Flight spells on the Coin

A long time ago the gods made it pretty clear that if the mortal races were supposed to be able to fly they would have been issued wings up front. After some lightning bolts were thrown around, the wizarding community got the hint and gave up on spells that allow humans to soar like birds.

Of course, wizards are smartasses. They've since worked out a myriad of spells that do similar things without breaking the "no flying mortals" rule. Feather Fall will slow your decent, Levitate will allow some vertical movement without actually counting as flight, and finally, the coin version of the spell Fly actually imbues aerial mobility on a broom* which a mortal spellcaster might just happen to sit on...

*or carpet, or staff, or cauldron. Different cultures have different versions with different degrees of speed and stability.

eXPloration: the pictorial guide (part 2)

I'd just like to thank every artist who's fantastic work I've ripped off for this.

You also get 2 xp for visiting each of these locations...

The Pyrsburg, realm of mages and merchants, hub of trade (if you can read French, just ignore the text)

Al-Harraj, city of a thousand genies
Spinotaur City, center of learning in Zwuyala
The great city of the drow that nobody can pronounce the name of.
Cannon Valley, the ancient stronghold of the dwarves
Broken Glade, the elven retreat on Spindlewick
The very Edge of the World (although you have to look over it to get the XP)

I couldn't find a picture of Yendys, as nobody has ever felt inclined to draw Sydney as a fantasy city. I guess I'll just have to do it myself...

Also, Xp will be given for...

Getting ship-wrecked (unless you did it intentionally) - 1 xp
Watching a city burn (once per city) - 2 xp
Watching a dragon fly - 1xp
Flying on a dragon - 5xp (less for later dragon flights and other forms of aerial transport)

And that, for the moment, concludes the pictorial guide to eXPloration in Jarrah's campaign.

eXPloration: the pictorial guide (part 1)

really, as an artist, I should be doing these drawings myself, but instead I've just stolen them wholesale from around the internet. So, without further ado, some inspirational artwork to represent the various things you can earn exploration XP for in my campaign:


Gazing upon the Coin from one of it's three moons - 20xp

Climbing the Spindle, the mountain at the center of the world, home to the gods - 15xp
Visiting the secret grove of the high druids, or the hidden monastery of the Tax monks - 8xp

Cross the Spindlewick mountains, or the Great Howling Desert of Aratha - 5xp

To be continued...

Random Details on the Races of the Coin

(the Coin, by the way, is the name of the planet my current D&D campaign is set on. More explanation on the subject will be forthcoming at a future point)

Dwarves:
Dwarves don't pray, or worship gods. They acknowledge that the gods exist, and that they're very powerful, but they draw the line at actually being deferential to such beings. What they will do, however, is bargain.

The closest thing to a dwarf prayer would go something like this:
"Hey, any gods who might be listening, I'd be willing to, I dunno, forge you some neat stuff in the afterlife, if you'd nudge things my way right now. Not that I need it, mind you, it's just that it would be awfully convenient..."

Dwarf clerics should probably be more accurately called "professional god bargainers".

Elves: Nobody has ever seen a fat elf. Some conspiracy theorists believe that all the ugly-looking elves are rounded up and kept hidden in dungeons beneath the elven capital of Yendys. Everybody else just thinks this is more evidence of the elves being an entire species that is annoyingly lucky.

Most elves are incapable of growing facial hair. They are perpetually aggravated that the human wizard community refuses to take their mages seriously as a result.

Gnomes (aka Halflings): Gnomes are by their basic nature, obsessive. Most people don't notice, because the average gnome obsesses over living a quiet, comfortable, unremarkable life in a nice little pastoral hamlet, and eating five square meals a day.

Adventuring gnomes are mostly those weirdos who become obsessed with travel, money, magic, power, bloodshed or similar, rather than pies.

Orcs and Half-Orcs
Orcs are an artificial species, crafted long ago by some forgotten Dark Lord from a mixture of goblin and human biology and beer. They have gone extinct several times since then, but as the recipe for their manufacture has been passed down from evil wizard to evil wizard, such reprieves haven't lasted.

Orcs can be found in two locations - in the service of an evil magic user with a spare vat to make them in, or skulking about in otherwise uninhabited regions after their dark master has been offed by some adventurers.

Half-orcs occur when a human and an orc love each other very, very much.

All greenskins enjoy singing.

my take on eXPloration

entirely stolen in format from Jeff Rients' post on the subject. XP values calibrated for microlite20

• 20xp for visiting any of the Coin's three moons and gazing upon the elephants and the turtle (10xp each for the other two moons).
• 15xp for scaling the spindle (talking to the gods when you reach the top is entirely optional. They might get pissed either way).
• 8xp for visiting the secret grove of the high druids or the hidden monastery of the Tax Monks. 10xp if the inhabitants actually invite you in.
• 5xp for crossing the Spindlewick mountains, or the Howling Desert.
  
• 2xp for each Great City you visit (Al Harraj, Pyresburg, Spinotaur City, and That Underdark One Nobody Can Pronounce).
  
• 2xp for visiting Cannon Valley.
• 2xp for looking off the edge of the world.
• 2xp for braving the misty hills or any similar monster-haunted, malevolent and generally creepy location for three nights.
  

Non-location XP

• 1xp for seeing a dragon.
  
• 5xp for the first time you ride a dragon. Other modes of aerial transit (flying carpet, skyship, roc, spell) as well as later rides on a dragon will give less xp.
• 2xp for watching a city burn. Once per city (no camping, people).
• 1xp for getting shipwrecked (either sea or skyship), but no xp if you do it intentionally.
  

Cubic Dungeon

So, here's an idea that came from me messing about with Dyson Logos' dungeon Geomorphs, and the nifty random dungeon generator made from them.

I give you, the cubic dungeon:


Of course, to any hapless adventurers transported inside it (whether by a goblin doorway, or an angered sorcerer, or something else entirely) it does not at first appear to be a cube. From inside, it's a normal dungeon, until you discover that walking in one direction long enough will bring you back to your starting point, as will taking three right (or left) turns in the right location.

The party mapper will be tearing his hair out.


Above is the 6 geomorphs I pasted together. I took the liberty of tweaking the left "arm" design slightly so as to avoid having dead ends. Also note that while there are several secret doors in the complex, there is only one truly secret room. Perhaps that holds the key to escaping?

Random Hallucination Table

As mentioned here, some goblins use hallucinogenic poison on their arrows. Any character struck by such an arrow must make a save (DC 15 Fortitude) or Suffer the effects. If the initial save is successful, the character must save again in 1 minute. Either way, the effects are rolled once on the table below, and last for 1d4 hours (or until somebody casts Neutralize Poison).

1d10

1. Mine Lederhosen have Shrunkenvagen! Character is convinced his clothing and armour are shrinking, and must try to remove them as soon as possible. Once removed, the character is convinced the clothing is trying to chase him, and will try to flee.
   
2. Whoa, like, My Hands... Character just stands there and stares at his hands.
3. You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die! Character will attack the closest creature until it is dead, at which poin he will fixate on somebody new.
4. What's a Humanoid like You doing in a Dungeon like This? Character makes romantic advances on the closest creature of a species and gender appropriate to his tastes. If no such beings are in sight, will wander off, looking for such.
   
5. Eureka! The character is convinced he has just had a ground-breaking idea that he must write down. Will seek out writing implements, or attempt to fashion his own. Just writes gibberish (probably). This applies even if the character can't actually write.
   
6. So Soft and Fuzzy... character will try to feel the other character's hair (or, if rebuffed, that of the closest monster...).
7. Can't Stop The Beat! Character will dance on the spot. Also possibly sing. Thinks everybody else is joining in.
8. The pretty butterflies! Character chases butterflies around at jogging speed in a random direction. Gets a Will save to avoid walking off cliffs.
   
9. Spiders! Spiders Behind my EYES! Character has a really bad trip, and spends the whole time curled in a fetal ball.
10. Invisible Dead Tortoise. The character trips over every time he stands up. Tries to crawl around and find his poor departed hard-shelled friend.

Characters under the effect of goblin poison cannot cast spells or use ranged attacks, but will attack back if attacked in melee.

Any character left alone for any length of time while tripping on goblin poison has a 1-in-6 chance of acquiring a pineapple. No mortal magic can reveal where this fruit has come from.

My D&D House Rules

Actually, I won't bore you with them, but suffice to say that in the process of typing up all the house rules I have stored in my head, I discovered the document is nearly as long as the rules they're modifying. Of course, I'm modifying MicroLite20, so that isn't terribly long. Thus, this brought me to the conclusion that it might be best for me to just make a Microlite20 rulebook of my own, with all the house rules included as standard.

A Thought on Goblin Warfare

Goblins, generally, can be found to be wielding one of four types of weapon

Firstly, there is the wickedly curved (or wavy) sword. This is the mainstay of goblin warfare, largely because they're vicious little buggers who love causing hurt to anything around them.

Second, there is the spear, or, more often, the Pointy Stick. Typically wielded by goblins who are vicious, but either have some modicum of self-preservation instinct, or are just too slow to get the any of the "good" spots up the front.

Third there is the bow. Beware the goblin bowman, because he lacks the kind of craziness requires for front-line fighting, and thus might be capable of some actual tactics and proper target selection. Particularly nasty are those bowmen who have the skill to coat their arrows in hallucinogenic poisons.

And lastly, but by now means least, no matter how silly it may seem, there are those goblins who go into battle armed not with a sword, or a spear, nor even a bow, but with whatever they can pick up and throw. This is a problem, because as these are often the craziest goblin, they will often select rather dangerous missiles, such as flasks of burning oil, or rabid rats.

Or, occasionally, rabid rats covered in burning oil.

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Characters (We hope)

So, say you've got a bunch of PCs in a long tunnel, running away from a boulder which is rolling after them (ala Indiana Jones). How would you mechanically represent that in, say, Microliet20?

That's the question I posed myself 10 minutes ago. Here's what I came up with.

(I'm using the notation squares here for all movement. I assume that a square is 5 feet, but feel free to do whatever you like)

There is a tunnel, which is 60 squares long. At one end is the boulder. 10 squares further along are the PCs. The boulder moves 12 squares every turn. Any PCs it moves over are, most likely, dead, or if not, wishing they were.

However, the PCs get to move first. Each turn, each PC gets a number of movement points. The base is 6, to which they add their Dexterity modifier. Also, every turn, they can roll 1, 2, or 3d6 for extra points. It costs 1 point to move 1 square.

That's the basics. Now, here's where it gets interesting:
If you get a double or triple on your move points roll, your character trips and falls at the end of your movement. On your next turn, you'll lose 2 move points from lost momentum anyway, in addition to having to spend 4 points just standing up.

However, other people can help you up, so long as they're adjacent to you. Helping somebody up costs you 4 movement points, minus your Strength modifier, to a minimum of 1 point.

Example:

Wyfy Cygnet is a rogue with Strength 7 and Dexterity 16. She gets a base movement point allotment of 9 every turn, and it costs her 6 points to help somebody up.

Meanwhile, Power Murderface is a bard with Strength 18, and Dexterity 8. He gets 5 movement points every turn, but it only takes 1 point for him to help somebody up.

Obviously, anybody who gets to the 60-square finish line before the boulder does wins (i.e. doesn't die messily).

Edit: actually you could use much the same process for doing Chased by Wolves, or Outrunning a Tidal-wave of Water, the basic Rolling Boulder is what got me onto the idea.

Links!

For lack of anything better to post, I present various awesome game-related things I've found around the internet recently.

• The Grand Open game License Wiki: a project to convert all the OGL content produced by various non-WotC folks over the years into a wiki for easy access. Personally, I just go trawling for nifty spells to introduce to my microlite20 games.
• A webpage that, at least personally, makes me all inspired to adventure! While I did manage to track down the original source of the picture, I'm stumped as to where the music is from. In the unlikely event somebody reading this knows, send me a comment!
• A Big and quite detailed map of the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Is it just me, or does it look like Craftworlds Lugannath and Yme-Loo are trying to run away from the Tyranids?
  
• Robert Fisher's Classic D&D injury house rule. I quite like this, and might well use it in my own Microlite20 campaign. His observations about old school dungeons are kinda neat as well.
  

Abstract-ish d20 Chase mechanic

While walking my dog and humming the Starship Troopers theme tune (my brain is like a broken and expectionally nerdy iPod) today, I started thinking about chase scene. I love them in movies, but I've yet to see very many RPGs handle them in a fun way. While many systems have quite reasonable mechanics for such things, mostly they just boil down to a series of opposed rolls, with little or no choices made on the part of the players. This sucks, because RPGs are really all about making choices. So, here goes a simple mechanic for d20 games (Microlite20 mostly, but it's adaptable) for chases and races.

Step 1: Setup
During the chase, distance between people (or horse, or starships, or whatever) will be determined by points of Lead. Pick some increment of distance that Lead will represent for this chase. For a thief running through the streets chased by guards, 10 feet is good, while an all-day overland chase on horseback might have a point of Lead represent several miles. Generally starting the two parties (pursed and pursers) about 5 points of Lead apart is good, but do whatever fits the situation.

Step 2: Determine Initiative.
Unlike in normal combat, chase initiative is rolled at the start of every round. Each individual or group in the chase rolls a d20 and add their Mind bonus. If the individual or group is being pursued they get +2. If a group is pursuing and outnumbers the pursued party, then they get +2. Highest roll goes first this round.

Step 3: Determine conditions.
Whoever won initiative for this round gets to describe the conditions that the chase will be going through this round. If they choose to play it safe, each participant in the chase must make a DC 10 check (usually Physical + Dex, but whatever suits the type of chase), with failure losing them a point of lead, and success winning a point of lead.

Alternatively, the initiative winner can choose different conditions, increase the DC, and add other effects to winning or losing (such as damage), as suits him.

Example: Claude the Clandestine has stolen a horse from a lord's stables and is fleeing through the woods on it. The lord's men are chasing him. Claude, having won initiative, decides he'll ride through the thickest part of the wood, braving the low-hanging tree branches. He tells the GM that for this round, the DC for the chase will be 17, and failure will deal 2d6 damage, in addition to losing anybody who fails 2 points of Lead from riding into a tree-branch and being knocked off their horse.

Step 3.5: Roll the Dice
Once the initiative winner has worked out the conditions, everybody rolls their check (the GM may choose to roll individually or as a group for grouped creatures), and applies the effects. Additionally, for any such check where the speed of the participants would aid them (i.e. pretty much every check), the faster party gets +2 on their check, or +5 if they're twice as fast, or +10 if they're three times as fast or more. Any party can voluntarily fail their check if they so wish.

Example of being tricky with these rules: Claude has stolen a magical trinket from a dragon's horde and is now being chased by a huge and rather unhappy giant lizard. Claude, having won initiative once again, decides to repeat his old trick and rides into some trees. However, this time, Claude says that the DC will be 10, with failure causing the loss of a point of Lead (like normal), and success causing the gain of a point of lead, and 6d6 damage unless you also make a save to avoid smacking into a tree.

Claude then voluntarily fails his check, and loses a point of lead. The dragon, hoping to catch up to the thief and roast him, decides to roll to succeed (getting a +5 bonus on the roll because dragons are twice as fast as horses). Easily rolling high enough, the dragon slams into the treeline, and now has to make a save to avoid braining itself with a conifer...

Step 4: Are We There Yet?
After Lead points have been lost and gained, work out what happens. If the pursuer has caught up to the pursued, they can they attack or catch their prey, as appropriate. If the pursued have got 10 points of lead ahead of their attacker, they've managed to get away. If neither such circumstance has occurred, go back to step 2 and repeat for the next round.

Optional Variants for Races:
For races, usually everybody starts at the same point, and thus nobody has a Lead point advantage. Additionally, give every participant two extra points of lead every turn, in addition to however many they won or lost form their skill checks, and whoever gets to the finish line (say, 20 points of Lead) first is the winner.

Also, as neither party can really direct the course of the racetrack, use a straight d20 roll for initiative. For added fun, have any players who are just spectating roll as well, and determine the conditions of that round is they win.

Under Xylarthen's Tower

A few weeks ago, at a camp, I managed to run Jeff's awesome Under Xylanthen's Tower.

It was very awesome. Did I say awesome already?

Aaaannyway... The PDF of this nifty old-school dungeon crawl is here, while various things about it can be found here. We played using my own slightly tweaked version of Microlite20, with all the party being level 1. Of course, an M20 character at level 1 is rather more tough and competant than an old edition character, but the dungeon is meant for levels 1-6, so I figured it'd work out okay. The party almost entirely consisted of Rogues and Mages, and the general line-up changed a bit over the course of a few playing session, but particular mention goes to John (Pseudo-Arabian Assassin), Other John (Half Orc Cleric), Angus (Weasel-Attracting Human Rogue), and Margaret (Elf Mage).

For the first time, i actually forced the party to do the mapping themselves, and felt unreasonably gratified when they actually started making guesses about the layout of rooms they hadn't got to yet based on the map they had. It was even better when these guesses were wrong due to inconsistencies in their mapping.

The party explored most of the northern part of level 1, starting with setting fire to the room full of rubbish while trying to detach two weasels that had attached themselves to Angus's posterior. Margaret carefully incribed her Arcane Mark (her free-to-cast spell) everywhere they went, in case there was any surprise teleporting. They battled the Ogre Wight, and stole its necklace. Angus took responsibility for selling it once they returned to town, and I gave him the opportunity to misrepresent its value to his companions, a larcenous chance he took with great glee (although he did start feeling guilty later, and kept shouting people supplies he got "cheap" due to his "contacts").

The group found the hidden ladder to level 4, and they threw a stone with a Light spell down it. When one of the white apes (christened on the spot as "Barry") stuck its head in the chute to investigate, Angus carefully drew his shortsword, rolled a 20, and killed the rather surprised creature with one hit... from a shortsword dropped 2 stories. After hearing the enraged growling of the other white apes, the party decided that they should probably find the long way to level 4, and continued on.

They discovered the Hobgoblin urinal, and decoded the orge password. I personally foud it hilarious when they knocked on the door to the ogre's room, saw it wrenched open, timidly offered the password, and then weren't quite sure what to do when the ogre let them in. Eventually they decided that attacking an ogre while he was drinking a cup of tea was not on, and headed down to level 2.

They then tried to ambush the hobgoblin guards who demanded a toll, stuffed up spectacularly, and had to flee the level under a hail of crossbow bolts.

The one further expedition after that just discovered the petrified genie on level 1. I suspect next session, whenever that is, will probably focus on trying to find the genie's missing hand.

Oh, The (Dungeon Related) Places You'll Go

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have spells in your book.
Or a sword in your sheath.
Or a minstrel’s fine lute.
Or the tools of a thief.
You’re off with your party, and you know where there’s treasure.
To buy beer, feasts and wenches, whichever’s your pleasure.

You’ll look up and down tunnels. Look ‘em over with care.
About some you will say, “I’m too smart to go there”
With your old book of spells, and your sword in it’s sheath,
You’ll seek out the tunnels where you won’t come to grief.

And you may not find any
You’ll want to explore
In which case, of course,
Go outside to seek more.