How to Keep Players Returning for a Thousand Hours

As noted elsewhere, I've run a lot of long campaigns. (I don't currently have an ongoing game that has lasted less than three years. My longest campaigns lasted eleven and eight years, respectively; one of my current ongoing games has continued for six-and-a-half years.)

Bearing that in mind, one of the most common complaints I see on the internet is about Game Masters attempting to wrangle players and force them to enjoy the GM's nonsense. To answer those complaints, here's a short list of advice, in many ways a coda and distillation of the advice I gave at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

1. Don't cancel. If the players have to cancel, that's one thing. But in my experience, if the GM habitually cancels, everyone assumes the game isn't a priority and their attention wanes. Stay home if you're sick or there's an emergency, but otherwise, do your best to make the game a priority and your players will do the same.
• If you have to cancel, give as much notice if you can. Otherwise, even if you're feeling unprepared, this might be a great opportunity for a breather session.
• If you can establish a regular schedule, that's even better. Don't break it unless you absolutely must.
2. Listen to the players and make their choices matter. Table-top role-playing games have two big selling features: players can try anything they want (as long as they're willing to live with the consequences), and it's the only activity in this cyberpunk hellscape where a participant is guaranteed an actual living human's individual attention (as a reward rather than a punishment). So give it to them: let them try whatever they want and live with the consequences as long as you telegraph the consequences in advance.
• You don't have to tell them exactly what will happen, but "if you fail this jump you'll fall" and "you don't know what will happen if you mix those potions together" are good starts.
• Also, let consequences echo throughout the campaign. Players love it when a dangling plot thread from a year ago makes its triumphant return.
• You can do this even if the characters aren't "important." The cashier at the corner store notices that you haven't been around in a couple of weeks; that establishes the character's place in the world and suggests that someone cares about what they're doing.
3. Establish real stakes. A series of 300 scripted fights might be fun as a tabletop combat sport, but it makes for a boring longform campaign. Dig into why the characters are doing what they do, and play antagonists as intelligent characters in their own right. Everybody wants something, and has stuff they're willing to do to get it. What does that mean for the NPCs? What does that mean for the PCs? Even if the players are no-backstory dungeoneering chumps engaging in 1974-style fantasy adventuring to get gold to gain XP to build a domain, that's a plot detail that should probably come up before Level 9, right?
• On a smaller scale, not every encounter with hostile forces should lead to combat, and those that do should feature creative use of equipment, terrain, traps, tactics, and even more ephemeral things like positioning and time limits. A fight even against weaker opponents is more interesting if they have hostages, while C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan increases the difficulty by giving the players a time limit while delving the dungeon.
• Even if events become world-shaking, always bring the game back to the player characters' scale. They're not saving the world, They're saving the people in it. They probably even know and like some of them!

That's basically it. You should show your players all the courtesy you want a friend to show you, and they'll keep coming back to find out what happens next.

Don't Punish the Players

A couple of months ago, The Alexandrian made a post about OneD&D in which he took issue with "bounded accuracy," the idea in 5e and some older D&D and OSR variants that the character's statistics for attacking, skills, and the like are going to remain within a narrow range throughout a character's development. (Contrast with a game like 3e, where a character's statistics can theoretically scale infinitely such that lower-level threats do not meaningfully concern higher-level characters.)

Among his other points, Justin Alexander argues that bounded accuracy is a myth, that certain abilities in the game break it by making characters too good at certain activities. I'll let him explain:

"The more fundamental problem is mechanical: There are a handful of class abilities which trivially — but hilariously! — break bounded accuracy.

"The rogue, of course, makes an easy example here. Expertise doubles proficiency bonuses, changing a range of +2 to +6 into a range of +4 to +12. Combined with ability score modifiers, this almost immediately turns most reasonable DCs within the system’s bounded accuracy into an automatic success for the rogue, and it gets worse from there.

"Reliable Talent then comes in for mop-up, making the rogue’s minimum die roll 10. The rogue is now auto-succeeding on every proficient check, and in their chosen Expertise any DC that could challenge them is probably impossible for every other PC.

"Of course, those are exactly the DCs these hilariously broken abilities pressure the DM to assign. Partly because they want to challenge the PCs. Partly because it just makes sense that these PCs should be able to achieve things the PCs without the hilariously broken abilities can’t do."

This, in turn, reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend years ago, in which he was talking about running D&D and worrying about the fighter's armor class and hit points. He posited that one has to ensure the monsters are tough enough to routinely hit said character's high armor class so that they deduct hit points, otherwise the players are not properly engaging with the rules system.

But I don't think those approaches are the right way of looking at things. It's perfectly acceptable — and likely even good — for player characters to be good at certain things. If the rogue can pick almost any lock with a single action, or if the fighter routinely doesn't have to worry about being significantly challenged in melees, that's fine. As a Game Master, if you seek to "challenge" your players (whatever that means to you), making the numbers scale infinitely is the laziest way to do it.

You can only begin to challenge the players when you establish real stakes for success and failure. My oft-mentioned high-level D&D game could defeat any fair challenge I throw at them (and quite a few unfair ones!), but they could still be challenged with stakes: retrieve an item, save the prisoners, delve the dungeon on a time limit. Your rogue can pick any lock and disarm any trap, but can she disarm the traps and pick the locks before the room fills with water? The fighter can stand tall against any challenger, but what about a distant wizard lobbing fireballs and mind control sorcery? Your diplomat can talk his way out of any situation, but can he stall the unfriendly cultists long enough for your allies to arrive before the cult starts executing hostages?

What if one of the hostages is a beloved and trusted hireling?

I have had plenty of Game Masters in the past who seem to like to punish players for their choices: they invalidate your character abilities, steal your resources, threaten every ally you have, and turn every victory into ash in your mouth. And while that sort of game can be fun with appropriate buy-in — Black Sun Deathcrawl, Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, and Ten Candles all come to mind as fun games when you learn to embrace the catharsis inherent in nihilism — that often turns a fun, engaging game into a grimy slog. (Incidentally, that's usually about the time when I lose interest. Always winning is just as much a bland and uninteresting railroad as always losing.)

Don't punish your players for smart choices they made, and don't make a hard game harder for everyone. If a character is good at something, you know you're only going to target that thing with luck or by making the game unfair. Instead, challenge something else. Employ distractions, challenge multiple abilities simultaneously, play foes as intelligent and reactive forces who adapt to changing circumstances.

Establish real stakes, then build on what you've established. Character stats don't make mistakes, but players certainly do when the clock starts ticking.

You might be able to support yourself and maybe even your allies, but can you accomplish your goals?

Can you save everyone?

What Happens When I Eat the Corpse Cake?

In the Sorrowfell Plains, the locals often call confessors or counselors, "sin-eaters." As with many terms, the origin is obscure to the average pseudo-medieval peasant, but scholars recognize that the villages of the western Sorrowfell Plains still maintain traditional funerary rites*, including leaving an offering upon the decedent's body which is then consumed by the mourners.

While this is often a celebratory practice, hoping that one will gain some of the positive qualities of the deceased, there is another aspect to the ritual. Those families who worry that their loved one's sins will cause them to rise as undead, or who have heard the heretical claims that the dead (called "petitioners") spend their afterlives in the Astral Reaches, will often feed this bread to a priest or other confessor, hoping that such a person will be able to take their loved one's sin and purify it. Other families or villages, cleaving more to the scapegoat model of morality (or lacking a local priest), may instead pay a poor person or a traveler to eat it in the hopes that they will go elsewhere and take the sin with them.

(Astute observers will also note that this trend is repeated across many such times and places. Interested parties are directed to examine sin-eating as practiced in historical Europe over the past few centuries.)

This sounds like the perfect excuse to put a funeral on your "What's happening in this random village?" chart, and have the locals try to sell the funerary bread to the adventurers passing through town in the hopes that they will take the sin with them. Locals are unlikely to offer much for this service: the traditional pay in Wales was six pence, and while I expect pseudo-medieval peasants and their ilk to not offer more than a gold piece for such an act, nobles might be willing to offer outrageous sums to travelers willing to eat the funerary bread.

If your system of choice offers XP-for-gold, it's up to you whether you grant XP for the gold given. I probably would, given that there's risk involved and since the money is likely to be low: a concerned and desperate noble will ensure your room-and-board for the night and might be willing to pay up to 100gp. It is unlikely that they would pay more unless they are certain the decedent's sins are truly grave, but what are the odds of someone doing something that horrible in private? Unless the characters are foreign and so are completely ignorant of the decedent's reputation...

So what's the harm? A free meal and ten gold pieces for your trouble? Why would you say no?

What Happens When I Eat the Corpse Cake?

Each player who partakes rolls 1d20. (The GM may prefer to roll, since a lot of these changes aren't immediately obvious.) Being under the effects of a spell like protection from evil completely prevents the following effects, which is why clerics are often preferred as sin-eaters.

1d20	Effect
1-12	No effect.
13	Roll a save vs. spell (BECMI) or a DC 13 Charisma save (5e). If you fail, your alignment inverts: Lawful becomes Chaotic (or vice versa) and Good becomes Evil (or vice versa). Neutral stays the same.
14	Roll a save vs. spell (BECMI) or a DC 13 Charisma save (5e). If you fail, your alignment changes to Evil, although the Law vs. Chaos axis remains the same. (If you're playing something like BECMI with only Law vs. Chaos, your alignment changes to Chaotic instead.)
15	You now detect as Evil/Chaotic/fiendish/bad for the purposes of spells and effects such as detect evil.
16	If there's a Bad Place™ to go when you die, you're headed there. Resurrection spells and other such effects don't work on you unless your party figures out how to get your soul out of cosmic impound first. (Revivify-style magic still works as long as the soul hasn't departed the body yet.) An appropriate purification ritual or quest can also free you from Hell, but since this corruption has no outward sign, you might not know until it's too late.
17	A small fiend — an imp, a quasit, or even just a regular animal with some weird demonic traits — starts following you around, serving you as a familiar. It hates you and wants to tempt you into evil acts, both to increase the net evil in the world and to condemn your soul when you die.
18	The decedent's sin pools in your head, giving voice to the worst, most self-destructive parts of you. (If this sounds similar to Shadowguiding from Wraith: The Oblivion, you know exactly how to play this.) Your bad side can consult with you telepathically and offer you advantage on any roll (roll two dice and take the better result), although it is under no obligation to do so and you are under no obligation to take the advantage. Once per day, it can attempt to possess you, controlling your actions for one hour: make a save vs. spell or DC 13 Charisma save to resist. The difficulty of the test is modified by the number of times you accepted advantage that day. (So if you accepted help twice, you're at a -2 to resist possession.) Smart evil sides do not volunteer this fact and do not attempt possession often. Your evil side can potentially be exorcised by appropriate spells (such as dispel evil), abilities, quests, and the like. It will attempt to pressure you into performing its own agenda, which may be your worst impulses and secret desires, the original decedent's worst impulses, or a mix of the two.
19	Corruption takes root in the flesh. Roll a save vs. paralyzation or a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or gain a mutation from the GM's favorite mutation table. (I personally recommend The Metamorphica, Realm of Chaos, or Tome of Corruption.)
20	No obvious change, but at midnight, a powerful fiend comes to tempt you. It can offer you anything the GM considers appropriate. It ultimately wants to purchase your soul, but might be willing to settle for less if it thinks it can goad you into corrupting someone or making future purchases later.
21	I don't know what qualifies for a +1 on this chart — maybe you ate all the funerary cakes by yourself, or the decedent was a really wicked dude, or you made a real ass of yourself at the funerary meal and someone surreptitiously cursed you — but if you somehow roll this, you die at dinner. A fiendish creature (again, maybe a fiend on the GM's demonic list of choice, or a weird mutant animal) bursts forth from you like the xenomorph to start terrorizing the countryside. (Or maybe you turn into a Deadite or something. Any option is fine, so long as it births a new monster from your flesh.) To add insult to injury, your soul is probably consigned to whatever bad corner of the afterlife exists in this world, and your flesh is so corrupted you can't be resurrected.

* According to the scholars, these funerary traditions were adapted from Olman rites into their current form. Contrast with the folk of the Feywalk Woods: the Maiavainrua elves are known to use magical rites to keep their dead around as counselors and honored ancestors, so many of the local villages in and around the wood maintain traditions involving prolonged mourning practices and embalming. Drigbolton, found on the northern edge of the Feywalk Woods near the elven town of En'amanisrahd, is cited as one of the most starling examples of these practices, at least to outsiders.

Developer Commentary: The general idea is that the characters get a free bed, a free meal, and some pocket change with a 40% chance of getting what is hopefully a weird and interesting curse. If you want to make D&D cosmology more present or turn this into more of an enticing gamble, expand this table into a 1d24 chart with eight additional entries for Good, no effect for Neutral, and the entries for 13-20 representing Evil. (Or expand the chart to your heart's content. Maybe true Goodness and true Evil are so rare that it's a d100 chart with only eight entries on one end, eight on the other, and eighty-four nonentries in between.) Also, in case it needs to be said, this assumes the generic, Gygax-style vague Christianity endemic to D&D and its imitators. If your setting or fantasy elfgame of choice has different assumptions, this will likely be tonally dissonant with the rest of your setting. (Unless you decide Hell is real, but only to the residents of this one village, which sounds delightful. "Hell is real, but only in Gawkes Mere," is a fun potential plot hook.)

Classic-Style Fantasy Elfgames: A Summary

To grossly misappropriate one of my favorite quotes about dungeon-y, dragon-y games, "You play Conan, I play Gandalf. We team up to fight Dracula." In that spirit, I saw this picture on Tumblr which also captures the appropriate vibe:

As always, click the picture for the original artwork

Review: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (and D&D 5e)

I wasn't going to write this review.

Despite recently running a lot of fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, I don't have an overwhelming urge to talk about it much here on the ol' hobby blog. I may publish the occasional piece of 5e content here, but the actual rules and the culture around the game has been analyzed to death elsewhere. The scene certainly doesn't need another voice muddying the waters and Wizards of the Coast has no need to benefit from either my praise or scorn, so I keep doing the stuff I like with or without them.

However, two things spurred me to write this review:

1. I love the Spelljammer setting, as the tags Spelljammer and SPELLS WILL BE JAMMED might suggest.
2. Most of The Dreaded Discourse™ surrounding the new Spelljammer release has been of even worse quality than usual.

So, this is perhaps less a review than a rebuttal. If you happen upon this review, consider this a message in a bottle: if someone on social media told you how horrible the new Spelljammer box set was and how you need a bunch of third-party content to make it playable, I'm here to more appropriately calibrate your expectations. (In short: the rules are perfectly acceptable, being neither excellent nor terrible, and you don't need anybody's homebrew to "fix" the new rules.)

However, this review will be a bit long, because it is (in my mind) impossible to discuss an official fifth edition D&D release without talking about WotC's design goals in making D&D 5e. (And you can't talk about those design goals without discussing what came before.) As such, this is a partial review of fifth edition itself. These reviews won't be especially in-depth, but they will hopefully be helpful.

If you're only here for a specific section, refer to the table of contents below.

Table of Contents

I. The History of D&D (and Table-Top RPGs)
II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition
III. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

I. The History of D&D (and Table-Top RPGs)

If you remember your history pretty well, you can safely skip down to section II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. Conversely, if you really want to delve into the thick of RPG history, authors like James Maliszewski, Ben Riggs, Jon Peterson, and Shannon Appelcline do great work in this sphere. (Although as with so many things in the hobby, their focus is often on Dungeons & Dragons specifically, leaving some of the less-renowned-but-still-influential aspects of the hobby unexamined.)

But the short version is that D&D starts in 1974 as a game exploring site-based and event-based adventures — pulp heroes wandering into the wilderness, facing danger in dungeons, and gathering the treasures therein (typically to fund their own personal projects).

Within a decade, more narrative structure emerges in game scenarios, exemplified by the investigation- and skill-heavy Call of Cthulhu in 1981 and the Hickman revolution starting with 1982's I3: Pharaoh. Money stops becoming a vital resource and starts becoming a supplement: 1989's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2e does away with XP-for-gold (although it remains as an optional rule), instead focusing primarily on fighting monsters, while 1991's Vampire: The Masquerade completely abstracts character wealth as part of the Backgrounds system and assumes it is not a primary goal.

By the end of the 1990s, the transition from site-based or event-based adventures into plot-based ones culminates in the ascendance of the metaplot: an overarching story that runs in the background of published game materials, such that collectors can read the books to put together the puzzle and players can interact with big events in the background of the setting. Many of the big games of the era have a metaplot revealed during the line's development (Cyberpunk, Deadlands, Delta Green, Unknown Armies, and World of Darkness all come to mind), and while D&D as a whole avoids a metaplot, most of its campaign settings have them. (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, and Ravenloft certainly all had metaplots.) The metaplot is simultaneously remembered fondly by fans as an interesting serialized story in its own right, while also being reviled as a bloated gimmick to sell books.

When TSR collapses and Wizards of the Coast takes over the game, they put their own stamp on the game by combining the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line with the BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia era-D&D line into simply Dungeons & Dragons. A few of the popular games at the time followed suit, relaunching in the early 2000s with slick new editions and largely abandoning the metaplot structure in favor of increased accessibility. However, this is an era in which a lot of games design more explicit rulesets (relying less on GM rulings), and also replace the metaplot subscription structure with a emphasis on "character builds" — the game line is now a vehicle by which to build an optimized character. While D&D 3e exemplifies this with its so-called ivory tower design, you see it in lines like Exalted and new World of Darkness.

While game lines become more bloated, desktop publishing and forums like The Forge and RPG.net allow for the creation and proliferation of smaller, more focused indie RPGs. While some of these games are short-lived, as befits a smaller and more narrow play experience, a lot of them are read by other game designers and introduce more mechanical concepts into the RPG ideaspace.

After an eight-year development cycle, Wizards of the Coast finally takes what it learned and rebrands D&D again into the wildly-polarizing fourth edition. This continues a lot of the game design trends of third edition, taking them to their logical conclusion by further emphasizing combat as the focus of the game. Combat procedures are explicit, repeatable, and largely in the players' hands. (Instead of GMs making rulings on things the players want to try, most of what a character can do is located on the character sheet.) The game's encounter design also lends itself to largely linear adventure paths of straightforward plots broken only by the game's setpiece battles.

While the game still sold well, the backlash online was fairly intense, taking two interesting forms:

1. The grognard bloggers who stuck with BECMI or AD&D during the third edition era start swapping design notes with the arthaus punk bloggers, forming the OSR largely by accident.
2. WotC ends their contract with Paizo Publishing, the contractor who published Dragon and Dungeon during the third-edition era. Since they now have a lot of experience writing third-edition content, they make their own third-edition retroclone called Pathfinder.

The backlash and increased competition for dungeon-y, dragon-y adventure game design space results in fourth edition D&D having one of the shortest development cycles of any D&D edition. After only four to six years depending on how you count it, WotC takes these disparate pieces of information — the stuff happening in the storygames sphere, the stuff happening in the OSR sphere, and the fan response to Pathfinder — and returns to the drawing board to release "D&D Next" for the game's fortieth anniversary.

II. Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition

While I read some D&D books and played a single, hazily-recalled game around 2006, fourth edition was my first edition of the game I ran and played beyond one session, starting in 2011. (As noted elsewhere, I mostly ran World of Darkness before coming to D&D.) As such, fifth edition is the first version of the game that I have followed largely as it released, instead of piecing it together in hindsight. I don't know if that makes me especially qualified to write what follows, but now you understand my background on the subject.

Forty years of game design brings us to this. During the mid-2010s, I recall someone calling fifth edition, "everyone's second-favorite edition of D&D," and that sounds about right. I recently described most of the fifth edition releases as "a C+ essay." (As with most things in the universe, I often describe it as, "Not as good as the fans say it is, but better than the haters say it is.")

If you play Super Smash Bros., D&D 5e is Mario, excelling in no particular area but robust in all of them. In the immortal words of George Costanza, 5e is "right in that meaty part of the curve: not showing off, not falling behind."

In short: it's good. (But not great.)

A lot of the things that drive its popularity include its prevalence (as it acts as a sort of lingua franca in the RPG hobby), its thriving play culture, its dominance on livestreaming RPG shows, and the fact that it more-or-less does what it advertises. If you want an adventure game that lets you go on adventures about exploring strange locations, interacting with interesting NPCs, fighting monsters, recovering treasure, and becoming more powerful while doing so, it handles all these things.

If you want a flatter power curve; a less number-heavy experience; something that focuses less on resource management; an experience that more consistently reflects a specific genre rather than "whatever breed of fantasy happens at the table tonight;" something that takes place in a more modern setting; an experience that actively dissuades combat; or a setting with no magic or different magic other than the pseudo-Vancian model, you probably want to look elsewhere.

As noted on this blog, I operate in a lot of indie spaces, and they tend to complain about Dungeons & Dragons at length. (So much so that allegedly anti-D&D places are where I sometimes get significant news about official D&D releases.) But those complaints are often incoherent, and clearly represent some personal issue with the game. In my mind, there are only three legitimate complaints about fifth edition D&D, and they're unlikely to change any time soon:

1. It's corporate art. And like a lot of corporate art, it's designed to be as inoffensive as possible. It's bland and it doesn't really do anything innovative.
2. The rules are complicated. It's very number-heavy and worries about fine details like positioning and resource management. If you have difficulty tracking a lot of variables, if you have a disability that makes it difficult to keep numbers in your head, or if tedious note-taking doesn't sound like your idea of fun, this might not be the game for you.
3. The culture overshadows the game at the table. Strictly speaking, this isn't the fault of the rules, but it does lead to a lot of trouble online. D&D is incredibly widespread, and people are overwhelmingly likely to learn the game from a mentor. As such, everyone thinks they know what the rules are, but almost no one actually reads the books cover-to-cover. (And even if you do, the rules are complicated. Nobody can keep all of the rules in their head at once.)
4. A phantom fourth argument that is partially true is that the game is pretty expensive. That isn't totally true: while there might be marketing pressure and peer pressure to spend money on it, the basic game is technically free. You can download the Basic Rules for free (or use the Basic Rules on D&D Beyond), use an online dice roller, and find enough free content online to run the game for the rest of your life without doing any work. I suspect the thriving community around the game and the free rules are two of the many factors that maintain the game's popularity.

But to understand why WotC has made the design decisions it made, one must understand that this represents forty years of game design and fifteen years of Wizards of the Coast corporate analysis. Fifth edition is a fundamentally reactionary edition, responding to all that came before and combining aspects from the previous eight or so editions of the game into something that tries to please everyone. The overall trend is one of retaining some of the most popular rules and incorporating bits of design from other games while also simplifying concepts from previous editions: multiple spells are condensed into aspects of a single spell, floating modifiers are condensed into advantage/disadvantage, monster stats are simplified from their third edition counterparts and all relevant information is found reliably in the stat block. (Recall that, during the BECMI and AD&D era, valuable statistical information like special abilities and spells were often hidden in the monster descriptions, usually-but-not-always in the same place.)

Also recall that, while a lot of the design of previous editions has proven quite popular, analysis suggests it maybe wasn't sustainable. Ahead of his recent book, Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, Ben Riggs made a handful of posts on Twitter and elsewhere about TSR sales figures, and they paint a bleak picture. The classic AD&D 2e box sets are fondly recalled but apparently didn't sell terribly well. Likewise, we know that third edition was popular and is well-regarded by the fans, but that edition had a punishing release schedule with an enormous game line. We don't know much about WotC sales figures, but it seems reasonable to surmise that they developed fourth edition because sales were flagging.

(I would also be remiss if I ignored the fact that fifth edition is also designed around the Adventurers League organized play program and the community content on DM's Guild, which is part of the complex mélange of factors that drives the game's popularity. The game can only be but so outlandish, otherwise it would interfere with the open table policy of the Adventurers League. Likewise, any content that fans really want to see can easily be made by the community and posted on DM's Guild for pay — which per DM's Guild policy, still monetarily benefits Wizards of the Coast. That's pure passive income for them.)

In short, the unified design and staggered release schedule for fifth edition indicate that Wizards of the Coast has learned from its business mistakes. They're not constantly churning out content every month, they're not establishing expansive metaplots, they're not trying to innovate while also risking failure. (The streaming space also provides a constant stream of free advertising for the game without WotC having to put out anything new. At this point, they don't need to churn out new content every month, and it's easier to catch press for the new release when it's a big one every quarter or so.) It's all very safe, focus-tested, and conservatively-designed. Whatever else someone's opinion of D&D 5e, these trends all suggest that this was a very conscientiously-designed edition of the game. (The feedback from the ongoing open playtest of the game no doubt guides some of its development and contributes to the smooth, inoffensive nature of it.)

III. Spelljammer: Adventures in Space

Which brings us to the actual point of this post.

You have a new edition of the game that also tries to be a legacy edition, supported by a continuous open playtest of the rules and a burgeoning fan community. While the original fifth edition release in 2014 focused on the popular Forgotten Realms as the game's implied setting, fans have been clamoring for old content like adventures and campaign settings to be re-released under fifth edition. Wizards of the Coast started releasing legacy content fairly quickly, beginning with an Eberron playtest in 2015 and an official release of an expanded version of I6: Ravenloft (entitled Curse of Strahd) in 2016. Fan requests for additional updates continue across social media, and WotC continues to publish it.

Hearkening back to the Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space box set, Wizards of the Coast releases Spelljammer: Adventures in Space in 2022. As with most of their other products, the production values are decent, the art is lovely, and the organization is as expected. It's a C+ essay — it promises rules for spelljammers, space-themed monsters, and an adventure, and it delivers exactly what it promised.

Interesting tidbits from the new setting include:

• In contrast to the original 2e setting, there is only one kind of spelljammer helm, and it no longer requires your spell power to use it. (This last fact is even a change from the helm of the scavenger published in 2018's Dungeon of the Mad Mage.) Every spelljammer is roughly as maneuverable as any other, and there is no longer an upper limit to the tonnage of a ship.
• Spelljammer helms can still only be used by spellcasters, though. You just don't have to turn spell energy into motive force anymore.
• They don't include all the ships from the old material, but again, it's pretty easy to convert old material to the new system. As it stands, the new set includes a lot of old designs and adds a few new ones.
• Spelljammers are very accessible in this edition. You can probably get one, helm and all, for about 25,000gp or so. (In 2e, spelljammers were expensive, especially the helms. While a spelljammer is a good place to invest one's loot after many expeditions, it's also fun for players to be able to buy one relatively early in the game.)
• The phlogiston from 2e is gone, replaced with the Astral Plane. I actually like this change, as it means that even low-level characters might have the resources to voyage into other worlds: journeys are now unlikely to take more than two months' worth of supplies, as the Astral Plane doesn't require rations or air. Of course, the trade-off is that the Astral Plane is way more dangerous than the phlogiston. (Not counting the inherent risk of setting your whole ship on fire in the phlogiston, of course.)
• Also in keeping with the Astral Plane, there are no space lanes, star systems have a tendency to move like bubbles in a sea, and you automatically orienteer in the direction of something by thinking about it. In short, they've made it easy to get around by leaving those details up to the Game Master — you don't need a map to get from Krynnspace to Realmspace, and the trip is as long or short as the GM decides it is.
• You can never go wrong with more monsters, and the included Boo's Astral Menagerie has plenty:
• A lot of Dark Sun monsters appear in this version, such as braxat, b'rohg, gaj, psurlons, and ssurrans. (The thri-kreen also appear as a playable race in the Astral Adventurer's Guide.) A leaked map even indicates that "Doomspace" in the included adventure Light of Xaryxis was originally going to be called "Athasspace." As it stands, Fyreen in Doomspace certainly sounds like a post-post-apocalyptic Athas. WotC also has a habit of teasing future products in current ones, although such references are just as likely to be fanservice. (But they've previously suggested that they'll do Dark Sun... sooner or later. Maybe.)
• A couple of BECMI-era monsters from Mystara also appear, like the brain collector/neh-thalggu and the feyr.
• In addition to some classic Spelljammer setting monsters, like arcane/mercane, dohwar, space swine, and zodar, there are also a handful of unique monsters in this edition, like space clowns and vampirates.
• The included adventure, Light of Xaryxis, is typical Wizards of the Coast fare: a linear plot crystallized around a couple of good ideas. It's looks fun to play and easy to run, but there isn't much in it that makes me excited to run it.
• Compare and contrast: John Battle's recent offering The Sun King's Palace is a little messier than Light of Xaryxis and looks like it might take a not-insignificant amount of preparation to run without messing up the presentation, but The Sun King's Palace is so much more evocative than Light of Xaryxis that I'm way more excited at the prospect of preparing it and running it.
• However, in the defense of Light of Xaryxis, I thought the hook was clever: it is a deliberate homage to the Flash Gordon serials of the late 1930s as well as the 1980 movie. It even has genre-appropriate cliffhangers between chapters!

Apart from the proliferation of Dark Sun monsters and the clever design to the included adventure, there aren't any surprises here. What you see is what you get.

However, as noted at the start of this review, the impetus for this review is to clarify some of the criticism online. Most of it is misleading and represents a different product from the one I read. We'll go through a few of the recurring criticisms I have seen:

1. "They didn't include [insert my favorite spelljammer monster or ship type here]!" This one's easy: if you're an old fan, you probably still have your books, or you bought pdfs from DM's Guild. Adapting old material is easy; Wizards of the Coast even gives you conversion guidelines. Specifically in the case of monsters, D&D 5e doesn't often publish fifteen variations of a single monster anymore. The guidelines in the Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual, and Boo's Astral Menagerie are pretty clear: if you want a weird version of a monster, take an existing one and give it different traits. Boo's Astral Menagerie gives guidelines for this process to make wildspace-dwelling versions of normal creatures.
2. "They didn't include the tables for making solar systems, or the subsystems for determining orbits!" They weren't going to. Remember, a major idea behind 5e is simplification. For determining orbits, they just tell you to calculate the distance between planets mathematically. They assume that you're going to use the included adventure as inspiration for other star systems you make, rather than relying on random tables. If you want the old subsystems, they're still in the 2e books, waiting to be used. (Also, those subsystems were all optional rules anyway.)
3. "They didn't tell you how to determine how far away you have to get from a planet to reach spelljamming speed!" In keeping with the (comparatively) more narrative focus of fifth edtion, they probably figure that's "however long the GM wants it to take." According to the old box set, on average it takes forty minutes to an hour to escape a planet's gravity well, more if it's windy, so I would use that as a guideline. I usually go with an hour; an hour is enough time for a single random encounter check, so that sounds good to me.
• If you want a more official ruling on this, the Astral Adventurer's Guide defines the air envelope of a planet extending out to a distance the same as the planet's diameter. That's... actually about right for Earth, but that distance describes the outer edge of the exosphere, which is too thin and too exposed to space to support actual life. Chapter five of the Dungeon Master's Guide describes terrestrial life typically ending above 20,000 which is also reasonably accurate; Earth's troposphere ends at about 40,000 feet, beyond which the atmospheric density is only one-thousandth of its value at sea level. While the gravitational pull at that altitude is about the same as at sea level, "the place where breathable air ends" is probably good enough for RPG games and occult symbolism. Twenty thousand feet is just under four miles, which most spelljammers can reach in a half-hour to an hour.
4. "The Astral Plane makes travel between systems too easy! Characters can't get lost in the Astral Sea!" I suspect that's part of the point. (But as noted above, the Astral Plane is often scarier than the phlogiston. I don't think there were astral dreadnoughts in the phlogiston...) Once you get to the Astral Plane, the GM decides how long the journey takes and what you encounter along the way, and all of this is in keeping with the procedures for GMing a game these days. If you want to make it more complicated and less certain, then do so.
• I would also remind anyone who thinks that you can't discover something by accident that the star systems move. You can take a five-month-long return journey to Realmspace only to find that another star system has bobbed into your path along the way. Likewise, since you can only travel to places that you know exist, learning that a specific star system exists so you can fly to it sounds like a pretty good adventure hook to me.
5. "They left out the rules for ship combat!" This is actually the critique that spurred me to write this review. Whenever I see this complaint, I re-read the "Ship-to-Ship Combat" section in the Astral Adventurer's Guide to make sure I didn't imagine it, and every time the rules are still there. They give guidelines for ship-to-ship combat, but they assume that you will remember the rules for combat, objects, and vehicles from chapters eight and nine of the Player's Handbook, and chapters five and eight of the Dungeon Master's Guide.
• A much more valid critique is that they ought to have provided a reference reminding you of where to find the relevant rules, or have provided a summary. For example, I had forgotten the rules for object saving throws until I went looking for them. (In D&D 5e, objects automatically fail all Strength and Dexterity saving throws, but succeed on all other saves.) That's why you need to read chapter eight of the Player's Handbook for spelljammer purposes; heaven forbid they would be in the "Object" section of chapter eight of the Dungeon Master's Guide.
• "Why are the rules for ship combat spread across five chapters in three books?" is an exceedingly valid critique. Does your game need hundreds of rules spread across several rulebooks in 2022? (Into the Odd, Mothership, and World of Dungeons all come to mind as short RPGs that could support years of play, not to mention the hundreds of one-page RPGs floating in the digital aethers.)
• "You need to get this fan supplement to make the rules playable!" is not a valid critique in this case (and really just sounds like someone's gimmick to sell more DM's Guild content or to bring you to their blog).
• As always, I would recommend using the procedures as defined in the core books before deciding it doesn't work for your group and adding third-party rules into the mix.
6. "They didn't use the expanded vehicle rules from Ghosts of Saltmarsh or Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus!" Remember, those are optional rules, and the developers have a lot of ground to cover in this book. (And again, the keyword of this edition is simplification. I suspect that they're moving away from optional vehicle rules because they weren't as popular as people on the internet suggested, or they're trying to streamline things for One D&D in 2024.) The basic vehicle and object rules are in the Dungeon Master's Guide, and they're perfectly serviceable.
• If you want to use the more detailed vehicle statistics from Ghosts of Saltmarsh or Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus, nothing is stopping you from doing a conversion, although converting sixteen ships to the more complex Ghosts of Saltmarsh system and running spaceship combat in it with multiple ships sounds like a nightmare.
7. "The adventure sucks!" As noted above, Light of Xaryxis has problems, but they're pretty consistent with the problems of other fifth edition adventures. (Too plot-focused, too linear, stakes are so high as to be totally abstract.) I suspect, however, that most people are reacting to the structure of the adventure, and they completely ignored the part where the authors say that it's a love letter to pulp adventure movie serials of the early 20th century. If you've seen the hokey plots and shocking swerves of a Flash Gordon or Commando Cody serial, you'll understand what the authors were trying to accomplish. (And despite the adventure's flaws, I feel like they succeeded.)

So, if you happened to find this after hearing that the new rules are unplayable, I'm here to tell you that they're perfectly serviceable. They may lack a lot of the flavor that made Spelljammer so beloved in the 2e era, but they're a good starting point. If you're looking for a rehash of the Unhuman Wars; the complicated subsystems for celestial mechanics; the granular ship mechanics; and a setting line comprising over two dozen products spread across box sets, books, Monstrous Compendium binder pages, and magazine articles, you won't find it here. (And Wizards of the Coast didn't take your old books away. Use them!)

However, if you want a stripped-down, back-to-basics version of the setting for fifth edition, you get exactly what you are expecting here and not a jot more. Honestly, if you read what they did with Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, you shouldn't be surprised here: in that book, they reset the metaplot such that you don't have to follow the old books to use the Domains of Dread in fifth edition, but you can absolutely include stuff from the old books if you like. It may not be innovative game design or provocative art, but it makes good business sense: include something interesting enough to draw in new fans while leaving enough gaps and references to legacy materials to avoid alienating old fans.

Edit (September 3, 2022):

After all that talk of Wizards of the Coast attempting to make their new edition as inoffensive as possible, The Dreaded Discourse™ continues apace. In the fifth edition Spelljammer adaptation, the hadozee were given a backstory wherein they were small, lemur-like creatures who were uplifted by a wizard to be used as workers and slaves before the wizard's apprentices helped liberate them.

If you know anything about Western history in the past five hundred years or so, you probably already see the problem. (A relatively comprehensive account of the scandal appears on this TechRaptor post.) For the record, I thought the backstory was a little weird, especially given how much of The Dreaded Discourse™ revolves around the long arm of the transatlantic slave trade, but I casually assume every big company hires a sensitivity reader these days and so promptly forgot about it.

After this fact was discovered and discussed on Twitter, Wizards of the Coast has issued a statement and errata and has already altered the race's description on D&D Beyond, removing the offending sections and slightly altering the hadozee's gliding ability. (However, some users have taken umbrage with the "Hadozee Resilience" trait, suggesting that it also reflects negative stereotypes against real-world ethnicities. As of yet, WotC has not issued a change for that.)

Edit (September 4, 2022):

Current WotC drama validates my boring opinion that mythological fantasy is simply too foundationed on ancient regressive philosophy (things like inherent evildom, platonic purity vs corruption, cruelty manifesting as physicality) to satisfy modern moralities. 1/4

— kirin (@koboldstyle) September 3, 2022

Edit (December 12, 2022):

After grousing about how players can't read, it is with a heavy heart that I must admit that I can't read, either.

In my refutation of point #3, "They didn't tell you how to determine how far away you have to get from a planet to reach spelljamming speed!" I made an error. A recent re-read of the Astral Adventurer's Guide reveals, "A spelljamming ship automatically slows to its flying speed (discussed later in this chapter) when it comes within 1 mile of something weighing 1 ton or more, such as another ship, a kindori (see Boo's Astral Menagerie), an asteroid, or a planet."

For some reason, I (like every other loudmouth on the internet, apparently) thought the "1 mile" rule didn't cover planets for some reason.

So by that math, escape velocity is much easier in 5e than it was in the 2e days; rather than an average of 40 minutes, most ships reach spelljamming altitude in 15-20 minutes. (The fastest ships like damselflies and shrikes reach spelljamming speed after a seven-and-a-half minute ascent.)

Remember, kids: reading is fundamental.

The Head of Vecna

A week or two ago, Wizards of the Coast released a new design for D&D's Archlich Vecna, back before he was betrayed by Kas and still had two eyes. He looks like this:

Vecna
.
Here is the final full bodied concept design for D&D’s Vecna. I was tasked with putting together a final look from designs by Ian McCaig, Steve Prescott, Wes Burt and myself. pic.twitter.com/P6U5Sqey2J

— Kieran Yanner (@kieranyanner) June 10, 2022

Vecna
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Final portrait concept design for D&D’s Vecna. The awesome talents of Ian McCaig and Steve Prescott were also core to concept development of the project. pic.twitter.com/7P46xYglXO

— Kieran Yanner (@kieranyanner) June 9, 2022

As you can imagine given the sharp cheekbones and strong chin, the internet-at-large was very normal about it.

Vecna featuring The Book of Erotic Fantasy.

Continuing with that train of thought, when Nicole saw it, her comment was, "They yassified Vecna..."

And her comment led me to create this monstrosity:

I think I met this guy at the club one time.

Which then prompted this edit of Vecna from the classic Die Vecna Die! cover:

A friend said he looks like an Are You Afraid of the Dark? villain.

And of course, since people were confused about Vecna because of Stranger Things, that led to whatever this is:

This anime protagonist needs moisturizer.

A friend also mentioned Acererak. Acererak the demilich or the regular ol' lich sadly doesn't have enough skin for FaceApp to recognize his face, and the one human picture of Acererak I was thinking about is too low-resolution for the filter to make his face look right:

He looks like a Spongmonkey.

To end this very stupid post, I'll leave you with a friend's ultimate comment about the Vecna redesign:

Happy Pride, everyone!

It Is Finished

It is done.

After eleven years, we finally wrapped the Crux of Eternity campaign last Saturday, May 21, 2022. If you want to read the session reports, you can find the whole thing at Obsidian Portal.

It's certainly the longest campaign I've ever run in terms of the number of years. Even though there were some significant breaks, I would still estimate the whole campaign at around 800 hours, which is probably about how much we would have played if we played regularly for eleven years. (Assuming roughly once every two weeks at three hours a session.) In contrast: my next-longest campaign is the occasionally-mentioned The Imperial City, which lasted about eight years. We played irregularly, but very often — I expect we were gathering roughly twice a week at the height of that game, so in terms of hours, it likely blew Crux of Eternity out of the water. Rounding out the other completed campaigns are Bread and Circuses at just over two years and False in Some Sense at about a year-and-a-half.

I have talked about the origins of this game elsewhere, but the key points are that we started in May of 2011 in fourth edition, updating to fifth edition in December of 2015. The humble seed of this campaign sprawled into my typical nonsense: an elaborate cultic criminal conspiracy corrupts the heart of the largest city in the region, and it is poised to spread if the player characters can't stop it. I didn't know then at the time that we were going to spend eleven years fighting slavery and delving the dangerous wilds of the Sorrowfell Plains, but here we are.

Since then, that game has spawned many others and has ranged across several different systems: in addition to a couple of one-shots and side stories and budding campaigns, we have explored a tale of escaped gladiators trying to find their way in the world, a conspiracy tale about high-level enchanters doing... something, and a tale about poor wanderers trapped in a land of arctic horror. I'd love to run a proper old-school, open-ended hexcrawl with, say, BECMI or Old-School Essentials one of these days, but most of my players respond way better to concrete objectives, so we keep riding the fine line between new-school and old-school.

(Although I can't tell you how badly I want to run a BECMI campaign that runs all the way from level 1 through the Immortals box set twice until the players ascend past the Immortals tier. A massive undertaking, but one that I imagine would be very fun with a dedicated group.)

While I'm always worried that my players aren't enjoying themselves, they kept returning after eleven years, so I suppose we made something we could all enjoy. They certainly seemed to find the final battle against the Khan of Nightmares dramatic; the umbral blot was a terrifying opponent, and the Khan's personal hound turned half the party to stone before they finally managed to defeat the Khan and take over his Coliseum Morpheuon.

And then they fade into the mists of history to fulfill their own agendas and inevitably return as NPCs in some future game...

The Obligatory After-action Report

This was my first time running fantasy in general or Dungeons & Dragons in particular, and since it lasted over a decade and spawned many spin-offs, I have to assume it was a rousing success.

I have to assume the players were engaged if they stayed with this game for so long. For all my uncertainty, they certainly seemed like it; it wasn't as anarchic as The Imperial City, but every month or two, I would get a message in my inbox from someone who wanted to do something on their own time.

Having played both extensively, I vastly prefer fifth edition to fourth, and ultimately think it's a decent game. (As with most things, it's better than the haters claim it is but not as good as the fanatics seem to think.) It's certainly more suited to the sorts of games I like to run than some other editions, and not as focused on combat as third or fourth edition. If I could have run this entire campaign in fifth edition, it definitely would not have been as linear and structured.

However, I also tend to prefer old-school play to new-school play. As noted above, I wish I could have done more what I did with Of Kith and Kin: start the characters in a town, seed a couple of adventures, and see what direction they go. Some players respond better to that than others, but I preferred the sprawling, open-ended game Crux of Eternity became rather than the plot-driven quest it was at the start.

The game went largely as I expected, for better or worse, although we had a couple of side-quests that took me by surprise. (The battle against Kiaransalee and the Khan of Nightmares were both largely or wholly player-driven activities.) We've also done enough world-building that this game will no doubt spawn several others for as long as I care to run fantasy games and my various gaming groups care to play them.

My only regret is that we didn't have a more open table. We had a handful of guest stars over the years, but I like the energy that new people bring to the table. A possible consideration for future games. (Then again, I'm thinking of eventually following this up with a West Marches-style Blade in the Dark game, so then I can accommodate a truly sprawling number of players.)

And Now: Some Advice

This game has been marked by me becoming more active in the RPG internet hobby space, and so I see lots of comments, complaints, and critiques about long-running games. (Or trying to organize games in general.) Mainly, prospective Game Masters seem mystified as to how to get a group together and to keep them interested. I find that getting a group is the hardest part, especially if you live somewhere that's a trifle remote, but keeping them around and engaged isn't especially challenging. Trawl hobby spaces, be active, talk to people: the usual stuff you do to make friends in this wide world of ours. Beyond that, contemplate these tips:

• Don't get discouraged if your player group isn't interested in playing your favorite RPG. Compromise is part of life, and the rules typically aren't as important as the culture at the table. If you build a rapport with your group, you can eventually convince them to play any game you like. But you have to put in the work first to build trust.
• Be excited. Even if you're, say, a Monsterhearts GM who is stuck running this vanilla fantasy D&D game, put stuff you like into the game. There's plenty of room for queer romance and interpersonal drama even in the hardest sci-fi dogfighting game. I cut my teeth on World of Darkness and fell in love with Unknown Armies, so my D&D games are full of secret societies, Gothic horror monsters, obsessive wizards, moral ambiguity, and de-emphasized combat. There is a lot of room to explore the sort of stuff you like; traditional games usually have room for all sorts of campaigns in them, so there's room for the stuff that excites you.
• It's pretty easy to challenge high-level D&D characters: give them real stakes, follow through on your threatened consequences, and put them in impossible (but open-ended) situations. The real magic is when players surprise you. (This is good advice for any game, by the way. Most traditional sorts of pen-and-paper RPGs assume characters become more powerful as they age, so there's likely a "high-level" option for your favorite RPG, as long as it isn't too esoteric.)
• One of the reasons why good published high-level adventures are so rare is because high-level games seem to grow logically out of the consequences of your players' actions. Also, what might be a suitable challenge for one group might be too easy, too boring, or too difficult for another. The variables are so great that it's difficult to predict that sort of thing.
• Don't punish the players for good ideas. Throwing a bunch of qualifiers at them or making every outcome negative really hurts player morale. Every character choice is a vote for what players want to do and be good at doing in a game, and you shouldn't invalidate that.
• The players are the stars of the show, and what they choose to do in the game is a vote for what they want to see. If they fall away from certain challenges or characters, don't force them to interact with them. If they hang out with certain NPCs more than others or gravitate toward certain places, encourage them to do so.
• As an example, I'm not a romance-heavy GM, but my games often include romance because many of the players seem to enjoy exploring it. Give the people what they want.
• Make the players' choices matter. Good or bad outcomes are less important than agency, and the players are going to remember the puppy they saved or the tavern that was named after them more than the big, epic set piece battle with the Dawning Lord of the Nine Suns. Saving the world isn't half as cool as when the tavern server remembers your drink order.
• Although you can make saving the world matter when the world reacts to it. If people tearfully thank your players for saving them, or hide them when they're in trouble, then their choices mattered.

Final Thoughts

As I write this, it still hasn't really hit me that it's over. Admittedly, it's not really over for me: I have a session of Of Kith and Kin on Sunday, so my head is still very much in the Sorrowfell Plains.

In a very real way, this blog only exists because of this campaign, so if you've ever enjoyed anything you have read here, you can thank this sprawling epic and the dedicated players who saw it through to the end. I learned a lot from running it, and those lessons will hopefully inform whatever happens next.

I'll hopefully also have more time to curate the blog and write stuff as some of the existing campaigns wind down. That's always the dream, anyway.

Be seeing you.

REVEL AT ION

I've learned a lot about myself during this ongoing pandemic of ours. For instance, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was in ten role-playing games, and running six of them.

I've learned that you should never, ever do that.

(These days, I'm at a more reasonable six games, and only running five of them. You should never do that, either. I suspect I'd be happiest running two or maybe three.)

I've also learned that I'm not a big fan of running one-shots. They're fun to play, but I find it takes roughly as much work to craft or prepare a one-off game as it does to start a campaign, and then I might as well just run the campaign. (An endless series of one-shots requires roughly the same effort every time, but campaigns have a break-point where what I get out of them vastly exceeds the work I put into them. Plus, most games are complicated enough and many players are addled enough that there isn't really time for character creation and a game session, meaning a one-shot is two sessions, or I have to make the characters, which adds to my planning load.)

Of course, the track record among my circle of friends probably speaks to that. I have a modest number of completed campaigns under my belt, but to date, I have only played in one campaign to completion, and even then the GM scrambled to wrap everything up before he lost interest. Campaigns otherwise usually fall apart, or the GM gets bored, or the character sheets get lost, or whatever.

I vastly prefer to run RPGs than play them. (But you probably guessed that from the content on this blog.)

Most importantly, I think I've learned what my ultimate, Platonic ideal of a campaign would be.

Serious, Stupid, Spooky

You need the mix of all three in roughly equal proportion. To keep things interesting, the tone needs to drift over time. Perhaps an example will explain what I mean. My ultimate game would go something like this:

The player characters are trapped in a town during a zombie outbreak. (Did they arrive during the outbreak? Were they in town and the dead rose? It probably doesn't matter, although the latter makes more sense.) It's the standard zombie setup familiar to Romero fans and Resident Evil players: the town is under quarantine, zombies are wandering the streets, easy escape is unlikely, and help isn't coming. The zombies are scary: there are a lot of them, they never sleep, and maybe there are a few variants and mutants here and there. Even if the players are hardened horror fans, you can still overawe them through numbers and graphic description. [Spooky]

There are a lot of residents, and they all need help. And you can meaningfully help them, should you choose to do so. (What I mean by this: while choosing to help someone in the middle of a natural disaster is a difficult choice, it shouldn't backfire. You probably only get one guy in the opening act who is secretly nursing a zombie bite, and you don't get any tricks like "the PCs escort the NPCs to the safe haven but it's full of zombies and everyone dies." Your choices should be difficult, but meaningful.) People need food and escort to safe havens, disparate family members want to be reunited. Not everyone is going to survive, and the player characters will likely fumble their plans a couple of times, but the meat of the scenario is the tense character drama as the player characters interact with NPCs and argue with each other. [Serious]

Also, for some reason, there's a talking dog. The dog is helpful, but is mostly there for comic relief and so I can do a silly voice in an otherwise grim scenario. Apart from being able to talk, the dog isn't supernatural in any meaningful way. He can probably do a couple of useful things if asked like find lost objects or sniff out zombies a block away. The PCs probably think the talking dog is weird at first, but they probably grow to love him. [Stupid]

Then we boil the frog. Change the parameters of the test over several sessions until the campaign looks like this:

The player characters are pretty inured to the zombies now, so you tend to play them for dark comedy more than anything else. A zombie wrapped in a chain link fence who can't get free. One pinned under a car, snapping its jaws at the PCs' approach in the most amusing way possible. They don't stop being a threat, exactly, but you start playing up the slapstick elements. Zombies make weird noises designed to disarm the tension. [Stupid]

Of course, zombies aren't the real threat anymore. It's the people. (Maybe it always was.) It's been A Week™ for everyone in town: a week of raw terror and shattered nerves. Nobody has had a hot bath in that time, or a hot meal. Tensions are high. People are starting to get desperate and make bad decisions. And most importantly, the player characters aren't doing enough. As the campaign continues, the townsfolk become angry at them. You're the most capable people here. Why haven't you solved this yet? It probably doesn't take too long before some townsfolk reach the only logical conclusion: the "heroes" engineered this crisis. They're manipulating us. The torches and pitchforks emerge soon thereafter. [Spooky]

Towards the climax of the adventure, the talking dog dies. It's probably very heroic. The dog's body is recoverable. [Serious]

I could never run this as described, of course. Most of the elements I enjoy are things that emerge naturally over the course of a campaign. I like to be surprised.

It's a collaborative medium, and determining too much in advance spoils the fun. Even if I'm running an "adventure path" for real '90s-style traditionalists, the path is just an outline. If the players go somewhere else, that's fine. The surprise keeps me as an engaged player, too.

But the above scenario describes all the things I like in the course of a campaign. There should be something dramatic and sad, a tragedy the player characters can possibly prevent or solve or just watch unfold as they pursue their personal interests. Vampire: The Masquerade drew me into this hobby, and it still represents a lot of the things I like in stories and RPGs. If possible, I like to include a nerve-wracking and horrific threat. (I also lump thrillers in with horror, so sometimes the "spooky" element is simply the hidden: a mysterious serial killer, a lurking mastermind, an "ally" who knows too much.) And finally, I like there to be something a little dumb and fun to act as a release valve when the other elements are too much. Something with a silly voice, or some harmless eccentric as a bit of local color. My Unknown Armies games include a handful of scary wizards among a sea of obsessive (but ultimately friendly) weirdos. My arcane thriller about a secret wizard cabal has a ninja turtle in it.

While I can't usually plan the twist, those sorts of things happen naturally. Characters introduced as bits of color become important, central characters. The mood shifts as the player characters become more competent and their investment in the world changes. Things that were once threatening become mundane as greater or hidden threats emerge.

You know, the usual stuff.

Artifact April 2022

Seven years ago, I posted Artifact April, a month of theme posts whereby I posted one magical item every day in April across various RPG systems. I was hoping to do that again this year, but it never materialized.

However, some Artifact April is better than none Artifact April, so here's a selection of seven magic items. I'm running a lot of fifth edition D&D these days, so stats (where available) will primarily reference that edition, but I'll provide some notes on other editions because I convert material with abandon. Anything here should be easy to convert to your game system of choice.

(But just to make everything more confusing, Hekanhoda's Bane and Straight Razor are both made for Dungeon Crawl Classics.)

Cage

It probably looks something like this.

This sapient blade is a greatsword, appearing as a scimitar sized for a giant (or an efreeti, in this case). It is always warm to the touch. The black iron blade bears glowing runes in the language of fire elementals, while the shagreen wrap on the handle bears binding spells in the language of dragons. The pommel is a small, black iron cage in which a single red ember floats.

That red ember is the efreeti noble Padishah Nurhan Solak, bound in the blade. (He bestowed that title on himself, so he's likely not as powerful as you think he is.) When he speaks — and he often makes demands in imperious whispers — his voice emanates from the ember as it glows and crackles. The ember flares when he is angry.

Trapped in his own sword by a vengeful wizard, the sword now has the statistics of a luck blade. (Interested parties can also find 3.x statistics. The AD&D version of a luck blade gives +1 to saving throws and contains 1d4+1 wishes according to the Encyclopedia Magica.) This particular blade contains 3 wishes, powered by the bound efreeti. When the last wish is cast and the blade loses the Wishes property, the efreeti is released. He almost assuredly returns to the elemental planes and begins plotting his revenge against every previous owner of the blade, whom he has perceived as exploiting and wronging him in some way. (However, he may be gracious to an owner who uses their first wish to release him from the blade, possibly even offering them a free wish. As a lawful evil entity, however, any wishes he offers are of dubious quality.)

In true It Follows fashion, Nurhan probably works his way backwards, starting from the most recent owner until he eventually plots his epic revenge against the wizard who bound him in the first place.

Unlike most sapient swords, Cage cannot initiate an ego battle as the sword is the genie's prison. However, nothing prevents the Padishah from talking, constantly trying to convince the sword's wielder of the benefits of using a wish in this particular situation. Since he wants to escape the sword, he's even less capricious than a typical genie, fulfilling the spirit and letter of any wishes he grants. (At least for the first two wishes. He probably perverts the intent of wish number three as a final "fuck you" to his wielder before he leaves and plots his vengeance.)

If this sounds a bit like recommended Shadowguiding techniques from Wraith: The Oblivion, then you know exactly how to play the Padishah.

In addition to the standard properties of a luck blade, the sword's wielder can speak and understand the language of fire elementals while they carry the sword, and they are unaffected by extreme heat. (Up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about 49 degrees Celsius if you use metric.) The user can use a bonus action to cause the ember in the pommel to brighten, shedding bright light in a ten-foot-radius and dim light in a further ten-foot-radius.

The sword loses these properties if the genie is released, although it keeps the bonus to saving throws (and to-hit and damage for 3e and 5e versions and the Luck property in 5e).

Although it can't initiate conflicts, the sword's statistics might still be useful. It is lawful evil; has an Intelligence of 16, a Wisdom of 15, and a Charisma of 16; can hear and see (with darkvision) out to 120 feet; and can speak, read, and understand Common and Ignan.

If you're using 5e, Cage is a legendary magic item that requires attunement.

Dunce Cap

Nobody makes kids wear these anymore, right?

A standard paper dunce cap, albeit decorated with strange writing on the inside. While worn, it makes it hard to think but also makes the wearer less noticeable as a threat: people tend to ignore the wearer, and enemies target them less often.

For fifth edition, I'd probably give advantage on Charisma (Deception) checks to seem unobtrusive and Dexterity (Stealth) checks to remain hidden. The downside is that this item grants disadvantage on Intelligence checks, attacks, and saving throws.

This is likely a rare item that probably requires attunement. Assuming it requires attunement, it grants disadvantage on Intelligence rolls while it's attuned, but only grants the bonuses while it's being worn. Tricky, eh?

It's paper, so it folds away easily but is also easily damaged. If you'd like, maybe it's made out of something more durable, like leather.

Green Sash

A gift from the Fair Folk always comes with strings attached.

You probably know this one already. Lady Bertilak gifts such a sash to Sir Gawain for his confrontation with the Green Knight.

There aren't any tricks with this one: the wearer gains immunity to slashing damage, but a critical hit from a slashing weapon cuts the sash, dealing full damage and rendering it useless. (If your system of choice doesn't include critical hits, assume it is cut on a natural 20. You might also decide a called shot can sever the sash, but you should make that decision based on your system of choice.)

While there aren't any tricks with the item itself, it is a sash of fairy make. There is a possibility that having the sash itself causes trouble, such as in the case of Sir Gawain.

For the fifth edition crowd, this is another legendary item requiring attunement, although I think it's a more interesting item if it doesn't require attunement.

Hekanhoda's Bane

It looks a little something like this.

If you've read Intrigue at the Court of Chaos, you already know Hekanhoda, Lord of Grotesques. (I believe Hekanhoda also appears as a patron in the DCC Annual.)

Hekanhoda's Bane is a powerful sword of Law dedicated to slaying Hekanhoda. However, this sword has great ambitions, as it has plenty to do before killing the Chaos Lord.

This Lawful +1 long sword has Intelligence 11, and can speak and communicate telepathically. In addition to killing Hekanhoda, the sword also wants its wielder to uphold the Law. It has several banes:

• Thieves: the wielder gets a +1 bonus to attacks and damage against thieves.
• Wizards: any wizard successfully struck by the sword is banished. The wizard must make a Will save against the sword's roll of 1d20+10 or else be banished back to its native plane or lair.
• Earth Elementals: the sword detects any earth elementals within 100 feet, even if they are invisible or concealed. The sword can overcome magical defenses with an effective Will or spell check of +10.
• Dragons: as with thieves, the wielder gets a +1 bonus to attacks and damage against dragons.
• Sphinxes: the sword acts as a spotter, making it easier for allies to attack. Allies can fire into melee between wielder and bane at no penalty and with no chance of hitting the wielder, and allies attacking bane with missile fire within 100 feet of the sword receive a +1 attack bonus.

In addition, the sword has several powers. It can detect gold within 1d8 × 10 feet, it can locate object twice a day, it can shed light in a 20-foot-radius at will, it drains 1d4 XP with every blow in addition to its other damage, and the wielder heals 3 points of spellburn each night without rest, or 6 points each night with rest.

The Princess' Ring

Using magic from lost kingdoms is like unearthing uranium.
It could power or destroy a city, and there's only one way to find out.

While the origins of this ring are lost, the story attached to it is that the princess of a lost kingdom owned this ring, which she used to sneak around the castle and even beyond its walls. This is often told as a cautionary tale, as she was executed or exiled for witnessing something she ought not to have seen. Others say that the magic in her ring somehow destroyed the kingdom. Some even say her ghost haunts the ring, providing an unpleasant surprise for anybody who uses the ring's magic.

This item is simply an ornate ring that, when completely covered by the hands, transfers the user to the Ethereal Plane as per the etherealness spell. Depending on the tales, you can either use it three times per day or as often as desired, but it does require the user have both hands free. As such, it probably takes at least an action to use it.

If you're doing the full 5e thing, this probably works as a very rare item, although it likely doesn't require attunement. Watch out for thieves! (You might want to make it legendary if the wearer can use it at-will. Then again, you might feel that being able to do nothing other than hold the ring is balancing enough. It's ultimately your choice; I'm a blog post, not a cop.)

Straight Razor

It looks similarly impractical.

Diametrically opposed to the monument of Law that is Hekanhoda's Bane, Straight Razor would see civilization reduced to rubble and ash. This Chaotic +1 long sword has Intelligence 10 but only communicates through simple urges. It seeks to build a monument to Chaos from the rubble of civilization and to punish interlopers and those who interfere.

The sword hates water elementals, sending its wielder into a berserker fury against them. When facing water elementals in combat, the wielder must succeed on an Ego check against the sword or else gain +4 Strength and Stamina for 2d6 rounds, and then become exhausted at -4 Strength and Stamina for 1d6 turns thereafter.

On the other hand, Straight Razor grants its wielder the ability to speak and understand thieves' cant, and it can shoot out a tongue of flame once per day. The flame jet is shaped like a cone, 40’ long and 10’ wide at end. All within take 2d6 fire damage and may catch on fire. They can avoid this damage with a Reflex save against the sword's roll of 1d10+10.

The Widow's Ring

Just what I always wanted: a ring that hates me!

Old tales speak of the maedar, the male versions of medusae. One particular tale speaks of a maedar who found a mate very late in life, but was as devoted to her as any other maedar is to his wife. In fact, he was so devoted to her that he ensured he would never leave her.

When he felt his life coming to an end, he undertook the ritual that maedars sometimes undertake to become a glyptar, a maedar's consciousness remaining in stone. Maedars are said to go mad if they become trapped in gemstones, but this particular maedar willingly projected his consciousness into amethyst so that he could remain with his wife until the end of her days, and could continue to guide and protect future generations of their family. Before death, he made arrangements to have the amethyst fitted into a ring, delivered to his wife, so that they could spend eternity together.

And so the glyptar spent generations with his descendants, at least until some group of adventurers murdered them and took the ring.

As you might imagine, the glyptar is very displeased with this state of affairs.

Any medusa can use the widow's ring to gain a burrow speed equal to her walking speed, even allowing her to move through solid stone. Three times per day, she can turn stone to flesh, either ending the petrified condition on a creature or turning an area of stone as large as a 10' cube into meat. (If you're using an older edition with a proper stone to flesh spell, just use that instead. If you want the classic glyptar experience, old-school maedars can technically use their stone to flesh power every 30 minutes. In AD&D, the spell mentions turning stone golems into flesh golems, but since 5e stone golems cannot be altered in such a way, we'll skip that particular detail.)

Humanoids and other folk might be able to use the ring's powers as discussed above, but they have to convince it of their intentions first. The original adventurers who stole the ring probably won't get it to cooperate, nor will any adventurer who kills a medusa and lets the ring know about it. (Even hearing a rumor that the wearer killed a medusa might be enough to prevent the widow's ring from cooperating.) In fact, such users find the ring is basically cursed: the glyptar will attempt to take control, leading the wearer into suicidal situations. However, wearers who seem sympathetic to medusae and are willing to help local medusa populations will likely receive the ring's aid. (Although it might just ask for them to deliver it to a proper medusa, unless it thinks it can better aid medusakind by staying with the current wearer.)

The widow's ring is lawful evil; has an Intelligence of 12, a Wisdom of 13, and a Charisma of 15; can hear and see (with darkvision) out to 120 feet; and can speak, read, and understand Common. (If you're using an old-school system, the ring can also speak the languages of medusae. It also has the equivalent of a Labyrinth Lord psyche around 15 or so, to give you an idea of what sort of Ego rating you should give it in whatever system you're using.)

For 5e, this ring is probably legendary and definitely requires attunement.