Faction Friday: The Eyetooth Cult

The Eyetooth Cult can be used either as a friendly faction that sends the PCs out on a mission, or as a foe that the PCs must overcome. It is led by Bariam Incisor, an old human man who wears a black, hooded cloak and carries a gnarled staff. The cult bases itself in an abandoned crypt where a werewolf is interred.

As a friendly faction, the Eyetooth Cult is a small cult to Cala, a canine god. Their leader has set himself up in an abandoned crypt to a powerful werewolf, where he’s careful not to desecrate anything, and his followers meet here once a week to perform simple rituals.

Plot hook: An enemy group has stolen Bariam’s staff of dreaming, which is a symbol of his authority within the cult. He pays handsomely for its return. The enemy group wants it to invade the dreams of a foe.

As a foe faction, the Eyetooth Cult is a pack of gnolls led by a werewolf who controls them with a staff of domination. He has secreted the gnolls in an abandoned crypt to a powerful werewolf, who he wants to raise as an undead servant.

Plot hook: The cult has been raiding nearby settlements (even dominated gnolls need food). During a recent raid, the village’s healer saw the staff and realized its purpose, and the village elders will pay the PCs to bring back the staff, broken, as proof that Bariam’s power is no longer.

The Crypt of Callahan
Room 1: Entrance Room 2 Room 3
Friendly: Two acolytes sit at a small, book-covered table in this small stone entrance chamber, studying their books.

Foe: Two gnolls keep watch in this small stone entrance chamber.

This otherwise empty chamber contains three sarcophagi (one along each side wall and a large one at the end) and four gargoyles. Stepping on any of the floor tiles in a 10’x10′ square at the room’s entrance causes darts to fire at the triggering creature (1d8 damage; DC 12 Dexterity saving throw for half damage). A DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check will identify the trap. Moving past the trap causes the gargoyles to animate if the intruders are unknown to them.

The cult usually performs its rituals in this chamber. Three copper ritual bowls lay on top of the large sarcophagus.

Each sarcophagus is carved with the image of a half-man, half-wolf. Each contains the skeleton of a human; the main sarcophagus also contains a small gold ring.

Bariam spends much of his time in this chamber off the main crypt. It contains a simple bed, chair, and table, on top of which are stacks of books about lycanthropy.

If attacked, this room will contain a force of cultists or gnolls guarding Bariam. A creature within 5 feet of Bariam can make a DC 15 Strength check to wrest the staff away from him and break it. Doing so ends his control of the gnolls, and they will attack anyone they please.

 

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Your villain should be like your PCs except in one way

VillainYour villain should be industrious and productive, just like the heroes.

Your villain should be committed to her or his cause, just like the heroes. Your villain should be convinced that she or he is right, and have reasonable justifications for her or his behavior.

Your villain should inspire others to follow the same cause, just like the heroes.

However…

Your villain should be willing to do anything to accomplish her or his goals. Murder, theft, bribery, kidnapping; all of it is defensible in pursuit of a goal. The villain may not relish taking those actions, but the villain must be willing to take those actions.

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Do you like isometric dungeon maps?

Would you have any interest in seeing more maps like this?

It’s a bad photo of a line drawing, so if I did this more often, I’d make it much cleaner (and I’d add a symbol pointing north).

I enjoyed drawing it, but I don’t know if anyone would find it useful. Please comment if you’d like me to draw more of them, a la Dyson Logos.

Isometric map

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Have you ever had a die break?

Check this out:

Broken die

Found it in my big bag of spare dice.

I like to think that the dice gods said, “Nope, rolled poorly too many times.”

Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Monster Monday: Kala Warcaster of Tarakona

Kala Warcaster

Art for Pathfinder “Hell or High Water” book; artist uncredited

The savage continent of Tarakona, where draconic races battle for supremacy!

The fearsome, combative, plains-dwelling Kala people (think lizardfolk) send spellcasters into battle along with their warriors and archers. The kala warcaster is a ranged support fighter, corralling enemies with walls of force, churning up ground into difficult terrain, and blasting enemies that get too near.

Because Tarakona is designed as a foreign, unexplored continent, the warcaster uses unique spells, outlined in its stat block.

If you’re dropping the warcaster alone into your campaign, it livens up a battle with its unusual tactics.

Text version of stat block:

Kala Warcaster

Medium humanoid, lawful


  • Armor Class 11
  • Hit Points 25 (5d8 + 3)
  • Speed 30 ft.

|STR|DEX|CON|INT|WIS|CHA|
|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|
|10 (+0)|12 (+1)|13 (+1)|12 (+1)|15 (+2)|11 (+0)|


  • Proficiency Bonus +2
  • Skills Perception +4, Nature +3, Medicine +4
  • Senses passive Perception 14
  • Languages Draconic
  • Challenge 2 (450 XP)

Spellcasting. The warcaster is a 4th-level spellcaster. Its spellcasting ability is Wisdom (spell save DC 12, +4 to hit with spell attacks). It casts from a non-standard spell list, so its standard combat spells are listed below.

Actions

Blast of Overwhelming Force. Melee Spell Attack: +4 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d8+2) force damage, and the target must make a DC 12 Consitution save or be pushed back 10 feet.

Prayer of Blessed Healing. Up to 3 creatures the warcaster can see within 50 feet gain 2d4 temporary Hit Points.

Perimeter of Total Defense. Concentration, up to 1 minute. The warcaster creates an invisible wall of force 10 feet high, 1 foot thick, and up to 30 feet long, which can turn 90 degrees every 5 feet as desired. The wall can be enclosed on itself. The wall has Armor Class 10 and 20 Hit Points.

Corruption of Firm Ground. An area 30 feet wide shakes and crumbles, becoming difficult terrain. All creatures within the area are knocked prone and must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or take 1d8 thunder damage.

Tactics

The warcaster uses corruption of firm ground on enemies as they approach, then perimeter to keep them away from allies (especially archers), switching to prayer if enough allies are damaged. If an enemy gets within melee range of the warcaster, it uses blast then moves 30 feet away.

Categories: Monsters, Tarakona | Leave a comment

How to Prepare a One-Shot RPG Session

"OC-2013-8143" by mattlephotography.com

By mattlephotography.com

Let’s say you’re going to run a game at a convention, or you want to introduce a new system to your regular players who may not continue beyond one session. That’s what I’m calling a one-shot for this article: a self-contained tabletop RPG session, where you don’t expect to return to the characters or world.

Since this is such a different experience than so many games, you’ll want to approach it differently:

Create interesting characters. Make sure the characters are vibrant, with stronger personalities than you’d normally make. Remember, the players will only have a few opportunities over the course of a few hours to really act out with that character, so the character needs to be strong, memorable, and easy to grasp.

Make sure the player characters’ goals relate to each other. With so little time, it’s easy for each PC to just act in his or her own self-interest. Each PC should have a specific bond to at least one other PC (“Sara saved Melanie’s life last week,” “Carroll is Johann’s best friend,” “Fred is so amazed by Tara’s mystical abilities that he trusts them implicitly”). This will make it easier for the players to include each other and back each other up.

Set the session at an interesting location. Again, since you have so little time, make sure it’s a place that the players can latch onto easily and won’t soon forget. Make a little more bizarre or off-kilter than your typical place. For a crime investigation game, place the murders at a carnival. Set an epic fantasy RPG in a crystal tower or an Aztec-style jungle city.

Also give the characters a strong reason to be at that location. Since you’ll only be playing this once, you can tie the characters closer to the backstory. Maybe the crime scene investigators are all employees of the carnival. Maybe the fantasy explorers were captured and will be sacrificed to the sun god at dawn by the Aztec-style civilization.

Now that you have characters and location, you’ll have a good idea of the basic building blocks of the scenario: the big problem that the PCs have to solve, the obstacles in their way, and the various ways they can solve the problem.

This gets to one of the toughest things about one-shots: time. Some players will breeze through a scene that you thought would take an hour, while others will draw out a scene you thought would pass quikcly. Make sure you create more content than you think you’ll need, but modularized. In other words, if you can think of the session as a series of scenes, set up more scenes than you’ll probably need. Just make sure that you can drop a few scenes to make the session shorter than you think you’ll need.

Now that you have a good idea of all the elements of your session, you can think about props. A physical prop or two pulls players into the fictional world (which can be particularly helpful in a noisy, distracting convention environment). This can be as “simple” as a map or letter printed onto a piece of paper that you stain in a tea bath to jewelry representing magical artifacts or talismans (craft stores often sell inexpensive, fantastical jewelry in their make-your-own-jewelry aisle) to 3D printed objects like skulls. Of course, this is completely optional, but it’s worth looking over the adventure for items that you could easily fabricate or cheaply buy.

As you finalize the game and prepare character sheets, look for (or write) rules summaries that you can print and hand out to players. Keep these to one side of one piece of paper; just the core rules that the players are most likely to encounter. It can be terse, too. If you’re playing with a simple enough system, you might be able to include that on the character sheet itself!

And there you have it! That should ensure a fun session that fills its time nicely, where the players can dive deep into their characters and the setting.

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Why you should playtest

"service-design-41" by tobiastoft on Flickr

“service-design-41” by tobiastoft on Flickr

I’ve run across a surprising number of people who will design a tabletop RPG, then publish it without doing any playtesting. I’ll admit it: I was one of them.

To be clear, I’m not talking about folks who throw together a simple RPG, then publish it on their blog as an early draft for feedback. And I’m not talking about people working against a contest deadline.

I’m talking about designers who never playtest. This post is for you.

Why should you playtest your games?

1) Your words aren’t clear to other people

It’s clear to you, and it looks like it will be clear to other people. But folks have all sorts of different experiences and exposures to games. You may use terminology they’ve never come across.

Even beyond that, writing clear rules is hard. It’s very easy for players to find loopholes, or interpretations that let them break the game.

2) Math gets out-of-whack quickly and in surprising ways

That dice mechanic that seems so elegant in your head will work great in the scenarios you’ve thought of, but what happens when someone pushes it? What happens with a group of jokesters, or serious RPers, or GMs who like to throw very hard challenges at the players?

How many bonuses can someone add to that die roll? Can a PC overwhelm the odds?

3) You can’t know what parts won’t work together

So far, I’ve been talking just about atomic pieces of the game. All the pieces of your game have to work together. Those interactions can cause all sorts of havoc in the actual game.

Here’s an example: the rules say you can apply bonuses from “relevant skills” to a die roll. What happens when a PC builds all of her skills around a certain task, then applies all of them to the same roll?

Or let’s say you’re making a traditional epic fantasy, dungeon crawling game that includes healing potions. Have you looked at the price of healing potions, and made sure that PCs aren’t making enough in treasure to just load up on 10 healing potions each before every encounter?

4) Why spend a lot of time on mechanics that you’ll likely change?

This may sound counter-intuitive, but bear with me. Let’s say you have a reasonable idea for a mechanic in your game. Write it down, then move on to another part of your game. Don’t spend lots of time fiddling with the math. Write down a reasonable mechanic, then playtest it. Playtest it as much as possible. The playtest will tell you how the math should work, and any weaknesses in the rules themselves.

Adjust based on player feedback, not based on the voices in your head telling you how it should be.

 

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The Kala, Draconic Warriors of the Plains

As part of the draconic Tarakona setting I’m building on this blog, today I introduce in detail the Kala, fierce humanoid lizards who live in the plains of the world.

Found online without attribution

Created as laborers, Kala are, as a whole, strong but not bright. They have capitalized on these traits by developing a strong warrior culture of hunters and soldiers. For their first few generations, they established small clans of 20 to 50, each led by a chief, living off the bounty of the western grasslands.

Then came Dak One-Eye, who carried the magic hammer Thundermaker. This hammer was given to him by the god Ahm, who instructed Dak to unite the Kala as one empire under his name. The other clans quickly fell under Dak’s banner, forming the Empire of Ahm. Dak received many other visions and teachings of Ahm, which evolved into a complex religion.

Quickly conquering the western plains, the Kala established a thriving, spirited civilization now divided between industrious city-dwelling Kala and their wilder nomadic cousins, though it is not without its own internal squabbles.

Kala Culture

The empire is led by the Charl—currently Charl Torren of the Piercing Gaze. According to the Fourth Scroll of Ahm, the Charl must be “warrior in spirit, noble in bearing, fierce in war, decisive in home, and dedicated entirely to preserving the worship of Ahm.” This is generally interpreted to mean a strong warrior with a level head and respect for religion. Torren certainly combines these attributes, though he’s a better administrator than a fighter. This reputation has earned him some enemies among the war-chiefs.

Just below the Charl in rank are the priests and priestesses of the Eight Orders of Ahm. Each gender has its own religious role. Males (korani) serve as lay counselors and perform basic rites like the Seventh-Day Naming of the Child. Only females (dessen) may dance the holy dances and participate in the holiest of rites directly to Ahm. The high council of dessen also choose the next Charl when the current Charl dies.

Charls rarely die of old age. This remains an open secret.

Just below the priesthood sits the warrior class. Organized into battalions named according to their originating clan, battalions are led by war-chiefs. Each battalion votes for its war chief, though these elections are usually far from fair.

At the moment, the most powerful clans include Piercing Gaze, Everstride, Deep Shadow, and the Thousand Spears.

The rest of the Kala population is made up of the common class, including all the usual suspects: potters, weavers, ranchers, etc. Kala are omnivores, but favor meat. Since so much of the continent has been domesticated, most of their food comes from ranching and herding of slurn, a large, cattle-like lizard. Farming is looked down upon as an occupation too tied to one place, though some vegetable and fruit gardening occurs, particularly in the cities.

Every clan specializes in a particular craft, though several clans may practice the same craft.

Kala love rocks and stones, attaching great significance to the shape of stones, and often carrying one with them as a sort of totem. They will often set up standing stones to absorb evil or as sites of worship, believing that powerful spirits are attracted to them.

Kala Clan Life

Kala live in clans. Adolescents are encouraged to explore strong relationships but remain sexually celibate. Upon maturation, males and females are “bonded,” which is roughly equivalent to a marriage ceremony. Kala bond deeply to their mates, to an extent that may be physiological. Infidelity is a capital crime for both involved. Kala reproduce ovipariously (by laying eggs), and both parents watch over the eggs.

However, Kala young are raised by the clan. Mothers are expected to care for their infants themselves, but after weaning, parentage is mostly ignored. Adults self-organize into disciplinarians, care-givers, trainers, and so forth.

Kala Civilization

Kala live in either large, sprawling cities miles wide, with buildings rarely more than 2 stories high, or in nomadic camps. Predictably, nomadic Kala look down on city-dwellers as soft and living lives unfit to traditional values, while city-dwelling Kala see themselves as modern and much more economically powerful than their scattered nomadic cousins.

Kala cities are usually built of adobe or simple brick. What was once a clan on the plains is now a group of several dozen Kala who live in a complex of squat buildings surrounded by a low stake wall. Each clan works a particular trade, from weaving to weapon-making.

Kala Personality

Found online without attribution

The average Kala has a spirited personality, given to strong emotions. They are not the savage brutes often painted by other cultures. Instead, they lust for life and vibrant experiences.

This helps to explain their many festivals and generally loud culture. As the Kala saying goes, “It’s not a proper festival unless a dish has been broken.”

Because companionship enhances emotion, Kala make excellent friends, and indeed they often jump into friendships without much judgment.

Most Kala are highly religious, though most outsiders have a difficult time deciphering Ahm rituals and festivals, which operate according to a highly complex schedule.

The Teachings of Ahm

According to the only two historical records we have of his early life, Dak One-Eye was just another energetic clan chief until receiving Thundermaker. His early revelations about Ahm concentrate on the importance of uniting the Kala race under one banner for Ahm’s glory. Later teachings take a much more pacifistic tone, particularly in the Eighteenth Revelation.

At the time, Dak’s teachings about pacifism were revolutionary, and caused much debate within the Kala wash-tents. However, Dak carefully phrased pacifism not as a lack of conflict, but as necessary for the survival of the race. As is explained in lines fifty-three through sixty-one and seventy-six through eighty-one of the Eighteenth Revelation:

In war there is fighting, yes
But is there not also death, not only of lives but also of nations?
Are the lives of all to be risked, year after year, generation after generation, without end?
No warrior wins every battle.
No feeling surpasses that of proof of arms
Of feeling victory over your foe with the might of claw and arm and leg
And can we feel this only in war?
We are warriors, yes
And we are more, far more, infinitely more.

We must survive,
To survive we must stand firm,*
To stand firm we must build,
To build we must not step onto the battlefield.
We will preserve our warrior’s spirit
In a thousand other ways.

* There is no direct translation for the term here translated as “stand firm.” The closest equivalent means to remain successful over a long period, despite drawbacks and enemies.

Ahm’s teachings can be usefully analyzed along the same gender division of the korani and dessen. The korani lay teachings emphasize self-discipline, self-reliance, self-control, and zest for raw emotion. These are taught during daily lessons given by the korani, who also typically teach in the informal neighborhood schools of the Kala (though these are gradually being supplanted by tutors and “professional” teachers, which has caused much concern). The dessen oversee the three-hour weekly rites attended by all Kala at temples or shrines, and dessen lectures emphasize pacifism and the importance of preserving Kala race and culture.

Kala Religion

The major festivals of the Kala include (but are by no means limited to):

  • The Feast of the High Sun
  • The Fast of Thek
  • The Festival of the Waxing Moon
  • The Three-Day Festival
  • The Five-Day Festival
  • The Feast of Forgiveness
  • The Coming of Age
  • The Gift of the Dead

Encountering the Kala

Combat

If you encounter a Kala raiding party, it will generally consist of a handful of warriors, archers, and warcasters, led by an elite warrior. The warriors will swarm the most physically powerfully enemy, directing their archers to do the same, while the warcasters keep other enemies at bay. Once the first enemy dies, the warriors leap to the next most powerful enemy in turn.

Plot Hooks

Nomadic clans often want information on rival clans nearby; this can be as simple as a scouting mission or as complex as infiltrating and “helping” the other clan.

Whenever you visit a Kala city, you’re likely to find it in the middle of a religious celebration. There are many opportunities for conflict here, such as the theft of a religious item or a mysterious death during a feast.

Categories: Tarakona | Leave a comment

Run an entire D&D 5E encounter on one sheet of paper

D&D Encounter Sheet

D&D Encounter Sheet

I’ve put everything I need to run a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition encounter on one page, with enough space for 40 monsters (4 different monster types, and 10 individual monsters for each type).

This doesn’t include every stat for every monster; just the stats that I need for 90% of my encounters: Hit Points, Armor Class, speed, initiative, attacks (attack bonus, average damage, damage roll, and damage type/special options), and special abilities.

There’s also an initiative tracker on the side, numbered from -5 to 25. Just write down where each creature is, and you can just glance down to see who’s where. There’s even a round tracker.

Download the PDF here.

Categories: Cool Utilities | 1 Comment

What created Tarakona, the Land of Dragons?

I’m building a setting on this blog: Tarakona, a continent filled with draconic races.

Today I’m going to flesh out the continent’s history. To understand any world, it helps to understand where it came from. If you know which elements forged it into its present shape, you can grasp it that much better.

However, a world intended for a tabletop RPG has specific requirements, different than what you need for a novel.

First, the world has to provide plot hooks. All the “fluff” in a game should provide plot hooks, in my opinion: material that can provide the backstory or motivation for an adventure.

Second, the setting has to provide dungeons. I don’t mean that literally, nor is it just because of the legacy of D&D. The PCs will need iconic areas to explore and have their adventures in. Even games that don’t involve heroic fantasy or dungeon crawling need iconic environments: dusty libraries and long-forgotten crypts in a Cthulhu investigation game, for example. The setting has to provide for the presence of those environments.

I’ve already established that dragons ruled the continent some centuries ago, and created the races that currently dominate it. But every epic fantasy world needs ruins and dungeons of past empires, and it’ll be difficult for GMs to run a game in a world where all the ruins are scaled for dragons.

So, let’s add some races that came before: humans who grew too powerful. What destroyed them? Let’s echo the downfall of the dragons by having them destroy the humans who came before.

On to our history:

The Age of Monsters

Savage Jungle by Private Islands Magazine

Savage Jungle by Private Islands Magazine

Tarakona was a primitive, untamed wilderness. Huge monsters roamed the jungle-covered land. Eventually, humans arrived and killed off most of those monsters, though many were driven underground or to remote areas. Few records of this era survive.

Plot hooks=: A newly-discovered record hints at an ancient monster driven underground, now living in caves like Morlocks, their internal organs valuable for spell components.

The Golden Age of Man

Great empires grew during this time. Men built massive cities and fortresses. Armies fought until they were united under Grand Emperor Koss. Under Koss and his descendants, lords squabbled and fought, but never put the entire nation at risk.

Most people viewed magic with suspicion, and the state increasingly disfavored it. This eventually led to the Sorcerer’s Rebellion. In their search for freedom and vengeance, wizards unleashed massive powers, leveling whole nations and throwing Tarakona into chaos. Great cities fell into ruin and sank into the jungle.

Plot hooks: Koss and his descendants ruled with a famous scepter, long thought lost; a recently-discovered map shows its location. Five artifacts were used to destroy whole cities during the Sorcerer’s Rebellion; someone has found an old, heavily trapped ruin that contains one of them.

The Days of Magic

After the dust settled, the surviving wizards set themselves up in power. Frankly horrified at the vast destruction they and their peers had wrought, they pledged never to use spells of mass destruction again.

For the next few centuries, the High Wizards retreated into their towers, devoting themselves to magical research. Their minions built fantastic palaces, impregnable fortresses, and secret underground laboratories.

Then one High Wizard grew powerful and distrustful. He allied with a few other spellcasters and summoned the dragons in an attempt to wipe out the other High Wizards.

Plot hooks: An old, fallen tower from the Days of Magic has been discovered; it’s full of valuable artifacts…and magically-animated guardians.

The Age of Dragons

The Dragon's Lair by jeffchendesigns on DeviantArt

The Dragon’s Lair by jeffchendesigns on DeviantArt

The dragons fought for the wizards in a long war. The remaining humans and humanoids either died or emigrated to other continents of the world. Eventually, the dragons turned on their masters and killed them all, leaving Tarakona solely to its dragon masters. The dragons settled in their former masters’ homes, and used the wizards’ abandoned laboratories to create many lizard-like and draconic servant races.

Dragons and dragonkind spread throughout Tarakona, settling every corner of the continent. The dragons ruled with absolute power, sending Kala into vast battles purely for the dragons’ amusement, toying with craven lizardlings, and driving komodos deep into the dangerous old ruins for forgotten magical lore.

Then, mysteriously, a few centuries ago, the dragons began to weaken. Some died; some left. Nobody knows why; the dragons murmured of a dozen different reasons, few of them compatible.

Once the dragons grew sufficiently weak, the many servant races seized the opportunity, rose up, and killed their masters.

Fifty years of civil war followed, and the races eventually settled into stable clans and empires. The wars died, and over the next century, things slowly settled. Occasional battles marred a period of general peace and construction. Today, each of the three primary civilizations of Tarakona is sufficiently mature to attempt true mastery of their entire continent.

Now, each kingdom needs adventurers.

Plot hooks: An oracle prophesies that the dragons will return in one year unless certain conditions are met. A dragon’s lair has been unearthed.

Categories: Tarakona | Leave a comment