Likewise, I could totally see running Giantslayer as an “A” plotline and a “Back in Trunau,” homebrew “B” plot to really increase the importance of the hometown in the campaign. Particularly, if you spread some of the campaign’s early events a little thinner. In the first book there is an amazing series of encounters that is basically a single very long combat scene. Allowing the players to play both their “A” and “B” plotline characters through some of these encounters could be a good way to establish the idea of two narratives. Conversely, you could give the “B” characters the lead plot of the first book and guide the “A” characters to pursue the bigger campaign threads after the big siege scene.

So yeah, yeah this was a really inspiring idea. Thanks Ryan.

Okay, that out of the way, let’s move onto what I was going to talk about this week. As I said, I have been thinking about and discussing rules that have inspired me. I figured now that my players and I have had a session zero and a short intro session for the 5e Ptolus campaign I just started, I thought I’d talk secrets and my own take on Perram’s snowflake cards.

When Monica and I joined our friend’s already-in-progress Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign for 5e, we were each given 2 secrets randomly selected by the GM. The other players got to roll or draw theirs themselves during session zero but since we were just dropping into the campaign our GM simply texted us each the two she selected for each of us. We could toss one back or keep both. These all gave hints about the campaign to come, set some dark truth about our character, or gave us a mechanical benefit…one of my secrets does all three! It was an interesting alternative to campaign traits.

Interesting enough that I created a selection of my own for my Ptolus game. A few of my secrets were more akin, however, to Perram’s Snowflake cards. For instance, Ptolus is an urban campaign with limited gunpowder weapons. While I didn’t want everyone at the table playing gunslingers I figured it might be fun to include the option for one gunslinger. So one of the cards was:

Dragon Pistol

You own and are currently licensed to carry a dragon pistol. You keep the weapon in good repair and are proficient in its use and upkeep, furthermore if you are playing a fighter you may choose the gunslinger martial archetype.

It wasn’t really a secret, and when Monica drew it she embraced the card and is playing a cherubim-elf gunslinger. Other secrets were more secret including being a murderer, former cultist, or fugitive. Some of my favorites revolved around a common NPC however. During our pre-session zero conversations the players indicated they’d like to play PCs who had been adventurers together before splitting up five years ago. I decided that back then their party had an additional team member, An assamar name Yydril (pronounced Ee drill). At the start of the campaign Yydril is missing.

Each Yydril card allowed the player to make select design choices that define who Yydril is / was (gender, class, weapon of choice, and more). One of my players drew the following card:

Yydril’s Blade

It had been some time since you’d last seen Yydril (Pronounced Ee-Drill) when they showed up on your doorstep. They seemed nervous or at least off balance. When pressed they denied it and deflected to how good you looked and suggested you gather the old crew together. They also left their silvery sword in your care.

Yydril’s blade is a +1 weapon. You gain proficiency in the sword of your choice. Yydril’s sword is a weapon of this type and was Yydril’s primary weapon in your previous adventuring days.

Again not a secret per se. But it does put some of the campaign’s exposition in the hands of a PC. When Yydril failed to show at the appointed time and meeting place the player who drew this was able to construct a scene from the few details I provided on the card and during our session zero private one-on-one discussion.

I let each player draw three cards they had to keep at least one and discard at least one. Using Secret cards in this way, Each player had to make an interesting choice during session zero that would effect the ongoing campaign plust I was able to give characters sellect clues about the campaign to come and mechanical advantages I could live with, while seasoning events with dramatic secrets that when revealed will have interesting repurcussions for most every character. This was the sort of succeess that all but garantees I’ll be using it in campaigns to come possibly even PF1 games over the existing Traits system.

Owen K.C. Stephens’ Spell Points, House Rules Handbook Spell Points, Rogue Genius Games: I know this statement will get me in hot water with some folks, but, I dislike Vancian magic. Despite the fact that I love spell-casters I’m just not that invested in the traditional D&D / Pathfinder prepared caster magic systems. I play with Vancian magic because that’s how the rules work but I’m actually a much bigger fan of spontaneous casting than I am prepared casting. So when I found the Owen’s Spell Points rules I was instantly sold. I could play the wizard or magus I’ve been longing to play. Unfortunately, my GMs haven’t allowed it in a campaign yet.

I love the idea behind spell points. You can cast any spell you know at a cost from your spell points pool, and casting a previously cast spell becomes more expensive. This keeps PCs from hoarding Spell Points to spam thier best spells. The balance on the mechanics is pretty tight and certainly gives players access to a wizard more like we see in 90+ percent of genre fiction.

20 Levels of Spells, Book of Expiremental Might: Yeah this would be a big change to implement but the idea is pretty cool. Every time a character levels they get access to a new level of spells it breaks a lot of traditions but makes more intuitive sense.  I’m a third level character so I have access to third level spells. I do love this rule…but I’m not likely to ever use it unless I play just use the spell list in the Book of Expiremental Might.

Heightened Spell Effects: Pathfinder Second Edition: My current Second Edition Pathfinder PC is a Dwarven Cleric of Torag. And I’m really loving the spell options. Boosting the power of a spell by casting it with a higher level spell slot just makes good design and narrative sense. It’s fun and I think it better reflects magic as we are familiar with it in a great deal of fiction. Which is a huge plus for me.

On a related note, the Pathfider 2 spells that can be cast with a variable number of actions and components are also a lot of fun. I frequently find myself casting heal at different levels and with a different number of actions every time I cast it. I love the added flexibility. Spells and the 3 action economy are some of the best rules developments made to the old D&D chassis.

Room DCs, Index Card RPG: Okay ICRPG isn’t exactly D&D or Pathfinder but it definitely evolved from the same roots and the ROOM DC trick began as a D&D 5e House Rule on the game designer’s Youtube Channel. So I’ll allow it. Not a rule I use but it is one that has had me rethinking certain possibilities in encounter design. A simple static DC for every challenge spin a chamber is an interesting idea that would certainly speed play. So I can see the appeal and at low levels it even feels quite workable in the 5e math. Ultimately, though I want certain things to have logical and consistant dificulties. I feel as though it would be easy to accidentally create a similar challenge to one the PCs faced before but with very different DCs because the PCs leveled and the rooms need to be harder…

And finally.

The Elephant in the Room:Feat Taxes in Pathfinder, Mathew and Michael Iantorno: A house rule option that first appeared in a blog post that offers alternatives to the feat taxes in Pathfinder. The authors eliminate many feats making them simply options for characters to use in combat. A decision I come to like more and more. I think the concept will be very important to me if I go back to run Pathfinder first edition in the future. I will likely make different choices than the original authors did because my focus will be a little different.

While feat taxes are a concern, afterall there are many excellent feats that rarely see use because of the requirements to access some of the feats essential to many builds. So my first design goal would be to open the options and choices of players at character creation and leveling. Second I want to also open choice in play. Many feats ALLOW a player to do something that in theory they might have been able to do before there was a feat. Take Spring Attack. PF2’s action economy proves spring attack at first level isn’t broken and yet it has a pretty heavy cost in feats and in itself could be something PCs could just do.  All too often it feels like Feats as they are currently written can stifle PC action options at the table. Feats like Power Attack that change how an attack works would likely stay in my system but might not be a prerequisite for as many feats up the chain. While a feat like Spring Attack would become something everyone can do from the get go.

Action Points, Eberron Campaign Setting: Perhaps technically I should be crediting d20 Star Wars for Force points since they released 4 years earlier and are esentially the same rules I’m not going to because Action Points broke from the meta-physical magic of the Star Wars Galaxy and rooted the mechanics in pulp action. Action Points encouraged players to DO something BOLD and mechanically rewarded that daring. Since then we’ve seen Action Points revisted and expanded in Unearthed Arcana, Hero Points in Pathfinder, and now Inspiration in 5e. All of these mechanics are very similar but the original with an excellent accompaning web article first rewarded creativity in action at the table.

Defiler and Preserver Magic, Dark Sun Boxed Set: In the campaign setting heyday of second edition it felt like every other day TSR was releasing a new campaign world with a different twist on what D&D was: Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Darksun, and Planescape. When Darksun arrived we were given a world informed by the tales of John Carter of Mars, Conan, and Mad Max. A grim post apocalyptic fantasy where traditional D&D species and concepts were delivered with a twist, half-dwarves and canibal halflings certainly, but most notably was the change in magic. Difiler magic could give a character an edge but at such a terrible cost.

This was probably only the second time I’d seen what I thought of as a fundamental mechanic of the rules changed for “story” reasons and it validated some of the ideas I’d been having about campaign worlds since the Dragon Lance hardcover altered magic by tying it to a lunar cycle. The difference here, I think though was a matter of how central to the setting the change was. While with Dragonlance the moons played a direct part of the fiction, the complexity of tracking three different moon cycles for very little variation meant that the mechanical effects of the moons could be easily left out. Not so much with Dark Sun. Defiling and preserving was a core narrative element and was inextricable from the setting as psionics.

Cinematic Advantage, Mike Shea of SlyFlourish.com: If I have one beef with D&D and Pathfinder since 3.0 its the games’ reliance on battle maps. I love a thrilling combat told largely in theater of the mind. I remember fondly just eyeballing distances on a battle map and moving figures without regard to number of squares moved. Sometimes tactical visuals were just arrows and scribbles denoting movement on a scrap paper map with no scale. My recollection of those combats is that they tended to be faster paced and more mobile. Characters didn’t pick a square and camp in it trading blows with the BBEG until someone fell the way 3.0’s grid, flanking, and AoO’s encouraged. So with all of that said I’m always a little biased when there’s a rule that can (if only for a combat or two) break us away from the grid.

Enter Cinematic Advantage. While specifically for 5e this is still a fun rule that like Action Points rewards PCs for taking bold actions and is easily adapted to any previous game edition including both editions of Pathfinder (so long as you don’t mind making a few feats obsolete – Sliding Dash I’m looking at you). Describe an action typically using set features of the area: A chandalier, long table, or even the monster itself and describe an action that could give your PC an edge and succeed on a skill check determined by the GM to recieve advantage (or a flanking bonus) on your accompaning attack. For example, your monk might run across the banquet table leap to catching a candleabra and swinging out into the air to deliver an epic flying kick. Or your halfling rogue might scale the ogre’s trousers and shirt to gain “flanking” and deliver a deadly sneak attack to the monster’s neck.

Monte Cook’s Alternate Metamagic Feats, Book of Expiremental Might: Okay, this book is a gold mine of interesting ideas but one of my favorites is this simple metamagic variant. In many of the games I’ve played, metamagic has been largely dismissed. Particuarly for wizard PCs, who must not only attempt to predict what spells they’ll need but which of those might need to be stilled, silent, or otherwise modified. Monte Cook’s solution to this is to make metamagic something that any spell caster can perform on the fly a limited number of times a day. It’s a simple solution that makes metamagic much more viable and while the rules only cover some of the earliest metamagic feats the mechanics are easy enough to reverse engineer and apply to any feats your players may want from newer sources if you’re playing PF1 or 3.5 D&D.

I hope you find this article helpful whether you play Pathfinder 1, 2, D&D 5e, or an OSR clone.

Chainmail, D&D, and AD&D: I started gaming in 1983 with the Frank Mentzer Basic D&D set. I was drawn into the game by the tramendous art of Larry Elmore but I stayed because D&D was like no game I’d ever played and no other game compared. The old school games shaped the hobby and laid the foundation for everything that has come since and it certainly set my imagination a flame but there is something else that really warrants talking about that era of game and why they really make my list.

House Rules. There was a culture of house rules DM’s would sometimes have binders longer than rulebooks full to over flowing with campaign notes and house rules. Oh we loved house rules. sometimes they were our own creation and others they’d be culled from the pages of Dragon magazine Xeroxed and three-hole-punched. In my memory, “Rules-As-Written” wasn’t as important as the DM themself. That sense of freedom and creative mindset led me to a great many design mistakes to be sure but it also lead me to constantly observe how other games handle problems and to ask, “Could I use that in my game?”

Kits, Second Edition D&D: Kits were sort of the proto-prestige class or achetype. Kits were archetypical fantasy concepts more specific than the base classes they were designed for. While they introduced some power-creep into the system we found that these completely optional rules added a lot of character diversity to our games without disrupting play too much. The elven blade singer is still a favorite concept of mine despite it being a bit over the top in the power creep department. I think its my love of those early kits that fuels my love of all the class options available in First Edition Pathfinder even if not every class is perfectly balanced.

Three-Actions, Pathfinder Second Edition: One of my hands down favorite things about Second Edition Pathfinder and a topic that has been written and talked about to death so I’ll keep it brief. Even after playing for a while now I’m still very fond of  Pathfinder’s new action economy. There’s more moving around the battle space, casting spells and comanding companions while limiting some options by restricting the character’s actions open new choices.

I know there have been a number of videos and discussions about the illusion of choice in Pathfinder but I think its all in how you play and I’m still finding I have plenty of real choices in combat.

Perram’s Snow Flake Cards, House Rule, Know Direction: Perram sets the rules for character creation at the onset of his game then allows players to draw cards from a special deck. Each card has a feature that will make each character stand out. It may allow the player to play an otherwise off limits race or it might be a special ability tied into the plot of the campaign. I recently began playing in a Rime of the Frost Maiden campaign and we each drew two cards from a very similar deck in secret. We had to use one of the cards but could use both if we chose. the secrets tied us into the campaign and will also set us apart as the secrets become known. Since I first heard about it years ago I’ve been thinking about implementing something similar in my own campaign. Now that Rime has primed my players for the experience I’ll be adding it to my very next campaign where I’ll be taking my first crack at 5e with the newly revised Ptolus.

In Pathfinder, D&D, and many other fantasy RPGs you get experience for killing things. Sometimes you get XP for the treasure you acquire (effectively doubling its impact as a reward). When you consider these rewards it is little wonder the trope of the PCs as little more than murder hobos has taken root. Kill creatures and take their stuff is a very lucrative cycle of play but not one that every group fully embraces.

Many GMs, either for ease of book keeping or to out and out minimize the murder hobo playstyle, have migrated to a milestone leveling system that awards levels (or XP) at select points in the campaign narrative. When you separate leveling from overcoming every obstacle you may find your players more inclined to focus on what it is you are rewarding.

Experience and treasure are just two of the ways you can reward your players. Hero points, Action Points, Story Points, Karma. . . All of these (xp included) and more make great ways to reinforce the style of play you’d like to see your PCs explore. Eberron is pulp inspired action adventure, to reward players who embrace the two-fisted shenanigans of pulp heroes the original campaign setting book introduced action points which would be earned for attempting over the top stunts, mouthy bravado, and other action movie tropes. Numenera is about exploration and uncovering the secrets of the prior worlds so rather than awarding XP for killing or over coming challenges XP is earned for discoveries. Even D&D’s Advantage / Disadvantage mechanics can be leveraged as a more immediate reward that can leverage a particular style of play.

My point: If you have the opportunity to explore other game systems, particularly those that emulate the style of play you most enjoy, and see what it is the rules reward and how they reward it.

I don’t mean dungeons should be out to get the party. There certainly is an appeal to that but like there are many types of NPCs (even just among villains) there should be a variety of dungeons. Over the years I’ve heard of cities (most notably New York) or starships as being the last character of an ensemble. This can be true of dungeons as well. Some dungeons as I pointed out might be openly hostile to the PCs while others, thanks to advance study or because of divine alignment could be virtually allied to the party.

Imagine a tomb of a long dead saint defiled by a group of tomb raiders and bandits who use the site as a camp for further raids on the local towns. When the PCs arrive to scour the bandits they may find the blessings of the saint to be upon them, giving the party a small leg up over the more numerous bandits. Especially if the departed saint and the party’s cleric share a deity.

The important part is that as the GM you should know you dungeon’s history and current events and your player’s characters should learn much of the dungeon’s story before, during, and/or after a delve. If the PCs in the previous example scout the bandit camp in advance the advantage they might have could be less divine and more a matter of secret entrances and hidden passages recorded in old church documents. Once inside the saint’s tomb these hidden corridors allow the PCs to pull a Die Hard sneaking around and killing bad guys in manageable numbers. You might also allow your party to bypass ancient traps much as Indiana Jones passed the three tests with his father’s Grail Diary during the final act of the Last Crusade.

Don’t overlook mid-dungeon discoveries either. Murals, and engravings can tell the PCs valuable secrets or warn the wary of traps and dangers. Using the same techniques as the filmmakers used in Last Crusade of warning our heroes of traps with riddles you can also scribe those riddles right into the walls of the dungeon themselves.

Not that heeding these warnings might not come with their own risks. In the temple of a dread devil or demon, following the ritualized instructions to “grovel before the master” (to avoid a decapitation trap) or “mortify the flesh” and deactivate a magical trap with a sacrifice of one’s own blood could eventually lead to taint and corruption.

Saying the words don’t come easily is an understatement. The words I need just don’t come at all. I want to talk about the Cypher System, Technopunk, or how I’m learning layout. I just want to talk or write about anything really but the fudge in my brain is congealing and hardening around the chopstick. Which of course alternates between bending dangerously close to breaking or slips entirely from my grip. My mental hand is sore from the effort and I’m tired.

Ideas are plentiful and teasingly just out of reach, like the sweet and tempting mass of fudge I’m still aimlessly trying to stir but my chopstick is stuck and bowing again which makes focusing on one idea for more than a moment seem impossible. So I stay on course forcing out word-after-word about how I’m struggling onto the page just so I keep writing.

It is worth noting that today is just one of many recent days where I’ve stared at my screen and stumbled along aimlessly turning out a mere handful of words for hours of exhausting mental effort. Yesterday, it felt like biking against the wind in a storm. Buffeted and slashed by icy-rainy wind my tires just never could find traction on the sodden pavement. The sensation followed me to bed and I awoke tired and sore from the continued exertions. 

As you may have guessed writer’s block rarely feels like a wall to me. Walls feel like truly insurmountable obstacles. Most of the time my writer’s block is more like writer’s strain. It’s a chore to put any words down but you have to slog through and put something down. Anything. 

I know deep down I need to relax. Try not to force it but that’s easier said than done because it is all about balance. And my writer’s block also comes from the other side of the spectrum. Those days I tip too far the other way and while the words flow easily enough I’m only able to focus for short periods of time. I’m distracted, flighty and procrastination prone. I’ll indulge this impulse for just a minute and get right back to work…but then there’s another distraction and another. Suddenly, I’ve wasted a whole day or enough of one and I buckle back down. . . and . . . Fudge!

Just because I know what patterns I’m falling into on these days doesn’t mean I’ll easily beat my writer’s block but sometimes . . . sometimes I can get myself knocked loose and turn the problem into a solution (like I just did for this stubborn blog). Unfortunately, more and more often lately as the pandemic keeps me from the outlets and contact I need most to stay invigorated I struggle with this more and more frequently. On the bright side, since starting this stream of consciousness blog an hour ago I think I know what I should be doing.

I don’t really fit into the Introvert  / Extrovert stereotypes. I have an unhealthy amount of social anxiety reaching out and talking to people can actually be hard for me which is certainly a clear indicator of an Introvert BUT I thrive on contact and positive interactions with people particularly, close friends which is why my day job is in retail management and customer service. I like being around lots of different people which is a common Extrovert trait.

It’s a contradiction that I often find hard to navigate. I don’t always reach out for help when I should because my introversion(?) keeps me somewhat distant (I’m not even all that good with social media) even when what I need (and know I need) is human contact beyond the three people I live with and the customers who get me through my day job. I need contact with my gamer friends. Playing games, talking games, or discussing the latest episode of WandaVision or the Mandalorian. Just sharing our mutual love of nerd culture and firing the sparks of imagination.

It’s very easy to cut oneself off. The internet often runs ugly once fun sites and communities are bitter and uninviting and those that still feel welcoming often spike my anxiety and I’ll delete posts. So, I guess I need to spend some time each day reaching out to my friends and contacts over all my insecurities and find ways to reconnect with the people and communities that matter to me and maybe I’ll reinvigorate myself enough to endure the pandemic doldrums and rediscover that place in myself where the words flow (if not easily) easier.

Full disclosure this isn’t a new revelation. But, I hope that acknowledging it so publicly (*anxiety spikes*) that I’ll finally listen to myself. *grins sheepishly*

So, thank you for indulging my bit of self reflection today. If you’re also having trouble staying engaged with writing, GMing, or other creative endeavors I hope that this Burst of Insight was at least a little helpful. And if you have a favorite way to keep your creative batteries charged and writer’s block at bay feel free to talk about it on the Know Direction Facebook page or in our Discord channel.

• Garabb is a doppelganger and an Identity thief who takes not only passwords and account records but also mimics full biometrics allowing them total access to their target’s holdings. Recently, Garabb impersonated a key member of a powerful corporate board. Shortly after cleaning out the target’s accounts they were approached by a shadowy figure asking Garabb to continue impersonating the board member. Garabb knows something very strange is going on and is becoming more and more nervous. Slipping their handlers for a few hours Garabb in a previous guise contacts the PCs. Garabb hires them forcibly extract Garabb’s current identity from the corporate compound. Just after the meeting Garabb turns himself back into his handlers berating them for abandoning him.
• Tanner is a halfling star-yacht racer and a one-time friend of the PCs. While on a time trial, He picked up an unusual anomaly along the race route. Afterward every night since he’s dreamt of something pushing its way through the anomaly into this universe. He’s made two sweeps of the of the race route and hasn’t found any sign of the anomaly but the dreams become more and more vivid and urgent. Finally, after several sleepless nights and a mysteriously vanished racer Tanner reaches out to the PCs certain a terrible alien force is pushing into this universe.
• The PCs take in the sights, aromas, and exotic wares a forbidden market in a wandering asteroid while searching for [what they require for the current story] one of the PCs discovers an ancient stone puzzle box with silver inlay resembling a circuit board. The box literally speaks to the PC offering up the wealth of its contents if only the PC purchase it and take it away far away from the market. Note: Have a plan for if the PC take the stone box and if they leave it behind.

I’m pretty sure I saw this little jerk ring leading the mob crashing through my fictitious study.

As the world careens from crisis to crisis it is hard not to go numb. To rage. Or sink into depression. Sometimes all of those and worse. How then do we maintain creativity in the face of pandemics, protests and violent counter protests, then even outright attacks on democracy?

Honestly, I have no idea. I haven’t fared so well myself in these tumultuous times of living history. As, 2020 began even into the early days of the pandemic I had big goals for 2020. Personal creative projects that have fizzled for the moment awaiting a time for me to become productive again. Even this blog which I really enjoy writing most of the time has taken far more effort and energy than it ever has before. I’ve spent the last several months thinking, “Just get to January. Put 2020 behind us and your Mojo will comeback.” While a bitter, definitively Gen X portion of my mind waited for the other shoe to drop. We didn’t wait long. Sigh.

So anyway, the world’s upside down. My creativity is shot . . . I’m watching my friends via social media complain of much the same, which seems to emphasize my own depression because now I’m worried about all of them and this grim spiral keeps cycling and recycling.

Then, somebody, another gamer on the internet kinda pissed me off. What people on the internet arguing—It’s unthinkable, I know, but there I was arguing (generally) that you can run nearly any setting with any system. And sure, some systems either because of work required or the general feel of the rules won’t appeal to every group but you can certainly run Cyberpunk in the Cypher system! Two things were noteworthy about this discussion. One it really was a discussion, it was a little circular at times but it wasn’t a flame war. It remained civil. Two, I was angry. I don’t normally get angry about games but I was fired up. As I broke my first 500 words of Cypher System Cyberpunk notes I realized I was wrong I wasn’t angry (at least not with the guy I’d been debating) I was passionate somehow that got tangled up with my anger with the world and the words and work just flowed. At least until the other shoe dropped and the events at the US capital dimmed my enthusiasm and slowed my pace.

I should emphasize slowed not stopped, I still have that fire and I’m keeping it stoked. So I guess the point of all of this is we’re living a messed-up crazy time and whatever it is that inspires your creativity run with it while you can and walk with it if that’s the only pace you can keep. Just try not to lose hope and create while you can.

My best wishes to everyone struggling right now.

Most often when we talk about reboots we’re talking about rebooting a story because it was a rousing success. Today, I’m thinking of rebooting one of the most disappointing gaming experiences I’ve ever had. In 1988, one of the guys we regularly gamed with brought us a new game and a singularly brilliant campaign seed poorly executed. Now to be fair we were all 14 or 15 years old at the time so we were all prone to some really basic mistakes.

Our GM, Clay, had a cinematic vision of what Cyberpunk could be. For the first session we faced biker gangs and strutted Night City’s mean streets. Then in the Second longer session we were hired for our first real run. A famous elite runner needed a support team help him take key data . . . in reality we were his patsies. It was possibly one of the most frustrating sessions I’ve ever played. The elite runner stole the spotlight and outshined every PC in everything they specialized in. Then he turned his preternatural abilities on the team and proceeded to hunt down and slaughter the lot of us effortlessly. My first TPK . . . Except we didn’t stay dead. We woke in a Trauma Team recruitment ward.

Between the second and third sessions we were able to buy a fortune in cyberware representing the necessary repairs performed on our injured bodies . . . so from a narrative point of view we’d accidentally “sold our souls” to Trauma Team. We needed to find a way to pay back our debt—or boom! While also finding a way to get vengeance on a runner who had the skills and experience that made us look like children.

He then narrated the next few months with a montage of missions before dropping us in an active medical extraction under fire. Which resulted in our second TPK and the premature end of the campaign.

Despite, all of the frustration, I still feel like this could have been one of the most incredible Cyberpunk campaigns hence my desire for a reboot. Sadly, Clay passed away several years ago so while social media has allowed me to reconnect with most of my first gaming group I’ll never have the opportunity to see how he might have rebooted this campaign but I’ll try to do my old friend proud.

Benefitting, from the experience we didn’t have in 88, there are a lot of things I would do differently. One I wouldn’t run a hard mode intro with an active intent to kill all the PCs. When Clay ran the scene I’m pretty sure he fudged a lot of the rolls to guarantee our demise or just plain stacked the deck against us. It was dramatic sure but also fostered an adversarial Player v. GM vibe.

Instead, I’d be clear going in what the intent was and have the PCs built with a group origin that had them betrayed together and allow them to outfit their PCs with the bonus euros. I’d also have each PC define how the villain contacted them originally and what secret or leverage did he have over them to get them to take this job. Depending on the answer I’d probably reward a bonus skill point or similar advantage related to the hook. Similar, to how campaign traits function in the Pathfinder APs.

Now one of the cool things about a Trauma Team campaign is you can have a lot of character types present. Medtechs have the most obvious value but nearly every PC could have a place on the team. Solos are the trained operators who provide tactical support to the less martial members of the team. Nomads and techies keep the hardware flying on mission and between missions. Netrunners slice through security barriers between the extraction team and the injured clients. Medias and Rockerboys might be team leaders or run comms while a Cop or Corporate might be Trauma Team in the field oversight.

Mission Concept: A dying Client the team attempt to rescue passes a PC an encrypted data stick. And urges them to deliver the stick to his contact in dangerous part of the sprawl. Even if they don’t read the data someone is taking no chances just being close to the data stick can be lethal as a deadly assassin stops at nothing to secure the data and erase all trace of its existence.

Mission Concept: While making a series of standard and mostly uneventful runs to collect Clients and get them each to medical facilities or their corporate fortresses. The PCs are routed to pick up a transplant patient a young teen who doesn’t seem like he could afford the low fee service let alone the tier of service the team is providing today. The Kid is talkative and likeable. This is a role-play rich opportunity. Turns out the kid is selling his heart lungs and spinal fluid to save an 80 year old corporate executive in exchange the corporation will keep his mom and brothers from starving.

Mission Concept: The Client has only superficial wounds but is someone important from one of the PCs past. Possibly friend, family, or lover the PC desperately wants to keep alive or an enemy the PC would very much rather see dead but can’t kill without violating the client contract and forfeiting their own contract (BOOM!). As an added complication the “ambulance” is hit hand goes down in the middle of a boostergang war. The team escorts the Client from tenement to tenement trying to stay ahead of whomever is pursuing the Client and away from the booster gang factions.

Mission Concept: After running a few baseline missions consider a mission outside of Night City. A corporate personnel transport drone goes down in the wilderness during wild fire season. The Team is one of several dispatched to locate the Clients before the fires or one of the many bands of nomad marauders catches them.

Mission Concept: Another mission montage scenario. Between Trauma Team assignments the crew is tracking information on the Villain who “killed” their old selves. At a critical moment the PCs must choose between getting to a Client or to the information . . . unless they can figure out a way to do it all.

I miss Clay, and his visceral and evocative style of running games. I hope this honors the mission concept laid out by one of my first and best GMs. In memory of our friend and on behalf of my original gaming crew, I want to remind folks, especially this year while we’re all isolated from our typical support networks. It’s okay to need help, it is okay to need support. It’s okay to be, “not okay.” If you need someone reach out and if you don’t know where else to go in the US you can always reach counselors via the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 24 hours a day [800-273-8255].

By The Window header image by ParallelVision, used with permission

So assuming your players are not comfortable spotlighting only one PC frequently you are going to be playing with an ensemble of player characters all of whom will need some time in the spotlight. If you are running your game in Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder and want a mechanical way to award and reinforce spotlight time Owen KC Stephens has some excellent rules for that over on his blog. Mechanical solutions aside, you will also want to carve out time for each character in your adventure narrative.

One way to do this is to run an “A” plot and a “B” plot during the same adventure. On TV these plots are either linked at the climax or just thematically. You don’t have to do this frequently but running a campaign with this in mind gives more of your players a chance to shine even if one of your plots focuses on only one or two characters. And yes for the record I’m recommending splitting the party from time to time.

Another important consideration at this point is continuity. What is going to be the through line plot of the season arc for your campaign? Mine will likely be a major threat to the settlement of Sanctuary Hills. Something seen, or whispered of, several times over the sessions always getting closer. I’d like the final episode culminate in the PCs acquiring all the parts they need to activate and use the suits of power armor they have procured throughout the season to full effect and but given the importance of the Institute in the overall story

Revisiting the Robin D. Laws article I referenced a couple of weeks back (TV Structure: Next Week on an all new Episode of . . .) I think my Fallout campaign season one looks something like a Netflix season with only 10 episodes. I have only a few listed below because while it’s a decent place to start, I’d definitely flesh out some B plots and specific adventures for the other PCs. The survivor’s plots are easy because they are hard wired into the campaign from the source material.

Now, one of our least favorite elements of the video game is how despite there being four factions you can join there are only three you can ally with for the finale. There is no actual storyline for the Minutemen at the game’s conclusion so that provides a lot of storytelling possibilities in the first season as well as later seasons.

Now since this is the first arc of the campaign we’ll want to focus on building up and fortifying Sanctuary hills and establishing the Minutemen as the protectors of the Commonwealth.

Episode 101: Preston Garvey (NPC) and PC Minutemen local to Sanctuary Hills reopen vault 111 in search of prewar supplies and are able to thaw the Sole Survivor (PC-1). Back in the settlement, they offer PC-1 a place to stay and a purpose in the Commonwealth as a member of the Minutemen. They also offer to help find the character’s son. (Focus on PC-1)

Episode 102: While exploring and patrolling the area around Sanctuary Hills the PCs stumble on a pack of feral ghouls living in a polluted cave behind the nearby Red Rocket. (Focus on the Ensemble)

Episode 103: Preston Garvey radios the camp from Concord he’s trapped with a group of refugees in the ruins of the freedom museum and will require backup. At the Conclusion of the episode Garvey promotes PC-2 to general and grants them Command of Sanctuary Hills. (Focus on PC-2)

Episode 104: During a supply run to Diamond City PCs may split up to accomplish personal tasks. A PCs dark secret catches up to them and PC-1 pursues clues to track down Shaun enlisting the aid of a mysterious stranger PI, Nick Valentine. (Focus on PC-1 and likely will use the Memory Den, that used to be in Good Neighbor to identify the NPC Kellogg who kidnapped Shaun) [[This is a good opportunity to showcase the other factions through the plotlines tied to the other PCs]]

Episode 105: Back home, an old flame/friend/rival of PC-3 arrives in Sanctuary Hills wounded and scared. Mutant raiders attacked their settlement and kidnapped their friends and family. They need the Minutemen’s help. (Focus PC-3)

…..

Episode 109: PC’s use their Power Armor to help retake Fort Independence aka The Castle from a mirelurk queen and her brood.  Episode cliffhanger Nick arrives with information about Kellogg.

Episode 110: After just missing Kellogg where Nick led the PCs first. PC-1 and the rest of the PCs finally track down and can confront Kellogg in his base at Fort Hagen. If Kellogg is killed it is revealed he is a synth…which is a deliberate change.

Season one stingers for season two include Kellogg telling the PC Shaun is beyond their reach because the Institute has him. And the armed arrival of the Brotherhood of Steel.

My dumb brain really won’t give up this idea and I find myself spiraling closer and closer to running a Fallout 4 limited campaign despite not having the time or bandwidth. I keep hoping this blog series will scratch that itch but so far I’m not convinced. Right now I just hope you folks enjoy my efforts.

Recently I’ve been talking reboots specifically rebooting Fallout 4 for a tabletop campaign.  Previously, we journeyed in the way back machine to 2002 and one of my favorite Dragon Magazine articles. Robin D. Laws’ article, “T.V. Structure, NEXT WEEK on an All New Episode of . . .” laid out how to plot an episodic campaign which feels like a great way to adapt Fallout from console to tabletop.

My plan is to use some of the video game’s questlines in much the same way the MCU uses comic book cannon as a basis for the MCU. Obviously, the MCU makes changes from the original comics for the big screen. Likewise, we don’t need to adhere 100% to the source material either plotlines can be bent and reshaped to best suit the table. For example, if several players want to be pre-war neighbors, maybe one is a ghoul still in residence in Sanctuary Hills while more than one PC survived the cryogenic sleep. With multiple survivors, it’s likely that both of Sean’s parents survived and both could be played by PCs. Just as likely it is possible that no one wants to play as the “Sole Survivor” of the video game. In such a case the videogame survivor can be a NPC and the PCs could be helping with the missing child plotline or that plot could be reduced in importance or eliminated entirely.

Before I lock in all of my possible plots I would be sure to host a session zero to determine what my players would want in a Fallout themed campaign. Including specifically who they want to play and what concepts and stories from the videogame are most important. As a thought experiment however I can make some guesses and of course indulge some of my own interests.

• Exploration and Community Building: Confession time, I haven’t read Kingmaker yet, partly because I was a player in the early chapters of the AP and now I’m eagerly awaiting the Pathfinder 2 adaptation. That said I think digging into Paizo’s big hexploration and kingdom building adventure will only serve to benefit how I go about constructing the campaign.

• The Institute: From pretty early on in Fallout 4 the faction known as the Institute begins to crop up in conversations and is a central force in the plotline of Sean’s abduction. Since my players are well aware of how that plays out in the game this is a good place to deviate from the script. We might lose some of the emotional kick of the video game but honestly most of my players are well aware of how the story is supposed to end.

Now as I said the Institute begins to appear pretty early in the game, rumors that the institute is kidnapping people and replacing them with synths (androids nearly indistinguishable from real humans) is creating paranoia and distrust. Again, as I pointed out in my last article Suspicion is a central theme in Fallout 4. So because the institute is such a key element to both plot and theme, I might double-down on the Institute’s presence drawing additional inspiration from the West World remake. If I have a known synth PC I might run a flashback scene with an institute scientist using a special pip boy to tune and set the PCs final parameters. Obviously, this would be an institute scientist the PCs ultimately meet.

• Crafting: Making / improving equipment is a big deal in the video game for Fallout, to feel like Fallout 4 it’s going to need to be a central component of the tabletop experience as well. Fortunately, several game systems offer rules on how to handle crafting in play.

Next Time: Quests into Episodes With a few core guesses about what’s important to a Fallout campaign or better yet actual player input I can dig into the quest system and start outlining my episode order for season one of my campaign. Each session or occasionally multiple sessions comprise an episode to keep with the TV theme and a complete story arc of about 10-20 episodes would comprise a season.

Way back in Dragon issue 293, the magazine ran an article by Robin D. Laws that has been a touchstone of my campaign planning for nearly twenty years called “T.V. Structure, NEXT WEEK on an All New Episode of . . .” The article helps lay out an episodic campaign framework that I feel would work very well for a campaign based on rebooting a video game. Like episodic television shows video games such as Fallout contain easily compartmentalized quests that can become the focus of a single session or short series of sessions.

Mr. Laws sets down a few basic guidelines to get a GM started: Decide on a formula, a theme, tone, and your production design and use these elements to put together to form your campaign bible. I’ll talk about how I’m approaching each of these elements for my hypothetical campaign through the Wastelands.

Formula

Your formula is supposed to be just a couple of quick sentences to explain what the characters will do each session. For the Fallout Reboot I decided to borrow the kernel of an idea that Owen K.C. Stephens has been talking about on his blog. He’s recently begun a Fantasy Age campaign in which the PCs all belong to an adventuring guild called The Intrepideurs. There are a number of benefits to this sort of frame work: it’s flexible, a GM can run a session no matter how many of the player’s show up it’s also simple and the, “why would my character do this,” question is hard-baked into the campaign’s premise. Which is something I’d like to tap into.

So my formula is: The PCs are all members of the Minutemen based in the settlement of Sanctuary Hills. They are tasked with protecting their settlement and the helpless of the Commonwealth.

Like Owen, I end up with a framework of small groups going out and doing difficult and dangerous things—with the added benefit of a home-base and friends and families to protect.

Theme and Tone

Your theme is a broad (preferably simple) idea that your campaign will explore. In rebooting Fallout 4, I thought a lot about the surface themes of coming home, family, rebuilding, and what defines humanity but my research led me to a video from one of the game’s lead developer Emil Pagliarulo that pinpointed the theme in the video, “At its core Fallout 4 is about androids that look like humans. Okay. And so,” he continues, “. . . the most important theme in Fallout 4 is Suspicion. Who is this person sitting next to me? Are they human? Do they want to do me harm?” He goes on to ask additional questions “Am I human?” and “What are my motivations?”

I think if I’m going to accurately reboot Fallout 4 for tabletop I need to lean into that theme of suspicion and dress it in the surface themes we identified: Home, family, rebuilding, and redefining humanity, as well as the colorful tropes common to all the Fallout games.

Which brings us to Tone. Now, Robin D. Laws’ article tells us, “The tone is the mood you want to establish: Do you want a lighthearted romp or a grisly horror show? The tone might be obvious from the theme you decide on, or it might need further elaboration.” Fallout has a pretty specific set of tones. First we have a setting set in the ruins of a gleaming nineteen-fifties future. Like the patina of rust on an muscle car shows us the hard steel beneath the once candy apple red gleam of the car’s hood; the crumbling ruins of the Commonwealth reveals the hidden dystopia beneath the optimistic utopian veneer carefully painted and polished by the likes of Vault-Tec and Nuka-Cola.

And like that gleam versus decay, contrasting tones abound in Fallout. Upbeat music about dying in a nuclear holocaust, the cheerful humor of Vault boy and the other corporate mascots juxtaposed with the countless images of tragedy and betrayal. So our primary tone is one of grim humor.

Production Design

In the Dragon Magazine article. We are reminded that even in the earliest stages of a TV shows production the show’s creator needs to establish a look for the series. Mr. Laws then encourages GMs to fill their campaign bibles with text and images that will fire the player’s imaginations. Particularly in areas their characters will spend a lot of time. In rebooting a video game we have a huge advantage when it comes to production design over building a homebrew campaign from scratch. There are thousands of Fallout 4 screenshots online, countless maps, character close-ups, and fan-art.

My PCs will be based in Sanctuary Hills but for my campaign the region will be a collection of three VG canon locations. Sanctuary Hills is the neighborhood suburb, the nearby vault 111 and the Red Rocket. The Red Rocket will be a forward fort guarding the road to the main portion of the settlement. While the vault serves as secure extra provisions storage and a safe fall back point in case of emergency. So I’ll collect appropriate art for each of those sites as well as art for key NPCs. Now I like “casting” actors in my NPCs roles so I may do side by side images of actors I want for certain roles and images of those character from the videogame.

With these starting concepts laid out in a rudimentary campaign bible I can start to get to work laying out the actual campaign plan so come back in two weeks as I continue to develop my Fallout campaign plan.

A couple of posts back I talked about rebooting settings to create new campaigns and while I was thinking on the topic of reboots I stumbled on a D&D 5e character sheet in the style of Fallout complete with art of Vault Boy and my mind got to turning on how I might run a fallout tabletop mini-campaign. 

Right now, I don’t have the time or bandwidth to create a whole campaign (even a short one) set in Fallout’s retro future wastelands but that doesn’t stop me from contemplating it. A lot. Fortunately for me I have this blog that gives me an excuse to dabble in it even if it never hits my table.

As I’ve said before I’m a sucker for a good character sheet and whomever put the fallout sheet I found together did an excellent job (link)…BUT…They used 5e pretty much unchanged. Don’t get me wrong 5e is a great game, I’ve had fun playing it the few times I’ve had the opportunity so this isn’t me calling out the newest version of D&D as a bad game. It’s just not the engine I would use for a Fallout game. It doesn’t feel like Fallout to me, D&D is just too heroic.

Not that I would probably use the new rules from Modiphius either. Again not because its a bad game in this case it’s back to I don’t have the band width. Learning a new ruleset for a one-shot or short-shot mini-campaign seems like more work than I want to put in right now.

So despite just saying I don’t have the time my dumb brain decided, “Ooooh! Let’s plan a Fallout mini-campaign and even make a character sheet! That’ll be awesome!”

First step then was deciding on a ruleset to use. Normally, I default to the Cypher System, or Genesys, which has a perfectly good Fallout theme but, no. my brain wasn’t having any of it. The rules I would theoretically use needed to be something SPECIAL (yeah, that pun is intentional. You’re welcome.) 

If you’re looking to capture the right feel in a reboot the rules and character sheet can be used to immediately set the right tone. Fallout needs to be dangerous and gritty. We’ve been playing Delta Green and I recently grabbed a copy of the 7th edition of Call of Cthulhu (CoC) so the d100 based rules of Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying (BRP) were firmly in my mind as I started my planning. Call of Cthulhu has a reputation, many players who have never cracked a cover of a CoC know the investigators are fragile in both mind and body. Not a terrible place to start a Wastelands game.

So, I got to thinking about the character sheet and googled some Vault Boy images and decided to forgo the normal BRP attributes and skills. Instead I opted for the “SPECIAL” attributes (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck) and a short custom skill list derived from the skills used across the various video games.

Once, I had a rough character sheet (with borrowed art from the internet) I started to think about the sort of story I’d tell. Come back in two weeks and I’ll lay out a few of the key details I’d focus on to properly reboot Fallout 4 as a tabletop mini-campaign.

Instead of telling your players what is happening in a scene you can instead ask questions. Not only will you often be surprised by the directions events go your players will be invested in what happens next. This is a great tool for improvisational play when your players take an unexpected turn and torpedo your plans for the session. You ask a few questions and suddenly the story is moving again. This is also a great technique for exploring character backstories. Especially if, like me, you have a player who has to play the character for a bit before she gets to know the character’s history. A lot of my wifes character backgrounds have to form organically during play. Asking the right questions helps this process along and has resulted in some amazing stories.

Sometimes, instead of planning a session I’ll start with a scene and a few direct questions and see where the adventure takes us.

So what questions should you ask at the table? 

There is no right answer to this question except to say they should challenge the player and in turn invite them to challenge you. They should also either advance a story or inject conflict or drama. To that end I offer you a selection of sample questions and suggestions on how they might be used.

A thief has slipped close and picked your pocket. What small or personal item did they take? What problems does the loss of this item cause? Make sure the player knows the item stolen need not be something on the character sheet but can be an item from their backstory, something they’re holding for an NPC ally or patron. It can even be something they stole first between this session and the last. The item stolen is less important than its impact on your story. You’ve asked your player to create their own Macguffin.

Imagine your player says it’s an engagement ring he’s waiting to give his beloved and that it’s a family heirloom. Maybe it’s the bank note the PCs employer tasked them to collect. The fact that the employer is a crime kingpin not known for forgiveness certainly complicates things.

Wandering the halls of a creepy old mansion your character sees an unsettling statue. What does the statue look like and why does its appearance fill your character with dread? This is a great set up during a horror investigation. Rather than trying to imagine what will frighten a player’s character you ask directly. Additionally, the follow up question gives you a chance to explore the elements that frighten the character in subsequent scenes.

This is one of the few questions you might want to repeat with each PC. Likely not the same piece of art or even in the same scene but when stretched out through the adventure you can ratchet up the tension as each character’s fears are revealed and explored.

You turn a corner and see a familiar silhouette from behind. Who would you most want to see right now and why? Maybe the player says he’d like to see his estranged brother that’s been missing for the entire campaign. As the GM you can tell the player that while the figure isn’t his brother. It is a childhood friend who was close with the brother the last the PC knew.

What if the player says they want to see the campaign’s big bad so they can get the drop on them from behind. You might turn the tables on the PCs expectations and agree it is the person they believe is the villain is in the alley. As the PCs close in on the villain they fall to their knees pivoting as they tumble down. Red blood pooling in copious amounts. The villain who was more powerful than the PCs has been killed by someone even more powerful and now the PCs don’t even know who they’re pursuing anymore.

An old contact warns you someone’s in town to settle a score with you. Who’s coming for you and why? This one is pretty straight forward and self-explanatory. However simple it seems it can still be very interesting. That’s much of the fun of this sort of improvisational GMing: The constant surprise.

When a player is particularly clever with an answer or sets a truly entertaining complication in their own path consider offering them a small reward such as a few XP, a hero point, inspiration or some other in-game meta-currency that rewards them for their creativity.

HBO’s Perry Mason

I recently began watching the gritty and hard-boiled reboot of Perry Mason on HBO. If you aren’t too attached to the lighter toned original it’s good TV. Between this, the MCU (which basically reboots the comic books), and the Disney changes to the Star Wars timelines have all had me thinking about bringing reboots to the gaming table. Reboots are generally frowned on by fans of the originals and we’ve probably all heard plenty of laments of, “Hollywood has no new ideas,” the truth is I have enjoyed a number of rebooted stories over the years.

So, while the core ideas may not be original, the reimaginings are often novel and inventive. The best take what works and update the aspects that haven’t aged as well all while making the story feel at once new and yet familiar. Now, I’ve talked in the past about adapting settings from one rule set to another and today’s topic is not dissimilar: Campaign reboots. You can reimagine a familiar campaign setting, taking what works best for you and your players while changing a few aspects to surprise and excite your player as they are discovered.

What makes a good reboot is subjective to say the least. For a moment let’s return to Perry Mason. I’m a sucker for gritty noir and while I watched (and enjoyed) Raymond Burr as the title character I wasn’t super invested in the original series. Nor have I read the books, so I was all in for the new series and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Conversely, my mother (who apparently stopped watching after the first couple of episodes) was rather disappointed in the series because of those very same choices. 

Similarly, I have a friend, we’ll call Adam, who completely gave up on Mission Impossible when the first movie turned the hero of the two prior television series into the main villain.  This reversal only makes sense if you ignore the nine prior seasons of storytelling to just focus on the spies on impossible missions and impossibly lifelike latex masks. That flaw aside, the franchise is a major success because the central premise (spies, impossible missions, and trickery with masks) is still a lot of fun and many of the viewers aren’t so attached to the characters from originals as my buddy Adam.

Okay then how do you bring the concept of a campaign reboot to the table successfully?

As always begin by talking to your players. The trick of any successful reboot is striking the best balance between classic tropes from the original and injecting new and innovative twists. To get the most buy in for the campaign have a “writer’s room,” discussion with your players either as a part of a session zero or better yet before it. This discussion should help you determine what everyone expects from the campaign and what about the setting wasn’t so great. This can be applied to published settings such as Golarion, The Realms, Eberron, or any of the hundreds of other available worlds. You can apply the same discussion points to any TV or film franchise you want to set your game in or even an old homebrew world you want to revisit. 

Like Perry Mason you might totally shift the tone but retain other thematic elements. For example this weekend I ran a potentially stand-alone Spelljammer reboot. My players said they didn’t care what we did; they were 100% in for whatever I rolled out. So I indulged myself and rolled out a reboot of one of the wackiest most fun campaign settings TSR released.

Thirty years ago when I first played Spelljammer the setting was wild, gonzo, and almost Scooby-Doo-cartoonish or at least that’s how we played it. When 3rd edition rolled out the setting got an official reboot in the Polyhedron portion of Dungeon 92. The Shadow of a Spider Moon mini-game elegantly reframed the setting within a single star system, gave us much improved character artwork, and a tight backstory for the immediate setting. I never played Shadow of a Spider Moon but as I began my own Spelljammer reboot I drew heavy inspiration from the 3e minigame and grounded my tone (a little) in the feel pulp action movies rather than just wild and gonzo. At the climax of our stand alone adventure the heroes saw the rise of a dire threat in the form of an undead fleet bent on dominating the unsuspecting planets of the system. I fully expect any subsequent adventures might be tinged with a little horror. Much in the same way Indiana Jones, The Mummy (1999), and the Pirates of the Caribbean balance action, humor, and horror together.

In this time of social distancing and the rise of virtual gaming I’m finding more excuses to reach out to friends from around the country and play one off or limited run campaigns. I think that rebooted stories and settings from our collective gaming past (as well as books and movies) can provide an easy familiar starting point but can still be twisted into something new and exciting. Look for more discussions of reboot campaigns in the coming weeks.

Now, years ago I played Call of Cthulhu (CoC) and had a blast, but other than the d20 version (which never quite “felt” right) I’ve never owed a copy of CoC itself. So I began looking into picking up the latest edition of the game. At the same time I was listening to the Glass Cannon Network’s New Game, Who Dis pandemic podcast for their patrons and specifically the Delta Green episode.

Prior to the podcast, I knew Delta Green was a series of CoC supplements in the 90’s and possibly into the early 2000’s but I knew little more than that. I certainly didn’t realize it had evolved into its own RPG. Having listened to the GCP actual play of Last Things Last I was very interested in Delta Green and curious about how it stacked up to Call of Cthulhu so I asked around (mostly among my friends on social media). Ultimately, it turned out my friends just swayed me to just go out and buy both games but I did start with Delta Green based solely on the mechanics for character bonds. Those NPCs the PC agents need in their lives to stay balanced and sane but at a very serious cost to those very relationships.

I ran my own players (including my 14 year old son) through Last Things Last and it was a frightening good time.

It needs to be addressed that cosmic horror particularly the Cthulhu Mythos is tainted by Lovecraft’s rampant racism so I’ve been seeking out other writers to inspire my games not just those original stories. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle possesses a singularly African-American voice as an excellent book. While set in the 1920’s its relevance to current events today highlights we haven’t come as far as some of us might have thought and that might be more monstrous and horrifying than the creatures of the mythos. I also just picked up reading the all women authored anthology, She Walks in Shadows. I haven’t finished all the stories yet but I’m very much enjoying the tales so far. I highly encourage players, GMs (Handlers and Keepers) to explore the mythos with these sorts of alternate and often under-represented voices your games will be richer for it.

 Star Wars (1987 / d6): I have been a lifelong fan of Star Wars. For all their flaws, I enjoy all three trilogies of the Skywalker Saga and the other new movies. I read a lot of the EU novels and I’ve watched eagerly what I’ve had time to from the new TV offerings. So, it should come as no surprise that when I discovered West End Games’ Star Wars RPG in 1987 I leapt on it. The early Star Wars RPG taught me things about narrative play I hadn’t expected: Cut scenes, starting the sessions in media res, and adventure scripts. The last of those I didn’t really appreciate until much later and lately I’ve been toying with experimenting with this tool again. We had some success with the script tool while revisiting one my favorite adventures from the d6 era last year. We began the session by paraphrasing the accompanying script and it got everyone in character and playing without a lot of GM exposition. I can see this being super useful for convention play and one shot adventures.

Laws of the Night (Wild etc.): Originally released as Mind’s Eye Theater: The Masquerade and The Apocalypse, I played these game for a very long time. Some of my best and most of my worst roleplaying experiences occurred while playing these games.

I enjoy the classic World of Darkness as a setting (especially tabletop Werewolf) but I have something of a love-hate relationship with the LARP rules and the culture of play where the back-biting politics makes its way into real world relationships. Of all the lessons I’ve learned from gaming some of the most useful real-world lessons have come from the in- and out-of-game politics centered around vampire society.

My biggest problems with the system, stems from the fact that the rules were designed with shorter and more intimate games in mind. Often intended to be played as a special session as a part of a longer running tabletop campaign or as a short story within the World of Darkness. In larger-long running LARPs with fifty or more players the system mechanics become overtaxed. Neonate vampires gain the potency of elder Kindred in just a couple of years of weekly play and when a character kicks around for nearly a decade they are huge and start to run out of things to spend XP on. While in genre at 10 years they’re still babies compared to their hundreds or thousands of years old superiors.

While a game can accommodate certain styles of play doesn’t mean it’s at its best in those cases. This is not to say players who enjoy large organized play LARPs like I used to be a part of are doing it wrong. It’s just not for me anymore. I’d certainly consider playing in a LARP again if it was small, intimate, and limited in scope.

GURPS: While I think Palladium’s rules may have been the first multi-genre game system I had experience with our group pretty much stayed solidly locked on superheroes or Robotech and every genre required a whole new rulebook. With GURPS I was introduced to the actual infinite possibilities of the hobby all in one book. My battered copy of the rules supported dungeon crawls, super heroes, time-travelers, historical settings, far future and weirder combinations on occasion.

Most compelling was the ability to make exactly the character you wanted to play. I’m pretty sure GURPS cemented my ongoing love of generic rules systems. It was also the first game where I replaced my rulebook because I wore out the original.

Another strength of the GURPS line has always been the sourcebooks. I’m not actively playing GURPS but I still tap one or more setting guides to add depth and details to whatever campaign I may be running.

Cyberpunk: 2013 may be history now but when I first discovered cyberpunk it felt impossibly far in the future and the 2020 of Cyberpunk’s next edition even more removed. So here we are midway through real 2020 and I want to know where are is all the marvelous tech to go with our current dystopic conditions? Cyberpunk came at the exact right time in my life. A violent post-modern-punk-rebellion with an ethos of look badass kicking ass was just what we needed to get out of the dungeon.

One of my favorite aspects of the Cyberpunk books is large portions of the texts were written in the vernacular of the setting, the effect immerses the reader in the setting. Some of the best examples included the gear sourcebooks called Chromebooks (not the Google kind) and the Corporate Sourcebooks. The Chromebooks read like digital catalogs selling your PC on the latest styles in armored clothes and hottest new firearms. While the Corporation sourcebooks read almost like annual reports rather than RPG supplements. The sense of a believable lived in world has shaped how I’ve written content for my own homebrew settings as well as at least one professional product.

FATE: Whether you know it as FATE or Fudge, this game features a flexible narrative ruleset suitable for nearly any setting. When I first encountered the Fudge ruleset it was sold as a tool kit to create your own RPG. The next time I encountered the rules it was in Evil Hat’s Spirit of the Century then later in FATE Core and FATE Accelerated. The designer’s at Evil Hat really polished the rough edges off Fudge and codified the assorted pieces into a coherent game system still every bit as flexible as the original.

Improvisational play is a key aspect of FATE’s design. Players and GM alike are empowered to shape the narrative not just through the actions of the characters but also through setting details of the environment the characters can interact with.

Numenera (Cypher System): Numenera and the Cypher System are my current favorite setting and rules system combination. The Cypher System utilizes unique resource management mechanics that empowers players to choose how they may effect dice outcomes while the GM is empowered to intrude on the players with story complications for XP rather than depend on the randomness of dice.

The Ninth World, the default setting of Numenera is a weird techno-fantasy world of ancient ruins to explore, strange and hideous creatures to face, and wondrous relics to discover. It satisfies many of my favorite aspects of Gamma World and traditional fantasy RPGs like D&D and Pathfinder.

Now this list is far from exhaustive. Nearly every game I’ve played has had an influence on my personal style and gaming preferences. Some omissions were hard to lose but ultimately I think I got the list right.

D&D (multiple editions): Let’s go ahead and get this one out of the way. The summer of ‘83 I joined a board game club at the neighborhood park where I made several new friends. One of those friends invited me and a few others to try out a game his dad had picked up but they hadn’t played more than once. I accepted but had no idea what to expect. The game came in what seemed to be an unimpressively sized box and had longer instruction manuals than I had ever seen in a game…and yet I fell in love. The Elmore and Easley artwork captured the imagination. Over that summer we played every day.

Eventually, we progressed to AD&D and then Second Edition. I played D&D off and on for decades until we finally switched to Pathfinder. Even D&D 5e which I’ve really only dabbled in has given me a tremendous amount of inspiration. I love the Advantage / Disadvantage mechanics and despite not playing the game I’ve been reading the Monster’s Know what They’re Doing by Keith Ammann and I’m finding much of his advice to be invaluable for other games.

Thanks to D&D, I’ve wandered across a dozen or more published worlds and made life-long friends doing it. (For example, the guy who introduced me to D&D in the summer of 83? We were in each other’s weddings and still talk about once a week or more.)

Pathfinder: And with D&D out of the way I figure we’ll hit the other really obvious influence: First Edition Pathfinder. From playtest to final release Pathfinder became my game of choice for most of its run and is still even with other awesome options it still holds up as a game I love to play.

When the playtest came out all of my years of tinkering with rules felt vindicated. And I expanded my own efforts in rules redesign. Over the years we’ve played several d20 one offs with hybrid and variant rules. I don’t often throw major house rules into major campaigns because I want my players to be able to reference the rulebooks and know what the rule will be six months to a year into the campaign. I did toy with a heavily house ruled campaign and made pretty serious headway into creating a character specific set of variant rulebook documents we could print and play with but life happened and that campaign idea didn’t progress very far. (I talked about that campaign concept here before see the Maze articles.)

Speaking of campaigns I would be remiss if I didn’t address the Adventure Path line and model. AP’s have greatly improved how I run published adventures and even my homebrew campaigns have improved since I’ve had the opportunity to play and run several of Paizo’s tightly plotted adventure paths.

Finally, Pathfinder is the ruleset I was immersed in when I finally broke into professional game design. I entered RPG Superstar because it was fun and there was a community around the event I was fond of. I didn’t expect to break into game design . . . sure I hoped I would, but self-doubt is a thing and until I received an email from an industry professional after reaching the top 16 the first time, I didn’t dare do more than hope. Now I consider that industry professional and his wife to be among my closest friends.

E6: As this isn’t a full game it feels a little like a cheat to put this on this list but E6 calls itself something like the “game within the game” so I’m running with it. E6 was one of those lightning bolt moments of, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The idea of running a game from x level on we’d done for years. I even retired campaigns at certain levels because they weren’t fun any more . . . but setting those limits at the start of the campaign never occurred to me. Also the way it could handle advancement beyond 6^th level by just adding feats was genius. I’m still sold 100% on this concept and will likely explore it in the future.

Gamma World: During the eighties I probably picked up most of my gaming books at the mall. Waldenbooks was a favorite hangout place for me. On one trip, a friend of mine and I were drawn to a new game on the strength of the cover art by Keith Parkinson. A robot or power armor garbed warrior astride a giant cyborg wolverine dominated the image. We NEEDED this game! Suddenly the line between fantasy and science was blurred for entire campaigns. We could dungeon crawl through the ruins of Pittsburg while playing cyborgs, mutants, or humans.

I have a huge soft spot for the weird post apocalypse genre because of this game and have been super excited to see Owen K. C. Stephens posting Gamma Finder conversions for the Starfinder rules.

These are just a few of the games that have had strong influences on me and my time gaming. In two weeks I’ll be back with a few less obvious choices. What games have inspired you? Shout out in the comments.

Neutral Good: You have little respect for authority or rules, you live by a personal—not a code but—a flexible set of guidelines that are more focused on doing what is good and right than it is on doing what is proper.

You are charming and gregarious and exceptionally skilled in your field. Your skills set you apart from many others around you and you’ve earned the respect of many of your superiors enough so that your antics and impropriety are often overlooked.

Neutral: You had a traumatic childhood. Your early experiences left you . . .  hollow, so many of your emotional responses feel muted and distant.  Except anger, anger is always close to hand. You want to be a good person but honestly don’t know how.

On your own you are quick to handle things the way you grew up handling them on the streets, with brutal efficiency. Fortunately for you, you have acquired a new family of allies. You look to them (possibly even one in particular) to be your guiding star. You often ask yourself “what would they do?” before simply resorting to violence and murder. For the most part this works for you.

Neutral Evil: You’re selfish, and generally lazy. You still believe you’re a good person but you lack both conviction and the will to maintain more than a façade of decency. You genuinely like your companions and as long as they’re watching you strive to do the right thing and impress them. As long as their watching, given any leeway you’ll take advantage of your friend’s trust and take the easiest or most profitable way out. What your allies don’t know won’t hurt them.

Deep down you also know you are a coward. Someday, you’ll be forced to make a choice between you and your allies and you know full well you will buckle and sell them out. Hopefully, it never comes to that but your best hope is that when that day comes your allies never find out it was you who betrayed them.

So that wraps the three Neutral alignment prompts. In two weeks we’ll wrap this with three Chaotic prompts. In the meantime, please tell us about a favorite neutral character you’ve played.

We’ve done a lot of Weird Prompts articles and most of them are for the GM. This week I thought I’d write one for everyone and focus on character concepts. Some of these are adapted from characters in popular media while others are more original. Each is tied to one of the nine alignments in a way that would allow these characters to join or be allied with heroic PCs even if they are evil in nature. This first article will revolve around the three moral variations of the Lawful alignments.

Lawful Good: You are pleasant and outgoing and people like you. It may because you make an effort to remember people’s names, actively listen to their stories, and actually empathize with their struggles. You also have a strong moral code when you give your word you keep it. Even when it’s inconvenient for you.

You had a complicated relationship with one of your parents. They were a pillar in your community a paragon of valor, honor, and duty. You tried very hard to live up to that ideal and while others would tell you how proud you made your parent you never felt it. Your parent was always trying to show you how you could be better…you never doubted they loved you but they rarely displayed that love openly. Recently this parent died and you have come into possession of their journal. In it, you have found the words and signs of pride and love you always believed they held for you as well as the complicated fears and human flaws that kept them from really expressing it to you.

Lawful Neutral: You are meticulous outside and in. Your fashion sense is on point and you never appear rumpled or disheveled unless it’s a calculated dissemblance. You are a planner and tend to try and have contingencies for your contingencies. You are also a con artist, cheat, and a thief. It’s not that you have no respect for the law on the contrary society’s laws provide frameworks for the unique challenges of taking what you want. Now, this doesn’t mean you are completely amoral. You have a code you live by and are far from a cold-blooded killer. You have a good heart and tend to select victims who have “it” coming or will likely never notice a loss of a few items, rather than those who can’t afford it or would be emotionally devastated by the theft of a family heirloom.

You never steal from friends (you might occasionally borrow their things without asking) but you always return the items in as good of condition as you borrowed it or you graciously replace the item if at all possible. It is likely your friends are aware of your proclivities and tolerate it because of your charm, wit, and steadfast support or they’re also thieves and con artists with some scruples.

Lawful Evil: You have few friends or loved ones because it’s hard for you to trust. After all, you are very acutely aware of what horrors people are capable of because you know what you are capable of whether it be cold-blooded murder, torture, or black magic. For the most part, you follow society’s rules because they are good rules but they don’t supersede the less codified but just as important rules of the criminal underworld that you are often a part of. As such you are occasionally called upon to “make an example” of someone who slights you or kill a contact who might snitch on you to the crown.

You might feel regret for having to kill an associate but not remorse or guilt over the killing itself. Your family and close friends should have nothing to fear from you. In fact, you’ll do terrible things to anyone who threatens or mistreats them.

So there are the first three character personality prompts. If you have a favorite Lawful character tell us about their personality in the comments below.

This weekend I decided I’d build my own and document the process. My quick trip to the big box hardware store ended up taking a little longer than expected because I became a little sidetracked while I shopped.  If you don’t get lost in the aisles like I did, then you can be in and out of the store in under 20 minutes and $30. Better yet the build time once I got my hand full of parts home was still very quick and even the least project inclined should be able to handle it.

Parts List

24″ x 48″ half inch MDF. My cost $ 9.49.

two packs of 1 inch sink washers (need 12 washers in total). My cost $ 1.18 each pack.

6 door stops. These need to be rigid not the coiled spring variety. My cost 1.88 each.

My total with tax : $24.69

Construction

Before leaving the store I asked a store employee to cut down my MDF to the width I wanted for my table. In this case our table is about 3 feet across and I didn’t want to crowd players on either side so I opted for an 18 inch surface width. Note I didn’t take any pictures of the MDF until I was home so the above image is already cut down to the size I wanted.

Now I began to add the door stops as legs. at the corner I measured in 2 inches from the top and side and marked the board. Next I added two washers to the threaded portion of the door stopper. I didn’t want the sharp screw tip to protrude from the top of the table when I screwed the leg in place. A small wrench made screwing in the legs very simple.  Repeat for each of the corners. for the final two legs I again measured in 2 inches from the side but from the top I measured in 24 inches to the halfway point to add some extra stability.

And that was it. I may paint the table top black so that it matches the current table or I may wrap the top in felt and staple it in place on the bottom. most likely however will be to use insulation foam to create a removable gridded surface similar to what I made for my Ultimate Dungeon Terrain (above) inspired by this video: https://youtu.be/dQqhTiE7i84

My UDT features a non skid surface glued onto the back and a sport ring for extra stability both of which are elements I’d repeat at least in part for the table surface here.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
With the Extinction Curse Adventure Path already underway this excellent fantasy novel of a mysterious and magical circus is rather timely. The Night Circus is the tale of two rival magicians and the apprentices they set against one another in a challenge to see whose tradition is best. The venue of the challenge is the titular Night Circus.

Beautifully told, The Night Circus is an unusual and spellbinding fantasy novel that may not be perfectly suited to a typical Pathfinder campaign but players and GMs may all find something to add depth and wonder to an Extinction Curse campaign.

The Egil and Nix series by Paul S. Kemp
Inspiration for any adventurer. Paul S. Kemp’s buddy adventurer duo raid tombs for fun and profit. Egil the sturdy and dependable priest of the Momentary God and Nix is the wise cracking rogue with just enough magic to dangerous.

With all the fantasy properties that have been snapped up by Hollywood for film and TV I’m surprised this fun series hasn’t been optioned already. It’s a heroes are classic fantasy in the style of Lieber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser with better dialog. From a GM’s point of view it’s an interesting look at deadly high-level campaign design. At the risk of spoiling the opening scene we start with the pair facing a demon and advance from there.

The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski
Speaking of fantasy properties that have been turned into TV shows. Let’s talk about The Witcher. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m so late to this party. I knew there was a video game (that looked both amazing and sadly outside of my skill set) It never occurred to me to see if there were books until in the lead up to the Netflix series it was mentioned in an article. I pretty much immediately picked up the first book of the short stories that introduce us to Geralt of Rivia.

The series has a gloriously grim take on famous faerie tales, legends, and monster stories and for tabletop gamers it offers an interesting look at the knowledge skill checks player should be making whenever they encounter a monster while adventuring.

The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan
This unique fantasy series takes place in a world similar to probably our Napoleonic era. Powder mages get their magic from gun powder making the especially deadly on a battlefield. The trilogy begins with a coup and is rife with politics, action, and tension through to the end.

This IS a great example of a “guns everywhere” setting for first edition Pathfinder. If you enjoy gunslingers and firearms in your games this trilogy may give you all sorts of new ideas. Never mind, that there is a lot more to love in this series. All of the primary and major secondary characters are believable and relatable. Incredible world building from the use of three different and well-conceived magic traditions to the interplay between nations and men. This is top-notch storytelling even if you’re not a hundred percent sold on firearms in your game.

The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
This is the story of the young torturer Severian who begins a mythic quest across a science fantasy future. The world has fallen into a new dark age but the wondrous relics of the past have almost magical significance. The world and the people are at once relatable and familiar and yet also very different from what you may have experienced before.

This series was one of the major inspirations for the Numenera Roleplaying game and in a similar vein it could provide a lot of inspiration for GMs running games in Golarion’s own science fantasy nation of Numeria.

If you have books you’d like to suggest I (or anyone else in the Know Direction community) read drop us a line in the comments. There are many more books I’d like to cover myself and may yet do so in the near future.

For a while now Monica and I, with the help of some close friends have been live streaming tabletop roleplaying games on Twitch (www.twitch.tv/marlowehouse) with some small success. While I love GMing, I’m less comfortable under the scrutiny of a live audience, so as our most frequent GM I’ve been doing a lot of research to improve my skills and increase my confidence and thought I might share some of the resources I’ve liked.

First of all let’s talk about watching / Listening to other great GMs and players. From polished and professional streams and podcasts like Critical Role, The Glass Cannon, or Knights of the Everflame we can learn a lot. Whether its house rules, how to weave in backstories, execute effective flashbacks or when to speak in funny voices. Noting what you like…and don’t like that a particular stream does is invaluable. You don’t have to expect to do any of these things as well as these professionals do to improve your own performance. Similarly, pay attention to the way your own GMs do things. If you are fortunate to live in an area with a thriving organized play community and several GMs or you can make it to conventions like PAX, GenCon, or Paizo Con get into games with a diverse group of new GMs. If you’re paying attention there’s a lot you can learn by just observing whether it’s a GM at your home table, a GM from across the country at a con, or one of the professionals.

The internet, particularly YouTube, has been full useful videos and articles on GMing. Obviously, we spend a lot of time right here on the various Know Direction blogs talking about various aspects of playing RPGs particularly GMing but our emphasis tends to be on Pathfinder and Starfinder and I’ve found some really great advice directed to the audiences of 5e and other games that had a lot of utility in my own games.

A few of the channels I’ve found useful include:

Mathew Colville (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkVdb9Yr8fc05_VbAVfskCA)

Seth Skorkowsky (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQs8-UJ7IHsrzhQ-OQOYBmg)

MonarchsFactory (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChSBq3h26QNYGBmi2yQPHKA)

Dungeon Craft (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD6ERRdXrF2IZ0R888G8PQg)

Finally let’s talk books. I’ve always been a reader and lately my physical reading has been very focused on RPG theory and advice.

Your Best Game Ever by Monte Cook may be the most comprehensive collection of RPG advice. It covers nearly every aspect of the RPG experience and includes sidebars from the some of the biggest names in the industry. In my opinion this is a book that deserves to be on every gamer’s shelf whether they run games or are just players.

Sly Flourish’s Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea is an easy to read guide to GMing with a minimalistic style. This sort of “prepare only what benefits your game” approach may not appeal to every GM but I think being able to distill a session down to its most basic elements is a valuable skill for any game master even if they are open to more concrete adventure development. There is also a companion workbook but unless you are playing 5e I’m not convinced it’s worth picking up.

I’ve also found a lot of use in the various essays in the Kobold Guide’s from Kobold Press. An essay in the Kobold Guide to Plots and Campaigns inspired a huge portion of my recent Numenera campaign. And the Kobold Guide to Combat had several eye opening essays that had me rethinking significant elements of my playstyle. So far I’ve been very pleased with each instalment of this series that I’ve picked up.

Gnome Stew and Engine Publishing also have a series of books for GM’s I’ve been enjoying quite a bit. Never Unprepared cover’s session preparation and is very interesting when compared and contrasted to the Lazy DM. Odyssey covers campaign management and Focal Point Addresses the actual running of the game session. These three apparently started with a single book topic and developed into something of a GM trilogy. Gnome Stew and Engine Publishing have a few other titles that are probably worth checking out. I do have a copy of Unframed which like the Kobold Guides is a collection of Essays. Unframed focuses on Improv for GMs and the couple of Essays I’ve read so far have been very good, especially the one called “Hitting Rock Bottom,” by Phil Vecchione (one of the authors from the previously mentioned trilogy of GM books).

I think improvisation is a key skill for everyone in the RPG hobby and while it’s certainly one of the skills best illustrated by the professional actual plays. It’s something that I think everyone can benefit from. So I was very excited that for Christmas I received a copy of Improv for Gamers by Karen Twelves. I haven’t had time to properly dig into this book but I hope to get my gaming group playing some of the improv exercises from the book.

Many of these resources I’ve found useful as a veteran gamer and longtime GM but I think many of them will also benefit newer GMs. But for those of you who are new to GMing and are just thinking of spending some time on the other side of the screen. Let me also introduce you to New Game Master Month. Every January New Gamemaster Month introduces gamers to the thrill and fun of running games. The website focuses on four game systems Numenera, Unknown Armies, Trail of Cthulhu, and 7^th Sea. Today January 7,2020 was the first day of this year’s series. So it’s not too late to get involved (https://newgamemastermonth.com/).

I encourage everyone who wants to improve in the hobby to take a look at the many resources available and do a little research into improving some aspect of their game play. If you have a favorite book, web series, or whatever drop it in the comments below. I’d love to check it out.

Numenera introduces us to the Ninth World. The Ninth World is Earth but it’s a staggering billion years in our future. The lore of the setting holds that eight great civilizations have risen and fallen and the recently returned human species is exploring and building new societies in the ruins of these prior worlds. The people of the setting have a rather medieval lifestyle but it’s augmented by the strange and nearly magical technology of the past.

Speaking of which we should start by talking about the technology of the original game, the numenera that the game takes its name from. The numenera can be classified into three broad categories: Oddities, Cyphers, and Artifacts.

Oddities have little if any mechanical effect but are weird and interesting bits of technological flotsam. An oddity may be a 6-inch piece of thin cord that cannot be cut, it might be a mirror that reflects the face of an unknown stranger, or it could be a lump of clay that reshapes itself into different geometric forms while no one is looking at it. Oddities may prove useful with creative play but they are not powerful.

The next tier of items are cyphers. Cyphers are often unstable and are always single-use items. A cypher can take many forms from ingestible pills, ray emitters, and force-field generators to clouds of nano-robots, organic grafts, or living symbiotic organisms. Think of these as the potions and scrolls of the setting but far more dangerous. Characters who carry too many cyphers (as determined by their character type and tier) run the risk of potentially deadly mishaps.

Artifacts are everything else we’d typically classify as a magic item. Some are full pieces of technology others are adapted from scraps of technology. A PC may possess an artifact sword that someone has welded a bit of numenera to the hilt that allows the wielder to inflict electrical damage in addition to the weapon’s normal damage. Or they may possess a device that hurls orbs of explosive plasma at range.

The easiest way to introduce all of this weird tech into your game is to simply reskin each item’s description. Rather than eldritch runes marking a blade or suit of armor, it might be an energy sheath generator riveted to your leather armor a gastropod that lives on your specially treated sword and secretes acidic mucous. A wand of fireballs may be that device hurling plasma I discussed above. A potion of healing might be an injector full of microscopic robot surgeons suspended in a nutrient gel.

We’ll continue talking about adapting Numenera’s weird science-fantasy to Pathfinder Second Edition in January.

At GenCon this past year I ran an adventure that started with the heroes “retrieving” a legendary jewel from a lost temple. As the PCs claimed their prize the temple began to collapse and they had to fight their way through skeletal guardians who only just awoke and avoid falling rocks and debris. It was my homage to Raiders without resorting to a giant rolling boulder.

As I’ve been running more and more often, I’ve been thinking about more ways to start in the middle of the action and I thought I’d share a few as a part of my ongoing weird prompts series.

1. Captured? Inspired by the Natasha Romanov introduction in the original Avengers (https://youtu.be/1HAydBEyvio) although in a larger party it may look more like the Prison break in Guardians of the Galaxy. The PCs begin captured but somehow they still have the upper hand. Set the scene but as the encounter begins give the players plenty of latitude in what they may have prepared in advance that gives them the advantage. Also, don’t make the PCs captors too tough the purpose of this sort of opening is to make the PCs look cool as they make their escape.
2. Distress Signal and Escape Pod: In a Starfinder or other Sci-fi game the PCs begin responding to a distress signal. A light freighter has been beset by pirates. The Pirates have the upper hand until the PCs arrive. A single escape pod escapes the crippled freighter. The pirates are interested in claiming the PCs ship and capturing or destroying the escape pod. What is the pirate’s interest in the freighter and the escape pod? The answer to that question could lead to further adventures.
3. The villain in their Sanctum: The PCs begin the session in the middle of an infiltration into a villain’s home or lair. The PCs are either performing a heist or are stopping the villain from accomplishing something terrible, such as summoning a powerful demon or poisoning a group of diplomats at a fancy dress party. Once the villain is defeated the item retrieved, the heroes are recognized by the local authorities for this service. Which may draw the attention of another party in need of adventurers.
4. Salvage and Rescue: An NPC vessel is badly damaged and in danger of being swept into a vast whirlpool. For the moment, the vessel is holding its own against the natural forces but the won’t hold for long. You begin the game with the PCs already involved in a daring rescue of either the ship or its cargo. (In a sci-fi game this can be accomplished with a damaged and disabled ship falling into a decaying orbit around a planet or other stellar body. A survivor aboard the ship knows the resting place of a vast treasure and they offer the map to the PCs by way of thanks.
5. A Bar Fight: Whether your Browncoat PCs are in an Alliance friendly bar on Unification Day (https://youtu.be/zxnA0BWxbKk), or you just want to turn the PCs meet in a bar trope on its ear a little a barroom brawl can be a fun action-filled way to begin a session. It is especially rewarding if you can tie it to the campaign’s important events either in the PCs’ pasts or in their immediate futures.

1.    Character Motivations, Genesys

First up let’s talk Genesys. Fantasy Flight’s setting agnostic rules set is a modified version of their Star Wars RPG line. I’ve talked about this game several times on this blog because frankly I love the narrative dice mechanics. But today we’re not talking about the dice but the motivation system.

In Genesys’s motivation system each character gets a desire, a fear, a strength, and a flaw. These four aspects are the primary drivers of the character’s actions. If a player can’t decide on one or more of these there is a reasonably comprehensive table of suggestions that can be randomly rolled. I’ve found that just quick rolling random options gave me some pretty interesting character concepts for one shot pregen characters.

So what constitutes these four personality traits? Let’s look at the rules for a portion of the description for each.

Desire: “The Desire aspect of your character tracks most closely with what we typically think of when we hear the term “motivation”: it’s the reason why the character acts. What, more than anything else, does your character want or want to achieve?”

Fear: “A character’s Fear represents the thing they dread. It might be the character’s deepest insecurity, their bogeyman, or a deep-seated threat to their culture or life.

Strength: “Your character’s Strength is one of the best things about them. It’s the first thing you’d put on your character’s résumé, the one word other people use when praising your character, and the defining feature that they’re known for.”

Flaw: “Everyone has an element of themselves that they’re not proud of. Why should your character be any different? When someone speaks ill of your character, this is always the first thing they bring up. It’s also what gets mentioned when your character’s friends say ‘They’re a great person, but…’ That ‘but’ is your character’s Flaw.”

The Genesys rules offer a lot more detail than the snippets I’ve quoted here but it should be enough to give you an idea of how this can be integrated into your session zero notes.

2.    Life Path, Cyberpunk 2020

In the 90’s my group played several different games but we spent most of our time playing R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk games. One of the hallmarks of character creation was rolling on the Life Path tables. The Life Path was a series of interlocked tables that helped generate your character’s background. There were good results such as allies and windfalls as well as bad results such as enemies.

Over the years we’ve adapted the tables for play in a number of campaigns in other systems (mostly AD&D). In a Pathfinder campaign a GM could build a table that serves the campaign’s needs granting access to certain feats, archetypes, etc. that may be rarity locked in second edition.

3.    Character Arcs, Your Best Game Ever and the Cypher System

Monte Cook Games ran a recent Kickstarter for a system agnostic guide for GMs and players of any RPG included in the advice is a section on character arcs. This same system appears in the revised Cypher system core rulebook.

Character Arcs help improve player investment as well as character depth and development. Think of character arcs as the personal development stories we see in television characters such as Data’s drive to be more human on Star Trek the Next Generation, Raymond “Red” Redington’s mysterious interest in Elizabeth Keen at the onset of The Blacklist. If you opt to use this system players should select an arc to pursue.

Each arc is comprised of four or more stages, an Opening, Step(s), Climax, and Resolution. Let’s look at the summary of the purpose of each of the stages of an arc.

“Opening: This sets the stage for the rest of the arc. It involves some action, although that might just be the PC agreeing to do the task or undertake the mission. It usually has no reward.

Step(s): This is the action required to move toward the climax. In story terms, this is the movement through the bulk of the arc. It’s the journey. The rising tension. Although there might be just one step, there might also be many, depending on the story told. Each results in a reward of 2 XP.

Climax: This is the finale—the point at which the PC likely succeeds or fails at what they’ve set out to do. Not every arc ends with victory. If the character is successful, they earn a reward of 4 XP. If they fail, they still earn a reward of 2 XP. If a character fails the climax, they very likely ignore the resolution.

Resolution: This is the wrap-up or denouement. It’s a time for the character to reflect on what happened, tie up any loose ends, and figure out what happens next. When things are more or less resolved, the character earns a 1 XP reward.”

Now the Cypher System only requires PCs to have 4xp to increase a character’s capabilities and 16xp to advance a tier which is far less than a Pathfinder PC (of either edition) so a GM would have to adjust the rewards for completing an arc. For a second edition game I’d recommend 125 XP for each step, 250 XP for the Climax and 75 XP for the Resolution.

Both books have a long list of sample arcs that are suitable for nearly any setting.

As I said at the onset this is not intended to be a remotely comprehensive list of resources you can adapt to your next campaign. If you have a favorite tool for developing characters drop it in the comments.

Nearly, every bit of boxed text I’ve read in adventures since the early eighties say something to the effect of “Read or Paraphrase the following.” For years I’ve been reading that text, certain my words were not as good as the writer’s words. Largely, I’d say that’s true but unless you are a skilled narrator, reading box text fails to be as engaging as the words that flow naturally from the GM. Another, advantage of skipping the box text is because the module doesn’t know how your PCs are entering a room box text neglects certain details like PC carried light sources, point of entry, and monsters. I cannot stress how frustrating it is to some players to get this elaborate narration of a room then, “Oh, by the way, there are half a dozen devils in the room. Roll initiative!” Most GMs are able to narrate descriptively and improvise details during the game, why not do the same with the box text, so you can integrate the details your PCs need.

For me, the key to reducing your dependence on the box text is in the preparation for your next session. I’m starting to tag encounters with single words or short phrases to remind me what’s important in each room. This is an idea I stole from FATE, which uses Aspects (single words or short phrases) to define the environment of an encounter. Typically these get laid out on index cards so players and GM alike can remember them and invoke their effects but for my purposes, I’ll just keep these Aspects as tags in my notes. Not unlike the rules tags, 2e Pathfinder makes good use of. These aspect tags in conjunction with the map will help me narrate scenes more fluidly than if I relied solely on boxed text.

!!WARNING MINOR SPOILERS FOR LEVEL 1 of the EMERALD SPIRE SUPER DUNGEON!!

An early and memorable encounter in the Emerald Spire Adventure Path has the following associated box text:

“From this curving, room doors lead east and west, and a passage leads south. A small table with four rickety chairs sits in the middle of the room. A pair of dice lies on the table amid cups and plates.”

Now, this chamber is divided by a short hallway so the remainder of this page of the text is box text for the other end of the room…it isn’t until you turn the page in the module that you get to the room’s inhabitants, a pair of goblins. Provided the alarm hasn’t been raised these two are engaged in hilariously awesome behavior that would be a shame to bury beneath even a short bit of boxed text. Let alone forget entirely due to being hidden behind a page flip.

From the text:

“One of the two goblins stationed here has fallen asleep on his half-eaten plate of food. The other goblin passes the time by putting small pieces of food in her slumbering mate’s ears, creating a culinary work of art (by goblin standards).”

The text goes on to indicate even if the fort goes on high alert she’ll let her companion sleep rather than disturb her masterpiece so even if the PCs alert all the other goblins to their presence there will still inexplicably be a goblin face down in his plate with food sprouting from his ears. This is all far more interesting and entertaining than a pair of dice likely obscured from view by the two goblins sitting at the table.

I might assign the following tags (in order of importance) to the encounter to remind me how to describe the scene at the table with little more than a glance: Goblin Artist, Sleeping Goblin with Food Art in Ears, Rickety Table Cluttered with Cups and Plates. Between the map, the original boxed text and my three tags I should be able to easily narrate this encounter making the most of the absurd setup without reading a word aloud to my players.

When possible I like to make notes directly on my maps or more accurately copies of my maps (I’m not normally one to write in my books). Placing these sorts of tags directly on the map provides easy to access visual cues that make running the game easier. I find it helpful to also tag the conditions found in the common areas of the dungeon or another adventure site.

All of these notes (particularly if placed directly on my maps) are helpful if something changes due to the PC’s or NPC’s actions. An alarm is raised I can easily see where and who the nearest reinforcements are and mark their tags off of the rooms they were in. Similarly, if a goblin guard turns tail and runs I the middle of the combat to warn her bugbear chief I can add her tag to the chieftain’s war room with the tag ready for battle. So if it takes us another week or more in real life I’ll still remember and I’ll be better able narrate that scene

It is important to note if you’re not adding your tags directly to your map you needn’t add tags to every encounter. Some encounters have only a single short sentence or two for boxed text and the area’s significance may be minor allowing you to either simply paraphrase the box text or just read it outright. You should only prepare and tag the encounters that will really benefit from reorganizing the missing details or whose boxed text is too long for you to read aloud well. Further regardless of whether you are tagging the text of your adventure, the map itself, or some other method you should try to prepare only tags you think you’ll need for your next session. You’ll probably have a good idea of where your party will go during that game so focus on those areas first. Trying to prepare too many areas at once might lead to burnout or clutter your thoughts making it harder to remember what your tags mean.

Welcome back to Burst of Insight. For the last few weeks, we’ve been talking about things GMs can do to center the player characters in an adventure path’s narrative. This week we’re talking about something players can do to help in this process as well.

Now, we often talk about the player facing adventure hooks but what about GM facing background hooks? If an adventure hook is the plot element that encourages a group of PCs to brave the dragon’s lair then the background hook is the plot element that encourages the GM to dig into your character’s backstory for future story ideas.

It need not even be a big plot laden hook it can be a small detail such as a missing (or deceased) relative or troubled childhood friend who may resurface as a villain or trapped in the villain’s clutches. In our recent Council of Thieves game, I think our GM nearly used this tactic after an off-hand remark from one of the players. One player joked that a particular undead NPC could be our character’s mother (that player and I portray brothers). I think our GM shied away from the opportunity to preserve the encounter’s narrative and because it was suddenly too expected. But I really wish that maybe he had. While our local knowledge told us a pretty cool story about a cannibal witch who’d died and rose as a devourer how utterly horrible would it have been for the devourer to have been our PCs dead mother. We’re well known to our enemies who are undoubtedly behind all the undead rising in the north quarter of the city. Why couldn’t they have raised her to hurt us specifically? That personalized bit of mayhem would have been crushing. And could have made for great roleplaying, unfortunately, we went another way. Now, the encounter was challenging enough (devourer’s who have had a few moments to prepare are no joke) but ultimately it was a cut and dry combat in a very tight space.

That said I’m not really complaining just offering a recent example. Our GM is a clever guy, he may already have plans in place for our famous and dearly departed mother that would have been ruined by adding her in now. Or the devourer’s identity may be important for other continuity reasons. The same should go for your table, just because your hooks aren’t used exactly when you’d expect or like doesn’t mean your GM is doing it wrong

Finding NPCs

If your GM hosts a session zero consider just asking your GM directly if there are any NPCs you can create connections to. Tell her your general idea and ask her if there are any NPCs who show up in the campaign who might be able to be tied into your character’s background.

Consider The Empire Strikes Back. Lando could have very easily been a minor character with no direct ties to Han and Chewie but the story would have been flatter without the betrayal. As a player, you don’t know what otherwise insignificant NPCs might show up in an adventure path that you and the GM can define a previous relationship (good or bad) with.

Another example comes from a Giantslayer campaign I was running. One of the PCs was a new arrival I knew there was a significant boat trip out of the region in book two. I had her bargain with the same crew to ride into the region. This meant she could introduce the other PCs to the crew and take center stage for a moment. The player and characters were talkers so I knew this would be a fun opportunity for the player but I came up with it because she asked. We were still in the earliest moments of book one and the characters are getting to know one another and the player asks me if she had any adventures she could tell about coming into town. So I took a moment and filled her in on the crew and told her she could tell any story she liked and we’d work out how much of it was accurate and how much of it was embellished together later. Knowing full well that embellishments could lead to fun roleplaying opportunities in the second book when the rest of the PCs boarded the boat.

I haven’t delved deeply into many of the actual play podcasts, streams or YouTube shows but I have caught a few episodes of a variety of them and have consistently listened to the Glass Cannon Podcast and Androids and Aliens for quite some time. Something, the cast of the Glass Cannon does particularly well is to collaborate with the GM to produce very compelling flashbacks. As I understand it, typically the flashback scene is written or outlined by the player then, during play the GM, Troy, finds what he feels is the best moment to bring it to life. Troy acts as narrator and plays the NPCs in the scripted scene in much the same way a GM would for any typical scene and as you may have guessed the player provides the voice for his character if there is dialog in the flashback. The effect is amazing.

The reason these scenes work so well is we only get a glimpse . . . and we want to know more. This should be just as true for the other players as it is for an actual play audience. The glimpse is good because it teases us with a few answers but more unanswered questions. On the GCP it’s pretty clear that only Troy and the player of the Flashback PC know what’s going on. It is just as evident that the tantalizing hints affect not only the audience but the other players as well. If your players are willing to buy into the whole group narrative these small revelations should draw them deeper into the story even when their character doesn’t have the spotlight.

As we learn about each player character’s secrets our focus is drawn to that character. A good GM will balance the flashbacks and interludes to keep the spotlight moving from one player to the next. A best practice is to keep a sort of scorecard and make sure one PC doesn’t fall behind or shoot too far ahead of the group with opportunities to take center stage.

Each player should take some time to talk with the GM about what secrets their character may be keeping. The PCs secrets need not be dangerous to the party and should not be used as an excuse to be a jerk. Some characters may not even think of these as secrets so much as things they rarely talk about. When you are considering what the secrets are going to be, it is very important to remember that these secrets are meant to be discovered. The point is to react to them, in and out of the game so players shouldn’t feel compelled to shroud themselves in so much mystery they alienate the rest of the party.

Example: The party has a Monk PC. Every morning she spends time polishing her Wayfinder but when asked most days she politely declines to talk about it and puts it away. Now the rest of the PCs know she grew up an orphan on the streets but little else. The player and the GM, on the other hand, know she was always a scrapper until a Pathfinder monk of Irori took her under her wing taught her Discipline and gave her a family by sponsoring the PC into the Pathfinders. That is until a year ago when she left the Society under scandalous circumstances.

Now we have talked about running flashbacks in other systems before, this time we’re focusing on narrative only flashbacks where the Player at the GM’s direction writes or outlines a short flashback for use at the table or the GM adapts one from the character’s written background or another existing but unused flashback scene.

It is ideal when the GM can tie these flashbacks and interludes directly to the Adventure Path’s events but even thematic connections will elevate the whole narrative. For example, in Council of Thieves, the PCs must enter an abandoned Pathfinder Lodge. Even though this lodge has a different floor plan there is something familiar about the decor and design. Entering the lodge might trigger particularly strong memories. Possibly of happier times or if deep into the revelations, maybe memories of the last time she’d been in any lodge and stormed out into the rain. This is a direct tie to the campaign events. Suddenly everything our Monk PC does in the lodge takes on a new significance. Alternately, using the same PC, a GM prepping a particularly brutal encounter might ask the PC for a scene about a time she’d been badly beaten and maybe even thought she’d die but ultimately lived. Then later during that combat after a particularly damaging blow, she flashes back to briefly compare then and now. If timed with a critical hit against the PC dragging out the damage reveal will raise the tension and give what could be the character’s final moment (live or die) additional weight.

GMs and Players can coordinate other story elements to help put the PCs center stage. Have you ever coordinated a scene in advance with your GM? If so drop a comment below we’d love what your experience with the technique was.

The other night as we were wrapping the most recent session of our Council of Thieves game one of the players and I talked about some of the strengths and weaknesses of the AP format and specifically what we missed from our very first AP experience with Shackled City.

For those who may not know, Shackled City was Paizo’s first Adventure Path from the pages of Dungeon Magazine it eventually was reprinted as a standalone full hardcover. The players are residents of Cauldron, a city built in the caldera of an extinct volcano. And much of the campaign’s action happens in or near the city. One of the climactic scenes of the AP is pretty predictable but the good sort of predictable and there are plenty of surprises throughout the adventure. Some of those surprises are quite good. Even my wary and suspicious PCs were blindsided by one particular betrayal.

Now, Paizo is in the midst of releasing their 29^th adventure path and have learned a lot about what makes a good AP and still Shackled City is the campaign we most fondly remember at my table. What exactly made that first adventure path so good? And what can past-me teach present-me about being a better GM?

Well, first of all, I suspect Shackled City offered such a unique new experience that replicating the wonder of our first experiences with an AP would be tough. I also think I need to give credit to the Paizo community at that time. With the first AP, there were tons of groups all playing that first AP and with only one AP available we were hyper-focused on Cauldron and its narrative. There was a wealth of ideas swirling around the message boards in a volume I think few of the APs have enjoyed since. I know, I drew on those resources a lot to draw the players in and cement the reality of the setting from the get-go.

I think some of the most important lessons though are about how much work an AP is and where we need to focus our efforts. After Shackled City, we’ve gone on to run or play in a number of other APs at our table (we have rotating GMs) and the experience had started to stale. It staled enough that the last campaign we completed ended up being an entirely homebrew Numenera campaign, that I ran. That experience was still heavily influenced by the Adventure Path format but it gave me a chance to kinda cleanse my palate and reexamine our AP experience with clear eyes. And see exactly where the GMs at our table have been putting their efforts versus where we should be putting our efforts.

Adventure paths are shared experiences, much like the classic modules of early D&D they become something that players can discuss and reminisce about even if they never played at the same table. As such, I think, even good GMs can be so drawn into the idea of presenting an adventure path in as pure a form as possible. In my opinion, this is a mistake. It elevates the adventures and the NPCs of the adventures above the player characters. The AP itself takes center stage and the PCs blindly follow the path to the story’s conclusion. Being willing to embrace table variance is a vital first step in spotlighting the PCs.

In Shackled City there is a rival band of adventurers called the Stormblades. Like many other aspects of the city, I tailored these NPCs to best suit our campaign and to best elevate our PCs. Long before the end of the campaign, these rivals became friends with the party (save one-I made Todd an insufferable jerk to the PCs until the bitter end). This didn’t stop the rivalry but elevated it. The one-up-man-ship became a game of its own not unlike Legolas and Gimli counting kills in the Lord of the Rings films. I know we had several nights over the course of the campaign were the two groups simply drank beer, played cards and swapped stories.

In a recent Matt Colville video (I’ll be talking more about this video I expect in the future) he referred to scenes like these as interludes rather than encounters. As there is some risk in an encounter even in simply a social encounter, while an interlude carries no risk it’s just a way to better get to know our characters. I think with APs where it’s possible to have recurring NPCs, developing relationships between those characters and the PCs is vital. We wrote in early connections with several of Cauldron’s NPCs (not just the Stormblades) and would frequently revisit those connections even when the campaign didn’t call for it specifically sometimes as interludes and sometimes as actual encounters where the PCs friends and family were put at risk.

Looking back I can see I need to not only help the players create connections with important NPCs but I need to go off-book more often and run more interludes between the player characters and those key NPCs and be willing to shift the focus and put the PCs contacts in jeopardy a hair more frequently even if means changing the adventure’s encounters from time to time.

Now, this isn’t to say I’m actually a worse GM now than I was 12+ years ago. I certainly have GM tools in my belt I wish I’d had back then, and there are others I use with more skill but it never hurts to look back and rediscover things we used to do better. That’s what I learned by looking back. What was one of your most memorable campaigns? What did you do then that (maybe) you could bring forward to your next campaign?

The Shackled City Logo and Cauldron Image are Copyright Wizards of the Coast.

Today I thought I’d take a stab at the latter option. Now I have a fondness for the Mummy’s Mask AP and some experience with the traits as I adapted the whole selection of them to the Cypher System back in January so I thought I’d dip back into that well and present a few 2e Background alternatives for the Mummy’s Mask AP.

Blood of Pharaohs (Background)
Long ago, one of your ancestors generations removed ruled over the lands of Osirion. Although you are many generations removed and the line of descent is hard to prove, his or her blood still runs in your veins. Perhaps you may find some proof of your lineage in the tombs of Wati’s necropolis.  

Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Wisdom or Charisma and one is a free ability boost.

You are trained in the Society skill and the Genealogy Lore skill. You gain the Multilingual feat and may choose Ancient Osiriani as one of your additional languages.

Devotee of the Old Gods (Background)
Osirion has a history stretching back over 8,000 years, and the deities worshiped today in modern Osirion are not the same ones revered in Ancient Osirion’s heyday—deities with names like Anubis, Osiris, Ra, and Set, among others. Your family never lost the faith of your ancestors, however, and your devotion to one of the deities of Ancient Osirion has helped keep the memory of Osirion’s past alive—a past that still lingers on in the untouched necropolis of Wati.

Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Intelligence or Wisdom and one is a free ability boost.

You are trained in the Religion skill and the Old Gods Lore skill. You gain the Student of the Canon feat.

Foreign Opportunist (Background)
You’re not a native Osirian, but the opportunity to explore the tombs of Ancient Osirion—and “liberate” the treasures they hold—is too good to pass up. Whether or not you’re interested in the history of this land, you’re definitely interested in the wealth that’s lain hidden in dusty crypts for millennia—such as the tombs in the newly opened necropolis of Wati.

Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Dexterity or Charisma and one is a free ability boost.

You are trained in the Diplomacy skill and the Relics of Ancient Osirion Lore skill. You gain the Bargain Hunter feat.

Inquisitive Archaeologist (Background)
You have studied the architectural styles of nations throughout the Inner Sea region, but none have fascinated you like the architecture of Ancient Osirion. Hearing that the famed necropolis of Wati has finally been opened for exploration, you’ve come to that city to get firsthand experience with the lost secrets of Ancient Osirion’s master builders.

Choose two ability boosts one must be to Intelligence or Wisdom and the other is a free ability boost.

You are trained in the Society Skill and the Archaeology Lore skill. You gain the Experienced Professional feat with Archaeology Lore.

Resurrected (Background)
At some time in the recent past you died, but you were brought back to life—whether because of magic, a blessing of the gods, a destiny you have to fulfill, or perhaps it just wasn’t your time to die yet. Either through insights gained from your journey beyond or a quirt of your resurrection you find that you are able to wield magic items you normally could not. Whatever the nature of your resurrection, your experience gave you a fascination with death, and you hope to find some insight into the nature of mortality by exploring the tombs of Wati’s famous necropolis.

Choose two ability boosts one must be to Constitution or Wisdom and the other is a free ability boost.

You are trained in the Occultism or Religion skill and the Philosophy Lore skill. You gain the Trick Magic Item feat.

Sphinx Riddler (Background)
You’ve always been fascinated with the ancient race of sphinxes, and are inspired by them to love puzzles and riddles and enjoy solving difficult dilemmas. Like so many others, you’ve come to Wati to explore its ancient necropolis, but you’ve also heard that sphinxes occasionally visit a sphinx-shaped ruin called Ubet’s Folly in the city—perhaps you’ll have the chance to meet and talk with a sphinx yourself!

Choose two ability scores one must be Intelligence or Wisdom and the other is a free ability boost.

You’re trained in the Society skill and the Puzzle and Riddle Lore skill. You gain the Multilingual feat and may choose Sphinx as one of your additional languages.

Trap Finder (Background)
Forgotten dungeons and ancient tombs have always held an appeal for you, and you’ve never been able to resist the urge to delve into these lost sites in search of knowledge, treasure, or both. You may not have received any formal training in the roguish arts, but you’ve nonetheless become skilled at spotting and disabling hidden traps. The tombs of Wati’s necropolis, just opened for exploration, seem like the perfect place to put your skills to the test.

Choose two ability scores one must be Dexterity or Wisdom and the other is a free ability boost.

You’re trained in the Thievery skill and the Traps Lore skill. You gain the Assurance feat with the Thievery skill.

Undead Crusader (Background)
You have dedicated your life to eradicating the scourge of the undead from Golarion. You have spent countless hours studying the different types of undead and have trained endlessly to learn the best ways to defeat them. If any undead creatures come out of the tombs of Wati’s necropolis, you’ll be ready for them!

Choose two ability boosts one must be Strength or Constitution and one is a free ability boost.

You’re trained in Athletics or Stealth and Undead Lore. You gain the Assurance feat with a skill of your choice.

Wati Native (Background)
You were born and raised in the city of Wati, and you know its streets and secrets well. Although it’s frowned upon by the city’s authorities, you have sneaked into the necropolis on multiple occasions to wander its dusty, abandoned streets. Out of respect for the deceased, you’ve never actually entered one of the necropolis’s silent tombs, but you have no fear of what might lie inside.

Choose two ability boosts one must be Dexterity or Wisdom and the one is a free ability boost.

You’re trained in the Diplomacy skill and the Wati Lore skill. You gain the Hobnobber feat.

You may have noticed I left Mummy-Cursed off the list. This was a deliberate choice because there didn’t seem to be a skill feat that worked with the original intent of the Mummy-Cursed trait. As Paizo,  third party publishers, or even yourself add new skill feats the options for Backgrounds will continue to expand. That helps make this an even more exciting design space to play in. I highly encourage GMs to add a custom background or two to their campaigns for players to choose.

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Top Image Credit: Infouad used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Via Wikipedia.

Now, I’ve debated for years whether I should compete. And frankly, as an introvert I’ve shied away from the spectacle that is Iron GM, but sometimes you have to step outside your comfort zone. I already GM games at GenCon and GM in public on Twitch every Friday night (9pm EDT www.twitch.tv/MarloweHouse) but this would be very different. So I put on the mein of a fearless extrovert and headed toward the event. Okay, I’m never going to be the showman that some of these guys are but that’s alright I just needed to walk in without passing out. 

So I arrive at Wabash 1–the room where Iron GM was held and was immediately welcomed by everyone and handed a release and questionnaire. Gillian Frasersees me eyeing the form looks at me and says, “Read it all. Carefully.” her tone is somewhat ominous. 

“Am I at risk for injury?” I asked light heartedly.

“No they’re going to take your picture, stupid.” She may or may not have said the last word but I’m pretty sure I heard it in her tone. 

After signing the release I realized there were still several questions. One I’d been prepared for: Your Iron GM name. Every Iron GM contestant takes a name. It’s supposed to be evocative of your style or who you are as a GM. So names like Ancient Sensei, Emotional Trauma, Necessary Evil, That Guy, or Dramatic Pause are common. I chose Bedlam for my moniker, anyone who’s watched our table game knows why.

Next on the questionnaire came, “where are you from (city and state)” then the question no one had prepared me for. “Why are you going to win?” It was like filling out a self review at work but worse because it had to be short and punchy. Just because you’re a writer doesn’t mean it’s easy to come up with clever complimentary things to say about yourself! Fortunately, in exchange for a little physical labor (helping to move the virtual mountain of prize content into the event room) Gillian filled out that portion of my form with something cool like, “Forged in the fires of chaos and drama, I will bring my table the best game ever!”

At the appointed moment, Lou Agresta and Rone Barton began warming up the crowd in the room. Meanwhile out in the hall despite all the trash-talking between the long-time competitors its clear this is a tight group of friends. RPG Superstar Steve Helt has won the competition twice and talks a fierce game but in the moments before we all went out he gathered the whole group of us together for a pep-talk. He spoke from the heart encouraging everyone from those of us who were competing for the first time all the way up to the three-time winner Necessary Evil. Then suddenly we were being called into the roo- room really isn’t the right word it was more like a tiny arena. With Lou announcing each of us by our Iron GM names and describing why each of us would top the competition amid cheers from the twenty or so tables of players. Some of the contestants burst into the space with entrances that had been planned for months while others simply walked in. I’d have been in that group except for all of my Iron GM friends and their friends back at the door who started cheering and chanting: “Bedlam! Bedlam! Bedlam!” the moment I stepped through the door. I still had too much to carry in to do much more than walk in, but I did walk taller.

Once in the room, we drew lots for our tables. Pitched the games we’d like to run (with the default incase of a disagreement being 3.5). Then we received our three secret ingredients: This year it was dryad, dinosaur breeding ground, and deicide (killing a god). And with that final revelation Lou released us to our tables where for the first hour while the players made characters and we planned the adventure. Unfortunately the rules prevent a GM from speaking more than 3 words to their players. Which leaves plenty of loopholes for communication. 

My table had agreed to Pathfinder but upon my arrival immediately asked if I could run 5th edition D&D.  Unfortunately I had no books with me and have only played it once so I scrawled that I would be willing to but “no books–played once,” they immediately returned to Pathfinder. And that’s how most of the first hour passed. My players asking questions and me trying to scrawl answers. Soon however, we were deep in the action of the game itself. Our action began in the ruined temple of a dead god and soon led to a dryad and her dinosaur breeding ground. As the action rose all around the room erupted cries and cheers of, “Bonsai!” with every roll of 20!

When the hosts called time on the halfway point I’d worked in all three of the secret elements and the three additional elements Steve Helt, Alan Venable, and Gillian Fraserhad added during my stream interview with them (a bath of blood, a jar of angel feathers, and sponge-cake). When we came back from the break everything was much more intense. I really wanted to tell a complete story so the pressure was on. 

In the final moments of the session we were locked in the boss combat and the timer was ticking down. We began resolving two characters actions simultaneously and it may be something I do more often in the future even at home games. It increased the speed of combat and created a sense of frenetic action. With fewer than three minutes I wrapped the scenario, thanked my players and walked away from the table.

Congratulations to Gillian Fraser who took home the belt and title of Iron GM and put on what I’ve heard was an incredible game including a climactic battle that had the PCs piloting the corpse of a dead god like a mech into battle against a kaiju-dinosaur! While I may not have made it to the podium I still loved every moment of the event and my table seemed to have a good time. I suspect I’ll be back to Iron GM next year and maybe I’ll see you there.

Today, we’re going to meet three of these Iron GMs: Steven T. Helt, Chris [That Guy], and returning to our Ask the Experts series Alan [Dramatic Pause] Venable. These three champion GMs are going to share their experiences with competitive gaming and their tips to make us all better GMs.

Andrew: Can each of you take a moment to tell introduce yourselves to our readers?

ThatGuy: My name is Chris. I’m 39 years old from Bangor, Maine. I’ve been into role-playing games since I was introduced to Rifts at 16 years old and it’s been both my Jiminy Cricket and The Devil on my Shoulder ever since.

STH: I’m Steven T. Helt. I’ve been a Pathfinder designer for about six years and a GM for about 30. I live in Tulsa and work as an estate planner. I love big epic campaigns, great villains, and ambitious high-level play. Thanks for having us!

Andrew: Thank you all for agreeing to this interview.

Dramatic Pause: Hello my name is Alan Venable, I have been a role-player since freshman year in high school, playing on the bus to and from school. I quickly realized I liked being the GM too and ran games for my friends in between classes all day long in high school. That’s about 20 years of make-believe under my belt. Oh, and I won Iron GM in 2016.

Andrew: What can you tell our audience about Iron GM.

ThatGuy: It’s friggin’ amazing amounts of fun. It’s a 6-hour event where game masters are given a random table of people, three plot elements, and an hour to write a four-hour adventure. Place in mixing bowl, whip vigorously, celebrating like crazed Vikings every time you get a natural 20, but at the end, only one game master comes out of it alive. Be it a player or a game master, it is an amazing time. It is a daunting challenge that I think every game master should test themselves with at least once.

STH: I was always an enthusiastic GM, but Iron GM absolutely has made me better. I’ve won the event twice (as has Chris) and the energy in that room is always a blast. Some guys have a pro wrestling approach to the competition, which is fun. I just put my head down and work though. I believe some of the best GMs (in the history of the game) are in that room Saturday every GenCon. Love those people and have strong relationships with many.

ThatGuy: I’ve heard it called a family on more than a few occasions.

Dramatic Pause: Iron GM is my GenCon family for sure. I have established a lot of love for the insanely talented group of people that create epic adventures in an hour from three little words. Any event where everyone has a blast and can be entertained for six hours has got to be on to something right?

Andrew:  Tell me a little about what it’s like to be an Iron GM contestant.

ThatGuy: it’s like meeting a girl for the first time on some kind of bizarre blind date, but instead of just one, there are six of them, and every one of them needs to walk away from that table happy. It’s nerve-wracking, exciting, and a whole bunch of other adjectives that I can’t think of right now.

STH: Iron GM is my favorite event every year (unless I’m hosting one!). In the beginning, it was a dozen tables or so. Smaller room. Cozier. My first time was the second year they’d done the event. My players gave me the moniker Ancient Sensei (I’d introduced myself as a longtime GM who encourages players to be epic). I think I have an advantage in that the first couple of years were more intimate. So I planned big scenes, the room was less noisy. It was easier to learn about and relate to players. As it became more of a show with bigger personalities I got to balance that sort of showmanship with the more humble approach. My third year I invited a fun player from an event I ran to the event, and he became a friend and our only three-time winner. I’ve recruited friends and talented GMs, some of whom also won. I really like that the level of competition remains high, the event always sells out. During mustering before we get started, I’m always encouraging first time GMs. The event has gone from competition to self-improvement class, to family for me.

Dramatic Pause: Iron GM is the reason my wife and I go to GenCon. I even proposed to her before I knew I won in 2016. The following year I commissioned a championship belt made, which resides with each year’s champion.

It’s an awesome feeling competing in something you love, and creating five to seven brand new friends each year. Every year I try to make the experience memorable for my table, sometimes even planning my entrance for a month before the big day. It’s the most terrifying and euphoric feeling the day of competition, but at the end of the day, more than a hundred people are having fun playing games in that room.

ThatGuy: The belt fits really well, by the way. Thank you.

Andrew: How is competitive game mastering different from just game mastering or are you always running your games like there’s a belt at stake?

ThatGuy: it’s kind of like describing Wolverine’s healing Factor compared to Healing naturally. With competitive game mastering, all of the stress and excitement of planning out a game happens all in the span of an hour instead of over the week. But, if you run a crap game in the iron GM, you don’t have to see those people again. In your Weekly game, you got people staring at you wondering, “Oh shit, is this gonna suck again?”

But the belt is cool though. That’s definitely an incentive. I mean, who doesn’t love a belt like that?

STH: I’ve apologized to my players because I feel like my Iron GM tables always get me at my best. My home games have always had incredible players. Mechanical savants. In-character roleplayers. I’ve been fortunate to live in towns with great gaming communities. But in home games, you have work, kids, the other players have their own things they bring in every week. At Gen Con, everyone is there to game. Things that interrupt your focus don’t interfere as much. You play with strangers, some of whom become fast friends, so the only thing that’s there is the story you’re telling that day. No inside jokes. No tension breaks or family walking through the room. Just a story and the authority your reputation gives you. I love that dynamic.

But I’ve learned so much from Iron GM that has made me better in every game I run. Keeping energy levels up. Starting with action. That skill set makes me better at cutscenes and splitting up the party. The spontaneous nature made me better at instantly assigning names and personality to NPCs. Every GM has to learn how to roll with the punches and not punish players for upsetting your careful plan. The Iron GM experience forces you to develop tricks and habits that make you better at leading, plotting, pacing, and improvising.

ThatGuy: I like how Steve’s responses are so eloquent, and I’m just a rabid chihuahua.

STH: That’s the difference between my Neutral Evil and your Chaotic Neutral.

Dramatic Pause: Never underestimate the power of a rabid chihuahua! Competitive GMing is an entirely different creature. I like to think of Iron GM as a great test of my improvisation skills. The ability to align with people you just met and run the best game they have ever played is not for the faint of heart! It’s a chance to seduce, scheme, and betray everything and everyone while keeping to a (hopefully) coherent one-shot plot.

At my home games, I tend to delve further into long, epic story arcs that take months for the players to realize the grand story. At Iron GM, everything is more immediate, raw, and urgent to get to the big bad. Competitive GMing allows me to go for the throat from the start, creating five-minute backstories for NPCs on the fly and perceiving what my players want from their five-minute backstories.

Though they are different experiences, always run games like there is a belt on the line!

Andrew: What’s your Iron GM prep look like? Before you even arrive at the con. Is there something you do? Stuff you always bring?

ThatGuy: I either over or under prepare every year. This year was under-prepared. I’ll bring any books that I think I’ll need, like Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons. My laptop is a must as well as a tiny jump drive with every idea I’ve ever committed in a game on it. In the hours before the actual event, I’ll listen to inspiring music, anything from Disturbed to Imagine Dragons. I’ll usually find a nice quiet place just to get my nerves under control. It’s all about putting my mind in a place where I feel like I am in control.

STH: I prepare ideas: scenes, ideas I might want to use some time. If an idea is exciting and matches well with the elements the Iron GM team gives us to craft our adventure, I have some ideas to slot into my story. But the idea is supposed to be spontaneous so I don’t plan full fights or plot points. Just shells of ideas. Like a group of villains who destroy an entire oasis in one combat and leave our heroes stranded in the desert. Or an old elven tower that exists in time so every door or balcony looks out on a different time period (and maybe a different army). Over the years you acquire a few scenes and settings that you enjoy and use them where they offer a memorable scene.

Dramatic Pause: As I said before, I plan my entrance, try to prepare with printed character sheets and the core rulebooks of the games I run. Dice and other little gaming aids (initiative trackers, pawns, maps, etc) Everything else is made up on the day.

Andrew: Let’s talk strategy. What does it take to win?

ThatGuy: The best advice I could give would be to make sure that your players either are or become the Legendary Heroes of your story.

I also like to come with pre-prepared hooks and NPCs. Especially villains. I love making villains.

STH: I have always tried to do something different…something to show I’m working harder than other competitors. The first few years, I incorporated every story element of every previous Iron GM year. So one year my 4-hour-long story (with zero pre-planning at all)  included time travel, dragons, a wedding, flashbacks, frost giants, a funeral, mistaken identity, minotaurs, magma, a rakshasa, river rapids, a redemption theme, a Dream Theater reference (for myself), and a TPK to be different. That was the first year I won. When another competitor complained that it was too easy to write a story using so many elements (never mind that we never knew the first three before go-time), I started asking each of my players for a new story element. So these days I incorporate nine new elements I didn’t know before, plus my trademark Dream Theater reference. A funny story. My first year, I wanted all the neighboring tables to know what a great time my players were having. A little meta-competitiveness. I made them build 21st-level characters and we had a great time. Whenever one of my players confirmed a critical, I shouted “Utz!” and pointed at him, and the table yelled BONZAI!!”. Now that’s part of the regular environment for the event. It works against me because I am very ADD and the sudden shouts every few minutes can really shut my brain down. So…if the Bonzai thing is fun for you all, great. And if not, it’s totally my fault!

Aside from meta things to make an impression on players, you have to make sure each player is engaged and getting what they individually want out of a one-off game, you have to blend those so there’s a great group experience, AND you have to make their character important and make them laugh. Do those things and you’ll get your best reward—a table full of attentive players who are buying what you’re selling.

ThatGuy: I always get the ‘Why didn’t I think of that’ during the Player Olympics break at the 2hr mark. Especially talking to you, Steve, and Necessary Evil. Getting that time to reflect can help to shape the second Act.

Dramatic Pause: I definitely have felt that before. But the best advice I could give is to ask your players (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) what they want and what they enjoy, then do that.

Also, don’t try anything new, use the skills and techniques you know work. Competitive GMing is not the time to experiment.

Andrew: Do you pull your punches or go for the kill? How do you handle character deaths or TPKs at your table?

ThatGuy: I am, admittedly, a softy when it comes to player deaths. I’m trying to cull that instinct in my home games. But, at Iron GM, I have a rule: No Deaths until the Second Act, which is after the break. It has to be challenging, yes, but you don’t want a player who got an unlucky crit just sitting there for an hour. Part of the judgment is their enjoyment. So, if I have a danger of a TPK so soon I’ll have them get kidnapped for a sacrifice or make them switch characters and take on the roles of those seeking revenge. Anything to keep the game going and keep the players interested.

But when you get to the Big Boss Bad Guy, gloves gotta come off. It’s something that I have struggled with as a Gamemaster since i first sat behind the screen.

STH: First, why is all of my text this red-brown color? Did I choose this? I’m changing everything to purple. You know. Cause royalty. : P

[Writer’s Note: I invited the participants to use colored text to make it easier to denote who’s text was whose in the shared document. Steve totally chose red-brown before changing it all to purple…that you all can’t see. Sorry about that but the line was pretty funny so kept it.—Andrew]

STH: MUCH better…now…I don’t like pulling punches. Especially in one-off games. I believe encounter should be cinematically described so the players are terrified. Set an atmosFEAR so they see an action/horror scene instead of numbers and miniatures. That helps create a sense of danger. Now they fight harder.  Try to use only the most cinematic abilities of a creature. Make them watch themselves die in the bodak’s eyes before they make their saving throw. I run my Iron GM games at high enough level that the players can bring each other back if dying isn’t the plan. Then again, I have had two intentional TPKs in my Iron GM experience. The first year I won I killed the whole party in the first scene and then handed them notes letting them know it wasn’t over. They spent the rest of the adventure touring Hell and realizing they were brought in untimely to act as outside agents in a political scheme where no devil could be trusted. The second time, the players asked if they could destroy the world, but weren’t really up to the task. They sacrificed themselves at the end to interrupt their own scheme and destroy an NPC who turned from ally to rival as they (the players, not the PCs) realized this wasn’t the thing they wanted to do. If death doesn’t serve a purpose (like a failed jump check), then I never let it happen. If it serves a purpose, then I use it like any other tool.

Andrew: what cool things have you seen other competitors do that made you think, “wow!” or “I should try that.”

ThatGuy: I can’t really nail down any specifics, but you probably cuz my brain is a little flighty. I always get a kick out of the different interpretations of the three plot elements, the further outside the box the better.

STH: My good friend Erik (Iron GM Necessary Evil) is our only three-time winner. Every year past his first year he makes a big deal of leaving before the three story-elements are announced. He goes to get a drink or spend a dime in the exhibit hall while his players make their characters and text him questions. Then he gets the three elements when his game starts and incorporates them spontaneously. It’s not that high a degree of difficulty but it’s his schtick and he works it out to be very obnoxious and funny. And I think that prepares his tables for his sort of pro-wrestling heel approach to the event. When he gets uppity, I remind him I invited him to Iron GM after I TPKed him and his friends in the DnD Open. But…seriously Erik’s over the top approach is a lot like Chris Pierce. Plenty of positive aggression, a little attitude with the players. Charisma and confidence and making sure you’re players know they are the stars of the show are the keys to a good score and a chance to place in this very tough event.

ThatGuy: Steve, I always thought your incorporation of all the elements from the past was always kinda badass. Your games seem to have that old school brutality when we’re sharing.

STH: I think one great thing about my Iron GM family is that, despite the veneer of heels and smack talk, there is a lot of humility. A lot of willingness to appreciate what the successful GMs do to up their game. Alan and Jill and Erik and Chris are all great about that. The big talk is all good fun, but the recognition of elite skills is always there. Chris is saying nice stuff about me here and I just wanted to recognize him for that.

Dramatic Pause: Everyone has their own techniques. I think the common theme for all of us is that we make the players feel like the heroes they want to be that day. I have definitely stolen different things from each of the previous champions but twisted them to my own devices.

Andrew: What effect do you think the popularity of Critical Role, The Glass Cannon Podcast and other popular actual plays will have on the competition?

ThatGuy: I feel like a dunce. I’ve never actually checked out Critical Role, and I probably should. Everyone says that Matt Mercer is phenomenal Gamemaster.

But, I try not to let other ideas influence my own, otherwise, they’re not mine. Not really, you know? I got obsessed with the Tomb of Horrors for a while there and i think it hurt my creativity. But, that’s just from being a spaz.

But that wasn’t the question. Anything that draws attention to the hobby is a good thing. Gaming podcasts that highlight the hobby can never be a bad thing unless you have a bad group.

STH: Go back to the Tormentor, or through the arch, and the second Great Hall you’ll discover…

Between kids and day job and design work and trying to have a little fun for myself, I don’t really listen to a lot of podcasts. I used to appear on several and that was always fun. It made me aware of that side of the fandom, but I never made the leap to following many and I would like to change that. But Chris is right: anything good for the hobby is important. We (collectively) haven’t been the best ambassadors of our hobby over the years and the game is behnd where it should be in sales and fandom and public consumption. I reiterate the levels of skill and camaraderie in the Iron GM family are vital. Because so many gamers treat newcomers like they have no hope of being a great gamer. I play Magic to build jank decks and win with something that isn’t the current top tier meme deck. Why would I play Pathfinder if the people I see playing the game have toxic attitudes? We need fun events, families of influential minds selling the fun of the game, podcasts, great designers and publishers. And we need more of all of that yesterday.

Andrew: Once the competition is over (win or lose) how does competing in an event like Iron GM help your home game. What lessons have you learned that make your home games better?

ThatGuy: there’s always some element that I use in my iron GM game that tends to bleed over to regular games. It’s usually a singular element, like a cool fight scene or a monster that I thought-up on the Fly. I’ll refine it and put it into practice.

I tend to reuse NPCs and villains like a bachelor reuses dirty clothes.

STH: I feel I mentioned this above. If I had to narrow it down to one skill I’ve refined in the fires of Iron GM, it’s the ability to manage time and energy. It’s so vital in a one-off game to balance combat time and story/roleplay time and that improves my home game performance, too. Okay…two skills. I’m pretty proud of my ability to control multiple NPCs and tell a story by dividing players into groups (it’s always rewarding to split the party when I’m behind the screen, because we think about cinematics, not about the fastest way to kill everyone). Having to think quickly and remember characters that were only made an hour ago by complete strangers really hones your ability to jump from one scene to another and weave a story that benefits the whole group as they see the pieces unfold.

Dramatic Pause: ALWAYS run games like there is a championship belt on the line.

I’d like to thank our guests again for joining me for this Burst of Insight Ask the Experts interview. If you enjoyed this or have further questions about Iron GM or competitive Game Mastering the discussion is just getting started. Tonight Live on the MarloweHouse Twitch feed we’ll be picking up the conversation at 9:00 pm EDT.

Not in Kansas Anymore

The PCs are whisked away to an unfamiliar land either intentionally or by mishap. It could even be that the party all died and are in the land of the dead. Where they are matters far less than getting back out. They will have to treat with the locals make new allies and face off against dangerous new foes if they’re ever to make it home.

The Halfling’s Offer

Halflings are not normally considered great threats, but when the halfling is an underworld crime boss things may become a bit more serious. The PCs owe the crime boss a significant debt, so when offered a chance to clean the slate the PCs reluctantly undertake a seemingly simple job. Unfortunately, the job sets off a powderkeg in the city and an underworld mob war seems inevitable unless the PCs can stop it.

A Magical Mishap

A magical accident polymorphs most of an entire neighborhood in the PCs local city into a variety of farm animals. When heroes restore the resident’s bodies and minds the PCs discover a friend is missing. And the pig everyone thought the friend remains unchanged. The PCs will have to track down their friend. To do it they’ll need the help of a few NPCs who in turn need help.

Unbeknownst to the party the friend suddenly human again has fallen in love with the farmer who mistakenly swapped pigs in town when his pig escaped. When the PCs show up the new couple has one more task that needs addressing. A band of brigands who have been demanding more and more protection money (the reason the farmer was in town to sell his pig until the accident closed trade in livestock) has arrived to harass the farmer…

A Magical Misadventure

The same setup as above, the PCs find themselves on a farm in livestock pens with no memory of how they got there just after the brigands head into the dangerous wilderness with the farmer’s savings and a cart of stolen goods. The PCs must brave the wilds to face down the brigands in their camp.

If you want a little more fleshed out adventure seed, try this:

A Dying Wish

Setup: A onetime ally of the heroes, is dying from a terrible curse. They have acquired a stolen relic with a terrible burden any who take possession of the relic eventually begin to fall under a wasting curse. The only cure is for the relic to be returned to its rightful resting place in a distant lost city.  The PCs must return the relic before their friend dies…and more importantly, before one of them begins to waste away as well. The PCs are given a crude map with ancient markings not easily read.

This is a pretty tried and true narrative but I think you can get a lot of mileage out of familiar stories by presenting them in new ways. In the scene structure below I outline an atypical order of events. Also, the nature of the relic, its curse, and the location of the Lost City can be tweaked to create a unique session.

Villain: A powerful immortal or undead (likely immune to the relics negative effects) wants the relic for its other powers.

Complications: The PCs must seek out aid in interpreting the map. When the PCs arrive agents of the villain are already there waiting in an ambush this is just the first of several such attacks on the PCs. Other complications could include dangers of the road and Traps and denizens of the lost city and the temple. Depending on the length of time you have to run this adventure and where you want your focus to be I’d consider narrating much of the travel and really start the adventure at the gates of the Lost City.

• Scene One: The PCs arrive at the Sage’s and are ambushed by minions of the villain.
• Scene Two: Flashback to the Setup and the ally on his deathbed.
• Special: Introduce short cut scenes especially during scenes 5 & 6 that showcase their ally’s worsening condition.
• Scene Three: Travel montage mostly narrative but possibly punctuated with a skill challenge or two.
• Scene Four: PCs arrive at the gates of the Lost City and fight the guardian at the gates possibly an elemental or a draconic wyrm of some sort.
• Scene Five: Exploration of the ruins. Keep it evocative utilize skill challenges of some sort or just focus on the narrative. If you have plenty of time you may be able to sneak in additional combat.
• Scene Six: Confrontation with the powerful villain.
• Scene Seven: Putting the relic back.

Asking Questions About the Scene

One of the most obvious uses for this technique is to ask about something that catches a character’s attention. Even if you’re running a published adventure you can use this technique to draw your players into the scene. For example: If your players are exploring a haunted infirmary that local teens sneak into for kicks and you’ve read all the box text that talks about fire damaged bedframes and whatnot. You might ask the players to make a Perception check. Let whichever player rolled highest find the primary clue but you might tell the player with the second highest roll they found something small dropped on the floor. Ask them to describe what they found as the pick it up. The adventure in question has some specific items outlined in this encounter there’s no reason (unless you’re running society) why you have to use these items exactly. Giving the players a little extra agency in moments like this can really boost their engagement with the story.

If you don’t abuse it, you might be able to use this trick once or twice to lure the PCs into haunts or traps by engaging their interest in those things they discover and describe.

Asking Questions About a Character’s Past

In many campaigns players come up with elaborate backstories and their GMs aren’t always certain how to connect the characters’ pasts with the campaign’s current events. Other times Players may have only one or two vague details about their characters’ pasts worked out. When a GM asks questions at the table about a character’s past they bring the character’s backstory into the present.
Taking the previous example the GM knows that the player’s PC is local to the area and likely broke into the place at least once. When the GM tells the player they found something she might elaborate and ask the significance of the item. And while the other characters are possibly unaware there is a personal story tied to the find but the players are. If the clues and questions are kept concise the GM and the player can work together to slowly reveal more of the character’s backstory.

These questions need not be limited to trinkets and finds. If the GM needs an NPC tied to a character background this can be accomplished by asking questions at the table. in a homebrew game or a published story where who the NPC is, makes little difference to the overall plot the GM might ask questions that lead to a unique character largely crafted by the player. Alternatively, if you have a clear idea of exactly what NPC you need to use. You can describe the character and then ask questions about how the characters met or what exactly that falling out was over.

Asking Questions About How a Character Feels

Similar to asking about a character’s past the GM can ask for a peek behind the mask every character wears. She can ask a player about the character’s fears, desires, and impressions. Again these questions can be presented in a number of ways. The GM might be direct and just ask what a character is feeling or sometimes it can be a lot of fun to ask the same sorts of things in more roundabout methods. For example, an orc skald successfully intimidates a PC in combat rather than narrating what intimidating thing the GM thinks would be cool, the GM might ask the player what the intimidating behavior was.

All in all. Inviting your players to contribute to setting the scene, filling in details or providing insights to their character’s motivation and backstory is a great way to increase engagement at the table and focus that spotlight back onto the Players and their PCs.

The larger ways GMs fail their players are rarer in my experience especially as GMs get to practice and improve their craft but they still happen frequently enough they bear mentioning.

Created with Clips using Apple emojis.

Mary Sues and Know-It-All NPCs

Non-player characters should be (for the most part) be relegated to two main roles: Villain or Support. Villains are masterminds, monsters, or thugs the PCs need to somehow defeat and overcome. They may need to be killed in battle or talked down from violence. There are numerous ways the PCs may overcome a villain but the point is that the villain is essentially an obstacle the PCs need to try and overcome.

Right now though, I’m focusing on NPCs in the support role. Support NPCs are the agents and allies the PCs can rely on for aid, council, and to have their backs when everything goes sideways. The PCs may not be able to put out every fire and be everyplace someone is needed. Support NPCs can fill that niche letting the PCs be where the action is heaviest.

Unfortunately, sometimes GMs get carried away. Sometimes we fall in love with our own fictional creations, sometimes we realize the finely crafted story we have in our minds needs a super-powered hero and we “CAN’T” give that kind of power to a single PC. Whatever the reason we include a superhero who outshines the PCs. The NPC might be a far better thief than the party rogue, a more captivating persona than the party envoy, or worse a master of skills who makes the entire party obsolete.

The other problem is the know-it-all NPC. Not every spotlight scene is stolen because the NPC can kill everything easily sometimes they just know so much the only way forward is the NPCs way. Imagine a campaign where the PCs are hired by a strange old wizard who tells the PCs where to go, what to do when they get there. He talks over characters whose theories are wrong to set them on the right course. He always knows one or two more facts than the PCs when they make knowledge rolls…and that extra knowledge is always more pertinent to events than what the players have.

Sometimes players will encounter a game with both problems. A friend recently recounted a game where the party was allied with a group of this sort of NPCs. At every turn in the dungeon, the players were given choices but the NPCs always made the final call if the PCs suggested going another route. The one time a player stepped out of line and went down a divergent tunnel alone a trap was triggered reinforcing the idea that the NPCs knew best. At the final boss fight the party of first level PCs didn’t have the magic weapons necessary to hurt the Big Bad End Guy…but the NPCs did. The PCs were relegated to mopping up minions while the GM rolled and narrated every blow against the BBEG. It slowed down play and bored the players from start to finish.

And while this example is extreme it’s not uncommon. I’ve had countless occasions where similar events have unfolded as have nearly every player I know.

Copyright 2015 Lucasfilms

GMs aren’t solely to blame in all instances of this though. Sometimes in well-known settings with powerful NPCs, the players rather than try to shoulder the campaign’s burden may try to take problem after problem to more powerful NPCs to handle. I’ve had this happen most notoriously in Star Wars and Forgotten Realms campaigns.  Sith on the rise and building a super weapon? Run to Luke Skywalker or the Jedi Council depending on the era. Demons encroaching on Cormyr? Ask Elminster! The first time a GM may want to reward what at the moment feels like clever thinking but this can quickly become a crutch.

How do you fix these sorts of missteps? Well in the latter example is the NPC thanks the player’s for their diligence but reveals he has his own problem that may be related and are as critical. Instead of rushing off to solve the PCs problem themselves. The NPC thanks the players for the information and charges them to go back to the plot of the campaign and do what must be done. Now, I would encourage the player’s creative thinking and maybe have the NPC reveal a small insight or offer a minor tool to make their task easier. Maybe there is a contact they can reach on Coruscant that will give them access to a spy among the sith or Elminster has a +1 demon bane longsword he can lend the party fighter. This still can become a crutch so moderate the sort of help the PCs receive.

In the first example, the GM could moderate the NPC group’s power have them defer to the PC’s experience in the dungeon and let the player’s pick the course. Another option would be to truncate this part of the adventure. Declaring the NPCs lead the party to the lair of the BBEG. Now you’ve not spent hours on puppet theatre the players couldn’t really affect and moved to the climactic battle. Then what happens if in this final battle the NPCs are killed and the BBEG escapes deeper into the dungeon to hatch plans to destroy the city? Now the PCs can recover magic weapons at least capable of hurting it and are the only survivors who know the threat that lurks ahead. But then too these “epic heroes” the beast just wiped out were legends what hope does a bunch of junior adventurers have? That sounds like a potentially epic intro…so long as the fight focus was on the PCs combat with the minions and the failure of the NPCs wasn’t rolled out round by round and was naturally narrated into the rest of the combat scene.

Those are a couple of the big ways GMs can steal the spotlight. Now, let’s talk about some of the smaller ways it can happen.

PABLO RUIZ MUZQUIZweb:diacritica.net

Too Many Die Rolls

As GMs, we call for a lot of dice rolls. Some are necessary but some others are not really needed. If a task doesn’t seem to be too difficult and is in the unique wheelhouse of the character consider skipping the roll. For example, the rogue wants to scout the outskirts of a bandit camp while the bandits are having a drunken revel you could ask for a Stealth roll. Alternately, you could just decide that the rogue is skillful enough to move unseen by the impaired bandits. With the first option sure the PC could roll very poorly and it might be fun to have the PC break a twig and get spotted but that fun comes at the expense of making the character look foolish. The second option might embolden the character to get closer and try something more daring which will probably be a better opportunity for a roll than just scouting.

While we’re talking unnecessary dice rolls let’s talk about those rolls that not only take some of the character’s spotlight but can bring a story to a screeching halt. Sometimes we hide important clues and other key story elements behind dice rolls. If the PCs miss a clue in a particular area because they fail to make a Perception check your game may grind to a halt while the players spin their wheels trying to piece together what they need to do next without that critical clue. Sometimes it isn’t a clue. Sometimes it’s an item that will make a later encounter easier or sometimes possible such as a bundle of ghost touch arrows located behind a secret door intended to be found just before a key encounter with an incorporeal foe. If the party missed the perception roll to find the door that fight will be much more difficult if not outright impossible for very low-level characters. As GMs, we can look at our party makeup and showcase PCs who have the sorts of abilities that might discover the secret door easiest. Maybe the dwarven character notices something about the stonework while the rogue might notice a seam in the wall and the oracle might sense something unnatural in the space beyond.

Another way to modify dice rolls to shift the spotlight on your PCs is to make the base clue a given then offer the roll to get more information. This works best with Knowledge or Gather Information checks. You can say you are knowledgeable enough to know, X but go ahead and give me a roll and see what else you can learn. Then award them additional information based on the final skill roll. I will sometimes step down the DCs of knowledge checks in an adventure so that the lowest DC is a given fact and lower the DCs of each following level by one
step on the chart.

I hope you found some of the advice and cautions above to be helpful. I’ll be back in two weeks and we’ll address another basic GM tip.

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When you split the party you can cut away with cliffhangers to increase the tension and drama. You can layer new discoveries so that the players can gain insights and revelations their characters won’t know until they can back together and compare notes…If they can get back together. And that uncertainty can be exciting!

If you are using a published module you may find the sections on scaling the adventure a helpful starting point in balancing out encounters for split parties. Feel free to try and err on the too weak side to start as your goal probably isn’t a TPK. If your encounters seem too weak, you can scale them up a little as you progress.

Intercutting between the two groups as often as reasonably possible is a good idea especially if you can time it so that at least one pair of combat encounters can sync up. At which point you can run the two separate encounters as one combat. Having each player and monster act on their turn in the initiative regardless of what room they’re in.

If you can’t sync up the monster encounters or the party splits outside the dungeon you can have the other players run monsters or NPCs for the other half of the party. Talk about this well in advance of splitting the party (such as during session zero) and again when it happens. Make it clear that none of this is personal and there should be no hard feelings. Enemy NPCs are meant to die in combat encounters and that still holds true.

Another thing you can do with these un-synced combats is to leave them with cliffhangers and return to the other half of the party. If the Big Bad scores a crit on one of your PCs or an attack might kill someone take note of the current round, initiative order, and damage inflicted but before revealing the damage you cut to the other group. If you are looking for great examples of cliffhangers the Glass Cannon Podcast* and/or Androids and Aliens* podcast (if you’re a Starfinder fan) are good resources.

You can also split the party on a smaller scale. Recently, I was considering doing something similar to some of the door puzzles in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. Several times in the game you need to slide shelving units to gain access to various areas. In most cases, these units simply help conceal an area from view but at one point your character has to move some in one area run around a corner and move others into the now vacated space. Other video games have pressure plates or switches that multiple character’s need to stand on or pull. We can do similar things in our dungeon design putting parts of the party in limited isolation allowing for wandering foes to attack while the party is not at full strength at least for a couple of rounds.

Sometimes the payoff isn’t in splitting the party but in reuniting them. Imagine leaving one half the party with the cliffhanger when they stumble on a group of the Big Bad’s mercenaries gearing up for action. Later the other half of the party is hitting the room with the big bad himself instead of making the partial party who stumbled into the wrong room fight the big bad alone. When you call for initiative several of the apparent minions of the big bad unmask and reveal themselves to be the rest of the PC’s party. After the combat, you can narrate the intervening time detailing how the PCs joined or replaced some of the villain’s minions just prior to the final battle in a flashback scene.

Again, not splitting the party is often good advice but sometimes it’s advice worth ignoring.

*Parental Discretion is advised due to language and often adult content. The Glass Cannon podcasts are not all audience podcasts.

Featured Image is used under fair use and is copyright Warner Brothers Animation. 

Now, this isn’t to say groups never use non-linear storytelling techniques but a few are hard to include. Of the non-linear tools GMs can use, flash-forwards can be one of the most difficult. Because flash-forwards assume that all the involved PCs will still be alive in the future when the scene occurs. That certainty of survival can detrimentally affect a player’s fear for their character. The stakes are necessarily lowered because now the flash-forward POV character(s) can’t die.

Funny thing is the stakes don’t have to drop significantly. When playing an AP or an epic home-brew the stakes include the lives of the player characters but not exclusively. Typically there’s a runelord, giant, demon horde or some other threat to the larger world that requires the PCs to be successful. Ultimately, these campaign level stakes are more important to the success of the overall story than individual life of any single PC. Especially, since there are fates that players my fear as much or more than character death. If you set up a flash-forward that seems to shelter the player characters make sure it doesn’t also lock in their overall victory or protect the PC from other difficult fates.

Now, video game RPGs by necessity are pretty on-the-rails experiences and yet we do see some interesting uses of flash-forwards. The Assassin’s Creed series takes the flash-forward to an extreme where the time shift takes us to a distant future where the primary storyline characters are long dead. One of my favorite uses of the flash-forward technique in games comes from the Dragon Age franchise. In Dragon Age 2 Bioware utilized a narrative framework that had a follower NPC, Varric, being interrogated by a Seeker sent by the Chantry. The action of the game was presented as Varric’s version of past events. This allowed the story to easily jump periods of time, where not much of importance occurs. This format also allowed the designers to set Varric as an unreliable narrator once or twice and boost the main character’s abilities for a scene or two.

In a recent campaign, I had the opportunity to insert a flash-forward scene. The game is an over-the-top anime-inspired fantasy Wild West with magical suits of power armor. Despite already being pretty over the top, for one short storyline, I thought that maybe we’d jumped a shark. So after a break in the action, I quickly switched scenes and had one PCs mentor incredulously ask the PCs if they were serious. As we’ve played on through this storyline I’ve popped back to this future scene a few more times. The most recent occurred at the end of a session where rather than fight a group of powerful stone giants the PCs talked their way around the creatures. When I returned to the future scene I drew the player’s attention to a newspaper article that showed a pair of stone giants rampaging a nearby town.

My player’s realized then that while they may be safe from death, the world wouldn’t be immune to the consequences of their actions.

It can be fun to use a flash-forward scene like Bioware did with Dragon Age to set up a scene with an unreliable narrator and amp up the power of your game for a session or two, either by boosting the PCs level significantly or road testing the mythic rules. The unreliable narrator and built-in player safety means everyone can really ham it up and crank up the nonsense without ruining the actual events of the campaign. When we finish the current storyline in my campaign I’ll have a sit down with my players and we’ll discuss what likely happened for real and what they might have exaggerated (if any of it.) They won’t be able to undo any of the consequences but other then I’ll give them the agency to describe what really happened.

If a character involved in a flash-forward dies you may need to do some quick thinking. One obvious option is to have it look like the character died but maybe pure luck, a mysterious benefactor, or some force intervenes. This intervening power need not be benevolent. The character may come to locked in a cage or indebted to a powerful spell caster with dubious motives.

Another option is to take the flash-forward scene and turn what the players thought they knew on its ear. If the scene had seemed to be a friendly conversation with a PCs mentor where the party is sharing war stories over drinks. It would be shocking for the players to suddenly discover that the relaxed and familiar surroundings were but a facade to make the dead PC feel more comfortable as they defended their life to the powers that determine a soul’s ultimate fate in the afterlife.

Variety can really liven up a campaign so I encourage GMs to try injecting some non-linear storytelling to their campaigns whether it be a flash-back, side story or flash-forward. In the case of the latter option, I hope this article was of some use or inspiration.

Worse, even the unique items rarely offer a great deal of mystery and within a roll or two powers and charges are all revealed. Now in a world where wizards and clerics wield fundamental forces unknown in our reality some of this is to be expected. And playing with some predictable magic is fun but I still want more wonder and mystery in my games even on items that don’t rise to the power of artifacts.

I’ve talked on the blog before about my fondness for Numenera and the Cypher System. One of the elements I really liked about Numenera was the “magical” treasure one could find. Most of it came in one of three varieties: oddities, cyphers, and artifacts.

Today I’m most interested in the Cypher System’s artifacts. These are not artifacts in the same way as Pathfinder artifacts. Cypher system artifacts fill the niches of magical weapons, armor, staves, rods, wondrous items, etc. These are items with a single magical effect and an unknown number of charges. Unknown because each time an artifact is used a depletion roll is made. Depletion is expressed as a range and a die, for example, one item might have a 1 in 1d10 while another might have a 1-2 in 1d6. If the depletion roll is within the listed range the item ceases to function.

I like the uncertainty this creates.

I’m also quite fond of the existing artifact model. Highly unique items impossible to replicate…or at least not easily replicated because not every unique item needs to be of such colossal power. So with that as a basis, I’ve begun thinking about trivial artifacts. These items are rare if not singularly unique and may not reveal all of their secrets when identified.

Vial of Stars

Aura strong divination; CL 18
Slot none, Weight —

When the stopper is pulled from this faceted crystal vial it seems to pulse with a faint inner glow for a mere moment. To the eyes of the wielder motes of candle bright light spring into existence creating an area of dim light in a 90-foot radius of the vial. A wielder with darkvision finds this has no adverse effect on their sight but color returns to things viewed within the vial’s effective radius. The vial casts its dim light even through magical darkness.

Depletion 1 in 1d20 per hour of use.

Possible Secrets for the vial of stars: The pattern of lights viewed is not random but forms a specific series of constellations. In a Starfinder campaign, it might be an actual magical stellar map that might require a second piece be inserted in the uncapped vial to reveal the exact location of a particular campaign McGuffin.

Destiny Coin

Aura strong transmutation; CL 18
Slot neck, Weight —

This pendant features a brightly shining double headed gold coin. Both sides of the coin bear the true likeness of the person holding or wearing the pendant although sometimes one of the heads is that of an enraged red dragon. The pendant may be activated as an immediate action whenever the bearer fails any attack roll, caster level check, saving throw or skill check. When activated there is the faint but audible ring of a flipped coin. For the user, time seems to rewind by a bare moment. Just long enough that the bearer may reroll the initial check with an additional d20 and take the highest of the two new results. Unlike other trivial artifacts, when the Destiny Coin is depleted it doesn’t become inert instead it vanishes and reappears somewhere else in the world.

Depletion 1-3 in 1d20 Destruction it must be melted down in the fire of a colossal dragon.

Possible secrets of the Destiny Coin: The coin once was the centerpiece of a dragon’s hoard but it was stolen. The dragon had grown too dependent on the coin’s luck and soon perished. Haunted by the loss of its prized treasure the now undead dragon seeks it out and can hear every flip of the coin where ever in the world it is. Worse in the presence of the undead dragon the power of the coin warps and both heads on the coin take on the likeness of the red dragon. While appearing like this the bearer may still reroll a d20 check per the normal power, but instead of taking the best of two results the bearer must take the worst of the two results. In this case, an alternate depletion effect might be that instead of vanishing the coin teleports the dragon to wherever the bearer is.

The bearer might also discover they can speak draconic while they wear the coin this ability doesn’t deplete the item.

So, given the conversation on air, I should stipulate that I like characters with backstories.  Whether it’s my own PCs or the PCs of my players I like backstories. For my characters, past is prologue. Often my character’s past informs how I relate to events in the campaign. Often this is most important at low levels because events that occur at the table tend to (and should) exert more influence on my PCs. Now I don’t need a novel-length backstory or even a short story. Three hundred words and a few bullet points are probably more than sufficient. Sometimes even fewer. When it comes to my player’s characters I like to have the character’s backstory so I can find ways to weave their characters deeper into the campaign narrative, plus as Perram points out during the podcast, backstories are often good indicators of what kinds of stories the players are interested in. I won’t go so far as to say everything in a backstory must be used directly it doesn’t hurt to look for themes and ways later campaign events might parallel events from the characters’ pasts.

Right now, I’d like to echo one of Ryan’s points. Talk to your players right away about elements of their backstory that excite you as the GM and find out why those elements are there. If you find out that Ryan has a tragic unsolved mystery at the center of his character concept and his excitement lands on exploring a character haunted by this unresolved tragedy maybe you don’t solve the mystery. Perhaps instead you introduce an NPC who parallels the themes of the mystery. If a player has an estranged son you don’t have to bring the son into your narrative if the PC wants to keep that situation unresolved. Instead, maybe there’s an NPC who’s just entering a similar situation and needs the PC’s advice. Or the NPC is a young person about the same age as the PC’s son and is in need of a mentor.  You have a lot of options for using a player’s backstory so it’s worth making sure you don’t irreparably damage the PC’s image of their character by having these conversations early.

So that’s what I like about backstories (particularly me as a GM) but not all of my players engage with their characters or their stories the way I do. My wife typically likes to discover the character as she plays. She’ll have a vague idea of who the character is and as we play she’ll start filling in her backstory sometimes comparing and contrasting the events of the campaign and sometimes drawing from (seemingly) unrelated events in her life or the media she consumes. Other players at my table have little interest in backgrounds at all, instead, they develop their character only from the moment it hits the table and moving forward. In a normal campaign even if I specifically ask for backgrounds I’ll only get one or two.

A Living Backstory

My table and I experiment with new-to-us approaches to various aspects of gaming that we don’t like or don’t get as much mileage from as we might like. Backgrounds included. I have to give credit where credit is due. While I’ve wanted to do flashback scenes in my tabletop games in the past I never played in a game where flashbacks were used much. So lacking any experiences to model it’s been a trick I’ve used maybe only once or twice with middling success. Since I’ve started watching and listening to actual plays I’ve seen how some other GMs have used it effectively and seen some pitfalls to avoid as demonstrated by others. Flashbacks can be an effective way to create a living backstory for the characters in your game.

During a recent game-session, Monica asked if she might have had a mentor she could call on. I agreed and we spent a special session one-on-one giving the NPC a rough outline then we spent about 20 minutes playing through a scene that had the two characters meeting for the first time.

When I ran that scene, I let her have a lot of the narrative reigns. She played most of the NPCs and I played the NPC Mentor and moved the action by moving him about. I have to say the experiment was a success and I’ll be making more use of similar scenes in the future. Because roleplaying through the backstory lets the players actually experience the past in the same way they experience the rest of the campaign it makes key elements of the backstory far more memorable.

All of these actual plays I’ve been consuming have encouraged me to mix running some of these scenes with the full table present and running other as side scenes with only the principle player(s) present. While on camera and mic the other players on these shows stay very engaged and focused on the whole story. I’m not certain my more casual group has the focus to run a lot of these sorts of scenes during the regular session when we can meet for 30 to forty minutes and resolve things without boring everyone else. Separate scenes also allow for participating players to recount events in their own words other than “I tell your characters all the stuff that just happened.”

I’m curious if any of you have tried role-playing through elements of your party’s backstories and what your experience with it was.

A newer one of these actual plays is a Geek and Sundry show featuring Deborah Ann Woll as the GM called Relics and Rarities. Now as a part of the opening of each adventure the PCs gather on the set of the Relics and Rarities shop before moving to the game table. Deborah in the role of the shopkeeper who gives them their missions invites the players to pick out a magical item from specially tagged items scattered about with the other curios in the shop. Once a player makes a selection the shopkeeper explains the basic powers of the item in natural language rather than game terms.

This approach really intrigued members of my regular gaming group and we began discussing how we might use this or something like it at our game table in the future.

Obviously, we’d need a campaign premise that like R&R would give the PCs reason to get a briefing before every adventure from a patron who could outfit the PCs with something interesting before each new adventure. In Golarion that sort of set up would align nicely with the Pathfinder Society. But there are a number of stories that could work with this starting structure.

Once we discussed a number of campaign hooks we discussed a couple of ways this might be employed mechanically in a campaign. One option was for the GM to custom design everything in advance and just issue an item to each PC. This was probably my least favorite method as it felt more like Q and James Bond and almost requires the GM to make each item relevant to the adventure at hand. Another option could be for the GM to describe what’s in the store to the group and let the players react to the descriptions and select what they want but this could be more slow and confusing than I care to think about.

The option I prefer is to actually use props. If you have a curio shop worth of trinkets you could leave those about the room or as I’m inclined to do lay out a number of Paizo’s Item Cards on the table. Players can then choose from the cards presented. I’m inclined to put out about 1.5 to 2 cards per player. I suggest just laying them out on the center of your table.

For narrative purposes, you might set each one down on an index card that tells the players where in the shop the item is located. If you really want to get tricky you might “obscure” one or two of the items requiring a low to mid-DC perception check to notice the item. You could simulate this by writing a DC on the back of the index card and tucking the item card under the inverted Index card.

If the scene you are setting up is particularly cluttered you might even put multiple items on one location so that as the players are looking at the images they actually have to rummage through other item cards. A GM might instead of having specific locations “mapped out” might just randomly shuffle the cards into a similarly sized deck of playing cards and ask players to sort through the stack.

No matter how you execute getting the props to the players how do you decide what the items do? Personally, for some of it, I’d use existing low-cost items. For others, I’d eyeball cool powers of small utility.

Examples:

A wand of light with 5 charges but as an added bonus if the light created by the wand illuminates a magical item, anyone within 10 feet of the illuminated item may make a Perception Check DC 15 to notice the item’s aura as if detect magic had been cast within the last round. Additional time spent looking at an illuminated magic item yields no further information.

A pair of boots that once per day while making an Acrobatics or Climb skill check allow you to roll two d20s and take the best result.

A ring that while worn shrinks the wearer 2 size categories but bestows a temporary negative level until removed. The wearer would be killed at any time by this negative level the ring ceases to work automatically restoring the character to normal size. Note hit point loss even with a character’s reduced hit points does not end the ring’s effects.

A good source for some low powered magical items I’m planning to reference is the Loot 4 Less series from Rogue Genius Games. Then as my characters become more powerful better items will ultimately begin to make their way into the player’s hands.

I should note that no matter what method you use to add these items to your game. You should treat the unused items like James Bond’s gadgets from Q and limit the items the players have access to.  It’s best if each adventure the magic items go back to the patron and new items can be selected.

I hate to use the phrase crowdsourcing in terms of world building but it’s mostly appropriate. Maybe better would be player-sourced world building. Well whatever we decide to call it I think it is a good Idea for GMs to return some of that work back over to the players. This can be a daunting prospect for both the GM and some players. It can be hard to let go and let someone else add their ideas to your world. It can also be intimidating to make changes to what you see as your GM’s campaign setting. But these worlds we play in have never belonged exclusively to the game masters.

Even if they don’t notice, they players will take ownership of parts of the campaign world and you can see it in the way reference things. “our castle,” “our city […village…town…etc…],” “my follower,”, “my mentor” and on and on. The players and the GM share the world your campaigns happen in why not start letting them influence the shape of the world before the campaign begins.

There are a couple of different approaches you can take to this. Maybe as a part of a session zero or even sometime before that you sit down with your potential players and everyone comes up with two to four, short prompts toss those in a bowl, hat or on random results table. Select one idea for each player (including the GM) at your table or more if you have a very small group and brainstorm a setting that encompasses all of those ideas.

You might pull: Zombies, Wild Magic, Road Trip, The Royal Castle, Animal Companions, and Zeppelins. So you have a campaign about a zombie apocalypse that has forced the mortal races to build zeppelin cities far above the hungry horde. All was returning to normal but recently magic has become unpredictable and the council of magi has determined that the source of the disruption is hidden in the Royal Castle of in Neveris and the PC’s must journey there and discover what is affecting magic. Unfortunately, a permanent storm rages at the border of Neveris that will force the PCs to travel by road for several days to reach the castle. Each PC is gifted an animal companion because the animals will sense the approach of zombies.

Or maybe you decide on something totally different. Ignoring elements that stop feeling relevant and adding new ones that fire your imaginations. We’ve used this method a number of times a couple of the times we’ve even recorded it (both the Session zero and several sessions of play).

Another less radical approach is to for the GM to create the space where most of the campaign’s action will take place and during your session zero the players can add details.

Player one: “Hey I’m playing a rogue is there a thieves guild?”

GM: I think there might be. Is your character a part of the guild?

Player one: No, I was thinking I got on the guild’s bad side.

GM: Okay, cool. What does your character know about the guild?

In this scenario the player can outline what they think they know about the guild and the GM can fill in the details including subverting one or two things the character was mistaken about. The GM shouldn’t invalidate all of the character’s information but use minor misunderstandings to make the world seem more real. For example, the player suggests the guild is known as the Shadow Asps and the ranking guild lord is a level 10 vigilante known as the Demon. The GM decides the Demon was unseated by an underling, and is now missing. When the PCs inevitably cross the guild they will discover that some of their intelligence is outdated. The GM might even use the vigilante’s public persona to put the PCs in the path of the guild making the Demon a potential ally instead of an enemy to overcome.

You might ask the Cleric player to detail the, legends of her deity or an overview of the far away land she hails from. You might also ask your players what they want from the campaign (and the setting) and get their input and define the aspects that most resonate with your players together.

These are things you can also do on the fly. A PC asks to make a religion roll to see if they remember anything about the Cult of the Iridescent Fang. Even though you had some ideas about what lies ahead in the campaign turn the question back to the player:

“I don’t know. You rolled a 16, I think that’s enough for you to tell me three things you’ve heard about the Cult of the Iridescent Fang.”

Try to work the details they give you in as fact. If they give you something you don’t think you can use you can “remind” them that that particular rumor comes from Bob whose rumors tend to prove unreliable most of the time. If it then doesn’t seem like they have enough information or if the quality of the rumors they give you warrants it, drop a hint that directly pertains to the current application of the skill check.

All in all, asking your players to contribute will not only increase their investment in the setting but it will likely open up ideas you would have never considered.

This week when I sat down to write my blog my brain quit. I had too many ideas and no ideas. My ideas were like trying to catch the tide in your hands. Ideas would crash in, then withdraw before I had a chance to really develop them. To anyone who works creatively, this is likely not a new sensation. It certainly isn’t new to me.

Fortunately, tonight I had a slight breakthrough…I decided to cheat and talk about writer’s block instead of looking too closely at any of those ideas teasing me from the sandy shores of my imagination.

I find that while the following technique doesn’t always work it does work often enough that it might be worth sharing and it comes down to this. Stop trying to write the thing that the block is obstructing. Take a moment to acknowledge (possibly out loud) the problem and begin writing something else. Anything else.

Dare to be Ordinary

I used to think of this more as “dare to be awful” but recently I’ve been listening to an audiobook about improv for actors. One of the guidelines the author talks about is, “daring to be ordinary,” which I like better than dare to be awful. I find that when mental blocks stimy my writing it easiest to stop trying to be creative and just type the first things that come to mind.

When you begin writing, don’t worry about whether your writing on a useful topic or if your grammar is even coherent. The objective is to simply put words to paper (or screen). If you decide to use what you’ve written for any purpose you can revise it later.  Which is essentially what I’ve been doing for the last several minutes here. Tonight’s blog began life as an angry stream of consciousness rant and has since evolved into an attempt to help other creatives add a tool to their writer’s toolbox.

And now that I have…

More Weird for Your Campaign

Now that I have written down my thoughts I figured we’d continue committing words to screen and I’d jot down a few weird prompt ideas. I’m still not looking too closely at the blog Idea I had before and I’m willing for these prompts (in the initial draft at least) to be a little ordinary and obvious.

Chimera Campaign: Like the mythical monster that mixes aspects of a lion, a goat,  and a dragon you can pull two (or more) random campaign settings from your shelves and come up with ways to draw elements from each together into something new and weird. Example: At random you select the original Planescape Campaign Setting and the 3era setting X-Crawl. You decide to ramp up the campy professional sport-dungeoneer aspect of X-Crawl and then focus on the otherworldly nature of Planescape and the Blood War. In place of the settings actual struggle, the PCs are swept up into the conflict and forced to compete in a series of deadly Pro-League Dungeons. These events are broadcast by crystal ball all over Sigil.

Alternately, you might cross the World of Darkness and Starfinder. The PCs are a werewolf pack traversing the stars together.  Players each portray a werewolf likely with a different tribe and auspice and the looming apocalypse threatens all of the Pact Worlds.

Distress Beacon: This is a trope that has been used to great effect in other media whether it was the Nostromo investigating LV-426 or the crew of the Canterbury boarding the Scopuli the early distress call set the direction for the rest of each of these franchises. If you are playing Starfinder a distress beacon can be a great way to kick off a campaign. Begin in media res with the decision to investigate already established. What do the PCs discover, a heretofore unknown and famished alien lifeform bent on eating and spreading to all of the Pact Words or maybe all they find is …betrayal and the start of an interstellar war.

Everyone World Builds: FATE has some great rules for the entire group to contribute to creating the campaign setting. These rules work as great advice when playing other games such as Pathfinder or Starfinder. For our Marlowe House, Friday live-stream games on Twitch Monica and I have taken inspiration from these guidelines and we’ve built a couple of different campaign settings. For our games, everyone contributes a few rough concepts and we pool our creativity and build our settings together. If your curious how we do this you can watch here:  https://youtu.be/ht5b7HNCfY0.

I’ve enjoyed doing the Weird Prompts in the past and I thought I’d revisit the concept once again. So without further ado here we go again, this time with a single campaign prompt. Way back in October, I posted about a campaign I was running based in the afterlife and the city of Purgatory. Unfortunately, it was a short-lived campaign but I thought I’d share a few of my notes as a part of the weird prompts series.

The Pitch—“We won’t be playing in Golarion or any other published world. We’ll build aspects of the world during character creation and play. Your characters can be from any traditional sort of fantasy region originally although for ease and familiarity I encourage you to stick to fairly common western tropes like you would find in Golarion, Oerth, Toril, Krynn, etc. Only the Core Races are allowed but all Paizo classes are allowed except the occult classes. Run anything else you’d like to play by me if I have easy enough access to it I’ll probably allow it.”

“You’ll each be playing a fifth level character so they’ve had some adventures, earned some fame. Put yourself in your PCs shoes. Think about your best haul or your most famous deed. You each made friends and enemies. Think of those people whose lives you’ve touched. Think about those you’ve put in the ground already. Give your character goals. Then decide how your character died.”

Up until this point I’d made no reference to the type of campaign I’d be running. The sudden revelation that the characters were deceased sold this concept to more than one of the players.

“As we begin play the PCs reside in the surreal city of Purgatory in the lands of the dead. Each character has unfinished business in the world of the living, loved ones left behind. Destinies unfulfilled. The PCs have made contact with each other. Discuss how your characters connect to one another, who knew who before and who met who after. 

You have all also had dealings with Valdis Firth a rogue charon (rank and file member of the Guild of Soul Ferriers or just Boatman’s Guild in the vernacular). Valdis has been known to smuggle in the living for final goodbyes and instructions and on rarer occasions, he’s smuggled in other things from the world of the living. He’s every PCs primary contact with their pasts. You should decide how you met Valdis and how your character perceives their relationship with the rogue charon.”

Important Factions of the Setting

Some other details from my early notes.

The Guild of Soul Ferriers: The charons are the rank and file members of the boatman’s guild. Many charons are deceased themselves the upper ranks are exclusively extra-planner emissaries of death.

Order of the Shroud: Better known as reapers these extra-planner beings are responsible for the harvesting of the dead. Very few of the Order is seen in Purgatory outside of their headquarters, the Obsidian Keep.

Cerberai: Purgatory’s police force. The Cerberai have a reputation for ruthlessness. Very few of the dead citizens are accepted to serve but a few do and some have reached surprising ranks.

Facts of the World

Purgatory doesn’t just take on the recently deceased. Sometimes items destroyed in the mortal world also cross over. Scavengers search the wastes around Purgatory for valuables that arrive in the afterlife unexpected and unguided.

While the wastes fill with detritus other items are guided through the veil either manifesting with the deceased by force of will or they are guided by the collective unconscious of the living and the dead. Books tend to appear in the library of Purgatory’s Grand Arcanum.

After death, the disappointing fact is that life goes on. The rewards (both good and bad) have been suspended. No one in the city is quite certain why. It is a popular belief that the Order of the Shroud knows why and may even be responsible for the embargo. With the gates of the various afterlives closed the countless souls in Purgatory typically pick up where they left off in life.

Homelessness is rare but not unheard of. When a new resident arrives in the city their home manifests somewhere in the city. This home is born from the subconscious of the recently deceased and the thoughts of those still living most emotionally affected by their passing. Sometimes, a new resident takes ownership of a compatible home already in existence but no longer occupied because the previous owner has either passed to their Reward or met death for the dead.

Death for the dead.

There are three kinds of death for the dead.

• Oblivion: Murder is almost unheard of but when the dead are “killed” again pass into Oblivion. It requires special materials or extreme circumstances to kill the dead.
• Shambled: Healing is uncommon in Purgatory and violence is not unheard of. Anyone who suffers too much damage becomes too broken joins the mindless hordes of the shambled. The Cerberai force the shambled into the wastes.
• Faded: Those who have been dead for too long risk becoming one of the faded. The faded have long been forgotten by the mortal world and in turn, have forgotten their own ties to the mortal realm. As this occurs the subject begins to fade ultimately becoming insubstantial even within the world of the dead.

Neighboring realms: Purgatory borders on the Wall a barrier between the whole of reality and the madness and horror beyond. It also borders two mortal realms including the World of Dreams and the Shadow Realm itself directly adjacent to the World of the Living.

Navigating Purgatory: so long as a residence knows the proper name of a location they can find it. Getting from place to place in the same neighborhood seldom takes more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Getting to somewhere else in the infinite city can take literally forever if they do not know the name of the locale. When the name is known it seldom takes more than an hour to reach the right neighborhood. A character who is feeling an urgent need to get somewhere faster may make a Knowledge (local) check to get somewhere more quickly. Failing this check by 10 or more can result in becoming lost.

Spoiler Warning

In this article I’ll be spending considerable time talking about the Mummy’s Mask AP particularly book one The Half Dead City. So there will be spoilers. You have been warned.

Read for Discoveries

While you are prepping your adventure, read it with an eye for where your major and minor discoveries are. With the dungeons in The Half Dead City (Mummy’s Mask volume one) you can certainly award XP for unravelling the stories wrapped up in the hieroglyphics on the walls and learning who these people were. You will also definitely want to offer XP when the PCs discover that they aren’t the only explorers to be in the Sanctum of the Erudite Eye and that something was stolen from the Reliquary of the Thrice-Divided Soul. You need not award every discovery but I’d be prepared to award most of them.

Remember PCs need about 16 XP to advance a tier and about half the XP the PCs earn is expected to be spent on immediate uses such as rerolls. If you’re running an AP you may have be quite generous with XP to give the players the opportunity to reach tier 6 by the end of book 6.

Fill Role-playing Opportunities

Many GMs already do this, in fact most of Paizo adventures and APs are written to encourage interacting with colorful local NPC and learning their side stories. This is especially true in the early books of an AP.

If you are playing an adventure where the PCs have rivals, let them get to know them. Let some of that rivalry grow naturally. In the Half Dead city that means letting the PCs meet and interact with the Scorched Hand. Not only does this expand your opportunities to award XP as the PCs discover your NPCs desires and motivations it also increases the drama of the moment when a friendly rivalry turns deadly.

Cut Some Combat

Cutting combats may seem counterintuitive but not every encounter is necessary. Sure combat is fun, but it isn’t the focus of the Cypher System the way it is for Pathfinder. Pathfinder requires frequent combat (and other CR-ed obstacles) otherwise the characters never advance. Cypher System on the other hand requires discovery. The upshot of this is while you can convert every combat and every trap you don’t have to. I suggest you focus instead on the encounters that also qualify as a discoveries, add to the narrative, or are fun set piece encounters.

In the first dungeon of the Half Dead City there are multiple encounters with monstrous vermin. All of these encounters become very optional. None of reveal anything major plot points or move your story forward in some other way. Now you might want to keep one to reinforce how dangerous it is raiding tombs. At which point the best encounter for that to keep is the ghost scorpion encounter in A1. Better still, since this encounter can happen at anytime the PCs are in A1 for a length of time this can be an encounter you kick off by offering a lagging PC a GM intrusion.

A Note About GM Intrusions

In the Cypher System the GM can offer the players XP in exchange for accepting a complication. Sometimes this complication is mechanical but most often it’s narrative. A bad or unexpected event occurs and the affected player gains 2 XP, one they can keep and another they pass to another player. This is not meant to be a gotcha moment or a GM v. Player moment but rather is intended to up the stakes, create drama and turn the story in unexpected directions.

Traps As Intrusions

A common way to present traps in the Cypher System is to introduce the trap’s effect as a GM Intrusion. This works well even for adapted adventures. Unless a trap is attached to a particular dungeon feature such as a chest, door, or sarcophagus I tend to “lift” the trap out of its precise location in the dungeon and keep it as a potential Intrusion I can drop on the players when the timing feels right rather than when they step on the wrong 5 foot space. I rarely use a trap out of its original encounter area but in some cases that’s a valid option. After all one hallway in a dungeon is much like the next.

Now, this doesn’t mean I’m a jerk about trap placement. If my PCs are in the same room as the trap I’ll allow them to say they are generally searching the area for traps. I don’t need to spend 20 minutes rolling for every 5’ square when I’m not even sure where the trap is at this point. If the player rolls high enough they find the trap and know how it’s triggered. Now I’ll tell them where it was in the module. This trap’s location is now pretty much fixed and can be triggered normally.

You can treat haunts and some other hazards in much the same way. Triggering them with GM intrusions and moving them around in the dungeon so they trigger at the right dramatic moment.

Final Thoughts

Combats in the Cypher system tends to run faster than combats in Pathfinder and since you may also be trimming out extraneous combats it’s very likely you’ll finish each book noticeably faster than you otherwise might expect. Feel free to embellish any aspect of the story your players seem enamored with. Throw in some intrusions to put a few twists and turns into the plot. If you can tie your player characters’ backstories into these intrusions and in turn loop in the plot of the AP that’s ideal.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series on adapting Golarion to other game systems particularly the Cypher System from Monte Cook Games. If you’ve ever adapted Golarion or another d20 fantasy setting to another system I’d love to hear your story. Feel free to drop your story in the comments below. And, if you’ve enjoyed this series let me know that too if there’s enough interest maybe we’ll revisit this topic again in the future.

This blog post uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo’s Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This blog is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo’s Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com.

Know the Rules

Before you start, it is helpful if you have at least a working knowledge of both game systems. It’s good to understand how tough an encounter is supposed to be in the original material before you start stating up the same encounter for your destination game. It’s also helpful to understand what each game rewards. Even if you picked up an adventure for a system you never heard of in a bargain bin because the story sounded cool that’s fine. As you read the adventure you can try to extrapolate the power of challenges and see what the designers offer as rewards.

Rewards

The Pathfinder rulebook is mostly dedicated to combat. Most XP the players will earn is gained in combat encounters. Some certainly, will come from traps survived and story awards but the bulk is combat. Pathfinder also has a robust economy of wealth and magical treasure that is essential for higher level play, and again much of this wealth is gained through combat.

In contrast, Cypher System characters earn most of their experience for Discoveries and accepting story complications in the form of GM intrusions. Most “magical” treasure in the Cypher system is more fleeting than you find in traditional games because much of it manifests in the form of cyphers. One use items akin to scrolls and potions in Pathfinder but much more varied in appearance. A few particularly interesting items might be artifacts that persist for more than one use but run the risk of becoming depleted over time. And while these items can be acquired in combat they are just as likely to be found through some other means.

This is not to imply, one system is better than another. They are just different and each provides its own distinct experience at the table and understanding those differences will enhance the quality of your adaptation.

Difficulties, Challenges, and Monsters

Action lies at the heart of nearly every RPG. From big action such as the heroes are fighting a rampaging otyugh bursting up from the sewers or the smaller scale action of kicking in a door or picking a lock. And Action requires rules. Pathfinder and the Cypher System have very different mechanics for approaching challenges. Pathfinder scales it’s DCs with the level of the characters while Cypher uses a pretty static difficulty system.

In Pathfinder, it is expected that characters will have acquired not only levels but specific magical gear or have access to spells that aid them in overcoming various obstacles thus DCs for low-level characters are never as high as those presented to 15^th level or higher characters. Pathfinder gives GMs detailed rules for setting the CRs of monsters and traps, and DCs can range from 10 (sometimes lower) to up past 30.

In the Cypher System every task, monster, or challenge is given a level of 0-10. Most often that level is the Difficulty to succeed at the task, hit the creature, or overcome the challenge. These levels are not assigned with characters in mind only the difficulty of the task at hand. What this means for those of reading who don’t play the Cypher System is that the actual target number the player must roll on a d20 is 3 times the difficulty. So for a simple task (1) the player only needs to roll a 3 or better on the die, while for a formidable task (7) they need to roll a 21 which is functionally impossible without help, the right tools, or effort (your attributes are actually pools you can spend points from to generate effort to accomplish tasks.)

Now you might say, “but Pathfinder’s DCs are always the same regardless of who might attempt it,” and to a point, I’ll agree. Where I disagree is that Pathfinder has a lot of moving cogs that click numbers up as character’s level and Pathfinder places reasons on why those numbers are higher into the narrative. If I, as a GM, want my players to have a challenging time opening a particular lock I set the DC according to their level then justify it by saying it was rusted or masterwork for low-level parties or magically sealed for higher level parties. In Cypher I can just say it’s a difficulty 5 (challenging on the chart with a target number of 15) to open.

So how do I set difficulty from DC? Generally, I look at how hard it should be to accomplish in Pathfinder and eyeball it from there. If it’s a monster I’ll generally divide the CR by 2 or 3 and see how that feels but sometimes I’ll ignore that and just assign a level I think fits in with the creatures already available to me in the various Cypher Bestiaries I already own. Then I’ll throw a couple of modifications and special abilities and call it good. Monsters that get class levels I’ll again try to decide how hard the encounter was intended to be and work from there.

I know two weeks ago I said this would be my last installment of this series but there is more to cover in adapting an adventure so I’ll be back in two weeks to wrap up this topic. If you’ve been enjoying this series let me know in the comments if there’s interest I may revisit Golarion without Pathfinder.

This blog post uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo’s Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This blog is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo’s Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com.

As I said in that first blog, we had narrowed our campaign choices down to Mummy’s Mask and Strange Aeons. I had the opportunity to play briefly in a Mummy’s Mask campaign and that minor exposure really peaked my curiosity for the rest of the story. Admittedly, I may have campaigned a little harder for Mummies Mask and since my players are really easy going about these things it looks like that’s the direction we’re likely to go.

So with the system and campaign selected, I figured I’d adapt the campaign traits to become Cypher abilities. Following the Pathfinder model of the traits being both minor and extra I decided PCs could select one of these abilities to round out their character. Now, in Pathfinder each character can choose 2 traits but I don’t feel converting every trait is necessary or desirable. Limiting it to just a single ability that ties the character closer to the themes of the AP seems more logical.

At this point, I did more of a conversion job taking the name and flavor text from each campaign trait directly, then designed a first-tier ability for each.

Cypher System Campaign Traits for Mummy’s Mask

The Campaign Traits are adapted from the Campaign Traits that appear in the Mummy’s Mask Player’s Guide. Copyright Paizo

 Blood of Pharaohs: Long ago, one of your ancestors ruled over the lands of Osirion. Although you are many generations removed and the line of descent is hard to prove, his or her blood still runs in your veins. Perhaps you may find some proof of your lineage in the tombs of Wati’s necropolis. You are trained in Osirion’s history and are fluent in Ancient Osiriani. Enabler.

Devotee of the Old Gods: Osirion has a history stretching back over 8,000 years, and the deities worshiped today in modern Osirion are not the same ones revered in Ancient Osirion’s heyday—deities with names like Anubis, Osiris, Ra, and Set, among others. Your family never lost the faith of your ancestors, however, and your devotion to one of the deities of Ancient Osirion has helped keep the memory of Osirion’s past alive—a past that still lingers on in the untouched necropolis of Wati. You are trained in Osrion’s history and the religions of Ancient Osirion. Enabler.

Foreign Opportunist: You’re not a native Osirian, but the opportunity to explore the tombs of Ancient Osirion—and “liberate” the treasures they hold—is too good to pass up. Whether or not you’re interested in the history of this land, you’re definitely interested in the wealth that’s lain hidden in dusty crypts for millennia—such as the tombs in the newly opened necropolis of Wati. You are trained in appraising the value of items this includes discovering any rumored properties of unique or storied items. Beware, you cannot always count on the veracity of legend and rumor. In addition, your contacts in the antiquities markets grant you an Asset when trading in the markets to get the best deal whether you are buying or selling. Enabler.

Ezren in the Big Finish Audio Production of Mummy’s Mask feels like he might have the Inquisitive Archaeologist trait. Image: Paizo.

Inquisitive Archaeologist: You have studied the architectural styles of nations throughout the Inner Sea region, but none have fascinated you like the architecture of Ancient Osirion. Hearing that the famed necropolis of Wati has finally been opened for exploration, you’ve come to that city to get firsthand experience with the lost secrets of Ancient Osirion’s master builders. You are trained in all tasks involving architecture and structural engineering. You are also trained in perception tasks involving the detection of concealed or secret doors in structures built in the style of Ancient Osirion. Enabler.

Mummy-Cursed (1 Intellect Point): One of your ancestors ran afoul of a mummy’s curse while exploring an ancient tomb. This curse was passed down to later generations of your family, but over time, your line has become more resistant to curses. You’ve come to Wati to explore its untouched necropolis, and while you hope you won’t have to face a real undead mummy, at least you have some defense if you do. For the next 10 minutes, the difficulty of all Intellect defense tasks is eased by one step. Enabler.

Resurrected: At some time in the recent past you died, but you were brought back to life—whether because of magic, a blessing of the gods, a destiny you have to fulfill, or perhaps it just wasn’t your time to die yet. Whatever the nature of your resurrection, your experience gave you a fascination with death, and you hope to find some insight into the nature of mortality by exploring the tombs of Wati’s famous necropolis. Once per day, when making a recovery roll you may roll twice and take the better result. You must choose to use this ability before making the recovery roll. Enabler.

Sphinx Riddler: You’ve always been fascinated with the ancient race of sphinxes, and are inspired by them to love puzzles and riddles and enjoy solving difficult dilemmas. Like so many others, you’ve come to Wati to explore its ancient necropolis, but you’ve also heard that sphinxes occasionally visit a sphinx-shaped ruin called Ubet’s Folly in the city—perhaps you’ll have the chance to meet and talk with a sphinx yourself! You are trained in tasks involving puzzles and riddles and are fluent in the language of sphinxes. Enabler.

Trap Finder: Forgotten dungeons and ancient tombs have always held an appeal for you, and you’ve never been able to resist the urge to delve into these lost sites in search of knowledge, treasure, or both. You may not have received any formal training in the roguish arts, but you’ve nonetheless become skilled at spotting and disabling hidden traps. The tombs of Wati’s necropolis, just opened for exploration, seem like the perfect place to put your skills to the test. You are trained in perception tasks and in tasks to disarm and remove traps. Enabler.

Undead Crusader (1 Intellect Point): You have dedicated your life to eradicating the scourge of the undead from Golarion. You have spent countless hours studying the different types of undead and have trained endlessly to learn the best ways to defeat them. If any undead creatures come out of the tombs of Wati’s necropolis, you’ll be ready for them! When you make an attack against an undead creature you inflict 1 additional point of damage. Action.

Wati Native: You were born and raised in the city of Wati, and you know its streets and secrets well. Although it’s frowned upon by the city’s authorities, you have sneaked into the necropolis on multiple occasions to wander its dusty, abandoned streets. Out of respect for the deceased, you’ve never actually entered one of the necropolis’s silent tombs, but you have no fear of what might lie inside. You are trained in resisting fear effects. In addition, you are trained in all knowledge tasks pertaining to the city of Wati. Enabler.

Normally, I don’t try for 1:1 parity going from system to system but for a small discrete set of options like this felt right. I’m not converting hundreds of spells or feats just a few relevant traits. This is an approach GMs and players could take with numerous different systems. In a Fate game, each of these traits could become an Aspect or stunt. In Genesys, each could be expanded into a Talent players could select or adapted into a single 5 or 10 XP species trait each character gains as a special bonus. The trick to getting this right is to look more to the destination system for guidance than the original source. The original source is good to flavor and feel but the mechanics need to be solidly a part of the destination system.

In two weeks we’ll conclude this series with a look at preparing and adapting an adventure.

This blog post uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo’s Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This blog is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo’s Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com.

Top Image Credit: Infouad used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Via Wikipedia.

“It wouldn’t be so close–if you didn’t get so close!” quipped Evynn, Hurk’s irritatingly cheerful halfling companion as she fired her crossbow into the back of the gray-skinned giant before dashing around the giant in a tight arc trying to stay in the creature’s blind spot. When she reached the collapsed pillar, the evoker Marrin was using for cover, Evynn leapt up without breaking stride and nimbly dashed up the length of the ruined support before crouching and fumbling for another bolt.

Marrin finished a complicated phrase and glowing runes of power began to encircle the human’s gesticulating hands. Hurk thought he recognized the last part of that incantation and as realization dawned he hurled himself to the ground narrowly avoiding being caught in the arc of crackling electricity the lanced from Marrin’s outstretched hands and into the giant’s exposed side.

Rolling to his feet, Hurk leapt at the still reeling stone giant. His axe bit deep into the giant’s lightning blackened hide armor. The coppery scent of blood joining the stench of ozone and burning fur. The force of the blow numbed Hurk’s arm and the dwarf struggled to pull the axe free even as the giant raised its hammer for another blow.

Then the giant’s grip on the weapon slackened and it lurched forward unsteady before it collapsed, a bolt from Evynn’s crossbow buried to the fletching in its neck. “That makes eight kills for me Hurk. How many do you have again?”

“Shut it Evynn.” Grumbled the dwarf but he couldn’t hide his smile. The tiny rogue may have just saved his life. Again.

Ancestry, species or race. Whatever term you prefer, this is a crucial element of most heroic fantasy roleplaying and Golarion is no exception. For most settings, the playable races are pretty much the same and heavily are influenced by Tolkien and Middle Earth. Anyone who’s been playing Pathfinder for a while can probably tell you what the traits for a particular ancestry are and even those that don’t know specifics have a pretty good feel for what the traits should be.

As I continue our discussion from my last post I’m going to focus more on getting the feel of the ancestries right rather than precisely duplicate each individual ability. After all, in the opening fiction, you probably didn’t notice the Hurk doesn’t have the mechanical benefits for fighting giants, or that Marryn doesn’t get an extra feat or any extra skill points. Those are not qualities that truly define those ancestries.  When we adapt any character options to a new rules system we want to focus on the abilities that make an ancestry feel like it belongs on Golarion.

Before we get into my specific design choices I’m going to very briefly talk about the Genesys and Cypher game systems. I’m assuming anyone who’s sticking with me this far has at least a passing understanding of how these two games are played but I’ll address some basics for each game in case there’s someone who just wants to know.

Adapting Ancestries to Genesys

Genesys uses Fantasy Flight Games’ narrative dice system which means it the same basic mechanics as their Star Wars line (Edge of Empire, Age of Rebellion, Force and Destiny) with all the iconic “Galaxy far, far away…” filed off. The system features six attributes (see below) and a host of skills. Players attempt tasks by rolling a dice pool assembled from positive dice and negative dice. Positive dice are determined by basically combining the character’s relevant attribute and skill. While negative dice are set by the difficulty. The total pool can be further augmented (positively and negatively) by applying boost and setback dice for situational modifiers. The various dice have symbols instead of numbers and with a little practice are pretty easy to interpret.

When I first sat down with the Genesys rules to learn how to play my mind immediately went to creating my own content. That’s because while the rules are complete enough they are presented more as a toolbox for creating pretty much any world imaginable. So while I was penning my first versions of Pathfinder ancestries I spoke to my friend and Fantasy Flight Freelancer, Keith Kappel. Who offered some advice then directed me to an interview he did with HoloNet Uplink about creating new species for Star Wars. Again same basic rules so all of this advice translates. Armed with Keith’s advice and the section on species creation in the core rulebook I knocked out a number of Pathfinder ancestries.

Elves

Tall and graceful elves have delicate features and long pointed ears. Many of the nearly immortal elves master the primal forces of the wild to shape wonders of nature and magic. Relics that like their creators seem to impervious to the ravages of time. Others become attuned to the land and are renowned for their abilities as hunters and trackers.

Species Abilities

Starting Wound Threshold: 9 + Brawn

Starting Strain Threshold: 10 + Willpower

Starting Experience: 90 XP

Starting Skills: Elves begin with one rank in Perception. You still cannot train their Perception above rank 2 during character creation.

Elven Immunities: Elves are immune to magical sleep and adversaries add {Setback die} on Magic checks to cast curse spells that target an elf’s mental abilities.

Low Light Vision: Elves can see twice as far as a normal human in conditions of dim light. When making skill checks elves remove {one Setback Die} imposed due to darkness.

The Elf ancestry was one of the last of the core ancestries I decided to make. The Elf species that appears in the Genesys Core Rulebook certainly feels enough like a Golarion elf that it would probably pass okay but without low-light vision and the normal elven resistances I wasn’t sure my players would go for it hence the rebuild.

Goblins

A cruelly fun-loving species known for its acts of sadism and arson. Goblins live in tribal communities on the outskirts of civilization where they can survive largely as scavengers.

Species Abilities 

Starting Wound Threshold: 10 + Brawn

Starting Strain Threshold: 9 + Willpower

Starting Experience: 100

Starting Skills: Goblins begin with one rank in Stealth and another in Riding. You still cannot train their either of these skills above rank 2 during character creation.

Dark Vision: When making skill checks, goblins remove up to {two Setback Dice} imposed due to darkness.

Fast: In combat, adversaries add {one Setback Die} on Melee checks to hit a goblin.

Small: Due to their diminutive stature, goblins add {one Boost Die} when making Stealth checks.

It just doesn’t seem right to make a Genesys adaptation of Pathfinder and not stat up goblins as a viable option. Now, canny Star Wars and Genesys players may notice I’ve made what may be an unusual design choice with the goblin. I opted to not follow the lead of the Genesys core rulebook and size the goblin, halflings, or gnomes the way that Fantasy Flight did. They opted to make gnomes Silhouette 0 but as Keith explained to me that would make them faerie sized not half size. For a great many settings gnomes and goblins might be that small but not Golarion.

Silhouette 0 is small enough that you can fairly easily carry 10 Silhouette 0 items or creatures. I frankly cannot imagine carrying 10 goblins would be that easy.

Tieflings

Species Abilities 

Starting Wound Threshold: 10 + Brawn

Starting Strain Threshold: 9 + Willpower

Starting Experience: 90

Starting Skills: Tieflings begin with one rank in Arcane. You still cannot train their Arcane skill above rank 2 during character creation.

Dark Vision: When making skill checks, Tieflings remove up to {two Setback Dice} imposed due to darkness.

Fiendish Resistance: When taking damage from acid, cold, or fire sources tieflings soak an additional 2 points.

Fiendish Strike: Tieflings have fangs, claws, horns or sharp bone spurs at their elbows. Some may just manifest hellfire in their touch. Regardless of its source, Tieflings may choose to attack with the following weapon profile: (Brawl; Damage +1; Critical 3; Range |Engaged|; Vicious 1).

The big things here are the absence of the darkness spell-like ability and the inclusion of a “Fiendish Strike.” So I could have written up a magical ability to make it darker at the character’s will. Instead, I opted to give Tieflings the Arcane skill. This served two ends. First, they can now craft a spell to make it dark per the magic rules and second it helps to link the infernal and abyssal sorcerer bloodlines to actual arcane power.

We can directly blame the addition of Fiendish Strike on two things. One, nearly every piece of Tiefling art ever (horns, claws, barbed tails abound) and two, Dave Gross’s character of Radovan who has bone spurs which he uses with painful efficiency in the novels and stories.

Adapting Ancestries to the Cypher System

The Cypher system functions quite a bit differently than most RPGs. In the Cypher System characters lower the difficulty of an action by having the right gear and skills and by applying Effort. There are only three attributes (Might, Speed, and Intellect). These attributes are expressed as pools that you can spend points from to apply effort. For a more comprehensive explanation of how to play the Cypher System including a demonstration of play, I have a Cypher System Primer posted on YouTube (part one | part two).

Now, as I discussed two weeks ago, the default means to create a character of another ancestry is to take a racial descriptor but then that character is defined more by the race than their personality. An alternative comes indirectly from another optional rule in the Cypher system core rules referred to as Flavor.

The Flavor rules allow you to customize a character type by adding and swapping ability options. This might be done by a GM who wants to make custom types for her setting or by a player with GM approval to fine tune a character to fit their vision. The current flavors include themes like stealth and magic.

With a little creativity, Ancestries can be framed in a similar way. Thus, a character who selects a special ancestry gains the basic qualities of the ancestry and may choose to select one or more of the other special abilities in place of abilities they may gain from their type. You can even add your ancestry to your character sentence (See my last blog) Merisiel is a graceful elven explorer who throws with deadly accuracy.

Ideally, each of these examples would have a few more optional abilities at least one per tier but this suffices for the moment as examples.

Dwarven Ancestry 

Basic Qualities

Inability: The difficulty of your Speed defense actions are hindered by one step. Inability

Dark Vision. You treat illumination as if it was one category brighter. You treat darkness as very dim light, you treat very dim light as dim light, and you treat dim light as normal illumination.

Optional Special Abilities

Tier 1: Stability. You are trained in tasks related to keeping your balance and standing your ground.

Tier 1: Stone Cunning. You are trained in tasks related to stone, including sensing stonework traps, knowing the history of a particular piece of stone-craft, and knowing your distance beneath the surface. You are also trained in the use of the tools required to shape and mine stone.

Tier 2: Experienced with Armor. The cost reduction from your Practiced in Armor ability improves. You now reduce the Speed Effort cost for wearing armor by an additional 1. Enabler.

Tier 2: Defensive Training. You are trained in all defense tasks related to fighting giants and dragons.

Tier 4: Mastery with Armor. The cost reduction from your Practiced in Armor ability improves. You now reduce the Speed Effort cost for wearing armor by an additional 1. Enabler.

Recommended Foci: Explores Dark Places, Fights Dirty, Masters Defense, Masters Weaponry, Never Says Die, Stands Like a Bastion.

Elven Ancestry 

Basic Qualities

Fragile.  When you fail a Might defense roll to avoid damage, you take 1 extra point of damage. Inability.

Elven Perception. You have keen senses particularly sight. You are trained in tasks involving perception. Enabler.

Optional Special Abilities

Tier 1: Arcane Resistance. You are trained in tasks of resisting magical mental effects and are immune to magical sleep effects. Enabler.

Tier 1: Precision Aim (1 Intellect Point). You take time to line up your shot with a ranged or thrown weapon. The next time you attack your target before the end of the next round reduce the difficulty by one step or deal an additional point of damage. Action.

Tier 2: Breadth of Experience (2 Intellect Points). At the beginning of each day, choose one task (other than attacks or defense) on which you will concentrate. For the rest of that day, you’re trained in that task. You can use this ability with a skill you’re already trained in to become specialized by spending an additional 2 Intellect points. Action.

Recommended Foci: Carries a Quiver, Casts Spells, Fights with Panache, Moves Like a Cat, Speaks for the Land, Throws with Deadly Accuracy.

Hopefully, you found these examples helpful and/or thought-provoking. Next time, We’ll look a little at campaign traits.

This blog post uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo’s Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This blog is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo’s Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com.

The first two Harry Potter films from Director Chris Columbus aren’t bad movies and visually are as close to what I imagined as I read the books as I think they could be but they aren’t my favorite of the series. While I like movies to be faithful to the source material it is also nice to get a slightly new perspective on the story. So what does this have to do with game design? Well, when last we met, I began a discussion about adapting Golarion to other rules. That blog was mostly about why you might want to play with a different rules system.

Like directors have different approaches for translating print to screen, GMs and game designers have different approaches to translating material from one game system to another. I like to call two of the most common approaches “conversion,” and “adaptation.” Admittedly, this bit of word choice is subjective and dependent on anecdotal observations but this gives us a point of reference for the discussion.

Conversion typically involves trying to maintain a 1:1 parity between the two rulesets to emulate the original experience. Recreating the play experience of one game as closely as possible in the second. This often manifests in the allocation of powers the PCs can wield. Every spell and feat of the original system needs a correlating ability in the new destination system. This is what I think Chris Columbus was shooting for in those first two Harry Potter films, 1:1 parity from chapter-to-scene.

Adaptation, on the other hand, tries to emulate the by focusing less on the details matching rule-for-rule and instead moves towards broad strokes. Pathfinder’s Vancian wizards prepare spells each day allowing them to throw fireballs, launch magic missiles, and summon monstrous allies. You don’t need a rigid spell list to give players those same sorts of abilities…but you may have to reimagine how preparing spells works mechanically in your game. It’s this sort of reimagining that helped to make The Prisoner of Azkaban work better for my friends than Chamber of Secrets.

You can use either of these approaches you like and it doesn’t even have to be “either-or,” there is a whole range of approaches between the two extremes. These days, I tend to design more on the adaptation end of the spectrum but in the past, I leaned hard towards 1:1 conversion. Neither is right or wrong but I’ve discovered that adaption often lets me design to the strengths of the destination system without becoming overwhelmed.

So, to give you an example of what I mean let’s talk character race or ancestry. Character ancestries are a central part of fantasy RPGs and they’re often handled in a very similar fashion. Genesys’s species rules are certainly similar enough to Pathfinder’s that it will be easy enough to adapt Golarion’s races to Genesys. As an added plus Genesys has a chapter on fantasy gaming that includes a few sample races. So first off, humans are the baseline in any RPG I’ll leave humans alone no point in remaking humans. Looking through the other species in the fantasy chapter I find Dwarves, Elves, and Orcs. Now, rather than a half dozen or more racial abilities each Genesys species only gets two or three special abilities which typically includes a single bonus skill rank. So there will be some serious pairing down of racial abilities in this conversion. It is also worth noting that while each species is recognizable in the context of typical fantasy tropes, they are not exact fits for Golarion.

Looking at the dwarf, the starting characteristics (ability scores) match up pretty closely with Pathfinders dwarves as do their special abilities: Dark Vision, and Tough as Nails (this is an ability that makes it possible for a dwarf to minimize a potentially disabling critical injury once per session at a cost.) All in all, I’m happy and I’ll leave dwarves alone. Certainly, there are sacrifices (no more bonuses against dragons, giants, and goblinoids) but much of that can be restored with new Talents (sort of the Genesys version of Feats).

Now while the dwarf worked fine as is, the elves and orcs were another story. Each lacks some features that are too hardwired into the setting to omit such as low light and darkvision. Elves gained an ability called Nimble that makes them harder to hit and Orcs received an ability called Battle Rage which is rather like Power Attack sacrificing accuracy for damage. Neither of these species requires a lot to rework basically add in missing senses and adjust the starting experience accordingly. Elves are missing their traditional resistances so I may decide to replace Nimble with an immunity to sleep and some sort of resistance to charm effects.

Then I’ll need to write up any additional ancestries I think I’ll need. Now the entertaining thing here is I don’t need to stick to the races from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. I don’t even have to stick to normally playable races if I have a player who’s been reading the Pathfinder Tales line and is inspired by Celeste the lunar naga from Chris A. Jackson’s pirate novels I can create a playable lunar naga species with that player in mind without unbalancing the game.

Adapting ancestries to the Cypher System is a bit different. Unlike many RPGs, ancestry isn’t really part of the system. When you make a character in the Cypher system instead of choosing a race and a class like you do in Pathfinder you complete a sentence such as Valeros is a charming warrior who wields two weapons at once. Breaking that down the sentence we can see the individual parts are: [Character Name (Valeros)] is a [Descriptor (charming)] [Type (warrior)] who [Focus (wields two weapons at once)]. So long as you are flexible you can create a wide variety of characters without worrying overmuch about a character’s ancestry. For example, say I wanted to make Merisiel I could go with a graceful explorer who throws with deadly accuracy. If, however, I want to make elves and dwarves mechanically different from humans the rules suggest using the racial descriptors. A rule suggestion I’m not overly fond of because if I use that rule every human player has 50 descriptors to choose from but a player who wants to play a non-human character only has their racial descriptor to choose from.

In two weeks, I’ll present sample ancestries for both Genesys and the Cypher System and talk a little more about how I settled on the options I chose.

This blog post uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Paizo Inc., which are used under Paizo’s Community Use Policy. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This blog is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc. For more information about Paizo’s Community Use Policy, please visit paizo.com/communityuse. For more information about Paizo Inc. and Paizo products, please visit paizo.com.

This is a blog post I’ve wanted to write for some time, I even touched on it briefly in my, Thoughts on Design post from this past May. Now, I finally decided to take the risk and post about adapting and running Golarion with other game systems. I’ve seen a number of GMs talking about converting Pathfinder and Pathfinder APs to other systems and I thought I’d share my two cents.

I think it probably goes without saying that Paizo’s greatest strength is in their storytelling and world building. Golarion might be a kitchen sink setting but like Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms before it but in addition to the seeds of stories hidden in the entries on this village or that monument Golarion also has a host of excellent adventures spanning several seasons of PFS, a slew single module adventures and over a decade’s worth of Adventure Path modules. There are so many story possibilities explicit and implied in the setting that it seems inevitable that even players who are not fans of the Pathfinder Roleplaying game might be inspired by the setting. With that in mind, my approach is more to adapt the setting and story material rather than to try and convert the systems.

Obviously, I’m a Pathfinder fan. I’ve competed in RPG Superstar and I’ve freelanced for several RPG companies including Paizo making content for Pathfinder. That said, I don’t think Pathfinder is the ideal tool for every story idea I’d like to run. Even when they’re set in Golarion. For example, I still want to run a prequel to book 2 of Giantslayer, focusing on the NPC Nargrimkin siblings using Dread, a horror RPG that uses a Jenga tower instead of dice. A successful pull means a character succeeds at a given task while refusing to pull means they fail giving players some choices, but if the tower falls…well…you really don’t want the tower to fall. I’m not sure the outcome of such a game would mesh perfectly with the events of the Adventure Path but the ever-looming doom inherent in a game of Dread fits the sibling’s story and if I run that Dread prequel before playing chapter two of the AP I can make adjustments.

I also think it would be fun to play Blades in the Dark against the backdrop of Westcrown during the events of Council of Thieves or Hell’s Rebels/Vengeance. Blades in the Dark is a dark fantasy RPG of heists, chases, and dangerous deals. The PCs comprise a crew trying to make their next big score. The base setting is more industrialized than anything in Golarion but with a little work, Westcrown would be an ideal setting for the game. Unlike with how I’d like to use Dread as a prequel to an AP I was running. I’d run this separate from an actual Adventure Path play-through. Rather than expecting the PCs to hero up and play the AP I’d use the events in the AP as backdrop either having NPC heroes doing the AP things off camera or just letting everything ride without much heroic intervention. Either way, those events would simply be the backdrop for the crew’s heists and troubles.

Even a Fiasco playset featuring goblin PCs could be a hilarious way to spend a night roleplaying. Fiasco is a GMless RPG meant to be played in a single session. Events in the game tend to unfold like a Coen brother’s movie, as things that seemed like a good idea quickly spiral out of control. So yeah, imagine Fargo or the Big Lebowski with goblins.

Now, one of my groups is suffering from a bit of Pathfinder burnout after playing it pretty consistently for the last 10 years (plus all the 3e we played before that). They’re not yet sold on Pathfinder 2e and so we’re looking at other game options. Which is to say I’m trying to decide what game system I’ll run next and what story I want to tell. As of the writing of this blog I’m looking at setting my next campaign in Golarion and running a story based on an existing AP either Mummy’s Mask or Strange Aeons but without the Pathfinder rules.

I haven’t settled on a system yet but I’m leaning heavily towards the Cypher System or Genesys. Both of these games tend to be a little more narrative than Pathfinder but not so much as say FATE which would suffer for being constrained to an APs more linear plot.

Genesys is based on the Star Wars Roleplaying game which means its focus is on set piece cinematic moments. Genesys features a dynamic dice mechanic that allows for more variation than simple success/fail, and I like that. Since it is a narrative action RPG it makes for a good system to adapt the Pathfinder APs into.

As much as I like Genesys, I am leaning more towards the Cypher System because my players are familiar with it and enjoy how the system plays. I also like the focus on discovery over combat. PCs get XP in the Cypher System for making discoveries rather than defeating opponents which means we can focus on the adventure’s story elements and trim out some of the grinding encounters required for the party to level. That isn’t to say combat in the Cypher System doesn’t happen and isn’t exciting it just doesn’t have the same focus it has in Pathfinder or even Genesys.

So for the next few blogs, we’ll talk tips for adapting Golarion options to a new system with a particular focus on Cypher System and Genesys as I narrow down my next campaign.

In Pathfinder we have six hard-cover bestiaries from Paizo and countless monster books from third party sources including the Tome of Horrors series and the Advanced Bestiary. We have tons of stat-blocks and there’s almost no way your players are familiar with every creature, and creature template combination you could think of and yet I don’t surprise my players as often as I’d like because my players and I have similar tastes and we’re drawn to read the same entries in the bestiaries or because at least one of my players apparently falls asleep reading monster manuals and bestiaries.

So how do you surprise and worry the PCs at the table?

Option One: File Off the Serial Numbers. The simplest route is to use a familiar stat-block but ditch the normal description. For example, let’s take the common troll. Whether you use the tusked green-skinned creature introduced in Gollarion or the older vine-like long-limbed troll of the 3era monster manuals chances are your players will immediately begin looking for acid and fire. Or thinking of ways they can justify discovering that, that’s what they need. If you want to worry your character’s longer consider the following description:

“You hear a huff of breath come from the darkened corner of the room and see a large muscular seemingly headless, bipedal creature with gray stone like skin crisscrossed with black veins. It has a pair of pincer-like talons that are currently shoving chunks of meat into a maw where its neck would be. As you enter the room you make enough noise that creature lunges to its feet in a crouch and whirls to face you revealing a round red-rimmed and toothy maw atop the creature’s torso you can also see a number of bulbous spider-like eyes bulging from the creature’s upper back as it charges you its gait awkward but terrifyingly fast. Roll initiative.”

Chances are your player’s will ask to make knowledge checks, rather than just saying it’s a reskinned troll consider telling them it’s a giant then reveal that the black veins are an eye-stingingly strong-smelling sticky sweat that reminds them of the scent of alchemist fire. Maybe the creature is susceptible to fire damage.

The point is use details to support those checks but don’t give away what you’ve done. Keep your player’s in the dark. This also works best if the players can’t see over your screen or steal a glance at your monitor. If you have time copy the stat-block from the PRD and make changes to the name and description and have that at the table instead.

Option Two: Surprise Round! Okay not literally the surprise round but you can get a lot of mileage by adding a surprise to an existing monster. Nothing tells players they know nothing faster than giving them a familiar enemy that functions differently.

Maybe your adventure culminates with an encounter with a dragon but you don’t want to use typical chromatic dragons in your world. Set-up the difference right away in the description then throw on an unexpected ability or two. So maybe instead of red, you describe the dragon as having patterned brown and green scales and a mane of quill-like fur around its head and its spine. Then instead of frightful presence, you give it the stench aura. For simplicity, you can stick with the DC for frightful presence. Now at least for a moment, the PCs won’t know what to expect.

Option Three: Look Ma, No Hands! If you have experience making monsters you can always make your own but you can’t do that on the fly…or can you? In the back of the Bestiary are the monster creation rules. I like using this table on the fly to build unique encounters quickly. It’s not how the table was intended to be used but your players will never know if you don’t tell them.

Choose a CR then Using the target numbers as a guide make a few notes on AC, saves, attacks etc. decide on a couple of special abilities and wing it. You have to be careful your monster’s don’t become too similar but mostly that’s in descriptions and tactics you employ. Now you probably don’t want to run whole campaigns this way because you also want encounters to be consistent. If the PCs fight a bunch of killer music-box automatons you built this way and two weeks later they’re fighting a bunch more the power levels and abilities should be the same as they were the first time.

I hope you found these tips helpful. If you have any comment or suggestions for keeping players in the dark when designing monstrous encounters leave us a comment below.

More so than usual some of these prompts may not be appropriate for all groups. Make sure your players are okay with any horror elements you plan to include in a game. For example, I’ve had players’ with severe aversions to various kinds of insects and arachnids. At one table, we swapped every spider encounter for giant ants and scorpions because while similar they didn’t trigger the player’s phobia. Be mindful of your table, everyone is there to have a good time and carelessly including the wrong encounter can ruin it for everyone.

Nightmares: Begin the scene with the character’s doing something mundane. This is a good prompt to begin a session with since many times there will be a bit of downtime and bookkeeping that still needs resolution. Begin the session as normal but you can quickly move to unusual events or escalate to threats way beyond the PCs capabilities. Now, these should not be without reason. The dream encounter should tie into a particular character’s fears and insecurities (not the player’s fears but the character’s fears). For example, if a PC has fears failing his friends and letting them die because of a failed Will save. Have him fail a save vs dominate person and have him and the villain team up and kill the other PCs. During the dream encounters, feel free to kill characters off until you kill off the dreaming PC, that player awakens soaked in sweat. As they get their bearings they may remember the early events of the dream as accurate then to can handwave through what really happened or back up the narrative and continue on.

Warning! Creepy Crawlers: Sometimes taking away the PC’s stuff can be just as horrifying as losing a character but that can feel heavy-handed. If you want to take away that favorite item you can encourage your player’s to do it themselves. This works well with either the Nightmares prompt above or just as a part of a normal night’s sleep. Maybe your PC has a favorite magical necklace or amulet they wear all the time. In a dream, the character becomes covered in insects but the footsteps of a giant centipede crawling around their neck is so real they wake up as the centipede crawls off of them. When they awaken they find the necklace is not on them but instead resting on the bedroll or side table near them. Still clasped so that it would be impossible that it fell off when picked up it is icy to the touch. If some sort of detect alignment is used on the item in the moments after the dream it radiates strongly of evil. This aura persists for several hours after which time it fades back into undetectable. Repeat as necessary maybe even have them awaken while the necklace is in the form of a fiendish house centipede and crawling on them.

Why is this happening? Maybe the item is a conduit to an evil entity akin to a lich’s phylactery and it is seeking to awaken its master. Or maybe it is simply cursed and it’s crawling on the character is foreshadowing for when the item will crawl off the PC when it is most needed.

Touch of Corruption: Sometimes, heavy-handed is still a viable option for taking the characters’ stuff. An ancient, powerful, and vile vampire (other undead or evil outsider) possesses a corruption so powerful that her touch can cause nearly any item to decay.  The ability might appear like this:

Ruinous Grasp (Su): The corrupting touch of this vile undead causes normal items to rot, rust, and decay. An object touched takes half its maximum hp in damage and gains the broken condition—a second hit destroys the item. When using its ruinous grasp, the undead never provokes attacks of opportunity by attempting to strike a weapon or armor. Against living creatures, the undead’s touch deals 3d6+5 points of damage. An attended object, any magic object, or living creature can attempt a DC [varies] Reflex save to negate this effect. The save DC is Charisma-based.

Paralyzed and Powerless: Unbeknownst to the PCs, the villain has come in contact with a relic or place of power that she can use to overwhelm the PCs. At some seemingly normal moment such as mealtime or waking in the morning, all of the PCs find themselves unable to move. While paralyzed, the PCs are approached by an enemy allied to the villain who delivers a threat or ultimatum. To capstone the encounter the enemy either steals something or murders someone while the PCs are unable to prevent it.

Later the PCs may themselves find the same item or location and determine how the villain’s underling managed to affect the party so thoroughly unfortunately now the device or location has been burned out or is missing a key component that will be used in campaign’s climax.

This Is Not my Body: A character who was reduced to zero hp in conflict with the minions of the villains is subjected to an unusual attack from a mysterious rod held by one of the NPCs. The PC immediately regains awareness in the body of a mostly-completed flesh golem. Now the party is split but the bulk of the party must preserve the still living but unconscious companion while that character’s personality is isolated in a strange body. Worse, the mystery of where some of the PC’s favorite NPCs disappeared to may be revealed in the tattoos and birthmarks on parts of the new body.

Purgatory Rules

In my current campaign, the PCs are already dead. No, I didn’t TPK the party, the premise is they are all petitioners in the city of Purgatory. The PCs had full lives, loves, enemies and unfinished business. Since I wanted the player character’s to have histories and experiences more advanced than your typical level one PC they were allowed to start at 5^th level. But, you can’t take it with you…Each PC started with significantly less starting money than a typical 5^th level PC. This allows me to use weaker monsters and still have them threaten the party. Which is particularly useful since the plan is for this to be a limited campaign maybe six months of play and every treasure will also feel like advancement.

We’re not really using any special rules for the dead because in Purgatory all the petitioners are basically starting over. The big house rules here involve additional states of the dead. Once a PC or NPC petitioner dies again they lay dormant for a random period of time before rising again as shambled. Shambled mindless undead mechanically little different from zombies. Not the zombies of film, however, they have no hunger for flesh and are mostly docile at least for a while. Eventually, though the constant excruciating pain of their mortal injuries drives many of the shambled to frenzy and lash out. Roving packs of feral shambled lurk beyond the walls of Purgatory. This is the fate that most likely awaits every resident of Purgatory. Unless they avoid serious injury or are killed with an oblivion weapon. A petitioner killed by an oblivion weapon is utterly destroyed (on a failed save) and fades away.

House Rules for Harrowing Combat

(Not that kind of Harrow, put the cards away)

I really want to run a fast-paced rules light and spooky Halloween one-shot and so I need to figure out what rules changes will best suit my goals for the game. So first I want to identify a problem I think we need to solve, I don’t want to change rules I don’t have to.

For the horror vibe, I’m looking for, Pathfinder is too heroic. So I have a couple of ideas to tone it down and make it a bit grittier. First up, let’s look at the d20 itself. The 3era Dungeons and Dragons release Unearthed Arcana proposed using 3d6 instead of a d20 to make all the rolls. It takes reduces some of the random chance and makes the character’s abilities a little more relevant to success or failure. For good and ill extremely lucky becomes a little more uncommon.

One change I’d make to the UA: 3d6 rule would be to borrow something from the Pathfinder Playtest. Instead of using the Critical results as they are modified in Unearthed Arcana I’m just going to make critical successes happen on “18’s” and if the roll is 5 points above the target DC. This does mess with weapons with expanded threat ranges so I’ll let those weapons critical if the roll is 4 points above the target DC. I won’t allow qualities to stack beyond lowering that number to a 3.

Combat should be scary and fast-paced. I’m looking at reducing the number of dice rolls at the table. With the luck behind criticals reduced I’m going to do away with confirmation rolls. I think I’ll also do away with damage rolls. All weapons will inflict maximum damage + plus the appropriate ability modifier. Criticals will inflict bonus damage equal to half the weapon’s normal damage (without the modifier) for every 5 points (or fewer for increased threat ranges) over the Target DC.

Because I’m using static weapon damage, I want a way to mitigate some of it, so we’ll use the Armor as Damage reduction rules from Ultimate Combat or Unearthed Arcana. I’ll need to give the two systems a very close look in relation to the other rules I have here.

We’ll set HP at max hit die -2 because I want the characters to be a little more fragile but not too much so.

While we’re looking at health and injury rules let’s pause at death and dying. There are aspects I like of the current PF1 rules (particularly how easy it is to determine your condition) but I also like that dying in the Playtest is separate from negative HP. For this game, I’d like to hybrid the two concepts and illustrate how dangerous such serious injuries can be. This rule won’t work in every game but for a gritty action or horror campaign, I think it will function well.

When a character reaches 0 hp they begin dying. They lose no more hit points but suffer 1 point of Constitution Bleed each round. If they reach zero Constitution they are Dead. A dying PC may make a DC 10 Constitution check (as normal) to stabilize. The stabilize cantrip prevents the target from losing any more points of Con bleed as a result of reaching 0 hp it has no effect on any other Con bleed. I this way Constitution damage may be a sign of lasting injuries such as cracked ribs and deep bruises.

One thing I’m really enjoying in the Playtest is the mobility in the game. Characters don’t just stand toe to toe and slug it out a huge chunk of that is the reduced number of Attacks of Opportunity. I have a house rule I’m thinking about that would allow fighters to take one AoO automatically and then stipulate when certain other classes could take one. But that’s a separate discussion, for this game I’m going to experiment with removing them entirely unless the character has Combat Reflexes. A character with that feat may then take one AoO each round.

Another way the Playtest shines on the subject of mobility is how the action economy allows characters to move about. Without porting over the full 3 actions a round rule (which can be done pretty easily) we can instead remove the feats Spring Attack and Shot on the Run from the game and simply allow all characters and creatures to move – attack – move. I think mobility is important especially in horror because players need to feel like they can at least attempt flee from an opponent that is too strong.

So what are some horror house rules you use at the table?

Sometimes as I prepare to write a blog post or prepare a session for a homebrew campaign I’ll open up Word to begin writing and—Nothing. Nadda, zip, zero, zilch. Blank-slate. When that happens my approach to both my blog and my campaigns is very similar. I begin by going back. In the case of my blog typically I’ll reread the last post or two other times I’ll do a deeper dive back into my archives.  All because like a good campaign I like my blog to carry some themes over from post to post. So going back and getting back into the same headspace I was in previously can be a great help. Sometimes it’s enough on its own.

With a campaign, I go back over my notes if I took any during the previous sessions (I’m sadly not great about notetaking) and I’ll initiate conversations with the players about the game. Figuring out what they remember not only gets me back in my old headspace but it also gives me a roadmap to what engaged the players over the last few sessions. Many times your players will have seen something in a different way than you had and your imagination will fire on that difference opening whole new avenues for your story to go.

But what happens when these first steps fail?

You have to go look for inspiration. Trouble is you can’t force it…well, I can’t, and I imagine most people can’t. I have to relax and leave myself open to inspiration, not an easy task with a deadline or game night looming on the horizon. So for me, I let my mind wander…sometimes that means physically wandering. If no one else is home I can pace around the house otherwise I head out the door. Because of the way my schedule works this often aligns with errands so I do a LOT of thinking while wandering the grocery store. In the past that might mean walking the mall or going for a drive.

Another technique I use is to fill my space with noises I can mostly ignore. So either music or a movie I’ve seen so many times I can mostly ignore it. The original Star Wars trilogy usually works for me, Monica likes to write to the first Pacific Rim.

So once you get yourself in the right frame of mind where do you look? Me I look everywhere. Books I’m reading, TV shows, movies but I often find that incomplete ideas are the best. When I watch a movie trailer, for example, I get a snippet of the movie. An incomplete picture that my mind can’t help but speculate on imagining how the entire movie might go. Most of the time the movie in my head is similar to actual film but it’s rarely the same exact story. If you were to explore the story you created in your head rather than the actual film you can come away with the outline of a story that you might use in your game. This doesn’t even have to be a movie it can even be as simple as an engaging title that gets you wondering.

In addition to Pathfinder, it’s no secret that I’m a fan of Monte Cook Game’s Cypher System So when Monte Cook introduced his surreal Invisible Sun game and setting I was intrigued and since Monica and I backed the campaign on Kickstarter we figured we should play the demo at Gen Con. It was entitled “We Begin at the End.” That title really stuck with me enough so that I took it as inspiration for a Pathfinder game and ran it in a different direction.

I gave the players some instruction on basic character creation, then closed with an introduction to the setting with the below text:

You’ll each be playing a fifth level character so they’ve had some adventures, earned some fame. Put yourself in your PCs shoes. Think about your best haul or your most famous deed. You each made friends and enemies. Think of those people whose lives you’ve touched. Think about those you’ve put in the ground already. Give your character goals. Then decide how your character died.

As we begin play the PCs reside in the surreal city of Purgatory in the lands of the dead. Each character has unfinished business in the world of the living, loved ones left behind. Destinies unfulfilled. The PCs have made contact with each other. Discuss how your characters connect to one another, who knew who before and who met who after. You have all also had dealings with Valdis Firth a rogue charon (a rank and file member of the Guild of Soul Ferriers or just Boatman’s Guild in the vernacular). Valdis has been known to smuggle in the living for final goodbyes and instructions and on rarer occasions, he’s smuggled in other things from the world of the living. He’s every PCs primary contact with their pasts. You should decide how you met Valdis and how your character perceives their relationship with the rogue charon.

One of my players referred to the last line in that first paragraph above as a mic-drop. The PCs are already dead, “We Begin at the End.” I won’t spoil the Invisible Sun adventure but I will say the PCs are very much alive.

When I began thinking about the title “We Begin at the End” I expected irregular passage of time, maybe a cipher or puzzle that needed to be worked from the back to front. Really, I had no idea how the adventure would play out but it was interesting to think about. When I was planning my campaign I finally knew why Monte used the title but I had no interest in copying it. but the title’s possibilities still excited me. I continued to follow the title through varied possible meanings for my players. Somewhere in there, I decided what if they are already dead?

I decided that life(?) in Purgatory is pretty much the same as “life” in the world of the living so we’d use the normal PF rules with a few small alterations. When they inevitably leave Purgatory for the world of the living I’ll shift gears and probably change some rules or give them a modified ghost template.

If all else fails you can either do something different for your next game session. Try planning a one-shot with different maybe even pregenerated characters that might relate (even if only tangentially) to your main plot then loop that short story back into your campaign.

For example, most campaigns have some sort of MacGuffin as a plot element. If you are drawing a blank on what to do with your normal characters go back to your notes on the MacGuffin and outline a story from the item’s history. Make sure there’s a relevant clue to your ongoing campaign, then a session or two after your mini story let the PCs uncover books or scrolls that detail the events they already played through.

If that still fails and your game-night is about to start, you still have two choices as I see it. Fess up and break out some board games or pick a direction and just wing it. Throw out an off the cuff, unexpected complication and see what the PCs do with it. No matter what you do, just stay relaxed GM’s block doesn’t kick around forever and stressing over a lack of inspiration isn’t going to make it end any faster. Typically, we’re playing with friends and hopefully, your friends will understand when you just don’t’ feel up to running.

Characters

First of all, I am impressed with how smoothly character creation works. Admittedly, we don’t have the breadth of options we have now in first edition Pathfinder but I will say from Core Rulebook to Playtest Rulebook it feels like I have more control over the kind of character I’m playing. So it feels like over the life of the line PF2 will have easily as many character options if not more than PF1. If you watched (or listened) you know I played Braydon Forgebone, a dwarven cleric of Torag. Braydon came together quickly somewhat faster I think than if I were making a similar character in core first edition.

I did lose some capabilities because I didn’t take ancestry feats like Ancestral Hatred or Stonecunning which grant abilities similar to things Dwarves just get in PF1. But it never felt like I lost anything when it actually came time to roll dice.

My next character will likely be a ranger. Now, the ranger is the first time I’ve felt like we’re missing something because in the playtest they no longer get spells. Now I’m sure once we have all of the core classes available as archetypes this will be fixed simply by tacking on the Druid Dedication feat and a feat to get access to a broader range of Primal spells. Since we don’t get the druid archetype in the playtest I looked at both the wizard and rogue archetypes. I barely even considered playing a straight-up ranger because even before I settled on my class I knew I wanted to play around with the new multi-class rules.

Now, I have a confession. It seems my opinions on how I like to play have shifted since the release of 4th Edition D&D. I was not a fan of how Wizards of the coast handled multi-classing and here Paizo is offering a very similar system where you swap class options from your base class for options from the added class and I’m loving it. I don’t know if this change happened when I started looking at the variant multi-classing options in Unchained (and later expanded in Jenny Jarzabki’s excellent Genius Guide to Variant Multiclassing Rules from Rogue Genius Games), if it’s just part of my evolving view of what works for me, or  I just didn’t give 4E a fair shake on this point. But I digress.

Anyway, provided I don’t change my mind and roll up a new character before our next Doomsplay broadcast my ABCs will look like this: Elf-Criminal-Ranger. With a bit of multiclassing into rogue and my PC strongly resembles a PF1 slayer. The depth of options in the single book is impressive.

At the Table

The three action economy is fast and exciting. Not having to worry about what constitutes a standard action, a move action, or a full-round action speeds things up even for veteran players. The action economy (in conjunction a few other rules) also opened up movement options. Giving every one essentially Spring Attack helps the action to shift all over the battlefield. I liked the system on paper but I really enjoyed it in practice. Enough that I may incorporate it into some of my 1^st edition games.

While I did have a few issues they were mostly confirmations of my earlier misgivings regarding the degree system mastery the new edition expects. There are a lot of tiny rules elements in the new edition. Some of these we’ve had before, some are new. The big two categories for these elements are Weapon traits and conditions. I’m not saying these elements aren’t valuable. They carry a lot of rules weight they’ll just require players to learn and remember the rules pertaining to their characters.

For all the things that make the game more accessible and easy to teach to new players some of these particular rules elements may become a barrier to new and casual players. I look forward to seeing what my regular group thinks of the new rules.

Weirdest Observation so Far

Not really a complaint but…What in the name of Abadar happened to Golarion’s economy?

All in All

Despite all the changes to the system playing the new edition still feels like Pathfinder and I’m still really liking what I see. I probably won’t give up 1e anytime soon (I have way too many adventures I want to run but have zero interest in converting) but I’m excited to play and run more of the new rules.

We’ll begin with the Community Relations Coordinator for Monte Cook Games, Darcy Ross. Darcy why don’t you tell the readers a little about yourself.

Snailologist by day, gamer by night, I’ve been in love with monsters and dungeons from the start. In my PhD studies, I basically make molluscan monsters. RPGs give biology geeks like me the chance to explore “what ifs” and life forms and evolutionary stories that might have been! The major game that opened that wondrous door to me was Numenera, a game that puts you on Earth a billion years in the future with the ruins of technology so advanced as to seem like magic. Think of the ecology! Thing of the good biomechanical beetle species!

Numenera and the elegant Cypher System got me GMing anywhere I could–for groups of scientists, local game and comic shops, and even rapid-fire demos for an after-dark planetarium night for dozens of folks who didn’t even know what an RPG was. It’s a delight to be the Community Relations Coordinator for the publisher of my favorite game, Monte Cook Games, where I’ve been spearheading our Twitch program. For fun, I like anything with some good tentacles or eyestalks, and I love to play anything horror/Cthulhu, D&D 5e, Planescape AD&D 2e, and lots of delightful and strange littler games like Golden Sky Stories and Maid.

So I’m not only a fan of Pathfinder, but I’m also a fan of Monte Cook’s Games so I came across this most recent Kickstarter pretty early on and I’m very excited to see what this book will ultimately look like. What can you tell us about the Kickstarter Campaign?

It’s all about creating a suite of tools to help EVERY gamer capture those “lightning in a bottle” epic gaming sessions that really stick with you. Experienced gamers will find new ideas, tools, and resources to try out to engineer those epic gaming experiences, and new gamers will learn everything they need to know about getting started. I dive a little deeper into the topics below, but I think it’s really special because of its intended audience (every gamer, players and GMs and creators), breadth of topics, and the fact that it’s written to be put into immediate use (not just theory).

It’s not just MCG either–we have a killer cast of consulting experts to make sure this book covers it all!

I’ve seen the list on the Kickstarter page you have like fifteen consultants on the book: Eric Campbell , Matt Colville, Luke Crane, Stacy Dellorfano, Tanya DePass, Ajit George, Jennell Jaquays, Eloy Lasanta, Tom Lommel, Matthew Mercer, Susan J. Morris, Alina Pete, John Rogers, and Monica Valentinelli. That’s an impressive list.

The book will also have comics and cartoons from:
John Kovalic (Dork Tower)
Vickie Lee (Dungeons and Doggos)
Aviv Or (Up to Four Players)
Brian Patterson (d20 Monkey) 
Len Peralta (Geek-a-Week)
Alina Pete (Weregeek)
Stan! (10x10Toon)

Our audience is primarily Pathfinder players will they get any benefit from the core product?
Absolutely! This game is written for players and GMs of any RPG system. In fact, with former Paizo developer Sean K Reynolds on the team, you can bet he’s going to bring the perspectives and tools that make a great Pathfinder game to this book.

So what makes this book different from other advice books such as the kobold guide to series?
In terms of content, Your Best Game Ever stands out because of its intended audience (players, GMs of every experience level, even some for writers/designers), its breadth (from handling character death and romance to navigating specific difficult social issues at a table, from taking great notes to gaming with kids), and its actionability (recipes to try for game night, lists of NPC names, and how to use the Invisible Sun character arc mechanic in any game you’re playing).

In terms of the form, Your Best Game Ever will be through-written by Monte Cook to have a singular voice and format, though all our consulting experts will weigh in on the text, and they’ll have a short section each to share their best gaming practices and advice! Thanks to a stretch goal, we also funded a Your Best Game Ever video series to accompany the book! There’s a lot going on with this puppy.

So hopefully my die-hard Pathfinder readers will indulge me, I know the campaign includes more than just Your Best Game Ever. What else can backer’s get?

The other side to this Kickstarter is revising our Cypher System Rulebook and generating some awesome new supplements for that line to give gamers tools for running and playing awesome sci-fi games (The Stars are Fire), horror/thriller games (Stay Alive!), and fantasy games (Godforsaken). The CSR and these books are going to make great companions, and of course I’m jazzed as heck to get more Cypher System goodness!

I attended the best game ever panel seminar. And you had a great piece advice, where you talked about asking players questions during play can I get you to share that with our audience.

Welcome to Darcy Ross’s lazy GMing seminar. I kid, but one piece of advice I shared was about generating investment from players at the table. While I’m GMing, I’ll spotlight a player and ask leading questions like “As you enter the library, you recognize someone you hate. Who is it?” or “Lying at the center of the reliquary is an artifact from a prior world. What does it look like?” Players naturally will produce the kinds of narrative elements that hook them, all the while taking some cognitive load off of me as the GM. Win-win!

My tips for making this approach successful:

• Start small to see how your players like it
• Give some example suggestions so they have a model to follow
• Use “Yes, and” as much as “Not quite, but” to help keep your game’s tone and structure cohesive.

By the way I’m officially jealous you’ve had the opportunity to play and GM for Shanna Germaine, Bruce Cordell, Sean K Reynolds and of course Monte Cook…what’s that like?

Pretty wild! I got to GM for them in our Numenera series, Echoes Linger. It was intimidating at first, but they’re excellent gamers and I got to run my favorite game of all time for them, which buoyed me through the initial jitters.

The most surprising thing about gaming with them is getting to see Monte as a player! He’s almost always GMing, but he’s a REALLY good player, and really gets into character. It’s a delight to watch and run for! Definitely watch the show and see him at work.

I know we’re getting close to the end of the Kickstarter. How much long does it run?
It ends August 24th at 7pm CDT, don’t miss out!

Thank You Darcy for taking the time out of your busy schedule to share those details with us. Your Best Game Ever isn’t the only upcoming project for honing your skills. Next up is Keith Kappel from Adventure Writing Academy.

Keith why don’t you introduce yourself.

I’m Keith Ryan Kappel, and I’m a freelance writer based out of Chicago, best known for working on the three Star Wars RPG lines from Fantasy Flight Games (FFG). I’ve also done some work on their Legend of the Five Rings and Genesys RPG lines.

As for how I ended up here, it was a combination of having some interesting life experience, a broken leg, education, hard work, networking, and some luck. Ultimately, I got on because I entered an open call for writers FFG held in 2011 shortly after acquiring the Star Wars license. They’ve kept me busy ever since!

I know you have some military service, how has that impacted your RPG work?

It’s true! I served in the US Navy as an intelligence specialist from 1997 to 2001. And in a weird way, I’m only in this industry because of those four years.

During the first chunk of Intel school, they are limited in what they can teach because not every student’s background check is completed, so they have us learn general skills we’ll need that don’t require clearances, including public speaking.

We each had to give an oral presentation, and I watched as each of my classmates did a thematically appropriate Tom Clancy book review or a platform briefing on their favorite aircraft, ship, or submarine.

I’ve always been a star wars fan, and it was March of 1998. In my mind, intelligence specialists are analysts, which is to say we take in a bunch of information and try to tease out trends or patterns we can use to “predict” future events or better understand recent events. I thought it’d be great to do a briefing on Star Wars Episode I casting and production rumors, separating what I felt might be true or false.

I was laughed at for 7 minutes as I, hands shaking, face red, trudged through my briefing. The Intel program at the time was considered the Navy’s third hardest academic program. We had a test or quiz every day, and if any scored below an 85%, you had to repeat a week. If this happened more than once, you were generally booted from the program, doomed to work as an undesignated seaman for the remainder of your enlistment doing some of the least desirable (but very necessary) jobs the Navy has to offer. So needless to say, I was terrified I had grossly miscalculated.

Instead, after I finished, the IS1 running the class pulled me aside and asked if I liked Star Wars. I told him I did, and apologized and offered to redo the briefing. He just laughed and said it was fine. A few months later, when I finished the program, he found me and asked if I liked my duty station. He got me sent to Naval Space Command. I was ecstatic.

Being able to put “Intelligence Specialist at Naval space command” on your writing resume when you’re applying to write for Star Wars is a pretty great line item.

The navy also helped pay for my college. I was bartending full time when I broke my leg while paintballing. Unable to work, the only way I could pay my bills was to go to college and draw on my Montgomery GI bill. In my mind, I was only going to pay bills until I got back on my feet, so there was no need to take something sensible.

At the time, I was running a Star Wars fan site that created fan comics and fan RPG content for Star Wars D20. So writing was a hobby, and that led me to Columbia College Chicago, which had one of the few courses near me for writing comics. I would never have gone to that school if not for my military benefits.

But beyond resume lines, anecdotes, and tuition fees, the military has given me some unique experiences that often find their way into my work. For starters. The closest thing we have on earth to working on a giant star destroyer or battlecruiser is being on a naval warship. I spent some of my career on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier. That’s let me write those characters and situations with a certain amount of authority and authenticity that other writers have to work harder to achieve.

The other great ability I have, through my training as an I intelligence specialist, is how to extract information from a map. I can look at a fictional map of a planet, galaxy, or Rokugan, or whatever, and suss out a lot of information about city locations, available resources, trade partners, base locations, defenses, etc. Most of my research and outline phases involve a good deal of looking at maps first.

Very cool! So Adventure Writing Academy, would you like to tell us what that’s all about?

Sure! I co-founded the Adventure Writing Academy just last year, and we just finished up our first year of classes. Registration is open now for next year’s courses, which begin in late September and October.

I’ve been writing in the RPG industry for something like five years now, and recognized that to my knowledge, there is no writing program in America that specifically teaches how to write for tabletop RPGs, which is really a shame, because there are some very unique challenges to crafting RPG content that all of us in the industry have had to figure out on our own, or depend on finding generous mentors to show us the ropes.

I was inspired by legendary comic book artist Joe Kubert, who faced a similar problem when he noticed the lack of schools who taught the unique skills for drawing comic book sequential art, and figured I’d just open my own school and fill the niche need.

I learned how to write at Columbia College Chicago, where I received a BA in fiction writing. They run an intense writing program using the brilliant story workshop method pedagogy. So I partnered with Maggie Ritchie, a former classmate who got her MFA in the program and has a lot of experience in the education field (and is also a great writer!).

We worked together to adapt the story workshop to an online Skype format tailored to writing genre material like science fiction and fantasy, as well as RPG content. As much as possible, we’ve selected readings and assignments we feel engage aspiring genre and RPG writers, without losing the important lessons and techniques that are hallmarks of story workshop writing.

The course is 11 sessions long, and each session is four hours. Ten sessions are run by one of our teachers, which guide students in discovering their own unique voice, largely through exercises, activities, and discussions that help writers connect their oral storytelling abilities with their writing.

Each of these ten sessions feature a guest student; someone working as a writer, editor, or developer in the RPG or fiction publishing industries. Guest students participate in class activities and provide a low stakes networking opportunity for students, and a chance to hear how things work in the industry right now. Guest students also provide a brief window for Q and A after class ends.

The eleventh session is a four hour seminar by a guest lecturer. This year we are welcoming back Jay Little, the designer of the Star Wars RPG, Mophidious’ Star Trek 2d20,  the X-Wing Miniatures game, and much more. Jay provides a unique window into game theory and game design, as well as the business realities of working in the industry as a salaried staffer and as a freelance game designer.

Is this for would be professionals, actual professionals or GMs who just want to better their games? Or does it work for any of those people?

I think it works for any of those people. While our primary audience is aspiring professionals, our intro to creative writing course would help any GM or fan fiction author up their game.

Working professionals who got in on talent (be it natural or hard-won), but perhaps never received much formal training, might find they learn a lot, or at the very least get a way to name and understand all the things they taught themselves over the years (which can be supremely validating). And of course, we are always looking for working professionals to act as guest students. Our prices are also a fraction of what an equivalent college course might go for, and since were more targeted, industry professionals might find us an attractive option for furthering their education.

Full disclosure, you asked me last year to be a guest student but our schedules never aligned hopefully we do better this year. That said, an industry professional is interested, how can they contact you about becoming a guest student?

Www.adventurewritingacademy.com has a contact form. If they just list their credits (or the highlights) and provide their email address, we can work with them to set it up. We are also mulling over the logistics of a guest student residency program, which would allow a professional to audit our entire program as a guest student, bouncing from class to class.

Is the course system specific at all?

No. We have two actual courses. The first is an introduction to creative writing. There, the primary focus is developing core writing skills through the lens of genre fiction and RPG work. We discuss RPG writing in broader terms, but the intro class is more focused on the prose than mechanics. Of course, students are free to do their RPG homework in whichever system or style they prefer for intro.

We also are piloting our RPG Writing I class this year. In that course (which requires completion of the intro course unless given an exemption), each class spends some time covering a different system, so aspiring developers can learn a breadth of system mechanics. RPG I covers the ten systems hiring the most freelancers or providing the most third party self-publishing opportunities.

RPG I also examines prose in RPGs at a deeper level, and spends a bit more time talking about revising RPG work to hit specific word counts and squeeze out all extraneous words and such.

If there was one piece of advice you’d share with GMs what would you suggest?

RPGs are first and foremost interactive, collaborative, storytelling games. Learn how the game works, but then put down that core book, and just wing it more. Say “yes” more often when players do something unexpected and jump off the rails. The best games I’ve run or played in didn’t follow the canned module, they veered off into unexpected territory.

Remember, rule one is, “always have fun!”

Thank you Keith for sharing the details of the Adventure Writing Academy with us today.

I’m excited by the prospects offered by both of these projects, and I’d like to once again thank Darcy and Keith for taking the time to join us on the blog today.

The Score of a Lifetime: The player characters begin to play with a sizable sum of wealth. Likely the spoils of a heist or con. Now the rightful owner(s) of the PCs windfall is out for payback. Front load your adventure with a level or two’s worth of gold. Maybe you give the players time to spend some of it maybe not. Maybe they aren’t even the crew that stole the money. It could be they are in the right place at the wrong time now the crew who stole the money are after the PCs as is the rightful owner putting the PCs in a very tight spot.

I Think I Know That Sword: A PC encounters an intelligent blade in a treasure hoard and is surprised that they know the blade…or at least its personality. Somehow an old mentor, childhood friend, or battle companion’s personality has become imprinted on this sword. How and why did this happen? Is it really their old friend? Can the PCs undo whatever has caused this or do they even want to?

Swift Travels: While exploring the PCs discover a crumbling marble statue of the region’s god most associated with safe or swift travel. The statue radiates magic and can be activated to transit to a similar statue in the middle of nowhere. The two statues appear to be all that’s left of a larger ancient fast travel network. What might the PCs find in the remote destination? Maybe they find a seer, an ancient ruin, or a simple farming village. The statues have significant age damage and wear, is travel between the statues even safe still?

Second Chances: Either the Lady of Graves is giving the PCs a second chance or they’ve been resurrected by a peculiar benefactor, either way, several heroes and/or scoundrels of various historical eras have been brought back to fulfill one last quest or solve a seemingly unsolvable mystery.

If you use this prompt, encourage the players to write their own legends. The characters need not live up to these mythical talents yet…they’ve been dead for a while it could be some time (and levels) before they’re back up to snuff. It is also possible to tap into the Quantum Leap/Altered Carbon tropes where it’s not even the character’s original body. If you use this last option it is best if you let the players decide what they looked like before and what they look like now.

I’m Keeping an Eye on You: The PCs encounter a large angry looking demon eye floating in a sealed glass jar. The eye floats and follows the actions of the PCs whenever it is out. Despite being just a floating eye it seems to be able to express a range of emotions from irritable to enraged. I used this once in one of my own games and it was far more popular than I expected. The players even named the eye…later in a (loosely connected) game run by one of those players we met a one-eyed demon. It was not a happy demon but quite well informed about events on the Prime Material.

FantasyWorld ™: Borrowing from themes present in the TV series West World an Illusory realm reminiscent of ancient Golarion has become THE vacation site for the rich and powerful of the Pact Worlds. Run “reality” in Starfinder and the illusory Golarion in your favorite version of Pathfinder or maybe all three as upgrades become available.

Maybe the PCs are employees of the park, maybe they are visitors enjoying a little R&R, or maybe they have an ulterior motive to be in the park. As a GM you don’t need to go into the questions of AI the show deals with, instead find other ways to tap into the ramifications of dual “realities.”

Old Warriors Never Die: A campaign veteran or expert in a current crisis long thought deceased fails to respond to all magical means to contact the dead spurring those in power to beseech the PCs into attempting to find the now aged hero so their related expertise can be brought to bear in the current crisis.

This is more or less the central plot point of one my favorite d6 Star Wars adventures Tatooine Manhunt and is worth reading.

(bonus prompt) A Mysterious Child: The PCs begin seeing signs of a mystery child. The child when glimpsed seems to be suffering from a few terrible burns but the more often they are seen, the less visible the burns. Other signs become noticeable small footprints around the party’s campsite. Half-eaten fruit with child-sized bite marks. When the child is directly approached they run and quickly vanish. Who is the child? Is it a spirit or ghost? What do they want?

In a recent campaign, our GM began hinting at a major shift in the direction of our campaign by introducing just this NPC. Ultimately, we discovered it wasn’t a child but a planar hoping Halfling who needed help in his world. What will such a mysterious figure portend in your game?

Have any weird prompts you’d like to share? Leave them in the comments!

So what do I mean by “Engagement”? When I say engagement I mean how invested your players are. How committed their involvement is and how much they enjoy playing your campaign. An engaged player isn’t playing games on their phone, checking social media, or reading books. They are focused on the game and having a good time playing it.

Last year, our Sunday group wrapped the Carrion Crown AP prematurely. It was a tough call but the game had ceased being fun for most of the players. For varying reasons many of us had lost our investment in the story and weren’t engaged with the plot. After one player left the campaign we had a long, awkward, and somewhat painful conversation between the remaining players and GM. Eventually, we conceded that it was better to shelve the game than to hemorrhage more players.

How did we get to that point? First, most of the players came to the game with the wrong expectations and we made our characters with those expectations in mind. To a player, we made hard-nosed monster hunters that would have been better suited to a Supernatural campaign or a Hunter’s Hunted Chronicle in the old World of Darkness. Our party motto could easily have been, “we kill all the monsters (and sometimes even humans). Zero mercy!” Then we compounded this problem with the fact none of us felt at all attached to either Ustalav or 90% of the NPCs. Some of our interactions with the locals turned downright ugly. The lone exception (I can recall) to that was the professor’s daughter who we met right away in book one and began dating one of the PCs.

Most of Paizo’s adventure paths by their very nature railroad the PCs along a particular storyline. This isn’t normally a problem but in this case, we reflexively fought the rails in this AP almost from the jump.  Once we solved book one we had no real reason to stick with the relative strangers we met at the professor’s funeral (the other PCs) or remain in Ustalav at all, except that’s what the books said we did. Most of us didn’t care about the locals (they were assholes) or our connections to one another (we all used to know a guy who was dead now, so yeah.) it wasn’t until our very last session as a full group did we get an idea of the larger threat in the campaign and by then it was far too late to save the game.

During our post-mortem discussion of the campaign, some important things came to light. One, we’d broken the player-GM dynamic worse than some of us, I think, realized. We were all much more adversarial than our typical campaigns as the GM fought to keep us on course and we fought to kill every monster with fire and nuke the nation of Ustalav from orbit because it was the only way to be sure. During play, our cleric of Pharasma lost some of her spellcasting for her part in killing a scientist who was arguably interfering with the passage of souls to the Lady of Graves and the path to atonement was left vague. The GM was prepared to fridge the professor’s daughter because she’d become romantically involved a PC and we were pissing off bad-guys and not-bad-guys alike. The most shocking revelation to come from our post-mortem was that our traditionally least engaged player was the one most attached to the campaign, especially, when she found out someone was going to kill her character’s in-game girlfriend.

From our discussions, I think if we’d been managed our expectations better and not made a party of merciless hunters and actually had a session zero where we could have tied our backgrounds not only to the professor but also to one another we might have had a better chance to weather the turns the AP eventually took. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to talk to your players especially if you notice one or more of your players’ attentions are waning.  This goes double for players who grow bored or frustrated with a campaign talk to your GM, they may not realize they are losing you as a player.

As GMs, we need to actually listen to our disengaged players when we discuss what’s happening with a campaign. Most of the time these are our friends and they may not want to talk openly about what they think is wrong for fear of hurting our feelings. Conversely, we cant take it personally if they have complaints about the game. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad GM or they dislike you if they criticize. Try not to get defensive and work to find a solution. Sometimes, the issue isn’t even you. Often we’re carrying a ton of baggage from other parts of life to the game table and so are your players. Check in with them and if it’s something beyond the scope of the game your player may have to work it out on their own, but even then, your friends will likely appreciate that you noticed.

With that Carrion Crown concluded, I began to run what was supposed to be a short filler Numenera campaign. I started with things I learned during the post-mortem about what everyone wanted from a game. Over a year later and it’s become one of our strongest campaigns ever, but not one without its own engagement difficulties. So far as a group we’ve learned quite a bit and we’ve tried to proactively discuss when our engagement with the campaign slips. Six months into the campaign a player approached me and after we discussed her issues with the game we discovered the easiest fix was to fill in more of her background’s details including a husband she rarely sees and a cult-like religion dedicated to reaching the stars. Even as recent as a couple of weeks ago I reached out to a player who’s interest I could actively see waning. We met for lunch and discussed the game and I think we’ve had some solutions that begin to put us back on the right course for him.

Adventure Path Crossovers

Now, if run a lot of adventure paths you can begin with cameos and the ripples of one campaigns events entering another campaign. This works even if you aren’t the GM of every campaign your group plays in. Coordinate with the other GM if neither of you has been focused on dating your campaigns to the release schedule you can very easily incorporate major events from one campaign into another especially if they happen to occur close to one another. It could be a lot of fun to have three GMs running in rotation each running a different Cheliax based AP (Council of Thieves, Hell’s Rebels, and Hell’s Vengeance). The GMs could even get together and coordinate a few traveling NPC such as peddlers, bandits, or Hellknights who pop up from time to time in each campaign. This collaboration can also allow for interesting player character crossover. Maybe the uprisings in Cheliax have split a family, and Monica and Ryan choose to play estranged siblings one a hero in Hell’s Rebels the other a crown loyalist in Hell’s Vengeance. As a GM in one of these games, you’ll need to decide how much continuity you want between games and then come to an agreement with the other GMs. If everyone is on board with full crossover continuity potential you can then start thinking about crossover adventures.

These crossover stories may be easiest to place between books depending on the Adventure Paths and shouldn’t include every PC from every campaign. Assuming the example above, it could be interesting to set a standalone adventure in Westcrown that brings the estranged siblings together perhaps at the request of an old childhood friend who happens to be a regular contact of one or more of the Council of Thieves PCs but on arrival they all discover the friend/contact has been murdered, making this a family drama/mystery story. Maybe this ties into Council of Thieves main plot if you’re that GM, maybe one of the other GMs has a secret they’d like you to try and work in, or perhaps it stands wholly on its own.

No matter how it all connects, you’ll want to coordinate not only with the other GMs but the players so everyone knows what this side story is going to be about and what characters most belong as the main protagonists. You might allow some of your players to play an additional PC but be mindful of how this will affect the game. You’ll also need to set some ground rules, while many comic book (and thus comic book movie) crossovers feature hero v. hero setups it is probably for the best if you limit or outright disallow PvP no matter how tempting. This is particularly true if you’re using a setup like the Cheliax example where you may have wildly divergent moral codes.

Another good time to insert a crossover is at the conclusion of all the campaigns. So one party has saved the world from the threat of the Storm Tyrant and his army of giants while another has bested Karzoug and a third has carved out a Kingdom in the Stolen Lands. And the question hangs over the table of what’s next? Maybe even if you haven’t laid any prior groundwork you decide to run a high-level mini-campaign that mixes characters from all of these campaigns. The fact that each was set in Golarion should be enough to satisfy most players. When planning this epic mini-campaign go back and review the adventure paths your players will be pulling character’s from especially the material at the end of the final volume that talks about further adventures. If you can find a theme or villain that interests you and ties into more than one of the previous campaigns that might make the crossover feel more organic and natural.

Heroes with Helpers

You can also plan a crossover campaign where you run related but different adventures for the same group of players with multiple PCs or multiple groups of players each with their own set of PCs. If you look at how the MCU has handled all of its superheroes (excepting Guardians of the Galaxy) to date each branch of the franchise has started with one titular hero and a support team of relatively normal individuals working together to defeat the movie’s big bad. Admittedly, some of these relatively normal characters are or become heroes in their own right but the point is this is a pattern you can model. If you set up and plan with your group who the main party will be when the crossover happens then build groups around each one or two of those characters depending on the number of players you have and the number of story arcs you want to begin with).  You can even give special bonuses to the “titular” or “spotlight” heroes in the party such as if you use point-buy, allowing those characters to begin with high fantasy (20) point-buy and limiting the other characters to low (15) point buy or even one of the NPC arrays. Every player should make a hero and a support character for each of the other games.

Support characters, like Marvel’s Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), still need to be center stage from time to time and given interesting stories.

Once you’re finished you might have for the Crossover game a Cavalier, a Wizard, an Oracle, and an Investigator for your party. If you decided only to run two games each party will have two spotlight characters and two support PCs. The Cavalier may be surrounded by her Oracle brother, her squire (a fighter) and a pick-pocket (rogue) she saved from the gallows in return for a year’s honorable service. While the Wizard and Investigator were comrades in arms for the last five years working in the King’s Watch solving crimes on the mean streets of the capital. They are accompanied by a rookie guardsman (a fighter) and a confidant from the church of Pharasma (cleric). When the crossover story happens most of the action will be handled by the spotlight characters although some tasks might still fall to the support characters and could be roleplayed as well.

Years ago I played in an Ars Magica troupe. We each took turns playing our wizards, playing the other wizards hirelings, and running adventures. It was a short-lived campaign and I remember little of the experience except that I actually had as much or more fun playing my servant character than my wizard. The guys who GMed that game were very good at making sure even the peon PCs were spotlighted and had narratively interesting things to do. It’s important if you run a mini-campaign with a titular or spotlight character that you don’t ignore the other characters at the table. For reference, the Netflix Marvel shows do a good job of giving the support team meaningful and interesting story arcs in a way that sometimes the movies miss. Which makes the TV series a better model for this sort of campaign even though Cap and Iron Man have support teams.

One Final Crossover

These were just a few ways you could run crossovers as an integral part of your campaign there are certainly many other options but I want to leave you with one more that can be a lot of fun and a little unexpected. Have all the players create level 1 versions of favorite characters who died in previous campaigns. Agents of Pharasma have pulled each from their respective afterlives and reincarnated them on the material plane. The characters may be the same race or a different race but they each wear an unfamiliar face but they are whole and back on the prime material plane and they have been given a job to do…This campaign idea will give you ample opportunities to call back to old NPCs, unfinished business with the past, and a mission to accomplish in the present even if they don’t know why the Lady of Graves selected them for it.

Before we get deep into the cameos discussion though, I’d like to remind everyone that a successful campaign isn’t about you as a GM it’s about your players’ characters. Let’s face it, whether your players are butt-kickers, method-actors, min-maxers, or storytellers the most important thing to each of them when they sit down at the table is their character. With method-actors it’s pretty obvious from the voices and mannerisms they adopt at the table their character is their focus but with some of the others, it might not be as noticeable. Butt-kickers might be interested in combat, mayhem and murder-hobo excitement but that’s measured by, “Did you see all the butt my PC kicked this week?!” Storytellers might be interested in the story you’re telling but they are most engaged with the part that centers on their PC. Now, most players don’t sit in such easy stereotypes but isn’t it nice to think that at least one thing about each player type is (almost) universal.

Why am I drilling this concept from GM 101 home? Because for some GMs cameos and crossovers can be deceptively tough. When I started roleplaying there wasn’t a lot of game fiction but there was some and then suddenly—Boom! There was more game fiction than I or my friends could keep up with. Inexorably, some of the material from the novels began making its way into our games. Whether we were adventuring in Krynn or Toril we either had adventures that paralleled events from the novels or we kept rubbing shoulders with the heroes from the books…and more often than I care to admit we did it poorly.

Image copyright Wizards of the Coast

From talking to other GMs over the years, I’ve found that ours weren’t the only tables struggling to handle the influx of book heroes outshining the PCs at the table. If the GMs weren’t solving every problem for the PCs by playing Drizzt or Raistlin when the PC’s should be in focus, then the PCs were trying to track down Elminster or Luke Skywalker to fix everything for them.

When I started a 3^rd edition Forgotten Realms campaign rather than botch cameos again I decided the events depicted in the novels were bard tales and nothing more. There might be people with those names but chances were they were mythical, long dead, or not as skilled as the PCs. In avoiding the issue altogether I weakened that campaign. After all existing in the same universe as the big novel characters is part of the fun. It’s what the MCU gets right when it teases the Avengers with Nick Fury at the end of the first Iron Man or pits Captain America against Tony Stark in Civil War.

Image copyright Marvel Studios.

So how do you get it right? Well, that’s going to depend on your group but my recommendation is to start small. Name drop and hint rather than roll out the big NPCs right away. If your group has been reading the Pathfinder novels use small specific details such as having someone offer the PCs wine from the Jeggare Vineyards in Cheliax or while in a port city mention the names of the ships and include the Stargazer. If these sorts of things get oohs-and-ahs then you’re on the right track and you can up the ante a little. Maybe, while carousing in Sandpoint they find Velaros and Seoni passing through the Rusty Dragon and one of the PCs gets into a drinking contest with the big warrior before they part company. If you have room at your table you might even let a guest player step in and play a notable NPC. Whether it be an iconic or major character from the novels (or movies if you’re using a framework like I suggested in the last blog).

Alternately, if you’ve been playing in the same world for any length of time maybe the cameo isn’t with major characters from the fiction but other adventurers from previous campaigns. You could for example, have your party of Kingmaker PCs relaxing in Restov one evening and they encounter one of their old Carrion Crown PCs on his way to the reading of a will in Ustalav. This can especially be a lot of fun if you let the character’s original player reprise the 1^st level version of the favorite character. Your Starfinder characters’ may end up the proud owners of a pre-gap statue depicting the founding monarch of a tiny nation in the River Kingdoms.

Other Tips

• Whenever you add a cameo ask yourself does this add to the story or fun of the game?
• Does the cameo make sense?
• Does the cameo allow the spotlight to still be on the PCs? Don’t let the NPC hog the spotlight.

You also don’t have to do all the work. Is there a player whose character would be absent you can let play the NPC? If so let that player stay involved at the table by portraying an NPC. Coordinating with the player between sessions can also help make sure the interactions add to the story. For example, John’s PC is taking a fallen comrade Jane’s PC to the nearby big city for resurrection while the rest of the party waits in the local port town for word from Lord McGuffin.  Rather than hand-wave the wait time away you could run two parallel adventures one where the waiting PCs play one short story with Jane and John taking on the roles of NPCs such as Captain Torius Vin and Celeste who are calling in a small favor from an old acquaintance who just happens to be in town…this is of course one of the waiting PCs. Then you could run another short adventure with the recently resurrected Jane and John as they get ensnared in a caper involving the wizard Ezren and a nare-do-well swordsman Rodrick and his sword of living ice Hrym. All played by the other players at the table.

When we return in two weeks we’ll talk about planning a major crossover event at the table.

The MCU works because while all of its movies are comic book movies they are often something else. Ant-man is a heist. Guardians of the Galaxy is space-opera or galactic fantasy. Winter Soldier is an espionage thriller.  So with that in mind, don’t be afraid mix your Pathfinder and Starfinder campaigns with other genres for an adventure or two. Imagine your fantasy party planning a con or a heist or your galactic heroes roughing it on a colonial homestead defending the locals from the tyranny of a local bandit-prince.

Or you can go a step further and build a campaign around your favorite movies.

Origin of an Idea

Not too long ago I read an article in which Ridley Scott the director of Alien and Blade Runner felt that the earth Ellen Ripley, and the crew of the Nostromo were trying to return home to in Alien was the very earth that Rick Deckard was hunting replicants in. (Now, I can’t find the original article now but there are sever good ones out there if you google Blade Runner and Alien, One from Den of Geek has a TL;DR video that’s summarizes it all nicely.) Anyway, all this got me to thinking about creating my own head-cannon cinematic universe based around these films to possibly use as a foundation for a Starfinder Campaign.

Early Planning

To date, I have not run this campaign but I thought I’d share the rough timeline with you. Note: I ignore some actual cannon film connections and alter some dates to make this work but…eh…who cares? Also not every film or T.V. series on this list is what I’d consider good but each adds something worthwhile to the overall universe. So starting from Bladerunner and Alien I began to consider other movies and TV series that shared elements I’d like to include. The single-season Almost Human felt like a reasonable pre-Bladerunner era. Then, the other night as I was watching the second season of Westworld I noticed that not only does the storyline fit nicely but that some of the stonework in the “real world” architecture looked like the stonework in Deckard’s apartment. And that cinched it. Westworld started as a good fit now it was inescapable.

So while I pondered TV I decided to add Fringe. Fringe introduced weird “fringe science” including parallel worlds and mental powers. Elements that could certainly be spun to fit the fantasy needs of a Starfinder game. Now that’s a lot of non-space background, so I wanted to dig in and look for plausible space movies. Event Horizon and Pandorum are good horror companions to Alien and Aliens as is the original Pitch Black. Event Horizon also nicely ties back into Fringe in an odd way. The titular starship in Event Horizon used a drive that opened a rift in the space-time continuum. A rift that let a hostile entity from a parallel universe take over the ship. If that’s not fringe science then I’m Walter Bishop. We can add all of these films to the possible list.

Alien Life

Hudson: Is this going to be a standup fight, sir, or another bug-hunt?
Gorman: All we know is that there is still is no contact with the colony and that a xenomorph may be involved.
Frost: Excuse me, sir, a what?
Gorman: A xenomorph.
Hicks: It’s a bug-hunt.

Well, given that exchange it’s pretty clear our colonial marines have had altercations with extra-terrestrials and since Jame’s Cameron’s Avatar looks so much like his Aliens we’ll mark that as an easy addition to our setting canon. And the “bughunt” line brings to mind Starship Troopers so I’ll pencil that movie in too. Now Aliens versus Predator makes a lot of people happy so while I’m less disposed to wrangle any of the predator films into my setting I might be convinced it just won’t be the AVP movies. I’d rather stick with the originals or 2010’s Predators. So all of those can go in the hopper as well.

So the preliminary backdrop of our campaign is (in setting chronological order which may ignore in movie dating) Predator, Fringe, Predators, West World, Event Horizon, Starship Troopers, Blade Runner, Alien, Pitchblack, Pandorum, Bladerunner 2049, and Avatar. Maybe we’ll have a couple movie nights and revise this list as a group.

Did I miss a movie you think I should include? What movies would you pick for your own cinematic universe campaign? Leave us a comment.

Copyright Paizo

In addition to following Pathfinder First and Second Edition news, there are several other games and game communities I’ve been keeping up with. One thing I’ve noticed all of these groups have in common is that gamers are always looking to adapt their favorite books, comics, movies and even games to their system of choice. Some of what I’ve seen from these designers is frankly awesome and other things not so much. Over the course of this blog, I’ve spent a lot of time hacking other settings, adding rules to my home games sometimes new and sometimes cribbed from other systems.

This week I’d like to talk a little about my design philosophies for when it comes to homebrew and adaptations. I am in no way saying my way is the one true way. It is simply the right way for me right now. As GMs and designers we’re always learning and growing so I don’t expect everything I say today will necessarily hold true for me in a year, let alone after another decade of gaming. My goal today is to provide you my current perspective and see if it helps with your design.

Try New Things

My first philosophy is unlikely to change much and it is the backbone of most of this blog. Try New Things in one way means playing different games and types of games you never know where a novel idea may come from. I’ve stolen mechanics from boardgames as well as other RPGs for my various home games I’ve even talked about it here on this blog.

But beyond playing other games, when you think you might have a better or at least different way of handling an element of the game just try it. It seems like ages ago I made a small change to how I run initiative in Pathfinder. It’s a rule change I’m still using and see no reason to change back. Sometimes you’re not so lucky and you change a rule that makes game-play bog down or become less enjoyable. Okay, you tried something new it didn’t work out, change back. Don’t be afraid to try things out.

Be Open with Your Players and Have an Exit Plan

Goblin copyright Paizo

Like my first philosophy, I doubt this second one will change much either.

Before you launch a new rule even if the players will never see it (like my initiative rule) tell them about the change. Solicit feedback and establish the exit plan. Players like to know what to expect from a game and it’s important that trust and communication flow both ways. If you make a change to the rules you’ll want to know if the players love it or hate it.

Keep it Simple

Most often, new rules should make the gameplay smoother and easier. Pathfinder is already fairly complex, there is a reason why many of its detractors and even some of its fans call it Mathfinder. When you add rules they should at least conform to existing rules or better yet streamline them. I’m typically a fan of the wealth of options and general complexity of Pathfinder but there are some rules that when tweaked just a little could improve play a lot for everyone at the table.

Design with a Purpose and a Plan

You should have a particular goal in mind when you start tinkering with the rules. When I implemented my variant initiative rules I just wanted to simplify my workload as GM and speed up combat for everyone. When one of my players expressed an extreme dislike of the swarm rules we experimented with some options to patch that specific problem. Ask yourself questions to identify the problem and then brainstorm possible solutions. Note any concerns you might have about the rule try to find solutions for those concerns as well. Keep notes on your process you may want to refer to them again later.

Design with the Destination System in Mind

This is a cousin philosophy to Keep it Simple. This most often crops up when adapting from one game system to another. While reading various conversion threads I often see people converting Game System A to Game System B. Something many of these conversions try to do is carry over the exact experience of playing Game System A instead of focusing on how to adapt concepts to fit within the parameters that make Game System B worth playing. I’ll admit I’ve even been suckered by my own cleverness on this one. When 3e and d20 modern first launched I attempted to convert Shadowrun to d20. Instead of focusing on small manageable changes I began by making a priority based character creation system. The new mechanics despite feeling very much like the original Shadowrun rules didn’t work. The priority-based character creation really mucked about with how the PC balanced against one another and against the threats they would have to face. Ultimately, I gave up the project without ever running more than a single session with those rules. I had a similar discussion online with a Pathfinder player who was adapting Pathfinder to Genesys. Now, Genesys is a very narrative game with freeform magic rules that would do a reasonable job of replicating Golarion but the GM in question wanted to convert Pathfinder and was porting over rewrites for all the races, every spell, and a wide array of feats. Needless to say, the project fizzled despite some excellent work by the designer because of the project’s massive scope and the problem that this kind of straight Pathfinder conversion doesn’t play to the strengths of Genesys.

I hinted to this above but one way to convert one game system to another is to look any fiction that might exist for Game System A (or imagine what fiction set in that world might look like) and adapt the fiction rather than the mechanics. That isn’t to say you can’t borrow mechanics (that’s another hallmark of this blog, I borrow mechanics all the time) just keep your destination ruleset in mind when adapting those mechanics over.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel (Unless You Must)

If you had a good time with Strange Aeons decide you want to play more Call of Cthulhu with the Pathfinder rules don’t bother creating a new Sanity sub-system unless you don’t feel the current rules service your or your table’s needs. This goes for other rules too not just adaptation. I’ve found that (at least at my table) until someone gets a metamagic rod very little metamagic gets used. Now, I could design a new rule to fix this or spend a little time looking to see if anyone else has already dealt with this problem. I happen to know that Monte Cook has optional write-ups for metamagic feats in The Collected Book of Experimental Might. In that book rather than increasing the requisite spell slot, the feats can each only be used x number of times a day.

How do you approach game and rules design? Leave a comment and let us know.

Good one-shot games and good medium- to long-length campaigns have different needs and slightly different GM skills. A good long-term game benefits from a slow burn and strong character development but a one-shot needs to hit the ground fast and showcase every PC in its four to six hour runtime. I like to think of ongoing campaigns as serial television and the one-shot or limited campaign as a summer blockbuster. The following tips are my touchstones for one-shot games gleaned from years of watching movies, playing RPGs, and reading GM tips.

Start In Media Res

If you’ve been gaming for any length of time or are a student of film you may have heard the phrase “In media res.” Or, “into the middle of things,” in Latin and tends to refer to stories that start in the midst of action rather than the very beginning. Star Wars and James Bond movies make good use of this trope. When the action opens on these movies we (the audience) are less concerned with “how did our heroes get here?” But far more interested in “What’ll happen next?”

Starting a stand-alone game in the middle of the action is a useful technique. When you drop your PCs right into the action their players (your audience as GM) will be focused on “what happens next?” Starting with interesting or exciting events hooks the players quickly and means you keep your story zipping along.

Keep the Pacing Fast

Pacing in all campaigns is important. Most GM advice is to keep the pace brisk and exciting but the truth is in long arc campaigns you can slow down and do player driven side plots and have nights where the exciting thing is a lot of (dare I say it) role-playing. When you run a one-shot game role-playing is still vital but you don’t want it bog down your story development or action scenes. Sometimes players will slow down the pace of your game. They’ll obsess over a detail you’ve described certain it’s an important clue, They’ll over plan or otherwise proceed too cautiously, or maybe they’ll bicker of the right course of action. It’s up to you to spice things up and keep the action moving even if they seem to want to slow down.

Ramping up the excitement and pace isn’t hard. Maybe the bad-guys kick in the door, this works equally well in a noir-themed investigative adventure, high fantasy, or pulp style games. Whether it’s Nickie the Nose and his goons, A team of Red Mantis Assassins or the Galactic Empire hardly matters. What matters is the bad-guys are on to the heroes and the PCs must Fight or Flee. Either way, the pace stays lively.

Another option is if the PCs are hung up on the clues you’ve provided you can prod them forward with new information to tip their investigations in the right direction. Have an additional witness come forward, let them discover one more clue as their leaving the current location or if one or more of the PCs has contacts or allies in the area have one of those NPCs show up and present the new information.

Sometimes the game slows down as players engage with your NPCs. For a one-shot, it’s best to run your NPCs as busy people. While it might be tempting to linger with an entertaining NPC a bit of impatience on the NPCs part can keep the action moving forward. Think of your typical police procedural the witness always needs to go pick up their kid, get back to work, or has some pressing issue that keeps the story moving.

Long campaigns benefit from your attention to detail but in a one-shot all the little details might eat into your time at the table. Feel free to transition from one scene or location to another with cinematic terms like “fade to back,” “cut to…” The 3era Eberron books talk about traveling the red line, much as we see in the Indiana Jones movies. This is great advice if there is a lot of overland travel in your one-shot game as well.  If the adventure you’re running has a dungeon-like locale consider focusing on key encounters rather than exploring every inch in detail. You can summarize and hand wave much of the exploration.

If you have an un-keyed version of your map you might consider showing it to the players. This way, you can get guidance from the players regarding where generally they want to explore and you can summarize what they found in the less interesting regions of your map. Then focus tightly on the important parts whether that be where monsters lair or an ancient mural with the necessary clue to finish the adventure.

If you are running tight on time, you can even revisit the trope of in media res. Once the PCs have uncovered the dastardly plot of the Cult of Rovagug roll for initiative and cut right into the fight at the gates of the enemy temple. Now all the PCs need to do is get inside.

Don’t Let the Rules Become a Drag

These disappointed Stormtroopers just found out they’d been replaced by minions who hit thier targets.

You have a very limited time and Pathfinder has ten years’ worth of books. The size of the Pathfinder library can make finding a particular rule a daunting task. Even if your table is normally used to playing with the rules as written and will happily spend 30 minutes searching for the exact right answer don’t fall to this temptation. Use your understanding of the rules to make a quick call on whatever is bogging down gameplay, whether it is a DC, an item’s hardness, a monster ability, or something else. Just make a call and move on.

To speed up combat but keep it exciting and cinematic, you might even consider running encounters with D&D style minions to raise the stakes but not over complicate things at the table. Give these minions 1 HP each and if you want them to be a little hardier maybe DR 5 or 10 depending on your PCs level. This approach makes for more exciting minions than padding the encounter with low CR Stormtroopers or goblins that really don’t threaten the PCs. Plus, this option requires very little bookkeeping on your part.

One Final Tip

With time so short in a one-shot game it’s easy to accidentally overlook a particular PC’s niche especially if you’ve planned a lot of action scenes and that player made a social character or puzzle solver. Make sure you have things for the those characters to do that lets them shine as brightly as the characters who specialize in combat.

I’ve talked about hacking Pathfinder and using it as the engine to run Supernatural and other pop-culture properties before in this blog. I’ve even talked about porting select rules from other systems to your Pathfinder game to get the right. But, what if I talked about the truly heretical: Porting Golarion to another ruleset.

There are a number of reasons you might want to run a Golarion game in a different system. Maybe you have a group of players who are more familiar with the rules of FATE or you really like Starfinder as an update from 1^st edition Pathfinder. It could be that you’re ready to try something different for a week or two but you want to keep it connected to your current campaign. It’s this last option that I really want to focus on today but the advice I’m sharing here could be used for any of the above reasons and many more. I touched on this in a prior blog when I mentioned using the RPG Dread to allow the players to role-play through the horrific and tragic backstory of a pair of NPCs from the second volume of the Giantslayer AP.

Let me begin by saying I trust my players and I subscribe to a philosophy that allowing players to possess information their characters wouldn’t have, can make a game better. I love that modules give GMs all this backstory material but often either through bad rolls or missed opportunities and players never get so much as a glimpse of these backstories. Sometimes you can shake things up and give the player’s a peek behind the curtain by letting them play through past events with pre-generated NPCs.

USA’s series Suits uses muted almost green-hued color pallets for its flashback scenes.

While the bulk of the show uses a normal range of colors for events happening in the present.

I’ve used (playable) flashbacks in games before but more and more I’ve become interested in using alternate systems to run them. Changing the ruleset helps the flashback signal the players that this is different from the main story, like changing the filter on TV and in film signals the audience that the events on screen now, actually happened in the past. But you can’t just slap a scene together and run it in a different system and expect it fly. It still needs to feel like it belongs in the same world as your campaign’s main events. You need to make sure you preserve the feel of Golarion even if the mechanics don’t perfectly mimic Pathfinder’s many subsystems. If things seem too different in narration, it could break immersion.

I’ve begun running Giantslayer and there are a couple of scenes I’d really like to see the player’s handle in flashback. Obviously, I’ve been considering Dread for one of these scenes. The nice thing about dread is that I just need to write the characters and frame the scene there is very little in the Dread rules I’d have to deal with mechanically. But if I want to do other scenes I’d need to find an appropriate ruleset. FATE has a workable starting point with Green Ronin’s Fate Freeport Companion but I recently picked up Fantasy Flight’s Genesys rules (a setting agnostic version of the rules that power the new Star Wars RPGs also from Fantasy Flight) and I might like to try flashbacks in that rules system as well.

So, I reached out to a GM who was working on converting Pathfinder to Genesys. They wanted to do a full conversion of everything in the Pathfinder rules including every race, class, spell and most of the feats. A colossal undertaking the quickly overwhelmed and ended the project. They wanted to keep the feel of Pathfinder’s play style rather than the feel of the setting. So when I began considering conversion I focused on the world and the fiction. I would adapt the Tales line rather than the RPG line. My focus on the player facing elements was to choose Skills and Talents appropriate to Golarion from those already available and write up a few of the Pathfinder races as Genesys species. That way once I had an outline of how my flashbacks would happen I could focus on adapting the threats the PCs would face.

Really, for flashbacks, you’ll probably be using pre-generated characters which means you can reduce your workload even further and adapt only what you need for the character’s your designing. You can even rename abilities to better fit the world. I recently did this in preparation for a one-shot Planscape Game intended to be run in the Cypher system renaming types, descriptors, and foci to capitalize on the slang of the setting giving us characters like Miklo the Barmy Tout who Rattles Their Bonebox.

When adapting a game setting to different rules, don’t try to do too much. Adapt only what you need to capture the mood you want. Keep it simple and try not to overwhelm yourself with extra work.

We’re about to embark on the Giantslayer Adventure Path with one group, another GM is still running us through Kingmaker and a third GM we play with is still running Council of Thieves. I also have a desire to eventually run Carrion Crown and maybe some of the other First Edition APs. I am not, however, going to convert any of these APs to the new edition. I’ll save the new rules for APs and adventures written for the new rules.

I’m further excited because as much as I like tinkering with the rules. I suddenly feel much more at liberty to muck about under First Edition’s hood. And, the numerous blog posts have me itching to play with some of the new mechanics. Especially the new action economy.

So, with that in mind, I figure, I might approximate portions of the new mechanics as well as some older mechanics to tell a particular sort of story. Since I’m inclined to run this as a one-off game we’ll borrow once again from the E6 rules particularly the rules for advancing beyond 6 which is to say advancement is limited to acquiring new feats. Now, I’d like to run a homebrew series of short pulp-style adventures for 5th level PCs so everyone will make a level 5 character but any advancement will be limited to acquiring new feats which we’ll do on a faster progression so for 3,000 xp the character’s earn they may acquire a new feat.

We’ll use a simple variant of the new action economy. Every character gets three actions, largely regardless of the type of action used. Exceptions to this would be spell casting and full round actions that would take two or three actions. While I know under the new rules spells take a number of actions based on the components (verbal and somatic) used in the spell casting I’m inclined to simplify this further for the current rules to all spells take 2 actions to cast. The exceptions to that would be spells that could be cast as swift or immediate actions which might only take only 1 action (or a reaction) and spells that normally take a full round action or longer would continue to take longer to cast. Full round casting times would become 3 actions and longer casting times would remain unchanged.

We’ll also leave shields alone. Even though I like the look of the new shield rules I think it will be easier to play closer to the current edition on that front.

With actions able to be used for multiple attacks we’ll keep the normal -5/-10 penalties for each additional attack. But maybe we’ll modify this rule just a bit with a 3^rd edition D&D option from the Scarred Lands Setting. In The Player’s Guide to Fighter’s and Barbarians, there was an option for weapon speed that adjusted the penalty for iterative attacks based on how quick the weapon was allowing characters to gain an extra attack one BAB sooner for quick weapons and one BAB later for slow weapons. This also meant it was easier to hit on subsequent attacks with quick weapons than normal or slow weapons. Under the new action economy, the modifier wouldn’t actually affect speed but it would add an interesting variation to the available weapons. Making some weapons nimble and others clumsy.

Attacks of opportunity in the new edition will require a special ability but in the current edition everyone can take one…we’ll lose the Combat Reflexes feat and allow anyone to use their reaction to make an attack of opportunity.

Finally, it might be fun to adjust channel energy to be more like the healing power we’ve seen in the playtest. One action to heal (or harm) with a touch, two actions to heal (or harm) a single target within the cleric’s normal burst radius, and three actions to heal and harm eligible targets within the burst radius.

Setting up the game this way for a one-off game or a short series lets us dabble with concepts from the playtest rules right now without risking a long-term campaign on a partial understanding of the forthcoming rules and unexpected intersections with other house rules we might choose to employ. What new rules really excite you and do you think you’ll try them out before the playtest in August? Let us know in the comments here.

The titles in this list are presented in no particular order and each has a tip or two how you might approach including it or a portion of it in your Pathfinder campaign. I’ve also presented these adventures to be as spoiler free as possible but just so we’re clear…

WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW!

X-1, The Isle of Dread (D&D, Wizard of the Coast) — This pulpy hex-crawl adventure is reminiscent of Skull Island or a lost world locale. This was the first adventure I ever played where the action happened outside of the dungeon. I spent many hours exploring and uncovering the secrets of jungles and swamps of the titular island and just as many or more running players through encounters that appeared in the module and sometimes encounters inspired by the module but of my own creation.

The Isle of Dread in your Pathfinder game: The Isle of dread was updated in Dungeon magazine and expanded on during the Savage Tide adventure path (also Dungeon Magazine). Any of these three versions of the island could be converted to Pathfinder whole cloth or piecemeal. There is much adventure inspiration to be found on the Isle of Dread.

Shackled City Adventure Path (D&D 3.5, Paizo) — Okay Shackled City is probably the best-known adventure on this list and while I’ve only run the whole thing once it is a great adventure product and deserving of its place on this list. Shackled City hooked me from my first glimpse of Cauldron in Dungeon Magazine. It brought me back to Greyhawk, a campaign setting I never expected to be drawn back to. As the forerunner to the current Pathfinder APs it’s impossible to not at least mention this fantastic adventure path. Set in Cauldron, a city brazenly built in the caldera of a dormant volcano Shackled City is a complete campaign arc, following the heroes from their earliest adventures through the campaign’s ultimate challenges. It makes the PCs care about their hometown and the people in it, even their rivals. It also has one of the best villain introductions I have seen in an adventure product. The look on my player’s faces when they realized their first level PCs might be on the wrong end of a fight with a beholder was rather awesome.

Shackled City in your Pathfinder game: If a GM is up to some light to moderate conversion work they could certainly run the whole thing with the Pathfinder rules. As it’s 3.5 D&D the conversion isn’t a huge hurdle but it can very be time-consuming. I started running Rise of the Runelords when it released and switched to Pathfinder when the beta playtest came out and updated again when the Core Rulebook released so it’s unlikely I’d attempt that again. That said, there are a lot of great ideas throughout this adventure path, such as how to effectively introduce a villain early in your campaign and keep them interacting with your PCs.

Cabin Fever (Cyberpunk 2020, Atlas Games) —
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the cyberpunk genre but there are some tropes that show up (maybe a little too) frequently. Occasionally it is nice to see those tropes subverted that’s where Cabin Fever steps in. Cabin Fever begins with a shady fixer hiring the PCs for an under the table for a heist on a mega-corporation. The target is on a ship due to arrive in the Night City Harbor. The PCs have some time to prep and plan but just as the PCs are about to begin their op everything goes sideways much earlier than normal. Before they have even had a chance to make a run at the ship, it explodes spewing acidic gas. Worse, the PC’s boat is damaged and they are forced to take shelter or die from gas exposure. At this point, the adventure gets a bit railroad-y because the plot assumes the PCs shelter in a specific bar. A GM can mitigate some of this by making the bar the only logical choice and leave it up to the PCs to “choose” their hole up point. So, what started as a standard cyberpunk story has just been turned into a locked room scenario. Here the adventure shines. The bar has an adequately detailed (albeit dull map) but in this close space, we have ample opportunities for roleplaying. The adventure details a number of NPCs each with their own personalities and motives. Typically, this adventure can be run in a single session and I’ve run it a few times. Once, I even tweaked it for use in a Werewolf game.

Cabin Fever in your Pathfinder Game: I love the idea of surprising the PCs and subverting player expectations. In Cyberpunk my players were rarely surprised when things would go sideways but when the environment turns on them rather than a duplicitous corporate flunky they were caught quite unawares. Now in Pathfinder, the balance of plot tropes makes the story of individual betrayal swapped for bad environmental conditions less interesting, however, the locked room game can still be very compelling. Using the NPCs that appear in the bar from Cabin Fever as a starting point, a cagey GM could pull together a very compelling session or two locked in a tavern. Maybe a nearby alchemist’s shop catches fire and explodes the resulting cloud of smoke petrifies anyone who is exposed to it and the PC’s escort as many townsfolk as they can to the safety of the local tavern or inn.

Hour of the Knife (AD&D Ravenloft, Wizards of the Coast) — Okay I warned you spoilers abound down here. I’m warning you again SPOILERS. This is an old 2^nd ed AD&D adventure but I know more than a few GMs tap these older modules for modern use. Like with Cabin Fever the adventure does get a little railroad-y but largely it is a non-linear investigative adventure. What made this adventure so memorable for me was the twist: Doppelgangers. Not just using them as standard villains but player controlled doppelgangers that looked just like the PCs. I have run and recycled plot elements from this adventure a number of times with different groups. Hour of the Knife is a fun adventure that parallels tropes rarely seen at the table but common to TV and film.

Hour of the Knife in your Pathfinder Game: Moving the action from Ravenloft to Ustalav, a GM could adapt this module pretty easily to Pathfinder. In a slightly more unexpected twist (and a bit more work) this could make for a riveting Starfinder adventure too. Set it on Absalom Station in a single district for that dark sci-fi horror vibe.

Tatooine Manhunt (d6 Star Wars, West End Games) — Tatooine Manhunt is quite possibly my most frequently rerun adventure on this list. I admit to being duped by the original cover art. I really wanted a module that featured the bounty hunters of The Empire Strikes Back but I was only momentarily disappointed. This action-packed adventure had all the beats you want from a Star Wars story. The basic plot revolved around the disappearance and presumed death of an Old Republic hero who turns out to be alive and well on (of all places) Tatooine. The mission to bring Adar Talon to join the Rebellion has been the foundational adventure for most of my Star Wars campaigns regardless of edition.

Tatooine Manhunt in your Pathfinder Game: Much of the story of this adventure revolves too tightly around the canon of the Star Wars Universe for a complete adaptation but elements of the adventure could be employed as a side mission for a campaign like Hells Rebels or subverted for Hell’s Vengeance.

Skein of the Blackbone Bride (Numenera, Monte Cook Games) — I’m going to be as spoiler free as possible for this adventure because it is by far the most recent one on the list. Now Numenera has a lot in common with D&D but is a lot less combat focused. Instead, it focusses on discovery and exploration. Skein of the Blackbone Bride earns its place on this list for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that crux of the adventure will likely lead to more self-discovery for the player characters than almost any other adventure I’ve read or run. Simply by asking players to make a choice on how they’re going to proceed after the adventure is over. I don’t want to give anything away so until you play it or read it you may just have to trust me.

I’m also placing this adventure on the list because of how it starts. Originally designed to be a convention event, it sets all the player character’s up as members of a group called the Slying Seskiis. All have worked together for some time and each has a nickname. All that is, except one, a new recruit trying to earn his or her name. The relationships assumed and reinforced in the first few “getting to know your tablemates” minutes of the game quickly established this as one of the best roleplaying adventures I’ve run. The intro was so solid that I made this one of the earliest adventures in my home Numenera campaign even going so far as to keep the PCs as members of the Seskiis through several different adventures.

Skein of the Blackbone Bride in your Pathfinder game: I’ve been deliberately vague about the plot of this adventure but I will say that it starts with the sudden silence of an NPCs distant adopted daughter, who happens to be a telepathic humanoid-shaped automaton. Much of Numenera comes across as fantasy with the science and weird dialed up to eleven. But that doesn’t mean you can’t import some of that weird discovery your traditional fantasy campaign. Numenera’s rules-light approach means that adapting this module whole cloth to either Pathfinder or Starfinder is pretty straightforward. Find creatures in the right CR for your party that serve similar functions to what appears in the module and go.

Shadows of the Last War (D&D 3.5, Wizards of the Coast) — The Eberron Campaign Setting was a well-timed expansion of just what D&D could be. Eberron focussed on pulp and Noir themes evoking more Indiana Jones than Conan or Frodo. Ostensibly a stand-alone module but also the first in an introductory trilogy of adventures, Shadows of the Last War capitalized on the campaign elements (both themes and locales) that made Eberron unique. The adventure starts with action, draws the character’s away to a pre-war ruin in the Mournland practically following a red travel-line on a map to get them there. Once on site, the dungeon features a few cool elements GM’s should take note of, including a well-presented and logical zig-zag layout.

Shadows of the Last War in your Pathfinder game: Like all the previous edition adventures on this list a GM could just convert the adventure to the Pathfinder rules but it could also be disassembled and scenes from this module (or either of its sequels) could be put to use in your campaign once the identifying Eberron serial numbers have been filed off.

First up, is Gumshoe an award-winning investigation based system that powers a number of games including Trail of Cthulhu. A principal element of its design deals directly with keeping mysteries on track. According to the Gumshoe SRD, a traditional game like Pathfinder asks, “Will the heroes get the information they need?” Gumshoe on the other-hand asks, “What will the heroes do with the information once they’ve got it?” As such the mechanics all but make the finding of clues automatic. My plan is to borrow this philosophy and focus on the narrative portions of the investigation.

Gathering clues in Gumshoe is pretty easy. The PC needs to be in the right place, have the right skill, and tell the GM how they are using it. If all of these components are aligned they get the clue. Now, that said, Pathfinder players tend to like and often expect to throw dice. I can’t say I blame them, which brings me to the next game system I’m planning to borrow from, Fantasy Flight’s Genesys system.

Genesys is built on the same narrative dice mechanic as Fantasy Flight’s series of Star Wars RPGs. Unlike Pathfinder the Polyhedral dice Genesys uses have symbols instead of numbers. The symbols allow for the dice to resolve on two axis instead of the typical one. While most games (Pathfinder included) resolve challenges on a simple Succeed/Fail axis. Genesys’s dice mechanics allow for the Succeed/Fail axis as well as an Advantage/Threat axis. Which means simply that even though your character has succeeded it doesn’t mean something bad (sometimes barely related to the check) hasn’t also happened. Or, the reverse might be true and while your PC failed you rolled enough advantage results to narrate something good that happens to your character. Alternately, everything came up roses and you not only succeed something great has also happened…

A good example I was given the first time I played Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars is from Return of the Jedi. Lando flies the Millennium Falcon through the second Death Stars super-structure in a desperate attempt to knock out the reactor. As the route becomes tighter, Lando manages to avoid crashing (success) but not without brushing too close to a bulkhead and smashing the sensor disc off the top of the ship (threat). So much for Lando’ promise of “not a scratch.”

So what does this have to do with mysteries and clues? Well, rolling a d20 pretty much means you are only going to get single axis results which is fine. Since I’m planning to “give away” clues automatically (so long as the PCs have the right skills and are using them in the right place) I could change which axis I’m asking the die roll to resolve basically swapping Success/Fail for Advantage/Threat.

Which means I may ask the PC looking for a clue to roll normally and using the normal DC decide that a failure indicates the PC still gets the clue (per above) but something unfortunate occurs. Maybe the guilty party is passing by as the PCs uncover the clue and realizes they are close on her tail, conversely a successful roll not only reveals the clue but because the clue was so “hard” to find it impresses a nearby NPC giving the PCs a bonus on their next diplomacy check against the NPC. Or, maybe there’s an additional clue that isn’t necessary to solve the mystery but gives special insights that could help the PCs later or at least make them feel clever. For example, in addition to finding an important note behind a piece of furniture maybe they also find a few peanut shells the culprit had dropped and failed to notice while they waited. The shells are twisted open instead of cracked along the seam. Later, as the PCs close on the villain’s hideout the PCs notice more discarded shells twisted in the same way. The shells themselves only confirm what the PCs have deduced but hopefully will embolden the PCs and give them a sense of accomplishment.

As always when working on my home campaigns, I’m a huge fan of borrowing from other rules systems looking for solutions to issues I’m currently experiencing.

1. Working for Crumbs The PCs might notice they’re being followed through town and watched from a distance by several local children. Despite their initial nervousness and reluctance to approach the PCs, these kids have a problem that requires serious adventurers. Unfortunately, these children have no gold. The group’s speaker, however, is the daughter of the local baker and they offer the heroes baked goods in payment anything from cookies to delicious bread.
2. Pet Slime While exploring the PCs encounter an unusually clever and friendly ooze. This ooze has an animal level intelligence and the playful attitude of a puppy. It dances around the party, plays fetch, and simple mimicry games. If the PCs don’t attack it and wander off the ooze follows. Eventually, it becomes too friendly (probably when the PCs have their guard down) and the ooze attacks. In reality, the ooze is just playing but doesn’t understand how its action will injure the affected PC. Furthermore, it sees most responses to this attack as more playing. If it suffers more than 5 hp of damage it retreats and mopes as if scolded. If it suffers more than 10 hp of damage it retreats in fear.
3. Ghost Glasses The PCs discover or inherit a pair of spectacles. These glasses while not magical are directly tied into a haunted structure in town. Only while wearing the spectacles can the visual portions of the haunt’s be witnessed and several key clues to unraveling the mystery and putting the haunt to rest can be seen if someone is wearing the spectacles. GMs should encourage PCs to pass the glasses around. Maybe some clues are written in spectral blood in different languages that not every party member can read or a PC wearing the glasses becomes more susceptible to possession or certain haunt effects if worn for too long.
4. The Forgotten People are vanishing from town and only the children seem to notice or remember. Those adults who suffer a loss only seem to grieve but have no understanding as to why they are depressed, lonely, or tearful. This pairs very well with entry 1 above. Why are people vanishing? Are these abductions? If so who’s behind it and how are they making everyone forget the missing townsfolk.
5. Granite Minions A villain uses animated stone statues as his minions and foot soldiers. During a particular battle, the PCs notice one of the statues resembles an old friend who disappeared. Suddenly they realize that the statues are animated from the petrified bodies of innocents. Now they’ll need to find a way to disable the statues before turning innocent people into rubble. Points if the villain isn’t a medusa.
6. World of Silence While exploring a dungeon or other location the PCs discover a tear in reality. The other side looks just like this side but it’s twelve hours earlier or later and empty. There is nothing there but eerie silence. The point is, you need to make it creepy this could be a world of native invisible stalkers or a world overrun by shadows. Whatever it is even if the PCs can get the rift closed what has already crossed over?
7. Back to the Future Tapping into 6 and more for a one-shot or short game. What if the rift leads to a world where everything the PCs can see at first turns out to be fake? Props in a futuristic movie being filmed on Absalom Station somehow the heroes have crossed the gulf of time.
8. Glimpse the Past While handling items in a dragon’s hoard the PC’s are given a vision of the distant past. A vision so real you could run a separate adventure with either pre-generated characters or let the players use their normal PCs but the rest of the world sees the historical figures the PCs replace for the vision.
9. Bonus Prompt, Distant Past II Alternately, you could run a secondary adventure set in the past to simulate an event the PCs are researching. The PCs take on the roles of the historical heroes who did whatever the PCs need to finish in the present.
10. Bonus Prompt, Lost and Found An item of importance to an NPC or possibly even one of the PCs likely a magic weapon goes missing without warning or explanation. It reappears sometime in the future in the possession of the PCs at a moment when they most need it. Where did it go? Then later, how did it get here?

Celebrate Monte Cook’s Birthday

Monte Cook Games took to social media to invite gamers to Celebrate Monte Cook’s 50^th birthday and 30 years of game design.

The post reads:

#HappyBirthdayMonte!

Monte is approaching his 50th birthday, marking 30 years in game design!

THIS SATURDAY, Jan 27th, we invite you to join us in playing games or adventures Monte created, from Rolemaster to D&D and Planescape to #Numenera!

The process is simple:

– Play on January 27th.

– Share photos and stories about your events on social media, with the hashtag #HappyBirthdayMonte—that’s how Monte will see them.

– Afterward, go to mymcg.info/happy-birthday-monte, and let us know how it went. You’ll give us your shipping address at that time, and we’ll send you a little present to commemorate this event!

Learn more & RSVP here:

https://www.montecookgames.com/montes-birthday-celebration/

Golarion fans could break out a copy of Monte’s Curse of the Riven Sky a wilderness adventure for 10^th level Pathfinder characters, but, whatever you choose to play this looks like a great excuse to get in a little extra gaming.

A Session Journal for Players

A friend recently contacted me and asked if I’d take a look at a project he was working on, a journal for players to record important details from adventure sessions: The project has since gone live and can be found online at rpgournal.com.

According to the website, there is some science behind the journal’s design and touts that its design will help you engage with the game better regardless of your play style. There’s some discussion of “task switching,” and how the switching between two mental activities can take a toll on your short-term memory and willpower.

Honestly, I’m only taking their word on the actual neuroscience involved but I know I’m not good at taking notes during games. I’ll jot down the occasional name or impression of a character but because it happens so haphazardly there is little organization and it’s nearly impossible to reference. On occasion, I’ve been called to be the dedicated note keeper in games and with some focus, my notes do get better and more usable but I’m less invested in those campaigns. The RPGournal’s claims sound valid (or at least they seem to apply to me)and I really like the simple compartmentalized design. I can see how having places to put the sorts of notes I jot down in an organized way will help me. Add to that the inclusion of party and personal goals, which is one of those “why have I never thought of this,” ideas and the dot grid on the reverse pages, and I am sold.

If any of this sounds interesting, it’s a good time to check out the RPGournal. There is a single page PDF available for $1 and pre-orders are open online for physical copies but only until the 26^th.

Burst of Insight Makes a Map of Trunau

So recently during my preparations to run the Giantslayer Adventure Path, I decided I wanted a special map of Trunau. So I decided to make one that the players could mark locations of interest to them. While much of the AP happens away from Trunau I really want them to feel connected to the town and the inhabitants. I’m hoping the tactile and visual resource will help foster that connection. I also decided to give the map a hint of elevation. Not to scale elevation but a little something to make the map stand out.

I began by having a local copy center print off two untagged maps I extracted from my PDF of the adventure. You may need to shop around to find the best deal in the size you want. My local Staples offers a good price on color blueprint posters so that’s what I used here. Then I mounted one of the poster images to a piece of ¼” foam core poster board. Normally for a job like this I’d use spray adhesive but it’s cold outside and I’m not opening the windows to get good ventilation, so instead, I picked up a couple of the large Elmer’s glue sticks. It was a bit more work but it kept me from getting either cold or dizzy.

Next, I cut out thee two higher elevations from the second map and mounted them to a second piece of foam core. Then using a box cutter and an xacto knife I trimmed the foam core to match the town sections. Assembling the the top-most tier of the city, I used two layers of foam core.

Above is the finished map with the three main elevations showing. Now to be fair there should be a slope to the middle level and the highest should be much higher but the map isn’t intended to be 100% accurate but to be suggestive. Before we begin playing, I’ll pick up some small pins and let the players mark their homes and favorite hangouts in addition to key locations in the campaign’s early books. I’ll then hang the map near the table where the players can see it regularly.

This version of the fighter has a number of small increases that may produce a much more powerful character. Ideally, I don’t want to tip the power too much and I’m hoping with only small adjustments all dependant on a resource management feature we hit the right balance. All in all, I think the changes offer some interesting options for players without breaking the game. Yes, this fighter is a bit more potent but only playtesting at the table will tell if it breaks our game.

Fighter (revised)

Some take up arms for glory, wealth, or revenge. Others do battle to prove themselves, to protect others, or because they know nothing else. Still, others learn the ways of weaponcraft to hone their bodies in battle and prove their mettle in the forge of war. Lords of the battlefield, fighters are a disparate lot, training with many weapons or just one, perfecting the uses of armor, learning the fighting techniques of exotic masters, and studying the art of combat, all to shape themselves into living weapons. Far more than mere thugs, these skilled warriors reveal the true deadliness of their weapons, turning hunks of metal into arms capable of taming kingdoms, slaughtering monsters, and rousing the hearts of armies. Soldiers, knights, hunters, and artists of war, fighters are unparalleled champions and woe to those who dare stand against them.

Role: Fighters excel at combat—defeating their enemies, controlling the flow of battle, and surviving such sorties themselves. While their specific weapons and methods grant them a wide variety of tactics, few can match fighters for sheer battle prowess.

Alignment: Any.

Hit Die: d10.

Class Skills

The fighter’s class skills are Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (dungeoneering) (Int), Knowledge (engineering) (Int), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Survival (Wis), and Swim (Str).

Skill Ranks per Level: 2 + Int modifier.

Class Features

The following are class features of the fighter.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A fighter is proficient with all simple and martial weapons and with all armor (heavy, light, and medium) and shields (including tower shields).

Bonus Feats: At 1st level, and at every even level thereafter, a fighter gains a bonus feat in addition to those gained from normal advancement (meaning that the fighter gains a feat at every level). These bonus feats must be selected from those listed as combat feats, sometimes also called “fighter bonus feats.”

Upon reaching 4th level, and every four levels thereafter (8th, 12th, and so on), a fighter can choose to learn a new bonus feat in place of a bonus feat he has already learned. In effect, the fighter loses the bonus feat in exchange for the new one. The old feat cannot be one that was used as a prerequisite for another feat, prestige class, or other ability. A fighter can only change one feat at any given level and must choose whether or not to swap the feat at the time he gains a new bonus feat for the level.

Reserve Feats: At 1st level, fifth level and every five levels thereafter a fighter gains a reserve feat. Reserve feats are abilities the fighter has trained in but not yet learned to use effortlessly. Like bonus feats, reserve feats must be selected from those listed as combat feats. A fighter may access these feats in combat by spending a point of vigor (see below) for every round he wishes to use the feat. He may only access one reserve feat at a time.

Reserve feats may be promoted to regular feats by spending a fighter bonus feat to take the reserve feat. Once a feat has been acquired in this way a new reserve feat may be chosen to replace the promoted feat. Reserve feats count as feats known for the purposes of acquiring additional reserve feats but not for acquiring normal feats, thus a fighter cannot promote a feat with prerequisites he doesn’t have without first promoting all the prerequisite feats.

Vigor: Fighters are durable and adaptable in combat. This is represented by vigor, in game terms, vigor is a fluctuating measure of a fighter’s ability to perform amazing actions in combat. At the start of each day, a fighter gains a number of vigor points equal to his Constitution modifier (minimum 1). His vigor goes up or down throughout the day but usually cannot go higher than his Constitution modifier (minimum 1). Temporary increases to your Constitution score, such as those granted by the barbarian’s rage class feature or bear’s endurance, do not increase the number of vigor points in your pool or your pool’s maximum number of vigor points. However, permanent increases to Constitution, such as the bonus granted by a belt of mighty constitution worn for more than 24 hours, do adjust your vigor points. A fighter spends vigor to use some class abilities and regains vigor in the following ways.

Critical Hit: Each time the fighter confirms a critical hit with an attack while in the heat of combat, he regains 1 vigor point. Confirming a critical hit on a helpless or unaware creature or on a creature that has fewer Hit Dice than half the fighter’s character level does not restore vigor.

Killing Blow: When the fighter reduces a creature to 0 or fewer hit points with an attack while in the heat of combat, he regains 1 vigor point. Destroying an unattended object, reducing a helpless or unaware creature to 0 or fewer hit points, or reducing a creature that has fewer Hit Dice than half the fighter’s character level to 0 or fewer hit points does not restore any vigor.

Short Rest: A fighter regains vigor by resting for short periods of time. He doesn’t have to sleep while resting in this way, but can’t exert himself. He stops regaining vigor if he enters combat; takes an action that requires a Strength-, Dexterity-, or Constitution-based skill check or an ability check tied to one of those ability scores; or takes more than one move action or standard action in a round (he can still take free, immediate, and swift actions). This reduction in the fighter’s number of actions per round also effectively halves his overland speed. For every uninterrupted five minutes, he rests in this way, restores 1 vigor point.

Regardless of how the fighter attempts to restore his vigor, if he is suffering from any of the following conditions, he can’t regain vigor points: confused, cowering, dazed, dead, disabled, exhausted, fascinated, frightened, helpless, nauseated, panicked, paralyzed, petrified, shaken, sickened, staggered, or stunned.

Bravery (Ex): Starting at 2nd level, a fighter gains a +1 bonus on Will saves against fear. This bonus increases by +1 for every four levels beyond 2nd. Additionally, once per day before a fighter attempts a will save he may spend a point of vigor to roll twice and take the better result.

Armor Training (Ex): Starting at 3rd level, a fighter learns to be more maneuverable while wearing armor. Whenever he is wearing armor, he reduces the armor check penalty by 1 (to a minimum of 0) and increases the maximum Dexterity bonus allowed by his armor by 1. Every four levels thereafter (7th, 11th, and 15th), these bonuses increase by +1 each time, to a maximum –4 reduction of the armor check penalty and a +4 increase of the maximum Dexterity bonus allowed.

In addition, a fighter can also move at his normal speed while wearing medium armor. A fighter wearing light armor or no armor may spend a point of vigor while running or charging (up to equal to his constitution modifier) to move an additional 5 feet for every point of vigor spent. At 7th level, a fighter can move at his normal speed while wearing heavy armor and can spend a point of vigor to increase his movement as if he were in light armor.

Weapon Training (Ex): Starting at 5th level, a fighter can select one group of weapons, as noted below. Whenever he attacks with a weapon from this group, he gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls.

Every four levels thereafter (9th, 13th, and 17th), a fighter becomes further trained in another group of weapons. He gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls when using a weapon from this group. In addition, the bonuses granted by previous weapon groups increase by +1 each. For example, when a fighter reaches 9th level, he receives a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with one weapon group and a +2 bonus on attack and damage rolls with the weapon group selected at 5th level. Bonuses granted by overlapping groups do not stack. Take the highest bonus granted for a weapon if it resides in two or more groups.

A fighter also adds this bonus to any combat maneuver checks made with weapons from this group. This bonus also applies to the fighter’s Combat Maneuver Defense when defending against disarm and sunder attempts made against weapons from this group.

Finally, a fighter may spend 2 vigor to reroll the weapon damage dice on a single attack with a weapon in any of his weapon groups. This doesn’t affect any magical or precision damage sources but it does include critical damage. The fighter must take the result of the second roll even if it is lower.

Weapon groups are defined as follows (GMs may add other weapons to these groups, or add entirely new groups):

Axes: battleaxe, dwarven waraxe, greataxe, handaxe, heavy pick, light pick, orc double axe, and throwing axe.
Blades, Heavy: bastard sword, elven curve blade, falchion, greatsword, longsword, scimitar, scythe, and two-bladed sword.
Blades, Light: dagger, kama, kukri, rapier, sickle, starknife, and short sword.
Bows: composite longbow, composite shortbow, longbow, and shortbow.
Close: gauntlet, heavy shield, light shield, punching dagger, sap, spiked armor, spiked gauntlet, spiked shield, and unarmed strike.
Crossbows: hand crossbow, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, heavy repeating crossbow, and light repeating crossbow.
Double: dire flail, dwarven urgrosh, gnome hooked hammer, orc double axe, quarterstaff, and two-bladed sword.
Flails: dire flail, flail, heavy flail, morningstar, nunchaku, spiked chain, and whip.
Hammers: club, greatclub, heavy mace, light hammer, light mace, and warhammer.
Monk: kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, shuriken, siangham, and unarmed strike.
Natural: unarmed strike and all natural weapons, such as bite, claw, gore, tail, and wing.
Pole Arms: glaive, guisarme, halberd, and ranseur.
Spears: javelin, lance, longspear, shortspear, spear, and trident.
Thrown: blowgun, bolas, club, dagger, dart, halfling sling staff, javelin, light hammer, net, shortspear, shuriken, sling, spear, starknife, throwing axe, and trident.

Armor Mastery (Ex): At 19th level, a fighter gains DR 5/— whenever he is wearing armor or using a shield. The fighter as a swift action may increase the DR bonus by 1 for every point of vigor spent reducing the damage of the next successful attack against the fighter.

Weapon Mastery (Ex): At 20th level, a fighter chooses one weapon, such as the longsword, greataxe, or longbow. Any attacks made with that weapon automatically confirm all critical threats and have their damage multiplier increased by 1 (×2 becomes ×3, for example). In addition, he cannot be disarmed while wielding a weapon of this type.

I hope you like what I’ve done with the fighter. If you plan on trying to use this class, a rebuilt class you’ve designed, or any homebrew mechanics you come up with alway’s have an exit strategy if it doesn’t work. At my table, we’ll give the rebuilt class a few sessions to test proof of concept. Then if it passes the early tests, we’ll keep watching the class keeping an eye out for stress points as we continue to play. We may find that there are too many reserve feats at some point and adjust the number going forward or that the whole thing fails to do what we wanted and scrap it for the original class. So long as everyone is on board with experimenting with the rules and undoing the failed ones, you should feel free to house rule or homebrew alternatives for anything that doesn’t work for your table.

So while looking at the skill situation I was torn. I really do think skills are too important in Pathfinder for the fighter to begin with only 2 + Int skill points. However, that really goes for all the 2 + classes and I’m not looking to fix all the classes just the fighter, plus the background skills optional rules from Pathfinder Unchained help to really address this issue across the board. Then when you factor in the existing alternate class feature from the 3^rd era Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting hardcover, skills don’t seem to be a large enough concern and thus I’ve opted to leave them be.

Bravery brings the fighter’s Will save up to nearly good by about 6^th level which is a pretty potent edge even if it’s only good in a narrow range of things you need to make Will save for so I don’t want to tamper too much with the underlying math. Granting an additional +1 to each layer of the Bravery ability seems like a good idea until you start looking at the upper levels of the bravery and how that might stack with Iron Will. But, it is an ability that does need some sort of boost, especially, at low levels otherwise the fighter may become the butt of Supernatural “that was scary,” jokes.

Finally, the fighter doesn’t get any of the advanced options that make so many of the other classes more interesting. Stamina was a great attempt to fix this but as I said last week the application is limited and not for many more casual players who don’t want to juggle multiple rulebooks for every combat feat they take.

My thought then is to look at what a fighter (broadly speaking) does do. Last blog I inelegantly said, “They collect feats that let them hit harder in combat.” While only vaguely true, it’s a good enough summary for this exercise. I want to make the collecting and using feats more interesting for fighter players. I’d also like to implement a resource management pool into the class, not unlike grit, panache, or stamina that doesn’t upset the class balance too much.

Since stamina has an existing rules footprint I want to pick another word and for the moment I’m calling it “vigor.” My thoughts on Vigor right now are that it will fuel the boost I want to see in bravery, It will let the player do some small unique exploits and help make those feats more interesting without adding new abilities to every feat.

Which brings me to my first thoughts on feats. What if fighters had a flexible pool of feats they could “ready” each day like a wizard prepares spells? Now unlike a wizard fighters would need to be adaptable swapping one readied feat for another, sometimes in the middle of combat. How would that work? Vigor. Or more likely, it would require a standard or move action to do it normally but an expenditure of Vigor would allow the fighter to change feats as a move or swift action. I’ll work on the exact mechanics shortly. First, we need to decide how this pool of feats works. My first thought was at every level the fighter would have gained a bonus feat they instead gain two feats but that could be too many feats by the end of a campaign. As a compromise (that still generates a lot of feats and if maximized effectively possibly one more) I’m inclined to go with the normal bonus feats + one feat per point of the character’s Con Modifier. The additional bonus feats from the character’s Constitution would be broken out much like bonus spells are one per level the character earns a bonus feat normally until the Con modifier runs out. Since I want +0 or lower Con character’s to still be an option 1^st level fighters would get 2 bonus feats (+ Con) but could only ready one at a time. To err on the side of caution, when I begin playtesting this, I’m going to make it a standard action to change readied feats and allow a character to spend 1 vigor to reduce the time to a move action.

Now, this creates an interesting conundrum. The trade of a bonus feat for skills no longer works really unless it forces the character to wait on taking their flexible feats for two levels. I’m not sure how I feel about that I’m more inclined to rewrite the ability as a feat and make it available to more classes. This would fix many player complaints and bring the rule up to match the current edition. The more I think about it the more I like this idea and I think it might look like this:

Broad Skill Training
You received broader skill training than other members of your class.
Prerequisite: 1^st level only, 4 + Intelligence skill points per level or fewer.
Benefit: You may select two additional skills not normally class skills for your character to be class skills and gain 2 additional skill points at each level.

Okay, I have my blueprint of ideas and family holiday festivities are closing in as I write this so I’ll see you in two weeks for the conclusion of this design series.

This week, however, let’s begin by looking at some of the persistent concerns my players have about the fighter as is and some of the existing patches.

Skills: 2 + Intelligence seems a little short when you consider how important skills can be to getting your character to live up to its concept especially at first level. Imagine a pirate themed campaign and a player wants to build a straight fighter. They assign a slightly above average Intelligence of 12 and gets three skill points in total. Looking at the skill list the player decides Swim is essential, Profession (sailor) seems like a good idea, Climb to represent time in the rigging, Knowledge (local) for all those ports of call, Acrobatics for keeping balance on a pitching deck plus it’s fun to “swashbuckle” and perform daring stunts. Before we’ve gone very far at all, we’re already over our skill limit.

Right now there is a third-era alternate fighter ability that Paizo released with the original Campaign Setting hardcover that solves this problem increasing the Fighter’s base skill points from 2 to 4 at the cost of a bonus feat. This also broadened the list of class skills the fighter could access. So over the long haul, it’s a good investment. Almost too good. I don’t think I’ve ever made a fighter without it as long as I was allowed to take the class feature because it’s pretty much a no-brainer.

Bravery: Bravery is a huge boon to the fighter but at low levels, the bonus still leaves the “brave and stalwart” fighter one of the most vulnerable members of the party when it comes to fear effects. In the Council of Thieves campaign I play in, we have two fighters who have been scared out of combat several times both of us broke down and spent a feat on Iron Will just so we’d stop running for the hills when confronted by supernatural fear. It quickly became a standing joke. Fortunately, there is a fix (Iron Will) but again the cost is a feat. Suddenly that thing that fighter’s do (master of combat feats) starts to suffer.

The “Fighters are Boring” Complaint: Normally, I’m a huge fan of new rules options and despite what I’m about to say I still am, but the sheer volume of cool new classes has exacerbated this problem. Fighters pretty much do one thing: They collect feats that let them hit harder in combat. To be fair, I know this is a gross understatement but it is a common perception. Especially when you compare feats vs. spells or resource pools such as grit and panache.

Stamina was a great attempt to fix this issue but it left a lot of combat feats unaddressed and every subsequent release largely increases this issue. This is compounded by the fact that by necessity the existing tricks are not presented with the original feats. The end result is there is a great deal of additional book juggling on the player who wants to use this system. Not a selling point for the more casual gamers at my table.

Now some of these issues have been addressed by some excellent third-party products, I play a Talented Tighter in the previously mentioned Council of Thieves campaign built using The Genius Guide to the Talented Fighter from Rogue Genius Games. I’m also very interested in playing an unchained-style fighter as presented in Everyman Unchained: Fighters by our very own Alex Augunas but again my more casual players aren’t really demonstrating an interest in any aspect of the Stamina systems as they currently work.

Come back in two-weeks and we’ll see how (or possibly if*) I’ve addressed each of these concerns. Please, if you’ve had an issue with the current fighter class leave a comment and maybe I’ll address your thoughts in the upcoming design.

*Not if I’ll rebuild the fighter, but if a given issue actually ends up needing to be fixed.

Lose the phrase, “That’s what my character would do.”

We’ve all been there. Someone (maybe even you) has found themselves justifying an obnoxious action taken by their PC, “That’s what my character would do.” This is often code for “I’m being a jerk and I know it. I JUST do not want you to know it was me. Instead, I want you to think it was this piece of paper that made me do it.” A made-up persona, or even a character sheet cannot make you do anything. It’s your job to make the character act not the other way round. This is especially important in a cooperative RPG like Pathfinder where the PCs are supposed to form a team.

Much as I spoke above about players being storytellers for their character, players can also be great sounding-boards for each other. Again think of it like the writer’s room on your favorite TV show when you hit that moment when you know you’re about to do something you’ll have to justify, “that’s what my character would do.” Instead, consider taking a moment to discuss the situation with the other players. “This is what I think the character would do but I’m worried that it might cause some friction at the table. Does anyone have any ideas for how I should proceed and keep in character?” Opening discussion and asking someone else’s insight might help you avoid the awkward and uncomfortable moments that playing the character you are all telling this story together. Everyone might be on board with your chosen course of action or someone may have a suggestion that leads you to a less confrontational action.

Years ago, I played in a Planescape campaign where one of the players made a character whose name or surname was phonetically, “a key.” Another player decided his evil PC would see the name as a literal clue and began plotting to kill him. When he ultimately succeeded it caused a rift at the table that caused players to leave because the game wasn’t fun anymore. No friendships were lost but interest in the story crumbled. Much of this might have been avoided if the players had talked about alternate actions.

Share the limelight.

Unless you are playing a solo game with just you and a GM, Pathfinder is a game about groups of heroes. It’s an ensemble show, make sure you aren’t hogging the spotlight. Sometimes it happens that your character is just correctly positioned to shine during a particular part of the story. Enjoy your time in the light but when it comes time to let someone else shine don’t hog the light. Better yet if you have the spotlight pull other characters along. For example, your PC rides back into a town only your character has visited. At some point in your investigations in town the GM reminds you of a nervous and skittish informant you know. Now, you’re worried that if the whole party rides in the NPC will clam up or worse bolt. Particularly if he’s faced with the prospect of dealing with your buddy the gruff and tumble barbarian. So maybe, instead of heading off all alone, you just trim the party to less intimidating numbers and bring along the mild mage or the charming bard to talk to your contact. Now you know the guy and that’s cool, but maybe the mage can magically charm him or the bard can verbally disarm him, either way, you are sharing the stage light and the game becomes better for everyone.

Share the load.

Speaking of sharing the GM is juggling a lot of work behind that screen. The GM is responsible for maintaining the threads of the narrative as well as its mood and pace. They’re also tracking all the monsters, XP, initiative on and on. Some of this players can help with whether it’s keeping a loot log, tracking the in-game dates on a calendar perhaps even tracking initiative order or handing out condition cards, whatever. Volunteering to take on a couple of small tasks for your GM will at least be appreciated but it might also free up enough of their limited attention to better focus on the parts of the game they can’t leave to volunteers. Just a little bit of extra focus can really make a difference.

Another thing players can volunteer to do is run allied NPCs or the PCs of absent players when it comes to combat. In some circumstances (such as a split party), the GM may even ask players to play villainous NPCs or their underlings so that the players of the absent characters have something to do during the combat. This may be one of the only times, “I’m just acting the way the character would act,” becomes a valid reason to deliberately mess with the rest of the party.

GMs might not be the only people who could use a break sometimes a player with a lot of summoned creatures, followers, and companions could use a hand managing all of those characters. Players should feel comfortable asking for help and offering help. This load sharing is particularly useful if the player taking on the extra work has a simple single character to play.

Pay attention (even when it isn’t your turn.)

This one is pretty self-explanatory. If you are not paying attention, chances are other players or the GM will have to repeat vital information you missed. Worse someone might have to break character at an exciting moment while they get you back up to speed. Added exposition just bogs down play and can kill the campaign’s pacing. So put down the facebook games, twitter, or whatever. Pay attention and be respectful, both to the other players and your GM.

Make it epic.

Finally, own your character be vivid and maybe even a little over-the-top describing your character’s actions. A little color spices up combat and when you provide some description your GM won’t be the person exclusively imagining and explaining how the combat looks. Don’t just hit, lunge forward drawing a shallow gash across the villain’s torso. Don’t just power attack with your scimitar, recklessly slash at the villain’s head. Don’t just cleave describe how your Warhammer rocks the head of your first foe and the momentum carries the brutal head of the weapon onto the shoulder of the warrior directly adjacent to the first foe.

In a related vein and as I said two weeks ago, good descriptions only contribute so much to making the game feel epic. If you take some risks and aren’t afraid to fail it can be really awesome. Imagine racing towards a barricade acrobatically sliding beneath it in a spray of gravel with an opponent in hot pursuit, or leaping over the barricade with a flourish and a slash of your sword that catches your foe off guard and leaves a nasty wound in their arm. As I said two weeks ago you are the storyteller for your character make their actions detailed and heroic.

That concludes this week’s Burst of Insight. We’d still love to hear any tips you have for players—or GMs for making everyone’s tabletop campaigns a little more exciting.

Five Tricks to Improve a Campaign Every Player Can Do Right Now

Have goals and know them.

Parties should have goals, both personal goals for each character and group goals. Each player should be aware of their goals and the goals for the group, it’s even better if you have at least an inkling of what the other character’s goals might be, even if it is only out of character. The key here is to communicate important information to the other players so the whole group can accurately prioritize what they need to do. Knowing everyone’s goals will help the party function as a team.

Avengers Post-Mortem on the Battle of New York session.

Meta-gaming with knowledge that keeps your character out of immediate danger is different from meta-gaming to advance the story for the whole group. However, meta-game thinking is a hot button topic so be sure to discuss it with your GM and the other players before letting out-of-character knowledge of your allies goals affect your actions in game. Just opening this sort of discussion can help players decide what exactly they would keep secret and what they’ve kept secret inadvertently. If your group is willing to allow players to coordinate out-of-character the in-game stories may be more satisfying. Consider this, in a recent campaign a player in the party decided their character would keep a particular goal that would benefit the whole party secret. We knew they had a mission that would benefit us all but we didn’t know anything else. So no one else on the team prioritized the secret goal and by the time we accomplished the mission nearly a year had passed in-game and the outcome was not half as satisfying as it might have been if we’d accomplished it earlier. Had we known out of character what the goal was, the character’s still would have been surprised but we’d probably jumped the easy task it turned out to be much higher on the to-do list.

A good time to talk about all of these goals is often after your game. When I played in a Masquerade LARP we’d sometimes refer to this as a post-mortem. I cannot recommend the practice highly enough when you are playing tabletop games. A good post-mortem allows players to make plans, reflect out of character on what has happened, what they’d like to happen, and just talk through events. You can either do it right after the game, on social media platforms such as Obsidian Portal, Slack, Discord or even a group on Facebook.

Role-play more.

Role-play everything, or at least most everything. I’ve played with groups where there was lots of role-playing and in games where players after years of playing had trouble remembering the all the character names. And while we had fun in nearly all of those instances, the games with more and immersive role-playing at the table were significantly more fun. And to this day tend to be the ones we talk about fondly. Now while I love all the 3^rd era and Pathfinder rules, I’ve noticed a number of conversations blaming Pathfinder’s emphasis on tactical play for curtailing some of the role-playing aspects. Now, on one hand, this argument isn’t entirely unfounded. Unlike narrative RPGs like FATE and the Cypher System, Pathfinder has few mechanics that reward good role-playing. While I certainly encourage GMs to step-up and reward role-playing, the truth is great role-playing moments are (at least in part) their own reward.

If your group has become more invested in the tactical play but misses the role-playing aspects you can each do little things to liven up the game. In the midst of combat, don’t just trade blows and roll dice, taunt and banter with your enemies, holler out advice to the other PCs, get melodramatic, deliver epic war cries… Role-play it all in character. Same goes for camping and other mundane moments if you have something to discuss before you go forward, do it in-character describe what your PC is doing. Maybe you’re the cook, talk about what you’ve fixed describe the food describe passing around the bowls as you begin the conversation. Chances are if you start with these sorts of descriptions the other players will too.

Remember you are a storyteller, too.

This piece of advice runs hand-in-hand with the previous piece of advice about role-playing more. The GM is often equated to the storyteller with the players portraying characters in the story but that may not be the best analogy. I prefer to think of the campaign as a TV show with the GM and players collaborating as writers. The GM acts as showrunner plotting out the major turns in the story but each player controls how events of the main plot affect their character on the show. Everyone at the table is simultaneously a storyteller and a viewer waiting to be entertained as the campaign progresses.

Players should feel free to narrate how their characters react to situations even giving the other players and GM an out of character glimpse into what they may be thinking. For example, say your party is being honored by a local noble for clearing a nearby dungeon of bandits and cut-throats but the players have recently come to suspect it was the same noble that has been employing the bandits to disrupt the king’s rule in the region. As you make you Bluff rolls to hide your character’s true feelings you might describe to the table at large how they react outwardly then describe the sense of betrayal they feel.

Chances are you’ve written a background or have a history in mind for your character. As the storyteller for your character, you can drop hints about your background. Owen KC Stephens recently wrote a blog about the magic of the little details in world-building. This advice is largely geared towards GMs but players can often employ such small details as effective character building. Perhaps you describe how you brew your tea strong and bitter then for color your character tells someone, “My father told me to never trust a man who drinks his tea weak and sweet.” A cagey GM might seize on such a detail and use it with an NPC leaving the players wondering if the fact that the (otherwise trustworthy) captain of the guard over-sweetens his thin tea is significant or not.

Don’t be afraid to fail.

Take risks. You won’t remember that time when you played it safe. You will remember the times you did something heroic and reckless. This doesn’t mean you should be stupid or put the rest of the party in harm’s way just because. The tactics of Pathfinder often means it’s risky to move around a bunch in combat but there are times when provoking that attack of opportunity means you’ll be a better position on the battlefield. Other times it means your party tries a frontal assault against a bandit fort such as our group attempted in our Kingmaker campaign. We were fairly certain we’d tempted fate and as the combat entered a second session several players came back to game with a backup character in tow. We knew the risks and were excited to see how it played out. Fortunately, we scraped by and now we’ll have an epic tale to reminisce over for years to come in-game and out.

Now your risks need not be so large but the excitement and drama predominately come from the possibility of failure. I honestly think many if not most players understand taking big risks. Playing heroes tends to do that. Sometimes it’s the small risks that paralyze players they don’t want to look foolish to which I like to remind those players that it happens to the best of heroes. Just embrace your failure or possible failure and roll with it. Your PC’s moment of embarrassment could be legendary for years to come.

Fan Favorite Heroes Looking Foolish

Han Solo charges after a few retreating Stormtroopers then beats a hasty retreat when things go sideways.

The following exchange between Malcolm Reynolds and Jayne in Serenity:

Capt. Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds: Do you want to run this ship?

Jayne: Yes!

Capt. Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds: [sputters] Well… you can’t…

Indiana Jones bested by Baloch in the first act of Raiders of the Lost Ark

Han Solo steps on a twig in Return of the Jedi

Tony Stark gets stuck in his armor in Iron Man

Keep good notes.

The phrase “good notes” is intentionally subjective, your notes don’t have to be comprehensive but they should jump-start your memory so as the GM kicks off the next session you know where you are and what’s going on. Some people are good note-takers, honestly, I’m not. I have a hard time paying attention and taking notes. So when I’m gaming my note-taking technique is maybe jotting down the odd name or location and one or two words to associate with it. There are (and have been) other people at our table who kept tons of information. My brother-in-law filled multiple large hardcover journals during our weekly d20 Star Wars game years ago. Since he left it at our house, as GM I’d occasionally mine the entries for names and place I’d dropped in for flavor that he and the other players thought were important and make them more prominent. Really, either style works so long as you can drop yourself back into the moment when the game starts or you meet that mysterious NPC for the second or third time.

Again, this is another way good post-mortem discussions can be useful. If you are like me and in-the-moment note-taking isn’t your strong suit, a good after game discussion can give you the opportunity to take the notes you need. As you and the other players discuss the session. Everyone can make notations on their impressions of various NPCs and events. People can also take the time to expand their in game notes, get proper spellings for NPCs and locations from the GM all without disrupting the flow at the table. Moreover, if you are making plans those can go into your notes as well, making it easier to remember the party goals.

I hope some of this advice inspires more players to take an active role in helping their GMs make their Pathfinder games the best they can.

3 Uncommon Rewards

Bottle Caps If you listen to the Glass Cannon Podcast you know how this works. Players earn bottle caps for heroic deeds, great roleplaying or whatever the GM decides is bottle cap worthy. The players can redeem caps to gain an Advantage on a single d20 roll, which means they can roll twice and take the best result alternately bottle caps can be redeemed to impose a Disadvantage on an enemy NPCs d20 roll. Disadvantage works just like Advantage but the character must take the worse roll. I really like the bottle caps rules even if it’s Fallout feel makes me itch for a post-apocalyptic campaign. Now, you need not use bottle caps you can use poker chips, glass beads or whatever. I picked up a bunch of plastic gold coins from a local party store that would be especially ideal for a Skull and Shackles campaign. Or, just embrace the Fallout inspiration and customize your caps.

Even if you don’t want to introduce bottle caps to your game as a regular reward you can sprinkle them in here and there as a story reward. For example, if the players learn key information about a prominent NPC you could award them Advantage on a single roll made against that character in the next encounter similar to how in The Hobbit Bilbo discovers a defect in Smaug’s scales that Bard is able to exploit.

Boons Society players and GMs will have plenty of experience with boons but boons can also be applied to traditional home campaigns. When I ran the Emerald Spire Super Dungeon I had all of the chronicle sheets printed and at the table to award boons to the players as they become appropriate. If you don’t want to play with the Society content you can still add boons to your game. The easiest way is to limit PCs to the normal favored class bonuses (+1 hp or skill point) and award an alternate favored class bonus. As long as you don’t award these too often (I’d recommend no more than 1 per level) you’re really not affecting game balance all that much. One of the other neat things here is you need not award one tied to a multiclass character’s favored class. If Monica’s playing a gunslinger alchemist and gunslinger is her favored class I could still award her an alchemist (favored class) boon if the action earning the reward used more of her alchemist abilities.

Bonus Feats. There are tons of feat options in this game and players will seldom get even a chance to play with most of the feats they’d like to. This is because many feat options are both boring and required, either by virtue of being so good you’d have to be dumb not to take it or because it is an actual requirement for a more interesting feat. As a result, awarding bonus feats is the full-size candy bar of uncommon rewards. Now, I wouldn’t award a bonus feat or feat slot more than once every two levels and at that, I’d still deduct about 1,000 to 5,000 gp (see table below) from the treasure budget for each PC. Admittedly, my pricing is rather arbitrary, as feats would vary wildly in cost if created as magic items but I feel reasonably comfortable with this scale as a starting point.

You might award bonus feats as feat slots the players can use to select new feats or as specific feats you select for them most often as story feats or teamwork feats. I like to time feat awards with story milestones that may not align with leveling up.

I hope that this article gives you some ideas for unusual rewards for your campaign. If you have ideas for uncommon rewards I didn’t think of, drop them in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

I’m sure the demands of The Glass Cannon and Iron GM dictate that you play and run your event games a little differently than you might for a regular home game. How do you prepare differently for your home game than you do for those event games?

Savannah (right) shows her protege Kate (left) how to stare down temperamental players.

Savannah: I don’t bother with music or props at conventions most of the time, due to logistical issues, but I do use montages a lot more at Cons. They’re great for controlling your timeline when you’re on the clock. Mainly, my home game gives me more time with the players, allowing me to work with them on backstories, NPCs connected to their character, and so on. Often, I do text-based one on one sessions with players and NPCs to allow them to discuss private subjects, or just to get to know a character better. It leaves more time to focus on the group’s goals in-game, and helps the players see the other people in the world as something more than props or walking bags of XP.

Alan works some GM magic.

Alan: In home games, I tend to run year-long campaigns. This allows my players to get comfortable with their characters before I run the Big Bad at them. They also tend to have time to develop relationships with other characters and NPCs.

With Event Games, it’s more of an improvisational exercise than anything. A GM might only ever see these players and characters only for the one-shot. Prep becomes even more of a skeleton for a plot with the caveat of being able to roll with the many, many twists the players may throw at you, allowing the players ample opportunity to have just enough rope to hang themselves.

Nick is happy because we didn’t post him getting kicked again.

Nick: My home games differ in only one regard – I know the players and I know exactly what most of them enjoy, so I tailor everything to suit those needs.  For an event, I strive to get a good sense of the players as quickly as possible, and as innocuously as possible, usually just through pre-game chit chat and introductions.  I keep it very light and relaxed always.  The narrative is intense, but my interactions with stranger-players is always of the utmost politeness.  I want everyone to feel comfortable and able to really dig into the game and express themselves through their characters without worrying about being judged for it.

Troy while not hosting the Glass Cannon Podcast.

Troy: It’s like being on vacation. Sadly, with the demands of the show and a second show in the works, my time for playing non-recorded games has dwindled to almost never. I’ve been running a Jade Regent campaign for the past four years. We just had our first session in a long time on September 16th. Our last session before that was January 21st, 2017! I’d say the only real difference with my prep is I feel more comfortable “improvising” encounter prep in the moment with my off-air games. If I don’t know exactly how a certain spell/feat/power works, I don’t mind taking a second to look it up and telling everyone to talk amongst themselves. I don’t have that luxury on the show. I also think my off-air games make the podcast better because I can experiment with new techniques both in terms of my preparation and in-game management, then see if it’s something I can bring to the podcast to make things more efficient.

Although I’m getting better, I’m terrible at notes. I take a whole bunch up front and sometimes a few between sessions and some midsession but it’s really more disorganized than I care to admit. What sort of note taking and record keeping do you do?

Savannah: I try to leave a synopsis in the Discord group created specifically for the game at the end of each session, but ultimately call for a group recap at the beginning of each session. I’m terrible at consistent notes, but a fair hand at remembering narrative, so I emphasize to the players that if they want to keep the mechanical cockatoo they found, or know how many magic, dragon-slaying arrows they have, they need to write that down.

“According to my notes, Alex gets this cool green tipped wand of ‘we didn’t roll high enough’ and Monica gets . . . the seven ‘clearly normal’ arrows”

Alan: I have my players recap previous sessions. This brings everyone together at the beginning of each session, and helps everyone get back into the mindset of their characters. Rewarding the recap with experience points or other goodies gives a great incentive for most players. Important information, like NPC names and roles, tend to go into a notebook or spreadsheet made specifically for the current game, as well as keeps the GM on track.

Nick: I am awful at notes.  It’s why I mostly run one shots.  I tend to forget things I’ve run almost immediately after running them.  Even when I run the same one-shot, it’s nothing like the first time usually.  For the few multi-session games I run, I do rely heavily on the players to take notes on their sheets, which I take with me and review before the next session.  Sometimes it’s helpful to assign one player as the “scribe” or “archivist” in a campaign – pick someone with legible handwriting!  🙂

Troy: Hahaha. Record every session and designate players to keep track of loot. Let them do work for a change!

So now we’ve prepared the game, how do you maintain player engagement at the table?

Savannah: I ask them to help me build the world around them–characters, towns, rumors, you name it. The trick is to make it feel like they have agency without making them feel like they’re doing your job for you, so don’t lean on this too often. It’s a good thing to try when there’s a lull in story, or you see someone start to disengage. Just remember: this is to help them have fun, not to call out a person you don’t think is listening.

Also, I try to check in during breaks (especially during Con games or one-shots) and ask what sorts of things they want to see in the session–should there be a car chase? A chance for your character to join a shadowy cult?–and make a note to work it in.

Alan: Again, communication is key. I talk to my players about what possible tragedy might befall them just before the session, staying as vague and mysterious as I can so as to entice them into the trap. Each player brings something to the table, as does each character. If I can get each character a “Spotlight” moment each couple of sessions, the players stay engaged. Get to know what the players want, and let them live vicariously through their characters to get it. Of course, make sure they have earned it by putting little obstacle in their way, but in the end, GMs are ultimately on their players’ side. They want the PCs to win, but mostly at a cost.

Nick: I use music, and a lot of energy.  I never sit down when I’m running a session, at least not in the first hour or so.  I want to keep the energy pouring on thick, and make sure people feel like they are part of something extraordinary.  If you care enough to get into the story, chances are the players will want to involve themselves as well.  Make sure you don’t lose any one.  Include something for every character in every scene.  A connection to one of the NPCs.  A challenge that suits their skill-set.  A foil that gives them a chance to be creative.  Also, let them be awesome sometimes.  Not every encounter has to test them to their limits.  Sometimes it’s nice to let them flex their muscles and feel like the heroes they are supposed to be – this plays to a larger note – vary the challenge, pacing, and style of every scene.  Throw in a puzzle or a deception, some tense role-playing, an amusing comic-relief side-NPC for the PCs to interact with, some personal moments for their characters, and of course some epic battles.  There’s room for everything, and the more interesting opportunities for all manner of drama you throw at your players, the more the whole experience will feel like a finely wrought tale.

Troy: it’s really important that my energy is uplifting and infectious, especially if the players are having a bad day or not in the mood or sad because I just killed another one of their characters. I rarely sit down during the course of a session and almost never during combat. I like to be moving around and getting up in people’s faces, reiterating the stakes to them as much as possible and just doing my best to keep the players living and dying on each dice roll. If someone pulls out a phone, I make fun of them. If I see someone zoning out, I shame them. Ultimately though, I think player engagement is as much on the players as it is the GM. I’m always going to show up having put a ton of time into the prep of the actual session, so it’s the individual player’s jobs to not only show up prepared but also show up ready and pumped to play. I think a lot of players feel like they’re Elizabethan royalty and the GM is the court jester. “Amuse me, clown.” It needs to be a team effort. I know I’m doing my work. If my players aren’t picking up what I’m putting down, then their invite to the next session might get lost in the mail.

If the player’s attention wanes crash the party with a cry of, “Roll for initiative!”

How do you maintain excitement between sessions?

Savannah: I set up a Discord for the group and make sure there are spots for game-inspired art, roleplay, fiction, that sort of thing. It helps to grow the world, and it’s fantastic to see the art that the game inspires. Also, I try to give small “homework” assignments like “Write a love-letter from the first mate to the captain. Extra points if it’s full of piratey phrases.” They’re not mandatory, but they’re fun.

Alan: At the end of every session I have a five to ten minute summary of what happened, so as to remind the players of how awesome (or otherwise) they were. We go around the table and share our favorite part of the session and also ask questions. This allows the players to tell each other how cool the others are, and at the same time ask questions about each other “out of character.” My favorite games are where the players have wild theories and conjecture about the plot that are actually better than what I had written. Then comes the following sessions that lead to their eventual validation of their theories, which then lay the groundwork for even more questions!

Nick: Cliffhangers…always.  Leave em dying to know what happens next and thirsty for more.  If you set up some nice pay-offs that will come next session (like getting revenge on an old contact who sold you out this session, or finally finding out the identity of a mastermind behind an evil plan that’s been ongoing for a session or two), they’ll be drooling for the next game night.  Also, it never hurts to make a gaming day into a theme.  Gonna play a great super-hero themed game?  Maybe all go to see the latest MARVEL movie the Friday before your Saturday game to get people in the mood.  I’ve occasionally thrown a little party with themed food, drink, etc. to get people in the right mindset for the flavor of the game we’ll be playing too.  Think of the game as a full-on experience and don’t shy away from anything that can add to the experiential nature of our favorite hobby.

Troy: This is super important, especially as the people around the gaming table are getting older, getting married, having kids, etc. and the time to play Pathfinder may not be a top priority anymore. Keeping the excitement going is your only chance of ever finishing an Adventure Path, which to me is the litmus test for having “leveled up” as a gamer in this hobby. The easiest way I do this is with cliffhangers. It obviously works well for the podcast to keep the audience coming back every week, but it’s equally important to have your players walking away from the table salivating at the thought of what could happen next. That’s what’s going to get people wanting to play another session, thinking about their character between games and antsy to get the next one underway. I also like to send out email recaps of the previous session within 24 hours after we finish with a bunch of possible dates for the next time we can play. It’s an uphill battle trying to get five to six 30-40 year olds in a room together. Whatever you gotta do to make that happen, it’s the GM’s job to be the ringleader. When in doubt, bribe them with promises of alcohol and fine artisanal cheeses.

I’d like to thank everyone again for participating in this first-ever Burst of Insight: Ask the Experts panel. This was so much fun there is already a sequel in the works with a new topic and different experts…stay tuned for more details.

First, it doesn’t matter what you read. Whether you read fantasy, horror, science fiction, romance, history, or true crime, you can draw on everything when you sit down at your table. So, what follows is a list of books I’ve found inspiring.

Pathfinder Tales (various authors) – Let’s just get the obvious out of the way. If you are running a campaign set in Golarion this is one of the best ways to immerse yourself in the setting. I haven’t read all the books in the line but have thoroughly enjoyed those I have. I’ve also taken inspiration for my current Kingmaker PC from a small setting detail I hadn’t considered as a starting option before it came up in two separate books.

Club Anyone (Lou Agresta) – It’s been a while since I tore through a book at the pace I read this one. Club anyone is a solid cyberpunk adventure that really reminded me of why I love the genre. It is also setting fiction like the Pathfinder Tales. Gun Metal Games has a multi-system cyberpunk setting called Interface Zero which as of this past June included a Pathfinder version of the rules. So I recommend it if you’re planning on running or playing in an Interface Zero game but beyond that it’s an entertaining story that might offer ideas to starfinder players and GMs.

Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman) – This is a story I’ve read, reread, and watched (there was a BBC mini-series that predates the novel) several times since its release. A dark and twisted retelling of the Wizard of Oz Set in modern London (and the magical realm of London below). For homebrew campaigns, it is a great example of how you can run a traditional fantasy game run right up against the modern world. Frankly, I was almost inspired to start a brand new campaign just writing this hundred-word review and I haven’t read the book again for a while now.

The Ellenium (David Eddings) – A tale of high fantasy, courtly intrigue, and church knights told well. The series really shaped how I view paladins as a class and I’ve spoken to many others over the years who have felt the same. I played in an AD&D Greyhawk “paladin” campaign in high school that drew on this series as inspiration. The bulk of the party were paladins and the conflict of the game ran around treachery from within our respective churches and the growing threat of Iuz the Evil from without.

Codex Alera (Jim Butcher) – Most people know Jim Butcher from the Dresden Files (which are fantastic), but I also encourage people to read his Codex Alera. There are a number of familiar fantasy tropes present but also some pretty-neat innovations as well. The series is a bizarre cross between the roman legion and Pokémon that somehow works. The series largely follows the youth Tavi who may be the only Aleran who doesn’t have a fury (elemental spirit companion) of his own. Tavi is a pretty standard epic hero, there are secrets and gifts that make him uniquely suited to face the threat of the alien Vord. The furies for example, it’s a little like nearly everyone has an elemental-eidolon (or more than one in some cases) summoner players may find use in the relationships between the character’s and their furies. While half-orc, barbarian, and skald players may find inspiration in the culture of the Marat.

The Martian (Andy Weir) – This is probably my all-time favorite hard sci-fi novel. An astronaut stranded alone on mars. The familiar stranded on a desert island story engagingly reimagined and well told. The uses for a Starfinder campaign are obvious right away but imagine for a moment telling the same sort of story as an arch in a fantasy campaign. What if a character became trapped on another plane of existence and had to struggle to survive in the alien environment while his companions had to find a way to open a portal and rescue him before his resources ran out. The trapped person could be a player in a solo survival campaign or an NPC McGuffin the player’s need to rescue. Alternatively, maybe the GM runs two concurrent campaigns one with a single trapped PC or a small party of trapped adventures and a second game where the PCs back home race to save the heroes of the first campaign.

The Old Man’s War series (John Scalzi) – Enlist in the army at retirement age and get a high tech replacement body to better go and fight aliens. This series is an interesting reconstruction of military sci-fi and as the series progresses it become so much more. I wonder how many mechanic players who have read this series will call their exocortex “asshole” or some other pejorative.

The Caine Mutiny (Herman Wouk) – When I was in high school we read the play the Caine Mutiny Court Martial and watched the Humphry Bogart film the Caine Mutiny but that was only a small part of the actual novel. I enjoyed that small bit enough that I picked up the novel. In addition to being an entertaining read I could easily see setting a Starfinder campaign aboard a larger ship crewed by characters from the novel as NPCs. Ditto that in Pathfinder. Run in another more military setting I could even see recycling a number of the plot elements as a part of a longer campaign.

The Warlord Trilogy (Bernard Cornwell) – I’m a sucker for tales of Arthurian Legend and Cornwell delivers one of my favorite versions and includes historical notes at the end of each volume as a bonus. Surprisingly, his main character is not Arthur however; instead, we follow one of Arthur’s lesser-known knights, Derfel Cadarn and we meat Arthur as a friend. The trilogy is full of the familiar heroism, treachery and magic but not the high magic of typical fantasy. Instead, we’re treated to more earthy, coincidental, and realistic magic. I reskinned portions of this fictional Britain’s kingdoms and politics as a star system for a long running d20 Star Wars campaign.

The Magic Goes Away Collection (edited by Larry Niven) – What is magic was a finite resource? What if magic was nearly all used up like gasoline in the Mad Max universe? This collection of novellas short stories is full of fascinating ideas that can be mined for all sorts of fantasy gaming. Even if you just to draw from it ideas for compelling stories and encounters around dispel magic and anti-magic shell.

Far from an exhaustive list, I’m sure I’ll revisit this topic in the future, however, feel free to post any recommendations you have in the comments below. Burst of Insight will return tomorrow with the conclusion of the GM roundtable interview we began two weeks ago.

My guests today are Savannah Broadway, Troy Lavallee, Nicolas Logue, and Alan Venable. Why don’t you each take a moment to tell our readers a little bit about yourselves what you’re currently working on (if you can) and how you got into gaming.

Savannah: Hey all, Savannah Broadway here. I’m a former Paizo intern turned freelance writer and editor. I’m currently working on the Book of Exalted Darkness from Mike Myler games, and my own passion piece, Spiders and Souffles, about a group of drow running a restaurant. My first taste of gaming was a book of AD&D art that my dad used for sketch references. 5-year-old me was instantly hooked on the idea, but I didn’t get a chance to play until late high school, when I cut my teeth on GURPS (the Satanic Panic still manages to linger in the Midwest).

Troy: Well hello. I’m Troy Lavallee, the GM and producer of The Glass Cannon Podcast. I’m also an actor and comedian based out of New York City. The GCP is an actual play podcast of Paizo’s Giantslayer Adventure Path that we launched in June of 2015. Two years later, we signed a partnership agreement with Paizo to become their first officially licensed Pathfinder podcast. At Gen Con 50, we announced that we will soon be launching a second actual play podcast of the first Starfinder AP Dead Suns. I started playing in the early 90s, mostly 2nd edition, but I took a solid 20-year break before getting back into tabletop RPGs in my early 30s. Now, an embarrassing amount of my life is spent recording myself and my friends playing Pathfinder for a growing, highly critical worldwide audience and, once in a great while, for fun as well.

Here’s a picture of me kicking Nick in the junk. We all know he had it coming and you’re welcome.

Nicolas: Aloha Everyone! Nick Logue reporting in!  I started gaming in with friends in middle school waaay back in the late 80s, mostly playing D&D, the old Marvel Superheroes game, eventually Shadowrun, Rifts, Call of Cthulhu and lots more games. I started freelancing for ye old Dungeon magazine back in 2002, and since then I’ve had over 100 adventures, campaign supplements and articles published by Paizo Publishing, Wizards of the Coast, Kobold Press and many other publishers.  I created the Iron GM (formerly Iron DM) event at GenCon, and was the Organized Play Coordinator at Paizo Publishing briefly wherein I had a large hand in launching Pathfinder Society.   

Alan: Hello, I am Alan Venable, I won Iron GM in 2016 and have a couple of games published in the Wield Companion. I am currently working on a multi-dimensional game that has been bouncing around in my head for a few years. I got into gaming because of a friend of mine in high school, who ran an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game for me on the hour-long bus ride from home to school every day.

Now before we get started into what to do right. I’ve found that I learn more about GMing from my mistakes and the mistakes others make when running. For example, my long-term players still laugh about a session I ran about 20 years ago when they ran away from a summer breeze. I was running a Ravenloft campaign (from the first box set not the classic module) and evidently overdid the mood descriptions next thing I know they’ve fled the castle they’re staying in and running from a wind flowing through town. One player in a brave heroic moment decided to sacrifice himself and stand against the unseen pursuer. And I wasn’t prepared the wind blew around him and I missed an opportunity to deliver the heroic spotlight of personal sacrifice. In failing to deliver on the expectations of those players I turned a moment of horror into a 20-year punchline.

So what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made as a GM and what can we all learn from it?

Savannah: I worked on fiction writing long before I first GMed, so I’d say that my biggest mistake was treating the experience more like a monologue and less like a game. My descriptions of locations were generally at least a paragraph long (which I knew because I’d write them ahead of time) and I’d prioritize my story over the rules in a way that was detrimental to my players. Thankfully my group was patient with me, and I eventually got a grasp on one of the most fundamental truths of gaming: you’re all there to tell a story, not just the person running the game. Let the players describe their own actions (“How does it die?” is a super simple but very impactful question), ask them what outcome they think would be more interesting, and for goodness’ sake, value brevity in setting descriptors.

Alan: My biggest mistakes always come from the miscommunication or mismanagement of player expectations. After all, gaming is a social contract between the people around the table to come together and tell a certain story with an agreed upon theme. If your players think you are playing a tongue-in-cheek game of Toon, don’t run an espionage-laden SpyCraft session.

When you said we were going to play Dungeons and Dragons I didn’t think you wanted to ride big wheels.

Nick: I ran an adventure for Ninjas and Superspies one time, that was dubbed “Niagara Ninja” by my old gaming crew.  It remains my biggest and most hilarious flop.  The adventure was set mostly on a cable car traveling over the whirlpool near Niagara Falls, wherein, somehow, a triad assassin, a secret Iga ninja, a Canadian Mounted Police detective, and a CIA wetwork specialist were all trying to kill the same person.  It was not my finest hour, but we do laugh about it often.  The takeaway:  Too many weird concepts crowbarred into one adventure – also, our set piece was a small cable car…it was cramped and did not supply much room for anything dramatic or action-oriented.

Troy: Deciding to do an actual play podcast. Kidding! That’s a great question. I definitely forget lots of minor elements all the time because I’m trying to focus on a million things at once. Whether it’s not remembering my creature has DR, that they have poisoned weapons, important feats – I don’t think a combat ever ends where I’m not kicking myself for blanking on a cool little detail that I got really excited about using when I prepped and then blanked on once we rolled initiative. In terms of major mistakes, maybe I’m just hopelessly optimistic, but I don’t think there is such a thing when you’re the GM. Never let them see you sweat. If you screw something up, find a way to make it work. They don’t need to know you’re an idiot. In summation, I’ve never made a huge mistake. Final answer.

With our mistakes out of the way, what makes a good game, great?

Savannah: When the players, the characters, and the story are in sync with each other. Great table rapport leads to great character interaction, which in turn leads to great stories. I started a pirate-esque game with the intention that it would be fairly serious. Instead, when the NPC who had press-ganged them gave his speech, everyone cracked up. One very fast mental re-calibration later, I had a fellow crew member look embarrassed about it all, which led to the PCs naming him Jeremiah Jorts and basically adopting him into their group. He’s group tailor/ cleric now. Make sure to keep an eye on the table and adjust the story, content, and tone based on what you see, and when your players want to insert something into the world, roll with it–within reason, of course.

Alan: A good game comes from a good moment, a great game comes from a series of good moments. When a PC pulls off an awesome moment, like solving the riddle before the sphinx eviscerates the party, or when the barbarian slays the dragon from within the dragon’s belly. In the end, great games come from the stories told about those moments years later.

Nick: Focus on the players and their characters.  They are the stars of your movie.  Make sure the action revolves completely around them.  If you do this, and can check your own ego about your “story” at the door to the gaming room, you’re halfway to a truly memorable and glorious evening of gaming.  NPCs exist only to serve up fun opportunities for drama, action and humor for your players – not to smack them down, or make them feel worthless.  Remember that your players probably want to be Big Damn Heroes, so let them step up and knock it out of the park.  Related:  Get used to “reading” the table and the players.  Try and figure out what they want out of the gaming session.  You can always just ask them too, and then deliver it, but sometimes it’s best when you can intuit their hopes and desires for the session and deliver them.

Troy: The most important thing to me is the story, more specifically, engaging the players in the story as deeply as possible, so that they surprise even you when you hear them talk about it to each other. I love watching my players have those moments where I drop a big story element and they all gasp. To me, that’s like, ok, not only am I doing my job well by creating circumstances that hold real emotional weight with them, but also I feel like I’ve created an atmosphere where they feel comfortable allowing themselves to become so immersed in the story that their natural reactions are guttural. Those are always the best sessions.

What does your game prep look like?

“Desna’s Tears! This AP is brutal!”

Savannah: I try to make an outline of how I think the adventure will go, as well as its place in the overall plot, if it’s a homebrew. With APs I try to read the book that we’re on (and at least half of the next if we’re near the end) for optimal foreshadowing knowledge.

I don’t generally deal much with maps or minis, which gives me time to focus on props and general atmosphere. I run with Syrinscape a lot, so I make sure to put what soundpacks I want to go with what scene, as well as pertinent one-off sounds. Bags of coins, small bottles of strange liquid–i.e. soda water and fruit syrup–and definitely-not-cursed amulets that are cold to the touch (and definitely not from the freezer when the GM goes to refresh their drink) are all invaluable to bringing a little of that sense of wonder to even the most jaded players, so I make sure to scour estate sales, junk shops, and second-hand stores for anything that fits the bill.

Alan: I usually game at my house, so any and all my terrain pieces, miniatures, sound systems, and ambiance is basically prepped the night before. More elaborate sessions, like the musical Mage: The Ascension game I ran years ago, take a whole other session with the players to prep.

Away games tend to be a little tougher, as I can’t bring everything with me, but two-dimensional maps and pawns tend to do the trick. Also voice projection is key. In a crowded room at a convention, players need to hear you from across the table.

Nick: I prefer one-shots to campaigns these days.  My prep is 100% focused on creating incredibly engaging and epic PCs for my players.  That’s usually all I do.  Their characters (and character sheets) are really the nuts and bolts of my adventure – all their relationships, foes, foils, strings-attached problems, are all included therein.  Beyond that, I prep a really great playlist of music – if I have time, I make it a real soundtrack with songs picked out specifically for important scenes.  I don’t use any miniatures, terrain, maps, etc.  I strive to create a shared imaginative space, and would rather the players look at each other and me than down at a “board.”  I don’t prep any stats for any NPCs or bad guys.  Just a page or two of notes on their names and key features.  I improv from there.

Troy: It used to be so much easier. Now that every single one of my sessions is picked apart by every Tom, Dick and Harry with a set of dice, I have way less room for error than I did before. To break it down methodically, I like to read everything once without thinking too much about it. If an idea pops into mind, I might jot it down, but for that first read, I just want to just soak up the raw info as much as possible and familiarize or refamiliarize myself with the bullet points. So on my second, third and fourth read-throughs of what I think will be happening in the next sesh, I’m taking progressively more and more detailed notes both in terms of mechanics (What does this feat do? What does this weapon enhancement do?) and story (How does this moment connect to the larger arc? How could I link this to a PCs backstory?) Then we sit down to play and I get so excited I forget everything I prepared.

How would each of you describe your GM style? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the way you run?

Savannah: If you were being polite, you might call my style “improv.” If you were less so, you’d call it “slapdash.” I enjoy generating ideas with my group on the fly (“What are some rumors going around town?” “Does your character have any rivals that might be in town?”) and rolling with the punches when the plot, inevitably, fails to survive contact with the players. The advantage is that the story stays flexible and always includes things that the characters want to see. The downfall, of course, is that the overarching plot can get lost in the face of the more episodic storylines. Similarly, I have enough experience with monster building that I can BS stats enough to get through a fight if the PCs wander off-track, but there can be inconsistencies later on if they encounter that same monster again. Also, this style makes me absolutely rubbish at running very regimented games, like Pathfinder Society.

Montages are one of my favorite things in the toolbox, and I try to incorporate them in at least once a session. For those of you unfamiliar with 13th Age, the idea of a montage is to take a scenario–say, crossing a mountain–and propose a problem to the players–“Sharp winds coming down the slope are threatening to gust you off the path.” Pick a player and go clockwise. That first player will solve the problem–“We get out rope and tie ourselves together, then my character goes first with her shield to serve as a wind-block”–and then propose another problem to the next player–“Unfortunately, the pack mule spooked and our food just fell into a ravine.” The idea of montages is that the players cannot fail in the actions they specify, and what combats there are don’t require rolling. They can and should be cinematic, but still within the abilities of the players–no interplanetary teleportation from first level wizards. Basically, give your players agency in a way that makes them feel cool and allows you to more or less stick to your storyline (they’re still getting across the mountain instead of hunting monsters in the woods, after all).

Alan: My GM style might be described as “cinematic.” I like to paint a picture with the paint brush of imagination, capture the sights, sounds, smells, and texture of each scene to create as much immersion as possible for my players. I use soundtracks, dim the lights, have scented candles or oils, and even occasionally create elaborate three dimensional maps of of the scenes I describe.

Core relationships and group dynamics are key in my sessions, with how and why this group of ragtag misfits have come together as murderous sell-swords or a party of big damn heroes. How did they all meet and decide to adventure together? Are they related to each other? Do they share a common enemy?

Action is as much roll-played as much as role-played, not only by how much damage is dealt, but also with detail in where a PC or NPC is hit and how they respond.

Nick: I’m an actor/playwright/director by day – my games are tightly wrought stories in which action and character are everything.  I go for cinematic style, but blended with real powerful themes that make my players think and feel.  I like to set the scene and describe a lot of elements and action early in the session, and then once the “world” has really come to life for the players, I take a backseat and let them drive from there.  The advantage is that my games are wildly immersive experiences that are not quickly forgotten.  The disadvantage is that some players find the focus on narrative over strategy a little frustrating.  I do my best to please every player though – that’s key!

Troy: I like to play the bad guy, but I’m way more forgiving than most of my players would ever give me credit for. I’m a big fan of letting the dice control fate. I hate fudging numbers and keeping characters alive because of plot armor. Both as a GM and a player, I love high difficulty combats where everyone is truly challenged every single round. To me, there’s no fun in just crushing combat after combat. The Dark Souls series is a personal favorite of mine, and I try, as best I can, to implement that level of merciless masochistic difficulty into my encounters. I like to think that I balance that brutality by adding in as much humor as I can the rest of the time, whether it be through creating off-the-wall NPCs to interact with or judiciously breaking the fourth wall to keep things light. At the end of the day, though, if the table needs someone to hate, I’ll happily be that target any day I’m behind the screen.

I’d like to thank my guests for agreeing to come on the blog and share their collective wisdom. Come back in two weeks for the conclusion to our first Ask the Expert’s panel where they’ll address the different demands of event style games like Iron GM or an actual play podcast vs. a home game, talk about maintaining player excitement and more.

The narrative structure of RPGs is pretty universal. Everything that happens is from the PCs point of view and everything happens pretty much in chronological order, but as Ryan and Perram discussed on the last Know Direction, it doesn’t have to always be that way. Ryan was talking about how in the Hells Rebels campaign their planning session turned into a sort of heist montage. Plan X Event, jump to later executing X Event then return to the past and the planning session moving on to Y Event, and so on. But, the heist montage isn’t the only way you can change the narrative in Pathfinder. There are a number of simple tricks that if used sparingly can keep your campaign fresh and your players invested.

Spoiler Warning: This Week’s Blog has Minor Spoilers for the 1988 Star Wars Module, Tatooine Manhunt, Chapter Three of Rise of the Runelords, and Chapter Two of Giantslayer. I’ve tried to keep the spoilers away from major revelations but read at your own risk. Cover images are posted next to the portions of the article that include said spoilers.

1—GM Cut-Away Scenes

The old d6 Star Wars RPG made extensive use of cut-away scenes most often to show what the villains were up to. In the 1988 adventure, Tatooine Manhunt, time is of the essence according to the data the PC’s receive initially they’ll have five days to complete their mission as the Imperial forces make repairs to the Star Destroyer that is docked in the vicinity. Unfortunately, for the PCs once the events get rolling the Empire’s techs and mechanics work overtime to get the ship repaired in four days. To ramp up the player’s suspense and sense of urgency this fact it delivered in a quick cut-away scene narrated by the GM on day three:

Copyright 1988 West End Games

EXTERIOR: SPACECRAFT IN SPACE. The Imperial Star Destroyer Relentless, docked with Kwenn Space Station.
INTERIOR: IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER—BRIDGE. Captain Parlan stands upon the command platform, watching the space station through bridge viewports. A lower officer steps up and clears his throat.
“Speak,” order’s Parlan.
“The crews have worked through the night and all systems have been repaired.” Snaps the officer. “In addition, Astrogation has calculated an optimum hyperspace route that will get us to Tatooine by tomorrow evening.”
Parlan’s eyes sparkle and his lip turns up in an evil smile. “Then Tallon’s mine! Order immediate departure.”
Fade to . . .
EXTERIOR: THE TATOOINE DESERT

Copyright 2007 Paizo Inc.

I’ve always really appreciated this scene because it wasn’t only a peek at what the villains were up to but it set up for the player’s that the GM wasn’t cheating or hadn’t misled them maliciously about the amount of time they would have. Instead, it presents a logical and troubling turn of events that should worry the players, if not the characters.

With a little planning, scenes like this can be utilized in both published adventures and homebrew campaigns. Feel free to draw attention to distant allies, as well as enemies, or even total strangers who are about to have an impact on the PCs. Consider the following paragraph from Nicolas Logue’s The Hook Mountain Massacre.

“By now, the villagers know the heroes not only laid low “those damnable Grauls,” but also liberated and reclaimed Fort Rannick. When the flood strikes, people begin evacuating at once, but the water’s rise rapidly. Soon after the flooding begins, a villager (a hunter named Bran Fered) rides hellbent up the road north as the banks of the Skull River rise ever higher, threatening to swamp the bridge and road in hours. His report to the PCs is panicked and breathless.”

This single paragraph offers the GM a view of what’s happening in Turtleback Ferry and with only a little work a GM could plan a cutscene that lends weight to Bran’s report of events. Before the box text that follows the above paragraph you could change the point-of-view from the PCs to Bran Fered show some of the flooding as he helps his neighbors out of immediate danger then jumps on his horse and his hellbent ride north to the PCs.

I just recently started listening to the Big Finish Audio Dramas for Pathfinder, specifically, the series based on the Mummy’s Mask AP. The first episode offers a good example of how to do villain cut-aways without giving away too much information.

2—Player Involved Cut-Away Scenes

Copyright 2015 Paizo Inc

Another kind of cut-away scene has the players donning different roles for a time, usually no longer than a single session but often as short as a single scene. A great example of this from popular television includes Supernatural and the myriad police procedural shows. Each typically begins with a vignette from the POV of the victim just before they turn up dead. Then, after the opening credits, the heroes show up to begin the investigation. You can use this same technique in your own campaigns and it doesn’t have to be part of a mystery, although running it as a part of the mystery can be interesting because it can give the player’s clues and hints that can help make their characters look more competent. You just have to be careful to not give up too much information.

You can also use this technique to introduce long-running NPCs sometimes well in advance of their arrival. An example of this from the AP line originates in the second book of the adventure path, The Hill Giant’s Pledge. About midway through the module, the PCs are introduced to a pair of dwarf siblings with a rather tragic storyline. Ingrahild and Umlo Nargrymkin entered Ghostlight Marsh in search of an ancestor’s tomb. The pair with their hired mercenaries run afoul of a hag coven. The mercenaries are killed and the siblings are driven mad and separated. A GM could run much of the exploration of Ghostlight Marsh with the PCs in the rolls of the Dwarves and their mercenaries ending the story with the revelation of the hags as a cliffhanger.

I think the ideal time to run this scene would be between books one and two or if Ingrahild survives long enough to tell the PC’s her story a GM could run it as a flashback there.

On TV and in movies, Flashbacks are often filmed with different filters to make them stand out from the current timeline. The TV show Suits makes heavy use of this technique because it regularly uses flashbacks. The flashback sequences all have this green tint to them that isn’t distracting but does set them starkly apart visually from the current events. For those groups really wanting to experiment with making flashback scenes feel different from the main line of the campaign, you don’t have to run those scenes in Pathfinder.

Using the previous example you might use a more narrative RPG such as Dread to focus on the horror aspects of a doomed expedition into Ghostlight Marsh. Alternatively, maybe your PCs have encountered an ancient ruin with pictograms on the walls that tell a particular story from the past. Rather than just relaying it, maybe, you run it in a previous edition of the game. Whether it’s Ancient Thassilon, Azlant, or Old Osirion, nothing says old days and long ago like Thac0 and negative armor classes.

3—Memories

Memories can be full flashbacks you run with a PC or two playing an earlier version of themselves for a scene or two (usually based on their backstory) to give clues to the current encounter. Most often though, you’ll just use it as a narrative tool reminding players of things they either wrote into their backstory or events from earlier in the campaign. One example comes from an early episode of the Glass Cannon Podcast when Lorc, the PC Ranger, is getting his animal companion. The then unnamed wolverine is nearly killed by a party ally as unwanted vermin but the Lorc is able to save the animal first. The scene has a lot more emotional weight than you typically get from “My ranger goes up a level and I get a companion,” because GM paralleled the scene to a previous scene and narrated the memory. Earlier in the campaign, Lorc was helpless to protect someone in a similar situation so this small moment of redemption cements the pair’s ongoing relationship.

When using this technique try to avoid telling the player what their character feels instead focus on the events they remember and how they synch-up with what’s happening now. Remember too that memories can be funny things they often bring familiar odors or sounds and not always in a logical order. A PC trying to figure out a word puzzle who has successfully made a Linguistics check to decipher it might first remember a phantom tune that slowly becomes more coherently the song their father whistled while he thought through a problem. As the tune rattles around in her head the character remembers her father’s advice in his voice and can try to apply what she knows or maybe the song itself has the answer in lyrics he would sing to her as a child.

4—In Media Res

As you start the next portion of your campaign, or a brand new campaign consider jumping straight to the action. If your player’s trust you, it can be very satisfying to begin a new chapter with the briefest of introductions and those three magical words, “Roll for Initiative!” Some adventures have this format hardwired in. Book one of Rise of the Runelords starts with this kind of action but you don’t always get so lucky with the material, or if you are running a strictly homebrew campaign. In those cases, you may need to do a bit more planning to use this technique. Many published adventures have events that occur early in the narrative that will happen regardless of the PC’s choices. Maybe there is a specific dungeon to explore. Nothing says you can’t start your adventure several rooms into the dungeon with the blood of an earlier (easy) encounter still dripping from the fighter’s sword.

Copyright West End Games

Now a GM could just summarize quickly how the PCs arrived in their current predicament or you could write a short introductory script to get the players talking and getting the information across. The script trick originates (at least to my knowledge) with the d6 Star Wars system and I think I under-utilized it when I first ran Star Wars years ago. The opening scripts were often a little hokey and that turned off younger me, but players could (and should) personalize and improvise a little to polish off some of the dialog’s rough edges. The important part is that scripting the prologue involves the players in the introduction and puts the PCs at the center of the action immediately.

If you are feeling particularly daring you could pick a dungeon or event a little further into the story and let the PCs start at 2^nd or 3^rd level. Then flashback to how they got into the dungeon running those scenes with the same characters. In this case, for simplicity, you might just use the initial character builds but with one or two negative levels applied. These negative levels would not be the result of damage and not subject to healing. Instead, the character’s work them off by earning XP and advancing. My recommendation is to preserve the integrity of the timeline, rather than killing characters let PCs automatically stabilize at 0 hp. This safety net only lasts until the character’s catch back up to current events although you could impose a lasting scar or flaw for anyone who reaches negative Con during this period.

Rulebook covers Copyrights Wizards of the Coast and Paizo.

5—Whack-a-Doo Campaign Ideas

Maybe you’re ready to go all Cloud Atlas and run a multi-generational and multi-verse campaign. Instead of playing through one world-changing event you advance the party through a campaign that grows the immortal soul. Each player takes on the role of one spirit through many lifetimes. A given adventure could happen at any time. Parts of each adventure might happen in different timelines . . . and game systems. If a GM uses Golarion as the base world AD&D could be ancient times (as I talked about above), 3.5 the recent past maybe up until Aroden’s death, Pathfinder the contemporary timeline, and Starfinder the distant future. Maybe you slip in d20 Modern and 5e as Golarion’s 20^th century analog and an alternate reality respectively. Or maybe the campaign follows celestial PCs as they handle necessary events over the millennia and the bulk of the action takes place in Starfinder with relevant flashbacks taking the characters to various times in history.

So while most of Pathfinder is played in chronological order and from the heroes point of view it doesn’t have to be. Hopefully, a few GMs will get out there and shake up their campaigns by experimenting with time, point of view maybe even varying the game system when the occasion calls for it. If you have any other GM tips for messing with time and point of view post them in the comments.

We’ll be back in two weeks with more GM tips as I interview a panel of rock star GMs about what makes their games tick.

Copyright Paizo Inc.

Hit Points as a game mechanic have passed through edition after edition of Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder largely unchanged. It is still an abstract measure of how well your character or an NPC is endure several rounds of punishing combat. The more Hit Points your character has the better they are at shrugging off grievous injury and resisting death. Now while Pathfinder wizards and sorcerers get a few extra hit points the rule has not changed much from any of the game’s previous versions.

Cover images from Malhavoc Press, Wizards of the Coast, and Paizo Inc.

Now that isn’t to say that health and wounds have been handled the same in every d20 game. Looking over some of the other games to run on the d20 engine including the new Starfinder rules there have been a number of innovations and variant rules that alter how characters handle fights. Pathfinder’s Beta Playtest included a sidebar offering four variant rules for starting hit points including: One (that Starfinder players might find familiar) gave 1^st level characters a racial hit point modifier and another option added a character’s full Constitution score. The d20 Star Wars Core Rulebook broke hit points into vitality and wound points a system that is a bit similar to the grace and health rules that appear in Monte Cook’s Collected Book of Experimental Might and the stamina and hit point rules from the Starfinder Core Rulebook. All of these rules make starting PCs a little hardier without eliminating interesting threats and dangers based mechanics like save DCs that adjust as you increase level.

Each of these systems made small changes to how the d20 engine runs combat. The variants in the Beta Playtest were the least complicated characters started with a few more hit points through one source or another. In Star Wars you didn’t multiply weapon damage on a critical hit but applied the normal damage directly to the target’s wound points. Vitality also doubled as a resource Jedi characters could use to power their Force abilities. Similarly, in the Experimental Might system grace points are also a spendable resource allowing character’s to push themselves to move farther and faster, improve certain physical skill rolls, and even recall spells you’ve expended. Starfinder brings us stamina points, hit points, and resolve points. Stamina like grace and vitality represents your energy and endurance while hit points are a measure of your physical wellbeing. Resolve is something new however more reminiscent of Pathfinder Unchained’s Stamina rule. Players may spend resolve points to regain stamina points (with a rest), stabilize when you are dying, or to stay in the fight while unconscious.

So, I’ve been considering all these options and thinking about how I’ll handle hit points in my next campaign. I really like how grace and vitality can be spent to pay for taking particularly taxing actions, but I think, I want actions to have a uniform cost. Basically, you can do these things and each costs x number of hp. I like this application because it adds another interesting risk-reward choice to actions characters may attempt in combat.

Magical Healing

Healer’s Handbook cover art Copyright, Paizo Inc.

Now while I have been considering these rules I just came across two things of related interest. One, is an article from Keith Baker he posted this past week about making divine magic more mysterious and dramatic. While the article is generally advice for narrative tweaks to divine magic it did get me thinking about the primary divine intervention in fantasy RPGs: magical healing. The other was a rediscovery in Experimental Might about divine healing. The latter is a rule that says clerics can heal an unlimited number of times per day but a recipient can only receive healing from magic a limited number of times per day. There is also a limitation on how many individuals the cleric can heal each day, but that number rises quickly as the character increases in level.

I have lots of options to consider so I think I may have an excuse to playtest a variant hit point rule in a short game to see how it works in the short term before adding it to my table long term.

House Rules

Stamina & Hit Points Playtest Version 1
Player Characters will get two health pools: Stamina and hit points, to borrow from Starfinder’s parlance.  Stamina will be equal to the character’s normal Pathfinder hit points. Hit points on the other hand, will be equal to 10 + racial modifier + Con +1 per level.

Frail races (elves, gnomes, and halflings) get +4 hp, standard races (half-elf and human) get +6 hp, while the hardy races (dwarf and half-orc) get +8 hp.

When PCs are injured they lose points from thier Stamina first. Only when thier stamina pool is reduced to 0 do they begin losing hit points. Like with the grace and health rules the primary mechanical difference between the two pools is the rate of healing. For every 10 minutes of rest, you may heal your largest hit die + con modifier worth of stamina points. During an overnight rest, all of a character’s stamina points are restored and they regain 1 hp per day of rest. When magical healing is applied the character is healed of stamina damage first then hit point damage.

The Toughness feat adds to the character’s hit points normally while the Extra Stamina feat from Pathfinder Unchained adds to the character’s stamina points. Temporary hp such as from a barbarian rage are typically applied to the stamina pool unless noted otherwise in an update to these house rules.

Stamina points may be spent by to accomplish the following tricks.

• Anyone can spend 2 stamina points to move an Extra 5 feet as a part of a single move or double move once per round.
• Anyone can spend 5 stamina points to gain a +2 on a movement related skill check (such as acrobatics, climb, fly, or swim) or an unmodified physical ability check (such as a Strength check to break things).
• Anyone can spend 10 stamina points to take an extra move action (once per round)
• A character with the Combat Stamina feat from Pathfinder Unchained may spend thier stamina points as the feat describes and can also spend stamina to perform combat tricks for the combat feats they possess.

Characters who are fatigued, exhausted or unconscious cannot spend stamina points except to take it as damage.

If this works out well we’ll see about adding the magical healing rules from the Experimental Might book.

This weekend was GenCon the fastest four days in gaming. Like several other members of the Know Direction Network, I was wandering the halls of the Indianapolis Convention Center basking in the sheer excitement of the 50^th. Thousands of gamers roamed the dealer hall looking for the latest and greatest new releases and other cool swag. Thousands more bustled the convention center corridors on their way to play games, get food, or listen to seminars.

Of course, GenCon wasn’t the only big thing happening this weekend so as the convention closed up on Sunday, Monica and I took the family down to Nashville to watch the solar eclipse. What an awe-inspiring way to end our vacation but it all got jumbled together as I began thinking about how I might implement some of the experiences of the past weekend into a game.

NASA, Eclipse 2017

The Twilight Market

The Twilight Market is a misnomer but no one cares. Nearly seventy-thousand people crowd the stall-lined streets of this magical marketplace. The market exists as a demiplane near both the plane of shadow and the prime material. It can only be accessed by means of a magical black key turned in a lock during a full solar eclipse and stepping through the door. Returning is often harder as the door must still be in the moon’s shadow for the portal to work. As eclipses are brief only a couple of minutes, it is fortunate that time passes much more quickly in the market an hour spent in the market is only a second or two on the prime material.

Only the corona of the permanently eclipsed sun is visible on the demiplane leaving the market in the perpetual dim light of twilight or early dawn. Candles, lanterns, and the occasional torch offer supplemental light particularly near the taverns and inns of the market.

Rumor is anything can be found for sale in the Twilight Market, even weird things that can be found nowhere else: The distilled dreams of a long dead saint, books not yet written, incense that when burned evokes long forgotten memories and wine vintages made from grape species that died out before the first humans walked the material world.

1. Prepare based on your weaknesses: We’re all better at some things than others. Be honest with yourself and prepare most based on the things you are not so good at. If the Adventure you are running uses rules you don’t often play with such as drowning or other environmental hazards make sure you review those rules carefully before the event and have a copy of those rules ready at the table. If instead, you have problems describing NPCs evocatively and quickly consider “casting” famous actors in those roles and name drop them to your players. This is especially good if you can type cast a little. Need a slightly crazy villainous witch describe her as Helena Bonham Carter in Harry Potter, or maybe you need a wise retired Pathfinder for that role Sir Ian McKellan or Patrick Stuart could make good choices. Similarly, most modules have pictures if you have a similar issue describing other things the characters will see have a few of those printed off or queued up on your phone or tablet to show you players. Honestly, this is a good idea even if you’re great with descriptions.  Whatever your weakest GM skill might be, make preparing to compensate for that your first priority.
2. Have good statblocks: A three-line statblock works for publication but I recommend using the bestiary PDFs, the PRD, or d20pfsrd to find full statblocks for each monster. Then print off what you need before you sit down at the table.
   

   I find the hit point check boxes incredibly useful. You can make them yourself with the wingdings font.

   Sure you can carry your bestiaries but it speeds things up if you don’t have to search for the right monster or juggle multiple books. A couple of blogs back I talked about using the Starfinder statblock model for your Pathfinder game.  I’d like to say even if you don’t use the statblock I suggested in that article you still should have physical copies of all the statblocks you’ll need for every encounter in the adventure.

3. Preroll initiative: As I discussed in the statblock blog I don’t roll initiative for my monsters I typically use a base 10 + Initiative modifier but if you still prefer the randomness of dice rolls, consider rolling all of your monsters initiative in advance and include that in the statblock. I was surprised how much this one small adjustment helped speed up combat. You can do this for Perception as well if you opt for the base 10 + Skill = DC variant.
4. Maps and minis: The right props at the table can make a big difference. Pathfinder is tactical and while you can run combat theater of the mind, it is easier if you have maps. When you are running at home you may have the luxury of drawing the maps as you go at a convention that can really eat into the limited time you have. I suggest you have tactical maps for every encounter ready to go. Last year for Gencon I was one of the GMs for the first round of the Four Horsemen Open and I took the provided encounter maps and had them printed at Staples as black and white blueprints pretty cheaply. Alternately, You can use preprinted Flipmats or draw them yourself on a wet or dry erase mat or on a roll of Gaming Paper. Just have your maps ready before game time. If you have a decent collection of minis and you can bring them to the con (and you really want to) that’s great. If you don’t or cant bring a mess of minis don’t sweat it, just bring enough tokens to represent the PCs and each monster. The tokens can be nearly anything. I find the bases from the Pathfinder Pawns to be fine for most encounters.
   

   If you go the Starburst route I recommend getting some small round labels to apply to the candies. Wax paper is hard to write on and you may want to differentiate the villains with notations like “orc 1.”

   I once played a game with Alex Augunas, where he brought a bag of Starburst candies to be all the monsters and the players got to eat what they killed. Just make sure you have everything you need ready before you sit down to play.

5. Plan your timing: Review your adventure for areas that might sap a lot of your player’s time just to prepare yourself. You should also try to identify elements in the second or third acts of your adventure you can cut, hand wave, or otherwise speed along so that your game still reaches a satisfying conclusion should you run out of time. Likewise, look for elements you can expand on the off chance your players race through the adventure easily. Ending early can be nearly as disappointing as not getting to finish an adventure. A great way to work on timing if you have the opportunity is to run the adventure for your home group before running it at the convention.

Did these tips help you get your game ready for your next convention game? Let us know in the comments. Also if you have any tips I didn’t cover leave your suggestion in the comments.

Problem: Too Few Skill Points

Yeah, we’re still fighting with this one. It really is hard sometimes to fully realize your character concept when you only have two or three skill points but you also don’t want to throw off the game’s balance. Despite the optional rules that appear in Pathfinder Unchained I think there might be an easier, more elegant solution than just adding skill points that must be applied to “background skills.”

Image copyright Paizo, Inc.

Alternate Solution: Every character selects a background career and notes it on his or her character sheet. Characters may make skill checks, related to their background equal to ½ the character’s level plus the relevant ability modifier.

For example, a former pig farmer from Sandpoint turned fighter finds himself beginning his adventuring career in Korvosa. With his limited skill points, he realizes he’s skimped on handle animal but still finds he’s been roped into a strange blood sport trying to catch a pig in the rain and muck. The GM should allow the player roll his background skill score. Later while on the road he and his party are faced by a stubborn aurochs blocking the road unless the GM is feeling particularly generous the fighter should probably let someone else try to handle the animal off the road. Finally, since most of the action was supposed to take place a good distance from his hometown our example fighter also neglected to place any points in Knowledge (local) but suddenly a side plot has him back in Sandpoint. Again, he could roll his background score to emulate Knowledge (local) while in Sandpoint.

Problem: Skills Are Not as Exciting as They Could Be

So when you compare skill-use to combat, combat is clearly more fun. But good storytelling involves challenges that can’t just be solved with the pointy end of a sword.

Cover image copyright Everyman Gaming

Alternate Solution I: So it looks like our very own Alex Augunas solved much of this particular problem for me with the Skill Challenge Handbook. Alex’s very favorably reviewed system draws on existing mechanics and frames skill challenges in a familiar format that brings the depth and excitement of combat other types of encounters. Skill challenges, like haunts, traps, and fights, come with challenge ratings and XP awards, and so there are some skill-uses that don’t require this sort of treatment to be improved.

Alternate Solution II: Some skills take several rounds to accomplish, not normally a problem mechanic, but when a PC has committed to deactivating a trap or a mechanical hazard in the middle of combat it can be awfully boring for the next several rounds while they wait for that action to finally be completed. Drawing on material from the Index Card RPG from Runehammer Games we can change how long duration actions work by making them a variant form of extended challenges. Much like you roll for damage in combat you can roll for effect on any long duration task. This is what ICRPG calls effort.

We can accomplish this in Pathfinder pretty easily instead of setting a duration in a random number of rounds the task has a hit point like value we’ll call challenge points. In most cases, the player rolls to reduce the number of challenge points. Once those points are reduced to “0” the task is resolved.

For simplicity, I suggest multiplying the maximum number of rounds the task would take by 5 to determine the task’s challenge points. For example: disabling a difficult device normally takes 2d4 rounds for a maximum of 8 rounds or for our system 40 challenge points.

Players attempting the task they will typically roll 1d6 + relevant ability modifier lowering the challenge point total. Being trained in a skill increases the die by one step (just like increasing in size increases damage), masterwork tools also increase the die by one step. A skill test like this isn’t failed on a single roll even if it normally would be. In the case of skill-uses that would fail outright, the GM should set a number of consecutive failures, typically two or three, after which the task is ultimately failed.

Optionally, a GM could allow for critical successes. Again, like in combat a natural 20 results in a critical threat and a second successful skill check would confirm the threat and results in rolling double “damage” against a task’s challenge points. If you use this system natural “1’s” should provide no progress against the task’s challenge points.

If there’s an aspect of the rules that aren’t meeting your expectations talk to your group. Together, you may be able to find ways to shore up those parts of the system that don’t quite work for your group.

Paizo’s 2017 Free RPG Day Offering Starfinder First Contact

By now everyone interested in Starfinder has probably gotten their hands on a print or PDF copy of Starfinder First Contact Paizo’s Free RPG Day release this year. We knew Starfinder was going to be a whole new game fashioned from the same d20 chassis as Pathfinder but a little different. Today I want to look at a few of the changes First Contact highlights and talk about porting some of those broad concepts into your home Pathfinder games. Particularly, in how you might prep for your next session.

But before I do, I want to talk a little gaming history, because I may not prep sessions the way you do. When Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons first launched TSR did away with monster manuals as we knew them (and how we know them now). Instead, TSR released a 3-hole binder they called the Monstrous Compendium with all the monsters printed on loose sheets you could clip into the binder. Later sets of just monster sheets were released with the intent you’d just add them to your binder.

Wizards of the Coast 1989

These products were novel and quite innovative at the time and while they had some flaws, they did allow me as a GM to have just the monsters I needed on the table in front of me. Sometimes, if time allowed I’d make a trip to the library and run copies of monsters so I could take notes right on the monster entry.

Eventually, the game moved back away from this format and I was again dragging lots of books to the table until the rise of the PRD, PDFs, and improvements in desktop publishing. So with technology on my side, I’m back to having just the statblocks I need at my fingertips with only a modicum of extra effort. Now Starfinder First Contact illustrates how we might further streamline the statblock and make it easier to find just what you need. So while I’m intrigued by many of the rules changes pointed out by the book, it’s the simplifications of the presentation I’d like to talk about most today.

Photo of the Space Goblin Entry, Paizo 2017

Looking at the space goblin entry, at first glance it’s the familiar two-column layout. Sure CR and XP occupy the “monster name” line but otherwise, it’s familiar. Except Hit Points are right on the Defense header line of the statblock. A much better location for easily referencing. Other changes called out in the beginning of the book are also easily noticed: Monster ability scores are listed just as their modifiers (“If you ever need a monster’s exact ability score, assume it has the minimum ability score that corresponds to its modifier…”), Not every feat gets listed, feats that just alter a small portion of the statblock (like Toughness or Skill Focus) simply aren’t listed which results in less word clutter. So it’s familiar but  still distinctly different.

Unchained Initiative

These aren’t huge changes and are easily ported over to your preparations for your next game. This streamlining also works nicely with a simple house rule I began using some time ago. Instead of having the NPCs roll for initiative I assign each NPC an Initiative Score and place that on the statblock instead of the normal modifier. I also do this for their Perception skill as it appears at the top of the statblock. I leave the skill itself alone in case I still need to roll Perception for some reason.

These static scores are typically equal to 10 + the character’s relevant modifiers. Situational modifiers might adjust the current score up or down. In this system, PCs roll initiative normally and the NPC acts on the same count as his or her initiative score. It’s that simple. Removing just a few dice rolls allows me to focus on getting all the PC’s initiatives logged quickly so everyone can dive right into combat.

The Final Statblocks

Below is a sample statblock drawn from an early encounter in the Emerald Spire (most of the spoilery bits have been removed). Note that I have also omitted the Goblin Commando’s race/class notation as well because it’s largely irrelevant to what I need to run this encounter. I’m also using my house rules here and since this particular encounter specifically calls out the Commando as inattentive I imposed a -2 to his Perception Score and recorded it accordingly. I’ve also added boxes to mark off lost hit points (an “X” for lethal damage and a “/ ” for non-lethal).

In regards to feats note, I left Mounted Combat on the Commando’s statblock because it is an ability that doesn’t just alter the goblin’s statistics. Conversely, I didn’t need to keep the Toughness feat listed on the Goblin Dog because it only adds bonus hit points. I debated removing the information in the parentheses at the back of the “AC” line but ultimately decided that the details were worth keeping even if I rarely have to reference them.

Now let’s take a look at a more complicated statblock like our old friend Ripwing from my March 6th blog. Ripwing’s statblock still looks a lot busier than the goblin above but that’s to be expected with a CR 13 opponent. That said, this one is a lot cleaner than the original Ripwing.  I excised much of the word clutter making it easier to find his feats and remember to use them effectively at the table. I also cleaned up the special ability descriptions by personalizing it and removing the portions of those abilities Ripwing hadn’t accessed yet.

I’m a huge fan of encounter sheets and prepared statblocks rather than a stack of books. I think good preparation is key to keeping everything moving quickly and smoothly during play. If you have a game prep trick that speeds up your games please leave your tip in the comments.

Pathfinder’s use of miniatures and a tactical grid is probably the most obvious similarity to board games (particularly if you use their flip mats) but not the only one already supported. Paizo also provides a number of card products that aid play. Condition cards, buff cards, and critical hit (and fumble) decks are just a few examples that use or add to the rules. While the Face Card and Item Card lines can add visual elements to your table.

Beyond Paizo’s offerings, you can add a number of other accessories to your table. Glass beads, poker chips, and replica coins, pretty much if you’ve seen it used in a board game you can probably imagine a use for it in play.

Some Examples

• The GM of our Friday night campaign is running Kingmaker. We’re still only in book one and already the hex exploration feels like a game within a game. We have a blank hex map “board” we log our progress on and poker chips for tracking our food reserves. We hunt or purchase rations for additional food tokens and spend those as we eat and explore.
• If you have a table you don’t need to clean up regularly you could lay out a “hexploration” board one hex tile (similar to the tiles found in Settlers of Catan) at a time and mark the PCs current location with a miniature, glass bead, or meeple.

Catan Hex Tiles

• If you’re using the Hero Point rules you could pass out replica coins whenever a player earns a point. You can use the deluxe metal coins or cheap plastic party favors depending on your budget or style.

Cheap plastic novelty coins I found at a local party store.

• I have a mountain of Paizo’s item cards but no longer use them as a GM. I recently decided that I’d use a card or two to track specific expendable items such as ammunition. I’ll lay an arrow card near my character sheet and keep a couple of dice on it as counters.

Consider giving those d12’s something to do. Use them as counters.

• Another board game our players have introduced us to is Clank which incorporates two of my favorite mechanics, deck building and an “impending doom timer” like you find in Pandemic or Forbidden Island. Most of the games that use timers do so by advancing it randomly. Another RPG I’ve recently come across (The Index Card Role-Playing Game) recommends using timers regularly. The author suggests GMs use a large d20 where all the players can see it and tick it down as rounds slip by. In Pathfinder you might use this method in an altercation with a dragon ticking down to the next use of the monster’s breath weapon or perhaps the PCs are in a flooding ruin or sinking ship and so you make a flood tracker like is found in Forbidden Island advancing it at regular intervals.

Flood Tracker from Fobidden Island

Whatever board game elements you add to your game should enhance your play experience not over complicate things. Try things out but if they don’t work retire them and get back to what works.

Imagine a post-apocalyptic fantasy world where the gods are dead and arcane magic is failing. The magic that remains in the world is found only in magic items from the time before. A talented few can draw on that power to fuel their spells. What follows is a simple feat-based alternate magic system suitable for such an apocalyptic world or alongside the normal rules found in Pathfinder. I again (see my Magic of the Maze article) drew inspiration from the RGG’s spell point system but built it around feats. These rules are still very rough but you’ll get the idea.

Artifice Adept (Artifice)

You have an inborn talent for detecting and eventually channeling the magical power in magic items for other purposes.

Prerequisites: Constitution 13

Benefit: You may cast detect magic as an at will spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your level -2 (minimum 1). You also gain an Artifice Pool of 3 + Con modifier (minimum 0) + ½ your hit dice (minimum 1) these points may be spent to power other artifice feats. This pool refreshes each morning after a full night’s sleep.

Relic Caster (Artifice)

You can borrow spells from your magic items to cast yourself while doing your best to conserve the item’s inherent magic.

Prerequisites: Constitution 13, Artifice Adept, Use Magic Device 1 rank

Benefit: You may cast any spell from the Construction Requirements of a magic item you are wearing or wielding as a spell-like ability. Use your Constitution as your spellcasting ability score.

To cast the spell you must make a Use Magic Device roll with a DC of 11 + Spell Level and spend a number of artifice points equal to the spell level +1. If the spell level is greater than half your character level you cannot cast it. On a failed roll the spell is not cast only half the artifice points must be spent. On a successful roll, the spell is cast normally and you treat your caster level as your character level -2 for any variable effects.

For the duration of the spell or 1d4+1 rounds, whichever is longer the item you siphoned the power from becomes inert, effectively an ordinary item of it’s kind. A magic sword becomes a masterwork sword a bag of holding an ordinary empty bag its extradimensional space temporarily inaccessible.

Consumable items such as ammunition, potions, and scrolls as well as items with charges such as wands are built with only a limited amount of power and exhaust a daily use when accessed in this way.

Magic Syphon (Artifice)

You can use potions and scrolls to refresh your Artifice pool.

Prerequisites: Constitution 13, Artifice Adept, Relic Caster, Use Magic Device 5 ranks

Benefit: While holding a single use magic item such as a scroll or potion you may make a Use Magic Device check (DC 11 + half the item’s caster level) to siphon off the item’s magic and restore a number of artifice points equal to the highest-level spell used to create the item. Using this ability destroys potions and leaves scrolls inert and blank.

I know this that this third and final feat is distinctly incomplete but I’m still not sure what campaign I’ll use this system with or what crafting rules I want to use. There could be special considerations to factor into the feat’s design if I use Pathfinder Unchained’s dynamic item creation rules for example. I also want to playtest the first two feats before I push this system

Trained Artificer (Artifice)

You can extract the magical energy of one magic item and channel it into an item being created or enhanced to reduce the cost of second item’s creation.

Prerequisites: Constitution 13, Artifice Adept, Spell Syphon, any 1 Item Creation feat, Use Magic Device 5 ranks

Benefit: Design Note: Reverse the Item Creation Rules with Use Magic Device as the Skill to generate gp. Only ½ value if the Schools don’t match. (Optionally only ¼ or no value if the schools are traditionally opposing schools.)

To flesh out these rules I’m thinking about including Monte Cook’s alternate meta-magic feats which instead of adjusting the level of a spell the feats limit the number of times per day each feat may be used. You can find these feats in the 3^rd ed era Collected Book of Experimental Might from Malhavoc Press.

I imagine my brain wasn’t quite finished with alternate magic systems after my recent blog post about Magic in the Maze. So I created these feats to be the foundation of an alternate magic system. There could very easily be other feats one of my early thoughts was that instead of specific spells each feat would be more like those I came up with for my Winter’s Chosen article (from Pathways Magazine issue 54) and have special powers instead based on the type of magic item and/or the body slot occupied. Each category would get it’s own feat…this idea still isn’t off the table yet either, a player’s artifice pool could be used to pay for other abilities in addition to their spells.

Elves

In the setting of The Maze, bright elves from the ages prior to the existence of the Maze would have been quite familiar. Noble scholars living in harmony with nature. Their tree cities teeming with life and magic. The elves revered the creator and treasured their ancestors who through the blessings of magic could instead of dying could have their soul bound with the spirit of a tree in a sacred ritual.

The tree bonding ritual is my version of “sailing into the West.” The elf’s soul would be preserved virtually immortal in the tree but physically gone from the world. I imagine elven legend holds that the souls of these ancient elves whispered wisdom when the wind blew through their branches and a patient elf with the will to listen would have learned much in those forests.

Today, the forests are gone but they are remembered in small groves often kept on the tops of the wide walls of the Maze. Tiny sacred groves of flowering fruit trees being the most common remembrances of the old forests.

Mechanically, I see little reason to tamper much with elves. Or at least I didn’t. A couple of blog posts back [insert link] I talked about magic and the two PCs who would wield it. One was an elven mystic I’ve since named Asuriel. She is slated to fill an advisor role to Venn the halfling leader of the PCs’ band of outlaws. The wise magician advisor is a pretty familiar trope. Ditto elven advisor. While I don’t mind a few touchstones to classic fantasy I was considering how to differentiate Asuriel. At the same time Owen K.C. Stephens made an excellent post about young “Spring Elves” which got me to thinking, what if Asuriel is a young elf not yet an adult? A runaway or an orphan. I like the idea—a lot and I’m fairly certain I’ll use rules at least similar to those Owen presented in his blog and pad those out with options from Childhood Adventures (a book from Everyman Gaming I had the good fortune to work on).

Thinking about spring elves and the forlorn elves of Golarion I started to think what would an exposed elven society look like to humans, halflings, and other short-lived races? In the prior world and heck, most fantasy elves live in isolation. People rarely see how long it takes elves to mature they only see the end result. And how would it feel to grow up an elf and have childhood friends who are the children of the childhood friends you had just a few decades ago? How does all that work? Honestly, I still don’t have a definitive answer but I’m working on some theories and I think I know how it will affect Asuriel at least.

Dwarves

The dark elves of the old world were once like the bright elves but they moved below the surface to live in caves. Like the bright elves they tried to live in harmony with the earth but the stone is stingy compared to trees. It is hard, unyielding, and nonrenewable. The dark elves toiled and worked to subdue their surroundings, at first they sought to balance what they took and what the earth had to offer but eventually, the dark elves were beset by greed and the spiritual need for balance waned.

Now, if you’ve been reading this series from the beginning you might remember I made an offhand remark about wanting to tie the pantheon of gods to metals. I’m still on board with this idea and I think it might even be some sort of divine interference that corrupted the dark-elves with the infamous dwarven greed.

Mechanically, Like the elves above, there is isn’t any reason to change dwarves much either. Although I’m not sure giants would be such a threat below ground that dwarves would receive special training to fight them, so I might change Defensive Training to dragons instead of giants. But now that I’ve typed all that and thought about it, I find the idea of deep vault dwelling stone giants is strangely appealing. I’ll have to consider this seriously before I make a final decision.

Appearances

Dwarves and elves and elves are rarely described in a way that would make you think they could be cousin races. So I’ve been toying with how one might address that with this design. First of all, despite the monikers Bight and dark (which refer to whether they live in the sun or below ground), neither race comes in a single skin tone. Bright elves can have ebony brown to pearl white skin tones. Likewise, dwarves have much the same range of variations.

In this version, both elves and dwarves share a few qualities not always present in both races. Both have pointed ears for example but the elven ears tend to be longer and more pronounced. Both races can grow facial hair and have similar traditions regarding hair length. Short to mid length hair is fine for young elves and dwarves but growing it long is a sign of age and wisdom. Growing out your hair whether you are male or female before having reached at least late middle age tends to be frowned upon. There are societal norms that say growing it out too soon is a sign of presumptive arrogance. Likewise with beards on the men. Elven tradition on beards is that one goes clean shaven until at least early middle age but even then the beard is kept short until the elf would start growing out his hair. Dwarves tend to grow beards from the moment their facial hair begins to grow in but again the beards are kept short until later in life.

On Inclusion

If a player wants to play a character that reflects their heritage I think the setting should allow for that.

In the world of the Maze the ethnic variations I mentioned above and those of the other mortal races evolved regionally much as they had on earth. But because the time prior to the Maze was an age of high magic distance was a trivial concern. Teleportation and flying magic lead most nations towards a far more cosmopolitan world view than we normally experience. As such, in the current timeframe of the campaign towns and villages are very diverse both in ethnicities you might find represented but you’ll also frequently find halflings, orcs, elves, and humans living in the same villages.

With only a few minotaur led trade caravans connecting these towns. The people rarely have contact with another village and some cultural traditions will vary greatly from town to town possibly even violating the sorts of societal norms I described above when talking about elven and dwarven hair length.

Conclusion

As it turns out, I really didn’t have to adjust the rules for these two races at all really to change them enough to truly fit into my view of this campaign. Sure I may build the PC elf using Owen’s rules for young elves but that becomes an exception rather than the rule. Most NPC elves will be more traditional. And even if I make the few alterations to the dwarf abilities I mentioned the things that make these races stand out is the flavor text around the mechanical parts.

Frequently, that’s all it takes.

Guerilla Gaming

In the summer of 1983, I was introduced to the D&D Red Box and my world changed forever. We played D&D every day and often way into the night. We would play anywhere. My best friend’s living room, the backseat of one of our parent’s station wagons, the park, someone else’s front porch and sometimes we’d play nothing more than a single d20 we could sneak into a pocket, a pencil, some scrap paper, and our sketchy memories of the rules and monsters. I don’t miss those games exactly but there are times I long for the freedom of that style of play.

The Empty Table

Today I’m a published freelancer with a lot more experience under my belt than 10-year-old me but clearly, there is something I can go back and learn from my younger self and those reckless “we don’t need no stinking Rulebook” days.

Next time I run a one-off game, I’m going to empty the table. Literally. No rulebooks. No phones. No distractions. Just dice and a pencil for each player. I have some rolled paper I’ll tape down onto the table to give the players a place to take notes and record their characters. Yup, right on the play area. Gaming paper has grid rolls so I might tape down a section of that too.

We’ll keep the rules very simple and I’ll adapt something my players are familiar with. Currently, our go to games are Pathfinder and Numenera but we’ve also played a little FATE. These three systems are pretty easy to pick up but have varying degrees of complexity. And while Pathfinder is easily the most complex of the three, I think my players are most familiar with its dice conventions. So I’ll build off of Pathfinder’s most basic mechanic and borrow some concepts from the other games to smooth over the rough rules. (Plus, this is a Pathfinder blog, so I don’t think I’ll go breaking that rule.)

The Rough Rules

Character Creation

Rather than picking a race and class each player should provide a short single-sentence Description of their character. As long as the character is performing an action tied to that Description she gains a +2 to any skill or ability checks. This sentence might also convey a few other minor abilities such as darkvision or low-light depending on racial choices summarized in the description. A description sentence might read something like this: “Beale is a slight elven rogue with a sharp tongue and sharper daggers,” Or “Despite being brutish and menacing in appearance, the half-orc, Thade is actually a kind hearted ranger.” An exact formula isn’t required and could be replaced with a more familiar list, “NG Halfling Fighter.”

We’ll use the six standard Pathfinder Abilities but we’re going to skip scores and just place modifiers as follows: +3, +2, +1, 0, 0, -2.

Each character selects up to five Skills and must take two Inabilities. Skills grant the character a +2 to any checks involving them while Inabilities inflict a -2 penalty. Skills (and Inabilities) can be anything from the PF skill list, saving throws, initiative, base attack, or defense (in lieu of AC). Basically, skills encompass anything you can do that would require a roll. A character may take a skill a second time to increase it to a maximum of +4. Note: some magical spell effects are best expressed as skills in this system.

Each character gains a single Unique Exploit. Maybe you’re the wielder of a magic talking sword of living ice. Maybe you’re a rogue and your exploit is that you take no damage from traps and you can aid an ally within arm’s reach granting them the same benefit. Players and GMs should work out a special quality for each character. In a more modern setting maybe you’re an expert in two gun mojo and can inflict double damage when wielding two guns against the same target.

Every Player begins with 20 Hit Points and 3 Hero Points. I’ve got a mess of poker chips we’ll probably use for easy reference.

Hit Points are an abstract measure of your health and vitality. You regain 1d6 Hit Points after a full nights rest.

Hero Points an even more abstract measure of your character’s potential. Hero points can be spent before a roll is made to roll two d20s and the character can choose the best. If spent to add a reroll after a roll has been made the character must take the second roll even if it is worse than the initial roll. You gain Hero Points for acting heroically or for enduring hardship. The GM may offer a hero point to add an unexpected complication to a situation. If the player accepts they gain a Hero Point but must deal with the complication. If the player refuses they must spend a Hero Point of their own instead of gaining one.

Finally, each character needs some equipment. You may select up to two weapons and a suit of armor a reasonable explorer’s kit of gear appropriate to your description and 3d4 gold pieces. Some gear such as shields automatically grants a skill bonus of +2 automatically.

Weapons and Armor Statistics

Light Weapons get a +1 bonus to hit but only deal 1d6 damage. Examples of light weapons include darts (3), daggers (2), rapier, shortbow (20 arrows), short sword, small club and whip.

Medium Weapons get neither a bonus nor a penalty to hit and inflict 1d8 damage. Some medium ranged weapons require two hands. Examples of medium weapons include battleaxe, broadsword, club, crossbow (20 bolts), flail, longbow (20 arrows), mace, pistols ^M, and war hammer.

Heavy Weapons suffer a -1 penalty to hit and inflict 1d10 points of damage. Heavy weapons always require two hands to wield. Examples of heavy weapons include chainsaw ^M, great axe, greatsword heavy crossbow (20 bolts), heavy draw longbow (20 arrows), polearms, rifles ^M, and spiked chain.

Light Armor grants a +1 to defense skill checks and Damage Reduction (DR) 1. Examples of light armor include chain shirt, leather armor, padded armor, and studded leather.

Medium Armor grants a +2 to defense skill checks and DR 2 but imposes a -1 armor check penalty to most other (non-combat) physical skill checks. Examples of medium armor include chainmail, steel breastplate, and tactical vest ^M.

Heavy Armor grants a +3 to defense skill checks and DR 3 but imposes a -2 armor check penalty to most other (non-combat) physical skill checks. Examples of heavy armor include: platemail and riot gear ^M

Spellcasting characters may instead of taking gear opt to use their weapons and armor allotments to count as targeted spells that use the same statistics as above. A ranged spell like a flame strike could be effectively “cast” 20 times per day unless it were selected twice while a conjured ice sword could be used pretty much as needed. Similarly, armor and be conjured as a spell using the statistics from above.

Playing

Everything is a Skill check. PCs either roll against a set DC or make an opposed roll against a monster. Any normal skill can be attempted by any character. Roll 1d20 + relevant Ability + relevant Skill + any relevant modifiers vs. opponent’s roll or static DC. In opposed rolls, the defender wins any ties.

Special Rolls: If a character rolls a natural 18, 19, or 20 something cool happens. It is up to the GM and the player to decide what the cool thing was. In combat, the cool this is usually extra damage +2 for an 18, +4 for a 19, and +6 for a 20.

If a character rolls a 1 something bad happens to complicate the situation. At the GMs discretion, the check might still succeed but with a cost. Maybe your bullet hits its mark but passes through the intended target inflicting damage to an ally on the other side or maybe your gun just jammed.

Aid: Characters can aid one another with either the same skill check or complimentary checks. If a character rolls a ten or better on the aid check the assisted character gains a +2 on their next related check. When three or more characters gang up on the same target in melee they are automatically considered to be aiding one another without using an action to do so.

Setting DCs and Choosing Adversaries

Below is a table for setting difficulties. Note that Intimidating and Formidable DCs are beyond the scope of most characters using these rules except in very some specific circumstances. Most difficulties should be somewhere between Simple and Tricky.

When deciding what sorts of enemies to throw at the PCs it’s unlikely you have a perfect and encyclopedic recall of all the bestiaries but I’m willing to bet you have a strong feel for what’s in this books nonetheless. Use the guidelines on the chart above to rough out the monsters you’ll have the character’s face.

Final Notes

Anything, not specifically covered in these rules is considered to be the same as the related rules from Pathfinder. Discrepancies that may pop up are left to the GM and to work out during play.

When you break the rules like this you could run pretty much anything from staple fantasy to time traveling historical figures.  How would you break all the rules and what would you run? Join in the conversation.

Next week we’ll go back into the Maze for a closer look at the elves and dwarves of the setting.

First, however, we need to look at the party composition and how it fits the story we want to tell. As I described before the leader of the party is the Halfling Venn Mears. Venn’s closest advisor is an elven spiritual-mystic. Despite a quasi-religious connection to the spirits of the world, this mystic would be an arcane caster. And the more I’ve thought about it the more I want to violate my own rule and include a small amount of divine magic. I think one of the gods, whether out of mischief or guilt should take an interest in the mortal world and has chosen a PC herald. The remaining characters won’t have much in the way of spellcasting if any.

So mechanically, both arcane and divine characters function pretty much the same and conform to the Rogue Genius spell point rules. Each character gets a number of spell points per level to cast their spells. For flavor, I’ll probably rename this pool of points (“essentia” for arcane casters and “grace” for divine) so players can have in character discussions without resorting to using the term “spell points.” Costs of spells can be modified by Dissonance (caused by repeatedly casting the same spell over and over) and maybe some environmental effects. Meta-magic feats and some magic items require alteration from the core rules but those explanations appear in the Spellpoints Companion.

This doesn’t radically change how magic works in Pathfinder terms but it does allow us to explore magic and its applications a little differently. We can look into the fundamental questions of magic that fiction writers explore: “What is the cost of magic?” and “What is the source of magical power?” I knew from the beginning that arcane magic comes from the destruction of the Creator. That a spark of the divine now resides within all mortals. That spark, for some burns like a flame granting the ability to work arcane magic. This also works nicely with the spell points system because there are fatigue and exhaustion rules built into the system. So that tapping too deeply into that inner flame can be taxing.

So how does a character replenish this inner fire? Their essentia? A character may regain some with rest but that’s how characters recover magic already. What if arcane casters have to regain power another way such as through food? Maybe, spell casters have a very fast metabolism and need to consume twice as much food as a normal character during the day in order to regain spell points during their eight hours of rest. An arcane spell-caster who doesn’t eat enough food still regains spell points but must treat it as though they went the day without any food. I like this thematically, it makes magic an appetite and power becomes more vital than life itself. We’ll keep it.

For our elven-mystic, I like the witch base class. With a bit of change applied to the class’ cosmetics and carefully curated character options, we’ll get a PC who plays very differently from the traditional arcane caster. So, like we did renaming spell points “essentia,” we’ll rename other elements of the witch class because words like “witch” and “hex” carry a lot of baggage. While those words work well for the class in most settings they won’t serve us as well here. We’ll continue to call the character a mystic and they’ll still learn spells via their familiar in accordance with an ancient spirit pact. The witches hex’s we’ll call “gifts” or something similar. Specific hexes such as Aura of Purity work well as written, while other mechanically sound hexes such as Evil Eye and Cauldron might make more sense within the setting if they have new names. Altogether, this gives familiar mechanics a whole new feel completing the illusion this is a new magic system.

Admittedly, I’ve given much less thought to divine casters. Mostly because I first thought the gods would be more remote and only a few antagonist NPCs might have divine backing. Now, however as I warm to a more traditional party and the (admittedly worn) “chosen of the gods” trope, I find myself needing to explore divine magic a little closer. I know that the PC in question will be an oracle. I even know that I want the blindness curse which we’ll re-flavor to actually be a complete boon (the character was born blind).

One of the few concepts I had going in was that each god would be attuned to a different metal the Creator deity had used to forge the bowl of the heavens. I know that I want the oracle’s eyes to have been transformed into metal. Divine casters regain spell points at the whim of their patron deities, but as long as the caster is serving the patron’s desires the power will likely flow. In order to regain spell points, the caster needs to be in physical contact with a holy symbol made of at least a pound of the deity’s metal.

In the end, I haven’t made as many sweeping or as drastic changes as I first expected but the changes still dramatically alter how magic affects the campaign’s story. The biggest changes come from the Spell Points Compilation and with that that all the major work was already done for me.

In 2013 Endzeitgeist gave the Spellpoints Compilation a five-star review.

Pre-generated PCs aren’t a new idea in table-top. Indie games like Lady Blackbird have been doing this for some time but that’s usually in shorter arcs. But it’s not even new to the Pathfinder Roleplaying game examples include playing as the iconics in PFS or Jason Bulmahn’s Patreon project: Edge of Eventide. There are occasions when players to play pre-generated characters but it doesn’t happen all that often.

So how did I get here?

Monica has been playing a lot of Dragon Age: Inquisition and I’ve been watching as I write. Now while the player has some open options regarding the Herald of Andraste the rest of the party is completely pre-generated and advancement for all the characters is pretty regimented along skill trees. Which got me to thinking: What if I build a “class” that is a specific character. I can customize the advancement but still leave a lot of open options for players to choose from.

This sort of design means you can weave the characters tightly into the campaign’s story and have a good expectation of what each character will be capable of at various levels.

For the campaign story, I’m going to go with a classic archetypal Robin Hood story set in the Maze where the Minotaur Lords forbid maps of the maze and starve out non-compliant villages. During the campaign, the PCs will be a small band of rebels resisting minotaur tyranny by mapping the roads of the maze and bringing supplies to starving towns. An ideal culmination of the campaign would be a heist to steal the mythical True Map. The artifact that bestows the ability to traverse the maze to the minotaur race.

So who would be the first player character of the Maze campaign?

Venn Mears a male Halfling who bears physical and emotional scars from his long conflict with the Minotaur Legion. Venn might be the leader, the other certainly follow him, but, he doesn’t care who gets the credit. Venn’s more Little John than Robin. On a similar note, Venn has a number of abilities and character options that allow him to more effectively aid his companions.

As a youth Venn harbored a fierce resentment for the freedom the minotaurs seemed to possess over the other races with their ability to freely travel the maze. He made a decision early to explore the region surrounding his home village of Cliffside. Alone and against the wishes of his closest family and friends Venn wandered into The Maze.

He watched the stars and the caravan of constellations arrayed across the sky. He mapped the paths of The Maze for several miles around the village until a band of minotaurs wearing the uniforms of Legion soldiers encountered Venn on the road. The unit’s leader decided this halfling’s behavior was suspicious and his presumption to “map the roads” tantamount to treason. Venn was beaten, tortured then left for dead.

[Design notes: Below are some of the mechanics for playing and advancing Venn. It should be noted characters are built with the consolidated skills system but get their full Intelligence bonus’ worth of skills. Hit points are a flat number that incorporates the character’s race in the equation at each level. Characters are built using 15 points for ability scores but get to advance attributes twice before seventh level (Venn’s Ability Scores are 9, 16, 12, 13, 12, 14). And characters get a feat at every level unless like Venn they are using the variant multi-classing rules from Pathfinder Unchained. Venn is designed primarily as a rogue (ranger). PCs also begin at 2nd level. All of these adjustments increase the character’s potential power but not dramatically even so GMs should keep the power shift in mind when designing adventures.]

Venn Mears

Class Skills

Venn’s Class Skills are Acrobatics, Finesse, Influence, Perception, Stealth, and Survival.

Skill Points per Level: 4 + Intelligence modifier.

Character Features

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: Venn is proficient with all simple weapons, plus the hand crossbow, rapier, sap, short sword, shortbow, and any weapon with the word “halfling” in its name. He is also proficient with light armor, but not with shields.

Evasion (Ex): Venn can avoid even magical and unusual attacks with great agility. If he succeeds at a Reflex saving throw against an attack that normally deals half damage on a successful save, he instead takes no damage. Evasion can be used only if Venn is wearing light armor or no armor. If helpless Venn does not gain the benefit of evasion.

Fearless: Halflings receive a +2 racial bonus on all saving throws against fear. This bonus stacks with the bonus granted by halfling luck.

Finesse Training (Ex): Venn begins play with Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat. In addition, starting at 3rd level, he can select any one type of weapon that can be used with Weapon Finesse (such as rapiers or daggers). Once this choice is made, it cannot be changed. Whenever he makes a successful melee attack with the selected weapon, he adds his Dexterity modifier instead of his Strength modifier to the damage roll. If any effect would prevent Venn from adding his Strength modifier to the damage roll, he does not add his Dexterity modifier.

Halfling Luck: Halflings receive a +1 racial bonus on all saving throws.

Keen Senses: Halflings receive a +1 racial bonus on Perception checks.

Rogue Talents: As Venn gains experience, he learns a number of talents that aid him and confound his foes. Starting at 2nd level, Venn gains one rogue talent. He gains an additional rogue talent for every 2 levels attained after 2nd level. Venn cannot select an individual talent more than once. See below for a list of talents for Venn to choose from.

Small size: Halflings are Small creatures and gain a +1 size bonus to their AC, a +1 size bonus on attack rolls, a –1 penalty to their CMB and CMD, and a +4 size bonus on Stealth checks.

Sneak Attack: If Venn can catch an opponent when it is unable to defend itself effectively from his attack, he can strike a vital spot for extra damage.

This attack deals extra damage anytime his target would be denied a Dexterity bonus to AC (whether the target actually has a Dexterity bonus or not), or when Venn flanks his target. This extra damage is 1d6 at 1st level, and increases by 1d6 every 2 levels thereafter. Ranged attacks can count as sneak attacks only if the target is within 30 feet. This additional damage is precision damage and is not multiplied on a critical hit.

With a weapon that deals nonlethal damage (such as a sap, unarmed strike, or whip), Venn can make a sneak attack that deals nonlethal damage instead of lethal damage. He cannot use a weapon that deals lethal damage to deal nonlethal damage in a sneak attack—not even with the usual –4 penalty.

Venn must be able to see the target well enough to pick out a vital spot and must be able to reach such a spot. He cannot sneak attack while striking a creature with total concealment.

Sure-Footed: Halflings receive a +1 racial bonus on Acrobatics and Athletics checks.

Trapfinding: A rogue adds 1/2 her level on Perception checks to locate traps and on Finesse checks (minimum +1) made to disable traps. A rogue can use Finesse to disarm magic traps.

Danger Sense (Ex): At 3rd level, Venn gains a +1 bonus on Reflex saves to avoid traps and a +1 dodge bonus to AC against attacks made by traps. In addition, she gains a +1 bonus on Perception checks to avoid being surprised by a foe. These bonuses increases to +2 at 6th level. This ability counts as trap sense for the purpose of any feat or class prerequisite.

Track (Ex): At 3rd level, Venn adds half his level to Survival skill checks made to follow tracks.

Debilitating Injury (Ex): At 4th level, whenever Venn deals sneak attack damage to a foe, he can also debilitate the target of her attack, causing it to take a penalty for 1 round (this is in addition to any penalty caused by a rogue talent or other special ability). The rogue can choose to apply any one of the following penalties when the damage is dealt.

Bewildered: The target becomes bewildered, taking a –2 penalty to AC. The target takes an additional –2 penalty to AC against all attacks made by Venn.

Disoriented: The target takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls. In addition, the target takes an additional –2 penalty on all attack rolls it makes against Venn.

Hampered: All of the target’s speeds are reduced by half (to a minimum of 5 feet). In addition, the target cannot take a 5-foot step.

These penalties do not stack with themselves, but additional attacks that deal sneak attack damage extend the duration by 1 round. A creature cannot suffer from more than one penalty from this ability at a time. If a new penalty is applied, the old penalty immediately ends. Any form of healing applied to a target suffering from one of these penalties also removes the penalty.

Uncanny Dodge (Ex): At 4th level, Venn can react to danger before his senses would normally allow him to do so. He cannot be caught flat-footed, nor does he lose his Dexterity bonus to AC if the attacker is invisible. He still loses his Dexterity bonus to AC if immobilized. Venn can still lose his Dexterity bonus to AC if an opponent successfully uses the feint action against him.

Rogue’s Edge (Ex): At 5th level, Venn has mastered a single skill beyond that skill’s normal boundaries, gaining results that others can only dream about. He gains the skill unlock powers for that skill as appropriate for her number of ranks in that skill.

Favored Enemy (Ex): At 7th level, Venn selects a creature type from the ranger favored enemies table. He gains a +2 bonus on Perception and Survival checks against creatures of the selected type, and to checks with the monster knowledge function of the relevant skill. Likewise, he gets a +2 bonus on weapon attack and damage rolls against them. A ranger may make Knowledge skill checks untrained when attempting to identify these creatures.

If Venn chooses humanoids or outsiders as a favored enemy, he must also choose an associated subtype, as indicated on the Ranger Favored Enemies table. (Note that there are other types of humanoid to choose from—those called out specifically on the table are merely the most common.)

Venn’s Rogue Talent Options

[Design note: Venn has a very restricted list of rogue talents but not all of them originate in the core rules. I added some slayer talents from Rogue Genius Games Talented Slayer variant class and I adjusted some of the variant Halfling racial traits and made those rogue talents and I created one new talent entirely. I wanted Venn’s player to have plenty of options but I wanted to make sure the options available reflected the sort of character that Venn is. So several of the talents from the core rules are unavailable. There are about eight talents for each selection the player can make. I’ll make similar decisions for each character’s feats as well although I’m not covering that here.]

Talents marked with an asterisk add effects to a rogue’s sneak attack. Only one of these talents can be applied to an individual attack, and the decision must be made before the attack roll is made.

Bleeding Attack* (Ex): A rogue with this ability can cause living opponents to bleed by hitting them with a sneak attack. This attack causes the target to take 1 additional point of damage each round for each die of the rogue’s sneak attack (e.g., 4d6 equals 4 points of bleed). Bleeding creatures take that amount of damage every round at the start of each of their turns. The bleeding can be stopped by a successful DC 15 Heal check or the application of any effect that heals hit point damage. Bleed damage from this ability does not stack with itself. Bleed damage bypasses any damage reduction the creature might possess.

Camouflage (Ex): A rogue with this talent can craft simple but effective camouflage from the surrounding foliage. The rogue needs 1 minute to prepare the camouflage, but once he does, it is effective for the rest of the day or until the rogue fails a saving throw against an area-effect spell that deals acid, cold, or fire damage, whichever comes first. The rogue gains a +4 bonus on Stealth checks while within terrain that matches the foliage used to make the camouflage. This ability cannot be used in areas without natural foliage.

Combat Trick: A rogue who selects this talent gains a bonus combat feat.

Esoteric Scholar (Ex): A rogue with this talent can attempt any Knowledge skill check, even if he is not trained in that Knowledge skill.

Fast Stealth (Ex): This ability allows a rogue to move at full speed using the Stealth skill without penalty.

Find the Chink (Ex): When the character scores a critical hit on a target with an attack that does not get to add his sneak attack dice, he may opt to deal normal (rather than critical) damage, and add his sneak attack dice.

Fleet of Foot: Some halflings are quicker than their kin. Halflings with this talent move at normal speed and have a base speed of 30 feet.

Force Off-Guard (Ex): As a standard action the rogue may make an Influence check to feint a target. If he succeeds, he may select one ally who may add half the rogue’s sneak attack dice to the first successful attack the ally makes against that target before the start of the rogue’s next turn. A rogue must have at least 2d6 of sneak attack to select this talent.

Got Your Back (Ex): While the rogue is adjacent to an ally, he may grant that ally the benefits from his uncanny dodge ability. If the rogue has improved uncanny dodge, the ally also gains the benefits of that ability. (If a creature would be able to flank the rogue despite uncanny dodge, it can also flank the rogue’s ally.) If the rogue is adjacent to multiple allies he may either select a single ally to benefit from this talent as a free action, to grant it to all adjacent allies as a swift action. If an ally moves so it is no longer adjacent to the rogue, the ally loses the benefit of the got your back talent. If the rogue is immobilized, flat-footed, or helpless, he cannot use this talent. A rogue must have uncanny dodge to select this talent.

Ledge Walker (Ex): This ability allows a rogue to move along narrow, uneven, or slippery surfaces (such as ice) at full speed using the Acrobatics skill without penalty. In addition, a rogue with this talent is not flat-footed when using Acrobatics to move along such surfaces, and retains her Dexterity bonus to AC.

Low Blow: Some halflings train extensively in the art of attacking larger creatures. Halflings with this talent gain a +1 bonus on critical confirmation rolls against opponents larger than themselves.

Major Magic (Sp): A rogue with this talent gains the ability to cast a 1st-level spell from the sorcerer/wizard spell list once per day as a spell-like ability for every 2 rogue levels he possesses. The rogue’s caster level for this ability is equal to his rogue level. The save DC for this spell is 11 + the rogue’s Intelligence modifier. A rogue must have the minor magic rogue talent and an Intelligence score of at least 11 to select this talent.

Minor Magic (Sp): A rogue with this talent gains the ability to cast a 0-level spell from the sorcerer/wizard spell list. This spell can be cast at will as a spell-like ability. The rogue’s caster level for this ability is equal to his rogue level. The save DC for this spell is 10 + the rogue’s Intelligence modifier. A rogue must have an Intelligence score of at least 10 to select this talent.

Multitalented (Ex): The rogue can use his rogue talents more often. Once per day, he can use a rogue talent that is normally only usable once per day one additional time. At 10th level and 18th level, he can use this talent one additional time per day (for a maximum total of 3 additional uses of a rogue talent that can normally only be used once per day). The uses of this talent do not have to be spent on the same rogue talent. This ability cannot be used with an advanced talent.

Nimble Climber (Ex): Whenever the rogue fails an Athletics check to climb by 5 or more, he can attempt a Reflex save (using the same DC as the Climb check) to catch himself and avoid falling.

Nimble Squeeze (Ex): Whenever the rogue needs to squeeze through a small space the penalties for squeezing are halved from –4 to –2. Additionally, the movement penalty to move through tight spaces is reduced. Each square counts as a square and a half, treat this like moving diagonally through a square. The first square counts as 5 feet the next 10 feet.

Powerful Sneak* (Ex): Whenever a rogue with this talent takes a full-attack action, he can take a –2 penalty on all attack rolls until the start of him next turn. If he does, he can reroll any sneak attack damage dice that result in 1s. He can reroll multiple dice, but he can’t reroll any individual die more than once per attack.

Resiliency (Ex): Once per day, a rogue with this ability can gain a number of temporary hit points equal to twice him rogue level. Activating this ability is an immediate action that can be performed only when the rogue is brought to below 0 hit points. This ability can be used to prevent the rogue from dying. These temporary hit points last for 1 minute. If the rogue’s hit points drop below 0 due to the loss of these temporary hit points, he falls unconscious and is dying as normal.

Rogue Crawl (Ex): While prone, a rogue with this ability can move at half speed. This movement provokes attacks of opportunity as normal. A rogue with this talent can take a 5-foot step while crawling, and he reduces his attack roll and AC penalties for being prone by 2.

Stand Up (Ex): A rogue with this ability can stand up from a prone position as a swift action without provoking attacks of opportunity, or as a free action that provokes attacks of opportunity.

Surprise Attack (Ex): During the surprise round, a rogue with this ability always considers opponents flat-footed, even if they have already acted. A rogue with this ability adds 1/2 his rogue level to his sneak attack damage rolls made during the surprise round.

Terrain Mastery (Ex): A rogue with this talent gains a favored terrain, as the ranger class feature of the same name, but the bonus does not increase with his level. A rogue can select this talent multiple times, each time applying it to a new terrain.

Trap Spotter (Ex): Whenever a rogue with this talent comes within 10 feet of a trap, he can attempt an immediate Perception check to notice the trap. This check should be made in secret by the GM.

Weapon Training: A rogue who selects this talent gains Weapon Focus as a bonus feat.

Zig-Zag (Ex): The rogue is an expert at moving swiftly through crowds and past foes. The rogue adds half her level to Acrobatics checks made to avoid attacks of opportunity and does not treat crowds as difficult terrain.

I think if the player’s trust the GM, pre-generated player characters can be an interesting option for a change of pace particularly if the story is tightly woven through the characters backgrounds. If this sounds like an interesting idea check with your group if everyone is on board with you the GM designing character’s for a short campaign give it a shot. It need not be as elaborate as I’ve planned out here it could be a matter of building 1st level PCs and integrating the backgrounds into the ongoing story.

I’ve made no secret that I love the idea behind e6 and I work it into many of the modifications I’ve made to Pathfinder. A big reason for this is that low-level play has fewer moving parts so you are less likely to wreck game balance. Which works well for a project like this where the goal is to make big changes. If the changes made to the first tier of play work we can then look to the remaining tiers of the game and extend our rules.

What kinds of changes are we talking about? For starters magic. I really want to lose Vancian magic. Don’t get me wrong I love Pathfinder and Vancian magic is part of that but sometimes I’d like to play with something different. In my last blog, I spoke of the spark in spell casters but that’s an explanation, not a magic system. Back in December, I woke from a vivid dream with a clear vision of a set of literary rules for magic. The core of this was the idea that conjunctions are magical.

Not just the great celestial conjunctions but small everyday conjunctions can be used for magical purposes. The premise runs something like all things are connected. When two closely connected things pass in close proximity to one another a magical practitioner may be able to exploit this connection and achieve a magical effect. Such as teleporting a small item from the pocket of one person’s coat to the caster’s own pocket exploiting the similarities between two nearly identical coats. Conjunctions like this require a lot of power and training to master and the more disparity between the items the weaker the conjunction.

I really want to be able to bring this magic system to the table with a system that focuses on these conjunctions and the natural spirits who empower them without resorting to “memorized spells” I want to encourage player creativity in the spell casting but I need it to be familiar to long term players.

With my design goals for magic in place, I began digging through my 3^rd era books and resources from some of my favorite third party publishers for Pathfinder. I knew pieces of what I want already exist and when your building rules for your home game you don’t need to completely reinvent the wheel yourself.

Mont Cook’s Collected Book of Experimental Might has rules for twenty levels of spells and it turns out alternate rules for meta-magic feats. Rather than increasing spell level these alternate feats only allow the feats to be used a limited number of times per day. I like both of these rules, twenty levels of spells means new spell options at every character level. And a balanced option that encourages players to use more meta-magic is more than welcome here.

Arcana Evolved also by Monte Cook gave every spell a weaker and a stronger version spellcaster’s could cast. This could be useful for strong or weak conjunctions or as written giving casters greater control over their spells.

Of most use however was Rogue Genius Game’s Houserule Handbooks Spell Point Compilation. In which Owen KC Stephens gives player’s and GMs a well-balanced point-based spell casting system that while using existing spells better mimics magic seen in books and on film. Here spell casters tire as they deplete their reserves of spell points, meta-magic feats increase casting costs and casting times, and casting the same spell over and over again becomes more costly.

Now since the Release of Ultimate Magic I’ve wanted to play with the Words of Power rules but I’ve never found the right opportunity. Maybe right now is the time? Maybe not. I like the idea of characters mastering different aspects of magic, or “words of power.” Thus being good at different spells.

Mingling all these very disparate optional magic seems like it could be a recipe for disaster or awesome. Each in equal measures. I’ll keep tinkering with it.

Please keep coming back while we explore the Maze, in two weeks I’ll be talking races and classes and maybe I’ll have a sneak peek available for what I’m coming up with in the way of this new magic system. If you have ever designed your own magic systems feel free to share your stories in the comments.

Since I’ve also been a part of a couple of discussions regarding what specifically makes this game Pathfinder. I thought it would be interesting to really stretch the ruleset to its limit and consider some big changes. There won’t be a lot of mechanics this week, right now I want to focus on setting elements.

I also don’t want to make this just medieval Europe with the serial numbers filed off. I want to create a setting different from anything I already have. Now, I’ve had this idea of a minotaur kingdom that was an actual physical maze for a long time, but the longer I consider it the more central I want to make this maze to an ongoing campaign. I also wanted to run a game that steps away from the typical Vancian magic. So that’s where we’ll start.

Now, what if the gods of the world not only turned their backs on the mortal races but also confined them to a vast prison maze and set the minotaurs as the guards or rulers? This sets the gods up ultimately as antagonists rather than constant (if inscrutable) allies. Although, given the capricious nature of the gods in earth’s own mythologies it is possible that every so often one of the gods may lend the PCs a hand.

This maze built by the gods would be open to the sky like a vast canyon system but in some places cities may be carved out of the maze walls or built atop the walls. Plenty of these walls would be wide enough to support several buildings or even allow for limited farming. In my mind, The Maze is huge like a small continent. Likely as large as Australia. What lies beyond its borders may be other kingdoms, untamed wilderness, or perhaps the sea.

Why would the gods do this? Was it a punishment for some transgression or was it an act of fear. I’m imagining this was an act of fear. Fear that humans, elves, and other races might one day rise up and cast down the gods…Just as the gods cast down their creator?

The Legend of the Maze

In an age, long ago before written histories the bards and skalds sang of the creation of the world. Their stories spoke of a great creator who birthed the world. The Creator lit the fires of the firmament from the forge she used to cast the black iron bowl of the sky. From the same metals as she used for the sky she cast the first of the gods.

The bards and skalds also told tales of betrayal and treachery. Of Uiran and his rebellion against the creator. Uiran led the gods to slay their maker they cut her down and cremated her corpse in the very forge from which each of the gods emerged.

They sing of the great sadness and anger of the early mortal kingdoms and how the Creator’s ashes spread across the world drifting and settling into every bit of the natural world awakening as divergent spirits who spoke to mortals and taught each race secrets and magic once known only to the Creator and the gods.

The gods began to fear the mortals who were justly angry at the death of the creator. As the mortal races grew in power Uiran again roused the gods to action. “The mortals will rise against us as we rose against the Creator.” Mithran the goddess of moonlight, dreams, and mercy refused to allow Uiran to slay the mortals. Instead, the gods raised a great prison a maze to keep the mortal races contained.

It is said that Auric god of the Sun and Knowledge raised the minotaurs up above the other mortal races and gave the first Minotaur king the only map of the maze and now generations later no minotaur gets lost in the maze. Another song, tells the story of a minotaur hero who found a hidden way into heaven and snuck into the realm of the gods and into Auric’s castle. The hero stole the map and when the gods found out they punished the minotaurs by making them the guards of the maze and stripping them of the trust of the other races.

This is just one myth of the maze. One of the most prevalent. But there are others. Some believe that those born in the Maze are the recently departed from another world and that the maze is redemption for a sinful life and escape through the maze will lead the petitioner to a paradise where their memories will be restored and they will live in joy with their loved ones who lived a more faithful life.

Regardless of faith, however, it is often a dream of the young to escape the maze. If anyone has ever succeeded is unknown. It is this uncertainty that keeps most mortals safely locked away inside. Well, that and the dragons.

The PC Races of the Maze

The Minotaurs are either being punished by the gods for the arrogance of stealing the First Map or are the elevated chosen of the gods but either way they are now the undisputed rulers of the Maze. The only people capable of reliable trade between cities because they alone can travel unerringly through the confusing passages. As a race, they are also responsible for ensuring no one escapes confinement within the maze. Minotaurs are likely not going to be a PC race.

Humans are the most numerous of the mortal races. And live with nearly all the races sometimes even adapting to the cultures of the people who take them in.

Elves also are known as the Tower People and Bright Elves most often live atop the maze walls. The elves remember trees in their art and in the elevation of their homes but few of the majestic legendary plants grow atop the maze except for a few small flowering fruit trees the elves revere almost religiously.

Dwarves live in vaults and tunnels below the maze. While they are not bound by the maze borders none have ever found a way to bypass the maze borders too much of the Undermaze is unstable and prone to collapse. The Dwarves after centuries below the Maze the Dwarves do not excavate many new tunnels and choose to live in the vaults of their ancestors and mine the precious metals they find in the earth. Many dwarves also serve the surface races carving new homes from the walls of the maze.

Special Note about Elves and Dwarves: I have recently finished reading Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology and I like the idea of dwarves are dark elves. So we’ll eliminate drow from the campaign (at least for now) and say that it is believed that once before the Maze dwarves and elves were one race and that sometimes, particularly in old texts, dwarves are called dark elves.

Halflings and Gnomes: I have a few ideas about these races but for the moment I’m going to wait and see.

Half-Elves and Half-Orcs: I’m inclined to make half-breeds all the more uncommon. And so I may reskin half-orcs as orcs and remove half-elves altogether.

Mechanical Note: I’d like to make a character’s choice of a race a more lasting and relevant decision as play continues. I may or may not pursue this as we proceed.

Magic of the Maze

There are no clerics in this setting. The gods have not only turned their backs on mortals but have locked them away. It might be possible for some minotaurs to have clerics but that would be an adversarial NPC option only.

All living things have a spark of the Creator’s essence. Magic-users are among the select few whose spark has blossomed into a flame. Those so gifted with this fire of creation can sense and speak to the myriad invisible and intangible spirits who inhabit the world. Through will, word, and gesture a caster can imbue these spirits with a portion of their inner fire and direct the spirits to create certain magical effects.

I’m inclined to create a custom list of spells that serves my purposes.

Metal and the Gods

Many people living in Maze are likely unaware that each of the gods is matched to a corresponding metal as each was forged from metal just as the bowl of the heavens was. Uiran the First is bound to iron. Mithran goddess of the moon is tied to mithril while her daughter Seeva is linked to silver.

Mechanical Note: How this impacts the world I haven’t decided yet but I have a few ideas. It might negatively affect spell casting or give the gods a way to spy on mortals or perhaps corrupt them.

Threats in the Maze

“Dungeons” sometimes these are old places from before the Maze that survived hidden underground or raised hundreds of feet into the air inside a maze wall. Other times, they are the homes of legendary figures long forgotten. A dungeon can contain nearly any threat a dungeon in another world might contain.

Chromatic dragons dwell out in remote portions of the Maze. The minotaurs work hard to keep the beasts from the cities and villages. Sometimes herding crews of slave warriors into dragon dens to overwhelm younger dragons in sheer numbers so that the minotaur knights can claim the kill in relative safety.

It is said that dragons are the only other creatures who can navigate the passages of the maze.

Goblins, kobolds, lizardmen, and other similar foes. While a few of examples of these races can be found living in the minotaur cities and towns. Many more tribes of these races live in the maze outside the strict laws of the minotaurs living as raiders and bandits.

Giant fauna like spiders might hunt wild places in the maze.

The town of Lakeside has suffered under the scourge of an angry black dragon for fifty years but the story of Ripwing’s reign of terror began almost fifty years before that when a band of young adventurers traveled from Lakeside on an ill-fated expedition to the swamp lair of a black dragon. After a bloody battle the dragon emerged victorious but he suffered a grievous wound that would never fully heal. One of the adventurers wielding an intelligent bane greatsword scored a crippling slash to one of the dragon’s wing membranes.

Already injured and unable to fly effectively the dragon was beset by the runtiest of his broodmates and driven away from his hoard. Pride crushed, the once feared ruler of the swamp nursed his anger and skulked away to heal his physical wounds. As the dragon convalesced he nursed his rage and decided to wreak vengeance on the town where the adventurers came from.

• Ripwing is the name the humans of Lakeside gave the dragon. The dragon keeps its true name secret.
• Ripwing loathes the name the humans have given him but deeply loves the fear he hears in their voices when they say it and has chosen to take it as a result. When he hears someone use it without fear it stokes his anger and may provoke a violent response.
• Ripwing is very conscious of his wounded wing and rarely flies preferring to walk or swim when he is close to Lakeside.
• He managed to retain two things from his old hoard one was a medallion of thoughts the other was the very intelligent blade that scarred him.
• Ripwing has been torturing the intelligent sword with acid and taunts that it would never again be wielded. Currently Ripwing has buried it deep in the lakebed.
• Ripwing lairs in acid formed clearing in the forest near town but spends nearly as much time in the lake.
• He tries to pollute the lake with his acidic breath but the river current through the lake keeps the acid from building up to truly hazardous levels.

Ripwing                         CR13
Male black, young adult dragon slayer 3
CE Large dragon (water)
Init +4; Senses dragon senses; Perception +24

Defense

AC 24, touch 9, flat-footed 24 (+15 natural, –1 size)
hp 156 (15 HD; 3d10+12d12+63)
Fort +15, Ref +11, Will +13
DR 5/magic; Immune acid, paralysis, sleep; SR 24

Offense

Speed 60 ft., fly 180 ft. (clumsy), swim 60 ft.
Melee bite +24 (4d6+13), 2 claws +23 (2d8+9), tail slap +18 (2d8+13), 2 wings +18 (2d6+4)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft. (10 ft. with bite)
Special Attacks breath weapon (80-ft line, DC 20, 10d6 acid), sneak attack +1d6, studied target +1 (1st, move action)
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 12th; concentration +14)
Constant—speak with animals (reptiles only)
At will—darkness (50 ft. radius)
Sorcerer Spells Known (CL 1st; concentration +3)
1st (4/day)—bungle (DC 13), cause fear (DC 13)
0 (at will)—acid splash, bleed (DC 12), detect magic, penumbra

Statistics

Str 28, Dex 10, Con 19, Int 16, Wis 18, Cha 14
Base Atk +15; CMB +25; CMD 35 (39 vs. trip)
Feats Alertness, Aquatic Combatant, Beartrap Bite, Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Skill Focus (Stealth), Vital Strike, Weapon Focus (bite)
Skills Acrobatics +0 (+12 to jump), Bluff +20, Diplomacy +20, Fly +5, Handle Animal +14, Intimidate +20, Knowledge (arcana) +14, Linguistics +8, Perception +24, Sense Motive +13, Spellcraft +12, Stealth +18, Survival +8 (+9 to track), Swim +37, Use Magic Device +9
Languages Boggard, Common, Draconic, Goblin, Grippli, Orc
SQ slayer talent (blood reader), speak with reptiles, swamp stride, track +1, water breathing
Other Gear medallion of thoughts, 1,500 gp.

Special Abilities

Blood Reader (Ex) While able to see a studied target, a slayer with this talent knows exactly how many hit points his opponent has remaining. This only works against living targets.

Speak with Reptiles (Sp) A young or older black dragon gains the constant spell-like ability to speak with reptiles. This functions as speak with animals, but only with reptilian animals.

Studied Target +1 (move action, 1 at a time) (Ex) A slayer can study an opponent he can see as a move action. The slayer then gains a +1 bonus on Bluff, Knowledge, Perception, Sense Motive, and Survival checks attempted against that opponent, and a +1 bonus on weapon attack and damage rolls against it. The DCs of slayer class abilities against that opponent increase by 1. A slayer can only maintain these bonuses against one opponent at a time; these bonuses remain in effect until either the opponent is dead or the slayer studies a new target.

If a slayer deals sneak attack damage to a target, he can study that target as an immediate action, allowing him to apply his studied target bonuses against that target (including to the normal weapon damage roll).

At 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th levels, the bonuses on weapon attack and damage rolls, as well as the bonus to slayer ability DCs against a studied target increase by 1. In addition, at each such interval, the slayer is able to maintain these bonuses against an additional studied target at the same time. The slayer may discard this connection to a studied target as a free action, allowing him to study another target in its place.

At 7th level, a slayer can study an opponent as a move or swift action.

Swamp Stride (Ex) A very young or older black dragon can move through bogs and quicksand without penalty at its normal speed.

Track +1 A slayer adds 1/2 his level (minimum 1) to Survival skill checks made to follow tracks.

Water Breathing (Ex) A black dragon can breathe underwater indefinitely and can freely use its Breath weapon, spells, and other abilities while submerged.

I bring this up early in this discussion because it is an often overlooked piece of advice. Once you have put in long hours creating a memorable villain and allowed them some “on-screen” time in your campaign it can become very tempting to give your villain an unrealistic advantage in every situation. You need to be okay with each scene you include your villain in possibly being their last.

You can mitigate this some by giving the villain some advantages. In the 3.5 era, AP Shackled City the PCs meet one of the campaign’s ongoing villains in the first chapter. The NPC in question is a beholder and clearly, outclasses the 1^st level party. Since the PCs are of no consequence to him at this stage he doesn’t run much risk of dying prematurely and only truly foolish PCs would push it against such a clearly overpowering threat. It is possible if your villain is monstrous to use a similar tactic in your campaign but it can be tricky to run it in a way that doesn’t also run the risk of an instant TPK if your players assume you won’t put anything in the adventure they can’t kill.

Maybe your campaign’s villain is a dragon harassing a small kingdom. You could have the PCs on hand as it issues its ultimatums for tribute: treasure, horses and the first-born sons and daughters who will be its slaves. Emphasize the massive size of the dragon and magnitude of the fear it projects and hopefully, your 1^st level heroes will be intimidated out of doing anything too foolish. Later to reinforce the threat of the villainous dragon have it fly overhead. The thunderous sound of flapping wings and a looming shadow creating an immediate reminder of the villain lurking in the PCs future.

For more mundane threats and particularly those closer to an appropriate CR for the PCs you should give your villains an escape plan for most of their encounters, something logical such as a screen of mooks, a magical escape such as an invisibility spell or teleport, or even just a secret door. These are all tricks that your villain can and should employ but at some point, they’ll fail and the PC’s will take out your villain. Even if it happens before you expect, it’s okay, because the PCs got to be heroes.

The real trick to memorable villains is making the PCs want to take the villain down. No more than “want” to take out the villain, to viscerally need to take out the villain.

Rule 1. Make It Personal!

You can craft a great recurring antagonist but if you want your players to love to hate them in a way that elevates them to a true villain you need to really provoke your characters. A surefire way to accomplish this is to make it personal.

Darth Vader was Luke’s Father. President Snow came into Katniss’s home and threatened her family and her friends. Kahn killed Kirk’s son. We see it in countless novels and movies the great villains have a close personal connection to one or more of the heroes whether by blood, by whom they threaten, or whom they hurt.

If you were using the villainous dragon from above, maybe the dragon’s ultimatum resulted in a PC losing her brother when he is taken to be a slave. Perhaps another PC’s family farm loses its only horse and all of his family now face starvation because they have no animal to pull a plow or bring the cart of goods to market. Now both of these PCs are vested in defeating the villain.

In another campaign the PCs may be tracking an unknown killer through a prolonged investigation. If the killer targets a favorite NPC ally the PCs who were invested in the mission may find their anger rising especially if the killer leaves a taunting note that indicates this victim was selected “because they just won’t let go of the case” and hints next time the victim will be someone even more dear to them.

When Chris ran Planescape we didn’t always know Diario was our story’s villain. We knew he was a frequent antagonist, sometimes questionable ally who often leveraged his relationship to our companion to get us to work for him, but it wasn’t until he skewered his brother nearly killing the PC and leaving him for the rest of the party to find did we discover he was our villain. That discovery shook the campaign and made us question just what we’d been doing…and we hated Diario for all of it.

So as you make your next villain remember his purpose is to be defeated and give your PCs a really personal need to defeat them.

A great villain is one the players both love and hate. One they aren’t sure they can beat until ultimately they must try. Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of playing with some amazing GMs and have faced some grizzly villains but two are standouts, each from a different GM. Jeff gave us Apocalypse Dreamer, a Black Spiral Dancer seer, in a Werewolf Chronicle and Chris made another group of us face Diario Mardane a shadowy master of assassins in Planescape’s city of Sigil.  These two characters shared some important traits. Each was formidable in their own right easily a match or more for any single one of our PCs. Despite this edge each also had potent allies, Apocalypse Dreamer had her packmates and could call on corrupted spirits for aid while Diario had access to a cadre of assassins and thieves. Both were clever and had access to the best intelligence available. But most importantly, each had flaws that might one day lead to their ultimate downfall at the hands of the PCs. Apocalypse Dreamer was an insane nihilist fanatic with an exploitable obsession for one of the PCs and Diario had a soft spot for family. Okay, a tiny soft spot but we were still fortunate to have his brother in the party.

The flaws in their personalities accomplished two things. One, they gave us a facet of the enemy we could try to exploit. That vulnerability often would be the only ray of hope we had that in time we might win or at least gain enough of an edge to extricate ourselves from the messes we found ourselves in with these villains. Two, those flaws helped round out those NPCs and make them more than long-lived cardboard cutouts.

So how do you begin to bring this into your own game?

Get to know your villains much in the same way as the player’s get to know their PCs. Many of the background elements we’ve talked about since December can certainly apply to NPCs. Ultimately, just be careful and don’t become too attached to this character. It needs to be defeated by the PCs and that likely means killed. You don’t want your attachment to this NPC to transform your game from a largely cooperative storytelling game into too much of a competitive experience. As you struggle to keep the NPC alive. If the PCs roll a villain too quickly they need not learn that was your big bad. As a GM you can always create a bigger threat.

Now as you get to know your villain think of how he might see himself. Most likely he sees himself as the hero of his story and the PCs as the villains or at least as obstacles to be overcome. Which brings us to question: What does he really want? What is your villain’s ultimate goal and what is his current plan to move closer to that endgame? When you know what makes your villain act you can keep his actions consistent and believable.

Assuming your players have turned in backgrounds of some sort, there are a number of simple tricks you can use to insert those stories take an important place in the narrative of your campaign. Rivals and old allies can be incorporated into the current storyline by switching out NPC names and tweaking the NPCs backstory to closer match the PC’s background. This works with both homebrew or published campaigns equally well. Another option is to mirror a scenario from a character’s background. If they had a problem with a bully as a child maybe the same bully or someone using similar tactics is muscling in on an ally of the PCs. Just read through the background select a few choice tidbits that appeal to you or you think will appeal to the players and work those bits into your current adventures.

These are simple tricks that are probably already part of most GMs arsenals.

Today let’s consider inspiration from outside of the Pathfinder rules.

The Cypher System from Monte Cook Games uses experience points not only as a way to advance your character but also as another resource pool. Among several other uses, Cypher System games allow players to spend XP to gain temporary benefits. We can borrow this concept and tie it directly to the Hero Point optional rules. Now, it should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been reading this blog that I like hero points and action points. Using action or hero points in your campaign increases player agency which often draws players deeper into the action of the campaign and with a little narrative adjudication we can also use hero points to expand player’s backgrounds.

If you allow your players to spend a hero point on a short-term benefit tied to their background the benefit should be directly tied to a known facet of the character’s background (even if only in passing). The benefits gained in this manner should rarely last beyond the end of the session. It is most satisfying if the players take this opportunity to share a little story as to why this benefit takes effect.

For example, Brian’s rogue was raised by a band of thieves in Westcrown and now the PC’s are burglarizing a notorious official’s home for clues.  Brian may spend a hero point and ask the GM if perhaps he and his tutor might have broken into houses with locks by the same locksmith and maybe he remembers a trick to opening these locks. Now Brian’s character gains a +2 competence bonus picking locks but only the locks in this official’s home. “These are Gunderson locks and it just so happens I know a trick or two.”….Click.

You could also extend this to short-term social interactions. Let’s say, the GM has introduced a plot where a rival of Mindy’s fighter is terrorizing the old neighborhood where they both grew up. Mindy asks the GM (since he’s familiar with the rival) if she could spend an action point to gain a +2 competence bonus on Intimidate checks made against that particular rival for the rest of the session. The GM agrees, and now ideally, Mindy would share a story in-character with the other players that would illustrate this connection but it isn’t required.

This system works with both hero and action points but if you’re using the push-pull destiny point system from a previous post [here] the GM could use it impose a penalty on the character related to their background, “Didn’t Gunderson locks always give you a little trouble?”

Effective character backgrounds increase player investment at the table and should be rewarded and encouraged either through traditional bonus XP, increased player agency as we discussed today or some other method that works for your table. And whether it’s the GM or the players bringing a group’s diverse backstories into the game enriches the story and the role-playing opportunities.

Before the Campaign Begins

That previous blog prompted conversation elsewhere about running a session zero. In other words a game session prior to actual campaign play dedicated to settling on house rules, laying the groundwork for the campaign, and creating characters. I really like this approach and encourage groups to adopt it when possible.

One of the first things you’ll want to do during a session zero is to set some of the out-of-game expectations. Important things like: where and how often are you getting together to play, what time game will start and what time should everyone arrive. And sometimes most importantly who brings the snacks. I trust many of you will be playing with an established group and already have the answers to most of those burning questions. If you need advice on addressing those issues check out the Pathfinder Game Mastery Guide for suggestions.

In addition to these out-of-game conversations, there’s a lot of narrative value in a session zero. Begin with an overview of the campaign setting. Even with a published setting or an AP there is a lot of unexplored space and you can really increase player buy in if you have them help you fill that in. Lucy is planning to run Rise of the Runelords, she knows that in later chapters the heroes will venture out and see much of Varisia but more importantly the players will need to buy into Sandpoint. So she spends a little time filling in the players on this part of the campaign world spending most of her time discussing Sandpoint and some of its more interesting NPCs. A tiny preview of who the Runelords were might not go amiss here too, just so the players have an inkling of what’s at stake should the Runelords rise.

The adventure path, Rise of the Runelords is a return to basics. PCs will spend a lot of time exploring dungeons making discoveries but investigations will not be confined to ancient ruins. Player’s should expect some urban adventure opportunities and some overland travel and wilderness adventuring. This AP offers a little something for almost every character niche. It doesn’t hurt to spoil this a little at this point. I’m not saying Lucy should give a blow by blow of where the PCs will go or what they’ll face but letting them glimpse a little of the campaign’s direction will help them make good character choices.

Which brings us to creating a group of heroes. You need to be focused on making a team. Players and GM should decide on which roles will likely be important to successfully completing the campaign. This might be classes but typically is more general than that. In Rise of the Runelords, you might just want to stick to the basics and say: “Arcane Caster,” “Healer,” “Locks and Traps Expert,” “Wilderness Expert,” “Support,” and “Muscle.” While these look a little like classes they’re broader than that. With so many official class and archetype options even these basic roles could be filled in a number of ways. In an urban game of con-artists and rogues, the roles might look even less like classes and include options like “Face,” “Lock’s & Traps Expert,” and “Fence.” The point here is to make sure every PC has a unique place in the party and something they can do that makes them valuable to the group. You want ever character in this ensemble to have an opportunity to shine.

Hook your character concepts back into elements of the campaign from the first step. Maybe Charles wants to play a half-orc investigator with a troubling secret in her mysterious past. Lucy getting some ideas for later in the campaign might suggest Charles hail from Kaer Maga. Lucy’s brother may wish to play a hermit-Shoanti druid from just outside of Sandpoint filling “Wilderness Expert” role. You should also spend some time connecting the characters to each other. Did Marci’s Varisian bard Meet Pat’s gunslinger in Caliphas? A shared history can really help draw the players in and get them excited.

“This is just like Caliphas all over again.”

“You and I remember Caliphas very differently.”

But what if we just want to make a band of strangers who meet during the events of the Swallow Tail Festival. This is often cited as a reason to not run a session zero. I disagree. I suggest this is an opportunity to leverage the best aspects of a session zero. Of course, this means you have more work ahead of you. Look at the crew of Serenity in Firefly some of them have shared backstories and others meet for the first time in the pilot. All together they are frequently dysfunctional but that’s by the writer’s design rather than happenstance. Everyone in the crew still has a role to fill and gets a chance to shine.

Then we should talk Jayne. Without planning, a character like Jayne could derail an entire campaign and even cause it to end in hard feelings between the players. That said Jayne fuels a lot of great humor and drama. It just requires planning. The Jayne player should tell the other players up front what he’d like to play. All the player’s (including the GM) should work together to set boundaries for the character. Maybe Jayne’s player needs to get permission from the other players before he does something particularly treacherous or foolish. Whatever the mechanism it should be established now in session zero.

Similarly, if any of the players want to have a romantic relationship that should be discussed now too. A relationship like Zoe and Wash have is pretty easy. The boundaries are mostly self-explanatory and PG rated. The romantic tension between Kaylee and Simon would be a little bit more complex but not horribly so. However, the train-wreck tension between Mal and Inara requires a lot of upfront discussion of boundaries and expectations. Since name calling is often a part of this relationship you should also decide up front if there are any slurs that should be avoided as a part of these exchanges even if they would be okay if used in other ways during the campaign.

Beyond the narrative value and the importance of establishing campaign expectations there are a few mechanical questions the GM and players will want to address during this session like what rulebooks are valid for play, whether you’ll be using 3^rd party rules, and how you’ll make characters. Because we still haven’t made characters yet. Talk about house rules…will you be using any optional rules such as point buy, the unchained classes, traits, or hero points?

Finally, once all the mechanical concerns are addressed the players should start making their characters. Try to keep the conversations going keep digging into who these characters are and how they fit together (or will fit together once they meet) and what their place in the world is.

In my experience, session zeroes offer groups the opportunity to make the coming campaign better through improved communication from the start. Please feel free to share your tips or experiences with session zero games here in the coments.

• Fish-Out-of-Water: I commented in my last blog that a player with an urban character might not have much fun in a wilderness-based campaign. That’s really only true if it’s a surprise. You can have a great deal of fun playing a character who is thrust into the unknown. It helps if you take feats and skills that while focused on your native environment that still apply. You could play a charming wilderness ranger who follows a trouble to a distant city where she gets involved with the other PCs and the campaign. While she’s specialized in wilderness survival her Diplomacy and combat expertise will still prove useful. Conversely, an urban scoundrel who stole from the wrong noble may find that he has had to flee into the wilds where he encounters opportunities to open mysterious doors and slink about unseen…even if he doesn’t know which herbs are safe to eat and which trails lead to dangerous predators.
• Former Slave (Halfling): You are the former slave of a wealthy Chelaxian noble family, they were traveling abroad and something happened (bandits, adventuring mishap etc.) and your owners were killed. You survived and looted the bodies before escaping to somewhere safer. Recommended Trait: Rich Parents, reskinned to reflect the background change.
• Reformed: You used to belong to an evil cult, were a loyal Hellknight, or just an unrepentant con-artist. No matter what you once were, recent events in your life have caused you to reconsider your past actions and you are now trying to atone. At least a little. You should (as always) talk to your GM. She may decide that the evil cult you have abandoned or the Hellknights are an important part of the campaign arc and make this a campaign trait that gives you special insight into the actions of your enemies.
• Relic of the Past: This is a fantasy staple I couldn’t pass on including. There are a number of fictional characters who were plucked from the past to help save the present. In a Pathfinder context, you might have been the victim of a petrification effect and mistaken by history as just a relic of the past until someone figured out the truth and set you free. New Campaign Trait: Relic of the Past, You were once an aspiring adventurer or hero but ran afoul of a basilisk or medusa and became petrified for a century or more until a wizard scholar discovered the truth of your statue and restored you to life. You make Knowledge (history) checks involving your native time period untrained and gain a +2 trait bonus to those checks if you take ranks in Knowledge (history). Unfortunately more current events cause you difficulty you suffer a -1 penalty on all Knowledge checks involving more current events.
• Strange Castaway: You aren’t from the campaign world but from someplace else maybe even our Earth. You were going about your normal day to day activities and something weird happened and you slipped through a portal to Golarion or where-ever the campaign is set. If your PC is from earth most likely he is from the World War I era (given the events of certain APs) which can make for an interesting gunslinger concept. The question of how do you get back home or even if you want to get back home will probably play an important role in your character’s personal story.

Don’t be afraid to try an unusual background, but always talk it over with the GM and probably the other players. As I said last week communication between the players and the GM in regards to character backgrounds in essential. But also the communication between players. Next blog I’ll be discussing running Session Zero character generation and character prologues. In the meantime feel free to add to the above prompts in the comments and I’ll see you all in 2017.

Getting and submitting good backgrounds begins (like nearly everything else in roleplaying) with solid communication. It is important that the GM let the players know the kind of game she plans on running and if there are any elements of the overall plot the PCs should attach their characters to. Similarly, a character’s background should flag events that the player would like to revisit in the coming campaign.

Soliciting Backgrounds

When you are running a Paizo produced Adventure Path, the designers do a nice job of putting together some of this information for the GM. Including key themes, hooks, and details like this is a horror campaign and why does your PCs hate this NPC or how did they know a certain deceased professor from Ustalav? But if you’re creating your own campaign you’ll need to reveal similar insights to your players before play begins. I know this can be hard. As GMs we want the PCs to be shocked to discover that a great ancient enemy is rising in the world but if we tell them a little about the campaign’s broader plot we can increase buy-in from the start and help the players create characters with backgrounds that will work for the campaign. If you are imagining lots of overland travel and deep dungeon crawls and a player chooses to make an urban socialite who hates the wilderness chances are things are probably going to go awry. So first make sure the players know the kind of adventures they might be able to expect.

Whether you’re running a homebrew or an AP, if you have really creative players it pays to consider how much reading time you’ll have and set a word count limit. I’d recommend 750 words or less. This is a little more than twice what round one entrants in RPG Superstar typically get to describe a magic item. This doesn’t need to be a hard limit but the closer they keep to whatever guidelines you set the better.

If your players are not prone to creative writing you can give them a short questionnaire to fill out that will guide them through getting you the information you’ll need. I’d recommend no more than a quick three to five general questions about how the characters became adventurers. Maybe something about their family or early life. Then two or three questions that focus more tightly on your campaign. Some suggestions might include: For a campaign that begins with dungeon exploration, “What is your character’s interest in the Azlanti ruins outside of your village? “For a campaign that begins with a jailbreak, “What led to your incarceration in the King’s infamous Iron Tower prison?” For a campaign motivated by an allied NPC, “Tell me about how you met and befriended the town bard, Alistair Peat?” Then finally you might ask one or two about the character’s goals, fears, or secrets. This final question could even be so broad as to basically be, “Tell me anything else about your character. Does he/she have any goals, fears, or secrets you would like me to explore throughout this campaign?” Whatever you do though keep your questionnaire short your players won’t want to feel like they have to do a ton of homework.

For my next campaign, I’ll probably do a little of both. I’ll ask for a quick 300-500 word background and ask a few more specific questions, Including a few to tie PCs together. It will probably resemble something like this:

1. Please summarize your PC in a single sentence.
2. Describe the important portions of your character’s backstory in about 300-500 words.
3. [An undetermined question relating to the campaign’s main hook]
4. Tell me anything else about your character. Does he/she have any goals, fears, or secrets you would like me to explore throughout this campaign?
5. After discussing your backgrounds together. Tell me one thing about how you met the character of the player to your left.

Tips for Players

If you are a player and your GM hasn’t provided you with any direction about what kind of background they would like for the player characters their campaign don’t hesitate to ask them questions. Find out if there are any noteworthy NPCs that would make sense as allies or enemies for your character. Find out if the GM wants just a few sentences or if they want a full-blown narrative. If the latter I’d again shoot for 750 words or less you don’t need to write a full short story or novella for your GM just the important beats of your story. In fact, I’d recommend once you have a good 300-500 word summary close out with just 2 or three solid hooks. You might even just bullet point these so it’s clear they aren’t part of your narrative. All in all, though you should keep everything under that 750-word target.

Even 500 words will be enough to get the broad strokes of your background and a few key events down. Remember your background need not be a standard narrative you could certainly bullet point events on a timeline using either your character’s age or (if you know when the campaign is set to start) with the in game years. I’ve used this method before but I usually prefer a more traditional narrative style for the bulk of my background but that’s just a personal choice. Employ whatever method you prefer just make sure the elements you might like to see played on in the campaign get addressed. Call out the parts of your background you are particularly interested in seeing expanded during play. Just add a note like, “If there’s an opportunity to use this in the campaign that would be great.”

In addition to talking to your GM about campaign ties and word count, you should keep it appropriate to campaign and your audience. I used to be a GM for a number of Vampire LARPs I have read a number of backgrounds that were inappropriate for the game. Some because they were unwanted erotica-fanfic where characters seduced NPCs and fictional characters not included in the setting and more often because the character had Mary-Sue’d their way through every possible secret the World of Darkness had to offer in the first year after becoming a vampire all without any of it being reflected in the hard numbers on their sheets.

You probably don’t want to make these mistakes.

Keep to the setting cannon. The likes of Raistlin, Drizzt, and Elminster are fine characters but they have their own worlds to romp around in. Similarly, you probably don’t need to have met every third character from the Pathfinder Tales line. Okay, maybe (with GM approval) when your Pharasmin priest was a young acolyte he briefly met Salim Ghadafar and now secretly wishes that the goddess was half as interested in her as she is in this atheist…or maybe you’re character is thankful that the goddess is not interested in her. Feel free to include some details of the setting but not in a way that reveals any special secrets to you or elevates your character to a position that makes you more important than the other PCs.

As an example, we are currently playing through Carrion Crown which begins with a funeral for a certain professor. My character is an elven wizard/rogue and I took the Campaign Trait: On the Payroll. Which made me a former employee of the late professor. Recently our GM asked us about our character’s backgrounds (again) my reply by text was short, “I was an itinerant scholar, scribe, researcher, translator, and occasional crypt robber hired by the professor.” At the beginning of the campaign that had sufficed but our GM is looking to dig deeper into the characters and I had to be a bit more specific. If you want to read my character’s background I’ll include it below.

Updating Backgrounds

As I said we’re in the middle of Carrion Crown and only just now digging into the character’s backgrounds which have some surprising advantages that you can leverage even if you record your backgrounds up front. My background has a few details I would never have thought to add but have evolved from conversations at the table.

Backgrounds need not be static things like television shows things happen during play that can become part of your background. The TV show Arrow has spent several seasons adding new revelations about Oliver’s time away from Starling City every week. You need not go to this extreme but GMs and players can get together as often as the campaign requires to fill in details from your background you didn’t think of when the campaign began. You might meet a character the GM says in an old acquaintance from your character’s broadly mentioned army days. Now you may wish to update your background with some help from your GM to incorporate new details from that time in your character’s life. GMs and players can get together and update backgrounds as often as the campaign requires.

A proactive GM, knowing an encounter with an old army buddy/rival is about to happen might foreshadow this revelation by working with a player to detail the relationship. While it might be tempting as a GM to keep such revelations secret, if you have worked out the relationship in advance there will be greater player buy-in and many of the questions you would normally have to answer will have been dealt with already.

That said there still may be occasions where you need to preserve the secret for as long as possible. However you decide to reveal the material update the PC’s background so there is a record of the information going forward.

Terrik Grady

Itinerant Scribe, Translator, and Occasional Crypt Robber

[About 560 words total]

Both of my parents were elves but I was not raised among elves. I was raised by humans in Absalom. My birth parents were adventurers. My father died before I was born and my mother died some time later, but I never knew her. The first set of parents I can remember were relatives of my mother’s adventuring companions. I was raised as if I were one of their own children but elves age slower than humans and soon my “brother” and his wife took me into their care. Both my adoptive families were ardent followers of Cayden Cailean and I was practically raised in a tavern.

Absalom is a cosmopolitan city and in the tavern, I heard dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects. My time steeped in foreign languages and cultures led me to scholarly pursuits. In the books, I read I also discovered magic. Rather than a more formal education, I’m largely self-taught. I did spend a few years in formal training getting the basics of arcane theory down but I grew bored and went out into the world.

I worked as a traveling scribe translator and sometimes crypt robber. I met the professor while he was a young man exploring Osirion. We were drinking in a bar when his chronicler was stabbed over a bad hand (and full sleeve) of cards. The professor and I hit it off and I worked for him for a number of years on a number of expeditions. While traveling in his retinue I learned (by necessity) a few cons, how to open doors other’s didn’t want opened and similar unsavory skills while still studying magical theory and drinking in honor of my taproom patron deity.

(Note: I’m a little flighty, like the humans that raised me I’m adaptive and flexible in my way of thinking but unlike them I have the time to pursue new areas of study…which is why despite already having experience with magic and less acceptable pursuits I’m now looking to learn about guns.)

• There was a persistent rumor that followed me through much of my childhood that my mother attempted to complete the Test of the Starstone and that is how I actually became an orphan. Another rumor claimed she’d lied about the test and abandoned me. My character believes that it doesn’t matter much as I was abandoned either way. Although, if the first rumor is to be believed I think she might have tried it to bring my father back…as apparently his soul was unwilling to return at the call of the Pharasmin priests who tried to raise him.
• After a drunken round of cards some thirty years ago or more the professor told me a secret. One that I “must never divulge,” at least not while the professor lived and was so important that I “MUST never forget it.” Of course, I forgot it before we sobered up. In fact, I didn’t remember it at all until I was at the old man’s funeral at which point it was far too late to ask him to remind me.
• In my early wanderings, I may have sired a half-elf child or two. I was a bit of a menace before I matured and joined the current group.