within Ashidal are:

Aasimar sheiks and the Sheik-of-Sheiks. As discussed the aasimar merchant oligarchs of Ashidal vie constantly among each other to take the golden throne of Dahga and declare themselves Sheik of Sheiks. Outside the capital of Dahga, sheiks and the lesser caliphs and sultans rule their demenses with absolute authority – and with varying degrees of corrupt self-interest.

The Givers of Silk. A quasi-legitimate guild of courtesans, who practice the ancient arts of belly dancing and assassination. Famous for their dancing, their assassination skills are less well known and never acknowledged. Prized as advisers, entertainers and lovers by their aasimar rulers, the Givers of Silk actively enmesh themselves in the weave of Ashidal politics. They keep their headquarters at a small palace in Dahga. The aasimar elite sometimes punish their members with exile to the guild. As a result many aasimar half-breeds hide among the Givers, claiming a pure aasimar heritage or simply denying their crossed bloodlines entirely. Unsubstantiated rumors connect the Givers of Silk to the urban criminal bands known as the Little Pockets.

Church of the Benevolent Sands. The mainstream religious organization sanctioned by the aasimar sheiks. Charged with licensing and policing magicians, they derive their legitimacy directly from Dahga. The Church’s severity and power vary depending on who rules as Sheik of Sheiks. When waxing in authority the Church expresses its power through inquisitions that execute non-licensed magicians with impunity, often acting on the mere say-so of a neighbor. Under more moderate Sheiks, the Church functions as a mere bureaucracy. Irritating but non-violent they ensure that Dahga knows of each and every wizard or sorcerer within its bounds, and they collect the practitioner tax. The Church leaders are on a clandestine mission to hunt down and exterminate secret magical societies, especially the Sect of Six.

The Sect of Six. A secret society of elemental magicians. Ashidal outlawed the sect decades ago for its suspected connection with the elemental djann and djinn. Each member of the Six has an affinity for one of the six branches of elemental magic: earth, metal, air, fire or water. Supposedly exterminated long ago, belief in their existence persists. Rumors claim their unknwon leader practices all six elemental magics, while sages speculate that, if the sect exists it most assuredly plots to destroy both the aasimar oligarchy and the Church of the Benevolent Sands. They Sect of Six frequently serves as a scapegoat for Ashidal’s rulers, an excuse to attack each other or to exterminate merchant rivals.

Oasis. A secret anti-government organization that sees injustice in aasimar-only rule. They seek to aid or free those who suffer under the corrupt whimsy of sheiks, caliphs and sultans. They are especially focused on helping those half-breeds who suffer the ethnic warfare practiced by the aasimar against their kind. Rumors hold Oasis maintains an underground railroad, smuggling the half-aasimar out of Ashidal and has deep ties among the Little Pockets gangs that litter Ashidal’s urban landscape.

Little Pockets. A loose association of orphan gangs, not sufficiently developed to call an organization, but who are perhaps a thieves guild in the making. Until recently, the aasimar rulers considered the Little Pockets a fad at best and a nuisance at worst. However, in the wake of anti-aasimar violence within the Smoke Folk ghettos, some caliphs and sultans have begun to revise that opinion. Given a choice, many aasimar rulers would like to exterminate the Little Pockets, but their advisers suggest the reward is not worth the effort or, coincidentally, more determined sultans just die in their sleep.

Smoke Folk. The true underclass of Ashidal. These people are partly extra-dimensional smoke beings who have only intermittent control of their forms. Regularly – and unpredictably – random parts of their bodies turn to smoke for equally random lengths of time. Considered unreliable by the Ashidal population, who find them disturbing or disgusting by turn, Smoke Folk have a hard time holding down a job. On the other hand sages argue the Smoke Folk are the abandoned offshoot of certain djinn tribes, and this makes them objects of fear. As a result the Smoke Folk live in ghettos. Instead of exterminating them, Ashidalans hire them for only the most menial labor. Rumors connect the Smoke Folk to both Oasis and the Little Pockets.

Of these groups, the ruling aasimar elite and the Church of the Benevolent Sands – practically the same body – followed closely by the less numerous Givers of Silk wield the most power and influence. Oasis most actively opposes the ruling Sheik of Sheiks, while the Sect of Six and the Church of Benevolent Sands are always at each others' throats. By contrast, the Givers of Silk and the Little Pockets or, alternately, Oasis and the Smoke Folk frequently stand together. The Sect of Six and Oasis are the most clandestine organization(s) in Ashidal, while the people love the entertaining and glamorous Givers of Silk the most. The rulers on the other hand, most dislike Oasis, the Little Pockets, and the Smoke Folk in that order.

MAGIC
Magic in Ashidal is present but not prevalent, a backdrop to everyone's daily lives. Average Ashidalans see little genuine magic, although fakirs are everywhere and the markets are rife with fortunetellers. Yet no Ashidalan expresses disbelief or even much surprise when real magic comes their way. Most people in Ashidal feel magic is a matter for their betters, something that happens to rulers and merchant-sheiks, but not to them. Many citizens grow anxious when faced with magic for fear the practitioner is not licensed, and that the magic will tar them with the same illegal brush. Secret societies for the practice of magic abound, as do licensing guilds. Such guilds range in character from genuine investigators of the arcane to little more than registry and tax collection stations.

THE GODS
In Ashidal, deities appear only rarely, but all acknowledge their reality and many worship devoutly. As one might expect in a land so divided between the rulers and the ruled, the two classes worship differently. The aasimar revere an established pantheon of personalized gods and goddesses who take a direct, if quarrelsome, interest in mortals. While the non-aasimar citizens and subjects of Ashidal grant the aasimar pantheon its due, they also worship a dizzying array of lesser deities personifying a host of natural and otherworldly forces. Most in Ashidal recognize the supremacy of the aasimar pantheon, but not all concur. Rumors speak of dark and secret cults who spit on the aasimar pantheon as false gods. To confuse matters more, the official rulers of the aasimar pantheon seem to change depending on which Sheik of Sheiks holds Dagha and the kind of Church their rule sponsors.

Nonetheless, some clear distinctions emerge. The aasimars’ pantheon always contains:

Ahur, the god of victory in battle, of wealth, tax collectors, city building and civilization. Throughout history Ahur is sometimes confused with or supplanted by Sarif, “He Who Shapes,” god of the shifting sands, the natural world, of change and many forms.

Twin sisters mark the second pillar of the aasimar pantheon: Tasar and Daphrit, goddesses of lust and love, sexuality and beauty. Often confused for each other, never separate, temples to the Twin Goddesses cover Ashidal. The goddesses offer temple prostitution or marriage counseling, orgiastic oblivion and artful inspiration – and none doubt their power.

Lastly, Esseleth, sexless god of law and justice. Cold and distant, concerned only with principles and not persons, supplicants approach Esseleth in fear or in the absolute certainty of their rectitude. This god’s temples hide in frozen wastes, desert caves, hidden grottoes and hard to find places. They say those who surrender utterly to Esseleth’s judgment are always answered, but that most regret the asking.

Names of the folk gods worshiped by majority Ashidalans are difficult to track. They seem to change from culture to culture, almost from worshiper to worshiper, multiplying dramatically whenever one turns around. These gods are so plentiful it becomes difficult to tell who is a priest or priestess and who a mere fakir.

Yet two things remain clear: first, certain folk gods are perennial. They reappear in various forms among all the peoples of Ashidal; second, every tale of these deities aiding supplicants is matched by a tale of woe. The most prominent perennial gods and goddesses include:

Y’eohkim. The trickster god, god of whirling dervishes and the spiral. Commonly portrayed as a jackal or the desert wind.

Holhie. Fat and grinning god of luck. Frequently portrayed as a rotund and laughing, four-armed camel. Tales of Holhie often tell of abusive or hubris-burdened owners suddenly abandoned in the desert by their camel, which was not really a camel.

The Six. Goddesses of the elemental powers and of weather. Akin to the muses, but representing both the positive and negative aspect of each natural element. The peoples of Ashidal pray to the Six to deliver them from storms, disasters, and all the problems the elements can bring. They also pray to them for wealth, guidance, and good travel. Explicit connections between the Six and the Sect of Six remain unverified, but some connection seems likely.

Selaru-thastis. Goddess of the hearth and home, of plenty and of pregnant women. She is also the goddess of abortions, stillbirth, starvation and plague. Worshipers appeal to Selaru-thastis for Her favor and beg her not to visit them with Her doom.

Plevarmes. God of celebration, splendor and variety. Worshiped by those who revere the natural world in all its forms as well as by those whose arts imitate life. Plevarmes is simultaneously the god of artful revels and skilled indulgence, as well as the god of the wilds and the untamed.

Darker gods inhabit the religious world of Ashidalans, gods of monsters and destruction. Most Ashidalans deny their existence, but those who encounter their cults and survive, no longer doubt their foul reality.

MISCELLANEOUS
The world which Ashidal inhabits and the kingdom itself possess of a number of additional noteworthy characteristics. These are:

1. By aasimar law, only aasimar rulers of the sheik, caliph or sultanate class and priests or priestess may use swords. Visiting foreigners and Ashidalan citizens may apply for or be granted formal exceptions to this rule. Wielding a sword illegally is taken as a repudiation of aasimar rule and is punishable by death.

2. Ashidal’s aasimar rulers, initiated servants of the Twin Goddesses, and many Givers of Silk train in a school of tantric sex magic. This school, sanctioned centuries ago by the first Sheik of Sheiks, teaches aasimar women to refuse conception or abort at will. It trains aasimar men to render their seed fruitless. This allows Ashidal’s aasimar rulers to indulge their huge sexual appetites without fear of birthing half-breeds. Aasimar women who chose to become pregnant and, worse, to keep their half-breed get are disgraced and placed under a death sentence only the Sheik of Sheik’s may commute. In response most either suicide, flee to foreign lands, or hide in Smoke Folk ghettos, raising their children in secrecy.

Publisher and game designer Chris Pramas has written a useful article on Running miniatures games at conventions.

The article gives some useful insights.

When I was about 12 years old, I “designed” my first wargame scenario. I tried to recreate the Battle of Kursk using Avalon Hill’s classic Squad Leader boardgame (I know, I know; I was 12). In practice this meant setting up four boards and filling them with as many German and Russian tanks as I could. My brother and I tried to play it and of course it was too big and unwieldy to finish. My attempt was a failure but it taught me an important lesson. Designing a good scenario takes more thought that just using everything you have and yet this is a trap many big games fall into.

Chris Pramas runs publisher Green Ronin, which published the Dragon Age tabletop RPG this year. You can hear more from Pramas in the Out of Character podcast episode 66.

It’s that darn real world intruding on the fun. The Unassailable Wall of Realism.

The UWoR never stands in the way of fantasy games. Because its fantasy, the GM can make anything up, and it’s as plausible as you want it to be, more or less. I don’t just mean handwaving mistakes away by saying “it’s magic” (although there’s some freedom in that too). I mean that the town guards don’t have to act like historical town guards or modern policemen. They can act like however you want them too, and it’s not incorrect. Since you make your own definitions in fantasy, you can’t do it “wrong.” You might create a fantastic situation that someone else doesn’t care for, but there’s no objective way to measure it all. It’s all subjective.

– Monte Cook, Top Secret.

A question that is often neglected when initially considering the details of a campaign world is how the inhabitants mark the passage of time. Precision measurements of time are relatively recent, but even tens of thousands of years ago people were calculating and measuring time. For your campaign world, defining a calendar and the common methods of measuring shorter intervals can be a very good way to add verisimilitude and character to your setting.

Tracking time can be considered from the smallest measurements right up to the largest.

Small units of time are likely to be imprecisely measured in most worlds. Seconds and minutes, or the equivalent thereof, are difficult to track accurately even for many modern clocks–the technology or magic available will determine how close to the “real” time one can determine. At the same time, seconds and minutes are less likely to be important to keep track of, for the most part, and rough estimates to the nearest quarter hour may be sufficient. Bear in mind before you decide to create your own small measurements–e.g. one hundred seconds to a “segment”, one hundred segments to a “bell”–that this kind of separation can make your world feel different from Earth, but can also make it confusing for players, who will almost invariably need to convert these times back to more familiar measurements to understand how long “three bells” is. This will probably be true for anything up to and including the length of a day. Simple equivalents (one bell is two hours) are more readily translatable without causing confusion or pauses while your players puzzle out the conversion.

Medium segments of time–days, weeks, and even months–can be changed more readily. A day might be slightly longer or shorter, but should remain fairly close to the 24-hour cycle your players (and you!) are used to, if only because it simplifies things. The concept of a week, though, is fairly easy to play around with. You might have a week be as few as five days, or as many as ten. If you do choose to use a different length for your weeks, it’s worth thinking about why it is grouped the way it is. Perhaps each weekday is dedicated to one of the gods in your world’s pantheon–our own weekday names are largely drawn from the Norse pantheon, in English, at least. You could also name the weekdays after elements, ancient heroes, or anything else you think thematically appropriate for your campaign world.

Months are similar to weeks in that it’s fairly easy to fiddle with the lengths of them. Perhaps on your world all months are of equal length. It can help to decide how many days are in a year on your world at the same time you choose to divide the months. For a 365-day year, wholesale lifting of the Gregorian calendar might work–or you could divide the year into six months of sixty days each, with a five-day period for the death of one year and the dawn of the next at the end of each cycle of months.

As with weekdays, consider what the months are named for. The Gregorian calendar uses a variety of sources for the names of months–September through December were originally named for their position in the calendar, January, March, May, and June take their names from gods, July and August honor Julius and Augustus Caesar, and February and April originate from the words for purification and opening, respectively. Your calendar could copy any or all of these inspirations, and more, for naming your months. Your player characters could even be honored similarly to Julius and Augustus–previously those months were numbered similarly to the latter months in the year. Most players would be fairly excited to have their characters immortalized in such a way.

Tracking the passage of years is relatively simple, by comparison. Pick an important event in your world’s history to start the year numbering from and work from there. It could be an ancient war, a religious event, a great cataclysm, or even the beginning of the reign of a given ruler–and again, your player characters could well be immortalized if their deeds are used as a starting point for a new calendar–”It is the third year since Hulkgar the Third and his stalwart companions overthrew the gods,” for example. If you are feeling truly ambitious you might name each individual year–the Year of the Shattered Sky, the Year of the Sun’s Betrayal, and so on–but it can be a lot of effort to do so for more than a very few years and maintain a consistent level of seriousness. Tread with care, or you may end up with names as ridiculous as Year of the Intimidating Porpoise–memorable, perhaps, but not easily taken seriously.

One benefit to keeping the year at 365 days (365.25, being precise) and simply renaming the months of the Gregorian calendar to match 1:1 with the calendar of your world is that it then becomes very easy to adapt a real-world calendar, electronic or otherwise, to track time in your game. Making your own calendar of a different scale may result in more work to track the time, but is not outside of the realm of possibility, or even an especially tedious amount of work once you have the framework decided on. Either way, knowing how time is measured and days are tracked in your world can add a very large dose of realism to your campaign–your players will be able to feel that things are happening at a much more concrete pace if they can look at a calendar and see what they were doing on a particular day in-game. Also, it can lead to more dimension in character backgrounds, as birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays can all be much more reliably tracked and used as plot hooks or roleplaying hooks if your players can see how the calendar works.

The myth is true: Warhammer six-sided dice roll 1s more often. That’s the conclusion of an American engineering professor who rolled dice 144,000 times and dissected them using a hydrogen-cooled diamond saw.

The experiment tested Games Workshop dice, Chessex dice, and precision casino dice. The GW and Chessex d6s rolled a ‘one’ 29% of the time, when the average should be one in six or 16.6%. That makes the dice almost 75% more likely to roll a ‘one’, giving your rogue a crappy damage roll or your Warhammer unit a pass on a leadership test. The casino dice were spot on at 16.6%.

The best theory is that rounded edges cause dice to keep rolling longer. Gravity paradoxically favours the heaviest side at the top, since gravity causes dice to stop rolling:

Game room logic, poor source of anything, would dictate that the side with the one is heavier and would therefore be on the bottom more. Unfortunately this is just not true, take popcorn or batholiths as an example. The 6 is too light to stop the momentum of the dice, the rounded corners cannot prevent the dice from turning due to the weight. In the end 1s are by far the most common result.

Dice inventor Lou Zocchi has a similar theory.

But who is this anonymous professor? Could he be a secret plant for the manufacturers of casino dice?

Welcome to RPG Countdown. This bi-weekly show features the hottest selling RPG products.

This episode of the Countdown covers the period between 30 May 2010 and 12 June 2010.

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a comment and share it with others. Consider subscribing so that you will get future episodes delivered to you - you won’t have to remember to download each one.

RPG Countdown (18 June 2010)

The Hot List
10: The Genius Guide to the Godling, Super Genius Games
9: Monster Manual 3, Wizards of the Coast
8: Castle Bravo, Pelgrane Press
7: Krazy Kragnar’s Used Chariots, Super Genius Games
6: 101 1st Level Spells, Rite Publishing
5: The Genius Guide to Archer Archetypes, Super Genius Games
4: Sunken Empires, Open Design
3: The Genius Guide to the Mystic Godling, Super Genius Games
2: GURPS City Stats, Steve Jackson Games
1: The Dresden Files, Evil Hat Productions

This article previously appeared on August 19th 2009. It reappears here as part of Brandan Landgraff’s World Building 101 series of articles.

At the end of a hard day adventuring, the most popular place for PCs to rest their weary heads is typically the local inn. It is the adventurer’s home away from home, base of operations, and the best place to celebrate a successful journey.

As it is generally one of the places that you can expect your PCs to be spending a lot of time, it makes sense to put a bit of effort into making the inn more than just a place to sleep. A memorable inn can be so much more—a place to introduce new characters and plot hooks both major and minor, and a place that actually feels like home. It could even be possible to run an entire adventure based solely in the inn, if it is set up correctly.

Continue reading this article »

Dungeons and Dragons, as with most any tabletop RPG, is at its strongest when the players and the Dungeon Master work together to create a world and a story that everyone involved enjoys and feels a sense of ownership towards. This sense of ownership comes readily to the DM, who creates the world and most of the population, behaving as the players’ senses and giving life to the NPCs they encounter. For the players, though, it can be less obvious where their role in world building comes in, and thus how their ownership of the world can begin.

As I have previously discussed in this column, getting player input on the world before the game begins can be a valuable tool to involve them in world generation—using the background hooks they provide with their characters invariably makes the player feel like his character is more than a simple stand-in or outsider, in the world but not of it. Collecting out of character feedback from your players is another way of finding out what they like, or dislike, about your setting and your campaign so that you can tailor it to suit their tastes.

Other ways exist to gain insight into what elements of your setting your players enjoy and what they do not, of course. One of the most important for any Dungeon Master to learn is what your players’ choices in-character suggest about their interests, and how to adapt quickly to incorporate their choices meaningfully into whatever plans you may have had for your campaign. I believe this can be illustrated with an example from my own campaign in which one of my players did something I wasn’t expecting.

A seemingly minor NPC—one who has been largely absent from the direct storyline the player characters have experienced, but who has and will continue to have a significant impact on the unfolding plot—was publically spurned by a major patron and ally of the PCs. I had included this as exposition and was expecting the party to be eager to move on to what I considered the meat of the session, but one of the players was interested in pursuing the spurned young woman and ensuring that she was taken care of.

In the short term, this forced me to improvise, as I had not given much thought to how the girl would react other than extricating herself from the humiliating situation she had been in, but the PC in question offered her comfort and actually arranged for new employment for her, since she had been summarily dismissed from the employ of the noblewoman who was hosting the party during which she raised a scene. In the long term, this PC’s interest in and interaction with the character has allowed me to place her in a position where I can more easily move the subplot involving that character, and furthermore has told me that this is a situation the players will likely find agreeable, since they themselves pursued it.

I could just as easily have had her flee too quickly for the PC to catch, or refuse to speak to him, but that would have been detrimental to the campaign in a variety of ways. First of all, and most importantly, it would have removed the player’s agency in affecting the world of the campaign and potentially his connection to it. It is essential that players be able to take actions that have an effect on the world around them, otherwise they are merely spectators to the story, and not participants—and may as well be reading a novel or watching a movie. Secondly, I would have then had to work harder later on to ensure that the NPC in question was visible and recognizable to the PCs when the story turns to her again, a task which I am now spared thanks to one of the players actively taking an interest in her well being and ensuring that he and the other PCs will be keeping an eye on her.

The idea that I am trying to illustrate here is that if a player shows interest in something in character, it probably means that player is interested in that element of the game out of character as well. Therefore, if a player character pursues an angle you weren’t expecting, your game can only improve by rolling with it rather than trying to shut it down. Improvisation is a key skill for handling this smoothly, but if all else fails, you can always admit to the players that you haven’t detailed whatever it is they’re pursuing all that heavily, and that you’ll need a bit to plan for it—you might even ask them for ideas on what they’d expect to find, giving them another chance to contribute to the world building.

This may not always be the case, however—sometimes players will seize on something that you mention in passing simply because they are trying to read you the same way, and mistakenly believe that it is important to the outcome of the encounter or the game. It can be something completely innocuous that you included for flavor—I have heard one DM mention that her players seemed obsessed with a squirrel she included as fluff, because “she wouldn’t have mentioned the squirrel if it wasn’t important”. Of course, the squirrel was in no way important, but the players weren’t sure…

Player agency, and meaningful choices, are what set tabletop roleplaying games apart from any other form of entertainment. It allows the DM to respond dynamically to unexpected actions and gives the players freedom to explore the world the way they see fit. Keeping that in mind, and working towards enabling it as much as possible, is one of the key steps towards creating a campaign your players will feel proud to be able to contribute to.

Television cliche wiki TV Tropes has an ever-expanding collection of common gimmicks and genre conventions that will be familiar to players of tabletop roleplaying games. (Be warned: TV Tropes is rather addictive, so expect to spend several hours clicking links.)

TV Tropes are especially useful for Dungeon Mastering ideas. One such trope is Schrodinger’s Gun, a rule defined as such:

“The state of anything in a Tabletop RPG that has not been observed by the players is undefined until the players’ actions affect it.”

–Schrödinger’s Gun

You are free to change any detail that the players haven’t seen yet. An example of this from my home game is when the players were looking for a prophecied hero named the Faith Scion, who I was going to have turn out to be one of the PCs all along. When that player left and another joined the group, I decided that the new player was actually the Faith Scion all along, and that his unusual choice of weapon played an important role in his backstory.

You can also use this rule when the players guess the ending to your mystery ahead of time, or an important NPC is killed unexpectedly. Reveal that the real villain was someone else all along, or that the mage they killed was actually a simulacrum created by the mage as a decoy. Use this carefully, as players don’t like to be robbed of their achievements.

Another rule is called Chandler’s Law, named for a piece of advice by pulp writer Raymond Chandler:

“When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.”

– Chandler’s Law

This rule applies readily to Dungeons & Dragons, and in fact I believe it appears in editions of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. When the game is going slowly, roll for initiative! Combat is engaging and interesting, and gives the opportunity to introduce new information or modify a difficult situation.

Some other useful RPG tropes include Pragmatic Villainy (see also the Evil Overlord List) and Dangeously Genre Savvy. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read a few more hours of TV Tropes.

Frank Trollman at RPG forum The Gaming Den takes a rare look at a Cold War era Czech D&D clone:

So today we’re going to be doing a little bit of a review of the Czech exclusive RPG Drači Doupě Plus, or as it is known in short hand: DrD+. In case this wasn’t immediately obvious from the name alone, this is an old school Dungeons & Dragons clone. The things that make it different from any of a thousand fantasy heartbreakers you will never play is that this one was designed behind the Iron Curtain by Czechoslovakian gamers in secret, and then released to the masses shortly after the wall came down in 1990.

Penny Arcade posts a ten minute video on why D&D is important to players.

Dicecreator’s Blog posts a guide on making your own custom dice.

In an old post from Jeff’s Gameblog, Jeff Rients reminds us that D&D was just a fad and may never become mainstream popular. Harsh!

Big Ball of No Fun offers a use of the Insight skill to gauge enemy strength. This could also be applied to D&D 3e’s Sense Motive skill.

Book: Kobold Quarterly 13
Length/Type: 64 pages/magazine
System: OGL/Pathfinder, 4e, System Independent
Author(s):Phil Larwood, Aeryn Rudel, David Mallon, Matthew Hanson, Monte Cook, Adam Daigle, Maurice de Mare, Mario Podeschi, John Flemming, Hank Woon, Ryan Costello, Jr., Chris Pramas, Jonathan McAnulty, Brandon Hodge, et. al.
Publisher: Wolfgang Bauer
Licensor/Endorser: n/a
Rating:






(5 of 5 rudii)

I love Kobold Quaterly. It's true. I gush with abundant gamer love for this magazine, more so every issue. Yet, as a reviewer I'm always looking for something critical to say, something to help my readers decide whether they want to buy this issue or not. Never works. It's all just varying degrees crunchy-fluffy goodness. Even the edition split fails as a sorting criteria. KQs articles are carefully crafted for use across editions, even when they are written for one. On top of that, for each edition there's always at least one article for which it's worth buying the whole magazine, while many articles work for all editions. Wolfgang and the KQ crew really hamper the critic, let me tell you.

In response, I've decided to take this approach: if you're a gamer, get yourself a subscription to KQ. Period. You won't regret it. And they don't pay me to say that; I just think it's true.

Whew. Good. That's out of the way. Now on to what's inside Issue #13. Here are some highlights:

Ecology of the Shoggoth
The articles start with Phil Larwood's Ecology of the Shoggoth. Phil is an interesting, inventive and prolific designer. Instead of trying to inject a little D&D into his Lovecraft, Larwood chose to inject a little Lovecraft into his D&D. This ecology slates the origin of the shoggoth firmly into aboleth history, explicates the relation between shoggoth and gibbering mouthers, fluffs out cults, variant shoggoths, magic items and lore. A fantastic guide to slotting some cthonic horror firmly into your D&D world. Written for 3.5/PFRPG but so rules lite as to make the distinction meaningless.

Lovecraftian Gods
Following up on the cthulu/horror theme, Aeryn Rudel gives us Lovecraftian Gods in 4e. From Azathoth to Nyarlathotep, replete with divine and horrific magic items and new abilities, this article helps GMs cement the cthonic into their campaigns. The rules might read 4e, but these are divinities. The important parts are the fluff and ability ideas. Easily adaptable to any edition.

The Arquebusier
Here I'm going to decline to comment. Conflict of interest. I've written my own take on black powder weapons in a piece titled Brace of Pistols (forthcoming) for Sinister Adventure's Razor Coast. Anything I might say would be informed by my own design work, rendering me less than partial. You'll have to find out for yourself on this one folks, but I know gunpowder is a hot topic for many so it seemed worth a mention.

Book Reviews
Swiftly becoming one of my favorite bits in KQ, the magazine follows the time-honored Lotus format to explore recent works of sci-fi and fantasy. This issue includes a review of Vandermeer's Finch, J.A. Pitts Black Blade Blues, a collection of Dying Earth short stories edited by GRRM and Gardner Dozois, and Peter Straub's Dark Matter. For reasons of my own, I've long been burnt out on urban fantasy with female heroine's - especially set in the continental Pacific Northwest. Too much Charles de Lint and Emma Bull, I suspect. That said, Janna Silverstein's review of Black Blade Blues left me excited to dip back into this sub-sub genre. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Thrill of the Unknown
What gamer doesn't love an advice column by Monte Cook? This issue covers guidelines for leaving just enough unsaid - and specific creative techniques for doing so - to add mystery and lasting terror to your campaign. Monte is always worth the read.

Spark
What issue of KQ would be complete without a monster? And who better to deliver than the winner of the KQ King of the Monsters contest, the Master of Minions himself, Adam Daigle! KQ13 presents Adam's contest winning entry, the Spark: an extraplanar, possession inclined, life burning electricity elemental. Great stuff!

Gambler's Magic
By John Flemming. This might have been my favorite piece in the whole issue, and I don't play 4e. Games of chance transformed into wondrous magical items. Four dice games, three coins of luck, and five gambling tokens plus assorted paraphernalia. I loves me some wondrous items!

Interview
This issue also includes a fantastic little 2-page interview with Green Ronin's Chris Pramas. I know a few things about interviews myself and found this one enthralling. The interview spotlights Pramas' most recent accomplishment, designing the Dragon Age RPG boxed set. And what better way to back up the interview than with an excerpt of Pramas' own work: Freeport Backgrounds for Dragon Age. Not to be missed by pirate lovers in any edition.

The Wreck of the Goodwife
Those of you who know me know I'm editing Sinister Adventures pirate campaign setting and mega-adventure, Razor Coast. So I approached the Wreck of the Goodwife by McAnulty and Hodge (sounds like a law firm in a Cthulu adventure! hmmm...) with the jaundiced eye of a self-assured pirate snob. And swiftly forgot all that nonsense in sheer wonder over this little shipwreck set piece. Hooks, new organizations, new magic items, new templates, new spells, new monsters, and an underwater encounter complemented by a gorgeously mapped, full-page shipwreck. How they fit all that in four pages plus map, I'll never know. I'm just mad I didn't hire these two to work on Razor Coast! Great stuff. Pathfinder, but (again) easily adaptable.

There is more in this issue than I've listed. All good stuff and how not with the Kobold's stamp of approval. Above are just my favorite bits, but I'm sure you can see why I'm telling you KQ #13 is just another in a long line of winners. It's starting to feel like I'm getting my Dragon back.

I’m particularly proud of this website’s Ioun stone guide, a collected list of over 154 different ioun stones from more than 15 different sources. Most are canon D&D sourcebooks, with some from third-party publications. The list has grown by 75% since originally posted, including 43 stones added this month from an AD&D sourcebook and six from a 1991 issue of Dragon magazine.

There’s a surprising amount of background story to the ioun stone. The ioun stone actually predates Dungeons & Dragons, appearing in Jack Vance’s 1973 short story “Morreion”. Vance’s works had a major influence on D&D and the ioun stone made its way into Dungeons & Dragons through The Strategic Review, TSR’s gaming magazine:

“FLASHING SWORDS! #1 (Dell, 1973) contained four excellent swords & sorcery yarns, including “Morreion” by Jack Vance. In this tale there was a magical item of highly unusual value — IOUN stones. Mr. Vance was kind enough to allow us to enlarge somewhat upon his creations and list them as a D&D “Miscellaneous Magic” item.”

– The Strategic Review #4, Winter 1975

Dragon Magazine issue #174 (October 1991) describes that according to Vance’s “Morreion”, ioun stones are recovered at great risk from the hearts of obliterated stars.

In that issue’s article, “Bazaar of the Bizarre: Ioun Stones”, Matthew Hargenrader offers a separate origin story for the ioun stones in D&D. Rare ioun stones grow gradually in the Demiplane of Mineral, a place where the Positive Energy Plane meets the Plane of Earth. This plane is hostile to human life and guarded by numerous crystalline creatures, but contains a wealth of gemstones and minerals, including the ioun stones.

TSR’s 1996 book Netheril: Empire of Magic gives an origin story for the ioun stones of the Forgotten Realms setting, where the NPC lich Larloch has a famous preference for the items:

“The Shadow King’s body was in stark contrast to that of Tam. While the Zulkir of Necromancy strove to maintain his human appearance, Larloch was nothing more than a collection of bones partially covered in fine garments. The Netheril lich’s bones were bright white in color, and trails of emerald energy traveled across his form. More than two dozen ioun stones circled his skull, and globes of red light gazed up at Szass Tam as he approached.”

– Netheril: Empire of Magic

The book describes the inventor of Ioun Stones, an Netherese arcanist born 4,000 years ago named Congenio Ioun. As this Ioun lived for over 900 years and was an extremely talented spellcaster, it’s not impossible that he ascended to become the deity Ioun of D&D 4th edition.

The earlier Dragon article dislikes the idea that a human wizard might simply have invented the ioun stones, considering it unworthy of the majestic star-cores of Vance’s Dying Earth series:

“This method lacks any spirit of adventure and is very straightforward: It is supposed that ultrapowerful wizards who live on some alternate Prime Material plane simply make these magical gems. The only interesting thing about this origin is that the magical effects created by such wizards are greatly superior to those encountered in a standard AD&D campaign.”

–Dragon magazine #174, October 1991, “Bazaar of the Bizarre: Ioun Stones”

I have to admit that I took this approach in Kobold Quarterly #6’s “Rolling Stones”, presenting new 15 new ioun stones as invented by a human inventor named Darven Regance. In deference to Vance’s work and other creation stories I wrote that only these new stones were man-made, and quite likely reverse-engineered from the original stones.

In retrospect, perhaps my character Regance is Congenio Ioun in disguise, or he simply took his “inventions” from the Demiplane of Mineral.

Welcome to RPG Countdown. This bi-weekly show features the hottest selling RPG products.

This episode of the Countdown covers the period between 16 May 2010 and 29 May 2010.

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RPG Countdown (04 June 2010)

The Hot List
10: Loot 4 Less, Vol. 6: Cloaks and Daggers, Super Genius Games
9: Player’s Strategy Guide, Wizards of the Coast
8: Castle Bravo, Pelgrane Press
7: The Genius Guide to Dream Magic, Super Genius Games
6: GURPS Psis, Steve Jackson Games
5: Class Options, Vol. 3: Rangers Renewed!, Gun Metal Games
4: The Genius Guide to Archer Archetypes, Super Genius Games
3: Pyramid #3/19: Tools of the Trade, Clerics, Steve Jackson Games
2: GURPS City Stats, Steve Jackson Games
1: The Dresden Files, Evil Hat Productions