How can a campaign last for decades, and what does such longevity imply?

A question recently asked us, I remember Mike mentioning his decades-long superhero game a few times, and am currently planning my next campaign, so I was just wondering how y’all can extend a game so far. Even if the players are still having fun and there is interest, there has to be a point when everything just got done (at least if they stay with the same characters). After a long enough time, all of a character’s goals will be accomplished, the ultimate BBEG will be taken down, and there are only so many ancient evils that can return to haunt you. Once you are literally on top of the world, where do you go from there? I imagine that constantly increasing scope (threats from previously unknown planets / galaxies / planes / multiverses / (insert bigger thing here)) gets old after a while and there are only so many revolutions to squish before that gets old as well. Is the trick to make sure the players never make it to the very top? Or perhaps never give the campaign that large of a scope to begin with? Another issue with my group in particular is that they don’t have much interest in “endgame” content (specifically D&D 3.5, no epic levels) where most of what you do is manage your newly carved out empire. In that long superhero game, did at least some of the players have the same characters from the beginning, or were they perhaps made into NPC’s after a while and everyone started a new party? I guess it can be my lack of experience, but new characters in the same setting seems to be the only way I can think of to keep my group interested for that long.

Mike’s Answer

Our Inquiring GM has hit the nail squarely on the head. To survive for decades, the campaign has to be bigger than any one style of threat, single player, group of players, or individual character. The campaign, and even the game setting, has to continually reinvent itself. I have so many tips to offer on this subject that I could easily fill five, or ten, or even twenty posts examining each in detail -and will, eventually. But here are 14 specific things that can be done to enhance the durability of the game, in a necessarily-abbreviated form…

Subcampaigns

The first thing you have to do is to break up the campaign into Subcampaigns, each with their own set of goals and objectives. These could require anything from 2 years to 5 years of play to complete. Their outcome, one way or another, should radically and permanently alter the status quo of the campaign. One of the goals of each subsequent campaign is to explore these changes and deal with all the people who will try to take advantage of the circumstances.

Overarching Megaplots

Within each subcampaign, you should have multiple plots occurring in parallel, sometimes connecting, sometimes conflicting. Some of these should span subcampaigns. Each Megaplot should comprise several scenarios, complete stories in and of themselves, like episodes of a TV serial. Every time a new opportunity to gain power looms over the horizon, every enemy with the capability of knowing about it should react to it in some way.

Reinvent the Campaign Background

As GM, you should regularly go through the events within the campaign, and try to imagine circumstances in which the minor side events and subplots assume new significance. There was an encounter with a rambunctious janitor three years ago? Maybe he wasn’t really a janitor…

Let PC actions perpetually change circumstances

The campaign setting must continually react to the presence and actions of the PCs. Allies can become reluctant (or enthusiastic!) enemies, enemies can become sometimes-allies, good guys can be corrupted, bad guys can reform. In most campaigns, the campaign background dictates the behaviour and roles of the NPCs, and they don’t often change (and it’s a big deal when they do); in a megacampaign, the NPCs change to meet the needs of the next plotline-sequence. If you have to, throw in a subplot or scenario or even a series of them that explains the transformation (even if the PCs don’t know that’s what they are there for).

New Threats constantly arise

Every change in circumstances that results brings about domino effects. Some of those dominoes set chains of events in motion that bring new threats to the surface, or which reinvigorate old threats. Think of it as a chess game in which every time a piece is captured, you put a new one – with different abilities and aspirations and loyalties and flaws – on the game board.

PC-Centric Plot Threads

Every PC should have at least one plot thread running through each subcampaign that relates directly to their character, who should emerge transformed in some way from it. For example, one PC in the current champions campaign has just discovered that she inherits a lot of her spunky independence from her grandmother, who she never met (because the PCs mother was estranged from her mother, who was an intrepid go-anywhere-for-a-story-no-matter-how-dangerous reporter. I’ve only just introduced the NPC grandmother, the current subcampaign is about to end in a big finish, and the player has to be wondering whether or not the NPC will figure in that big finish…

Mix Up The Style

No campaign can achieve true longevity telling the same style of story week after week. You need action-adventure to mix with politics to mix with life-on-the-street to mix with… well, you get the idea. I’ve even had scenarios that consisted of the PCs sitting around a table arguing about their organisation’s charter and by-laws – with every word said required to be “in character” (out-of-character suggestions could be passed by note). One memorable scenario was a cooking contest… and then there was the time the paranoid ninja had to go to the supermarket for some tomatoes….

Even stranger concepts can come from placing familiar plot styles in an interesting setting and reinventing the plot accordingly. A wild-west inspired plotline becomes something quite different when you’re talking high-tech supercooled psychokinetic crystalline entities on Pluto…

Exit Strategies

The GM should have an exit strategy up his sleeve for every character and every player. Some way that they can be pulled from the campaign at relatively short notice – four or five sessions of play, at most. And there should be no hard feelings when someone moves on – they might come back, eventually. Of course, the campaign will evolve to accommodate the absence of the old character or player and their style, and the presence of the new character and style – sometimes in unexpected ways.

Retire Old Characters

Another key is to force players to retire their old characters whenever it is appropriate for that character to call it a day – or go independent, or whatever. These then become NPCs under the GM’s control, even if they were killed.

Recycle Characters as Players change

If a character’s plotlines are too tightly-woven into the overall plotline for them to be retired immediatly, you have two choices. The bad one is to make them an NPC – this risks stealing the spotlight away from the remaining PCs, and costs a lot of spontaneity.

The better option is to find a new player who is willing to take over the character. Whenever that happens, you should sit down with the new player and let him totally rebuild the character from the ground up, retaining only the central character concepts and established personality traits; you then need to write a campaign plotline in which this transformation takes place, either quickly or slowly over time. From the moment they take over the character, they are considered to be the owner of that character.

One of the PCs in my current campaign has had three owners; with the first, he was a somewhat happy-go-lucky strongman with a lot of shadows lurking in his closet; with the second, those shadows came out of the closet, and he became a feral killing machine; and with the third, he is struggling to control his inner demons and is slowly coming to terms with his past mistakes.

Be Prepared to change the rules

No rules system can survive for 10+ years unmodified. Cracks emerge, new versions of the system emerge, and so on; every now and then, you may need to insert an appropriate “cosmic event” to “explain” the changed rules in-game. The corollary is that you can change the rules anytime it seems appropriate. At one point, the campaign consisted (for about 2 years) as a series of solo “miniseries”, each starring a character from the core campaign. In theory, these were all taking place more-or-less concurrently – it actually took ten weeks, game time, to run all 16-or-so sub-campaigns. For one of them, the PC was translated into Call Of Cthulhu; not only was his miniseries run by a guest referee, it had a guest rules system! It worked…

To every NPC, a subplot

Every NPC should have something to contribute to the campaign. Not all at once, but every time they show up, they should do more than make up the numbers. And at least one of them should show up in every plotline.

Lessons from Soap Opera

If you can force yourself to do it, or you happen to enjoy that sort of thing, watch some TV soap operas. Characters continually coming and going, motivations and relationships perpetually changing, never-ending plotlines – they may be cliched, but they are also the most accurate paradigm for what you’re trying to achieve when you set out to create a megacampaign.

With great power comes great responsibility

In a long-duration campaign, everyone shoulders additional responsibilities. The GM has more work; he needs to take responsibility for keeping the campaign going and keeping it fresh. The players have greater powers over the long-term shape of the campaign than they realise, but they also have to accept that sometimes, their character may not be the centre of attention for a whole session of play; their turn will come, they have to be patient. And the characters? By definition, they have great power, and its up to ‘them’ what they do with it.

This barely scratches the surface of a huge subject, but hopefully it gives you the tools you need to create the megacampaign you’re dreaming of.

Johnn’s Answer

This is an interesting topic. It is a lucky GM who can keep a campaign going for so long. I like Mike’s advice. Below are a few tips that overlap with Mike’s but hopefully have new details for you.

Make evil diffuse

Avoid black and white in campaigns that will last for such a long time. When things become either/or, good/evil the structures and permutations become apparent, predictable, and stale after several re-tellings.

Instead, go with grey scale or spectrum thinking. Leave extremes to locations and situations, but keep NPCs and quests near the middle as unpredictable elements whose properties you’re never quite so of.

For example, as Mike mentioned, make alliances with enemies possible to achieve party objectives faster, easier, or cheaper. Generate quests that are dilemmas (there is a cost to completion no matter the solution).

Instead of having a clear villain the PCs must fight against each time, create three-way (or more) situations that involve relationships and resources and conflicting interests for the PCs to resolve. Just removing one group from the equation does not resolve the situation (i.e. the PCs can’t kill there way to victory). And resolving the situation just results in a new, dynamic configuration that needs rebalancing.

For example, a drought hits the land. To save millions, the three parts of an artifact that can control the weather must be assembled. The PCs must choose which part to go after first. Rivals and enemies will be pursuing the item pieces as well.

When the PCs finally retrieve the piece they’ve quested for they learn the other two pieces are in the hands of rivals. Each rival wants something before they hand their piece over to be united with the other pieces. The PCs can whack each rival, negotiate, compromise, etc.

If the PCs don’t want to do any of this, you can have higher agencies take care of the resolution, but the final results require more PC intervention and service.

The relic is finally assembled. It turns out that the drought is being caused by the actions of three nations far to the west. While the relic provides temporary succor, the PCs are charged with finding a permanent solution.

More quests later, involving the western nations who are at war with each other, result in the drought being solved, but at the cost of more troubles for the east. The PCs are brought in again….

Side quests

As Mike said, use side quests to fill out the campaign so it’s more than just about the current villain being fought. The best side quests will also add depth to the PCs as you mine their personalities, relationships and backstories for quest inspiration.

Make side quests about the PCs – not the plot or world or campaign. Feel free to tie things together, but be sure the primary focus is on one or more characters.

Run a meta-level side game

Have your players tried a well-run world builder, realm management, or resource management side game? Games like the D&D Companion Rules, Reign by Greg Stoltz, and Aria have rules for shepherding meta-level game elements such as kingdoms, setting development, god management, and warfare.

Surf around and co-op rules for this type of gameplay and run a short one-shot to give players a taste. They can’t pass judgement until they’ve actually tried it.

You also do not need to have all players participating at the meta-level. Run a side game by email or before/after games. As news, stories, and campaign consequences emerge from the side game you might get more players interested in joining.

Develop the characters deeper

This has been mentioned already, but to call it out again: do not always progress the story forward. Get some character development going as well. For example, while on a mission to steal plans from Villain HQ you let a character know his parent’s village is en route. You spend two or three encounters in the village, perhaps old friends of the PCs being amazed at how the PC has changed (will the player gloat or be humble?) plus a fun contest with the locals (will the PCs make new friends or enemies?) and then maybe a quick remedy quest for the sick grand daughter of the village elder (the remedy involves a PC having to overcome a fear or flaw).

What do the players want?

Ask your group what they want. They might get a lot of satisfaction from defeating ever-larger villains. They might not be bored with the recurring gameplay even after all this time. Some of my players, for example, love whacking things because it’s fun and stress relief – they want me to just point them in the right direct and put lots of monsters in the way.

Introduce new elements all the time

Keep the campaign, the world, and especially the PCs fresh by always adding new details. Make things change. Add new elements. Destroy old elements.

Keep good records

Record a lot of details so you can use them for inspiration and expand them into larger campaign elements. As Mike said, mine previous gameplay for inspiration and new challenges.

With such a long-running campaign, you have the rare advantage of drawing on living campaign history to spawn new quests and objectives. This means you cannot GM a scorch and burn style of game where every element gets trashed. You have to get into the habit of creating and leaving open loops.

For example, switch an NPC victim to a pregnant NPC victim. Months or years later you have the option now of using the child NPC as a future adventure device.

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As you should know by now if you’re a regular visitor here – and with 2 new articles every week, why aren’t you, if you’re not!? – this month’s blog carnival is on the subject of mistakes, how you recover from them, and what lessons you’ve learnt for the future.

I made a couple of doozies at the start of the Zenith-3 superhero campaign, which I’ll be discussing in both this blog post and my next.

The Campaign

Player interest eventually wears out in any campaign, and when it does, it’s time to start something fresh. In the leadup to Ragnerok in my superhero campaign, a series of seemingly-pointless superhero slugfests had exhausted my player’s patience, and the campaign folded just as the meaning behind the never-ending stream of challengers was about to start coming to light.

After a few months R&R, I started a Torg campaign, but seven years later, it too faltered, mostly because there were too many campaigns competing for playing time and not enough players to go around; those players who were available weren’t interested in that campaign. Which was fine; I simply dusted off my long-held plans for a D&D campaign for the players who weren’t already doing something that week of every month, and the “Fumanor: The Last Deity” campaign got underway.

But, in the meantime, I had spent time writing up the remaining plotlines of the original Champions campaign more-or-less in the form of a novel – mostly so that any remaining questions about who was doing what and why would be answered. This project not only renewed my interest in the campaign and the genre, it captured the interest of a whole bunch of new players, who urged my to restart the campaign. With the stars in obvious alignment, I extended the draft with appendices and events to fill a five-year gap between the two campaigns (purely to generate enough new plotlines to keep the new campaign humming along) and character generation got underway.

The Circumstances

The backstory was long and dense, and even with careful indexing and glossaries of people, places, and things, I was wary of inundating the players with too much written material. I had also conceived the notion of roleplaying the initial meeting of the characters and their collective briefing on the new campaign, for several reasons that seemed good at the time. It gave me the chance to establish the personalities of some of the big names of the existing team (of which the new campaign was to be an offshoot), for example. It gave me more time to prepare the new background material. It could also be interrupted by actual plot, which would serve to break it into more-digestable lumps – at least in theory.

The Mistake

Well, the mistake is pretty clear to see already, isn’t it? Instead of those easily-digestable lumps, there were brief interludes of distracting non-briefing which seperated page after page of lectures by NPCs – who were going to (at best) be background characters in the new campaign. In fact, the briefing totalled 46 printed pages of referee-delivered monologue with half a page or so of interludes!

After the first hour – which contained little information of immediate relevance – it was going in one ear and out the other. The first hour? – heck, “the first ten minutes” would be more accurate!

I would have been far better off if I had written the briefing up in prose format and given copies to the players a few weeks before play.

Recovery

How do you recover from the fact that the players havn’t assimilated 99% of the campaign briefing?

Answer: you write scenarios which build on the main elements of the briefing material, and make darned sure that you give the players the essential information within the course of the scenario, preferably before they need to know it.

But wait — that means that the entire, long, drawn-out, interminable introduction scenario was completely unneccessary.

Yep, I had bored the metaphoric pants off my players with no good reason for doing so!!

Fortunately, the scenarios that followed were enough fun that most of the players stayed with the campaign – at least until most left one-by-one for other reasons (which I’ll talk about in my next post), and were replaced by others, but the campaign itself survived and prospered.

Lessons Learnt: Preparing for Dimension-Regency

It had always been my intention that once the campaign’s initial premise had been completed – “Superhero trainees lob off to a ‘safe’ world to gain enough experience to survive the real thing only to find that it’s far more dangerous than advertised” – the characters would rejoin the main group. I had populated the game world with problems that were waiting around to be solved when they got there. (They are only now reaching this point!)

My players had other ideas. This group was, according to the campaign background, the third such group of trainees to be set up by the parent team, and the players loved the descriptions of the ‘training worlds’ to which I had sent the previous (NPC) groups. They wanted the “Grand Tour” – a 6-month stint in each of the other training timelines.

First cab off the rank was to be a parallel world called “Earth-Regency”, “A 22nd-century world in which the Sun had never set on the British Empire”. There wasn’t much more description than that to go on – so I had to once again craft an introduction/indoctrination/briefing for the team prior to their embarking on a voyage to their new home.

Once again, there was a new world for them to come to grips with, and an alternate history for them to understand, and a new political foundation to comprehend – plus, instead of 1950s technology, there were the complications of 22nd-century tech. If anything, this was going to be a bigger briefing than the previous one!

Accordingly, I was determined to make it as digestable as possible. Instead of a lecture, I wrote it as a prose history – and in smallish chunks, delivered a month or two (or more) apart:

• King John II & Robin Hood to the US War Of Independance
• Crime & Punishment In Dimension-Regency
• Colonial Times – 1782
• Science & Technology in Dimension-Regency
• Science & Technology in Dimension-Regency Part 2 (it was supposed to be one part, but it just got too long)
• Imperial History 1782 – 1945
• Imperial History 1945 – 1977
• Imperial History 1978 – 1986
• Imperial History 1987 – 2015
• Imperial History 2015 – 2055*
• Special Dates within the Empire*
• List of Rulers of the Empire*
• Adventures Of Zenith-1 in Dimension Regency*

* These have been partially written but not yet issued to the players.

The next stage will be to compile all of these into a single document.

Hopefully, this gradual approach will let the players get their heads around the background and enable us to hit the ground running, showing that the lessons of the past have been learned.

Mine your combats

Traps in some game systems are standalone elements. However, I consider them a hazard if they factor into a combat in any way. Encounters without combat that just have traps in them I would consider hazardous for your health, but not a combat hazard.

Traps have been around RPGs since day one. In my first D&D session in grade 5 we were playing Keep on the Borderlands and my rogue got nailed by a trap in the kobold lair. 5 points of damage! I begged the cleric for healing and continued onward, but more cautiously. And by more cautiously, I mean everyone else lead from that point on while I guarded the rear.

Traps on the battlefield are a ton of fun. They heighten drama, add risk, and provide new options to combatants. They should be more than just a damage dice roll. Minor traps can harass, impact movement (pun not intended), cause hesitation. Traps can change the course of battle.

A third foe

In typical battles there are two sides. Traps create a new enemy, usually unaligned. They open another front for foes to defend or strategise against. Consider traps as a third foe, or x+1 if there are multiple factions in a battle. This not only helps with encounter balancing, but ensures you champion the traps well in your planning – traps added as an afterthought often feel patched-on or are underperformers.

Envision the trap in battle

This is a fluffy tip but oh so important, and oft neglected. How do you see the trap working in the battle? What contribution do you envision it making? How do you imagine it will affect gameplay and make the combat more fun and interesting?

Busy game masters will be prone to just selecting a trap and placing it on the encounter map. This is fine some of the time. But you should celebrate traps as strange, dangerous, and unusual combat elements. Make them special.

Surprise trigger

Unexpectedly triggered traps are wonderful in combats. For example, you’ve heard of land minds? What about magic mines that detonate if a certain school of magic is cast? Proximity triggers work well too, especially if there are specific triggers so it becomes a bit of a puzzle.

Surprise location

Traps in unexpected locations are always good for a table laugh, such as traps to the sides of doors, traps in front of fake glowing objects, trapped treasure, and so on. Portable traps can help you work out a lot of inconsistency issues that pop up with surprise locations, such as when arming areas already swept by the party or locations dangerous to everyday life.

Controllable

One side or the other can control various settings on the trap to provide tactical combat advantage. Perhaps a trap can be aimed, suppressed, disabled, delayed or embiggened.

Chain reaction

The first trap merely starts a sequence with deadly consequences. The puff of air is shrugged off by the barbarian who watches in fascination as the air pushes a round rock that rolls over to a switch that cuts a rope which scuttles across the floor up to the falling ceiling block….

Shock and awe

Traps can contribute more than blood cell count on paving stones. They can release new hazards, such as smoke or glue, or loud noises to attract more combatants, or a massive magnet effect that slows all metal armoured foes.

At some point during encounter design or preparation, envision how the combat will run and what role the trap has in it. Likely you will spot deficiencies and opportunities you’ll still have time to tweak for.

For example, with their fly ability PCs might use air superiority to make battles against land-bound foes easier than expected, and low ceilings is getting tired in the game. Perhaps some airborne invisible mines will make the PCs cautious for this combat and the next few too.

Placement is key

Some spots are better than others when placing a trap on the battlemat. Think of it like a chess game or tactical board game. If X happens then what? If Y happens in response, then what?

Some of the many factors to consider:

• Where will the PCs enter or be placed on the battlefield?
• Where will the foes enter or be placed?
• What likely movement routes will be taken by either side?
• What battlefield features will draw combatants to inspect, engage with, or move toward?
• Do the PCs tend to spread out or clump together?
• What are the usual attack modes of the PCs? (i.e. potential trap trigger conditions)
• Who is likely to win initiative?
• How fast can the PCs move?

A lot depends on the nature of the trap. Once you have a trap selected, look for its strengths and weaknesses. And untriggered trap in combat is such an unfortunate waste. Look at what the trap needs for it to be triggered, the type and nature of damage it does, and what might increase its chances of success.

Be creative with effects

Look at every condition and damage type in your game and build traps for them. Same with spells and strange effects. Look at the special abilities of the PCs, equipment, and magic items. Apply the most interesting effects to traps.

For example, a trap that emits concussive bursts, dazing friend and foe alike, is much more fun to play than one that merely does 1d6 damage. A trap that causes allies to attack each other, or forces combatants to flee in a random direction, or makes victims attack by grapple makes combats memorable.

Do not forget about area effects. Smoke bombs, noise suppressors, or bursts of substances can catch everyone off guard, or at least affect multiple victims for greater combat chaos. A trap that causes a wave of magical effect to blow through the battlefield will get everyone excited, as would a tall building forced to collapse or long chain whip that whirls across a huge radius.

Make some traps obvious

Not every trap needs to be invisible or catch combatants by surprise. Sometimes the obvious ones are the most entertaining. Either one or both sides avoids the area of the trap, which could have consequences, or foes try to figure out how to use the trap against each other, or while the fighters fight, the rogues and bards get some investigation gameplay in.

Why is the battlefield trapped?

Be sure to make the situation believable. Justify the trap’s existence. “Previous owners” is often a good answer. Portable traps allow lots of utility. A large expense account is another plausible answer.

Watch out for tricky answers. You don’t want to spend much time on trap backstories. If you see your answer getting complex, that’s a flag to simplify your explanation about why the trap came to exist where it is. Another, er, trap, is having to create layers of new game elements to support your rationale.

“Just because” is a good answer too, but I don’t want you to get cornered by clever players who choose to investigate the trap looking for details, or who find a logical flaw with the trap selection or placement.

Hopefully your battle traps become part of post-session stories and the campaign’s lore. They are so versatile and offer so many options for changing combat strategy, atmosphere, or difficulty.

Here are two related articles you might find interesting:

10 Ways To Use Traps To Enhance An Adventure, Part I

10 Ways To Use Traps To Enhance An Adventure, Part II

We all make mistakes. Some are trivial – I mean, who really cares in the long run if that critter did d6+1 damage and not d6+2? But I’m talking about bigger mistakes, the kind that matter. I’ve got five of them, and as part of this month’s blog carnival, which we at Campaign Mastery are hosting, I’ll be making posts describing each. This is the first one, where I made a general knowledge mistake that had massive ramifications for the campaign. Ultimately, I was able to make lemonade from lemons in this particular case, ultimately strengthening the campaign – but it could just have easily gone in the other direction and weakened it massively.

The Campaign

In order to understand the circumstances, you need to know some history of the game. This was in the early days of my superhero campaign; Champions II had not yet made its appearance in the game stores. The villain was a would-be world conquerer modelled on the Marvel Comics villain, the Mandarin, but in my game, the character was an alchemist and wizard who had accidentally discovered a form of immortality: after his current host body was killed, any full-blooded chinese male who came into contact with one of the wizard’s arcane devices would be posessed by his spirit, which would then be magically reshaped to match the physical characteristics of the original. Of course, he tried to keep a few in circulation to ensure repeated comebacks.

The character had faced off against the protagonist that I had created to initially teach myself the system in solo play, and then starred in a sequel campaign that I had started for some friends the following weekend, both of which had formed part of the campaign background of the “real” campaign. I had created a detailed backstory in which he was as much victim as villain, but was also responsible for both a rewritten version of the legendary Ghenghis Kahn’s conquest of Asia and near-conquest of Europe (ie the known world) and also for the story of Vlad Tepes and the myths apon which Count Dracula was founded. I very deliberately wanted to infuse the character with some of the nobility of Marvels’ Doctor Doom – the man would have made a Good ruler, but the price to paid for achieving that goal was one that was unconscionable to anyone not ruthlessly driven – in this case, by a profound personal grief relating to the assassination of his wife and child at the hands of a warlord in ancient China that had left him with an impossible-to-overcome chip on his shoulder.

The campaign concept was for him to start out tough enough to trouble the combined might of the PCs, and to be embarked on a quest to gather his personal arcane weaponry and devices. In his second campaign appearance (now part of the campaign history even though it was being run concurrently) he had been able to recover Excalibur, and extract a chip of the sword (which he wore on his forehead), which he used to imbue his own body with the strength and resiliance of the mythic blade through the power of sympathetic magic. So he started with invulnerability, superstrength, teleportation, and flame-based force-fields and related effects. Each time he succeeded in regaining one of his artifacts, he would both reduce his opportunities for a future reincarnation, but would also increase his personal power by adding another “school opf magic” to his repetoire; his power would rise far more quickly than that of the PCs with every early success but these increases would progressively become smaller, enabling the PCs to catch up – eventually. In order to beat him, the players were going to have to think outside the box. It took them 6 months of weekly play, 14+ hours a week, before they achieved anything that could be described as a victory against him, having graduated from irrellevances to inconveniences to irritants in the meantime.

The Circumstances

Even while the primary campaign was ongoing, the secondary campaign – whose events were historical so far as the players of the primary campaign were concerned – was also ongoing. Essentially, I was working a full-time job and refereeing for about 30 hours straight, most weekends. This is an exhausting schedule, and it was starting to show.

Why was I so driven to roleplay? It’s not directly relevant, so I’ll simply state that a romance had failed catastrophically a few years earlier I realised later that it never had a snowball’s chance in Hell of success). The fallout was pretty much screwing up my life completely with angst and emotional wreckage, despite superficial appearances to the contrary. In the course of the year that followed (in which I was supposedly studying for a degree in computer science, but wasn’t really trying at all), I discovered RPGs. The experience of being able to step outside my skin and escape my personal calamity for a while gave me the emotional distance to start seeing things in perspective, and that enabled me to start recovering. So I had started to eat, breathe, and sleep RPGs for a while.

By the time of the Mistake that is the subject of this Blog, it had been a couple of years since those events, and I had mostly put the need for that level of involvement behind me. I was genuinely enjoying what I was doing – so I continued to squeeze in as much of it as humanly possible (and then some). Heck, to some extent, I still do!

The Mistake

So, anyway, one of the Players asked about the attitude of the Chinese Government toward this supervillain running around the world, while I was concentrating on the history of the villain in question, and I made an off-the-cuff remark that the Emperor Of China considered him a terrorist, a criminal, and a traitor to the Buddhist philosophy, or something along those lines. For a moment, my mind had hiccoughed and the entire Communist Revolution in China had completely escaped my recollection.

My players, of course, immediatly picked up on this, and I was immediatly inundated with questions about who and how and when and why this had taken place, and how it had affected the Korean War, and all sorts of other things that I hadn’t given any thought whatsoever.

It was my philosophy at the time (which I have since relaxed somewhat) that when speaking “ex cathedra”, ie giving the players crucial information about the game world, the GM should never admit to a mistake, or the players will lose faith in everything he says. So I made up on the spot, and inserted into the campaign history, a chapter of the second campaign that had never been played in real life. This was a crucial moment in the credibility of the entire campaign, and it had come about because of a simple slip of the tongue.

If my whole-cloth invented plotline was not completely plausible to the players, the central core of the campaign would collapse, and the campaign could quickly follow. As it spilled out, one impulsive plot twist after another (in fairly generalised form), I was acutely aware of the sensation of digging myself in deeper with every word, of investing my entire credibility as GM in this work of utter fiction. For an experienced GM, this might not have been all that difficult; but at the time, I had only been refereeing for about two-and-a-half years, and was not feeling all that secure in my credentials. In fact, I was as nervous at the time as I have ever been in the big chair!

Recovery

As it transpired, the notion that the Mandarin’s previous incarnation had succeeded in overthrowing the Communist Chinese Government, only to be defeated through the same sympathetic magic that he had used to give himself his invulnerability when the REST of Excalibur was wielded against him, rang so completely true to the players that when the truth came out (many years later), they were completely surprised. UNTIL, which I had recast as the military arm of the United Nations, had (according to my story) been left with the choice of complete anarchy in the region, or having someone step into, and take over, the administration and bureacracy that the villain had established – and so a new Imperial Dynasty was founded in China. The Vietnam War then became a case of ambitious military types attempting to carve mini-empires out for themselves in defiance of their government.

Through the years that followed, Chinese mythology and philosophy cropped up time and time again. Elements that would have been out of place when set against the background of a Communist Regime were utterly appropriate against a Modern Imperial backdrop. Ressurected Chinese Dragons, the attempted assassination by a mystic assassin of the aging ruler, a Taoist supervillain, and many other such plots, grew out of that simply slip of the tongue. That invented-on-the-spot-story was the first really MAJOR change in world history that the players of the primary campaign experienced, and its success gave me the confidence to make even bigger and more interesting changes in later years. The original story, somewhat embellished, was played out as the big finish to the secondary campaign, and is now considered canonical in the campaign history.

Lessons Learnt

There are lots of lessons to emerge from this little chapter of my roleplaying history. The first is to think before you speak! The second is not to be afraid to admit that you’ve misspoken when you have; but the third is that, before you do so, you should see if there’s any way possible that you can insert backstory into your campaign to explain your slip of the tongue; the richer you can make your campaign background, once play is underway and the characters and immediate circumstances are established, the more groundwork you lay for future years.

I became so adept at making up on the spot both scenarios, and scenario twists to accommodate whatever the players did, that I was (in later years) sometimes accused of running plot trains – when there WAS no plot preplanned! But that’s a subject for another time…

Mistakes – ones you’ve made in the past and how you got past them, one’s you’re making now and don’t know how to solve. That’s the theme for this month’s RPG Blog Carnival.

I remember reading some great advice awhile ago: it’s ok to make a lot of mistakes as long as you don’t make the same one twice. At the game table it’s easy to forget stuff, make a bad judgement call, let emotions override polite behaviour.

One of my biggest mistakes was actually away from the game. For the first few years of Roleplaying Tips I also got a new job that required quite a bit of overtime, I was getting writing contracts, and the ezine was chewing up a lot of hours every week. I decided to stop gaming for awhile. That “while” turned into a five year hiatus. That’s five years of non-gaming I’ll never get back!

Today my schedule is no different. There are not enough hours in the day to do everything I want. However, I made a conscious decision to claw a game night out every two weeks, plus some prep time on weekends. I’m busier than ever before, but the sky has not fallen and giant fires have not flared up because I take this time out for gaming. And I’m actually less stressed because I’m getting my gaming fix in again.

I’ve been keeping this up since 2005 and still going strong. Real life has its pressures, but a bit of planning and protecting my time lets me game without problem. This is healthy for establishing better life-balance, maintaining (and making new) friendships, and keeping my creative juices flowing in all aspects of my life.

Long live RPG!

Remember to check out the previous RPG Blog Carnivals:

August 2008: The Core Mechanic: Death and Undeath

September 2008: The Fine Art of the TPK: Homebrew

October 2008: Musings of the Chatty DM: Superheroes

November 2008: The Dice Bag: Religion

December 2008: Critical Hits: Transitions and Transformations

January 2009: Unclebear: New Years Gaming Goals and Resolutions

February 2009: The Core Mechanic: Monsters and Maps

March 2009: The Book of Rev: War

April 2009: A Butterfly Dreaming: Humor and Gaming

May 2009: Roleplaying Pro: The Future Of Roleplaying

June 2009: Mad Brew Labs: Steampunk & Klokwerks

July 2009: 6d6Fireball.com: Dungeons & Dragons

August 2009: Chgowiz’s Old Guy RPG Blog: Conventions, Ren Fairs, Carnivals, Oh My!

This month’s RPG Carnival is about RPG conventions. GMing at cons is a fine art. It’s high pressure chaos that includes a lot more table and environment management than your typical home game. Add in a group of total strangers as players with unknown skills and game knowledge, and you have a recipe for an interesting game.

Roleplaying Tips has covered GMing at RPG conventions a few times in the past. Following are links to tips you might find useful next time you run a convention game.

Running Games At Conventions

How to Game Master at Conventions

Epic Weekend Convention Gaming: A Tale From The Trenches

4 Tips For Whipping Up Scenarios For Conventions

Speeding Up Convention Play

GMing Convention Games

In a previous blog, I discussed converting prices from “…and a 10-Foot Pole” from I.C.E. and mentioned a number of campaign-related issues and background elements from “Fumanor: The Last Deity” that complicated the discussion, which I promised to tell everyone about at another time. Since it’s a good example of how to take a rules element (the currency in use in the game) and turn it into a roleplaying ingredient, I thought that it would be a worthwhile subject.

By developing the coinage of the realm beyond the simple “copper piece”/”gold piece”/etc, I was able to connect the campaign background to practical implications surrounding the PCs, impart additional depth to that background, introduce plot threads that they could take up or not (as it suited them), and give some additional colour to the campaign setting.

As it happened, the players chose not to persue these plot threads at the time, with the result that in the sequel campaign “Fumanor: One Faith”, one of the plotlines that have confronted the PCs is a tax revolt, which is making it harder for the Crown to prepare for an imminant invasion, and which has forced unpalatable choices on the Government – such as revoking the tax-exempt status of the Church.

The approach that I’ve decided to use is to quote (with occasional paraphrasing) from the background notes/house rules that I gave the players before character generation commenced, and then add regular side comments, explanations, etc, in a form of pseudo-sidebars, to talk about the objectives, the choices, what worked, and what didn’t. So let’s get started….

Annotated excerpts from The Fumanor Campaign breifing material

Old Kingdom Currency
As stated in the previous blog where this subject was mentioned, Coinage is only now being ressurrected as an art in the Fumanor campaign. For most of the last century, the coins in use were all legacies of the old Kingdom. These coins are:

• Cirunum (Pl. Cirunai): Copper coin, commonly nicknamed “Tibbs”.
• Saudrum (Pl. Saudria): Bronze coin, commonly nicknamed “Slugs”.
• Ardrium (Pl. Ardria): Silver coin, commonly nicknamed “Crowns”.
• Haylernym (Pl. Haylia): Gold coin, commonly ncknamed “Nobles”.
• Daethorum (Pl. Daethia):Platinum coin, nicknamed “Marks”.

Cirunai and Saudria are common coins. The largest coin most people ever see is an Ardrium. It is common practice to exchange letters of ownership, known as Trusts, where larger sums are involved, rather than physically moving the coinage.

The section on ‘Old Kingdom Currency’ sets a romanesque tone to formal language from the old Kingdom while not being directly latin, while showing that informal speech is founded on simpler English, evoking an association between the old Kingdom and the Roman Empire. So strong was this association that over time, it even changed its title from “Kingdom” to “Empire”!

It also gives a glimmer of personality to the ordinary citizen – a slightly wry sense of humour (‘Slugs’) which leavens a pronounced respect for the Old Kingdom. It informs the players not to expect to see hoards of gold coins when they find treasure, states explicitly that the basic unit of currency is the silver piece, and establishes ‘paper money’ in the form of “Trusts” – suggesting that any stray scrap of paper might be worth a fortune. This last implication was lost on the players, who at one point, completely missed a Trust worth 75,000 silver peices.

The New Currency
The newly minted coins are theoretically an attempt to create a unifying social force, something to give the citizens a point of referance to identify with the Modern-day government of the Barony Of Fumanor and not with the Old Kingdom. The mint pays 150% of face value for old coins that they can melt down and remint. Since there is roughly a 30% chance of the shipment being lost to thieves, bandits, or raiders, unless trustworthy guards are hired, the population in general have been reluctant to take up the offer.

This further suggests that the actual number of coins they can expect to find will be about 2/3 of what the DMG/Monster Manual suggest, and tells the players that to get full value for their discoveries, they will have to make regular pilgrimages to the Mint; they didn’t bother, reasoning that there was ‘plenty more where that came from’.

It tells them that they can find employment at low levels as Guards for such trips (which they eventually used as a cover for more important activities), and establishes a level of dissatisfaction with the current social situation in comparison to the Golden Age of ‘the good old days’. The campaign was intended to have a slightly post-apocalyptic feel to it, and this is one way in which that flavour was communicated to the players.

There are also hints as to how the various alignments view the current world, and how the players can reflect their alignment in roleplay within the campaign.

The new mintings are not up to the same standards as the older currency. As a result, they are generally less popular. These facts have led moneylenders to discount the new coinage by 10% or more.

Offers the players a more direct route to currency conversion – at a price, establishes that moneylenders are commonplace and organised, and further adds to the post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

In an effort to encourage the circulation of the new currency, the Baron has decreed that all taxes must be paid in old currency, at face value, while all other payments recognised by the government must be made in new currency, as must any fees, commissions, rewards, or purchases by officials. In effect, this means that the Barony has mandated a 10% surcharge on all public payments, a 10% discount on all public purchasing, and an 11% tax hike – plus forcing ordinary citizens to deal with moneylenders, and pay moneylenders fees, on a regular basis.

There’s a lot of meat in this paragraph – the more you think about it, the more significant it becomes and the more ramifications come to light. The Baron is clearly more interested in practical solutions than being popular, and he clearly has some sophisticated and subtle advisors – there is a multipronged policy which simultaniously encourages the removal of old currency from circulation and the usage of new.

In order to pay taxes, the ordinary citizen has to buy old currency from adventurers (unofficially) or from moneylenders (officially) – that shows that society has integrated the concept of adventurers into its fabric, and has come to expect adventurers to find caches of old coins.

It also gives the first hints that the moneylenders have a very strong lobby within the Government – in fact, the Moneylenders & Minter’s Guild was subsequently revealed to be in the pocket of the Chancellor Of The Exchequer, who was gearing up for an attempt at seizing the Throne. The Baron, an honest but intellectually average man, was not as clever as the Chancellor, and did not appreciate the finer implications of the proposal (which were spelt out explicitly for the players); the extra currency was being diverted into his private accounts to build up his army: ten percent of all government spending, eleven percent of taxes collected, and kickbacks from the moneylenders who were making 20% extra profit on top of the 10% they officially claimed, by taking advantage of the mint’s new-for-old policy. With that 20% split 3:1 between the moneylender and the guild, and half the guild’s earnings being disbursed as kickbacks to the Chancellor, he was effectively soaking up about 18 percent of the gross national product for his own use – while limiting the funds disbursed to the regular army to 9% of disbursements, or about half what he was spending on his private army.

If the PCs had really gotten into the coinage situation, they would have uncovered this threat far sooner than they did – instead of a pitched battle at the conclusion of the campaign, with a PC-recruited army of Orcs and Kingdom soldiers and Commoners confronting a better-equipped revolutionary army with more than twice their numbers.

As a result, there has been growing resentment directed toward the Barony and its public representatives, especially the tax collectors. After a number of nasty incidents, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has recieved permission to recruit guards to protect the taxmen.

The irony that just oozes from this statement once you know the real situation went undetected by the players for years! When play started, it was taken at face value, suggesting another occupation the characters could take up if they got down on their luck. Five years later, when the truth began to come out, someone noticed it and was quite chagrined – and impressed at how deeply the clues to campaign events had been planted. As I recall, he called me some unfriendly names while I sat there with an evil grin…

To date, four coins have been minted:

• Shawler (Pl. Shawlers): Copper coin, commonly nicknamed “Shorts”. Face Value 1 CP.
• Pinnie (Pl. Pinnies): Copper coin, commonly nicknamed “Pinkies”. Face Value 2 CP.
• Kroner (Pl. Kroner): Bronze coin, commonly nicknamed “Groaners”. Face Value 1 BP.
• Royal (Pl. Royals): Silver coin, commonly ncknamed “Boils”. Face Value: 1 SP.

A more deprecating set of nicknames further adds to the character of ‘the common man’, places a relative social value on the new coinage vs the old, and reinforces the statement that paper ‘money’ has replaced gold and platinum coins. Think of these as 1¢, 2¢, 5¢, and 20¢ coins.

Moneylenders have discounted these face values, in addition to charging 10% of the face value for the service:

7 PP = 35 GP = 70 SP = 350 BP = 3500 CP will get you 5250 Shawlers, 3500 Pinnies, 875 Kroner, or 49 Royals.

Greedy moneylenders! What a revelation! And more kickbacks for the Chancellor…

Street values are even further discounted. The same 7 PP will get you 7350 Shorts, 4900 Pinkies, 1225 Groaners, or 70 Boils.

Not as greedy as the out-and-out criminal class, though.

This established, for the first time anywhere, that there was a seedy underside to the Barony; another source of potential scenarios, and one that was flirted with by the campaign. One of the players wanted to be a Wizard, which meant being taught by a Wizard-in-hiding since Magic was outlawed by the Church. Their patron was a High Priest in the second-largest city within the Barony, and was extremely… let’s just say, ‘well-connected’. In fact, the Players still suspect him of being “The Patriarch”, a Godfather equivalent!

Elements Of Coinage
Common Features applied to all coins for convenience:

• Specific Gravity (Weight by volume, water = 1): 15.8 g/cm³.
• Weight: 25 coins weighs 2 lb.
• Actual Volume: 0.14255 cubic inches each = 2.33 cm³
• Effective Stacking Volume: When neatly stacked, you get 9 coins to the cubic inch.
• Effective Unstacked Volume: When loosely contained, you get 8 coins to the cubic inch.

These numbers came about as the result of an article I read (in The Dragon, if I remember correctly, but it was more than 15 years ago now) which showed how to calculate the weight and volume of a stack of coins. From memory, the author assigned the different weights to the different coins, but gave them all the same physical dimensions based on the density of the refined metal of their construction, and went on to show how to calculate how much space they occupied when stacked or thrown in loose. (Side-note: It’s great to be able to acknowledge an article that had so much impact that it’s still remembered, however vaguelly! And a little terrifying – that’s the standard that we’re all trying to live up to…)

This was a fairly realistic view; we’re all used to different coinage denomenations being different sizes and different weights. I made the deliberate choice to make all the coins occupy the same volume and have the same weight, purely to simplify matters, when I realised that the calculations would hold true even if the coins were different sizes so long as they occupied the same volume of space.

It was a deliberate oversimplification, but since coins in AD&D were considered to have zero weight, it was a major step toward realism – and a blunt warning to the characters; coins were heavy, and just because they found a fortune it didn’t mean that they could carry it. This also explained why Trusts – the equivalent of early bank notes – were used for large currency exchanges.

I then went on to give specific numbers for them to digest:

• A chest 18″ x 12″ x 15″ will hold 25,920 coins just tossed in, or 29,160 coins if they are neatly stacked, weighing aprox 2074# and 2333#, respectively. (Plus the weight of the chest!). 34 and 35 STR to lift, respectively – at maximum encumberance. Or two strong men, similarly encumbered.
• A Backpack is assumed to be 16″ x 12″ x 6″, a volume of 1152 cubic inches. This volume could theoretically hold roughly 92# of coins, or 2-3 times the weight that the backpack could reasonably hold without ripping (30-50 lb = 375-625 coins).
• A large sack will hold 20#-30# (250-375 coins).
• A small sack will hold 5#-10# (62-125 coins).
• A Large Saddlebag will hold 10#-15# (125-187 coins) and are usually used in pairs.
• A Small Saddlebag will hold the same amount as a small sack.
• A belt pouch will hold 2#-3# (25-37 coins).
• A pocket will hold 0.5#-1.5# (6-18 coins).

In some cases, these were decided by volume, in others I decided that there was a maximum weight that could be contained before the object tore, based on the usual construction material.

Individual Descriptions of the coins: Old Kingdom:
Cirunum:
0.27″ (6.48 mm) thick and 0.81″ (1.944 cm) in diameter (roughly the size of 2 Australian 20¢ pieces stuck together). Supposedly “copper” coins, these are a 50% mixture of brass and bronze, producing a heavy coin that tarnishes quickly. The derivation of the nickname (“Tibbs”) is uncertain. On one side is the “Personal Rune” of the first King of the former kingdom, Audacious I, who through diplomacy and conquest unified the peoples of many scattered regions into a cohesive nation. (NB: during the Calamities, the landscape was so rearranged that no-one knows where Audacious’ original kingdom was, nor the site of his legendary capital, Althanfair).

And it still hasn’t been found. (Do any of my Fumanor Players read these blogs? I guess I’ll find out)…

Note the use of impurities to change the density to the “uniform value” that I had specified.

The image on this Wikipedia page at the time of writing will give non-australian readers a visual idea of the coin sizes.

Saudrum:
0.225″ (5.4mm) thick and 0.9″ (2.16cm) in diameter (roughly the same size as an A$1 coin and the thickness of an A$2 coin). These are adulterated with lead and palladium, two notoriously soft metals, to bring the weight up to standard. Silver itself being relatively soft, the faces of these coins are normally worn to such an extent that they are close to being unadorned disks; only the vaguest of markings can usually be made out. Physically closest to average in size of all the coins.

Rare Coins: Coins whose faces are as clear as when they were new-minted are extremely uncommon. For coins in general circulation, 3 in 1000 will be worth d10+1 times the face value to a collector. For coins from old caches, reduce the number of coins to be examined by 25 for every 25 full years of time undisturbed, to a minimum of 3 in 200. These are worth d10 x (d10+1 per 25 year period) times the face value to a collector. Beyond this 800-year span, the incidence climes at +2 coins per year to be tested, ie 801 years undisturbed is 3 in 202 coins, 802 is 3 in 204, and so on. These are worth d10 x (d10+32+1 per 20 years over 800) times face value to a collector.

I wanted to offer characters a roleplaying opportunity – spending time examining and polishing old coins – while making them more than just numbers on the page. They didn’t take up the offer – so someone got rich when the PCs went shopping.

Coins that are legible have the faces of famous (or notorious) individuals on them, with a sygil to indicate official approval or dissapproval of the individual. One side is generally used for a warrior or a person recieving recognition for deeds of valour or heroism; the other side is either a culturally-significant person (musician, priest, mage, businessman, etc) or the cultural equivalent of a “wanted” poster (with the dissaproval sygil and a nominated reward). The former faces were changed roughly every 6 months to a year, the former could change on a month-to-month basis.

A lot of nice campaign touches here, and roleplaying opportunities that went begging. These were going to be a means of adding to the campaign background – let the PCs find a coin with a notorious criminal and research what he did that was so heinous, for example – and also clues to other potential scenarios. But all those potentials are still there, waiting for the right circumstance to enter the light of day.

I especially like the notion of using coinage to replace ‘wanted’ posters and the recognition of noteworthy people on postage stamps!

Although it somehow got left out of the writeup, the nickname “slugs” was supposed to have derived from the fact that most of them are now featureless disks of metal. Raw coin disks that have not yet been milled and stamped are known as ‘slugs’, something I remembered from a tour of the Australian Mint.

Ardrium:
0.18″ (4.32mm) thick and 1″ (2.4cm) in diameter. Nicknamed for the crown which adorns one side of the coin, the other side being reserved for the face of the Queen at the time of minting. The coins are closest to what people generally consider “ideal” proportions and are (unofficially) the monetary standard of the Barony.

Rare Coins: Particularly rare are coins featuring Queen Lilliath II, wife of King Ewan III, who choked on a cherry pit only 3 weeks after Ewan’s ascension to the throne. Two weeks later, Ewan wed his wife’s chief chambourmaid. Thus, these coins were only being minted for a couple of months. Their value to a collector is up to 100 times the face value, depending on the quality of the coin (and the bargaining skills of the seller!). Only 1 in 10,000 such coins will be found.

More colour for the campaign – a lively source of royal gossip, and a juicy story that is likely to have survived. This was a practical example of the sort of detail and colour that I was prepared to provide to the players on request; the intention was to replace a lot of ‘rumours overheard in the tavern’ with these.

The unrealised concept was for Old Kingdom coins to form a trail of ‘breadcrumbs’, each hoard or cache giving clues to another – back when the campaign was going to be low-fantasy and not the high-fantasy spectacular that it became.

Haylernym:
0.36″ (8.64mm) thick, 0.71″ (1.704cm) diameter, which makes them the second thickest of the coins (the Shawler is thicker). Instead of a raised moulding, the surfaces of the coin are relief-sculpted. On one side is the face of the King at the time of issue, surmounted and backed by the Eagle that symbolised the Old Kingdom; on the other is an image commemorating the greatest achievement to date during that king’s reign.

Of particular note is King Elanthor VII, whose image is that of the donkey he made an advisor to the throne. And yes, he was serious.

Rare Coins (1): Nobles are inherantly variable in purity, some coins are actually more valuable if melted down to form ingots (refer p16-17 of the Black Book for details). The value of the Noble is defined based on an average purity. On average, every 22,500 Nobles will include 300 such Rare Coins, which can form a single 10# bar of 24-carat gold, valued at 1169 Haylernym.

The “Black Book” was a 200-page exercise book with black cloth cover, in which I had jotted down ten years worth of accumulated ideas for a new AD&D campaign; many of those ideas formed the foundations of the Fumanor Campaign series, while others (that were incompatable with the Fumanor concepts) were used to create the “Rings Of Time” campaign.

This is a practice that I strongly reccomend to every GM out there – you never know how long your current campaign is going to last, so the time to start recording idle brainstorms toward your next campaign is now.

Rare Coins (2): Aprox 50% of nobles can be smelted into bars of 14 carat gold. 338 Coins would include 167 such “pure” coins, which would weigh 13.36#. When smelted and the impurities drawn off, this would yield a 10# bar of 14-carat gold worth 187GP. And of course, there are still the other 171 Nobles worth a face value of 1 GP each. This 14-carat bar cannot be further refined.

I forget exactly where I had found the figures, but from somewhere I had recorded information on the purity and rarity of gold. Again, this was both an offer to the PCs of a money-making scheme that my treasure payouts were going to assume that they would take advantage of, and something for a Dwarven character to get his roleplaying teeth into.

Daethorum:
0.15″ (3.6mm) thick, 1.1″ (2.64cm) diameter. Adulterated with tin to reduce weight and with a hole in the centre for the same reason. One side is stamped with a finely detailed filligree, the other has a crown surmounted by a ring of stars, one for each of the 11 great Kings of history.

Rare Coins: All Daethorum are considered rare coins, and the actual appraisal value can vary by ±20%. When more than 20 such coins are used, assume that the average is 100% of value; only roll individually when coins are treated individually.

You can’t really be more blunt than that, can you? “All [Platinum Coins] are considered Rare Coins”….”roll individually when coins are treated individually”…

Individual Descriptions of the coins: New Baronial Mintings:
Shawler:
0.45″ (1.08cm) thick and 0.635″ (1.524cm) across. The copper mines of the Barony were always of poor grade, but with the best raw material (Old Kingdom copper pieces) reserved for the Pinnie, the local ore was all that was available for these coins, which seem designed for inconvenience. Universally loathed, the thickness was necessary to compensate for the poor ores.

One side of the coin depicts a waterwheel, supposedly symbolic of common industry, while the other shows a fictitous and idealised chapel. Unfortunately, the faces were carved before the need to adjust the proportions became known and as a result, the first batches cut off the tops of the designs. New designs are currently in final preperation, but the nickname “short” will probably stick.

It did, and does. The information in these paragraphs reinforces the post-apocalyptic theme and warns the players that some goods are no longer up to the standards of manufacture or material from 100 years ago – and that they might expect. Which is another way of saying that I was going to hit them with the occasional example of equipment failure. Probably at the most inconvenient possible time.

Pinnie:
0.24″ (5.76mm) thick and with a diameter of 0.87″ (2.088 cm). Features the faces of the Baron’s two most senior advisors, the Councillor For War (Count Madras) and the Chancellor of the Exchequor, (Count Rundgren) on one side, and the face of the Princess Pinafora on the other. Unfortunately, she is even less attractive than the gentlemen, and the sculptor was forced to work from a portrait commissioned when the Princess was 8. The coins are octagonal in shape.

The existance of a Princess was inconveniently forgotten – my mistake as well as that of the players – later in the first campaign. The question of what became of her, and whether or not she ever really existed, still hangs over the campaign. But if she didn’t, why is there an ugly girl’s face plastered on all those coins?

Kroner:
0.165″ (3.96mm) thick and with a diameter of 1.05″ (2.52cm). Nicknamed by the same ‘wit’ whose derisive names for the modern coins have largely permeated the entire Barony. This is the most recently introduced denomenation and the experience of the minters shows in a far superior finished product, approaching the standards of the old coins. 15-sided, it is only thicker than the Daethorum and the Royal.

It is believed by some (as a result of its size) that the Kroner is actually far more valuable than its face value, and it has become not uncommon for those who expect it to rise in value to hoard the currency. Hence, there are relatively few in circulation, much to the annoyance of the Baron. One side of the coin depicts the Baron’s castle, Birchwood, in exquisite detail; the other face is of a rose, the favorite flower of the deceased Baroness.

‘Hope in the face of post-apocalyptic despair’ was one of the central themes of the campaign, reflected in the description of this coin. The current population may have fumbled the ball at first, but they are getting the hang of it, and even starting to plan for the future; things are, slowly but surely, getting better.

Plus more trivial gossip that adds immediatly to the sense of realism of the campaign.

Royal:
0.12″ (2.88mm) thick and 1.23″ (2.952 cm) in diameter. Most valuable of the modern coins, it is (compared with the Old Kingdom mintings) ugly and crude. Shaped as a 9-sided regular solid, it bears the likeness of the Baron on one side and the Baron’s Crest on the other. Although derived from melting down Crowns, the process removes some impurities and adds others, resulting in a coin that is a champaigne yellow colour. Because the more pure Nobles are mixed in with the less-pure during smelting, the likelyhood of any given coin being of exceptional value is virtually nil, well beyond the few thousand which have actually been minted to date.

The coin is physically the thinnest of the denominations in use, testament to the overall increase in purity of the metals. It is also the broadest. It thus has the same volume as the ordinary coins, stacks just as many in a container, and so on.

Spending Money
The prices quoted in various sourcebooks for goods are Purchase Prices for new equipment. Second-hand gear can cost as little as 1/3 the price. Certainly, when characters go to sell equipment, they will get no more than 1/3 to 1/2 of the price listed.

Another ‘fair warning’ to the players, who knew to expect to get exactly what they paid for – at best.

Equipment prices (esp. Magical items) listed in the DMG are 10 x the usual manufacturing cost (including labour). The purchase price for a “new” item will have a 70% profit margin tacked on to the top of the price listed – if any are available at all. Where charges have been used, the loss of value is a straight percentage of the loss of charges. EG a wand usually holds 50 charges; if a wand is purchased with 12 charges, the actual price is 1.7 x 12/50 x the price listed. The sale price will generally be 1/2 to 2/3 of this amount if the item can be demonstrated (reduced for any charges used in the process), and 1/4 the listed amount if it can’t be EG a potion or scroll or something that’s not working, or that conveys a purely numeric advantage – a +1 sword without a visible special effect.

Notice that this drops the redeemable value of the most common magic items while boosting enormously the cost of manufacturing replacements. I’d had one campaign virtually destroyed by the ‘magic item economy’ many years earlier, and was taking steps to prevent it happening again.

Where a price is quoted in the PHB or DMG in GP, it refers to the price in ARDRIA (Silver coins). Where a price is quoted in SP, it refers to the number of SAUDRIA (Bronze coins). Where a price is quoted in CP, it refers to the number of CIRUNAI (Copper coins). Treasures from monsters also convert using these adjustments, EG if a monster’s treasure is “1,000 GP” according to the books, it means they have Old coins worth an average of 1,000 New silver coins.

Explicitly stating things that had been implied in earlier sections.

The exception to the above is magic items, which remain in Gold Pieces. This is because these are unusually rare and precious. Following the Magewars, Wizardry became an illegal practice. Those wizards who escaped public execution have gone underground, and while a few support forbidden research by supplying the black market with new magic items, the laws of supply and demand have driven prices skywards.

[Post “The Last Deity” campaign update: While the ban on Wizards has been lifted by the new King, and the construction of a new Arcane Academy has been permitted by the Throne, only a few Wizards have come forth to teach there, and no students have yet graduated. Consequently, those remaining have been far too busy to construct anything beyond the occasional potion or scroll; while magic items are no longer black-market commodities, rarity and the high taxes currently demanded of all businesses mean that the price has not measurably dropped and availability remains rare. In general, if you want a magic sword in this campaign, you will still have to go out and find an old one for yourself.]

The Value Of The Mundane

The most trivial objects can be a source of information to the PCs. Even though few of the plot threads dangled before them in this section of the house rules were actively persued, the detail provided helped establish the themes and flavour of the campaign, and gave some practical examples of how those themes would manifest in the course of play. Most of the specific information provided was made up out of whole cloth as I wrote; all I had were the general themes that I wanted to express.

Anyone can do the same. This is another valuable tool to have in your kit when next you work on a campaign’s background.

Oh, and for players, here’s a hot tip: read everything the GM provides, a couple of times, and re-read it every now and then after that – you never know what he’s hidden in it!

Wind affects archers, flying mounts and wizards, and more.

The first type of hazard we talked about was Terrain. Another variety of combat hazard is environmental. What are the physical surroundings like? Are there any interesting global effects in place?

My definition of environmental hazard is one that affects everyone. If a hazard is limited to just certain areas of the battlemap, then it is not environmental but another hazard type.

Ground

What are the combatants standing on? Ground is the same as default terrain, bit it’s included here to help you get a complete picture of your combat environment. Determine if there are any global features and modifiers due to the nature of the footing.

Overhead

What do combatants see when they look up? Ceiling? Sky? Perhaps they see large stalactites swarming with bats, a sheet of fire, or black clouds ready to let loose a hailstorm. As with ground, determine if there are any global features and modifiers due to the nature of ‘sky’.

Air or atmosphere

What’s the space like between the ground and the sky? The atmosphere is often overlooked as an entertaining hazard. Thin oxygen makes encounters with undead even more interesting (assuming undead in your game don’t breathe). Dust, airborne particles, and gases can cause choking, sneezing, or limited visibility. Next time a combat takes place in the middle of a boring city street, add smog or smoke to spice things up.

Light

Lighting and visibility are critical to survival for most combatants. If your game system has special rules for limited visibility, such as line of sight or concealment, then consider the lighting a great source of potential hazards.

Imagine a crazy strobe effect caused by a huge fan near a light source. Diabolical game masters might introduce epilepsy rules a couple sessions prior to such an encounter, and then assign a racially modified chance of seizure during such a combat. While you should make the chance very low, the added tension when you ask each player to roll would be momentarily exciting. In addition, the strobing effect might improve stealth skills and abilities during the combat, cause ranged attack modifiers, and so on.

Another example might be a light switch. One side can see in the dark, the other can’t. The switch now becomes an important tactical element to the fight. Does one side need to guard the switch, disable it, or control it?

Sound

Sound is another under-used environmental factor. If communication is limited, combatants must resort to poorer coordination or alternate methods to provide status updates, offer ideas, or issue commands. Conversely, if sound is enhanced so you can hear the slightest whisper, it will be hard to keep your foes from overhearing what you say.

An example of a sound hazard is loud machine noise. Pounding, grinding, rattling, and rumbling machines would make casual conversation impossible. You might restrict players to six words each round on their turn because of the environment their PCs are in.

Esoteric

Depending on your game system and genre, this category is for any global or physical surrounding effects that don’t fall into the other environmental categories.

For example, in one campaign I crafted evil ruled the night, and good ruled the day. If encounters took place at night, any evil foes received a combat bonus. If encounters took place during the day, good combatants received a bonus.

Ambiance

Rules should not be the only determinant for environmental effects on combat. Looks for ways to add flavour to your fights with evocative global effects, such as strange lighting or unusual ground.

Be sure to use description to bring out the full flavour of the hazard. You should provide a description before combat starts so the PCs know what they’re dealing with (as much as they can perceive, at least). However, you should also weave in descriptions of the hazard during combat as well, so players don’t forget about it, take it for granted, or get too lost in number crunching.

The best way to continually message your group about flavour and hazards during combats is to roleplay. Have the foes react to the hazards and environment. Even if no special rules are in effect because of the ambiance (especially when no rules are in effect – many players will then stop thinking about it and focus just on buffs and drawbacks) you should have NPCs and monsters interact with the environment.

Inconsequential behaviours and reactions are a great way to roleplay.

“The beast slips on the wet grass but recovers gracefully, revealing its dexterity despite its massive, stinking bulk.”

“The giant bees sway back and forth in the breeze, which brings you scent of the goblin camp you’ve been heading toward.”

“The warrior parries your blow and a sharp ringing sound echoes throughout the canyon, letting all canyon denizens know for miles that blood will be spilt today.”

Another technique is to roleplay, if the foes can communicate. Have NPCs remark to each other or the player characters about the environment. Add elements of the environment into combat challenges and insults.

A related technique is to visualize to improve your descriptions and roleplaying. Pretend you are the enemy. What do you see around you? How does the environment play to your strengths and affect your weaknesses? Are you comfortable? What’s making you uncomfortable (other than you’re in a fight)? Run through the five senses and not only visualize what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, but how you react to each sense as well.

Finally, keep this visualization going throughout the combat, updating it with what’s happening each round. Are you surrounded, hurt, on fire? Can you taste blood, smell fear, feel your attacks sink in, see your foe trip and fall, hear the leader issuing commands? Describe what’s in your imagination during each foe’s turn to bring combat and hazards to life.

Photo by Scott Lidell, colourshifted by Mike - click the image to view it in the orginal colours

I recently had the need to design a Drow Outpost for my Shards Of Divinity campaign, and in the process, I made a few mental notes concerning how I go about designing cities, and population centres in general, that I thought I would share with our readers.

Design First, Draw Later

I don’t put pencil to paper until I have a fairly clear understanding of how the city will operate and what I am going to have to draw. That means defining its style, and its nature – what makes it distinctive – and having some idea of its history, and how all of those elements have influanced the construction.

Planned Cities are Rational, Unplanned Cities Rationalise

All cities have an inherant logic, though the nuances of that logic might escape casual understanding. The most important functions of a city will generally occur at its centre, though that ‘centre’ might actually be on one extreme edge adjacent to a natural barrier that cuts through through an urban area.

Surrounding these will be everything that those functions need in order to operate, in sequence of descending wealth. This defines the inner city, and in a planned community, that’s as far as you need to go in designing it conceptually.

Unplanned cities are rather more haphazard, with structures intended for one use being adapted to another. In such cases, the functions and their overall locations will still be more-or-less the same, but various aspects of the architecture, the streets, etc, will continue to reflect the original purpose. In a word, a pre-existing urban structure has been rationalised.

Surface cities, of the type humans are used to, will often replace older less-permanent structures with ones more suited to the modern purpose of the district, though there will usually be clues to the district’s legacy; this is rather more difficult to achieve when you are considering an underground structure, or a city amongst the trees; and traditionalists may block any reconstruction in any conservative community. Larger and more expensive structures are far harder to replace, and will tend to remain where they were first constructed even if that becomes illogical in terms of the current functioning of the city. For example, opulantly-constructed Temples can cost a great deal of wealth to construct, and will tend to stay put long after the surrounding districts have changed in nature.

It’s also fair to say that no city is ever fully planned or completely random; there once was a logic to the arrangement, and that logic will form part of the history of the city in the form of both its architectural and social legacies.

When designing a relatively unplanned urban environment, the best place to start is by designing what was there originally, and then adapting each district to whatever its modern function is, just as the inhabitants supposedly did. But that can be quite a lot of work, unless you know a shortcut.

I just happen to have one handy: work with ‘districts’ instead of individual buildings and streets. A district is an urban area within which the buildings share a common general function, and hence will have many attributes in common. I treat these as very abstract in nature, drawing a rough ‘blob’ or area on a sheet of paper for each.

Outside Access defines district boundaries and centres

Once the central districts and their industries have been defined, you can determine what variety of access to the outside they require. Do fancy carraiges need a clear path through the city to the Diplomatic centre? Do large wagons need to bring in resources for industry, or will smaller modes of transport suffice? Do smaller wagons imply more frequent traffic? What is the nature of the transport mode, and what infrastructure does it, in turn, require?

Once you have these figured out, you know where the major roads in and out of the city centre are located, and something of their character. One of these will be the dominant freight road, and another may be a dominant civil road; the rest will suit a combination of foot traffic and light freight. It’s those first two that are significant to the design of the rest of the city.

The dominant civil road will have all the things that travellers require or desire lining it, and any industry that targets the passing wealthy. In effect, it has another type of district running along its length. Temples (unless they have already been placed), accommodation, entertainment, eateries, etc, will all be found along that road. It is also likely that the city patrol (or city watch, or police force, or whatever the correct term is for the culture of the city) will have its main office on that route, and most government centres and administrative structures will also be nearby if they have not already been emplaced.

The dominant freight road will likewise have other districts either straddling the roadway or alongside it; animal yards and corrals, warehouses, freight yards, dockyards, other industries which require heavy freight access, etc.

Each time a district is identified, there will be only one or two places where it lies close to the infrastructure districts that it requires (if that has already been emplaced) or where there is room for districts containing that infrastructure to be emplaced alongside it. City design is a bit like those sliding-block puzzles that we all played with as kids!

And if there is no logical connection possible between a functional district and it’s necessary infrastructure because there are other districts in the way? There are two major solutions: either the city operates ineficiently, or more than one district of the needed infrastructure type required will develop, over time. The first is, at best, a temporary solution; canny business types will slowly bring about the second, one building at a time. As a result, you will get impure districts – areas that are a blend of two different functions, giving them a somewhat distinctive flavour.

Complete The Jigsaw

Each type of district will have a type of population district associated with it – factories will have factory worker accommodations, and so on. Again, there will be only one logical arrangement of these when you consider that the wealthy won’t want the lower classes tramping through their streets every day on their way to and from work, and certainly won’t tramp through the poor district daily to get to where they want to go. Piece by piece, you can work outwards to place and define the required district types, and the major roads and byways that connect them.

The results can generally be drawn on your ‘district blobs’ to form a logic map of the urban layout, with a dot at the centre of each district connecting vertices to show the relations between districts.

The next stage is to assess the relative physical size of each district. Some require lots of space (warehouses), some are condensed with low amounts of space per head (industrial workers). Some need more space simply because they have higher populations associated with them, regardless of the function of the district, because of the nature of the urban centre itself. The larger districts will grow and push each of the surrounding districts outwards, away from the city centre.

If the space isn’t available, there will be some development up (multistory structures) and/or down (subterranean structures), and there will be overcrowding despite this – overcrowding which will put pressure on the neighbouring districts to move farther away. So district intersection lines will slowly push outwards from the city centre, taking over structures that – once again – were intended for some other purpose; and the district being consumed will in turn expand into it’s neighbouring regions.

This is where the vertices drawn earlier become significant, because they resist this pushing. As a result, the affected districts will distort into more crescent-like shapes, with the horns located on the edges farthest from the vertices. For each additional vertice, there will be additional ‘horns’ projecting outwards like fingers between the vertices, resulting in a district boundary that looks crennelated, like a castle wall. There will also be some spreading around a circumferance line drawn through the original boundaries of the district and centred on the point in the neighbouring district containing the other point of the vertice.

It is necessary, in order for this to be practical, to be systematic in working outwards from the centre of the map.

A second logic map can be prepared when you’ve finished, in which these relative sizes and distortions are taken into account. Once you have that, you are ready to go to the next stage.

The Way Things Were

It can often be useful to prepare two or three of these logic maps showing the city in different stages of its development, as was intimated earlier. This is especially the case where a city has changed in primary purpose several times over the years. Political Changes can shift the seat of government, new commodities and technologies can encourage new industries or wipe out old ones, trade routes can shift, wars can place an emphasis on defence, and so on.

Onion Skins

In some respects, city design can be viewed as a series of onion skins or layers, either metaphoric or literal. I start with the metaphoric, drawing arrows on the second logic map to indicate the flow of money, the flow of administrative control, the flow of freight, and the daily flow of people, generally using a different colour for each (don’t neglect the flow of money from illegal activities!)

Areas which are part of the flow of money will normally be subject to civic improvements and amenities; areas which are not will be poorly maintained. Areas which are part of the flow of administrative function will receive police stations / patrols (or the equivalents) while those which are not will be wilder. The two define which areas are slums, which are middle class, and which are comparatively well-off. Where the arrows cross, you are likely to get a traffic bottleneck. Each city design and each district quickly develop a more subtle and sophisticated level of definition.

Once these are known, the city plan is finally ready to be converted into an actual layout. This calls for the ‘literal’ layers. It’s my practice to identify, define, and design layouts for these out from the outside in, and then map in “detail” from the inside back out, perpandicular to the exterior ‘surface’ of the city. More important, though, than the actual streets are the district descriptions that you have developed for each part of the urban setting.

With typical human cities, this is all fairly straightforward: you have sewers, water delivery, garbage disposal, roads & streets, and buildings, one layer stacked on top of another. With exotic locations and other societies, it can get more complicated (and more interesting); a cliffside community has waste disposal at right angles to the layers of buildings, and accessways running in three dimensions. A treetop city has multiple layers of each type, some running vertically with gravity, and some horizontally. These layers are all about infrastructure, about how things work in this particular city; consider them seperately, both overall and by district, using the information gathered in the planning so far.

Draw The Map

Armed with all these details, it becomes relatively easy to draw the map itself, however crudely. It’s not necessary to show individual buildings, or (in a modern metropolis) even individual city blocks; an outline of each district showing the major access and travel routes and with individual descriptions of what each part of the city is like, both in population, architectural style, road style, business types, social activities, and even level of criminal activity, is generally enough. You can get more detailed, and more specific, whenever you need to, in-game; there’s no need to invest valuable prep time in doing it now. The street names will reflect the original purposes of the district, giving you a means for making them up on the spot as necessary.

Maps created like this may be less defined than a street map, but they are a HECK of a lot less work, and a heck of a lot better defined. The city becomes areas in which predefined blocks of flavour text describe the districts, a far more functional approach.

Working with Map Generators and existing maps

There are some beautiful maps out there, and there are some pieces of software that permit you to generate your own. But the odds of one of these matching your logical map are so low as to be almost trivial. Unless, of course, you cheat.

Look for natural district boundaries on your existing maps. Relate these back to your second logic map. Stretch and distort the shape of a district as necessary – so long as you don’t change it’s overall size or the district types that neighbour it, your information will be correct. And it’s much easier to do things this way than to go through each and every building and street, deciding what should be there!

Typical Experiences

I generally like to finish each ‘map’ by listing two or three things that the PCs might see or encounter within each district by day, and two or three more by night. In some districts, I might add a description of the early mornings (as workers set out to start work for the day) and/or early evenings (when they are on their way home). I’ll generally drop in half a dozen or more specific landmarks – statues or unique buildings or whatever – with quick descriptions, just to complete the design. A plot hook or two for each district (even if you don’t know the explanation) can also be a good idea. With those in place, the city is ready to be populated with NPCs as necessary (again, I make most of these up on the fly), and for the PCs to stroll into town.

Designing and constructing cities can be as much work as you make it; this technique shortcuts all the fiddly little bits in favour of a more general, more abstract, and much faster approach. And yet, for all that abbreviation, the cities that result often feel more alive than many more detailed ones that I’ve seen, simply because it’s easier for the GM to get a handle on the way of life and the daily routine; his or her consequent narrative is more lively, informed, and cohesive, as a result.

Broken glass for extreme terrain

There are many kinds of combat hazards, such as giant bubbles that trap combatants who bump into them, or a narrow band of strong wind that pushes combatants around. GMs often do not have enough variety in their hazard selections. Use these categories to inspire and keep combats fresh.

Terrain hazards

A classic combat hazard that hearkens back to wargaming days. Use of mixed terrain on the battlemap provides many possible dangers and tactical options.

Sun Tzu wrote about maintaining high ground and using the sun’s reflection on water to blind your foes. Mike Mearls in D&D 4E writes about rock slides and treacherous ice sheets. Past combats in my games have seen cliffs and boiling streams.

How much terrain is covered?

You need to decide when designing and placing terrain how much coverage it has. If the terrain hazard covers the whole battlefield, then everyone is affected. If it doesn’t, only a few are affected.

Partial coverage is more interesting, especially if there are two or three different terrain types, because it offers choices during the combat.

If everyone is affected equally by terrain, there is no choice, and combatants just learn to deal with it. Pockets or zones of terrain create potentially cool offensive and defensive tactics.

Limit terrain to two or three varieties

If you place too many terrain types on the battlefield you’ll slow combat down and over-stimulate encounters. Most of the time consider up to three terrain types for combat:

Default terrain

Where other terrain types are not present on the battlefield the default terrain is in effect.

Default terrain sets player expectations at the start of battle. Whether the terrain is simply dirt, bubbling swamp water, or a field of broken glass, this defines normal for the fight. Any other terrain types will be measured and evaluated against this, which means they need to be more interesting than the default in some way.

For example, if your default terrain is just grassland with no special effects, and you add dirt areas with no special effects, the dirt will be considered boring – if it is considered different terrain by players at all. The additional terrain will have no impact on flavour or gameplay, so why bother?

Avoid terrain inflation – aim for different and interesting most of the time, not more severe. Avoid the trap of escalating terrain effects just to make other terrain interesting. This is important to note because there can be carry-over of player expectations from previous battles, especially if the game has been in a themed region for awhile and encounters share terrain traits. You might be tempted to make each successive encounter’s terrain even wilder and deadlier than the last, which will end badkly for you before long. Instead, try to make terrain different but not more severe.

For example, in the 371st plane of the Abyss, the ground (default terrain) is made entirely of broken glass. Unprotected feet are ripped to shreds within seconds. Falling prone causes extra damage. Falling from a height causes additional wounds if the victim makes it to the ground. During periodic windstorms, victims caught without cover take damage each minute from airborne glass shards. And making camp with a good place to sleep is hell, er, the abyss.

During a battle on this plane you add another terrain type – grassland. Boring old grassland. It might seem like a letdown because grassland has no interesting traits. Yet, to the players, this terrain will seem like a godsend. It’s safe! No extra damage. One can fall prone here all they want.

You might have been tempted to make non-default terrain hot glass, killler thistles made out of glass shards, or glass +1. However, the grasslands is different enough that it offers fun gameplay and combat options without inflating danger levels to an extreme.

So, you don’t always need to beef up default terrain with even more diabolical terrain – it just needs to be different and interesting to the players.

Often you will have a variety of terrain that all blurs together because it doesn’t add much flavour, different game play, or game value. Consider the typical village region battle with grass, cropland, dirt road, and light foliage. Despite having four terrain types, they all play the same.

I would bundle the terrain types up and call them all default terrain, perhaps in this case, village terrain. This gives you room to offer up more interesting terrain as needed.

Enhanced terrain

This is terrain similar to the default but with one or more properties that are different. Enhanced terrain is often a derivative of the default terrain, and so it becomes a thematic as well as a tactical element. It also should generate greater danger or tactical options than the default terrain.

For example, the combat might be in woods. The default terrain is light trees and foliage. The enhanced terrain could be heavy trees and foliage that block movement, break line of sight, and provide cover; a pile of rocks that offers height advantage, cover, and ambush from a small cave; or a stream that blocks tracking and allows more rapid movement.

You might add rain to village terrain to make the road muddy and tricky to maintain footing on, snow to make non-road parts difficult to walk through and fight in, or deep snow to make ambush possible from any location.

Special terrain

This is terrain that is a lot different than your default or enhanced terrain. It can be within theme or breaking it, but it should have notably different game play. It can be extreme, and if so, should be limited to small areas of the battlefield, else it risks being considered default.

Special terrain should increase drama or have the potential for big impact. Perhaps the side that reaches it first, or figures out how to use it to their benefit first, will receive great tactical advantage.

For example, there might be three magic rune circles spread around the battlemap. If people are standing in all three at the same time they receive a significant magical boon that lasts three rounds. This special terrain might change combat from toe-to-toe hacking to positional play with both sides trying to get members into the circles and repelling the other side from doing so at the same time.

Another example might be poison globe plants that allow combatants to search for their fruit, which can be thrown and explode in a burst of poison spores upon impact. You could decide these plants hide well in thistles, so it takes time to find the fruit.

A third example is a combat that takes place near in a small crater. The ground is devoid of plants and the rocks are a strange orange colour. In certain areas larger parts of the celestial body remain intact beneath the ground. These areas have strong magnetism. Anything involving metal, such as moving in metal armour or swinging a sword, meets with great resistance, inflicting combants with potential movement, attack, and defense penalties.

Avoid too much terrain

Earlier I mentioned that offering too many hazards slows combat down and over-stimulates. Multiple terrain types that add a lot of extra rules to an encounter slows combat down because of the additional data tracking and communication involved. Players might get confused, forget, or not pay attention, resulting in lots of extra tabletalk about what terrain type has what effects. This extra data must be dealt with by every player each time it’s their turn. It also creates more for you to think about while game mastering.

If you have a rainbow of terrain types, any dramatic or flavour effects get lost in the crowd. Having magic runes, broken glass, boiling streams, and piles of rocks in every encounter deprives each of these interesting terrains spotlight time. Players will come to expect this large selection each combat, making fights with just two or three terrains seem less exciting.

Also, don’t forget there are several types of hazards. Monopolizing hazards by way of terrain each time is another way to make hazards less interesting over time.

The best case is to stick with two or three terrain types each combat – default plus a combination of one or two enhanced or special terrains. Then, unleash the full menu for important combats, such as with stage bosses or rivals for climatic scenes, or for encounters that have special significance to the PCs.

Mud is strikes fear into the hearts of heavily armoured combatants

The first helping hand you can offer your poor, underrated and under-appreciated combat hazards is to give them a great name. A name with gusto, panache, or spirit gives hazards a surge of vitality and interest. A great name inspires.

Instead of calling the mud in the middle “difficult terrain”, call it Grom’s Brown Demise. Rename ye olde pool of lava The Bubbling Heart of Hate. Switch razorgrass to The Slicing Green Tide.

If you find a hazard inspiring, you’re more likely to remember to use it during battles when you already have a dozen other things going on. Nay, not just use it, but employ it, like a finely honed game master weapon. Instead of just plopping difficult terrain down on the battlemat, the name of it inspires a GMing fever that demands you wield the hazard with subtle malice and perfect implementation before the fever breaks.

A compelling name also adds new interest in the hazard from your players. Some players will riff off the name to roleplay better during combat. Some players will see beyond the squiggly lines drawn on the map and be inpsired to play with more energy just because you’ve put such care and interesting detail into the game.

A spirited name begs world and campaign design. The group will wonder who this Grom person was, or why the locals call lava a bubbling heart of hate. If you get into the habit of naming your hazards with style, you’ll find a new source of development hooks that pays off in the long run.

If you have certain hazards – and their names – recur during the campaign, you are sure to inspire not only yourself but your group to investigate the history, mention the name to NPCs, and get more curious about the world in general.

It sounds too simple, I know, but crafting fun names is another great way to add a sense of wonder and mystery to your world.

Fire hazard - show players pics of real flames for best effect

Throw hazards into your combats to make fights more interesting, regardless of game systm or genre. Dungeons and Dragons, for example, has always promoted dungeon masters using traps and difficult terrain, though in the latest edition there seems to be more urgency for doing this.

To start this series off, I’d like to provide a working definition of what a hazard is. The word hazard can be a loaded keyword for your game, so it’s best not to make any assumptions about what we’re talking about.

A hazard is a combat element, other than the PCs and their foes, that brings danger, risk, or difficulty to the fight. Examples might be quicksand, a witch’s boiling cauldron, or acid rain.

A hazard can be harmful or just add an element of risk. It doesn’t have to injure, for example, like a lava pool could. A hazard might simply be deep snow that slows movement and makes combatants less nimble.

It’s important when designing hazards or dropping them into your games that there be some added gameplay value. The mountains 10 miles away might be dangerous to climbers, but they are not going to have an impact on the current combat, so they’re not a good hazard to add. :)

For hazards to be interesting to the game, I’d extend the definition to make hazards a challenge or exploitable tactic that adds complications, twists, or additional resource depletion to combat.

Some games put traps into a separate category. My definition will include traps as a type of hazard. This won’t affect your game’s rules, hopefully, but by including traps in the upcoming tips and advice about hazards I think your devilish devices and deterrents will make combats more interesting.