Last night was Session #13 – Bearded in Orcus’s Lair of my D&D 4E Carnus campaign. I used to write session logs after each game night, but fell out of practice due to time pressure. However, the benefits of logging are too great, so it’s time to get back into the habit. Roleplaying Tips readers have responded positively to my brief session summaries in the past, so as an experiment, I’m going to try logging about sessions on this web, er, log.

Spoiler alert: if you are a player in my campaign, please stop reading. Secrets are about to be revealed. Orcus will know if you’ve cheated. He’s a tricky one. He also knows your IP.

Bearded in the Temple of Orcus

In Session #12 the characters were dismayed to learn Orcus had a public and open temple in Carnus. A friend had been kidnapped and the first clue was a holy symbol of Orcus painted in blood at the scene of the disappearance (hey, who said Orcus was subtle?). The second clue was a feint trail in the rain that lead the ranger to the Temple District, though the tracks became washed out before they could take the ranger to a specific temple door. After brief inquiry, the group learned Orcus has a temple for followers nestled between two other holy buildings. Outraged, the PCs gathered up their gear and headed to the undead lord’s unholy site.

Further surprises lay in wait, however, as the temple turned out to be a quaint house that smelled slightly like apple pie. While half the party circled around the back, the others entered through the front door to be greeted by friendly and comely young ladies. One played a harp in the greeting room, one was cooking in the kitchen, and the greeter was warmly welcoming them and asking if they’d like some refreshments.

Bewildered, the PCs demanded to know the location of Douven Stahl, their kidnapped friend. The heroes around the back debated whether to storm into the kitchen or wait for a signal. The priestess of Orcus knew of Douven and said he was in the basement. The PCs were welcome to go down into the cellar to investigate. Barging through the house now from both directions, the PCs meet at the cellar door and cautiously descend.

Fast forward to Session #13. The PCs descend the stairs but realize they’ve been tricked. They’ve passed through some sort of invisible portal, because the stairs no longer lead back up to the house, but just to a stone wall. The steps end at the entrance of a horrific chamber with dozens of sarcophagi lining the walls and a dark altar at the far end. Burning braziers in the centre of the cavern cast an orange glow throughout. Standing at the altar appears to be Orcus himself! The characters believe him to be Orcus, though the creature is actually just an aspect of undead lord.

Orcus’s Aspect conducts a quick trial, finds the PCs guilty, and declares they’ve wasted their time because Douven is already dead (just to rub it in). Then he apparently vanishes, leaving the PCs to explore their new prison. (He actually just turns invisible, waiting with impatient glee at what is about to happen.)

As the PCs enter the chamber, the lids on the sarcophagi slam open and creatures from beyond the grave pour out like pus from a flesh golem’s ingrown toenail. A massive brawl breaks out and the PCs are nearly overwhelmed. The PCs also soon learn the braziers explode when approached, and certain floor tiles are pressure traps that release poison gas. The heroes fight courageously on.

Just as the battle tips to the party’s favour, the Aspect of Orcus reappears and lays down the smack on the party’s priest. After the cleric goes down beneath an onslaught of skull mace blows, the demon casts his gaze around the battle, gives a great belly laugh, and the disappears into one of the sarcophagi. The sharp-eyed ranger and two other PCs catch a glimpse of a struggling Douven Stahl also in the sarcophagus, renewing the group’s hope. The beast lied about their friend’s death!

Treasure Type J

Despite horrendous odds, the party wins the battle and takes a rest. Then they search for treasure. As expected, the search comes up Treasure type J. Several sessions ago, one player coined this term to indicated “treasure type Johnn” – no coins, magic items, valuables, or anything to add to the credits column on the party’s balance sheet. Hey, I figure coming out alive with a few lessons learned is reward enough. Go figure. :)

Guard ambush

The PCs investigate the sarcophagus where Orcus and Douven disappeared into, and discover a hidden door. Passing through they emerge into a dark, rainy day. A road takes them to the top of a hill where they spot a swamp and hamlet below. The hamlet is surrounded by a primitive wall and the PCs troop toward it. Guards at the hamlet’s gate challenge the party and the PCs manage to convince them to open the gate. Night is falling and the group needs dry shelter – even the stables would do. As the characters pass through, the gate slams shut behind them and the guards attack. No shabby peasants these guards, the battle is a tough one.

Victorious again, the heroes speculate why such skilled warriors guard this shabby hamlet, and why they attacked without provocation. At this point, the session is called and we wrap things up. Next session the PCs will begin module Master Dungeons M2: Curse of the Kingspire by Goodman Games, of which the guard encounter was the start.

Session reflection

GM notes

My monsters suffered at a few points because of my lack of rules knowledge. I have too many things to read for work and projects though, so I’m continuing with my plan to learn-by-GMing.

There was still a lot of confusion tracking damage to numerous, identical minis. I think next session I go back to marking figs with coloured chips to help distinguish them.

I could do a better job with critter ability use. I remembered a couple of missed opportunities after the session with unused monster powers. I might resume creating encounter tactics checklists.

It was a combat-heavy session, but there was good roleplaying with the guards in encounter Guard Ambush.

I might have to break down and grant a couple of treasure parcels soon lest the unwashed masses rebel.

To dos triggered from this session

• Treasure from the guards
• Update the party wiki with XPs and NPC portraits
• Craft monster tactics checklists for upcoming encounters

The subject of this month’s blog carnival is War. As part of that canival, I present an article on how to referee a war in an rpg. Not one that happens in some distant country, or a neighbouring city, but up close and personal – so close that the PCs can touch it. And not some small skirmish on the fringes – thousands of troops in conflict, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands.

Part 1 and Part 2 deal with the fundamental concepts and prep work needed to make War a practical option within an RPG.
Part 3 and Part 4 describe how to use those fundamental concepts in play.
Part 5 describes how to integrate PC-scale one-on-one combat with a war.
Part 6 concludes the series with miscellenious notes on how to implement unusual abilities and exotic armaments within the system.
So, without further ado…

Campaign Mastery Presents:
“This Means War!” – a system to make huge armies practical to DM

Part 1: Fundamental Concepts & Required Prep

It’s something that every GM inevitably comes across at some point, and it usually ends up causing nightmares: How can it be made practical to GM a huge army, or even more to the point, to have two or more of them engage in battle? The first time I ran up against it, I had very little experience, and opted to create ubermonsters out of each “army” – this was using AD&D, which dates it a LONG time ago. That worked, after a fashion, but it left quite a lot to be desired; the PCs weren’t able to interact with the army as they were on entirely different scales.

The second time around, I had about ten years experience as a GM under my belt, and chose to employ a narrative approach. The PCs interacted with those enemies in their immediate vicinity as individuals, and I simply making up whatever was going on outside of that as it suited me, with reversals, failures, successes, and high drama. The PCs were able to get down and dirty one-on-many, so it corrected the problems of the first method, but it made the battle almost impossible to run, even after I had decided to take the simple step of rolling a d% for each opponant faced on the PC-scale to decide how many hit points they had already lost in the battle, and choosing their tactics and objectives accordingly. There were just too many rolls to make, and too much to keep track of; it bogged down to a pace that made dawdling seem breakneck, with a single skirmish taking 25 hours to resolve.

So, when the problem began to loom on the horizon for a third time, in the preamble to the climactic finish of the first Fumanor campaign in 2004, I decided to have a good solid think about just what was involved and how to simulate the battle in a way that was practical. The results of that effort have never been published – in fact, they’ve never been fully collected in writing before – so this is definitly original material. All I have in the way of notes taken is the working-out that I did at the time, with no explanatory notes (Naughty Mike! Bad Mike!).

But rather than simply providing the results of that first go-round, which were designed for D&D 3.0, I thought it would be more useful, and more informative, to actually go through the process used to construct the ‘war’ rules, so that GMs can choose to apply it to any game system they happen to be using. I can also take the opportunity to formalise and update the rules to full 3.x spec. In any event, the absence of prepared notes on the subject means that I would have to reconstruct the significance of each calculation from scratch anyway! [Read the rest of this entry…]

Part 1 began discussing the fundamental concepts needed to simulate a unit of 100 soldiers, dealing with the number of hits that they could inflict in a round of battle, and the amount of damage that they could inflict.

Part 2 picks up right where we left off…

Part 2: Fundamental Concepts (continued)

Ranged Attacks

Some units have ranged attack capabilities. These don’t normally mean throwing daggers, but do include bows and spears and the like. Because these units have a different chance to hit depending on the number of range increments to the enemy, the amount of damage they inflict has to be calculated for each different range increment. Furthermore, cover may reduce the damage inflicted to 1/2 or 1/4 normal, which should also be calculated in advance. These units trade the ability to inflict damage at a distance for complexity of prep.

Weapons with a reloading requirement such as crossbows permit any enemy unit within range to make a free attack while the crossbows are being reloaded. The commanders of such units have a choice: they can either have all their crossbowmen in a unit fire in unison, inflicting maximum damage, but suffering maximum damage in reply, or they can stagger their attacks, doing half damage at a time but suffering half the normal damage in response. (An army making a normal attack against such a unit still does full damage, this rule applies only to the extra ‘free’ attack). [Read the rest of this entry…]

I received an advance copy of the Player’s Handbook 2 and checked out the shiny new barbarian class. Yowsa. Dungeon masters watch out, this guy is mean. As a skirmisher, he’s all about movement and doing massive damage periodically during combat. “Class Traits: Striker. You use powerful two-handed weapons to deal serious damage to your enemies.”

I say bring it on. Adding him to my group of PCs gives me an excuse to research higher level monsters. LOL.

I know at least one of my players is frothing for Player’s Handbook 2, and it’ll show up at the table next game session. My current Carnus campaign allows players to switch PCs, sometimes for interest sake, other times to bring a specialized role to an adventure or encounter. Oh, and there’s also been one TPK and one near TPK. In anticipation of having a barbarian enter the campaign one way or aonther, here are 50 barbarian character hooks and quests. If a new character is about to enter the game, we might as well take advantage of the opportunity and make the campaign more interesting because of it, eh?

50 Barbarian Hooks

1. Seeks a way to control his temper
2. To prove himself, he must cover his entire body with the scars of battle
3. Seeks out the ultimate specimen of a certain monster type to defeat it in battle
4. Aims to track down an ancient enemy and defeat it through guile, not might
5. To purge the world of a specific monster type
6. Seek out the ailing heart of the world and find a means to repair it
7. An enemy clipped his ponytail off, and now he must recover it
8. A foreign witch has stolen his soul and he seeks her out to reclaim it
9. Must go out and become a leader of men, or another racial group
10. Instructed to overthrow an evil empire
11. Must defeat an arch enemy with honour
12. Must tame a great beast, such as an ancient dragon
13. Adopted by a tribe of halflings, he journeys to beseech an exiled halfling hero to return and lead his former clan
14. Quests to gather the materials required to craft a powerful magic weapon
15. Seeks to challenge a god who whisked away his lifelong love so he can marry her himself
16. Slavers attacked his clan and he journeys the world to track down and liberate surviving clan members
17. Exact revenge on his demon father who attacked his mother all those years ago
18. His entire village was torn away into one of the planes of the abyss and he seeks its location and then to return the village to the real world
19. His village is cursed and only a powerful villain knows the cure
20. His god has tasked him with a holy war against a group of monstrous lords
21. Break the magic bloodline of a long line of evil emperors
22. His god has demanded he prove himself worthy of his markings by finding a unique creature and killing it
23. His god has demanded he prove himself worthy of his markings by finding a unique creature and befriending it
24. He aims to steal the heart of a princess away from her dashing prince
25. His father roamed the world and ascended to stand beside his god – how can he carry on such a legacy?
26. The tribal council has decreed he must bring supreme honour to the tribe
27. His animal spirit his instructed him to find a powerful magic item made from the animal’s bones and destroy it
28. He must guard and protect a natural wonder, such as a primeval forest or ancient elephant burial ground
29. To collect the teeth from 500 different kinds of beasts
30. To kill one dozen mighty creatures, each with a different weapon
31. To bring a rival clan to heel by seeking out and killing their godling totem beast
32. An ancient lie is made known to him through prophetic dreams, and he must venture forth to prove and reveal the truth to the world
33. Search out and seek the treasure from 24 ancient powerful kings
34. Coerce, steal, or loot 100 rich merchants from across the land and accumulate 1,000,000 gold coins, which should be sacrificed to his god when done
35. Gain the strength of the gods and then rip the demon emperor’s head from his shoulders with his bare hands
36. Seize the castle of an epic enemy and rule the region himself
37. Achieve such glory, fame, and reputation that his tribe must choose him over his brother for leadership when his father passes on
38. Find the cure for a debilitating disease that is killing the village’s most beautiful maiden
39. To overturn history and clear an ancestor of the false conviction of genocide
40. Stop a near immortal necromancer from piecing together a way to raise a dead god
41. Stop an evil city from further poisoning the land
42. Depose the Amazon Queen and enslave her evil hag followers
43. Return to his tribe with a certain powerful relic that will stop a wedding and make him the most worthy groom
44. Lead a band of mercenaries to the edge of the world…and beyond
45. Cursed with the eternal possession of a relic that harms as much as it helps, he seeks a way to break yet another lifetime of tragedy
46. Have a new world wonder built in his name
47. Purify a mega-dungeon of evil so the mother earth might take the vast area back and make it hers again
48. Make a pilgrimage to a holy site on another plane, bashing skulls the entire way
49. Recently discovered ancient scrolls of wisdom must be delivered by hand to the tribe’s god
50. To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women

Want to learn more about Player’s Handbook 2? Check out these articles on other blogs.

• Atomic Array: Episode 018: Player’s Handbook 2
• Game Cryer: Player’s Handbook 2 Review
• Gnome Stew: A Veteran GM’s Take on GMing and the PHB2
• Critical Hits: The Avenger
• Uncle Bear: The Bard
• Critical Ankle Bites: The Druid
• Kobold Quarterly: Review: Player’s Handbook 2
• The Core Mechanic: The Invoker
• Flames Rising: The Shaman
• Stupid Ranger: The Sorcerer
• Musings of the Chatty DM: The Warden

Drop by Wizards of the Coast today!

Leonines

Recently, Campaign Mastery recieved a comment to one of our blogs informing us of an online monster/NPC generator available at Dingle Games. While the comment was not approved as it was unrelated to the post in question, we felt the product itself was worth a look: http://www.dinglesgames.com/tools/MonsterGenerator/dnd35/
[Read the rest of this entry…]

When Toolbox for d20 by AEG came out I scooped it up right away and have found it very useful over the years. Now, in 2009, its big daddy has arrived on the Prime Material Plane and it’s awesome. While some might scoff at a book of tables, I see the Ultimate Toolbox, like its predecessor, as a tome of ideas. The Ultimate Toolbox is physically heavy too, but not just because it has 400 pages, but because it’s made out of Tyrannosaur Rex meat.

Sometimes I’m stuck and need inspiration. Other times I have a great idea and want to evaluate it against another to test its mettle or take it even further. While I’m predisposed to enjoy a book of tables – as you can tell – what I like best about Ultimate Toolbox is the thousands of hooks, seeds, and concepts it has. There are definitely many pure data tables inside its covers, such as Table 3-62: City Smells I or Table 4-28: Rope Knots, but there are also many wonderful tables like Table 6-15: Magic Item Histories, Table 2-35: Weather 1, and Table 7-29: Brute Details.

Ultimate Toolbox Contents

By my rough count there are 900+ tables in seven themed chapters and an appendix:

Chapter 1: Character (Example sections: Backgrounds, Character Paths, Local Color)
Chapter 2: World (Example sections: World Builder, Religion, Environment)
Chapter 3: Civilization (Example sections: Crime, Fanfare, Contacts)
Chapter 4: Maritime (Example sections: Ports ‘o Call, Ships, Pirates)
Chapter 5: Dungeon (Example sections: Trappings, Books and Labs, The Dead)
Chapter 6: Magic (Example sections: Arcana, Druids and Witches, The Planes)
Chapter 7: Plot (Example sections: Villains, Urban Inspiration, Quests and Secrets)

Original Toolbox owners take note: there is little overlap between that book and Ultimate Toolbox. Ultimate contains mostly new tables. In addition, while Toolbox was geared toward GMs, Ultimate has 6 chapters usable by GMs and players, with just chapter 7 labeled as DM’s eyes only. There is also a Table of Contents and an index of all the tables. In addition, sprinkled throughout the book are notes, advice, and guides – well done, authors.

Favourite Tables So Far

It’s going to take more than a couple days of pouring through the book to discover uses for all the tables, but here are my favourite ones to date:

• Tables 1-9 to 1-15: Character Motivations
• Table 1-22: Nightmares
• Table 1-41: Bard Performances
• Table 2-20: Evil Realm Names
• Table 2-26: State of the Nation
• Table 3-64: Monument Description
• Table 3-65: Statues Description
• Tables 3-95 to 3-106: Pick Pocket Yield (perfect for my Carnus campaign)
• Tables 4-6 to 4-10: Dockside Diversions
• Tables 5-21 to 5-23: Dungeon Tiles (tile shapes)
• Table 5-53: Dungeon Captives
• Tables 6-xx Various magic item descriptions (great way to spruce up treasure piles and NPC equipment)
• Table 7-13: MacGuffins
• Table 7-68: Surprise Endings
• Table 7-89: Secret Handshakes
• Appendix: Ambushes

Kudos to the books authors for what must have taken hundreds of hours researching, brainstorming, and compiling: Dawn Ibach, Jeff Ibach, and Jim Pinto.

Campaign Mastery readers, pick a number between 9 and 391. I’ll tell you a table that’s on that page!

The view from the cavern floor

Within The Flói Af Loft

Finally, the characters have reached the floor of the great chasm, and started looking around. It is even colder than expected, no more than 10°C, and there is perpetual dust and ash in the air. The sand dunes underfoot are treacherous; seemingly-solid surfaces offer no more support than smoke. As feared, lighting is at a twilight level, broken by the occasional flash of lightning from dust ball to dust ball, or dust ball to ground. The sand itself is more multicoloured than would have been expected from prior observation; what has been presumed to be an illusion of the distance was not, and individual dunes are predominantly one type of mineral sand or another in relatively pure form. There are blues, and purples, and greens, and golds, but the majority comprise four colours: yellows so light they are almost white, dirty greys, blacks, and deep red-browns. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Natural laws make sailing a Snyrtilegurskip unintuitive

Fólk Afsteinn (The People Of Stone)

These are a race of people capable of living in this environment not through physical adaption so much as through intelligent manipulation of their environment. I chose a blending of Dwarf and Halfling and called them Dwarvlings, because I wanted them to make a reasonable basis for PCs, but always thought that a blend of Stone Giant and Dwarf might have been a better choice id that was not a consideration.

The society was based on Vikings of the 12th century, with a couple of more modern refinements in technology. They have no written language and educate their young through epic sagas; Perform: ‘storytelling’ or other oratorical skills go over big. They are divided into clans (I used “Braveheart” for referance material and inspiration).

They have learnt the qualities of various local materials and employ them in various ways. For example, there is a cactus-like plant that grows here and there, especially in softsand rivers, which they cultivate. Not only does it provide water, but they can strip the skin and turn it into fabric and rope and so on. Dried cactus seed, thrown into one of the dust clouds, dies it a bright green for a time, until the cactus seeds are reawakened by the moisture trapped within the cloud. They use vast nets woven from cactus fibres in hunting as well as harpoons, javelins, etc. From a distance, these look like giant cacti, attracting the small flying mammals – and the things that feed on them! [Read the rest of this entry…]

The following is based on material prepared for My ‘Seeds Of Empire’ campaign in mid-2006. It has been rewritten to form a standalone setting for an encounter with an original creature to be found there (amongst others), as part of the February blog carnival. A day or so late, but better late than never…

It also serves as an example to my approaches to game-prep, adventure design, encounter design, and monster creation. When I ran this setting, we got 20 sessions of play from it. However, a lot of character interaction notes relevant only to the PCs and NPCs that took part have been excised; the original version was about twice this length. So my normal level of prep is 1/10th of this for a single session of play.

It is strongly recommended that this setting and encounter be run using the rules in “Sandstorm” from WOTC. Using the information provided in that supplement, in conjunction with the “Monster’s Handbook” by Fantasy Flight Games will make it easy to customise standard encounters from the Monster Manual or other sources to suit the environment. The rules in the “Manual Of The Planes” on adding elemental templates (p193) were also useful.

Click on thumbnail for a larger image

The Jörð Veröld (Earth World)

The Jörð Veröld is an elemental subplane or pocket reality derived from the elemental plane of Earth with infusions of air and fire. It can be presumed that at one time there was also an infusion from the water-plane but that this was sealed by molten lava and the water boiled away.

The plane essentially consists of 6 layers, each with their own features. Most of these will not be presented in detail here, but some key points will be identified. Each is discussed seperately below and a submap presented.

General Environmental Features:
The plane is spiritually and magically isolated. That means that no spells higher than 5th level can be cast, and no spells higher than 3rd level can be memorised or replenished once cast. Time moves more slowly within the subplane; for every second spent there, 1¼ seconds pass in the outside world.

Recommended Use:

Many of the terrain features come best as surprises, so the pocket realm should be newly-discovered. While the environment limits the effectiveness of mages, clerics, and other spellcasters, the setting is most effective with characters of 6th-8th level (at least initially). There are plenty of XP and roleplaying opportunities on offer, but not much in the way of treasure unless the party can get creative. [Read the rest of this entry…]

This blog post was originally going to be a review of Master Dungeons M2: Curse of the Kingspire by Goodman Games. However, once I got well into reading the module, I decided I was going to run this adventure for my Carnus D&D 4E campaign. It’s an excellent adventure, full of combat, puzzle, and roleplaying opportunities. Excellent sword and sorcery!

After deciding to DM this module for my group, I needed a way to fit it into my existing campaign and current plot threads. How do you catch player interest and hook them into a new adventure mid-campaign? Here is a simple model that I am applying for adding M2: Curse of the Kingspire to Carnus.

1. Character Link

Relate some aspect of the adventure to a PC. What element of the adventure directly relates to a character, or could be tweaked to link to a character? [Read the rest of this entry…]

What do you do when one character doesn’t trust the other characters, and it starts to degrade game play? A game master asks:

Hi Mike and Johnn, I am new to GMing and play with a group of close friends every week. One of my player’s characters doesn’t trust the rest of the group. Even after another PC said he’d pay him to be with the group the mistrust continued, and after about 5 sessions of this I can tell that the others are getting tired of this and he’s slowing the pace down. I was wondering if you had any advice as to how I can convince this player’s PC to trust the others. I would appreciate any advice, thank you.

Johnn’s answer:

In my opinion, the best option is to have a chat with the player about making his character fit in better. The player is probably wrapped up in roleplaying the personality of his PC and doesn’t want to “betray his character” by doing something that doesn’t make sense.

First, congrats if this is the case, because this is an awesome player who will take the roleplaying of your group up a level if allowed to do so.

Second, the player has crafted what sounds to be a character with too much group friction to be playable as-is. Meaning, the character has got to change or to go. The player will object. But, it’s no different than if a player brought a robot PC to a fantasy game, an evil PC to a good party, or a 50th level PC to a group of 1st level PCs. The character just doesn’t fit and it’s causing problems.

Fortunately, I think you can turn this situation into something positive for your group. Talk with the player alone and explain the difficulties the character is causing the group. Then offer to craft a storyline that would result in the character being more group-trusting. The storyline gives the roleplayer lots of great game fodder for his PC and it gives you more material to game with. If the player balks at this, bring to his attention that the definition of hero is one who undergoes transformation or change. Ask him to check out Joseph Campbell, movie guides, and literature guides. Characters change – because they must – and that makes them heroic. So, work out with the player a storyline that would result in his character becoming trustful of all the other PCs. If the two of you work this out together then you are sure to get your player’s support.

Depending on your group, you might fill your other players in. I would, but it depends. You don’t want to show favoritism, but you also want to resolve the situation, and if you are getting cooperation and a chance to resolve things quickly, then it’s worth the effort.

The other option is to ask the player to make a new PC – one who fits in with the party. This is not as good an option and might cause personal issues. But, every player at the game table has to understand it’s a cooperative game. It’s not a game of selfish destructive character gaming. :)

Mike’s answer:

There might be more going on here than meets the eye, and I’m not entirely confident that the GM asking the question has put his finger on the real problem. Perhaps the player in question has good reasons not to trust the others. Is this an issue of trust between players, or trust between characters?

If the player in question was a novice, in comparison to the others, he might be feeling overwhelmed by past stories of greed and betrayal spun for his entertainment and enlightenment by the more experienced players.

Perhaps the player’s behaviour is reflecting a real-world distrust of the other players, and not just their characters. These things crop up from time to time, even amongst friends, and it can sometimes be hard to put sufficient distance between out-of-game experiences and those taking place in-game; they will tend to surface, whether we want them to or not. If the problem is that the player doesn’t trust the other players, the DM needs to get to the reasons for that lack of trust before he can find a solution. Real-world problems require real-world answers, they can’t be resolved in-game!

Perhaps Johnn is right, and the character – not the player – is at fault. Again, perhaps he has good reason not to trust the other characters, either because of the character type, the background that he has chosen, or past events that didn’t sit well with the character. Or maybe it’s just that the other characters havn’t given the PC a reason to trust them yet! Bribing him to stay with the group clearly isn’t enough, in his character’s mindset (and would only aggravate the situation if the character is paranoid about the intentions of the other PCs) – they will, through their behaviour and shared experiences, have to find some reason to work together, some common goal. The players may well have agreed on something along those lines, but have the characters?

If the problem is of a purely in-game nature, then metagaming a solution is a viable tactic. Taking the problem outside the mindset of the character and talking to the PCs owner about his character AS A PLAYER may lead to a solution, as Johnn suggests. There are really two classes of solution: revisiting the character concept, or a conspiracy.

Johnn’s advice neatly covers the ‘revisiting the character concept’ solution set. The alternative type of answer is for the character to continue to distrust the other PCs, but to hide the fact from them! If the GM is satisfied that the character has good reasons for his behaviour, or has a character development arc of his own in mind, this can be a viable solution. To set it in motion, what’s needed is for the PC causing the problem to have a side-encounter of some sort that gives him reason to conceal his distrust, and for the GM to then arrange an encounter that justifies the aparrant ‘change of attitude’ on the part of the PC, just as he would if the character was really going to change attitude.

In many ways, this can be the ideal solution as it gives the campaign the best of both worlds – the player gets to play the character that he wants to, and party harmony is restored. In other ways, it may be seen as deferring the problem for another day. It is also an excellent solution if the GM decides that the character is unjustified in his distrust of the other characters; at a later point, the “side encounter” that persuades the PC to spy on the others can be revealed as a villain using the PC for his own ignoble ends. This gives the PC a big scene once the deception is revealed in which he has to attempt to atone for the wrong that he has done, (perhaps dying in the process) – definitely heroic!

There is a third class of problem that could also be at play here – besides the purely real-world and purely game-play causes of trouble, there is a transition layer between the two that can be cause this sort of problem. This is where difficulties in preferred playing style lurk in ambush, something that occasionally even catches out the experienced GM. Perhaps the player in question wants to spend more time roleplaying in character, while the others have a greater taste for hack-and-slash. This would explain the players intention to dwell on roleplaying his PCs distrust, and the mounting frustration of the other players. If this is the cause of the problem, then none of the solutions offered so far will ultimately solve it; the player will simply move on to some other ‘deep-immersion’ roleplaying of his character, slowing the game down just as much as ever, and frustrating the other players just as much.

I’m afraid that there’s no easy answer to that particular problem. There are some articles and past e-zines at the roleplaying tips website that might help out. Perhaps encounters in which the offending PC gets to roleplay instead of participating in battle while the other characters hold off the nasties, but these are easy to overuse. Ultimately, this type of problem comes down to one of player expectations, and customising the campaign to try and satisfy both. In other words, the best solution – and it’s not perfect, by any means – lies in changing what you as GM are doing!

Last, it might also be that the problem ISN’T with the player in question, but is actually the frustration being felt by the other players. Perhaps they feel that he is getting more than his fair share of the spotlight, and that is the real issue!

So, before you can begin solving this problem, you first have to identify exactly what it’s cause is. That means talking to the player – in private, and possibly at length – about the campaign, his playing style, his character, and why his character is acting as he is – without telling him about the problems that currently exist unless HE brings them up. DON’T tell the player that the others are getting frustrated, it can generate hard feelings – tell the player that AS GM, you want to understand what he’s doing and why so that you can better tailor scenarios to suit.

Have the same discussions with each of the other players as well – you might well find that there is actually more than one source of the complaint, and that they are merely resulting in a common symptom.

Once you know the real cause, you can tailor a solution (if there is one) to suit.

Ask The GMs is a service being offered by Campaign Mastery. Click on the link at the top of the page to find out more.

Monument To The Mother Country, Merida, Mexico

This is the final part of a four-part article. The first part gave a relatively straightforward technique for creating a unique society; the second and third parts identified four ways of communicating the uniqueness of the result to the players, selling them on its credibility, and exploiting it for scenarios and subplots, and examined these in detail. This final part will deal with expanding the cultural description into other areas of description.

Adding Color To Cultural Expressions

If you’ve followed the advice of the earlier parts of this series, you’ve defined a culture in terms of the differences between the ‘normal’ encountered by the party, established a rational basis for that difference, and extrapolated from this basis to determine the effects on the characters experience. But cultural differences and distinctiveness do not stop there, and there is rarely just one point of uniqueness to a culture. If it doesn’t directly interact with the characters, it can be considered a “color element”, something that the DM can insert into his descriptions and other passing comments, usually without particular significance, but which add to the depth and realism of the culture.

Architecture

A fairly obvious one, that most GMs will have already considered. No two cultures build exactly the same things exactly the same way. Architectural decisions by the DM reflect the history or character of a culture as well as current cultural aspects and levels of technology. Anything from the shape of the towers (Onion-shaped? Spires? Angular? Flat? Crenelated?) to the shape of the doors. Is bathing public or private, and what does either choice say about the water management of the culture? How does that affect the cleanliness of the streets, the building materials, the pottery, the farming capacity?

Diet

An aspect of the culture that a lot of GMs consider only briefly, if at all. It is not uncommon for a single unique dish to be specified (“Chilled Monkey’s Brains”), or for a general description to be applied to virtually everything (“Spicy Food”). It takes only a few minutes glancing through a cookbook specializing in one particular national cuisine – or one viewing of “Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom” – to realize that either approach sells the cultural distinctiveness short. Have a dozen or more dishes worked out, some for breakfast, some for formal dining, some for light refreshment, some for a working man’s main meal. For that matter, how many meals do the locals eat each day? What do they drink? Is there anything they are forbidden to consume?

Don’t try for shock value; this is a common mistake that DMs make in this area when they are trying to be memorable, and it soon makes one culture indistinguishable from another if they all eat something unpleasant.

Trade, Commerce, & Agriculture

What are the implications of the diet for land management? How does this affect what is on offer in the marketplace, and how much is charged? Do they even HAVE central marketplaces? How does the economy work?

Money

This can be a nightmare for GMs as it can bog the game down very quickly, but money is rarely the same from one culture to another, and rarely for very long within any given culture. The problems stem from coin conversions and currency valuations from one culture to another; the usual system is to have some universal currency that can be used as a basis, especially in D&D where the exchange rates – in theory – are fixed by the rules; and any change in those values means a lot of work for the GM and for the party.

It might be more realistic to have coins valued differently from one culture to another, but it gets in the way of play. This is one area where realism should bend to the needs of game play.

But even if this restriction is accepted, there is still scope to express a unique cultural identity through the coinage in common circulation. One face of a coin usually shows either the current monarch at the time of issue or some other national hero; the other shows an icon that is in some way representative of the culture. That’s a lot of information about the culture, and the GM should be prepared to give it all to the party who asks. Your parties don’t ask? Then punish them for their lack of curiosity! Perhaps one of the past monarchs was a lunatic, or from the wrong family, or whatever, and possession of those coins is a criminal offense. Perhaps there’s a clue – or even the solution outright – to a puzzle posed to the PCs in the iconography. Maybe they get obvious – if they look – counterfeit coins in change!

Furniture, Household decorations & Social Practices

Furniture reflects custom and usage. Consider the differences in table styles between an Italian cafe and a Chinese restaurant. How many people dine together? Is it customary for guests and visitors to eat at friend’s homes? How does this affect the size an shape of the pots? How does it affect the quantities sold in the marketplace? Is one meal different from the others in some respect? What are the local table manners? What does the local cutlery look like? Is it customary for a guest to provide a dish towards the meal? What is the tableware made of, and how is it decorated?

Gardens

These are another source of cultural individualism. Do they have them? How are they arranged? Herb gardens, Veggie patches, Japanese stone gardens, Bonsai trees, cultivated lawns, garden gnomes…. which brings us to:

Statues

Who and What have the people built statues of? Who are their most famous artists, and what did they do that’s so remarkable? What are the statues made of? What is distinctive about them? Statues are usually idealized in some respect that can be considered important to the culture – what does this culture idealize in their statuary and what does it say about their national character?

Roads & Streets

Narrow or wide, with open sewers or without? Paved or earthen, and if paved, what with? Are streets named, or do the names derive from the people living on them – or something else? Who or What are they named for? What are the naming conventions – do they use terms like avenue, street, place, etc?

Windows

Thick sills, or thin? Thick glass, or thin? Stained, colored, painted, glazed, or clear? Wide or narrow? Tall or squat? High or low? What shape?

Religion & Worship

What sets the temples and churches apart from other buildings? What is the local policy regarding church expenditure – do they decorate, or are the churches unadorned? Do they even HAVE churches in each town, or is it customary for each home to have a shrine? Remember that most of the parish churches of England started out as private property, for the exclusive use of the priests and major political figures – though the locals paid for them!

What are the local religious icons? How does religion influence day-to-day life? Do the religious figures have a particular costume that they wear, distinguishing them from the everyday citizen? How are local prayers different? How are local services conducted? How often?

Sports and Recreation

I once set about writing an article on nothing but sports in RPGs and how they can be used to express a particular culture, but it has never been finished. Sports reflect the culture’s attitude towards fairness and justice, they reflect the value placed on organisation, they give the masses things to get excited about and things to make small talk about. GMs should be able to put many, many, words into the mouths of NPCs on the subject. More, different social strata often enjoy different sporting activities – polo is usually associated with the social elite, as is yachting, it used to be that only the upper classes (English gentlemen) and wealthy could play ‘professional’ cricket, and so on. The various forms of football, on the other hand, are all designed to, and come from, the more ordinary folk of society.

More!

These are just the tip of the iceberg, there are many more. Music; Writing; Bathing customs; hairstyles; clothing styles; jewelry; systems of measurement; vices and addictions; law enforcement; laws; personal rights; tattoos & distinctive markings; gambling and games of chance; marriage customs; funeral customs; property ownership; inheritance law…

None of these HAVE to be detailed unless they are influenced by the fundamental difference, as described in part I of these articles. But having a page full of 1-line summations of the cultural uniqueness’s that are expressed through these everyday ramifications, guided by the major point of distinction and its ramifications, gives the GM a wealth of material he can drop into descriptions and NPC statements. The cumulative effect can be enormous.

A Caveat

There is a problem: having one distinctive culture in which the PCs immerse themselves for a period of time is one thing, but having a whole bunch of them show up at once can get confusing. At this point, it’s worth analyzing the Lord Of The Rings as a blueprint for how to utilize the “cultural distinction” information in practical terms.

The Lord Of The Rings as a Blueprint

Tolkien knew what he was doing when it came to structuring his story, there can be no doubt about it. We start in the Shire and re-introduced to Hobbits and to the plot device that will shape the rest of the story – the One Ring. Through the Hobbit’s eyes, we encounter the Old Forest, then are introduced to elves, and then the world of peasant-class men at the fringes of society in Bree. The Hobbits meet Strider, and the opposition is introduced through its servants, the Nazgul. Finally, at the end of the first part, we reach Rivendell and encounter the society of Elves in greater depth.

Hit the High points and Foreshadow

At the Council of Elrond, we meet Dwarves and Numenorians and Forest Elves for the first time, but only the most overt descriptions of their cultures are given. We are introduced to the Rohirrem, but they don’t even make an appearance; the descriptions are second-hand and again, only hit the high points. Most of the story at this point is given over to the backstory, and the only culture in focus is the society of Wizards through Gandalf, Saruman, and Radogast. Even the Eagle who came to Gandalf’s rescue and the Uruk-Hai can be described as an aspect of the society of Wizards, allies most races would not consider approaching, and who would not accept approaches from. This view that everything is awake to some degree, hinted at in the Old Forest encounter, also serves as the foundation of the scenes on Carhadras (I think I’ve mispelt that).

Present cultures-in-depth one at a time

The Fellowship are then immersed in the culture of Dwarves through the mines of Moria, even though Gimli is the only Dwarf present in the party. This is followed by Lothlorian, and are immersed in the culture of Elves. The Fellowship is then broken. In the second volume, Merry and Pippin are immersed in the society of Orcs, and then in that of the Ents, while Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf are immersed in the society of Rohan.

The same pattern is repeated throughout the books (and the movies, to a lesser extent) – a culture is introduced but not in any great depth – in effect, giving the reader a touchstone to the culture – “The Horsemen Of Rohan,” for example. We then encounter each culture one at a time, and each time, the only non-members of the culture present are the members of the Fellowship. In RPG terms, the only elf in Moria is Legolas, the only Dwarf in Lothlorian is Gimly, and so on; the PCs are immersed in each foreign culture, one at a time. This both gives the author (the GM) the capacity to deal with the culture in depth, and makes each a self-contained unit, avoiding confusion of one with another.

This is the blueprint that GMs should try and emulate when utilizing cultures in their games. Of course, once one is known in some depth, it’s fine to have two or more of them interact at the same time, just as the Elves can come to Rohan’s aid at Helm’s Deep.

Conclusion

Each campaign world proceeds from a different foundation. The Elves in my Fumanor campaigns are different to the Elves in Shards Of Divinity, because I answered the questions posed in the first part of this series of articles differently. In game mechanics, they are virtually identical, and there is even a superficial resemblance; but the more closely they are examined, the more different they become. It is in the expression of those differences that one campaign distinguishes itself from the other.

The cultures you create express themselves behind the scenes, but they can bring a campaign to life.