Monster Monday: Komodo Investigator of Tarakona

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

The studious Komodos explore the ancient ruins that cover Tarakona in groups of 5 to 10, typically made up of rangers, investigators, and tamed hunting drakes, who then report back to a team of researchers in a Komodo stone city.

Once the rangers get a team safely to a ruin, the investigator specializes in delving into it and uncovering its secrets. Part archaeologist, part sage, part adventurer, investigators are smart and careful.

They also each carry an orb of takala, which they use to electrify their staff and arrows.

Investigators typically keep to the back of a fight, using their illusion of falsehood to appear like rangers until they are engaged in melee. If a fight goes poorly, investigators retreat and escape rather than fight to the death.

Text version of stat block, suitable for use in Homebrewery:

___
> ## Komodo Investigator
>*medium humanoid, evil*
> ___
> – **Armor Class** 17
> – **Hit Points** 80 (12d8 + 34)
> – **Speed** 30 ft.
>___
>|STR|DEX|CON|INT|WIS|CHA|
>|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|
>|12 (+1)|14 (+2)|12 (+1)|17 (+3)|14 (+2)|9 (-1)|
>___
> – **Proficiency Bonus** +2
> – **Skills** Arcana +4, History +3, Perception +4, Stealth +3
> – **Senses** darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 14
> – **Languages** Draconic
> – **Challenge** 3 (700 XP)
> ___
> ***Innate Spellcasting.*** The investigator’s innate spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell attack bonus +5, spell save DC 15). It can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components: At will: *light, mage hand, minor illusion*
>
> ### Actions
> ***Quarterstaff of Lightning.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. *Hit:* 6 (1d6 + 3) bludgeoning damage plus 7 (1d8 + 3) lightning damage.
>
> ***Shortbow of Lightning.*** *Ranged Weapon Attack:* +4 to hit, range 80/320 ft., one target. *Hit:* 7 (1d6 + 4) piercing damage plus 8 (1d8 + 4) lightning damage.

> ***Illusion of Falsehood.*** The investigator can make itself (and anything it wears and carries) look like any other creature or humanoid its same general size and shape. This will not hold up to physical examination, it does not change the investigator’s voice, and a DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation) check will reveal the illusion.

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Faction Friday: Elydain’s Caravan, The Dragon Egg Smugglers

'The Caravan' by dungeonmiester

‘The Caravan’ by dungeonmiester

Elydain’s Caravan 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. This small caravan of about two dozen tightly-knit, mostly elven merchants, guards, and family members, led by an old elven lady named Elydain Cirelthion, trades mostly in metal merchandise from pans to daggers. Their ten-wagon caravan has plied the trade routes in this area for over two centuries.

As a friendly faction, Elydain contacts the PCs with a delicate problem. They were asked by a client to transport a dragon’s egg to a wizard’s tower. The client is part of an adventuring party that defeated a dragon and found the egg in its lair. Dragon’s eggs are dangerous enough that most city guards wouldn’t look kindly if they found anyone possessing one, but the client paid handsomely, so Elydain agreed. Unfortunately, the caravan arrived at the wizard’s tower to find it destroyed. She now has a dragon’s egg to fence, and asks the PCs to find a buyer. Any number of spellcasters would jump at the chance to study a dragon’s egg; Elydain just wants to ensure that the buyer doesn’t connect the egg to the caravan.

As a foe faction, the PCs are hired by a wizard, Carvorax the Splendid (so he calls himself), who has heard that the caravan recently acquired a dragon’s egg in secret. He wants the PCs to waylay the caravan and take the egg, which they shouldn’t be transporting anyway. They’re unwilling to sell the egg (they already have a buyer in the form of a sorcerer, Tristram the Invincible, who happens to be Carvorax’s rival).

Combat Encounter

If the PCs attack the caravan, its wagons will be pulled into a circle, and guards will approach the PCs outside the circle. If engaged, the PCs will have to defeat the guards, some of whom will remain with the wagons and fire crossbows at range. Once the guards are dealt with, half the merchants will muster and attack with short bows and swords. If at least two of the attacking merchants die, Elydain will approach the PCs, asking them what they want (if they haven’t made it clear), and give them the dragon’s egg. She doesn’t want to see the caravan slaughtered.

As such, make sure that the guards and the merchants are a very tough fight, since the PCs won’t have to kill most of the merchants.

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Game Design Hour: Helpful Sites for the Designer

'service-design-39' by Tobias Toft on Flickr

‘service-design-39’ by Tobias Toft on Flickr

This post covers public websites with features useful for the game designer during design. In other words, this isn’t about publishing your game (that’s another post).

Often, you’ll need to share game materials with other players, or you want to work on your rules from multiple places. Some folks forget the utility of Google Drive. You can create a shared folder on Google Drive for your game, then drag-and-drop your rules PDF into there and share the folder with playtesters. Or you can write your draft rules in a Google Doc, which you can access from any PC.

If you’re creating a game with components, like a board game or card game, or an RPG that uses special counters, The Game Crafter is invaluable. You can not only buy components (tokens, pawns, miniatures, etc.) in any amount you choose, you can actually build a game: upload art for custom cards or a game board, list the components, and order a copy. Prices are reasonable, and you can buy just one copy of anything (in other words, you never commit to a 10,000-copy print run). Particularly useful for RPG designers who use custom cards.

If you’re writing a tabletop RPG and want to self-publish the rule book, Lulu is one of the go-to self-publishing companies out there. Just upload your book as a Word document (or similar), and they’ll create a book out of it, which folks can buy straight off Lulu; you get the money dropped into a PayPal account once a month. They offer a reasonably wide selection of book types (softcover and hardcover at various sizes), and reasonable prices. Just as with The Game Crafter, you can buy as many copies as you want; you’re not ordering a big print run.

If you know of any others, please let me know in the comments.

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Campaign Concept: Savage, Dangerous Nature

Imagine a D&D fantasy world where you don’t screw with animals. If you enter a cave and you run across a growling wolf, you back down and find another way in (or tempt the creature away, or make peace with it, or whatever).

Now, you could make exceptions for some vermin, like sewer rats and spiders, as well as trained guardians. But otherwise, you only fight people.

Obviously, you’d need to establish this with your players. You could mechanically support it by, saying, tripling the damage and HP of each animal.

It would make a game where you explore the wilderness; you don’t dominate it.

Worth thinking about.

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Game Design Hour: The Three Phases of Prototyping

by Kars Alfrink

by Kars Alfrink

This post continues a series of blog posts in which I provide recommendations about tabletop game design. This won’t necessarily teach you how to design a game, but it will help you along as you build it.

In this post, I’m going to talk about the prototyping.

The Crappy First Prototype

When I get an idea for a game, I rush to a Word document, a pack of index cards, or a physical notebook, and I write down everything that’s pouring out of my head. I document abstract ideas, specific mechanics, materials, and anything else that comes to mind.

Then I need to see what it looks like on the table, and I build my Crappy First Prototype.

I intentionally use scrap for the first prototype. I use torn-off bits of paper for counters, printer paper for boards, binder clips for pawns; anything that’s nearby.

I do this for a couple of reasons:

  1. Your game will change so much that any time or expense you put into any item probably won’t be worth it. You won’t use that item in the final product anyway.
  2. If you invest time and thought in “perfect” materials, your unconscious mind will favor the mechanics using them. It’ll be harder to change something that’s a poor fit for the game.
  3. Cheap materials will spur you to create a cooler game. Your mind will spawn all sorts of cool ideas for materials as you struggle with paper chits.

For an RPG, you may not need any materials. For a card game, I recommend blank (that is, unlined) index cards, which you can buy in huge, inexpensive quantities at any office supply store. For board games, use 8.5×11″ paper taped together for boards. I take a highlighter to a paper and tear off bits to create tokens, markers, and pawns. Coins and binder clips are great pawns.

The Early Play Test Prototype

Eventually, you’ll need to show the game to other people.

At this point, I replace the low-quality materials with something better, but still simple. For tokens, I’ll use plastic poker chips, for example. The point is to move away from scrap, but still avoid investing serious cost. Your game is still going to go through a lot of changes.

I’ll also format my rules into a form that’s easier to read, with headers and some form of organization. This isn’t anywhere near the final version with cool fonts and fancy art, but it’s at least formatted in a way that other people will understand, and I fill out any “(NEED TO FILL THIS OUT LATER)” sections.

Remember, you’re not showing this to everyone in the world; just a few friends who can give you an idea of whether the basic mechanics work.

The Reasonably Nice “Public” Prototype

Once you’ve run your game with a few friends, you can turn this into something closer to a final game.

Find materials closer to the final version. For a board game, The Game Crafter sells spare tokens, player pieces, etc. For a card game, you can also use The Game Crafter to order a cheap version of your cards. You’ll be showing your game to people who are less familiar with your aesthetics and expectations, so it’s important that the components suggest the game.

Now’s the time to really think about how to format your rules and make them look interesting and inviting. If we had large budgets, we’d plan for art ahead of time, but indie developers rarely have that luxury. Now you can look for art to slot into your rules and the actual presentation of your game.

Once you’ve gone through a few playtests with your “public” prototype, you can look into actually publishing your game. But that’s another post.

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Monster Monday: Pupae-Disgorging Pregnant Armor Spider

How metal is that, huh?

Inspired by the Egg Hunt encounter designed by Drunkens & Dragons, this giant armored spider has two particularly interesting elements:

Every 1d4 rounds, the spider spits out 1d4 teethed pupae, who quickly join the fray. The pupae are low on Armor Class and Hit Points but high on damage, which means PCs are likely to ignore them and focus on the spiders until the pupae get in one or two good hits. By that point there may be an overwhelming number of pupae, depending on how many spiders you include.

This monster introduces a facing mechanic. Due to its chitinous armor and steel-like blades of its forearms, normal weapon damage is halved if the attacks are made against the spider’s side and front. Its bulbous, pupae-filled, pregnant abdomen, however, will take damage like normal.

I ran two of these spiders against a 6th-level party and it was a pretty tough encounter; two of six PCs dropped below 0 Hit Points.

And here are the stat blocks:

___
> ## Pregnant Armor Spider
>*Large beast, unaligned*
> ___
> – **Armor Class** 14
> – **Hit Points** 75 (14d10)
> – **Speed** 40 ft., climb 40 ft.
>___
>|STR|DEX|CON|INT|WIS|CHA|
>|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|
>|14 (+2)|16 (+3)|12 (+1)|2 (-4)|11 (+0)|4 (-3)|
>___
> – **Skills** Stealth +7
> – **Damage Immuinities** poison
> – **Senses** blindsight 10 ft., darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10
> – **Languages** —
> – **Challenge** 3 (700 XP)
> ___
> ***Spider Climb.*** The spider can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check.
>
> ***Web Sense.*** While in contact with a web, the spider knows the exact location of any other creature in contact with the same web.
>
> ***Web Walker.*** The spider ignores movement restrictions caused by webbing.
>
> ***Armored.*** The spider is resistant to slashing, bludgeoning, and piercing damage against the front and sides of the spider.
>
> ***Disgorge Pupae.*** Every 1d4 rounds, the spider disgorges 1d4 teethed pupae.
> ### Actions
> ***Bite.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. *Hit:* 7 (1d8 + 3) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 11 Constitution saving throw, taking 9 (2d8) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
>
> ***Slash.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. *Hit:* 9 (1d8 + 5) piercing damage.

___
> ## Teethed Pupae
>*Small beast, unaligned*
> ___
> – **Armor Class** 10
> – **Hit Points** 10 (1d10 + 5)
> – **Speed** 20 ft.
>___
>|STR|DEX|CON|INT|WIS|CHA|
>|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|
>|14 (+2)|10 (+0)|12 (+1)|2 (-4)|6 (-2)|4 (-3)|
>___
> – **Senses** blindsight 10 ft., darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10
> – **Damage Immuinities** poison
> – **Languages** —
> – **Challenge** 1/4 (50 XP)
> ___
> ### Actions
> ***Bite.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. *Hit:* 8 (2d6 + 2) piercing damage.

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Faction Friday: The Necromancer’s Pits

Magic: The Gathering art by Ryan Alexander Lee

Magic: The Gathering art by Ryan Alexander Lee

The Necromancer 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. Scarloth Vonidar studies necromancy in an old, haunted cave complex. He normally keeps to himself, but now he needs spell components to further his research.

As a friendly faction, Scarloth is a necromancer in name only; he’s a former druid who studies the arts of undeath to better understand the undead’s weaknesses, and maybe even find more powerful defenses against them. He found an out-of-the-way cave deep in the forest, not far from an old battleground that contains a mass grave, where he can raise and experiment on zombies in peace. The caves are further guarded by the ghosts of several dryads whom Scarloth befriended.

Plot hook: Scarloth needs poison sacs from gas spores as components in a spell that might weaken the undead. He’s located a cavern filled with fungi (and, unfortunately, a colony of ettercaps), travels in disguise to a nearby city, and hires the PCs to retrieve the sacs.

As a foe faction, Scarloth is no ordinary necromancer. Instead of just raising zombies to do his will, he seeks to understand the inner workings of undeath. To that end, he’s created a laboratory in a remote cave complex, where he raises and experiments on zombies. To guard the caves, he destroyed several nearby trees, and when dryads came to defend them, he killed them and turned them into ghosts that have no choice but to attack any except Scarloth who enter the caves.

 

  1. The entrance leads to a natural cave haunted by 3 ghostly dryads. They have the stats of regular dryads, without spells but with the addition of a ghost’s ethereal sight, incorporeal movement, and etherealness abilities, and an AC of 12.
  2. Scarloth uses this chamber as his laboratory; it contains several tables filled with bubbling potions, and a zombie chained in the small holding area to the west. He’s currently enlarging it as he has time, but the new room to the north is unfinished.
  3. Pits in each of these rooms contain noxious liquids, into which Scarloth dips bodies, testing their effects when he raises them as zombies.
  4. Scarloth stores his supplies in the square chamber, and has left the rest of the caves untouched. Most of the supplies are mundane items, like food and tools, but the various magical reagants stored here would be very valuable to a spellcaster. If this adventure isn’t challenging enough for the party, these caves could be home to any number of predators, and could connect to a larger cave system.
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Game Design Hour: The 4 most useful RPG design things I know

'Right in the thick of it' by Nic McPhee

‘Right in the thick of it’ by Nic McPhee

Do you want to design a tabletop game?

I’ve designed a couple of indie tabletop RPG games and a couple of indie board games. I’m in the middle of developing one of those board games, so I’m going through the process I’ve cobbled together over the years.

This is part of a series of blog posts in which I provide recommendations about tabletop game design. This won’t necessarily teach you how to design a game, but it will help you along as you build it.

There are four things I’ve learned that dramatically improved my ability to design interesting games.

3 Unique Things

At the beginning of your game document, describe 3 things about your system that are different than almost every other game.

If it’s really not different, why would people play it?

Shape the Conversation

The fundamental activity of a tabletop RPG game is talking. Your players will talk whether they’re playing your game or not, and whether they’re playing your game “correctly” or not.

The goal of your rules is to direct that conversation towards specific topics and experiences.

You should know those topics and experiences as well as you know the inside of your car. You need to know exactly what you want players to be saying. (And here’s a bonus trade secret: they’re perfect for examples of play in your game document.)

Design the Game, Not the Mechanics

This is a corollary to the advice above, but it bears expansion.

Don’t apply dice rolls (or card pulls or whatever) to your game initially. Imagine people talking and playing the game, narrating their characters’ actions.

Write the game to push the players towards the conversations you imagine. Tell them how to create their characters and what kinds of adventures they’ll go on. Build mechanics where you see the conversation getting bogged down.

Conversation usually gets bogged down in conflict resolution, but conflicts in your game may be very different than in other games, so don’t rush to apply another game’s resolution mechanics to your game. Look at how conflicts are shaped in your game, and build mechanics appropriately.

Mechanics Emerge from Play

When designing, don’t create rules for every conceivable situation, and don’t spend a lot of time polishing each rule. Instead, get your game to the table and playtest it. Watch the experience of people with the game, and modify or invent rules to deal with the actual situations and frustrations that you encounter in play.

It’s better to start with a one-page game with only a few basic rules and shape the game as you playtest it, than to try to design it all in your head. Let the games you play make your rules for you.

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First-Class Role-Playing…for Players! Part 4: Creating an Interesting Character

by Magdalena Roeseler

by Magdalena Roeseler

In previous posts in this series, I provided basic advice on creating a character, table etiquette, and dealing with problems.

This post is all about going one step beyond and creating an interesting, deep character.

Any character is (simplistically) made of two things: nature and nurture.

The nature comes from the character’s inherent physical and mental makeup: their biology. Does the character have any unusual physical or mental attributes that would have changed his/her path through life, like poor eyesight, a bad leg, or shyness? In other words, what’s fundamentally different about this character, in a way that the character can’t easily change?

Also, importantly, how did the character react to that nature? Did the character with a bad leg exercise and become even stronger than an average person, or favor that leg and use it as an excuse to get out of physical activities?

The nurture comes from external circumstances in the character’s life: his or her backstory. What major events in the character’s life significantly affected him or her, and changed his/her mind? Did the character face a trauma that affected his or her ability to cope with something? Did the character have a particularly positive experience that bolstered his or her confidence, like a child who grew up in the theater and is thus more comfortable speaking in front of crowds? Personality is often driven by circumstance; a child surrounded by unstable personalities might grow up to be adept at talking to people without upsetting them.

Okay, so how do you put this into practice in a tabletop role-playing context?

First off, before play, invent 1 or 2 unusual physical or mental characteristics for your character. You may already have these. Importantly, these characteristics should be more or less beyond your character’s control, like an ugly face or an extremely analytical mind. Your character just can’t help it when it comes to these characteristics.

Then, define 2 or 3 major life events that affected your character’s outlook on life. They can be positive (a long stay with an old relative that made the character appreciate the contributions of the old or the sick) or negative (the character was constantly bullied, which gave him or her a very strong sense of justice).

Then, invent catchphrases that sum up the character’s reactions to those characteristics and events, like “I’m Just as the Gods Made Me,” “Sherlockian Mind,” “The Weak Deserve Respect,” and “Always Protect the Oppressed.”

Then write those catchphrases down and have them in front of you while you play. No matter the situation, consult that piece of paper like an oracle. Look at your catchphrases constantly as a guide to how your character should act, and act accordingly.

Hope this helps!

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Monster Monday: Lizardling Knight of Tarakona

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

While the bureaucratic lizardling empire sends its well-trained units onto the battlefield in regimented rows and columns, the only wild cards on the field are the knights.

Knights are the smartest, most careful combatants in a lizardling army, carefully surveying their enemy for weak points and exploiting them. A knight will identify a dangerous enemy—particularly ranged spellcasters—and fire at it from range while closing, then switch to its sword and make two-handed attacks until its enemy drops to the ground.

Lizardling Knight stat block

 

Text version of stat block, suitable for use in Homebrewery:


Lizardling Knight

Small humanoid, lawful


  • Armor Class 11
  • Hit Points 55 (8d10 + 15)
  • Speed 30 ft.

|STR|DEX|CON|INT|WIS|CHA|
|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|:—:|
|15 (+2)|14 (+2)|13 (+1)|10 (+0)|12 (+1)|7 (-2)|


  • Proficiency Bonus +2
  • Skills Athletics +4, Stealth +4
  • Senses darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 13
  • Languages Draconic
  • Challenge 2 (450 XP)

Multiattack. The knight makes two melee attacks on its turn.

Actions

Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d8 + 4) slashing damage, or 9 (1d10 + 4) slashing damage if two-handed.

Shortbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, range 80/320, one target. Hit: 7 (1d6 + 4) piercing damage.

Tactics

Knights choose a single enemy on which they focus, usually staying back and getting in as many ranged attacks as possible before their chosen enemy closes to melee distance.

Categories: Monsters, Tarakona | Leave a comment