Spring Cleaning

I'm clearing out some of my RPG stuff. Take a look.

• The Monster Burner
• The Magic Burner
• Ron Edward's Sorcerer
• Dungeons of Dread
• The Dungeon Alphabet

The Visual Inspiration Series

One thing I struggle with as a GM is "purposeless" dungeons. By that I mean deserts, forests, mountains, natural cave systems and so on. Basically, any wide open space that is more of a geographical feature. To brush up on those skills I put together a series of slideshows meant to inspire challenges and help shape those spaces in my games. Hopefully, they are similarly useful for you.

• Badlands
• Castles
• Deserts
• Forests
• Mountains
• Plains
• Snow
• Swamps
• The Underdark

Visual Inspiration: Castles

Visual Inspiration: Badlands

Visual Inspiration: Plains

Visual Inspiration: Swamps

Visual Inspiration: Snow

Visual Inspiration: Mountains

Torchbearer: Navigate Maze Conflict

Should your party stumble into a maze, treat it as a trap. They can successfully navigate it with a Dungeoneer test using the factors below:

Suggested Help: Cartographer, Scout

Maze Factors

Size: small, medium, labyrinthine

Hazards (choose all that apply): monsters, traps, temperature

Construction: man-made, natural, magical

Twist: Go to Navigate Maze Conflict.

Navigate Maze Conflict

Skills and Abilities for Disposition

Skill: Dungeoneer
Add to Rank: Will

Conflict Ability and Skills Used by Action

Attack: Dungeoneer
Defend: Scout or Cartographer
Feint: Dungeoneer
Maneuver: Scout or Cartographer

Maneuver: Characters who succeed on a Maneuver with a margin of 3 successes may perform a special action: Loot. Roll 1d6 on the table below, and then roll on the appropriate subtable:

Loot

1-2: Stuff
3-5: Gear
6: Valuables

Suggested Compromises:

Minor: Exhausted or Angry

Solid: The characters lose a piece of gear in the maze

Major: Any map they make of the maze is inaccurate. Should they pass back through it, they will need to test again.

Labyrinth of Trials
Might: 4
Nature: 4
Descriptors: Misdirecting, Enclosing, Sprawling

Conflict Disposition

Navigate Maze: 9

Conflict Weapons

Attack: +1D Winding Caverns
Defend: +1D You've Been Here Before, Haven't You?
Feint: +1D Dead End

Special: The turn clock advances at the top of each round of this conflict. During this phase, players may light new torches and eat food. If the Hungry and Thirsty Condition is earned, the Conflict Captain chooses which member of the team suffers a loss to their disposition. Reduce maximum disposition for the duration of the conflict.

Visual Inspiration: Deserts

Visual Inspiration: Forests

Wyrdwood Tokens

Level 3 Magic Items

At the center of the Hall of Masters, there is a large, ornately carved stone table. The table is an ancient map of Fyndel Forest. Several carved wooden tokens have been placed on it. Upon further inspection, these tokens seem to be living, autonomous creatures. They are actually tied to the various creatures living in Fyndel Forest. The table is dotted with several piles of ash, as if some tokens have been burned.

Carved by the Druids of Fyndel, the Wyrdwood tokens have the likeness of a Spider, a Giant, a Giant Wasp, a Dragon, and a Goblin. All of the tokens share the following common abilities:

• Their eyes glow when a creature of the token's type is near
• While holding the token, characters may communicate with those creature as if they were fluent in its native language

Additionally, each token has a unique ability. After using it, the token turns to ash.

• Spider: Create 100' of silken rope.
• Giant: For a single turn, the bearer has giant's strength. Double the rating of Health or a Health-based skill for a single roll.
• Wasp: During a single round of combat, an arrow or bolt fired from a crossbow splits into many and swarms the enemy. The character who uses this decides how to reduce the enemies disposition in the turn it was used.
• Dragon: Engage in any type of conflict, regardless of Order of Might, counting the party as equal. 
• Goblin: The token transforms into a key capable of opening a single lock.

Starved for Cash

Two sessions ago my players found some strange wooden tokens on a 3D diorama of the forest they have been exploring. These tokens were moving independently of any force they could discern. The players threw them in their packs and hoofed it back to town to pawn their loot. It took every ounce of restraint to stop myself from shaking one of them and screaming, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT SELL THESE."

But I didn't. I just quietly smirked as they they traded a set of magic tokens to the vendor for a stack of gold without even bothering to identify them. To be fair, my players were in rough shape. They had recently lost a fight to some bats (food, as one of my players called them) and had very little in the way of cash. Even if they knew what these things could do, they likely still would have sold them to fund their next trek to the caves below Fyndel Forest.

Visual Inspiration: the Underdark

DCC Houserule: Glancing and Penetrating Hits

Credit goes to one of my players who also GMs from time to time.

Glancing Hit: On any attack roll where the dice total the target's AC, all damage is reduced by half, rounded down.

Penetrating Hit: On any attack roll where the dice exceed the target's AC, damage is rolled normally.

DCC RPG Variant: Thief Advancement by Guild

Of the seven available classes in DCC RPG, the Thief is the only one with a codified skill system. Naturally, these skills revolve around hiding in the shadows, pickpocketing, and stabbing things in the back. Y'know, Thief stuff. However, one of the more curious design choices was tying which ones advance to alignment. The book tries to make this more flavorful by renaming each advancement tree after a path (Path of the Boss, Path of the Assassin, Path of the Swindler), but I don't feel this adequately captures the true variety of Thiefdom. None of the three paths offered, for example, allocate the highest bonus to the Pick Lock skill.

One houserule I've been working on is advancement by Thieves' Guild. Rather than tie the skill advancement to alignment, it would be based on the flavor of the guild. Want a guild that is notorious for breaching the highest security areas in your world? Done. All the GM has to do is choose:

• 4 Skills to receive the highest bonus
• 4 Skills to receive the second highest bonus
• 2 Skills to receive the second lowest bonus
• 2 Skills to receive the lowest bonus
• One of the two advancement tracks for Casting Spells from Scrolls

Of course, basing advancement on guild flavor opens up a world of possibilities. For one, having a guild with such influence on a character means a direct source for adventure. It also provides opportunity to completely customize the Thief class. In exchange for a smaller selection of skills, perhaps the player advances faster or higher in their areas of expertise. Maybe each guild has a wholly custom list of skills and abilities or favored weapons. With all of these options, I find it best to start with the the fiction and worry about how to make it work within the rules after the fact.

Microscope Explorer Announced

Microscope Explorer is a supplement that explores (ehh? get it?) different facets of Microscope. Seeds to get play started quickly? Check. Tools to hone your history? Check. Rules variants and other twists? Check.

The full announcement is here. 

Ability Scores Above 18

As I gear up to run a DCC RPG campaign, I've been tinkering with some optional rules I want to add to my game. One of them is a mechanical benefit of ability scores above 18. Rather than simply tack on an additional +1 bonus, what if that score had a bigger impact?

If an ability score is increased above 18, either temporarily, magically, or permanently, the player may choose one of the following abilities:

• When using any ability rooted in this stat, the player rolls +1d on the die chain
• When using any ability rooted in this stat, the player rolls 2d10 instead of a D20
• If the stat is Strength or Agility, the player may re-roll damage rolls
• If the stat is Personality, a Cleric may re-roll the damage healed from their Lay on Hands check
• If the stat is Intelligence, a Wizard or Elf may re-roll their spell damage 

Players must accept the second roll, even if it's worse. If a character has more than one stat above 18, the player must choose a different ability for each. Should an effect reduce the ability score to 18 or below, either temporarily, magically, or permanently, the character immediately loses access to this ability. 

Review: Torchbearer GM Screen

GM screens are always one of the more trickier products to produce. While all accomplish the basic task of offering the GM's notes some much needed concealment, few are more than folded cardboard wrapped in some cool (or not) art. All of the good screens double as quick reference documents. I'm happy to say that the Torchbearer GM screen is one of the good ones.

The art depicts a sprawling dungeon in the typical light fantasy fare we've seen in all of the other Torchbearer products. At the upper levels are the archetypal fantasy creatures most people are familiar with: orcs, goblins, and the like. The lower levels are filled with dragons, demons, and other abominations. I particularly like this illustration because it reinforces the notion that you don't need to travel far and wide to find adventure, you just need to keep digging deeper.

This screen is smaller than the ones you normally find for use with the world's most popular roleplaying game. This is a good thing! Maybe I'm just short or need to better match my chairs to my gaming table, but I always feel like I'm straining to see over the top of those screens to make eye contact with the players. This screen provides adequate coverage without being obstructive.

One thing that did strike me as odd is that only two of three player-facing panels have art on them. The other one has the rules for conflicts printed on it. It's not an issue for me because I like the size of the screen and the art is really the least important part of this product, but I have a feeling that some may wonder if they couldn't have made a larger screen and put all of the rules on one side.

The hardest and most important part of designing a good GM screen is deciding which rules to include. Torchbearer is among the best as it includes rules for the Grind, Camp, Town, Light, Equipment (how much space they take up, how much they cost), Conflicts, and Loot tables, among other things. In short, there is not a session that goes by that almost all of the rules included do not get used, and having a quick reference to them will drastically cut down on the time spent flipping through the rulebook.

I think it speaks volumes that the only real criticism I can muster is that there is too much useful information included on the Torchbearer GM screen. Some may take issue with the size, but its utility for quick rules-reference far outweighs any form factor gripes. This product joins the Torchbearer Player's Deck as an essential play aid.

Kickstarter: Peril on the Purple Planet

In Peril on the Purple Planet, the characters are cast across the cosmos to a foreign world. Left to die beneath a weirdling sun and its sickening rays, the PCs’ survival depends as much upon their quick wit as a quick blade, as even the finest chain hauberk must fail beneath the crush of an alien horde.

A level 4 exploration-style adventure spanning scores of leagues, the party must contend with hundreds of miles of alien wasteland, the predatory creatures of the Purple Planet, deadly mushroom jungles, and thousands of factious savage man-beasts locked in an endless war.

In the course of the sprawling hex-crawl, the PCs will have the opportunity to assume mastery of their own warbands or pit faction against faction, plumb ancient burial mounds or respect the age-old taboos, and experiment with deadly artifacts – the remnants of the Last War. How the PCs meet each challenge will determine whether they discover the secrets to returning home, or slip beneath the sands of the wastes, succumbing to the perils of the Purple Planet.

But for those few with the courage to remain, we offer a world for the conquering.

Fund it here!