Concluding Campaign Mastery’s contribution to the December Blog Carnival hosted by Rising Phoenix Games is on the subject of “No Dice“.

In Part 1, I looked at why we roll dice for various things in RPGs and what these die rolls are attempting to simulate in game-world terms.

In a nutshell, the dice represent all the random factors that can contribute to or determine success or failure under normal conditions.

GMs usually apply a modifier, either to the roll or to the target (depending on the game system) to bias the influence of these random factors so as to incorporate abnormal or unusual conditions.

Why Not Roll?

First, let’s establish that there are occasions when you don’t want to demand a die roll.

1. The PCs enter a room. They have only to walk across to the far side and open the door; there are no obstacles and the door is not locked. The floor is softly carpeted and provides plenty of grip with no risk of tripping. Do you really want the PCs to roll?
2. A PC is looking through a filing cabinet in search of a specific file. The files are clearly labeled, he filing cabinet is not locked. The PC speaks the language used in the labels, knows how to read,has plenty of light, and there’s nothing wrong with his eyesight. Do you really want to make the player roll?

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3. A character with the equivalent of a Master’s Degree in Mathematics needs to add 2 and 2. Do you really want the player to roll to get the answer, “4”?

These are trivial demonstrations of ability. Demanding a die roll in such situations incurs all the negatives that come with a die roll – disruption of the narrative flow, delays in progressing the game – for absolutely no benefit, and raises the question of how you can plausibly interpret the outcome if the player contrives to fail the roll.

There are other occasions and reasons for not requiring a die roll, but these examples are enough to establish the general principle that demanding a die roll for everything is not necessary.

What It Means Not To Roll

In a nutshell, it means that you are satisfied that none of the random factors concerned will be enough to override a specific outcome. Success or failure are inevitable, no matter what the PC says or does. The third example offered above is particularly significant, because it establishes that what may be difficult, or require a die roll, from one character can be so obvious and simple that a more skilled character should have no chance of failure. So it’s not a general question, it’s a specific one relating to a specific character in specific circumstances.

Automatic Skill Checks

If a character has a certain level of expertise, it can generally be assumed that they have a certain level of fundamental understanding of the subject, and some questions are just so obvious that no roll should be needed.

This implies that the mere fact of having a particular skill can be enough – give the player any obvious information that they need to make future decisions and simply move on.

Beyond this obvious application of the theory of dicelessness, there is a gray area that GMs should be cognizant of. As stated earlier, there is an inherent cost to interrupting play while a player makes a die roll, as the mechanics drag them out of their state of being immersed in play. The pace of the game slows, the emotional intensity fades, and the game world is made to feel more artificial and less real. Almost always, these effects are neutral or negative in nature, and so to be avoided unless necessary.

On top of all that, there is a positive impact on the perceived reality of using the mere presence of a skill of sufficient ranks as a decision point within the logical structure of an adventure – essentially providing a concrete manifestation of the characters being a part of the game world.

And, finally, taking the randomness out of a skill check can simplify the plot structure, making the whole adventure simpler and easier to prep.

Automatic Stat Checks

The same logic applies to stats above a certain value. Consider a heavy weight that has to be lifted – you can either demand that players roll a stat roll and total the amount by which they succeed, which is a lot of palaver for a simple situation, or you could assume that people know how to use their strength to lift and simply mandate that they need a total strength between them. The latter choice has the advantage of permitting the simple use of ratios to calculate the effects of a lever, should the PCs decide to employ that approach to the problem.

There are similar situations with respect to virtually every stat, although some of them are a bit more tenuous in justification. A PCs charisma is 20 and the NPC with whom he is bargaining has only 8? While you could employ opposed rolls if the negotiation is serious, but if it’s routine, assume average rolls in advance, precalculate the outcome, and simply announce the results; don’t let the game get bogged down in minutia.

Automatic Detections

Whenever players make perception checks (a.k.a. ‘Spot’ checks in some game systems), they describe them as ‘spot the painfully obvious’ checks, and there’s a lot of truth in that description, or at least there used to be. These days, I try to make something that’s ‘painfully obvious’ evident to the players without a roll – though I will sometimes use a die roll to determine how long it will be before the character observes the ‘painfully obvious’ fact if that’s relevant.

Most of the time, though, I will only make the player roll if there is some subtle nuance that might not get noticed.

If there’s a sound in the forest but no-one makes their perception check, is the sound really there at all?

A blind spot in most game systems revolves around an implementation of non-visual senses that ranges from the incomplete to the inadequate.

So your rules have both ‘Listen’ and ‘spot’ mechanics? That’s great, now tell me how you determine how adequately a character can find a gas leak, or a bottle that has been tainted with something creating the odor of rotten eggs? Tell me how good the character is at determining that the recipe contains a typo in the amount of Turmeric to be added? But a lot of game systems don’t even go that far.

Using automatic detections can solve a lot of these problems, especially if you rule that such a detection only becomes automatic after a certain amount of time and if the character is actively trying to locate the source of whatever they are perceiving.

Auto-Saves

If a character is able to take cover, throwing themselves flat, should they still have to make a Reflex Save in D&D? Some GMs will say yes, because it’s all about how well they execute that maneuver. Others may say no, because so much of the randomness has been taken out of the question.

But the significance goes deeper; a ‘no’ answer means that clever tactics can result in an automatic success, while a ‘yes’ answer says that tactics are secondary to how well you roll. Those are powerful statements to make within a game; one enhances player agency, while the other promotes blind luck to a superior position over such agency. The choice is between encouraging players to invest more deeply in the campaign or telling them that paying attention and making good decisions doesn’t matter, discouraging player participation.

FORT saves

Consider, then, the FORT save, sometimes a Health check or even a Disease Resistance roll – the mechanics are essentially the same, even if the names and details change. Here, once again, there is a profound implication to the simple choice – if you permit a saving throw when a character has a very high stat basis for that saving throw, it says that immunity is a matter of luck more than of resistance, and sufficient exposure eventually results in failure. No roll, perhaps accompanied by a temporary negative modifier to some tasks and activities, bypasses the resulting myriad of rolls; you are either healthy enough to cope with the disease, or you are not.

An alternative is to choose the no-save option but permit saves after a period of rest to throw off the illness, or reduce the negative impact. This combines the best of both choices, o it deserves serious consideration. With serious illnesses, perhaps the choice is between the disease getting worse or getting better – escalation or recovery.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to PCs and disease. The first is that these are PCs, heroes all – they should not be subject to mundane illnesses, only to magical or super-diseases. The second is that these are people first, and it is more heroic to overcome adversity, so they should still be subject to mundane diseases but these should handicap, not incapacitate.

Personally, I can never consider the question without remembering an early issue of spider-man in which he had to save the day whilst suffering from a serious flu, or maybe it was a head cold, and that it made the challenges of being a super-hero even more difficult. That memory puts me squarely into the second group.

Factoring into these questions is the simplicity of cure spells in some game systems, and the potential in the future for people to be immunized against illnesses like the common cold, or right now, for the flu. The latter argues that the GM should feel more free to inflict illness on the PCs because it is so easily overcome; the second is more about how ill victims become, as everyone should know after all the pandemic education we have received over the last few years.

WILL saves

These are some of the most poorly defined saves or checks in most game systems. I’ve seen them used for concentration checks, for determination, for focus (i.e. setting aside distractions), for innate resistance to external influences or against mental control specifically. Although these are undoubtedly similar, they are emphatically not the same.

Autosaves in this department essentially create a threshold for the character; below the threshold, there is so little risk of effect that you might as well not roll, avoiding the negative consequences of interrupting game flow; exceed it, and you are in danger. Dealing with those dangers in narrative form gives the GM more control over then, but at the expense of players feeling like the GM is manipulating a character that doesn’t belong to them. And that can be exceptionally problematic.

A hybrid approach seems to offer the benefits of both with the liabilities of neither – a threshold, which – if exceeded – gives way to a traditional saving throw.

But there’s another side of the coin to consider.

Back when I was just a player in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, my character was Paulo Lumierre, a master hypnotist. Because I had designed the character carefully, under most conditions in which the character had a moment to prepare, he had 24d6 of mind control to utilize. The way this power works in the Hero system is that you roll the indicated number of dice and compare the total to the Will score of the opposition; if the result is greater than or equal to the Will, you have some effect, if double it, you have more, triple equals more again, and four times gives maximum effect.

So, 24 dice at an average of 3.5 each gives an average result of 84. Most normal people had a will of 10, most villains and PCs had 20 or less. An exceptionally strong-willed target might go as high as 25 Will. On an average result, then, I would get maximum result almost every time, and even against the ultra-strong-willed, an average roll would get me three levels of success. Since the character was designed to be as effective as he was supposed to get with just one or two levels of success, there was virtually no need to roll at all.

To get less than those two levels, I would need to roll a total of 50 or less, even against the most strong-willed of opponents; this works out to being so close to 100% chance that Anydice can’t measure the gap; 53 or more is a 99.99% likelihood of occurring. For less strong-willed characters, the chances of success were even closer to 100%.

This level of success was not an accident – at 23 dice, the shift from virtually 100% to 99.99% takes place at a total of 51; the extra dice simply gave me a little extra cushion (to achieve this level of success on an average roll, 50 / 3.5 = just 14.28 dice, but I was also factoring in the possibility that some targets might have defenses against mind control / hypnotism that would have to be overcome).

Why bother rolling? All I had to do was roleplay and stay in character.

So thresholds can and perhaps should run both ways. Beyond a certain threshold of effectiveness, there is essentially no chance of failure, and requiring a roll is all downside and no advantage. In such cases, I think it important for at least a couple of rolls to be made just to establish the reality in the mind of the players – whether it’s a PC or an NPC who is being so dominant – but then, go to a threshold and automatic success or failure when that is warranted.

Automatic Attacks

Just as Skill checks made the basic situation with Stat checks obvious, which in turn clarified automatic Saves, so Autosaves shed light on Automatic Attacks.

By all means, if there is any measure of doubt about the success or failure of an attack, die rolls should be used; but when no such doubt exists, why bother?

There is the need for a special caveat to that general principle when it comes to game mechanics like those of D&D / Pathfinder. When a critical success is needed to hit, or a critical failure to miss, my normal practice is to say that simply hitting the target is all the ‘extra’ that you are reasonably entitled to – but what if you are so far removed from potential success that this is your ONLY chance of success? And what of the situation in between?

My approach is:

• If you need a 2/- to hit (or a 19+), roll as usual.
• If you need a 1/- to hit (or a 20+), ‘critical’ effects are off the table, but roll as usual otherwise.
• If you need 0/- to hit, or 21+, (but will still hit on a critical), ‘critical’ effects are not only ruled out, but a successful hit will do minimum damage – once. After that, automatic miss.
• If you need 1 worse than that (minus 1 or less or 22 or more), even that single success is excluded, and automatic misses are the rule.
• A similar regime (with maximum normal damage instead of minimum) applies to attacks at the other end of the spectrum.

This prevents improbable rolls from wasting playing time, while still permitting ‘hail mary’ passes. Since a fundamental principle at my table is ‘sauce for the goose is good for the gander’ – in other words, a rule that applies to PCs also applies to NPCs and vice-versa – my players tend to tolerate (if not accept) this approach because it is equally fair and binding to both sides. YMMV.

Fixed Damage

The variability of damage is much broader than that of attack rolls in most game systems, even if it doesn’t appear to be the case. It doesn’t matter whether or not your chance of hitting are 3 or less or 17 or less or 14 or more, excluding the effects in some game systems of critical hits, the damage done remains variable to exactly the same degree.

There are three basic models when it comes to fixed damage: the minor, the catastrophic, and the average.

In the minor model, the actual damage inflicted is trivial, little more than a metaphoric scratch, and when coupled with an automatic hit, signifies overwhelming numbers that are fairly helpless to be anything more than an annoyance. This is therefore an excellent means of simulating large numbers of weak opponents, especially within an ‘aggregate time’ combat concept (refer to part 1 if you don’t know what that means).

In the catastrophic damage model, the damage inflicted is close to the maximum possible for the attack form, and reflects a superior enemy who is unable to focus on one target exclusively. This interpretation holds true with both the aggregate time and instant time approaches.

The average damage model is the hardest to justify, in many ways; it falls in between and implies that there is something mechanically repetitious and precise about the nature of the attack that eliminates most of the variability. I have found it effective in situations in which the combat is being faked but made to ‘look good’ in order to persuade a third party, but those situations don’t come along very often.

But, when there’s going to be recurring damage round after round due to the environment, instead of rolling separately for each character each round, it can make a lot more sense from a practicality and playability standpoint to assume that the variability will cancel out and simply apply an average damage result right from the start. This is convenience and playability overcoming strict simulation considerations. So the average damage model has its virtues, too.

Fixed damage is probably most useful when it comes to damage inflicted by mechanical devices and other physical realities, because these naturally take out most of the variables, anyway. The other situation in which I would seriously consider fixed damage is for describing damage caused directly by the environment, because there’s not much that the character can do to avoid or vary that short of some sort of complete protection.

Constant Effects

These are a lot more common, or should be, than people expect. Any effect that is created by a device (magical or technological) is arguably more appropriately simulated with a constant effect value – so much so that variability really needs to be explicitly justified.

Again, devices and contrivances reduce the number of variables significantly, and that logically should impact on the variability.

There’s no blanket justification for removing dice from game-play (save, perhaps, replacing them with some other variable-generating mechanism like cards or coins). But there are a whole heap of specific circumstances that can justify taking specific rolls ‘diceless’.

Life In The Twilight

It’s possible to adopt a half-way house in between these two extremes, i.e. rolls with less variability than is usual. This is often even more realistic than not rolling at all, but it’s generally more effort than it’s worth, so I have chosen not to explore it in this article..

There will be no posts over the holiday season. So it only remains to wish everyone all the best for the holiday season. I’ll see you all early in the New Year!

— Mike

Background Image by Petra from Pixabay, Text created using CoolText.com, compositing and photo-editing by Mike.

The December Blog Carnival by Rising Phoenix Games is on the subject of “No Dice“. This is the beginning of Campaign Mastery’s contribution to the subject.

There are times when it can be useful to the GM and his simulation of reality not to require a roll for something. This article is going to explore the conditions under which that seems worth considering, and what the resulting game mechanics mean in terms of that reality.

The Basic Approach

Just to be explicitly clear on what this article is going to propose, I thought it would be useful to set a baseline describing the usual process and what the rolling of dice normally represents in terms of underlying internal game physics.

While I can’t state that these interpretations will be correct for all game systems that use die rolls, I’m going to keep this at a level such that it will apply to the vast majority of game systems. To achieve that, I’m going to make sure that the interpretations provided are valid for the Hero System and GURPS, for D&D and Pathfinder, and for both my Doctor Who campaign (which uses The Sixes System and my now-completed Zener Gate campaign (which uses its own bespoke rules system. .

These systems are so different in their mechanics that the results should apply broadly to almost every RPG out there, with the occasional exception.

In particular, for each stage of the conceptual framework, I’m going to look at seven specific circumstances:

• Skill Checks
• Stat Checks
• Perception / Sensory Checks
• Saving Throws
• Attack Rolls
• Damage Rolls
• Rolls for effect

You’ll note that I’m explicitly including Saving Throws even though not every game system uses them; when a game system doesn’t, it usually substitutes some sort of stat check for the save mechanics, but the interpretations and implications can be quite different.

It might grow complicated at times, because some of these interact. For example, rolled attacks but not rolled damage, or vice-versa. I’m going to try to avoid this as much as possible, but there will be some of these fringe questions along the way.

Rolling Skill Checks

There are two basic kinds of skill check – knowledge checks and ability checks. Knowledge checks can include how to do something with a practical skill.

• Does the character know the answer to the question being posed? Can he solve the problem, or at least get a step closer to a solution? Can he devise a theory, and a way to test that theory? Can he spot the flaws in a plan or in someone else’s theory?
• Does the character recognize this architectural style? Can he determine which columns are load-bearing and which could be hollow?
• Can the character successfully attempt to do something, like repair a net, or patch a boat hull? How long does he think it will take to forge that sword?
• How much will it cost? What does the character consider a fair price for his services? If an NPC is to do the work, does the character think the price is reasonable?
• How good is the character at working with the tools available – and can he improvise his way around the lack of such tools if he has to?

These are all skill checks. The basic concept embedded in most RPGs is that there are all sorts of variable factors and an element of random chance in most of these tasks, and simulating those factors is the job of the die roll in such a check.

Rolling Stat Checks

Stat checks are very similar, but they deal with the more elemental raw abilities. In many game systems, if you don’t have an appropriate skill to fall back on, you can default to the raw stat check, the innate capacity to work in the field – sometimes with a penalty to you chances of success.

But there are also occasions when no skill is as relevant as those innate capacities. Holding your breath, for example, or running over broken ground, or holding onto something slippery.

If you assume that the stat value provides and defines the unskilled capability of performing such an action, then the die roll takes into account all the variable factors, just as it does for skill checks.

The other function of stat rolls in most game systems are opposed rolls. A tug-of-war is a typical example, in which each participant attempts to apply their strength more successfully than the other. But the same concept applies to attempts to persuade someone – assuming you don’t have a skill that applies, and to all sorts of other interactions, like bartering.

The rolls don’t have to be like against like, either. One stat might represent that character’s natural ability to sneak, while the opposing stat would be that character’s ability to perceive hidden objects.

Again, the stat represents the innate potential of the character, the die roll integrates that potential with the circumstances and variable factors to determine how well the character is able to apply that potential.

Attention and Awareness

‘Make a perception roll” – or it might be a Spot Roll, or a Listen check, or any number of alternatives. But they are all sensory checks, when you get to the bottom line. I could spend an entire column on this subject, but that would take us way off the point.

So here is the very-abbreviated version. When something happens, there is usually a visual change in the environment, or an audible change, or an odor, or – sometimes – a particular taste in the mouth. But for that change to impact on the character’s awareness, they first have to notice the change and then to correctly interpret it, and then recognize the significance. And none of that is as easy as it sounds.

Confirmation Bias, Ideation & Fixation, Malleable Memory, Illusions, Deceptions, and at least half-a-dozen other phenomena are all able to get in the way. Spend too much time looking into, for example, the reliability of witnesses, and you’ll find yourself starting to wonder if any of us ever really see anything clearly.

One truism is that the more attention we pay to something, the better we remember it, and the more details about that something we will typically notice. This usually comes at the expense of awareness of anything outside the scope of that something, and in extreme cases, complete obliviousness to even attention-getting phenomena like alarms and sirens and what other people are saying to us. That’s called fixation, and it’s one of the items on that list above.

Another factor is the state of mind of the witness, which can rewrite perceptions or cause them to be wildly misinterpreted.

In terms of the game mechanics that usually apply, not only do we have to be paying attention to the right thing in the world around us, our awareness has to navigate that whole litany of perceptual errors to bring it to our attention. All of which gets collected into a big conceptual pot called a die roll.

If you fail a perception check, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there was something to see and your didn’t notice it, in fact that’s going to be the case no more than 25-50% of the time. The rest of the time, one of those perceptual or cognitive traps intercepts the awareness and misinterprets it.

So you can interpret a perception check as a means of overcoming these deficiencies, and that would be as valid as any other interpretation..

Rolling Saving Throws

     “A whistling sound fills the air as a spark leaps from the spell-caster’s outstretched hand, flies up to a few dozen yards in height, and begins to fall toward you.”
     “I throw myself to the ground and search for any sort of cover I can find!”

That’s the usual interpretation of a Reflex save. Some GMs may omit all of the above and simply have the player make a Reflex save to throw themselves flat on sheer instinct, as – in fact – a reflex action.

The other kinds of saving throws that are common also derive from D&D: Fortitude saves to resist various things that could distract or incapacitate a character, and Will saves to resist various things that could influence or control their minds.

But, even though this iconic trio stem directly from D&D, most game systems have some sort of equivalents. Sometimes, these are run as stat checks like any other; that is especially common in game systems that don’t have the artificial construct of ‘character levels’. In fact, it’s fair to say that the only reason these checks are semi-divorced from stat scores is to permit the character level input to be the dominant factor.

Is it enough? Is it done in time? Do random factors – like what you had for breakfast – work in your favor? All such considerations are encompassed by the die roll component of a Saving Throw.

What about Modifiers?

If the random die roll is supposed to take all the ‘wild variables’ into account, what, then, is the role of Modifiers to these rolls? Before I move on to attack rolls, I thought it worth taking a moment to discuss modifiers and what they should be considered to represent in the game reality created by the rules system.

Most saving throws and stat checks can be assumed to incorporate those random variables into the die roll, assuming typical circumstances and an even positive-negative influence.

When either of these is not the case, modifiers should be used to reflect that. Effectively, they bias the die roll to take into account unusual circumstances, abnormal difficulties, and other forms of strangeness.

I use bonuses to reflect things like distractions, confusing environments, deceptions and ruses, distance, minuteness of pertinent details, the adequacy or inadequacy of the tools available (if such are necessary), and so on.

I also use them to compare the difficulty of the challenge / question relative to a character of similar skill to that of the character – because a character with a reasonably good skill level should be able to answer basic questions at least 9 times out of 10. Similarly, some problems are going to be harder for anyone but an expert to solve.

The latter is less relevant to game systems like D&D in which a certain natural result on the die always succeeds. because this overrides the consequences of the bias. In the Zenith-3 game system, there are no automatic successes, but there are critical results; “00” is read as “oh-oh” (checks are on d%), and means that something has gone wrong, any failure will be worsened and any success minimized or nullified outright. In fact, it usually signals a reverse of some sort. “01”, in comparison, is read as “Oh, Wow” and means that successes are enhanced, failures are diminished, and so on.

The Plotting Value of Bias Metagaming

Sounds fancy, doesn’t it? This simply means deciding what you want the chance of success to be in a given situation, determining what bias is necessary to translate the character’s normal roll into that probability of success, and then ‘delivering’ the circumstances needed to justify or create that bias.

Or to put it another way, you determine how difficult progress should be for the PC(s) in question and introduce plot elements to achieve that metagame outcome.

When you do this, you always need a ‘Plan B’ for the players to follow, even if they don’t know what it is; where there is one solution, there are probably several. Such metagame roadblocks exist to steer the adventure in the direction of more fun; there should be no malice involved.

The goal is for everyone to have fun. But that doesn’t mean letting the players always have their own way; it does mean rewarding them with success when that’s justified.

The Gods Are Watching

One more sidebar before returning to the main text. This is also metagaming, but in a positive way. Sometimes, especially in temples and the like, the Gods are watching, and may choose to help or hinder; instead of a random die roll to determine this, and then translating that result into a bias on the actual check, I assume the Gods have been watching and judging the characters as they approached this point.

If the Gods would have a good impression, that translates into a positive bias that the character can’t explain; if not, a negative one. And I do take into account how well the character was being roleplayed. Do that well enough, and even an enemy might develop a grudging respect for you – enough to stay their hand when they would be normally inclined to bias things towards trouble for you.

Attack Rolls

Attack Mechanics tend to work in one of two ways: the instant and aggregate time.

D&D and related systems are ‘aggregate time’ mechanics. Each ‘attack’ combines several thrusts, parries, swings, bobs, weaves, and dodges, all probing for an opening in the defenses of the target while keeping yourself clear of enemy attacks. But GMs rarely describe combat that way, and even less frequently, think about it that way.

Superhero games, in particular, tend to be have ‘instant time’ mechanic, in which each move and countermove is determined individually. That’s a reflection of the expected impact on the combat setting; even a single missed attack can have major repercussions.

Other game systems can use either of these interpretations, often without ever spelling out the assumptions that underpin their simulation of ‘in-genre reality’.

The difference is important, because the meaning of the die roll component of an attempted attack is different in both cases.

In ‘aggregate time’, it’s the conflict between maneuvering your opponent into a misstep while presenting minimal opportunities yourself, compounded with your capacity to exploit such mistakes. The die roll is a direct reflection of your success at doing this.

In ‘instant time’, such maneuvering is no longer treated as a collective series of events, and is therefore under the direct control of whoever is running the character. There is no luring of an opponent into a mistake; instead, it’s all about how effective an attack is at penetrating or bypassing the target’s resistance to that attack. In some ways, this can make the combat more interactive and hence more exciting; in others, it can slow it down enormously. There are vastly more variables and parameters that get aggregated into an ‘attack roll’, things that the ‘aggregate time’ perspective simply glosses over. If more of these random factors align in your favor, you are successful; if not, you are not. So that’s what the die roll component represents in such systems.

Many of these systems (especially the hero games system) use 3d6 for attack rolls. Any system that uses multiple dice for such rolls is mapping probabilities to a familiar pattern, the bell curve. The reality of such curves is that they can be viewed as being all about the deviation from the mean – a singularly appropriate perspective, under the circumstances.

Damage Rolls

Most game systems have a separate roll for damage, meaning that the attack roll does not represent the quality of success of the strike, only that it has been successful. The damage roll therefore represents the effectiveness of the attack.

In some game systems, this is the net effect; in others, this is a preliminary value that is then reduced by other game mechanics. The difference is a logical consequence of the differences in attack roll interpretation, i.e. ‘aggregate time’ vs ‘instant time’.

In ‘aggregate time’, the attack roll incorporates a host of modifiers to determine the overall consequences of multiple attempted attacks. This logically includes all the target’s defenses; hence there is no need to account for these in the damage roll, so the damage rolled is a net value.

One of the frequent complaints heard in the early days of AD&D was that this was unrealistic, and reduced the value of defenses more than should be the case, especially since attacks improved with rising character levels but defenses did not, and I have to concede the validity of the last point, at least. Character defenses were, as a result, one of the most common house rules offered – most of them missing at least one key point.

Rather than modifying the amount of damage done by having defenses increase with character levels, these game systems increase the capacity to absorb damage with character levels. In effect, the results make the damage done, as a percentage of the total to be endured by the character, smaller with increasing character levels. The significance of this was often not appreciated in the debates mentioned above, which formed a second nexus of debate because character classes did not increase in capacity equally.

It’s not the place of this article to try to resolve these debates, or even assess whether or not they remain relevant. My scope here is simply to provide understanding of what the variable element, i.e. die rolls, are simulating in such game systems.

When the game system uses ‘instant attack’ resolution, the same compromises are neither possible nor all that desirable, and that permits more realistic damage handling systems – including defenses that modify the amount of damage done.

Rolls for Effect

The final category covers rolls for effect. These are usually from spells or paranormal powers. In ‘instant time’ game systems, they tend to be relatively fixed in value, only increasing as a result of specific decisions in ongoing character development.

In ‘aggregate time’ systems, they tend to increase with character levels, with some exceptions for character class levels that are deemed to follow a different character track. That’s the difference between ‘Caster Level’ and ‘Character Level’ in such systems.

This lay at the center of a third nexus of debates amongst AD&D GMs and players, largely because they didn’t appreciate what the increase in character hit points was supposed to simulate. The reason relevant spells increase in effectiveness with caster level is not to make them more powerful, it is to maintain an approximate parity with rising hit point levels in targets with increasing character levels.

Because this context was not understood, the increase in the number of dice rolled for effects was not understood, either, and that led to a number of half-baked house rules at the time. The only consolation is that there were fewer of these house rules that made it into the game magazines, acquiring some level of semi-official plausibility in the process.

The biggest problem with most of these house rules was that they weren’t comprehensive and holistic; they focused on one specific element of the system without considering the big picture or how the elements of the game mechanics were supposed to integrate, and as a result, they tended to miss the mark.

Be that as it may – most effect determinations involve some sort of die roll, usually on multiple dice.

And when you are talking about multiple dice, you are talking about bell probability curves – the more dice, the more results will tend to cluster around the average result. For another article some time back, I produced the diagram below to illustrate this point.



Just to be complete about illustrating the ‘shape’ of effect rolls, below is a set of images from the series describing the sixes system that addresses the impact of rising numbers of d6:



The middle set of graphs shows the same thing as the stacking of d6 graphed above this trio but in less detail.

So, what does all this variability represent?

I have to admit this is the hardest thing to get your head around. Superficially, it looks like the only reason is to insert unpredictability into the system.

To really understand, you have to make a deep dive into the actual consequences of increasing effect dice in a numeric sense. There are consequences of note:

1. Minimum possible results increase by one per die added to the roll.
2. Maximum possible results increase by the die size per die added to the roll.
3. The probability range clusters more tightly around the average result.

The last one is the hardest for people to understand in a quantitative sense; it’s relatively easy to get a handle on the concept, but much harder to get a ‘feel’ for how significant it is.

To try and deliver an appreciation for the impact of the clustering, I’ve considered a number of different die rolls below, using Anydice, which was also employed for the graphs above.

I’m setting the technical details of the graph into this sidebar as they won’t matter much to most people.

Starting with the result or results of greatest probability, I totaled the probabilities, spreading out to either side. This enabled me to determine the range of results that equated to a given likelihood, and the results were then compiled into the table that follows the curve.



That’s useful in an illustrative way, but not helpful beyond that. The analysis is more revealing.
 

% of results	Number Of Dice
	2d6	3d6	4d6	5d6	6d6	12d6	18d6	24d6	30d6	40d6
3%										140
4%									105
5%							63	84
7%						42
9%					21
10%				14					104-106	139-141
15%	7						62-64	83-85		138-142
25%		10-11			20-22		61-65	82-86		137-143
30%			13-15			40-44		81-87	102-108	136-144
35%							60-66		101-109
40%	6-8	9-12		16-19	19-23	39-45		80-88		135-145
45%							59-67		100-110	134-146
50%			12-16					79-89	99-111	133-147
55%				15-20	18-24	38-46	58-68	78-90	98-112	132-148
60%							57-69	77-91		131-149
65%						37-47			97-113	130-150
66.67%	5-9	8-13	11-17
70%				14-21	17-25	36-48	56-70	76-92	96-114	129-151
75%							55-71	75-93	95-115	128-152
80%	4-10	7-14	10-18	13-22	16-26	35-49	54-72	74-94	93-117	127-153
85%					15-27	34-50	53-73	72-96	92-118	125-155
90%	3-11	6-15	9-19	12-23	14-28	33-51	51-75	71-97	90-120	122-158
95%			8-20	10-25	13-29	31-53	49-77	68-100	87-123	117-163
97.5%										100-180
98%							47-79		84-126
98.5%				9-26	12-30	28-56	46-80		83-127
99%					11-31	27-57	45-81	63-105	82-128
100%	2-12	3-18	4-24	5-30	6-36	12-72	18-108	24-144	30-180	40-240

 

The color bands divide the table up into 1/3 of the results, 2/3 of the results, and more than 90% of the results. And, at the last minute, I threw in a row for 100%, just to be pedantic.

The table shows that on 3d6, two-thirds of your results will typically be from 8 to 13. On 12d6, 70% of your rolls will result in results between from a low of 36 to a high of 48. And, on 24d6, 90% of your rolls will have a result from 71 to 97.

If you look again at the graph, you’ll note that a lot of results have virtually zero change of occurring. Never quite zero, if they are within the theoretical range – you can still roll a 34 on 30d6 – but it’s exceptionally unlikely.

This shows the real impact of the narrowing of the bell probability curve relative to a lower-dice curve. One third of results on 40d6 will fall within a span of 11 numbers – 135 to 145. More than two thirds will fall within a range of 23 numbers – from 129 to 151. 95% of the time, 40d6 will yield a result somewhere between 116 and 164, a span of just 46 results – and a far cry from the full 40-240 range.

I doubt that many game designers performed such calculations, at least in the early days – there was too much spit and baling wire in the rules-creation process back then, too much seat-of-the-pants and ‘that looks about right”.

But the ultimate goal remained – raising the minimum and maximum effect and making a ‘reasonable’ result more likely, relative to the rising hit points of enemies as they went up in terms of the challenge that they posed..

Still a long way to go in this article, but I’m right out of time, so I’m going to have to split it into at least two, and possibly three, parts. Come back next week to get the next installment!

So November has come and gone, and with it, Campaign Mastery’s bonus hosting of the Blog Carnival. Those who got inspired by the topic did a stellar job with some very interesting contributions, which I’ll summarize later in this wrap-up post.

Sadly, there weren’t really enough participants for that to fill this article. Possibly, misunderstanding the closure of the RPGBA, though that announcement seems clear enough to me – see Scot’s announcement – or perhaps potential participants were disheartened by the announcement.

Whatever the cause, what’s done is done and now history.

But, since it leaves this round-up short of content, I’ve decided to re-task a subject that has been sitting around for a while because it also was not substantial enough, and use the blending to create one last entry into the November carnival.

Context

So let’s start by being clear what I’m talking about when I refer to Context, since it’s something that I’ve been banging on about in these posts for absolute ages.

Context is content that implies, infers, or imparts additional meaning or interpretation to another element of content when the latter is considered in light of the Contextual content.

Clear? Or Clear as mud?

Text-to-text context

Sightings of shadowy figures haunting the old cemetery obviously mean something in isolation.

When the PCs discover a body drained of blood some time after hearing of those sightings, that information can also be taken at face value. Or the players can calculate 2 plus 2 equals 4, and put the two facts together, evaluating the reports of the sightings in the context of the later discovery.

2 + 2 = 4, or – in this case – equals Vampires in the Graveyard (or someone who wants the public to think that).

This is an example of one piece of text providing context for a second, conveying additional meaning that is not explicitly stated in either one of the individual pieces of text. It’s a narrative technique that GMs use to create adventures all the time, even if they didn’t recognize it at the time.

Context for Visuals

When using an image, it’s quite common to need to supplement the visual with a description of the significance.

That’s quite normal. Some GMs, when illustrating some element of the experienced ‘reality’ of a campaign, supplement that description or even replace it entirely (if the content’s meaning is sufficiently obvious) with some text that places the image, or some part of the image into a new context that adds meaning to the illustration.

The primary image chosen to illustrate this article, for example, was chosen because it contained two specific elements: distant mountains and sunrise or sunset. Those are not normally interchangeable, because they happen at different compass points, but for the purposes of this example, either would work. There’s a thumbnail version above, just to remind you.

Next, some text.

“The next morning’s dawn promises another day of fair weather and steady progress. In the distance, for the first time, you can see the mountains that stand between you and your destination.”

This text doesn’t give any additional meaning to the image, and the image doesn’t give any further meaning to the text; so neither of them are providing context for the others, this is simple narration accompanied by an illustration.

That’s great for imparting a sense of the environment, but doesn’t hold much importance beyond that. But, if I then add:

“This time tomorrow, you expect to be standing in their foothills,”

then there is an immediate context placed on the image – a sense of scale. If, instead of that addition, I had said

“This time next week, you expect to be standing in their foothills,”

that scale changes quite dramatically. It is clearly adding information that places what you can “see” into context, binding distance and time, and implying how large these mountains truly are.

If they are a day away, they are quite small and not likely to pose a significant challenge to cross. If they are a week away, they are that much more significant (and then some). Views of distant mountains during Tour-de-Fance coverage tells me that three days distance would equate such a view with the Alps or Pyrenees; double that must put the mountains on a scale closer to the Himalayas.

NSW Inland Exploration

Beware of the false equivalence, though you can use it to trap your PCs. Smaller mountains don’t necessarily equate to ‘easier to cross’, a fact that is drummed into residents of my state of New South Wales. When the colony of Sydney was first settled, the focus was on developing the Sydney region. As the colony grew, the presence of the Great Dividing Range (and specifically the local part of that Range, the Blue Mountains) began to impose constraints on growth.

Several expeditions were mounted to try and find a way through the mountains, because arable land was believed to lie beyond, but all failed. They all attempted to follow the rivers and watercourses and valleys, believing that the terrain would be more conducive to passage, but all attempts dead-ended at stone cliff-faces.

This forced the colony to expand along the coast, and to this day, the bulk of the Australian population can be found within about 50km of the coast.

More than 98% of the Australian Population are found in the yellow zones.
Original Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, released under CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, where it is available in much higher resolution; color tweak (sea) by Mike.

Click this link to view licensing information and gain access to a glorious 3200×1780 version of the image. The lighter-colored areas are freshly-exposed rock, subject to erosion.

It was only when three explorers – Wentworth, Blaxland, and Lawson – attempted the more difficult passage from peak to peak along the ridges that a passage through the mountains was found. Using the same strategy, a few other paths were later found, such as the Bell line of road.

You can get some idea of the terrain in question in this image of the Three Sisters mountain formation at Katoomba, originally presented as part of The Diversity Of Seasons Pt 1: Winter, shown to the right.

Context from Visuals

Visual media can also be used to illustrate or lend context to narration, comveying information visually so that you don’t have to waste words doing so. After all, it can take several minutes to convey what a player can garner in just a few seconds examination of an image.

It can sometimes be hard to tell whether it’s the image providing context for the words or vice-versa. Both are at their most powerful when there is a synergy between the two.

But sometimes, you have to answer the question “what am I looking at,” and the relationship is clear – the words are there to explain the visual and give it meaning, i.e. to place it into context.

This is the meaning of the term when it is applied to seeking inspiration from an image. Without context to give it direction, you are simply free-associating with the image.

The Other Side‘s Contribution

Timothy S Brannon offered up The Witch Babylon: Daughter of Eros, Mother of Harlots, inspired by a full-page panel from a Born-Again Christian comic (art by Al Hartley) that featured the Whore Of Babylon. So he re-envisaged her as a Witch and a leader of a cult/faction called the Daughters Of Eros. There’s a lot more meat on his creation so delve further through the link provided if this is something that would be useful in your campaign. Some conversion may be required, of course.

Beyond The Horizon‘s Contributions

Kim Frandsen offered up a multipart creation of a “Lost World” inhabited by Dinosaurs who have been (essentially) conquered / enslaved / semi-domesticated by a city of Duegar.

The first couple of times that I read it, I conflated the “Dragon Philosophers” with the Dinosaur survivors, as though the Dragons had saved their lives but regressed socially into a massive dark age following the meteor strike that wiped out their brethren still on the surface. Kim’s story was that the Dragons saved some Dinosaurs who survived underground and evolved to fit their new environment but were largely unchanged from their original forms through lack of competition.

This is a union of a pulp staple (The Lost World / Hollow Earth) with a D&D setting that holds plenty of story potential. This review has barely scratched the surface.

Part 1 of the two-part article details the early thoughts and the search for an appropriate image. It also has links to a Starfinder monster created in the same fashion, inspired by artwork.

The second part of the two-part article executes the creative process based on the chosen image.

Between them, the two provide a comprehensive overview of the process employed, so there is lots of useful material there.

Campaign Mastery: The Anchor Post

Campaign Mastery’s anchor post not only contained a dozen or so inspirational images for readers to use, but a bunch of ideas of what could be done with them, plus a few bonus hints on the side.
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But to round out this post, and to illustrate the importance of context, I’m going to go further, and derive a bunch of different interpretations for some of the images from the anchor post.

Galatea Of The Spheres by Salvador Dali

I’m going to interpret this image in four different ways, each of which lends it a different context, and hence a different meaning: NPCs, Physical Reality, Metaphor, and Social Reality. In some cases, the results will be literal, in others, they will be abstract or symbolic.

NPCs

The image could be symbolic or representative of how a character suffering from a Multiple Personality Disorder sees the world. It is fragmented, with some aspects open to any to appreciate, while others trigger a change in persona, the better to deal with a stressful situation.

MPD can be thought of as a small crowd of people. Most of the time, they are content to let one or two take the lead, and simply watch from the shadows; but each will have some specific circumstance in which they will elbow their way to the front and take control.

Each will have its own relationship with the other personas – they may be jealous, angry, spiteful, resentful, supportive, protective, or anything else you can imaging. Some personalities will be aware that the others are mere aspects of the core person, others will not realize that they are not the exclusive owners of the body, and may concoct elaborate fantasies or delusions to explain why things happen that they can’t remember.

It is only by uniting these fragmented perspectives that a full appreciation of the total personality can be achieved. If you were to ask one of the personalities who was aware of the others hosted by the shared body, they might well represent it in this way.

That makes this a useful tool for the GM attempting to portray such an individual, a way of getting them into the correct frame of mind for the role.

Physical Reality

What if this were literally true, what might a character be observing? Two possibilities, both related, come to mind: either an Explosion of parallel worlds, or the collision of alternate timelines, either viewed from some sort of privileged super-position. Cosmic!

It’s also possible, if a little less literal, to depict migrating or traveling from one world to an alternate reality – a panoply of worlds opening before the character, and the selection of the destination.

Metaphor

If I were to take this image as a metaphor, it would be of confusion, of a character at a crossroads with multiple directions to choose from. I’m talking a decision of the irrevocable, life-altering kind. If the character was a PC, this is the sort of decision that I might devote multiple adventures to; if an NPC, it would all be over and done with in one or two adventures.

When the PCs had to choose a 12th deity in the original Fumanor campaign, it was a decision of this magnitude. It’s indicative of the depth of the preparations they had experienced leading up to that decision that their ultimate selection was the individual that they had originally ruled out of consideration, no discussion necessary!

This image would serve as a metaphoric summary of that entire adventure, and even to large parts of the campaign. Contemplating it would have served as a valuable reminder of what I was intending to achieve, from a plot perspective, something that helped get my into the right headspace to work on the campaign.

Social Reality

Finally, this image could also be a metaphor for the social reality of a large organization. While that organization would present one unified face to the public, the reality is that it consists of a collection of individuals with different strengths, weaknesses, and personalities.

These would not represent the full gamut of possibilities; the recruitment process and performance reviews would function as a means of selection, winnowing out those most significantly at odds with that unified face. But there would still be significant levels of diversity.

I try very hard to make those NPCs representing an entire organization in one of my adventures individuals who fit – to a greater or lesser extent – the overall generic representative mold. I actively look for ‘acceptable’ ways for them to express their individuality – or, if they are the type that would push the limits, perhaps even an ‘unacceptable’ way.

I never want any character to be ‘just’ what he or she appears to be. They should all have at least a little more substance than that!

Old Man In An Armchair (possibly a portrait of Jan Amos Comenius 1665), by Rembrandt

For this image, I have five different contexts in which to interpret it: Literal Reality, Psychological Reality, Medical Reality, Intellect or Wisdom, and Wealth or Authority.

Literal Reality

Quite simply, this is what a particular character actually looks like. This is by far the most obvious interpretation. Anything else that is known about the character thereby becomes context for the interpretation of the image, while the image itself is context for anything the character says or does.

Psychological Reality

Things become more interesting if this is not the physical reality of the character, but how they see themselves. The contrast with the reality therefore defines what the context of this image is.

In the Lord Of The Rings, Saruman (and his spy, Wormtongue) take the relatively young and vital King Rohan and instill this sort of decrepit self-image in him, as revealed in The Two Towers.

But that helpless interpretation is not the only one. What if the character is physically or mentally disabled (or both), but views himself as being an ordinary person suffering from the effects of premature aging?

They are as capable (in their own minds) as anyone of comparable self-perceived age. That means that any personality that is valid for a figure of the depicted age would be appropriate to the character – from ‘crotchety old man’ to ‘overactive retiree’ and all points in between.

This is a profile that I would never have occurred to me without this stimulus, despite the known truism that the elderly often get on well with children because the two are closely matched in abilities.

Medical Reality

When my back was really bad, several years back, my doctor of the time described me as having the mobility, and associated impacts on my health, of a 101-year old. I could barely walk half a city-block without needing to rest; could not spend more than about 5 minutes in a bus, or about half an hour in a suburban train. Being in the back seat of a car was not much better than the latter, but I did better in the front seat, where I could stretch out a little more.

Should I exceed these limits, I spent weeks or months in pain with even more greatly reduced capacity – walking in a slow shuffle, for example.

By very carefully learning what I could and could not do, and building my lifestyle around those limitations, my health gradually improved, and my tolerance for these activities slowly increased. I can now walk two or even three city blocks without ill-effect, for example. It’s as though I were banking capacity for when I needed it.

I still can’t exceed whatever my current limits are without doing semi-permanent damage; but those limits continue to rise ever-so-slowly. The degree of excess is also a factor in how long it takes me to recover, and in what my limitations will be after such recovery.

I can never look at an image such as this one without being reminded of this medical realty. It took me a long time to learn these limits, because I still felt as capable as ever until going too far. Then, it was like flipping a switch; I went from capable to incapacitated at a stroke.

Intellect or Wisdom

If I were looking to represent a character of intellect or wisdom, this image would be perfectly suitable, simply because we often associate those achievements with age.

Wealth or Authority

You get completely different implied personalities for characters of Wealth or Authority if you choose an image like this than if you choose one of a younger individual. This is largely a matter of stereotyping, but there are times when that’s acceptable; as I have said before, there are usually good reasons for a stereotype being perceived as valid.

A useful tip, however, is to view all members of a stereotype as part of an organization – refer to what I’ve written about “Social Reality” and the Dali image.

The Scream, Edvard Munch

I’m starting to run short of time, so I will only offer three different contexts in which this image can be used for inspiration: External Reality, Altered Perceptions, and Paranoia.

External Reality

if this image is a literal reality, or representative of same, it implies that the featured character depicted has some reason to scream in fear or pain, or thinks they do.

This is a circumstance in which reactions and behavior will dominate or even over-rule personality to at least some extent. There are only a few reactions to acute distress of this type – the rational, the curl-into-a-ball, and the headless chicken, with the first one in the distinct minority.

Altered Perceptions

In general, however, i think this image is more useful to the GM as representative of an altered perception of reality. Such altered perspectives are commonly associated with Undead in D&D, and “Fear” spells are difficult to convey; there is always the question of whether or not such Fear is total (and better described as a “Panic” spell), or if it merely impacts on decision-making processes. Again, there are only the handful of expressions of such intensity.

But this also always reminds me of descriptions of some comatose patients, so psychologically damaged by an experience that they run from the world mentally since they can’t do so physically.

As a representation of an induced state of mind, this speaks directly to the way the GM wants the affected character to be played. It’s then up to the player and GM collectively to determine how this mindset will be reflected in the character’s behavior.

Finally, as a depiction of how a character might be feeling on the inside, this would be a useful stimulus for characters being subjected to extreme forms of blackmail, so fixated on their fear of exposure (or whatever) that all other considerations become wispy and ephemeral.

Paranoia

Finally, we have the question of unreasonable fear. Everything I’ve offered up so far for The Scream takes the perspective that the fear is reasonable (even if induced or externally amplified by circumstance). What if it’s not? Look at the two smaller figures who may or may not be pursuing the main character.

If the fear is in response to them, you have to wonder what they have done to inspire it – they certainly don’t look to be doing anything particularly menacing!

Two possibilities suggest themselves – either their faces are so horrifying, so terrifying, that their mere presence is sufficient to put the witness into such a state, or the witness is imbuing them with such menace. And that’s paranoia – and far more likely than the alternative.

As the clinician’s guiding aphorism states, “When you hear hooves, think Horses, Not Zebras”. Mundane explanations are always more probable than exotic ones – an expression of Occam’s Razor.

Of course, sometimes “Zebra” is the right answer. But that should never be assumed until their is some evidence that contradicts “Horse” being the right answer.

Matching context to image

Create the examples offered earlier in this article was done by starting with the image and free associating – not for interpretations, but for categories of interpretation.

It’s actually far more common to do things that other way around – to have a context in mind and simply scan collections of images looking for one that sparks an idea. You can then either accept that idea or continue searching.

Try not to overthink the initial phase of the process. Get yourself into the right frame of mind and then employ your instincts. Once you have the right image is the right time to analyze it intellectually, with the advantage of knowing that your subconscious has selected it as an appropriate ‘answer’ to the question posed.

So, that’s a wrap to the November 2022 Blog Carnival, which has now moved on to Rising Phoenix Games and the topic of No Dice – I Hope host Rodney gets some interesting responses! I have an idea for one, myself, but that will have to until another day…

This article had the working title of “The Penumbra of Personality Traits”, but when it came to actually write it, I decided that readers might find the meaning a little opaque (and yes, that’s a pun, as some will immediately recognize).

A penumbra is also a solid metaphor (another pun) for the personality construction technique that I am going to share with readers today, building on last week’s post about character relationships.

Another relevant metaphor as the article unfolds that I would ask readers to keep in mind is that of a spiderweb.

Foundations

This construction technique is built around the Zenith-3 variation on the standard Hero System rules, but that’s just a starting point. While those rules (both base and variant) determine character construction points, those are not relevant to this technique.

In fact, that’s the only reason this can be encapsulated in a single article; if it included the actual rules, it would not only be far too lengthy to be practical as a single article, it would fall foul of the copyright restrictions that Hero Games have mandated for home-brew rules. The latter consideration would require it to be split up into 15 or 16 smaller posts, and I suspect that there isn’t enough interest to sustain such a series – not in a general GMing blog, anyway.

Instead, this post describes the technique that I use to assign such disadvantages, limitations, and definitions to a character, completely ignoring the specific game system interpretations of those into game mechanics.

That makes this a universal system, or fairly close to it, something of as much value to sci-fi and fantasy GMs as it is to Superheroic Genre and Pulp GMs. In fact, it should also be of some use to those creating characters for fiction, as well.

Construction Elements

Before I can tell you how I select the personality construction elements that I use in constructing characters, I really need to define them. There are no less than thirty categories (not all of them recognized in game mechanics) of them.

As usual, it might be best to first present these in list format to serve as something of a table of contents for the rest of this section.

1. Motivations
2. Desires
3. Ambitions
4. Dislikes
5. Hobbies
6. Interests
7. Fascinations
8. Obsessions
9. Mysteries
10. Curiosities
11. Mistakes
12. Inhibitions
13. Habits
14. Targets
15. Enemies
16. Recurring Cast
17. Beliefs & Superstitions
18. Memberships
19. Identities – Public, Secret
20. Needs & Dependencies
21. Susceptibilities
22. Vulnerabilities
23. Fortune
24. Enraged
25. Berserk
26. Distinctive Features
27. Physical Limitations
28. Social Limitations
29. Other Traits
30. Curios & Treasured Possessions

My, but that’s a long list!

Some of these will be recognized to anyone familiar with the Hero System, some of them are grouped in the relevant game mechanics into entries in a broader category, but the more explicit listing is of greater value in personality construction, so…

Also in the relevant game mechanics is an overall rule – if a limitation doesn’t limit a character, it’s not to be listed – that this process explicitly ignores.

1. Motivations

Why does the character do whatever it is that they do? What is the motivation that drives them? What motivations drove them in the past?

2. Desires

What does the character desire? These need not be material objects; they can be an abstract category of object, or something more general again, or even something metaphysical – “World Peace” is a valid desire. However, to qualify for this category, it has to be something that the character does not expect to personally achieve or attain.

3. Ambitions

That’s because those are explicitly served by their own category, as you can see. Ambitions don’t have to be something that the character expects to achieve, but they are something the character is deliberately going to do something about trying to achieve. So if your character is a regular ecology protester, ‘ecological awareness’ or ‘ecological issues’ would be a perfectly valid choice.

4. Dislikes

This category is seemingly obvious, but this is the converse of Ambitions – these are things that the character dislikes enough to actually do something about. ‘Dislikes Pollution’ and ‘Dislikes Corporate Greed’ would both be valid choices for our Eco-warrior, for example.

5. Hobbies

Similarly, a hobby is something that the character is interested in that requires them to actually do something. It could be a craft like woodcarving, or it could be an activity like mountain climbing or hiking or wilderness camping or deep-sea fishing.

6. Interests

Things that the character is interested in learning about, but not participating in, go into this category. But some things that might be expected to fall into this group should more accurately be placed in the next.

7. Fascinations

There may be some subjects or types of event that absolutely transfix the character that he cannot turn aside from until complete save by an act of will. These are fascinations. I think most people have one or two, though many never discover what they are (or fail to recognize them when they do experience them).

8. Obsessions

One step more extreme again are obsessions. These are experiences that the character feels compelled to join into or take part in, or ambitions that the character will make drastic sacrifices to achieve.

9. Mysteries

There are three types of mysteries – but any mysteries that the character is merely curious about, without making any attempt to solve on their own, are merely an interest. That leaves the remaining two types – those that the character has an intellectual interest in solving, and those that hold some personal significance. The difference lies in the lengths that the character is typically willing to go to in search of a solution. In order to distinguish between these, the first are listed as ‘curiosities’ and the more definitive term is reserved for those puzzles that hold deep personal significance.

For some characters, this can include religious experiences, or para-physical ones. Near-death experiences and brain tumors can also be transformative. So this category can be a little broader than it might at first appear.

Because characters in RPGs are prone to the dramatic, it’s fair to say that they have more than their fair share of Mysteries; most ordinary people will have one or two at most, and often none at all. I frequently use this as a distinguishing point between ‘feature characters’ and ‘wallpaper characters’. The latter are also sometimes referred to as ‘stock characters’, ‘background characters’, or ‘extras’; they generally do not have significant speaking roles in an adventure or work of fiction.

In some cases, they are a compilation that is representative of many diverse individuals, grouped into a melange for convenience and focus while minimizing the attention that needs to be given them in character development.

10. Curiosities

The term used to refer to those mysteries that the character has a purely intellectual interest in seeing resolved, but which they do not feel compelled to solve because of personal impact. Sometimes, these subjects of which the character is curious can wax or wane; in ages past, I have been curious about the true identity of Jack The Ripper, for example, but that itch seems to have left me, at least for now. Usually, it takes only one tantalizing hint or revelation to reawaken the interest, however.

11. Mistakes

There are three types of mistake – those that the character doesn’t acknowledge as a mistake, those that the character accepts having made and has moved on from, and those that the character still deeply regrets. The latter are arguably the most significant now, because the memory will continue to drive future behavior, but the others deal with the road that the character has taken to get to this point, and that is usually also significant within the character’s history.

A potential fourth category would be choices that the character thinks were mistakes, but which actually were not – but that’s getting a little subtle, and most characters will have nothing of the sort in their makeup.

12. Inhibitions

There are two subtypes of inhibition – things the character doesn’t want to do (including phobias and paranoias) and lines that the character will only crossed if forced. Sometimes I consider separating the two, but every time I do so, I realize that anything from the first category can easily erupt into the second; it’s merely a matter of sensitivity.

13. Habits

Most people have habits, and they can be the very devil to break. More often than not, they need to be sublimated into some other form that is less corrosive to the spirit or the health of the individual. That’s the big secret to AA, in my opinion – confession and probity replacing the consumption of alcohol, and enabling the individual to withstand their desires for such consumption.

But the fact is that those who have a habit of sufficient intensity as to potentially pose problems for them (of whatever variety) do not think the same way as people who do not.

This is something that I’ve been aware of for a very long time; there are those who live for the sense of release of inhibitions that comes from alcohol, who feel ten feet tall and made of iron when they drink. They can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to feel that way. (I heard a very similar statement in the dialogue of Leo McGarry on The West Wing when he was attempting to explain his addiction to someone who didn’t share it).

Others drink, not to forget, but to become numb to some source of personal pain. This never really works very well, but eventually you become so inebriated that you don’t care any more; I guess that’s a form of pseudo-numbness.

But, in my case (aside from a couple of particular binges at one specific point in time), I could never stand the loss of self-control that comes with even mild inebriation. While I could (and did) drink socially, I almost always drew the line just short of that limit. And, on the few occasions when I did cross that line, I hated the way I would tell my body to do something and it would do something else.

Did that make me immune to addiction? Absolutely not; just to that particular addiction. But this isn’t about me; they are offered here in support and explanation of the statement offered, that addicts think differently.

14. Targets

There are often people and organizations that the character wants to take down or rehabilitate (by force if necessary). Sometimes the identity of the target is not known to the character, only what they have done; this implies an ongoing investigation aimed at obtaining that identification, but sometimes it can also produce actions aimed at a wider front that will include the target even without knowing explicitly who they are.

15. Enemies

Not necessarily the same groups or individuals, these are people/agencies who are actively seeking to do harm of some sort to the character. That harm could be a restraint of liberty, the capture/collection of some object in the character’s possession, or a public embarrassment of some kind. Again, not at all enemies will know who their target is, as an individual; they may oppose all members of a particular group or who participate in specific activities that they oppose.

16. Recurring Cast

Who does the character know and see regularly? Whose troubles is the character regularly drawn into? Who is likely to get drawn into the character’s troubles?

This can frequently be a far wider collection of individuals than it first seems. For me, the first step is always to identify a social circle or general category of supporting cast, then to identify discrete individuals from within each group; I retain the general group as well, representing everyone who has not been singled out.

For example: I went to school (schoolmates, teachers). I grew up in a particular small town (family, locals). I spent one memorable year in a boarding school (different group of schoolmates, a couple of teachers). I went to university (classmates), joined the Science Fiction Society (friends), joined the ‘wargaming’ group (actually playing TTRPGs) (friends). I lived at a particular place overlooking Bondi Beach (neighbors, landlord, local shopkeepers). I worked at a number of different jobs (fellow employees, bosses, associates), and so on. That’s 15 social circles (some overlapping) – and that’s with just one employer and one residential location in the picture; I’ve had many over the last 42 years. In fact, this only carries me through 1982!

In total, there have been 9 employers of note, and 12 – no, 13 – residences, over the years (not counting the ones already listed). With three social circles for each of those, that’s another 66 social circles, bringing my total to 81!

I’m fully prepared to accept that my experiences are more diverse than most people my age; and hence this is a more extreme example than is normal. That’s not especially relevant. From each of those groups, there will be a few standouts who I still remember (no idea if they would remember me!) – anywhere from 1 or 2 to a dozen or so, weighted toward the lower end. Median would probably be around 4. So those 81 social circles are represented by 324 individuals – which are not the totality of those in the social circles, but are just the individuals that I could name and of whom I have strong memories. But one (family) has to be separated out from that – mine is unusually large and relatively closely-knit, with more than 100 specific individuals with whom I have some sort of personal relationship because they are family. So that’s more than 400 memorable individuals.

Any of those could be the vector for an adventure to reach me, were I a character in an RPG. Or a social complication, or social event.

Now, this is not going to be true of most characters (it’s too much work!). They might have four or five social circles, with 2-3 individuals drawn from each, and a catch-all (“other people [character x] has known”) for everyone else. Most of those individuals will be nothing more than a name until they rise to prominence in a particular plotline, though there may be a few exceptions to that. And that’s for a feature character; less significant characters will have even less definition.

17. Beliefs & Superstitions

Beliefs and superstitions can be minor influences on character behavior or can be defining behavioral factors. Like curiosities, they can wax and wane, and come and go. Some people seem to shed their superstitions as they age, others seem to collect additional ones.

18. Memberships

What organizations is the character a past member of? What organizations is he or she a current member of?

19. Identities – Public, Secret

By what names is the character known (public identities)? What names has he or she used to conceal her true identity?

20. Needs & Dependencies

These are comparatively unusual, since addictions have already been dealt with. These are something that the character actually needs to maintain health, either physical, social, or mental. For example, I make no secret of the fact that I am diabetic; in fact, I have no less than 12 medications that I have to consume regularly (blood sugar, cholesterol, fast heartbeat, arthritis, and some vitamin deficiencies). if I were to stop taking these, not only would medical complications arise relatively quickly, but these would eventually prove crippling or even fatal.

These are something whose absence causes damage of some sort, either short-term or persistent and cumulative.

21. Susceptibilities

A susceptibility is something that has greater effect on the character than is normal. These are relatively uncommon, but all the more noteworthy for that. Special note should be made of any that the character doesn’t know he or she is susceptible to.

For example, as a writer, I am susceptible to accusations of plagiarism. Even the unfounded accusation is corrosive to my credibility and hence to my ability to earn money from my writing. While most people would suffer some social or professional harm from such an accusation, I would experience disproportionate harm from one. Some occupations are susceptible to allegations of child abuse, others to corruption.

22. Vulnerabilities

Vulnerabilities are more extreme again, but also more common. These are things that are generally harmless or even beneficial but that cause harm to the character. Such harm can be anything from discomfort to death. Kryptonite is a vulnerability for Superman. Penicillin is a vulnerability to me, I’m allergic to it. Some people are allergic to peanuts, or seafood, or pollen. Such harm can require ingestion, or contact, or even its mere presence may be enough.

23. Fortune

At first glance, a character can either have good luck or bad luck, and this is thus an entirely singular category – you either have one, or you don’t. That overlooks the real power of this liability, in terms of characterization.

First, you can specify that the character has bad luck or good luck in a specific situation – ‘bad luck while dating,’ ‘good luck when selling door-to-door’, ‘bad luck with men’ [or women, depending on character gender and orientation], ‘good luck when climbing’, ‘bad luck when engaging in outdoors activities’, ‘bad luck around [a particular person]’ – the list is endless. There is also a third option that is often overlooked, “karmic balance”.

Second, you can specify the form that this bad luck takes when it manifests – clumsiness, stammering, klutz, accident-prone, attacked by nature, tongue-tied, experiences reverses, or whatever.

Third, you can confine the manifestation of the luck, if that’s appropriate.

Put all those together, and you can end up with:

• Bad Luck: ‘Comedy of errors when dating’. Or ‘Accident-prone when camping outdoors’. Or ‘Stammers when talking to Claire [character’s girlfriend] about his feelings’;
• Good Luck: ‘Lucky at Poker’, ‘Always wins a minor prize in lotteries (but never the big prize)’, ‘Good luck at sports when Charlie [character’s friend] is on the opposing team’;
• Mixed: ‘Karmic Balance when Christmas shopping’, ‘Karmic balance when looking for parking spots’, ‘Karmic balance with traffic’.

Even so, for most characters, you won’t want too many of these, or they lose their impact, unless they specifically designed to integrate into a greater whole. For example:

• ‘Good Luck (always in the right place) in sports except when playing a Boston team’, plus
• ‘Makes clumsy mistakes when winning against a Boston team or player’.

This describes a character who is a naturally-gifted sportsman, but for some reason (probably psychological), he becomes a klutz when his team is winning but only when playing teams from a particular location. It doesn’t matter what the sport is – it could be baseball, basketball, football, whatever.

One of my favorite combinations is “Good luck when losing, bad luck when winning”.

24. Enraged

Some things tick us off enough that we have to make willpower rolls not to attack them or otherwise act when we encounter them. You can think about these as more intense but more intermittent forms of obsession. For me, it’s nagging that sets me off (I don’t know why), and sometimes — when I’m GMing, not being listened to or being interrupted. With the latter events, there is usually a singular explosion of temper and then I regain equilibrium; with the latter, it’s more persistent, and more prone to be re-triggered after an event. If pushed, it can even make me turn violent, something I’m not particularly proud of (bring up something once, and there’s no problem; bring it up again and again and you’re in for it).

I have known people who became outraged at perceived miscarriages of justice – some of them regained equilibrium after venting for a while, some needed to write a letter (or email) to the newspaper, and some immediately began organizing marches and protests.

A Narcissist will ‘do something dramatic for attention when he feels ignored or sidelined, even if that is not in his best interest.’

25. Berserk

Most of us don’t have these, thank goodness. They are triggers that cause us to lash out, indiscriminately.

But there are a couple of more common variations.

• Some people who are enraged can become indiscriminate when someone attempts to deflect them or intercede on behalf of the target of their anger, even attacking friends and allies.
• Some people have a chip on their shoulder that causes them to explode when triggered.

As with Fortunes, you can also specify the form in which this manifests; most people tend to think of it as ‘physically attack’, but it could be ‘Screams uncontrollably”, or ‘Emotionally embittered by’, or even ‘Becomes cruel and heartless’.

So there’s a lot more scope in this category than first meets the eye.

26. Distinctive Features

This includes scars and tattoos, and inhuman beauty, and even perfect symmetry of features. It includes missing limbs and missing digits. It can include extras of something, too – “Six fingers” for example, or “prehensile tail” (if that’s unusual). I’ve even known a couple of people whose eyes seemed to change color under certain circumstances – I’m not sure how that worked, physiologically, but I’ve seen it first-hand at close range.

Scars are especially significant, because they always stem from a particular incident and that in turn connects them with some other part of their personal makeup. For example, since the mid-80s, I’ve had extensive scarring on my right wrist and chin – I got mugged on a train, and physically thrown off it as it was pulling into a station, sliding 60m along the platform and narrowly missing steel girders acting as support columns. The scars elsewhere from this incident (which took off almost 1/4 of my skin) have faded, but those seem to persist. This caused me to have a ‘berserk when being mugged’ that, on a later occasion, caused me to break a solid oak walking stick on the hand of a would-be mugger (and breaking several bones in his hand, causing him to drop the knife that he was wielding in the process).

But the responses / reactions / connections don’t have to be so dramatic. I have a scar over one eye from an outdoors rock festival in the later 80s – I got up during one act’s set to use the facilities because I wasn’t a particular fan of the band, and one of their fans took a drunken swing at me, driving my eyeglasses back into the eye socket. That connects to my love of music, which is what led me to be in attendance (and hence in a position to be attacked), but there has been no other psychological impact from the event that I can detect. Okay. maybe this reinforced slightly my already-strong resistance to drunkenness – but even that I’m not sure of.

27. Physical Limitations

Missing eyes, missing limbs, missing digits, deafness in one ear – there are a number of possibilities here, but most of them won’t apply to most characters. Some of them will also be distinctive features, some of them may not – an eye-patch is obvious, a glass eye far less so.

But there are some less obvious ones that should be pointed out – things like “vertigo at heights or without solid footing”. Some allergies also belong in this category, even though they may be listed elsewhere in addition – “Hay Fever” is an obvious one. There was a time when I had to be especially wary of infected cuts and the like, because I’m allergic to Penicillin, and that was the treatment of first resort to such (thankfully, Penicillin-resistant diseases caused the adoption of other medications with which I have no problems, so this problem has become progressively less significant over the years – but I still have to bear in mind the fact that sensitivity to one medication can imply sensitivity to other, related, compounds).

28. Social Limitations

As a child, i was very introverted, which conferred a number of social limitations, for example a fear of public speaking – even though I was fairly good at it when forced into it. It was, in fact, RPGs that ‘brought me out of my shell’ – during the ‘Moral Panic’ of the 1980s, I was even able to appear on a radio program to defend the hobby, and I had a letter of protest over the one-sided report on the subject by 60 minutes quoted on-air. I once spent a month as a door-to-door salesman selling vacuum cleaners, and was described by my boss in the job as ‘a master of the soft sell’. Unfortunately, this was a job that principally paid by commission, and reached the point where I could not afford to continue, just as that boss thought I had grown skilled enough to achieve success in the role, so I had to give it away. But the gap from introvert with a fear of public speaking to door-to-door salesman shows just how far I had come!

29. Other Traits

I think that I’ve covered just about everything, but there’s always room for something I haven’t contemplated. So this category exists as an ‘anything else you can think of’ catch-all.

30. Curios & Treasured Possessions

But there’s one final category. Objects listed in this category can be specific (Babe-Ruth signed baseball bat) or general (collection of basketball memorabilia), or even metaphysical (memories of Paris). They can serve two noteworthy functions – first, the fact that the character values them tells you something about the character; and second, they can be used as a physical manifestation of some personality attribute that is otherwise obscure or inobvious, making them a key to ‘unlocking’ the personality by an observer.

For example, if the PCs are to have a meeting with the representative of a company – it could be anything from an insurance company to a manufacturer of some sort – and he has a bookshelf full of books about Conservative politics, including biographies of US Presidents from the Republican Party, that immediately ‘unlocks’ a part of the personality of the individual, creating context and implications and expectations. That one character trait becomes the focal point of so many others that half the work of detailing the personality can be assumed, saving the GM generating the character (or the writer describing the character) masses of time and effort, especially if none of these factors actually plays any active role in the ensuing meeting.

This can be so useful that I will invest a disproportionate amount of time contemplating the individual’s impact on their surroundings.

You can also convey an entirely different personality at a stroke – if I were to add to the description of the bookshelf, “but there is no evidence of any of the books ever having been opened,” you get an entirely different interpretation than if I had described them as “dog-eared and clearly frequently studied”.

Even then, there are still multiple opposing possibilities – the books might be well-read because the character is an active supporter of that side of politics, or because their job requires them to be persuasive to people who are aligned in that direction, politically. One phrase from the NPCs lips when they notice the PC noticing the bookshelf is enough to convey that shift – for example,

“Know your enemy,” she says with a smile.

This also implies that the NPC is adept enough at reading people to have discerned that the PC or PCs are antagonistic toward that branch of politics.

Don’t neglect the value that Curios and Treasured Possessions can have in communicating and defining a personality!

Okay, now that we have the construction elements defined, I can get to the real meat of this article – how to use them. Note that in order to use this technique, you have to have a clear understanding of what these categories contain, without the need to look them up. Until you have that, it’s a good idea to skim through them each time you sit down for an NPC generation session. Eventually, if you do this often enough, you will reach the point where you can use the initial list as sufficient mnemonic to bring them to mind, and can skip over the entire indented section of this article.

Step One: Root Cause

Always start with the one item from anywhere on the list that you consider the most definitive of the character. This is the “Root Cause” (you’ll see why in a moment).

Example

When this article was conceived, it came with the concept of an example that was actually instrumental in structuring it. That example is an NPC with the Root Cause, “Vigilante”.

Step Two: Consequences

A lot of players and GMs using the Hero System stop to calculate the points value of each Disadvantage as it is determined. I want to take this opportunity to actively advocate against this practice, as it results in a stop-start process that restricts the imagination.

The methodology that I am recommending in this article is to accelerate the process of coming up with relevant entries as much as possible, then cleaning up with the game mechanics later. This results in a more free-flowing process in which the imagination of the character’s creator is given free reign.

This step of the process consists of working your way through the list of categories and listing as many ideas in each that are conceptual consequences of the “root cause” (hence the term). “Consequences” lists every type of impact on the character of the root cause that the creator can identify.

Because the “root” in question is conceptual in nature, these “Consequences” can actually be the causes of, or justifications for, the Root Cause.

Example

Okay, so let’s work through the list of construction elements:

• Motivation: Lover of Justice
• Motivation: Righter Of Wrongs
• Desire: End injustice
• Desire: End inequality
• Desire: Expose Corruption
• Ambition: Identify and Expose the Jambala Killer
• Ambition: Expose Judge Prentice Shaw as corrupt
• Ambition: Investigate possible corruption in the Dallas District Attorney’s department
• Ambition: Investigate possible corruption in the Dallas Police Department
• Dislikes: Injustice
• Dislikes: Corruption
• Dislikes: Wrongful Convictions
• Dislikes: Mysteries
• Hobbies: none (yet)
• Interest: Legal Processes
• Interest: Legal Ethics
• Interest: Legal Theory and Practical Application
• Interest: Political History
• Interest: Daughter’s Welfare (restricted by court order from a more active role)
• Fascination: Stories of Karmic Revenge
• Fascination: Stories of Sherlock Holmes
• Fascination: Stories of American Pulp Heroes
• Fascination: Unsolved Crimes
• Fascination: Forensic Medicine
• Obsession: Exoneration
• Obsession: Ex-wife
• Obsession: Serial Killers
• Mystery: The Jambala Killer
• Curiosity: Jack the Ripper
• Mistake: Chose ineffectual counsel (Jambala Killer Trial)
• Mistake: Chose ineffectual counsel (Divorce)
• Mistake: Stalking Daughter (refer Interest, above)
• Inhibition; Illegal activities
• Inhibition; Daughter’s personal life
• Habit: Gambling (mild)
• Habit: Alcohol (mild)
• Target: The Jambala Killer
• Target: Judge Prentice Shaw
• Target: The Millford Manufacturing Company
• Enemy: Ex-Wife
• Enemy: Detective Zachery Benson
• Enemy: District Attorney Miles Galruth
• Enemy: Wilson Dent (convicted murderer)
• Recurring Cast: Mrs Shalhoub (landlady)
• Recurring Cast: Jake Prescott (friend / mechanic)
• Beliefs & Superstitions: Instruments of Karma
• Membership: Ex-cop
• Membership: Mystery Writers of America
• Public Identity: Nathan Johns, ex-cop
• Public Identity: Nathan Johns, ex-con
• Secret Identity: Karmon Tracy, mystery author
• Secret Identity: The Pivot (masked vigilante)
• Needs & Dependencies: none
• Susceptibilities: none
• Vulnerabilities: none
• Fortune: Bad luck (distractions arise) when investigating the Jambala Killer
• Fortune: Good luck (discover vital leads) when investigating other crimes
• Fortune: Bad luck (always loses) when gambling on horses and football
• Fortune: Good luck (wins more than he loses) when gambling on baseball
• Fortune: Bad luck (serious life complications) when intoxicated
• Enraged: Blatant injustice
• Enraged: Overt Corruption
• Berserk: If/When Daughter Threatened
• Distinctive Features: One blue eye, one gray
• Distinctive Features: Scar above left eye (barely noticeable)
• Distinctive Features: Tattoo (broken chain) on left wrist
• Physical Limitations: none
• Social Limitations: ex-convict
• Social Limitations: ex-cop
• Social Limitations: restraining order (ex-wife and daughter)
• Other Traits: none
• Curios & Treasured Possessions: Service Revolver

There were a number of decisions made on the fly in the above listing. I had a general outline of the character concept – a cop wrongfully imprisoned as a murderer, leading to his wife divorcing him and cutting his daughter out of his life – but that was all. My original thought was that he would be a private eye, but the mystery writer angle came to me as I was making out the list.

A couple of notes:

• The character (Nathan Johns) writes his fiction under a pseudonym, a legacy of the fact that his first novel was written while he was incarcerated.
• He clearly blames the Judge, Prentice Shaw, for his conviction, aided and abetted by the incompetence of his chosen attorney, but he is unsure of who else may have been involved.
• He served an unknown number of years of his sentence before proving his innocence, but the lead detective, Zachery Benson, is unconvinced.
• The District Attorney is opposed to Vigilantes on general principle and not to “The Pivot” specifically.
• Instruments of Karma: a blending of the concept of Karma and the principle of ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’, he believes that certain individuals are motivated and empowered to bring Karmic Balance to the world around them. This also relates to his chosen vigilante non-du-plum, “The Pivot” – he sees himself as the linchpin around which the scales of justice pivot. This concept also led to the “bad luck when intoxicated” entry – an expression of his personal Karma biting him on the ass when he neglects his “mission”.
• I’ve deliberately made this a slightly-flawed human being, one who means well but who has been hardened by his experiences. Although it is not listed as a mistake, it’s entirely possible that his chosen approach (vigilante) is the wrong road to take. Or maybe it’s the perfect response to his situation.

I trust you can now see the relevance of the spiderweb metaphor mentioned earlier. Each of these personality traits were derived from the basic concept of a vigilante good-guy, an almost-antihero who walks the fine line between justice and retribution for his own wrongful imprisonment.

Step Three: Penumbras

For each of the above items, do a really fast skim through the list looking for tertiary connections, and anything that leaps out as having been overlooked. This works on the principle that Step two has greatly refined the character as you proceeded, and so the character was better defined at the end of it than when you started. That opens the door for things to have been overlooked.

In particular (and this is where Penumbras come into the picture), this is where consequences of consequences and other questions around the fringes come into play. For example, he might have a superstition about the number 3 being unlucky – so he never bets on horses with that number, or on the third race.

Rather than continuing the example process at this point (time is becoming a factor), though, I’ll leave it at this point.

Step Four: Ripple Effects

Once you have filled in any blanks and any afterthoughts, it’s time to look at a more directed range of consequences. First, put together a narrative summary of the character background, similar to the one provided in the example after Step Two. Use that to put together a simple timeline of his personal history.

Now go through it, looking for anywhere that you can insert a plot hook or define a consequence that hasn’t already been enumerated.

The example character was in prison. And an ex-cop. That will have earned him enemies, and will have mandated his being present when some typical events went down. His reactions and actions in response may well have earned him still more enemies. And if there’s some sort of question about the honesty or brutality of the guards – there are likely to be some of both – that also needs to be spelled out.

The other thing to look for are consequences that impact events ‘down-time’ from the event. How does being an ex-cop impact his mystery writing? How does his being and ex-convict? Does his ex-wife share the view that he’s guilty, or does she have some other reason for her attitude toward the character, getting a restraining order to separate him from his Daughter’s life?

In general, this is looking through everything created thus far looking for the remaining gaps in the character concept, and filling them in.

Step Five: Prior Causes

Prior Causes looks further back than the earliest event listed, and asks where each of the items already listed came from. This character became a cop? Why? Who was his Instructor? Who were his partners? Where and in what part of his life did he meet his wife? When were they married?

Each such question does at least one of two things: Adds another influence over the events and traits already listed that now needs to be taken into account, and adds a further prior cause that should have its own set of consequences and ripple effects.

Consider the diagram to the right::

Each step back in time creates the conditions that lead to the decisions that produce the root cause, either directly or indirectly, and also have their own consequences.

With each step back, these generally become more insignificant. You might characterize them as adulthood, education, and childhood/family, respectively, for example.

Clearly, adulthood creates the conditions that lead to the root cause, the point at which the character’s life took an unexpected turn. In the case of our example, we’ve already backtracked to the point of our character being a cop, and married – so the next step back needs to explain how those two things came about, and the consequences and flow-on effects of events back then. Perhaps we could maintain our theme with a corrupt partner?

So that gets us back to the point where the character joins the police force. The layer behind that deals with his education and other career options, the teachers and home-town individuals that led to this particular choice being considered. Was it his first choice, his second, or somewhere a long way down the list? Did he, for example, always want to be a writer – but was dissuaded because they don’t earn much money?

Before that, we have family and childhood friends. These generally violate the “gets weaker’ rule, or can do so – unless there’s some estrangement.

If the character had a more complex history – perhaps there was a period of military service in between his becoming a cop and his leaving school – then you may end up with more than four layers, or you may decide that one is rendered so insignificant by this that it can be merged with another.

How the back-steps are broken up is up to you; just make sure there’s an obvious logic to it, and all will work out..

Inversions & Convolutions

There are two conceptual patterns that always lead to richer characters, and that I want to single out; you won’t always want to use them, but that’s always better as an educated and deliberate choice.

Inversions are represented by the example that I’ve been using – a cop who became a con, and who has now become the closest thing that he can to a cop once again. Religious characters who have gone through a crisis of faith, or who experienced some sort of religious revelation that transformed them, would be another example. In general, Characters who go from being one thing to being the opposite – wealthy to poor (or poor to wealthy) or whatever.

Some inversions are more difficult to arrange than others – going from educated to ignorant, for example (though there have been recent examples that suggest that it’s possible).

Convolutions are the other one. This is where a character’s life seems always to have been leading them to whatever they are, right now – but they have discovered along the way that their original vision of their position or role in society was oversimplified, even naive. As their world-view has become more complex, so has their perception of their role – not necessarily in ways that are too their liking. Frequently, they find that people they worshiped have feet of clay.

So common is disappointment as a them in Convolution Stories that I sometimes think that a character who experiences the opposite, discovering idealism, might be fun – but I’ve never come up with a credible character concept for achieving that. Not yet, anyway.

So, that’s the process. I think the example probably does more to sell it than any accolades I can offer about it at this point, so I’ll leave things as they stand, and wish readers success in adding to their repertoires!

That brings this article to a close, but before I go, I have some other news to impart.

Seven years ago or thereabouts, I was inspired by the Kickstarter campaign for an RPG rules system named Fortune’s Wheel to write an article on Prophecy in RPGs: The Breakdown of Intersecting Prophecies. Unfortunately, that Kickstarter didn’t reach its target, and the author, Peter Hollinghurst, had to drop out of developing it for a while with personal problems.

With those problems now resolved (in part by migrating from England to Canada), he’s back with a new offering, the Edinburgh Horrors, an adventure which uses the Fortunes Wheel system (tarot-card based instead of dice-based) as its foundation.

The adventure is set up so that players can control / influence some of the NPCs their characters encounter to achieve different outcomes, and a methodology for the players to create their own side stories using the card system if they want to enrich the gaming experience provided by the adventure

Interestingly, the plan is to use DriveThroughRPG’s print-on-demand service to deal with those who might want to purchase hard copies.

I don’t have time to get into a full review, so instead I’ll just share the link to the Kickstarter and let you do your own investigations: The Edinburgh Horrors – Long Dead Ink.

As I write, it’s closing in on meeting its goals, so – with 22 days remaining in the fundraising campaign as I write this – I have every expectation that it will achieve its quite modest targets, and even move on to stretch goals.

It certainly sounds interesting enough:

Click on the graphic to visit the Kickstarter page for The Edinburgh Horrors

…and the game mechanics might make it useful for GMs of other genres, (as might the ‘Haunted Edinburgh’ game supplement), so do yourself a favor and check it out!

Click the thumbnail to buy the complete Season One DVD set from Amazon (I will get a small commission).

I steal inspiration and technique from anywhere that I can find it, but I’m always careful to credit my sources (especially when the application is a bit left-of-field). In the past that has given me articles such as Growing The Perfect Family Tree (Part 1, Part 2), The Ashes: Understanding Brit and Aussie Characters, and Lessons From The West Wing V: Bilateral Political Incorrectness for RPGs, amongst many others.

Miraculous: Tales Of Ladybug & Cat Noir is an animated superhero TV series aimed at teens but with enough cleverness of plot and richness of canon that it’s quite watchable for adults, too. I find it quite reminiscent of early issues of Spider-man in some respects.

In particular, the approach take to relationships between characters is noteworthy for GMs.

An Introduction to the Premise & Canon of M:ToLaCN*

* the full title is quite a mouthful, and abbreviating it doesn’t help much, so from here on, I’ll simply call it Ladybug & Cat Noir, okay?

The title characters of Ladybug & Cat Noir are superheros who get their powers from pieces of jewelry called a “Miraculous”. Cat Noir’s is a ring, while Ladybug’s is a pair of earrings. These jewels become empowered through a magical being called a Kwami – they each have one.

The enemy who they continually battle is initially named Hawkmoth. He also has a Miraculous with a Kwami who is forced to obey his instructions because he wears the Miraculous. Hawkmoth’s power is to transform people experiencing strong negative emotions into super-villains by means of moths infused with dark energy of some sort; this process is called “Akumatizing” them.

In season 2, Hawkmoth is joined by “Mayura,” who uses a damaged Miraculous – that of the peacock – to create ‘sentimonsters’, strange life-forms that have to obey whoever their creator assigns them to, and which function as assistants, enhancers, and/or protectors of the villains created by Hawkmoth. Because the Miraculous is damaged, it slowly damages the user. In season four, Hawkmoth repairs the damaged Miraculous and gains both sets of powers, renaming himself Shadowmoth.

Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth stays in the shadows, creating super-villains and monsters to bedevil Paris, demanding that his creations capture the Miraculous of Ladybug and Cat Noir. Ladybug’s is the power of creation, while Cat Noir’s is the power of destruction; if one person ever holds both, they can be used to reshape reality, but at a cost equal to the change made.

To prevent this, Ladybug and Cat Noir can never know each other’s secret identities, so that if one is captured, they cannot be forced to put the other in danger.

There are other Miraculous and other Kwamis; from time to time, starting in Season 2, Ladybug uses them to create allies. At the end of Season 3, Ladybug becomes the new Guardian of the Miracle Box, which contains the Miraculous and is the extra-dimensional residence of the Kwamis.

The Core

The relationships of the central characters are the pivot around which everything revolves.

• Cat Noir falls in love with Ladybug.
• Ladybug considers Cat Noir a slightly-annoying friend and ally, nothing more.
• Cat Noir’s true identity is Adrien Agreste, a teenaged fashion model.
• Ladybug’s true identity is Marionette Dupain-Cheng (pronounced ‘du Penchain’), who falls in love with Adrien, not knowing that he is Cat Noir. She is in the process of becoming a fashion/art designer of note.
• Adrien considers Marionette a friend, nothing more.

This love quadrangle is at the heart of the series, and fuels plenty of teen angst – which is the element that reminds me so much of those early issues of Spider-man.

Surrounding this core is a second layer of characters:

• Tikki and Plagg are the Kwamis of Ladybug and Cat Noir, respectively. These are characters that can only interact with the holders of the Miraculous when they are not transformed into their superhero identities.
• Unknown to both Marionette and Adrien, Hawkmoth’s true identity is Adrien’s father, Gabriel Agreste. Nor does Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth know who Ladybug and Cat Noir really are.
• Emilie (Agreste) is Gabriel’s wife. She is comatose or dead, preserved in some sort of life-support container, and so never interacts with the other characters. It is not stated outright, but the clear implication of Season II is that she died from using the damaged Peacock Miraculous. Gabriel wants the Miraculouses of Creation and Destruction to rewrite history and return her to life, not knowing or caring that this means that someone else will have to die to achieve this (and possibly someone of equal significance to Gabriel, i.e. Adrien. As such, her ‘absence’ is an ever-present shadow cast over the Series.
• Gabriel’s assistant is Nathalie Sancoeur (I don’t remember her surname ever being used in the show, however), who uses the damaged peacock Miraculous to become Mayura, and becomes bedridden as the damage takes hold. Gabriel seems to genuinely care for Nathalie, and she practically worships him in an obvious case of unrequited love.
• “The Gorilla” (a nickname bestowed on him by Adrien’s friends) is Adrien’s bodyguard. He rarely speaks beyond grunts and gestures, but is a regular presence in the series and seems to genuinely care for his protectee, even to the point of going against the wishes of his employer (Gabriel) to give Adrien some respite from Gabriel’s domineering emotional abuse.
• Marionette’s father and mother are Tom Duplain and Sabine Cheng, respectively. Tom is the best Patisserie in Paris, assisted by Sabine. The two are emotional supports for Marionette and the gateway to Marionette’s other relatives, but their role in the series is relatively limited.

Surrounding these are a group of school-friends of both Adrien and Marionette. These are frequently involved in one of three ways: Akumatized into villains, lent a Miraculous to enable them to serve as superhero assistants to Ladybug and Cat Noir, or simply participating in the daily life of the two principle characters. Significantly, each has a defined relationship with the other classmates, and these evolve over time.

Some of these characters are more significant than others – in fact, some of them are more significant than Marionette’s parents, for all that those parents are more frequent participants than any one member of the social circle save, perhaps, Alya.

Members of this circle include:

• Alya Cesaire – Marionette’s best friend and (eventually) Ladybug’s chief assistant and confidante, who joins the cast in episode 1 of season 1.
• Non Lahiffe – Adrien’s best friend and (eventually) Alya’s boyfriend and superheroic partner.
• Chloe Bourgeois – “selfish, overzealous, and spoiled” according to Wikipedia, but that understates all three elements. Sometimes a hero (despite these character flaws), sometimes a villain, and frequently a catalyst, causing the negative emotions in her classmates that permit them to be akumatized.
• Lila Rossi – deliberately created to be spiteful and unlovable, she is evil where Chloe is simply malicious and selfish. A superlative liar who delights in manipulating others.
• Kagami Tsurugi – A Japanese girl who joins Adrien’s fencing class and becomes friends with Marionette. Sheltered by an overprotective and dominating mother, she briefly sets her sights on Adrien romantically, but the relationship fails.
• Luka Couffaine – brother of another of the classmates and a musician like his parents, Luka loves Marionette but is content to simply be her friend if it enables her to pursue her own happiness.
• Kim Ature, Max Kante, Mylene Haprele, Ivan Bruel, Sabrina Raincomprix, Julia Couffaine, Rose Lavillant, Aurore Beureal, Nathaniel Kurtzberg, Mac Anciel and Zoe Lee – other classmates of Marionette and Adrien.

And, outside this ring are other relatives of some of these characters and other recurring characters, such as Mayor Bourgeois, staff at the school attended by Marionette and Adrien, and so on.

If you were to map these relationships topographically, it would appear as a cluster of characters surrounding the principle roles, some linked with one of them and some with the other, with a set of further clusters, some linked with one of the two and some linked with both. And each of the members of a cluster is often at the center of a small cluster of their own.

Introductions

Characters are generally introduced one at a time, though they may be present in a number of episodes before we learn who they are. Quite often, when a character is introduced, he or she becomes the akumatized victim of Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth for that episode, but this is not always the case.

The structure of the character relationships is such that normal interactions between characters permits their surrounding cluster to be introduced organically. Usually, we are talking about the parents or siblings of one of the inner cluster of classmates or relatives. Sometimes, these characters make only a single appearance, on other occasions they may recur a number of times, or simply be present in the background when those more centrally-connected to Marionette / Adrien are interacted with.

Featured Relationship

Only one relationship is generally featured in a given episode, though others may be present in the background. This keeps the complexities of this vast supporting cast from overwhelming the viewer.

Relationship Evolution

No character is featured without their relationship with someone in the cast evolving or advancing in some way. Quite often, the other partner in this relationship is one of the title characters, but this is not always the case, as when Alya and Nino become boyfriend/girlfriend despite initially disliking each other.

If the relationship with the principle character does not directly advance/evolve, there are almost always ripple effects to these relationship developments that do impact on one of the principle characters.

In addition, those ripple effects can also affect the relationship between the principle characters. For example, Cat Noir can sometimes exhibit mild jealousy when Ladybug calls upon another of her allies to solve the problem of the episode, but he is also aware of this and tries to overcome it, usually successfully. He often attempts to charm other heroines when they appear, but this is mostly an act, and an attempt to create jealousy on the part of Ladybug; he desists when it is obviously not succeeding..

In RPGs – the minimalist approach

Obviously, it is desirable in most campaigns to have a similarly rich and interactive supporting cast of NPCs. This is often more easily said than done, however.

As a result, most GMs tend to establish relationships with those supporting cast and then leave them static and unchanging unless the change is clearly mandated by the NPCs presence within the events of the adventure.

For most campaigns, this approach is at least adequate, and it is relatively easy to manage. All you need is a list of the NPCs which describes who they are and any noteworthy relationships they may have; if this is a text document on a computer, it becomes searchable and can be updated as necessary.

Hardcopy versions may be more accessible, and easier to read or skim, but lose these benefits.

This is the approach generally used in the Adventurer’s Club campaign because the campaign and it’s major NPCs were created by my Co-GM.

The Hero System approach

In the hero system, characters get to list Dependent NPCs, Enemies and so on, and get character points for these. The problem is that this doesn’t just fix those relationships in place, it freezes them solid, and any changes can require wholesale changes to the PC and to any NPC connected to the one being changed.

What’s more, unless the NPC happens to fit one of those predetermined categories, there is no system for tracking them. For almost as long as I have been GMing Champions (since 1982, in fact), I’ve been trying to formulate a broader approach.

In RPGs – failed evolving approaches

Those attempts have been less than resounding successes, I’m the first to admit. The problem is that the various methods attempted have been too paperwork-intensive, and this has led to them being neglected, letting them slowly become out-of-date, and eventually leading to them being ignored or abandoned.

The most successful of these approaches (in the Zenith-3 campaign) was a contact list in which NPCs were assigned a positive or negative value which was added or subtracted from the XP award for an adventure when the NPC played a significant role. The more helpful the NPC was, the more it reduced the points payout earned in the course of the adventure.

In and of itself, this was not a bad concept; it meant that PCs did their best to solve problems on their own, only calling for assistance when it was really necessary. This kept the spotlight where it belonged, on the PCs. My previous attempt had failed to achieve this, which is one reason it was replaced.

But the resulting mechanics became onerous – the calculation of point values, the assessment of how helpful characters could expect to be, and so on – and this led to the relationships being even more rigidly fixed, and the sub-system being ignored more often than it was referenced.

I tried simplifying it by having a master list of relationships with the team instead of requiring each individual to list every NPC encountered, but this wasn’t enough.

The Ideal Solution

I’ve long realized that the best solution would be to design and implement a simple relational database for each campaign. The structure of this database would have a hierarchy something like this:

• Everything is indexed by character number.
  • Information about the character.
  • For each character, there is a secondary record for all other characters in the database, and a link to their database entry that extracts their name..
    • Each secondary record has a tertiary record that contains a record of each time they have appeared in an adventure and what their relationship is to the primary character after that appearance.

For example, we might have:

• 01
  • Dr Murko
  • Somewhat-deranged scientist, his experiments have a tendency to blow up in his face
  • To understand the source and parameters of Zed-Zero Energy
  • Won’t willingly break the law to achieve goals but often does so through thoughtlessness
  • 02 Lady Sage
    • Appearance 1
    • Creator of experimental subject on the run
  • 03 Blaster
    • Appearance 1
    • Creator of experimental subject, released to hunt Lady Sage
• 02
  • Lady Sage
  • Experimental subject of Dr Murko who has escaped
  • Wants to avoid recapture
  • Can’t resist helping / protecting others
  • 01 Dr Murko
    • Appearance 1
    • Obsessed scientist whose experiments pose a threat to himself and others
  • 03 Blaster
    • Appearance 1
    • Creation of Dr Murko sent to hunt down Lady Sage but who let her escape, recognizing her as kindred

…. and so on.

This example is a small database of just three entries – two NPCs and a PC. The first character, Dr Murko, is an NPC; he was testing Zed-Zero energy, giving his test subject (Lady Sage) paranormal abilities, which she used to escape. He then created a second subject, Blaster, to hunt her down and recapture her before his (illegal?) experiments were revealed. Blaster found and confronted Lady Sage but recognized that they were alike, and let her escape; but returned to Dr Murko in hopes that Murko would undo what he had done to him.

Clearly, there is a complicated relationship between Blaster and Lady Sage that is likely to evolve with every appearance of the character.

If I were running this as a campaign, the second adventure would have nothing to do with Dr Murko or Blaster, it would introduce some new characters to Lady Sage’s new life, giving her a place to live/hide and establishing her personality beyond a mere drive for survival and liberty.

Why this is impractical

There are three reasons why I consider this solution theoretically ideal, to be impractical.

1. Most Relational Database software is complicated and/or expensive.
2. The number of records would grow geometrically with each new character.
3. After a little while, maintaining the database would be a full-time job.

Consider the situation with 3 PCs and 20 NPCs, who have appeared an average of three times each in a campaign, eliminating all redundant records (no ‘self’ secondary record, for example) and all relationships over which the GM has no control (those between PCs):

23 primary records, three of which have 20 secondary records and 20 of which have 19 secondary records, each of which has an average of 3 tertiary records: 23 + 4 × (3×20 + 20×19) = 23 + 4 × (60 + 380) = 23 + 4 × (440) = 23 + 1760 = 1783 records.

Adding another NPC:= 1783 + 1 + 3 + 20 + 1 = 1808 records after just a single appearance.

The main driver of record count is (NPCs) × (NPCs -1). 2 NPCs = 2 records per appearance. 3 NPCs = 6 records per appearance. 20 NPCs = 380 records per appearance. 31 NPCs = 930 records per appearance…

Not practical.

Simplification

The easiest and most obvious method of simplifying this structure is to restrict the documentation to recording relationships between PCs and NPCs, ignoring relationships between NPCs, except possibly for notes regarding specific relationships of significance.

The next step of simplification would be to take the tertiary records away completely, and simply include a growing list of appearances and relationships in the secondary records. This actually complicates the internal structure of the database, because the records can no longer be fixed-length, but that’s a headache for the designer of the software, not you, and is generally a solved issue.

The total number of records thereby becomes # PCs × # NPCs.

This would also reduce the functionality of the resulting database, but it would be a lot more practical.

Practical Implementation

In fact, it’s so practical that it could easily be implemented as a single text file – no database required at all.

Create a section in your document for the group, and then a section for each PC. Each NPC gets a line to describe the relationship – all you need is the name.

You then have two choices: either over-typing the existing line when the relationship evolves, or inserting a new line for the new entry.

The first keeps the document instantly relevant, and makes it easier to find the current information that you need for the NPCs next appearance, the latter preserves a history that can be vital in identifying trends in the relationships. Both have their advantages and limitations, so this is very much a personal choice for the GM – which set of shortcomings is he willing to live with?

Evolving A Relationship

Each game session, one NPC should be selected as the feature relationship. The GM decides how he would like the relationship to progress – it could go forward, backward, or sideways – and then inserts into the planned gameplay of the day events that will prompt that change in the relationship.

Complications arise in multi-PC groups where you have to be careful not to develop one PCs relationships more frequently than others – this is akin to a spotlight-sharing problem, so it should be amenable to similar solutions.

Depending on how many PCs you have, you might be able to advance one relationship per PC, for example. Note that introducing a new NPC with a particular relationship to a specific PC counts! If you have too many PCs, this might consume too much game time on a ‘per game session’ schedule, but a ‘per adventure’ schedule would remain practical for much larger groups.

Above maybe half-a-dozen PCs, even this might begin to feel forced, or might consume so much game time that you don’t get to the main adventure for a whole game session; neither is desirable. It then becomes necessary to subdivide the group for this purpose and alternate between divisions, or introduce a rotating schedule of some kind.

Either will work, and with groups of this size, this is likely to be the very least of your problems!

Evolutionary Anatomy

So what does evolution of a relationship look like?

In general, it can be divided into:

1. Event
2. Engagement
3. Reaction
4. Action
5. Response
6. Checkpoint

1. Event

Something happens that involves or invokes the relationship between the characters. This could be a social occasion, a professional engagement, or even a chance encounter. It may or may not involve a third party. The first of the characters that it happens to (PC or NPC) is considered the primary participant.

2. Engagement

The primary participant decides how they will respond to the event. This may or may not directly involve the other participant in the relationship (the secondary participant).

3. Reaction

The secondary participant learns of the engagement (if they did not know already), and reacts to the combination of event and engagement. The primary participant may or may not know of the reaction.

4. Action

One or both participants undertake an action in response to the event, as directed by the engagement and/or reaction..

5. Response

The primary participant responds to the actions or reaction of the secondary participant, while the secondary participant responds to the actions or engagement of the primary participant. This completes the narrative elements of the development.

6. Checkpoint

Any lingering consequences on the relationship, and how it will impact on the characters in the future, need to be documented before the GM’s work is done, however.

So, let’s look at an example:

Sally decides to act to further her claim to superiority over Louanne by inviting Peter but not Louanne to her birthday party. (the event)

Peter, being clueless about such things, accepts, and even mentions the invitation to Louanne. (the engagement)

Louanne, who considers Peter a friend, suspects that Sally is simply using him to get at her (a correct assessment). She is angry at Sally as a result. (the reaction)

Louanne decides to take action, telling Peter what she suspects Sally is doing. (Action)

Peter decides to attend the party anyway, but is forewarned by Louanne, who he trusts more than he does Sally. At the party, Sally all but ignores Peter but spends a lot of time running Louanne down in his hearing. Peter tells her off and leaves the party very publicly, humiliating Sally. (The Response)

Peter misinterprets Louanne’s involvement, deciding that maybe she cares more for him than she has admitted and than he has hitherto suspected. Sally will remain angry at both Peter (and Louanne, who she correctly blames) until she finds an opportunity for revenge. (The Checkpoint)

There are three relationships affected by this development, and all three of them change somewhat as a result.

• Sally is more openly hostile toward Louanne and will treat Peter as an enemy for the first time.
• Peter will have to decide how to respond to Louanne’s ‘advances’, creating awkwardness between them, and will be cold toward Sally until she apologizes.
• Louanne is blissfully ignorant of the changed relationship with Peter, and may well make things worse by feeding into his misinterpretation. She will be even more wary of Sally in future.

Where might this go in the future? The obvious development would be for Peter to ask Louanne out, or try to force Sally to apologize to Louanne, or both. But a more subtle, and interesting, development might be for some unrelated event to impact all three of their lives. Some tangible manifestation of the rivalry between Sally and Louanne, perhaps, or something that forces them to work together.

Conclusion

The same process can be used to evolve any relationship. In a D&D campaign, a hidden antagonist might approach one of the retainers of the PCs and blackmail them into spying for him, or baiting a trap for the PCs, or otherwise betraying the PCs.

Any relationship, any event, it works.

Not only does this stimulate the GM into creating subplots that have meaning for the PCs, and hence engagement for the Players, but – little by little – it makes the campaign world a richer place for the PCs to adventure within. Evolving relationships is easy – once you’re aware of the need to do so, and a way to make it happen that’s practical.

And for that, you can thank Ladybug & Cat Noir.

Miraculous!

I have said before that you can never have too many approaches to determining the characterization of an NPC up your sleeve. Today’s article offers a new one, and a systematic way of looking at simpler approaches that can also be useful.

Let’s start by setting a baseline for comparison…

0. Going Nowhere: The Null State (for Comparison)

I once knew a GM with several bad habits to go with his undoubted ability to create interesting puzzles (his Sphinxes were deadly dangerous). But creating and naming NPCs was not his strong suit.

Unless he had lots of prep time to focus on a specific character of importance, they were pretty much cookie-cutter derivatives of the AD&D character class to which they belonged. His Paladins were all Noble, his Clerics were all Pious, and so on.

And he was even worse at naming them. Regardless of race and language, the first NPC encountered was always named “Dave”, the second one was “Sam”, and the third one was “Phil”.

Frankly, I always thought that he should team up with another GM, someone who was good in a literary sense; as combination, they would have been killer!

The problem with only being good at one aspect of the GM’s craft is that players sit at your table (assuming they have a choice) for that one aspect. A single dry spell (and we all have them from time to time) and your one hold over the audience goes up in smoke. End of campaign.

And, if you should happen to believe in the quality of that campaign, and if it is in fact clearly full of potential, that can be so disheartening that you give up the GMs screen, and shortly thereafter, the entire hobby. Which is an overreaction. but it’s hard to be objective when you’re hurting.

So that is the default worst-case example of technique. If, no matter how poor you consider your skills in this area, you are better than this, then you have plenty of reason to hold your head (reasonably) high. And to pay close attention to articles like this one that offer the chance to improve.

1. The Monotrait Road

Technique one is to make the character all about a single personality trait. Everything is assessed in this context – his or her relationships, profession, attitudes, reactions, everything.

This is an especially useful technique when combined with the principle of the partial NPC for throwaway characters who are not going to make repeat appearances.

It does take some practice to use well, so it’s not quite as simple a solution as it initially seems.

It’s also important to note that some traits will lead the NPC to be helpful to the PCs, while others will turn the character into roadblocks. You do not want your players to be able to accuse you of always fielding NPCs that do nothing but say “No” to them, so it’s important to balance these pro- and anti- traits.

That can make plotting an adventure more challenging, too. Again, it’s not quite as simple as it seems.

2. The Linear Road

A linear approach is also based around a single character trait, but uses other character traits to carve out exceptions and circumstances within which, no compromise can be countenanced by the NPC – either weakening or reinforcing that primary trait, in other words.

It should be obvious that the results are inevitably richer and more complex than Monotrait characters, but they are not much more complicated to generate.

In fact, for my TORG campaign, I wrote an NPC generator (software) that generated characters by the hundreds (I have mentioned it in the past). Part of that program was a subroutine to generate personalities. I don’t know exactly where that personality generator is, these days; I’ve long intended, the next time I come across it, to present it here at Campaign Mastery.

But the basic process was:

1. A d% roll to determine the number of personality traits;
2. A d20 roll for the primary trait that selected one of twenty lists of personality traits;
3. A d20 roll for the primary trait that selected the trait from that list of twenty;
4. repeat steps 2 & 3 for any other traits indicated by step 1.

A few of the traits had sub-rolls associated with them, but most did not. For example, for several traits, there was a 4-in-6 chance that it was a trait of the character, but there was a 2-in-6 chance that it was something that the character looked for in others (for some reason).

And, if there was any contradiction, the order of generation was the sequence of strength of trait, first to last being high to low.

Finally, the primary generation program used a single d% value to estimate “competence” (even though that isn’t an official stat in the game system; that was used for various other determinations, like skill level in the primary professional skill of the character. But it was also used, subtracted from 100, to estimate the severity of the primary trait; is it an obsession, a preference, or something in between?

This system still left quite a lot of interpretation up to the GM, which meant that there was scope to smooth over any rough spots. I had seen similar systems in magazines, but they all lacked that scope and the variety of having 400 different traits to select from, and that showed in the results, which often felt forced and wooden. My design intentionally sought to overcome this problem.

Linear characters are an order of magnitude more complex than Monotrait characters.

3. The Rich Road

Seeking a more complicated characterization seems rather pointless, even counter-productive. That’s why the approach I have labeled “The Rich Road” doesn’t try to create more complex characters, it creates more structured and coherent characters.

I rough out a quick backstory for the NPC, then divide it into logical segments. Sometimes, these will be short but having a profound impact on the character, sometimes longer and less intense. However, even a small change can accumulate into a significant total effect if it persists long enough.

The first such period is then used to allocate the primary trait. No, make that “a” primary trait; under this technique, a character can have more than one. The second period adds a second trait; if it contradicts the first, it creates an exception or limitation to the first primary trait, if not then it creates a second primary trait, one that is second only to the first primary trait.

And so on, each phase in the life story of the NPC adding to the richness of the personality. The traits are not chosen blindly or at random; they always have some bearing on the events experienced by the character.

If the selected trait is complimentary to the second primary trait but not the first, it not only carves out an exception to the first, it elevates the second to primacy.

I then throw away that backstory – well, treat it as a first draft – and craft a new one that more strongly emphasizes the enrichment of the personality that occurred. The new trait acquired could be the result of a negative or a positive experience. But at the same time, now that I have some idea of the finished personality, I can reflect other aspects of the character that had not yet emerged from his experiences.

This also helps to refine the personality; you are describing the history of the character as perceived by that character. That’s all of that character, not just the parts that were discovered during a particular phase of the character’s life.

Even if the character’s backstory is never to be revealed to the players (because it’s irrelevant to the encounter with the NPC), this helps to make the character a cohesive and coherent whole. The backstory can then get thrown away; if I know in advance that this is what’s going to happen, I can limit the amount of effort and polish that I put into it.

In a nutshell, this process binds the personality together into an Identity that has been designed explicitly to fulfill the plot needs of the moment, but which has enough depth and coherence that it can support multiple repeat appearances. Especially if the personality is treated as a dynamic phenomenon that will evolve with in-game experiences.

This technique is suitable for PCs and recurring NPCs, and – until a couple of years ago – it was my go-to approach for such characters.

4. The Narrative Road

So, what happened a couple of years ago? Answer: I came up with a new technique, one that I have dubbed the Narrative Technique – or, using the metaphor employed in this article, the Narrative Road.

The central concept of this approach is that every word of description, every word they utter in dialogue, and (almost) everything that is written or said describing the environment around them, all tell you something more about the character. Or they should, anyway.

This concept results in a similar process of step-wise refinement as the “Rich” approach, but this time the source is not a throwaway, it’s everything that you have generated to pass on to the players.

In other words, you start with a broad characterization – Linear, or even Monotrait – and enrich it throughout the character’s planned appearance in the adventure. Then you go back to the start of that appearance and revise the narrative and dialogue to reflect the more detailed personality and to communicate it to those listening, i.e. the players.

With any subsequent appearance, you can further expand on and refine the personality until you deem it sufficiently defined. Where you stop is up to you.

But there is a complication that you should keep in mind; with this first iteration of the character, you (like the players) are absorbing the personality one piece at a time. In subsequent appearances, you won’t have that luxury. This restricts how complex you can make the character, or it should – and everyone reading this will have a different threshold.

The solution is to describe the personality, within your notes, in the same fashion, then condense it as much as possible so that there is less to read and absorb. Bear in mind, too, that when you have to do this in play, it will be extremely unlikely that you will be able to concentrate fully on it; you will be busy and distracted by everything else that a GM has to do.

Of course, there is a solution to this problem, or at least, a test to tell you whether or not you have gone too far. All you need to do is wait a couple of days and then go through your planned adventure; each time you come to a new NPC, try to remember the personality you assigned to it. Take notes, then compare them to the actual character.

The theory is that the fading of memory will simulate the distractions of being the GM. Since you wrote the personality up just a couple of days earlier, though, you should still be able to recall most of it. If you lose too much of it, if there is too much difference between the recalled version and the actual one, it tells you that the personality is too complicated; you should either simplify it or look for a touchstone.

A Touchstone?

Sometimes, there is a central concept or a key that sums up the whole personality, at least as a starting point. It could be a phrase, an image, a statement in accent, or an extremely high-level summary of the personality.

If I describe a character as “Bugs Bunny to his boss’s Elmer Fudd”, I bring to mind everything that I have ‘on tap’ regarding those characters and their relationship. I don’t mean this description literally, of course, but that one phrase is quite enough to make sense of the description that I have attached to the character write-up.

Here’s a hint, too: such a phrase is a great starting point for the personality to be generated.

A Narrative Road example, Repeated

The process has been refined somewhat in the time since, but the basics remain unchanged from when I first thought up this approach to characterization.

But I’ve used the first case of it as an example before, I find. Hence, the ‘repeated’ in the section title. This will, however, be the first time that the actual narrative from the adventure will be excerpted.

And note that the process itself was not fully formed at the time. In fact, you can see the concept forming, if you read between the lines!

From the adventure “Cold Cases”, as written

The New Orleans Historical Society was founded in 1835 as the Louisiana Historical Society. It was officially chartered by the state of Louisiana in 1836, and has been rechartered several times over the decades since. Following the devastation of hurricane Katrina in late August of 2005 the LHS set up a dedicated sub-unit to protect, preserve, and – where necessary – restore the history and historical buildings of the city. In 2015, the original charter for the NOHS expired, and the LHS sought to discontinue funding since the project had consumed all of the state organization’s funding for the last decade. Heroic efforts and last-minute political maneuverings rescued it at the 11th hour, but the next decade saw repeated skirmishes between those advocating state priorities and those focused on the city.

Eventually, in 2023, the LHS did a deal to separate the NOHS from its operations and charter it as an ‘affiliated organization’. In theory,. by separating the funding, the LHS would stop the financial drain into the state capital. What they had not factored into consideration was that New Orleans generated the bulk of the operating capital that they were used to receiving. The LHS bled most of its funding and resources into the newly-constituted New Orleans Society, ending up with even less than they had enjoyed previously. They responded by issuing an invoice to NOHS for the funding provided in the disputed decade plus interest, on the principle that it was an internal loan that had been assumed by the splinter organization on separation from the main body. That was when the divorce turned nasty.

After a couple of years and tens of thousands of dollars spent on lawyers, and with both organizations facing bankruptcy, a compromise was reached under which a percentage of the funding raised by the NOHS was paid to the LHS each year for services in providing ‘Historical Context’ to the city of New Orleans. That arrangement lasted for twelve years before a new generation of leaders in both Societies got together and began amalgamation talks – with the better resourced and much larger NOHS as the leading partner.

These days, they occupy, wholly or in part, 21 city blocks of Central New Orleans (almost one quarter of the old city center), including 6 hotels (who lease space from the NOHS), the Louisiana Supreme Court building, three museums, and 13 restaurants and cafes, and are the largest single employer in New Orleans outside the various levels of government. It has become standard practice for the NOHS to buy any properties that they wish to conserve or restore and then lease the space back to the current tenants/occupants, usually at a discounted rate. Because the NOHS is placed in a protected tax bracket by the City and State, this generally provides a small windfall for the original owners and generates the fees needed for building maintenance and restoration. And it also gives them the financial clout to negotiate bank loans for whatever they need.

Their headquarters are located in the Williams Building at 410 Cartres Street. (Map 012j1 – Williams Building relative to Knightly Building; Map 012j2 from the Hyatt to the Williams Building, small map; Map 012j3 ditto, large map also showing New Orleans City Hall; Pic 012j4, exterior of the Williams Building; Pic 012j5 inside the New Orleans Historical Society.)

Inside, you meet receptionist Gennifer-with-a-G Patriskilopopodos (Patris-kilo-popo-dos). “Mah goodness, ah youh truhlay intuhrested in Histry, Saint Buhbura?” [Reply]

* A *

“I guss it takes uhl kinds, mah dear. I shuld have known yuh would nut be he-uh fuh frivuhlus reasons. How can I help one the most recent legend to base themselves in owuh wunduful City?”
[Pause for reply]

* B *

“Mah gudness! Uv co-ahse ah wull hulp in aneh whay ah can. Yuh have come tuh the raght place, Hon-ahy!

“In 2023, thuh city was menaced by Hurricane Inguh, but thuh levee banks held, though it wuz a close thing fo-ah a while. It wuz then that thuh society realized thut today is the history of tumorrah, und that we needed to conserve whut wuz around us, raht now. We partnered with Ghugle to examine and catalog everuh building, everuh fixtuh. Und we made shoah to preserve ut least wun uv everahthing. Let muh just consult our-uh datuhbase…”

*** Pretend to type on a keyboard for ‘datuhbase’ x2

“Ah, here we are. The lighting in that part uf town wuz supplied bah Cunsoluhdated Uhlectrucal Dustributahs. They are one of the biggest suppliers of ulectrical lighting in the world, with ullmost 6000 offices world wide. For that part of town they built LED lamps that looked like old-fashuned gas lamps, with coluhed effects in thuh bulbs and a built-in flickuhring effect. Those wuh populah fuh a time in Nuh Oleans but fell out of favuh aftuh Hurricane Landauh. They wuh veruh atmospheric but not veruh practical. There is one street left with those lights – Wilkunnson Street, about two blocks from heauh (Pic 12j6). Weuh have a pictuhe heah (Pic 12j7).
[Pause for reply]

* C *

“Ah don’t think weuh quite done yet, Miss Sahnt Baburuh. Ah see heuh that one of the lights whaz damuged in a ve-hic-el accident a few yeahs back, and weuh needed to source a replacemunt as they weuh no longer being made bah Cunsoluhdated Uhlectrucal. So weuh bought full technucal schematucs from them, und sent technishuns aht to measure how thuh actual lights had changed in perfawmence ovuh tha yeahs. Give me yoah email address and ah’ll send the full info raht ovuh to you.”
[Pause for reply]

Notice anything missing? I didn’t, when I was writing the adventure and doing game prep.

There is not one word of description of this NPC. There’s a name, and there’s an occupation and a workplace, and a history of that workplace – but no descriptions.

In game prep, I had located a building (which may or may not really be located in New Orleans, and may or may not really be located at the address stated above, I don’t remember any more).

I had an image of the building, so I needed little description there – show the image and move on. I also had an image of a library with at least two levels, a spiral staircase, and a reception desk with relatively young woman seated behind the counter, again reducing the need for any descriptions. And I had various maps showing where the place was located (at least in my campaign version of New Orleans).

I had, as you can tell from the phonetic writing (which gives my spell-checker fits), equipped the young woman with an extremely thick southern accent – much broader than usual for the location. That gave her a personality head-start, as you can tell from the script, but at the last possible second I recognized my oversight and further realized, in a flash, the possibility that this NPC might recur at some future point in the campaign.

This required a far more substantial character than the very Monotrait “Helpful Southerner” I had written up.

As I described in Interaction Flows – A Planning Tool and Function With Style: 10 thoughts for NPC Creation (Blog Carnival Jan 2021) (I have used this character as an example before!), I decided that she needed to be a social activist and a Star Trek fan. The PC could also be considered a social activist, but not the type to attend protest rallies, so this gave them a point of common ground AND a point of distinction from each other. The “Trekkie” idea I borrowed from The West Wing.

From the West Wing fandom wiki, abridged

In the episode “Arctic Radar“, in Act I, Josh and Donna are walking through the West Wing when Josh tells Donna that he’s spotted a temporary employee wearing a “Star Trek” pin and he needs Donna to tell her to take it off.

In Act II, Josh comments that he [has] noticed [that] the temp employee has removed the pin – but Donna comments that she is upset about having to take it off. Josh attempts to talk to the employee, Janice (played by Audrey Wasilewski), but is rebuffed and he walks away.

The Fandom Wiki doesn’t describe the rest of this plot sequence. So I’ve had to turn to a second source, a different West Wing wiki that gives a transcript of the script.

From The West Wing Wiki:

Link to source: westwingwiki.com

I’ll pick it up in the middle of the scene described above, as Janice tells Josh that she is going to appeal his decision with her supervisor.

JANICE: “Okay, well, you got the cards but Star Trek and the entire Starfleet series is about honor and loyalty and civic duty and the fact that you don’t think that those are characteristics that should be displayed inside the White House is sad. But I wouldn’t expect you to understand those kinds of things. Anything else?”

JOSH: No.

Josh walks away from Janice.

This subplot plays no part in Act III. In Act IV, Josh is passing Janice’s desk when she comments,

JANICE: “I’m not obsessed. I’m just a fan, and I care.”

JOSH: “What’s your name again?”

JANICE: “Janice.”

JOSH: “I’m a fan. I’m a sports fan, I’m a music fan and I’m a Star Trek fan. All of them. But here’s what I don’t do. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar: “Let’s list our ten favorite episodes. Let’s list our least favorite episodes. Let’s list our favorite galaxies. Let’s make a chart to see how often our favorite galaxies appear in our favorite episodes. What Romulan would you most like to see coupled with a Cardassian and why? Let’s spend a weekend talking about Romulans falling in love with Cardassians and then let’s do it again.” That’s not being a fan. That’s having a fetish. And I don’t have a problem with that, except you can’t bring your hobbies in to work, okay?”

JANICE: “Got it.”

JOSH: “Except on Star Trek holidays.” [walks away]

JANICE: “There’s no such thing as a Star Trek holiday.”

JOSH: “Well, work hard around here. We’ll make one.”

Josh walks off, and Janice smiles.

Now, I had a problem with this episode in that the behavior Josh describes is appropriate for those who would generally be described as “Trekkies” but most fans are not obsessed in that fashion, and distance themselves from this behavior by labeling themselves “Trekkers”. This is extremely widely documented and if you have done enough research to name-drop Cardassians, you can’t help but know it.

I would have given Janice another line, something along the lines of “Those are the traits of obsessed Trekkies. I’m a trekker.“, instead of “Got it”.

Josh would then have replied “Maybe so, but this place is about Perceptions as much as reality, and we can’t have our credibility undermined by any suggestion that we are obsessed – with anything.”

Janice: “Got It” – and the rest plays out as above.

Of course, it’s always possible that all this (or something similar) was in the original script and got cut for running time – that’s very common with TV dramas.

So, back to the NPC:

I decided that she was not directly supervised in her role, and as such, could choose to wear a Star Trek pin. Perhaps she had been challenged on it in the past, but the differences between her position and that of a staffer (temporary or otherwise) in the West Wing meant that she would probably have gotten away with it – perhaps with a compromise.

I then rejigged this concept to make it a coffee mug with a Federation logo, something I had seen offered for sale multiple times. I gave her a Save The Whales pin, a rainbow pin, and one that read “It’s the Environment, Stupid” (referencing the famous political aphorism about the economy offered by Bill Clinton advisor, James Carville).

Throw in a khaki t-shirt with women’s lib symbol and blonde dreadlocks tied with a scrunchy sporting a peace symbol, and the description was complete. Oh, and note the very Greek name and the not-Greek-at-all Speech Pattern, which immediately tells a story about the character’s ancestry.

Now that I had something to deliver, I had to figure out how to deliver it. I decided to insert little descriptive blocks in between the passages of dialogue that I had scripted, feeding into the replies by the PC being roleplayed. These have been marked in the excerpt above as “* A *” etc.

If the PC then referenced or responded to one of these cues, I could improvise some additional NPC dialogue that would permit the NPC to show off a further personality facet, be it Idealism, or Activism, or Respect, or Environmental Passion, or whatever.

The player picked up on each cue, and as a result, with each exchange, a little more of the NPC’s personality could be first, created, and second, showcased – all still under the umbrella of the Helpful Southerner (unless the PC was foolish enough to push one of the NPC’s many ‘buttons’).

This is a clear example of the Narrative Road to character in that every piece of description or dialogue expanded and expounded the personality of the NPC.

A Second Example

I thought that I would round this discussion out with a second example from earlier in the same adventure, one delivered in two parts.

The first part takes place in the New Orleans Council Offices. St Barbara is the PC:

St Barbara encounters a similar lack of assistance at the Council Offices, but this comes as less of a surprise. The Knightly Building was originally supposed to be used to replace the existing council building in a move that had been planned for months, but the Crown Prince turned the entire council on its head at the last second by arbitrarily giving the building to the Champions via IMAGE*. She is met by Road Safety Commissioner Jorg Ingram (Pic 012f7), and told that the records in question were lost during the flooding caused by Hurricane Landau in 2042.
*** Roleplay ***

She is in the middle of reacting to that news when Jorg adds that “some of the information may be available through the council’s website, but finding anything in that electronic rabbit warren can be quite challenging because of the archaic systems architecture used. For example, has she seen this?

He then shows her his hand-held computer’s display which has the message “Meet me in the coffee shop across the road in fifteen minutes. Be inconspicuous.” He then continues with his apologetic total non-cooperation, “You see what I mean? It would be impossible for anyone to find that information unless they knew exactly where to look for it.”
*** Roleplay ***

After turning the spotlight to the other PCs (see last week’s post, Spotlights In Focus: Plot Structure Impacts for a short period, Part two of this encounter then took place at The Borgne Cafe, Hyatt Regency, New Orleans, after the PC had disguised herself just enough that she might plausibly be someone else, but not so much that she would not be recognized instantly if you were expecting her to be there.:

Meanwhile, St Barbara is waiting in the Borgne Cafe (Pic 012h1) of the Hyatt Regency of New Orleans for the Road Safety Commissioner to arrive. The Cafe is considered one of the best and most Romantic in the French Quarter of New Orleans, serving Creole-style seafood. It doesn’t seem to surprise the waiter when St Barbara waves away the menu and simply orders a coffee. How do you have it, St B?
[Await Response]

The coffee, when it arrives, is absolutely delicious, though slightly stronger-flavored than St Barbara was expecting, and with faint overtones of chicory and cinnamon. [Despite the interruptions] she is almost finished it and wistfully contemplating another when Jorg Ingram arrives. Seeing that the cafe is packed, and most patrons are having a meal, he asks, “Excuse me ma’am, may I share your table? Like you, I have only stopped in for a quick coffee. Then I have to get back to work. Busy, busy, busy.
*** Roleplay. ***

“Do you know, the strangest thing happened today. I received a telephone call from a very prominent local Congressman telling me that were certain publicly-available information to be released to an even more prominent local personage of the superheroic persuasion, federal funding of the levee banks that protect New Orleans during hurricane season would be reviewed – unfavorably. That’s a very serious threat, don’t you think?”
[Pause for reply]

“Well, it’s their prerogative to decide how they are going to disburse Federal Funds, I have to admit. So, unfortunately, when the same august personage that the caller had referred to actually showed up, requesting that very information, I had to tell her that it had been destroyed in the Hurricane of ’42, even though we can’t be sure of that because no attempt had been made to locate the information in question in the first place.”
[Pause for reply]

“Now, I’m a good, honest, Democrat, and I don’t take kindly to threats from Republicans that prevent me from doing my job, especially when it involves helping someone who does a lot of good in my city. But there wasn’t much that I could do about it. I couldn’t even tell her that the New Orleans Historical Society will have all the information she needs.”
[Pause for reply]

“It’s a good thing the next election’s only a few months away. Maybe that blowhard won’t make it back into office this time. Are you registered to vote? Unlike many states, we permit any permanent residents to register, so if you live around these parts, you should give it some consideration. Anyway, nice talking to you, but I have to go.”
[Pause for reply]

*** Roleplay as he collects his takeaway coffee-cup and heads for the door with a jaunty wave.***

This is a Narrative characterization that consists of two opposing Linear characterizations – one, unhelpful but with hidden limits to that uncooperative nature; and the other, helpful, but with hidden limits to that cooperative nature. He is resentful of being told what to do by a member of the opposite political persuasion, but is (effectively) blackmailed into accepting the instructions. So he obeys, but uses his wits to subvert the instructions – which in turn holds implications about the intelligence of the politician who issued those instructions.

Because of this resentment, he has shifted from a neutral stance to one that actively opposes the source of the resentment, which in turn predisposes him to be as helpful as he can be without risking either his job or the city.

All this information unfolds as a subtext to the encounter, one line of dialogue at a time, and that’s what makes this a Narrative characterization.

He clearly suspected or knew that the conversation might be overheard and was at pains to make it sound natural. The player picked up on this and started looking around for people shadowing her informant, spotted a pair of them splitting up – one to continue following him and one to follow her for a while.

This last part is NOT mentioned anywhere in the write-up, but was implied by his paranoia or circumspection; once the player had noticed and played into the possibility, it fell into the general direction to “Roleplay”.

This resulted in her capturing a tablet containing the instructions issued by the politician – circumstantial evidence that he was complicit in the historical crime that the PCs were investigation at the time. It wasn’t enough to get him booted from public office – unfortunate from the perspective of the PC – but it put the politician on their radar, and eventually they nailed him for corruption.

This example is more fully-formed than the first, but is also more limited; there is very little chance of this character recurring so long as he retains his current position. But his quick wit earmarks him as a character who is going places; and if he gets promoted / recruited into some other department or agency, who knows?

It also shows how simple the building blocks of a complex characterization can be. And that’s a very noteworthy point on which to end this discussion.

Sidebar: *** Roleplay *** vs [Pause For Reply]

It could be interpreted that the latter means that the PC(s) with whom I am interacting in this encounter are not expected to be roleplaying. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

[Pause for reply]
means that I expect the player to reply with a statement made in character.

*** Roleplay ***
means that the player can decide how the character reacts – they might go somewhere, or talk to someone else, or use a skill, or whatever. They are, of course, free to do so at any point in the dialogue, but it’s not generally expected by me that they will do so.

If there is any risk of that happening, I will put directions in the square brackets:
[Pause for reply. If {name of PC} does X, refer to paragraph Y below.]

You may also have noted [Await response] – this means that the action / dialogue will not proceed until the character responds or reacts in some way. [Pause for reply] generally (but not quite always) means that after a short pause, if the PC hasn’t said something as part of the conversation, I will move on. It may be necessary to improvise dialogue if what is ‘pre-programmed’ doesn’t match the circumstances.

For example, at one point, an NPC asks a question – “How can I help” or words to that effect, followed by the [Pause for response] cue. If the player chooses not to have the PC respond to that question, then obviously the next dialogue sequence, in which the NPC reacts to what the PC was expected to say, needs to be deferred or revised.

Oh, and note the use of stage directions in
*** Roleplay as he collects his takeaway coffee-cup and heads for the door with a jaunty wave.***
– these are clearly directing what the NPC will do unless the PCs actions make it impossible or incorrect. If the PC had put her arm through the NPC’s and said, “Tell me more,” the action is clearly inappropriate, and some sort of reaction would be called for.

Just thought I should clarify all that.

My co-GM and I have almost finished designing the next adventure in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, entitled “Lucifer Rising”. This will be the 33rd adventure in the main continuity (which doesn’t count a half-dozen of fill-in adventures along the way).

This adventure is notable for having a slightly different structure to most of them, and the differences have given me a fresh perspective on game spotlights for PCs and being the focal point of an adventure or part thereof. (I’m going to be extra-careful not to give anything important away, so our players are welcome to read this article without hesitation).

At the same time, though, the structure is clearly very similar to our usual style; this is an evolution, not a revolution. And that means that the past posts on the subject remain relevant and the starting point for this discussion:
 

• The Wandering Spotlight Part One of Two: Plot Prologues
   
• The Wandering Spotlight Part Two of Tow: Shared Stories
   
• Engagement vs Involvement: The forgotten balance
   
• Campaign Incapability: The distant side of the coin
   
• Occupying A PC’s Shadow
   
• Ensemble or Star Vehicle – Which Is Your RPG Campaign?
   

There may be others, but that group provides a solid foundation for today’s discussion, I think.

Normalities In Structure

A normal adventure is divided into Acts, in each of which there is a major change of direction and fortunes for the PCs. That’s the essential definition used by discussions of story structure like the Three-Act structure, the Four-Act structure, and so on.

Each act is divided into a number of scenes. Whenever the location in which the action is set, or a significant NPC enters or exits the plot, or there is a deliberate change in tone, that signals a new scene. An act can have anywhere from one scene to many scenes – in fact, to as many scenes as necessary.

Sometimes, a change of PC spotlight focus can also trigger a change of scene, sometimes not. You really need to adopt an adventure structure that specifically suits the particular adventure, evolving the way you structure scenes to best communicate what you need to tell the players, and to share the spotlight around as evenly and equally as possible.

It is not abnormal for one or two PCs to be more central to a plotline than others; at the campaign level, it’s also important to monitor the resulting spotlight focus to ensure that one particular PC doesn’t dominate (unless that’s by deliberate campaign design, of course; in the Dr Who campaign, the fact that there’s only one player and one PC makes disproportionate spotlighting inevitable, for example).

That usually doesn’t impact scene-to-scene spotlight focus within the adventure; it simply means that some scenes are more central to the importance of the plot, not that they are more frequent or receive more or less attention.

Abnormalities In Structure

So, “Lucifer Rising” starts, as many of our adventures do, with the four PCs in different places, doing different things, and generally, just living their lives. Unlike most such plots, many of these individual plot threads will become relevant to the main plotline.

Normally, there would only be three or four of these before everybody comes together and the adventure structure changes as a consequence. Sometimes, there are only one or two – and on at least one occasion, we pitched the PCs directly into the main plot. But this time around, there were many more than usual, at least for one PC – call them ‘A’.

And, while characters ‘B’ and ‘C’ each had their own plotlines, it seemed inevitable (for content reasons) that ‘C’ would find themselves entangled in B’s plotline repeatedly.

In terms of adventure-wide focus, this shifts – it starts with A, then shifts to the B+C combination, then returns to A, and then finally shifts to D! Everyone gets their own share of the dominant position within the plotline, and everyone will have crucial contributions to make to a successful outcome.

This led us to settle on a radically different structure to the normal, and the change is rooted in the principle of sharing the spotlight.

Abnormal Composition

To rotate the spotlight, and ensure an equitable distribution of the focus, we decided that each Act would consist of 3 or 4 scenes – an A, a D, and either a B+C or a B and a C, in terms of which PC(s) would be targeted by the spotlight.

These would not occur in the same sequence in each Act; in fact, the only rules were that whoever went last in the previous act would not go first in the next, and the same character should not feature in the same position within one act as in the one prior to it. The spotlight would shift from one act to the next.

But it wasn’t long before we started to get hung up on nomenclature, using the same term – Act – in both its traditional sense and in this revised approach and occasionally talking at cross purposes as a result. So we defined a new term, Sequence, for these ‘groups’ of scenes.

The consequences of these decisions were that the number of Sequences would be determined by the number of scenes to be experienced by the PC with the most engagement (A), and that additional content would need to be created to ‘pad out’ the sequence.

So the structure of the adventure became:
 

• Plot, divided into several Acts;
  • Each Act is divided into a number of Sequences;
    • Each Sequence is split into a group of Scenes;
      • Each Scene advances the narrative from the perspective of a single PC or a group of PCs who have coalesced in consequence of a prior Scene.

Act 1 would have the PCs following 4 individual plot threads that would eventually begin coalescing. It would end when the PCs reunited as a group, a reunion explicitly resulting from developments within individual plot threads. In fact, the natural flow of action would first unite two pairs (A and D, B and C) as an interim step. In terms of dominant contributions to the main plot, there is a natural flow – A, B, C, A.

Act 2 would follow the PCs as they crossed a wilderness after reuniting, having a number of encounters, until they reached the location of the third Act. This is all about overcoming the natural challenges of the circumstances and environment while racing the clock. For most of this act, B is dominant, followed by C. A and D are relatively minor contributors in comparison.

Act 3 delivers the PCs to a particularly challenging confrontation, and just as it looks like things are headed toward a resolution, we up the Ante by dealing the PCs a serious Reverse. D is dominant, but everyone has vital contributions to make.

Finally, Act 4 will resolve the various conflicts, and may or may not lead to an Epilog – this is what we are writing at the current time, so that decision has yet to be made. Personally, I think an Epilog is likely, but we haven’t even discussed this yet. All four PCs have essential contributions to make, but D is slightly dominant.

Ultimately, this is an adventure that starts out as an A story and morphs into a D story with vital contributions by B and C along the way.

The Rotating Focus

While it might seem that the rotating focus from one scene to another within a Sequence is random and anarchic, in reality, these are very tightly controlled. A lot of factors come into play – overt significance, emotional intensity, even player preferences – but ultimately it comes down to when do you break one scene into two?

This question obviously becomes critically important when one string of encounters is setting the pace for the whole Act, as is the case with Lucifer Rising.

Ultimately, our approach is expository; we break a scene when it’s logical to do so, when the story progresses. That sets a standard, and creates a guideline for use on those occasions when there is no natural break point, but the scene is too long to remain whole.

Complications

There is a fine degree of nuance that becomes possible. You can shift a moment of introspection from one scene to another, move a moment of revelation from the start of a scene to the end of the featured character’s previous scene (or vice-versa), and so on, purely to trim and equalize length and other parameters between scenes.

There are also knock-on effects that sometimes have to be considered, relating to the psychological impact of information.

Let’s say that the sequence of scenes at one point is A12, B12, C12, D12, B13, A13.

If a particular moment of revelation takes place at the end of A12, then B12, D12, C13, and B13 all occur after the players have heard this revelation, even if their characters don’t know of it. This can shape context and interpretation.

If that moment of revelation gets shifted to the start of A13, those scenes no longer take place in the “shadow” of the revelation. This may or may not be a good thing; the specifics will differ from one example to another. It might be that making this change may force some of these other scenes to also be amended.

The sequencing of scenes and their content is a continual juggling act where the ultimate basis of judgment is the story that you are creating and sharing. Is that story better served by shifting the moment of resolution, prolonging the mystery? Or does the revelation become an anticlimax? Does having it at the start of the scene make for a stronger connection between circumstances and a player decision about what to do next?

There are too many variables for there to be any hard-and-fast rules. But the rule of thumb is that there is a lot more flexibility than there might seem.

Balancing within a Sequence

One of the primary reasons for shifting material from one Sequence to another is to balance the spotlight focus within the Sequence. This isn’t always possible, it depends on the content of the scene, but it’s always worth trying to achieve.

The example offered above can be even more illuminating, in this context; say, for example, that scene C13 contains its own revelation that places the A12 revelation under an entirely different light. That would make it important that the A12 revelation stay where it is, even if that makes the A12 scene slightly larger or more important than the A13.

This is not as unbalanced as it might appear; the significance to the A plotline of the C13 revelation means that a small part of the significance of the C13 scene can be considered to be transferred to the next A scene, A13, and illustrates how complex these considerations can sometimes become.

Padding A Plot Thread

Another way of thinking about all this is to consider all the “A” plotlines as forming a singular plot thread, all the “B” plotlines as forming a second, and so on. The Act/Sequence/Scene structure thereby becomes a way of interweaving and interleaving those plot threads.

This perspective can be extremely useful when it comes to padding such a plot thread to make it ‘bulk’ the same amount of screen time, or close to it, as each of the other plot threads.

‘Lucifer Rising’ is fairly typical in terms of the challenge this creates for the GM. I forget exactly how many ‘A’ scenes we had in the first act, one to a sequence, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that it was 10.

We also had 3 B scenes, two C scenes, and 3 B/C scenes, a shortfall of 2. Or is it a shortfall of 4 B scenes and 5 C scenes? The latter seems more correct, because otherwise we have the question of what B is doing during the C scenes, and vice-versa.

And, finally, we had 4 D scenes, a shortfall of 6.

Filling The Gaps

All these gaps need to be plugged, and that means additional content within those plot threads. Complications, setbacks, conversations, plot twists – and anything else you can think of – have to be used to expand the scope of the plot threads into a more significant and substantial narrative, just to keep it in lockstep with the ‘A’ plot.

But it is also true that each of these additional scenes adds to the complexity of both the plot thread and the overall plotline, and represents an additional opportunity for both to get seriously messed up. And that doesn’t even address one of the biggest dangers – that of miscounting, and ending up one scene short of, or one scene over, requirements.

This happens more often than I would care to admit.

Compounding this problem is that the default assumption is that all scenes will be of a similar size – whether you measure it by the word, by the line, or by the minute – and this assumption is more often wrong than it is right.

Solutions

If you break the plot thread down into bullet points, one to a scene, you can generally avoid the worst of the latter problem – by introducing a heightened risk of the first.

It was to get around that issue that we started labeling the scenes in Act I “A1, A2, A3” and so on. The presence of a numeric index (the “1, 2, 3” part) makes it more obvious how many holes have to be filled.

Signposts

Some of the scenes are signposted, i.e. fixed in place by another scene. If, in scene A7, character A sends a message to B and C, the B / C scene(s) in which those messages are received should follow scene A7. They don’t have to be B7 and/or C7 – B8 or whatever would be perfectly acceptable – but B6 would be a problem.

The signposts define both the length of the inserted plot points and where in the adventure they have to take place. this in turn restricts the content that will ‘fit’, and that in turn means that the ‘shape’ of that content is defined by the signposts.

It’s no good inserting a three-scene complication if you only have two empty scene-slots to fill. And even if that weren’t a problem, it will often be the case that the empty slots are non-consecutive in sequence.

Sometimes you have to add an ‘A’ scene or two just to make enough space to properly pad out the B, C, and D plot threads. That’s certainly what happened in the course of plotting Lucifer Rising.

The Hand-wave

However, there are times when you can eliminate an empty slot just by hand-waving a particular scene out of existence. Three scenes will certainly fit into two slots if you can hand-wave the middle one. Or perhaps an entire set of shortfalls can be eliminated by hand-waving one of the “A” scenes.

Some scenes should never be hand-waved – any scene in which a PC has to make a decision, for example. It’s far more acceptable to hand-wave the consequences of a decision, employing alternate forms of a scene and its content that reflect the choice made – insofar as the possible options are not too many in number.

There’s often a lot of playing around before balance is achieved.

Linearity vs Granularity

There are two fundamental approaches to crafting material to fit the shape of the plot threads indicated by the signposts. The Linear approach is to break down each thread, playing around with it until you get the right number of scenes within the thread. The Granular approach is to deal with all the “3” scenes, then move on to all the “4” scenes, and so on. This is the sequence in which they will take place when the adventure is actually played.

Neither approach, we have found, is entirely satisfactory or complete; a combination is often the most useful answer. We usually break the basic plot thread down using the linear approach and then fill out the content – narrative blocks, conversations, etc – in the granular fashion. This enables tone and pacing to be matched up within a particular Sequence – which in turn helps to balance the spotlight distribution.

This can provide additional tonal information that helps to define the content of any signposted ‘gaps’, which is why the approach is more useful, while placing strong emphasis on the coherent flow of action through each thread.

It’s more useful for the content of an inserted scene to contrast with the defined content that accompanies it in a given sequence. You don’t want all the plot threads encountering setbacks at the same time; you want thread A to encounter a setback and resolve it just as thread B is encountering a setback, and so on.

Emotional Roller-coasters

It’s sometimes helpful to consider these plot threads to be emotional roller-coasters that are in simultaneous operation – you don’t want them all to peak at the same time, or none of them will stand out.

The emotional intensity of a scene is also a factor in judging the balance of spotlight distribution, and is something that hasn’t really been mentioned so far. This perspective helps take that into account.

It also produces a natural ebb and flow both within a single Sequence and across several Sequences, in which one plot thread will briefly dominate before yielding the spotlight to another.

In the long run, the spotlight focus will even out, but in the shorter term, variation can be tolerated, even welcomed, because it elevates each plot thread (and the PC who is the focus of that plot thread) in prominence, one at a time, giving each the chance to shine.

Balancing across multiple Sequences

This process of balancing with a tolerance for drift from the ideal over multiple sequences naturally balances on the larger scale to a satisfactory standard; this is because it will be clear to the players that the deviations are story-derived, and that everyone has a share of that story that is reasonable for that specific story.

Balancing within an Act – group sequences

But this technique only works when the party are separated and pursuing individual objectives and plot threads. It needs modification to serve once a group has assembled in furtherance of some common objective.

An initial balance, and a critical one, is to ensure that each character has some specific contribution to make to the achievement of those shared goals. In some stories, this alone is enough to achieve a satisfactory balance. In some cases, though, such as Lucifer Rising, this is not enough because there is no direct contribution from one or more of the PCs.

The problem character in this case is the C character; as noted earlier, the others have significant parts to play in resolving the plotline.

When this occurs, there are two additional steps that are needed – the first is to ensure spotlight balance at the campaign level (see below), and the second is to ensure that the character in question has more instances of being a supporting character within the plotline than any of the others, using quantity of contributions to overcome the deficit in primary focus.

Sometimes we have achieved this by making the character in question – and it’s not the same character on every occasion – a communications hub. Sometimes, we achieve it by making them a conduit for essential information. Sometimes we use an NPC with whom that character will particularly relate or connect. And sometimes – relatively rarely – we are able to make the character’s non-involvement a central plot point.

That last requires some further explanation, I think. If you have a character who is an expert in something – let’s assume they are an expert in the supernatural, for example – and there is an event with multiple possible explanations, once of which is supernatural in nature, then a negative finding by that expert regarding the event can state more about what the event is not than any number of positive contributions by others.

In it’s own way, then, sometimes the lack of a direct contribution to the solution is as useful to the group as a whole as any other contribution.

Wider Interactions

The same technique can also be used on a smaller scale to balance temporary shortfalls in spotlight share.

It only stands to reason that every NPC encountered should relate to one PC more than the others, just by virtue of their particular circumstances, identity, or personality; recognizing this and harnessing it gives you another tool to employ for evening out spotlight share.

This sometimes requires fine-tuning or expansion of the characterization of NPCs. Often, you can hang such interactions on the smallest of details – the character may have spent a brief time in a place that was formative for the PC, and so have come to become a supporter of the same football team as the PC, for example. Or they may share a social issue, or a political opinion, or a love of the same specific foodstuff or cuisine. Or a form of music that the NPC and the PC have in common. Or any of a dozen other pieces of trivia.

What’s that? Your players haven’t generated such trivia?

No problem. Most players won’t have any objection to your adding such color to their characters, especially if it ‘fits’ with the decisions they have already made. For example, if a PC has a preference for supporting underdogs, it should not take much research to pick a team in an appropriate sport that are perennial under-achievers, whose fans live for the day when it ‘all comes good’.

For a long time here in Australia, the AFL team of St Kilda would have fit this description – and I know that, despite knowing almost nothing about the sport. (Actually, my co-GM is a fan of the sport, so I’ve picked up a little more than ‘almost nothing’ over the last 20 years or so, but my awareness of this fact predates this heightened knowledge by decades).

Who put their hand up to state that they can’t simply look things like that up because their game is set in a fantasy world, and they don’t even know what the sports are that are played there?

What an excuse to get creative!

The most important thing to do is to be aware of which characters need a little extra spotlight for a little while and create whatever background material you need to make that happen.

When possible, you can even let the player come up with the material you need – you simply ask the question (in advance of needing the answer) without telling them why, and make notes of the answers.

For example, we once got all our PCs to decide which newspapers they read regularly so that we could insert a story relevant to the current plotline in one of them – again, making that character a conduit for information that the PCs otherwise would not have had. That specific method won’t work in a fantasy campaign, but there are others that are the equivalent.

“What Temple do you routinely visit?” – and then you have an NPC with the information that you want the PCs to have attend the same Temple even if they don’t do so regularly,, have them bump into the PC and start to gossip/chat. Let them impart three or four partial stories – one of which happens to be the relevant information.

Balancing within a Campaign

We’re always aware of who the dominant drivers of a plotline are going to be within an overall plotline. In the case of Lucifer Rising, as I explained earlier, it starts as an A plotline and morphs into a D plotline with major contributions by B and C in the middle.

The current adventure – if I were to use the same coding scheme – starts out being fairly evenly spread amongst A, B, C, and D, but becomes a strongly C-oriented plotline without much warning.

We keep adventure synopses on index cards so that we can shuffle them around as necessary. These summaries include the PCs that we expect to dominate. According to those cards, the plotline planned to follow Lucifer Rising is “The Temple Of Nitrocris” – but I think we will reshuffle them, because that is another C-focused plotline, and I think we need a “B”-focused plotline first.

Equitable balancing of the distribution of the spotlight never happens by accident, but – used properly – the need can be a spur to creativity, and can unlock a richer and more diverse continuity. These are all good attributes to have within a campaign!

Non-exclusion

I wanted to particularly emphasize, in closing, that making a plotline, or a group scene, or an encounter, or an Act, or a Sequence, dominated by a particular PC does not mean that the other PCs are excluded. This approach either gives them their own narrative thread – even if that’s a “b”-plot – or gives them a role to play in the primary plotline, even if that isn’t as central a role as the featured character.

The spotlight is a tool, a constructed perspective that assists in creating inclusiveness for all your PCs. It’s just that it’s an incredibly useful one if nuanced correctly.

Campaign Mastery has already hosted the Blog Carnival once this year, but when Scot (who runs the Carnival for us) asked me to fill an empty slot, how could I say no? Especially when I already had a list of carnival subjects to draw on?

So, this is Art-spiration. Pick a painting or drawing and get inspired by it.

It’s that simple.

You could use your chosen image as a metaphor and create a character for your game world to reflect it, or a location, or an adventure. Or you could take the image more literally. Or anything in between.

To help, I have provided 21 images below, many by some the greatest artists of history – but you don’t have to use any of them, you can use this as an excuse to go exploring somewhere like DeviantArt or Pinterest, or an appropriate reference book like the one to the left, on the Brothers Hildebrandt (not many copies left, so shop quickly if interested) — and find your own.

It’s completely up to you.

So, on with the 21 images – most of them in no particular order.
 

Galatea Of The Spheres by Salvadore Dali:

Dali painted this image of his wife as a series of spheres in a three-dimensional lattice – a literal representation of the notion that she was his world. But this image also depicts atomic theory through the prism of renaissance art, according to the artist himself – and who better to describe his source of inspiration?

According to Wikipedia, Dali wanted the painting to be displayed on an easel that had been owned by French painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Messonier, in a suite of three rooms called the Palace Of The Winds in the Dali Museum in Figueres; his wishes were fulfilled, and it remains on display there to this day, though it has at least once been transported to another location (the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia) for display for a limited time.

The name Galatea usually refers to a Sea Nymph of classical mythology who was renowned for her virtue, but other interpretations have been offered.

Dali, of course, is the most renowned member of the surrealist art movement, and many have drawn inspiration from his most famous works, especially the melting clocks of The Persistence Of Memory. He died on January 23, 1989, so his work will be under copyright restrictions until 2073. In addition to sculptures, 3-dimensional objects, designs, and sketches, he is credited with the creation of more than 1600 paintings.

I thought seriously about offering up the melting clocks, but decided that the image was so ubiquitous – it’s practically synonymous with the term “Surreal” – that people might already have wrung as much inspiration from it as they could, and so a different choice might be more useful.
 

Old Man In An Armchair (possibly a portrait of Jan Amos Comenius 1665), by Rembrandt

Rembrandt van Rijn is so famous as an artist that many people will know the name and the occupation of its famous owner without having the faintest idea of his nationality. For the record, he was Dutch, and is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Rembrandt died in 1669 at the age of 63.

Rembrandt’s works include landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes, and animal studies – but he is best known for his portraits, both of others and of himself. In fact, the latter are considered a form of autobiography, constantly reflecting his changing circumstances and moods.

It is now accepted that he produced more than 300 paintings, almost 400 etchings, and around 2000 drawings. Some have attributed more than 600 paintings to him. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that he often had his students copy his works, especially his self-portraits, as part of their education in art. Eliminating as many of these as possible has reduced the number of self-portraits accepted as being by the artist himself from about 90 to 40-odd.

This portrait, presented here in a cropped close-up form, is housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. It’s reasonable to expect that it was originally brighter and richer in detail, but it is now partially obscured by varnish that has darkened with age. There are slight differences in the attribution date for the creation of the painting, but it was either 1660 or thereabouts.

His most famous work is The Night Watch, also known as The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, and I almost chose that as my ‘inspirational offering’, but opted for an image whose subject could be from just about any era – but which is full of personality.
 

The Scream, Edvard Munch

If ever a painting needed no introduction, it’s this one – though there are several images that I have selected that probably fall within that classification! The artist, Edvard Munch, is considered one of the pioneers or forerunners of the expressionist art movement, which needs no further explanation after you’ve seen the painting.

The sensational story of its theft and recovery made headlines around the world a few years back.

The Scream has completely overshadowed every other work by the Norwegian Artist, and is one of a handful of images that have extensively infiltrated western cultural awareness (like Dali’s The Persistence Of Memory, mentioned earlier). Three cultural references stand out as evidence of the extent of this recognition: The mask in the Scream movie series was inspired by The Scream, as were (in part) the appearance of “The Silence” in Dr Who, and the emoji for ‘screaming in fear’ is a representation of the principal figure in the painting.
 

Salvator Mundi (cropped closeup) by Leonardo Da Vinci

I was tempted to use Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, which is another of those iconic images; I was not tempted at all to offer up Da Vinci’s most famous paintings, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, because they seemed too narrow in focus to be capable of sufficient breadth of interpretation.

Ultimately, I selected this image of Jesus, “Salvator Mundi” is Latin for “Savior Of The World”, because it was sufficiently closely-cropped that it became a generic face, capable of being interpreted in many different ways. In fact, the close-up suggests an entirely different emotional flavor / personality to that of the portrait as a whole.

The painting was thought to be a copy of an original for many years, which had been subjected to overpainting at some point in its history, disguising it’s legitimacy. “Overpainting” is the process of adding layers of paint to “improve” or “repair” a damaged painting. Eventually, it’s nature was discovered and it was restored, but there are still a few who question it’s provenance.

it was sold at auction by Christie’s, New York, in 2017 for US$450.3 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold. You can see the complete image at this link.
 

Dawning – the ‘Queen of the Clippers’ by Montague Dawson

Montague Dawson was a British artist famed for his maritime artworks; his most famous painting depict sailing ships, especially clipper ships and warships of the 18th and 19th centuries. He died in 1973. he is noted for the strict accuracy of the nautical details in his works.

I chose this image because I wanted to include a sailing ship under sail in the range, and this was one of the most expressive. Despite the title, to my eye, the sea itself is the star focal point of the work; the ship is the second most important, but it is dwarfed by the immensity of wind and wave. Others would disagree with this assessment.

There are two different attitudes toward ships by sailors – one is that the ship is more important than the medium through which it sails, and the other is that the medium is more important and the vessel is merely the necessary means of safe immersion within the medium. Which is to say that some sailors love the ship, and others love the sea more.

These attitudes are often reflected in the attitudes of people in sci-fi movies and novels toward space, especially deep space or interstellar space; I see no reason why they would not also apply to those who explore planar spaces and cosmology. For some, the planes would be fascinating in and of themselves, while for others, they are just places, and it’s what you can do there that is more interesting or significant.

For that matter, I can see this being replicated by merchants in a trade caravan – for some, the caravan is just a means to an end, for others it is the mercantile activity that exists only to make it possible for them to live a vagabond life that most would nevertheless consider respectable.

The dichotomy between these perspectives seems perfectly and profoundly represented by this image, and that’s what earns it a place in this collection.
 

The Grove – Monhegan by George Bellows

George Bellows was an American painter with a realist style, best known for his depictions of urban life in New York City. Monhegan is an island in the Gulf of Maine, about 12 nautical miles (22 km) off the mainland. In the mid-19th century, an Artist Colony was founded and by 1890, was well-established. Summer visitors from the New York School Of Art and Pennsylvania Academy Of The Fine Arts regularly visited and found inspiration there, including Bellows; this 1911 painting is one result.

There’s a phenomenon in art that is familiar to every painter and anyone else who appreciates the craft: what you see up close is NOT the same as what you see when you view a painting from a distance.

The splashes of color and light blend together to form a photo-realistic impression that vanishes when you get up close and can see how the painting is actually put together. This painting is a great example of this phenomenon, which didn’t really enter art until the impressionists of the 19th century. The ‘old masters’ had a far more realistic style with smooth gradations of tone and color, as shown by the closeup of the Da Vinci earlier.

The big advantages that the more modern style permits is speed, enabling the capture of an impression or the suggestion of motion, in contrast to the almost forced stillness of the older works. The qualities of light are another aspect of reality that is often better expressed through the style of the impressionists, and their successors.

This work was chosen because I thought it important that a landscape be one of the images offered, from a thumbnail of roughly the size of the smaller image; it was only when I saw the larger version that it became clear that this effect was being exhibited.

That means that in addition to its content, this image can be considered symbolic of false appearances and deception in all its guises. A serendipitous bonus that amply justifies it’s presence in this collection of inspirational works.
 

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

Friedrich was a German painter in the 19th-century Romantic Landscape movement, and is generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. According to Wikipedia, he is ‘best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures standing before night skies, morning mists, barren trees, or gothic ruins’.

All of which should be fertile sources of inspiration for fantasy GMs!

Painted around 1817 after Friedrich experienced a hike in the Saxon Switzerland, this is one of Friedrich’s most famous works; I could easily have chosen any of a half-dozen other paintings but there were two compelling reasons for selecting this one.

First, the figure and the landscape are of equal prominence in this painting, which is not always the case in Freidrich’s works; this permits greater variety of inspirations to derive from it. And second, the silhouetted figure is such that with a little imagination, this could almost be a figure in mail, be it chain or plate. The staff or walking stick by the figures side could be a scabbarded sword.
 

Wivenhoe Park, Essex by John Constable

When it comes to bucolic English landscapes, John Constable is the iconic artist. Wikipedia, in describing this painting, offers: ‘Constable’s art is always penetrated by longing, melancholy and a yearning for the simple, natural life, for a bucolic, pastoral idyll, to rural subjects and aspects of life in the countryside, a “golden age” when people lived together in harmony with nature, a world on its way of disappearing when he painted his landscapes thanks to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution’.

In terms of landscapes, there are three dominant sources of inspiration for Fantasy authors and GMs – Medieval France, Medieval England, and the forests and mountains of Medieval Germany. Quite often, these form a melange of impressions in which none of the sources are truly represented. Make no mistake, these are quite different in the fine details, but these nuances are often lost to anyone who doesn’t look closely at the historical references.

I looked for a Constable quite deliberately to offer a contrast to all of these sources, but still an image that is not inappropriate to parts of the typical fantasy environment. Farmland and herds of domesticated livestock – cows and sheep and horses – are going to be fairly ubiquitous in fantasy settings, but are often not strongly represented in the images that GMs use for inspiration (though that may be less true of English GMs who have grown up with Constable).

This painting was commissioned by the owner of Wivenhoe Park, Major General Francis Slater-Rebow, who was among the artist’s first patrons. Wivenhoe Park is 200 acres (81 ha) of parkland, purchased by the Rebow family before 1734. The seven-year-old daughter of the Major General is depicted in a donkey cart to the left. The completion of this work earned Constable enough money to marry his long-time love, Mary Bicknell. That adds an extra layer of meaning to it that can be drawn upon for inspiration, making it symbolic of the price that we’re willing to pay for love.
 

Excerpt from The School Of Athens by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino

The School of Athens is a fresco in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. It depicts a congregation of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists from Ancient Greece.

The list of famous figures (some mythological) who appear in the full fresco include Pythagoras, Socrates, Alexander The Great, Ptolemy, Plato, Aristotle, Apollo, Minerva, Diogenes of Sinope, Raphael, Zoroaster, and Frederico Il Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. Note that most of these were not contemporaries!

Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo are also featured, as Plato and Heraclitus (who few will have heard of before), respectively. The cropped version shown focuses on Plato and Aristotle.

Setting aside the combination of brown and blue, often considered a fashion faux pas in modern times, the textual difference between the red cotton robes of the Plato figure (on the left) and the silken folds of blue worn by Aristotle (on the right) immediately caught my attention; this is a level of subtlety and detail that is often overlooked by casual viewing.

Rafael (full name Rafael Sanzio da Urbino) is one of the foremost Italian painters to have ever lived, and is part of the High Renaissance. Although died very young, a mere 37 years of age, he was enormously productive during his lifetime, resulting in his leaving behind a large body of work.

I strongly desired to include an image of either the Roman Empire or the Ancient Greek that preceded it, but the art of both was relatively primitive by modern standards, and not representative of how we envisage those cultures, thanks to movies and TV (unlike their sculptures). But in searching a usable image, I found this cropped excerpt from The School Of Athens,. which neatly ticks the Imperial boxes.
 

Deutsch: Le Chemin creux by Georges Seurat

Seurat is a little more obscure than many of the artists represented so far. He was a French Post-Impressionist who developed the painting techniques known as chormoluminarism (the separation of colors into individual dots or patches that interact optically) and pointilism (using small and distinct dots of color which are applied in patterns to form an image).

I’ve previously talked about Pointilism in two articles:

• Let’s Twist Again – Eleven types of Plot Twist for RPGs pt 2, which features it in Twist Eight, and
   
• Writing to the limits of longevity, which uses it in a sidebar about half-way through the article (without ever naming the style).

 
Like newspaper photographs from last century (boy, that makes me feel old), Pointilism relies on a form of optical illusion to create what we perceive to be an image with variable tonal qualities, and I’ve always been fascinated by optical illusions of all kinds..For that matter, inkjet and laser printers work in exactly the same way!

So I knew that I definitely wanted an example of Pointilism within this list, and Seurat was the most famous exponent of that style; but his most famous works – Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte contained subjects that were too linked in time and place to Seurat’s era and to Paris.

Le Chemin creux suffers from neither of these drawbacks. It depicts a downhill track through a field that is surrounded by trees; and there seems to be some sort of building up ahead but that is so vaguely defined that it’s hard to make out; it could be a cottage or a mansion or anything in-between, a barn or a boat-house, a trading post or a timber mill. And there appear to be mountains in the distance (personally, I think it could use a touch more contrast, but that’s a purely personal opinion). This could be just about anywhere in Europe and anytime in the last 800 or more years.
 

American Gothic by Grant DeVolson Wood

Another iconic image. Wood was inspired to paint it by the house in the background, adding figures that he ‘fancied should live in [such a] house’ – a farmer standing beside his daughter (often mistakenly assumed to be his wife). The models for the painting were Wood’s real-life sister and their family dentist.

It has been widely parodied over the years, in everything from The Rocky Horror Picture Show to The Simpsons and Green Acres, not to mention Mad Magazine, Desperate Housewives, and Sponge bob Squarepants (!), amongst many others. I also seem to remember it showing up in an episode of Scooby-Doo, but could be wrong!

Painted in 1930, it was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago in the same year, now part of the ‘Friends of American Art’ Collection.
 

Boreas by John WIlliam Waterhouse

Waterhouse was an English artist noted for depicting women from both Ancient Greek Mythology and Arthurian Legend in his works. Boreas was the Greek Goddess of the North Wind, and the painting depicts a young girl being buffeted by the wind in a spring landscape.

The painting was somewhat-famously lost for 90 years before being rediscovered and put up for sale in the 1990s, achieving a record price for works by this artist at the time of US$1,294,000.

The style of clothing could be from just about any era, and anywhere in southern or central Europe. The girl could be anyone from a princess to a gypsy.
 

Sci-fi 3D characters by LosBionicos

I very much wanted to include some images of a more directly sci-fi / fantasy orientation, and this – despite the name – could be either. I’m not sure if that’s another character on the nose of the frog, or if the name is a misnomer.

While it’s clearly more photo-realistic, there is nevertheless something about this work that reminds me of Studio Ghibly – maybe it’s the smile, reminiscent of the cat-bus in My Neighbor Tortoro, I’m not sure!

But that smile could easily be seen as a more sinister one, so this character study could offer many possibilities.
 

Fyrtårn for Storebælt by Anton Melbye

The English translation of the title is “Lighthouse at Stora Balt”, and that presents a problem, because this is actually the lighthouse at Eddystone. The artist (full name Daniel Herman Anton Melbye) clearly employed artistic license in more ways than is usual!

He was a Danish artist and photographer who specialized in maritime scenes. I very much wanted a seascape to be one of the images offered in this collection, and the earlier image of the clipper ship did not quite fit the bill. This image of the Lighthouse in pounding surf and inclement weather scratched that itch.

Like most GMs, Anton strove for both realism and drama, enhancing his subjects with dramatic lighting and weather effects, especially of storms. It’s for that reason that this was the work chosen (from several candidates) for inclusion here.
 

hd-wallpaper-4291517 (trees-path-stars-galaxy-starry_sky) by Darkmoon Art

For most of the more modern images that I wanted to include, I turned to my usual clip art provider, Pixabay. This is another image that blurs the lines between fantasy and science-fiction, depicting a stone or wooden park bench in a forest beneath a tunnel through space. Since no-one is visible, it suggests that this is an incoming portal – or a permanent fixture of the location. Where might it lead, and who made it?
 

Richard Westall Landscape Art by David Mark

Okay, so the name is a little confusing – is the artist Richard Westall or David Mark or are they both the same person? If they aren’t, did David Mark have the authority to publicly post Richard Westall’s work, or is this a stolen image? — or it might all be completely innocent, one of the names being a psedonym for the other that is no longer in use, but lingers through past usage.

Who knows?

I have to give all concerned the benefit of the doubt, because I could not go past this dark and dangerous forest with busy little stream emerging from it.

While this could be a sci-fi pic, it has a far stronger fantasy flavor to it.
 

hd-wallpaper-3077928 (fantasy-beautiful-dawn-sunset-sky) by Peter Pyw

Ah, a good old flying city! And a woman in white! Unquestionably fantasy in orientation, but is the focal point the woman, the city, or the relationship between the two?

The city is tethered to the ground using chains. Or are they very distant staircases viewed side-on? And what if the city isn’t flying at all, but an illusion built into the terrain makes it look as though it is, as a defensive disguise? Maybe it’s not a city after all – just the residence of a high-level illusionist and his support staff. So many possibilities, so little time…
 

Warrior-4458063 by Mark Frost, a.k.a. BlackDog1966

A question-begging image. But in place of any lengthy exposition, I thought readers might be better served by a closeup of the right-hand-side. So:

Why is the warrior crying? What has she just had to do, or is she about to have to do that would make her so upset? I sense an epic tale coming on!
 

castle-7003230 by Enqique Meseguer, a.k.a. darksouls1

Is there any more iconic fantasy image than that of a Castle? Disney clearly didn’t think so, that’s why Sleeping Beauty’s castle is the centerpiece of their theme parks! This one is a little unusual, in fantasy terms, in having square towers; although those happened in real history, they are not so common in fantasy art

Square towers are easier to build, but comparatively weak unless an enemy is foolish enough to attack one of the corners, at least compared to round towers, where bricks are arranged in layers of rings; strike the latter, and all he other bricks in the ring try to hold the one struck in place, whereas if you strike the flat surface of the square tower, virtually the whole force goes through the immediate surface.

To compensate for this, square towers can have walls that are up to three times as thick as those of a round tower. But that either severely restricts the space inside the tower, or forces that strength and resilience to be compromised.

The design thus tells you something about the people who designed and built the castle. And that makes them inspiring.
 

Robot Woman 3010309 by 0fjd125gk87.

The penultimate image in this set, this robotic woman is supposedly crying – but I’ve never seen tears travel in discrete droplets like that. One tear, yes – several, no. So perhaps they aren’t tears at all – they could be tattoos, or assembly screws. Not that they are going to be very visible at the scale I am restricted to.

So, let’s confound that restriction and again look at a closeup:

 

The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

The Starry Night (often abbreviated to just ‘Starry Night’) was painted in June 1889 by the Dutch painter, Van Gogh, and depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village.

I’ve left this image until last because it’s the one that inspired me to offer up an example of the sort of creativity that this whole collection is in furtherance of.

Specifically,. I was think of this painting and how it uses streaks of color in the same way that pointilism uses dots, and trying to imagine what it would look like if the starts really looked like this image. And then I thought –

What if the streaks were actually Elementals streaking through the sky? What would you call it? Planet of the Elementals has a nice ring to it….
 

So, 21 sources of inspiration, and these (of course) merely scratch the surface. So pick an image that inspires you, and make something of it :)

Don’t forget to drop me a line here in the comments section so that I know to include you in the end-of-month round-up – sometimes backlinks work, sometimes they don’t.

And most importantly of all, have fun!
 

BONUS CONTENT:

My original notes on this topic included a few examples of a slightly different take on the challenge. While not strictly applicable to the blog carnival challenge as described above, I thought they might still be of value to readers, so I’m including them here as an extra bonus.

• eg: Pointilism = hyperspace shock – everything breaks apart into tiny clusters of color, good for general impressions and viewing at a distance, useless at reading things like, oh, instruments and targetting sensors and warning displays…
   
• eg: Cubism = the way everything looks when you force yourself to occupy the “fourth dimension”.
   
• eg: Munch’s The Scream – a woman (or a man?) afflicted with brain-eating worms crosses a bridge, screaming in agony, only to collapse at the feet of the party Cleric – who discovers (to his horror) that these creations of [insert name of favorite evil demon or devil here] cannot be cured with clerical magic, being purely infernal in nature. So begins a quest that the Temples cannot put off any longer, to eradicate the [Demonic/Devilish] curse once and for all…
   
• eg: Sea storm-scene – a sea voyage, complete with pirates, storms, giant calamari, rum, and buried treasure! And, just for fun, let’s make the giant sea-life in question naturally armored…
   
• Bonus points for merging something utterly modern like Warhol’s soup cans with D&D! Maybe a wall display containing hundreds of empty vials arranged in precise lines with exacting spacing, labeled “Healing Potions I Have Known’?

  No? Then let’s see what you can come up with!

With the conclusion of the Zener Gate campaign, I’ve been thinking about what comes next. In fact, it’s fair to say that it’s been somewhere on my mind for most of 2022, if not always front-and-center.

About six months ago, I decided that I would resurrect the Warcry campaign, even though it would need some revision because one of the players passed away – the event that actually led to the campaign being put on hold, six or seven years ago.

This will be something of a reboot, and I was all set to spend this post describing the processes and thinking that I was using to carry out this reboot; but as I set (digital) pen to paper, another thought began crowding it out – both insistently and repeatedly. After three unsuccessful attempts to get my thoughts back on track, I have yielded to the demands of my subconscious, which obviously thinks that I’m onto something.

To Every Character, a blind spot

Every character has limits to their breadth of experience, at least when they first enter play. There are parts of a complete society that would simply never have been experienced by that character, by virtue of who they are.

Example 1: Fur-person

Take, for example, a character who is naturally covered in fur, and whose people do not naturally wear clothing. This character would almost certainly be utterly unaware of fashion, and of the way clothing is used to signal particular social activities or functions – wedding dresses, a judge’s robes (and wig, in some locations), and the like.

Example 2: Mer-man / -maid

A not dissimilar range of options comes to mind for a mer-person. But there is something that would be unique to such a character – sound behaves so much differently under water than it does in air that ‘music’ would be perceived entirely differently, and they would be completely ignorant of the many things that particular music or musical styles can represent in our society. Indeed, much of what we call music would be unrecognizable and completely without appeal to such a character.

Who amongst us would fail to recognize a wedding march immediately? Or a woman in white dress with a long train and a veil of lace?

Example 3: Synthetic person

This is a more difficult character to work with because the specifics of time period of origins would make a huge difference. In anything reasonably modern, the internet would provide a rich but shallow source of information; in many cases, the specifics of any social interaction would be revealed readily with little or no explanation of why we do things a certain way, and where that why was also available, context and symbolic meaning would be missing.

When someone holds out their hand, it might be recognized as a gesture of greeting, but such a character would not immediately know that the hands are supposed to be clasped in a particular way and then moved up and down once or twice. They are just as likely to put forth their own hand and simply move it up and down – a literal interpretation of the term “hand shake”.

Example 4: A D&D Cleric

It can be assumed that a child who became a Cleric was given religious instruction from an early age, and that this crowded out other subjects of study as the years progressed. Most people would not have received any formal education at all, instead learning a skill through experience with a master, such as blacksmithing.

They would thus have traded expertise in one area (religion / theology / religious ceremonies and practices / prayers) for expertise in many others. They might have some limited exposure to some things outside of this frame, but would be especially limited in knowledge of anything that wasn’t traditionally explained to younger children, such as the realities of war, and romance.

Overcoming the blind spot

I’ve known relatively few players who would not accept such blind spots as a logical part of such a character. But I have also known many players who would see them as a flaw or weakness within the character, and therefore something that should be overcome as quickly as completely as possible.

There have even been a few who made a point of setting the wheels in motion for such self-improvement in one game session and who then tried to argue that the deficiency was gone in the next.

It’s not that simple, or shouldn’t be. Superficial rote learning of the most common human practices might be possible in a relatively short space of time, but the all-important social context, the unwritten assumptions and associations within society in that particular subject, and how they interconnect, would take a lot longer.

As they described it in Star Trek, The Next Generation (and I am paraphrasing), there is a world of difference between memorizing the rules of poker and hand probabilities and the actual experience of playing the game, with the inherent personality interactions that are included – bluffing, learning how to read an opponent, strategies built around deliberate deceptions and detecting same – none of that would come out of such a rulebook. Then throw in all the unwritten rules, traditions, and expressions of table etiquette that can only be learned by experiencing them in a group that already knows them.

Ultimately, these players are missing a bet; these blind spots are not character flaws to be rectified as quickly as possible, they are tools for characterization that should be exploited.

A piece-meal approach

Instead of a single act of rectification, overcoming a blind spot should consist of dozens of actions and misinterpretations and outright social faux pas.

It’s reasonable to assume that upon being confronted with a particular manifestation of a blind spot, a character would seek to rectify that specific ignorance – probably starting with a conversation between PCs. Depending on the depth of understanding that ensues, that specific ignorance might thereafter be disregarded or downplayed.

Over time, the character’s ignorance of the subject in question would reduce, but there would still be the occasional manifestation of the blind spot.

A planned approach

An even better approach would be for the player to provide a list of the ways the blind spot might impact the character, a series of plot seeds for subplots involving their character. The sequence in which these appeared would be up to the GM, and even whether or not some of them appeared, so that he can tailor their inclusion to fit the adventure at hand.

This entire approach can be taken one step further and presented as a series of episodes that, in combination, tell the story of how the character overcomes his blind spot. By making these extremely episodic and relatively brief, they can be dropped into any plot where there’s room.

Of course, the GM is then free to take these general plot ideas and twist them mercilessly (so long as the point of the plot seed is not sacrificed in the process), so the player is no less in the dark than he would have been, and still has to roleplay any encounter or situation that arises, just as he would if he had not provided the GM with plot material to feature his character.

Nor does this exclude the GM coming up with his own mini-plots to explore other, completely unrelated, aspects of the character and/or his backstory. The planned approach to a blind spot is just one source of plot material for the GM to exploit amongst many.

Personal Story Arcs

The wise GM will take this philosophy one step further, and take the time to discuss the character with the player (before he enters play, if possible), and where the player sees the character heading over time, what he wants the character to have an opportunity to do, and so on.

In every campaign that I run, with the exception of those in which it is not necessary (like Zener Gate) or that are deliberately self-contained (like my Dr Who campaigns), I adopt this approach. In the Zenith-3 and Adventurer’s Club campaigns in particular, I’m at pains to detail where characters are and what they are doing when a new adventure begins, essentially roleplaying the character’s personal lives until the main plot thrusts itself upon them – and those plots frequently start as one PCs personal plotline and mushroom to involve the other PCs.

These are plot arcs or personal story arcs, and long-time readers will know that I have been championing the concept for a great many years, now. The concept of character blind spots as plot-fodder is just another variation on the general concept. But it’s a good one.

A relatively shortish article once again, because I still don’t have internet function. But every passing day brings the hour of reconnection – whenever it comes – another hour closer.

UPDATE October 27:

My internet connection has finally been restored, just in time to publish this article! Now, to get caught up on everything!

This weekend was the big finish to the Zener Gate campaign (exactly on schedule). Guest starring the Governator and James Cameron and the Mythbusters duo, it involved the PCs trying to convince Xi Jinping that the Chinese temporal agency was attempting to replace him with a perfect duplicate in order to abort the program – before it sent certain anonymous communiques to James Comey that gave Donald Trump just enough of a wedge against Hilary Clinton that the 2016 Elections turned out very differently – all while they were becoming ghosts because a later action by that same organization had successfully assassinated the PCs long before they had even been recruited by the Zener Gate program!

For obvious reasons, then, time travel and altered history adventures have been on my mind for the last month or so, and so I thought that I would write about them today. If you’re not into that type of adventure, if it doesn’t fit your campaign, don’t fret; there are some general lessons that can be drawn from the topic that will apply outside of this context.

If all goes according to plan, this post will also be accompanied by a review of a Kickstarter or two that might appeal, but that’s looking extremely doubtful at the moment.

Sometime in the early hours of Saturday morning, someone physically tore my internet and telephone connection out of the ground.

The earliest that the connection can be restored is Monday Afternoon – and I’m not sure that this will leave me enough time to prep that additional content for inclusion.

In fact, if there’s any headache with the restoration process, I won’t even be able to post this article on schedule, but that’s a less likely outcome. I hope.

If this gets published on the 17th or 18th of October, all is well; if not, expect to see an update on the situation, and its impact over the next couple of weeks, at the end of the post!

1. Fundamental Premise

The basic premise at the heart of most time travel / alternate history plotlines is that someone has changed history; the PCs discover this and have to change it back or otherwise prevent the Villains from changing it in the first place.

1a. Variations

A number of variations are possible on this theme.

• Reversing the assumed temporal arrow can be fun. This means that someone from the past has traveled into the future from the PCs’ time to stage some sort of intervention which will impact the far future (relatively speaking). The PCs get wind of this and have to prevent it.
• Setting your alternate history on an alien world can be a useful variation to have up your sleeve. All you then need to do is get the PCs to intersect it on their travels. Of course, having such a parallel world arise accidentally is beyond improbable – there needs to be a very well-informed operation in back of this creation, and their motivations have to be bulletproof. It’s a lot of trouble to go to just to fake out the PCs or play head games….
• Alternate timelines are a relatively safe answer – you just need a way to get the PCs there (perhaps against their wills) and some challenge to be overcome before they are able to return. See the Star Trek episode “Mirror Mirror” and a number of sequels in Deep Space 9.

2. The Implications

The PCs need to have some means of recognizing that history has changed, and some way of tracking the change to its “source event”. That usually means that they have some sort of immunity or protection from being affected by the change.

I cannot stress enough how important this is to get right; the credibility of the whole adventure rests on it.

But there are a number of variations possible, which I’ll look at in section 5.

3. The Mechanism

I think that the place to start is always with the mechanism that is used by the Villain(s) to cause the change in history. How were they able to alter the past?

The answer – and there are many possible contenders – will define the Immunity mechanism.

4. Granting Immunity

In some campaigns, immunity to such things comes with the territory, either as a general principle (“Temporal Shielding”) or as some sort of protection against the mechanism in general (“We’re shielded against external Magic”).

When neither of these is the case, the “Protection” has to derive from some accidental circumstance that is unique to the PCs at the key moment. Have them blasted out of their natural space-time or something.

As a general rule, deciding on the mechanism tells you everything you need to know about how ‘immunity” is to be granted.

Depending on the circumstances and the mechanism chosen, you may need to have your temporal theory nailed down, hard. For example:

A temporal change results in some object traveling interstellar distances changing it’s destination or vector. As the change propagates forward down the timeline, it is instantaneously somewhere else from where it was at the moment the Change intersects it. Anyone with ‘immunity’ from the change on board will perceive this change in location occurring faster than the speed of light.

Unless the speed of light limit still applies, in which case the wave of change will propagate more slowly as it expands from the Event that has changed history,

I’m not going to go into huge amounts of detail on this aspect of the situation; this article is all about the creation of a time travel / altered history plotline. If you want more information on this sort of thing, see my earlier series on the “Physics” of Time travel, Time Travel in RPGs.

5. Immunity Variations

There are a few variations that are worth considering when it comes to immunity. Which one, if any, apply to this specific situation will depend on the intersection between Temporal Mechanics and the mechanism by which history has been changed.

5a. Temporary Immunity

Having some sort of a deadline before the “immunity” runs out can be lots of fun. This is particularly likely in situations in which some external force is furnishing the protection. It creates a deadline after which the PCs will be irrevocably reintegrated with the changed timeline.

5b. Restricted Immunity

It can be a lot harder to arrange for ALL the PCs to have “Protection”. Having a situation in which only ONE PC is protected and who has to convince his Integrated companions from the altered timeline to act can also be fun. This basically involves determining how the unprotected PCs will have changed because of the Temporal Intervention (either directly or indirectly) and letting those players use a “variation” of their usual characters.

This can involve a lot more prep work, so it’s not a perfect solution. And you need players who are capable of handling such curve-balls with some level of aplomb. In fiction, it’s much easier.

5c. Without Immunity

I’ve only seen this worked a few times. The PCs discover that the world that they are used to is the result of Temporal Meddling, and their own personal histories as they know them are also affected. They HAVE no immunity – but they have the opportunity to bootstrap themselves and their world back to the way things were supposed to be.

Ironically, under this scenario, those causing such changes to history may be naturally protected from them, depending on how you are working the temporal physics. So this can be a great way to reboot a campaign or start a new one, and obviates the usual campaign briefing!

6. Assigning A Target

The mechanism and the motivation of the Villain will identify the Target Event that is to be altered. It’s a lot more work to try and rationalize these things after the fact; it’s far better to have at least a general outline of how things changed and what the resulting dominoes were.

One of my favorite things to do is to have Changes as a result of a Temporal Intervention be largely and wildly unpredictable, no matter how obvious the outcomes might have appeared when planning the change. There will almost always be some factor that can’t be taken into account that will… complicate… the flow of events.

Any decision that was “inspired” or “made on a whim” is particularly vulnerable to such chaos. Knocking over a domino might lead to the change in history desired, but with unexpected repercussions; or those repercussions might completely undermine the desired change.

Having the villain show up on the PCs doorstep to announce “I did something, it only made things worse, I need your help to undo my mistake” is a different way of propelling the PCs into such an adventure!

7. Assigning An Enemy

If you know the Motivation, you have at least an inkling as to who’s responsible. Again, it’s a lot easier to work from the Desired change in history to a motivation to a villain identity than it is to work things in the other direction, even though the logic as presented to the PCs will almost certainly run “Villain to motivation to desired change”.

8. Discovery

How are the PCs who have immunity going to recognize that history has changed? How will the change manifest itself? What is the plot hook, and how can one or more PCs be persuaded to swallow it whole?

A lot of GMs (and some writers) give only superficial attention to this, and it shows. It’s not completely accurate, but I advise acting as though the credibility of the whole adventure is resting on this. It needs to be compelling and believable and completely seamlessly integrated into the normal course of events, nothing out of the ordinary at all.

If the conferring of “Immunity” is not the start of the adventure, this is.

9. Detective Work

How are the protected characters going to back-trace the falling dominoes to discover the instant of change? Again, plausibility needs to be absolute, but you also need to make both the process and the results interesting, even though not everyone is necessarily going to participate – and that can be challenging at the best of times..

10. Motivating Counter-intervention

One of the worst problems that a GM can encounter when running such an adventure is the PC or PCs who respond “I like the way things have changed, let’s leave them this way”. That is the source of the advice offered in section 6, which I now reiterate – no matter how appealing and stable the changes to history may appear to be, they should always rapidly spin out of control.

These negative impacts don’t have to be large and overt; they can be relatively small and targeted. Think of the wishes granted by a Monkey’s Paw; you may return a beloved child or spouse to life, at the cost of the lives of one or more parents and a criminal conviction of the character leading to a divorce and the loss of custody. Just because the child / spouse is still alive in this revised history does not mean that the character can be part of the life of the Intervener, and vice-versa.

No matter how positive the change might appear to be, superficially, there should always be some severely negative aspects to it, which will act to motivate the PCs to oppose the intervention that has changed history. It might be that the resulting world is a happy one for the Villain who has changed history, because he doesn’t care that the rest of the world has gone to hell in a hand-basket so long as all is rosy in his little bubble.

Some GMs may feel that this proposed “rule” should not apply when it’s a PC who is changing history (and there can be a case made in this respect when that’s the whole point of the campaign); but except in such cases, the GM should think long and hard before giving players that much control over the campaign world.

11. Counter-intervention

The second-worst thing that can happen is for the players to say the equivalent of “it’s too big / too complicated, I don’t know what to do”. While the specifics of a counter-intervention may not be obvious, the general strokes of ‘What Needs To Be Done’ should always be clear to even superficial analysis of the situation.

If more information or specificity is needed before such counter-intervention can be properly targeted, where the PC(s) have to go, and what they have to do, in order to gain the required intelligence should be as clear as possible to the players.

This is more challenging to the GM than it might seem, because there is very little to challenge the players in a genuinely follow-your-nose path to a solution; it gets very old, very fast.

What’s more, most solutions of this type are extremely short on character interactions – where’s the opportunity to roleplay? In fact, this can be a problem with this type of adventure in general!

The best resolution to such a problem is for the GM to be proactive in incorporating opportunities for roleplay into their adventure design in the first instance.

The last time this type of adventure came up in the Zenith-3 campaign, for example, the agency for counter-action had the PCs taking the place of their alternate-world selves who fully integrated into the divergent timeline (and horrible people, to boot). They needed< the resources available to these alternate-world versions of themselves in order to solve the problem and set history back on its rightful course, and that meant interacting with various subordinates and superiors. And, in concluding this section, let me again reiterate - while the ultimate solution might not be apparent in all it's specifics, a general description should always be possible, and the next step towards such specifics should always be patently clear.

12. Counter-Intervention Variations

There are four variations on the basic counter-intervention model, and the GM should employ them to create variety in the adventure.

12a. Target Yesterday

This is the default – the PCs ‘go to’ the scene of the historical changes and undo them. While this is the most obvious approach, it’s also easily mishandled; perhaps the most common failure is insufficient prep. The environment and population of the world around the change in history needs to be sufficiently detailed that the GM can adopt the roles of the various NPCs in a completely convincing manner.

All too often – and I’ve been guilty of this myself – the GM will have the attitude of knowing ‘generally’ who these NPCs are, and confident of being able to improv whatever is needed; but there are many more moving parts to this type of adventure than is usually the case. The result is that such efforts are almost always inadequate. Even a single line of description – names and personas – is better than nothing.

The flaw in the ‘Target Yesterday’ Basic model

The problem is that the GM is fully aware that all such prep is disposable, intended to be thrown away at the end of the adventure, and so there is a constant temptation to do the absolute minimum. At the same time, this type of adventure is essentially the creation of a new campaign world, however temporary, and so the prep demands are far higher than is normally the case; these two facts are clearly at odds with each other.

Solving the flaw

The best solution is to find a way to recycle or perpetuate the value of the prep into the future. For example, just as the PCs are “protected” from the change, so some of their enemies who have been overcome or bypassed in order to counter the Temporal Incursion might also be “protected” and seeking to revert the corrected timeline; they carry the adventure prep with them as character background.

This also achieves another important outcome: all too often, this sort of adventure ends in the entire premise being overcome, history being restored or whatever. Aside from the PCs memories – and possibly not even there – no lingering impacts remain at the end; whatever caused the adventure to occur in the first place has been undone and nothing remains. To all intents and purposes, the adventure might as well not have happened.

Taking what would be a disposable adventure and giving it some long-term impact within the campaign, however limited or subtle, makes the adventure itself important. This is also an opportunity to correct anything that isn’t quite right in the campaign background, revise anything that didn’t quite work the way you intended it to; subtle changes to characters and character backgrounds are only reasonable as a consequence of an imperfect solution to the problem posed to the PCs and actually enhance the plausibility of the adventure and campaign.

12b. Target Tomorrow

One variation is to target the ’embarkation point’ of whoever changed history – stop them from doing so by targeting the enemy’s circumstances before they even commit the deed.

It’s implicit in time-changing adventures that there be some connection from the consequences of the ‘true’ history to the changes made in the past. This variation subverts that association to create a different adventure.

You can further distance the adventure from the predictable cookie-cutter form by having the intervention that is to be undone occur sometime in the PCs futures, too. This makes the entire adventure an embodiment of a “Plan B” (see section 15, below), as though the PCs that were contemporary or post-contemporary to the change in history have already tried to reverse the changes to history and failed. These versions of the PCs, of course, have no memory of that, because it lies in a future that will never come into existence – if they are successful!

Yet another variation is in someone from the PCs “now” wreaking recurring havoc in a peaceful future, a future that reaches out to the PCs to act as counter-agents to the future-villain.

12c. Target Interception

Perhaps the most difficult variation to implement is the one in which the counter-intervention targets neither end of the loop in time (embarkation point or arrival point), but instead seeks to intervene somewhere in between the two.

The reason is that it can be exceptionally hard to target a time-traveler “in transit” in any plausible way. But this changes the environment in which the adventure takes place, and that in turn makes the adventure all aboutthe most interesting way to introduce such an expanded cosmology, by making it immediately relevant and demonstrating that relevance.

12d. Domino Theory

A variation on a variation? Why not?

A previous attempt at a time-travel campaign that I ran, some years back (using an early version of the Sixes System, as it happens) had as a dictum that once an Intervention was made, it could never be undone; all you could do was introduce some new timeline that corrected the effect of the changed history. For example, the Enemies might have prevented the death of a key figure in a car accident by diverting the vehicle that was supposed to cause the accident; the solution might be to cut the brake lines of the car being driven by the Key Figure Who Is Supposed To Die so that even without the other vehicle, the NPC still dies in a car accident.

That campaign concept was predicated on this variation being the only valid one. It also meant that once you detected a change to history, that change was permanent, that domino was always going to fall; you could never prevent it from happening, so that event was always there to be detected. So every adventure had a lingering effect on campaign continuity, including those by NPC groups!

This is, of course, a variation on the proposal offered up in 12c. It involves very different temporal mechanics, arguably more plausible ones but definitely more complicated. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing – they are going to be more original and less cookie-cutter, but they will be harder for players to wrap their heads around at the same time.

Domino Theory Advice

If time-travel is to be a central or frequently-recurring part of the campaign, it can bear such detailed scrutiny and still be relevant; if not, then a more accessible alternative might be a better option, under the circumstances.

Whatever you decide in this respect can have extremely durable consequences for the campaign, so don’t make this choice frivolously or capriciously. Make sure that you understand and can accept the consequences, implications, and ramifications of whatever you choose.

13. Logical Timelines

It’s very easy to tie yourself up in time-travel knots. These bind you implicitly and seem absolutely secure – until they come unraveled at the worst possible moment. I avoid this problem by implicitly tracking the logical timelines from the point of view of all the different participating characters of this sort of adventure.

(Truth be told, I recommend doing this anyway, even if it’s not for a time-travel / alternate history adventure).

Everything that a character does, or is supposed to do (in the course of an adventure) should make complete sense from their perspective, knowing what they know at the time.

In an ordinary adventure, this is relatively straightforward, simply a matter of bearing in mind what different characters know and presume at the point of any decision being made (but sometimes it can get overlooked, anyway).

In a time travel / alternate history adventure, in which effects can and do precede causes (from some points of view), it becomes absolutely critical.

My Process

As you outline the course of events within the adventure, you will be writing that adventure / plotline from the perspective of the PCs and their players. This is the simplest and most elegant solution to the plotting problems of such an adventure, or so many people seem to think.

The ‘knots’ come into existence when this leads you to have an NPC – be it the Enemy, or whoever is providing the PCs with “Protection” from historical changes, or past versions of the PCs that never actually appear in-game, or whoever – are required to act on knowledge that they do not have at the time.

I prefer to plot the ‘Intervention’ from the point of view of the NPC committing the act of intervention, then any external source of information who is recruiting the PCs to stage a counter-intervention (if any) from the point of view of that source, and then actually writing the adventure and the proposed resolution to the events from the perspective of the PCs. And then it’s back to the NPC actor’s perspective for any reactions or responses to what the PCs are expected to (possibly) do – just to keep all the continuities straight.

14. Outcomes – Success, Failure, and points in between

The GM creating this sort of plotline should always have a clear idea of what the next step for the PCs is supposed to be, all the way through to a resolution of the adventure – and should strive to make that ‘next step’ abundantly obvious, even if multiple alternatives are to be presented or possible, and this should continue all the way through to the possible outcomes of the adventure.

In general, these outcomes come in three basic flavors.

14a. Success

What does success look like, and what are its ramifications? What’s the ideal outcome and what compromises may need to be made in order to succeed in dealing with the adventure?

As indicated earlier, it’s all too easy to have the resolution be ‘it never happened’, but that throws away a lot of prep work, which in turn discourages the GM from doing that prep to an adequate standard. That’s “sub-optimal” to use some Neo-militaristic jargon. And it’s never ,em>really the case, anyway; even in such an outcome, the players are forever-after aware that a “Time War” can happen.

Even if the effort itself is automatically condemned to failure by the Temporal Mechanics of the campaign, you can’t assume that every NPC will always know and respect this reality; there will always be those who think they have a loophole, or can create one, or who are simply ignorant or overconfident.

Time travel always opens up a can of worms – if you are prepared for that and willing to accept it, that’s fine. But don’t delude yourself into thinking that the PCs can be ‘walled off’ from the expanded reality around them – they can’t. Use it once, and Time Travel will always be a part of the game universe.

14b. Failure

Equally, you need to know what failure looks like, and be prepared to live with the consequences. I’ll speak further to this point in section 15, below, but the bottom line remains.

If you aren’t prepared to accept the consequences of failure on the part of the PCs who are attempting to correct the course of history, then you are setting yourself up for one (or both) of two possible problems:

• 1. Plot railroading, in which you manipulate events to orchestrate the outcome that is most desirable from a campaign perspective; and/or
• 2. Making the PCs fifth wheels to a dues-ex-machina that solves the problem for them.

Neither of these is an acceptable resolution, so it follows that you need to have a third option prepped and ready to go – just in case.

14c. Mixed Results

But my favorite choice is to avoid either of these extremes. The PCs may be 99% successful, but there remains just a little divergence from established history. Or they may be 99% unsuccessful, but with room left for hope.

Not only does this feel more realistic, but it means that the adventure will have lingering consequences. They may not manifest often, and certainly may not rub the player’s noses in the outcome, but they will still be there every now and then.

This creates an opportunity to rejig any campaign elements that have grown stale, to wallpaper over any continuity cracks and plot holes, and – in general – to revise anything that is either not working or has come to the end of it’s useful life within the campaign.

In fact, that can often be the whole point of running such an adventure – for its’ metagame repercussions.

Of course, this is not a card that can be played frequently or even regularly. That’s part of the challenge of a campaign that’s explicitly about time-travel. Once a year may be too often, even if you are playing almost every week.

15. Have a Plan ‘B’

Granting the possibility that the PCs will fail – making room within the adventure for that to happen – generally implies the existence of a ‘Plan B’, a way for the PCs to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (perhaps after a taste of the defeat).

If you permit a deus-ex-machina to provide the PCs with a second chance, this is easy to do. But that’s bad writing in the literary world, and not much better in the RPG sphere.

Plan B’s don’t happen by accident. They need to be carefully constructed and implicitly placed within the continuity of events while being completely hidden from player awareness until needed.

That usually means that they need to be subtle, and sophisticated, and very carefully prepared.

Sidebar: An example

One of my favorite plots of this type deliberately made it almost impossible for the players to succeed in stopping the Event – but included, as an inobvious inevitability, the seeds of the Villain’s defeat at the hands of parallel-world versions of the PCs. The flaw in the villain’s plans was a small one, essentially unnoticeable until it became a crashing reality to first the players and then the PCs – by undoing an unwanted victory on the part of the PCs, he also undid a subsequent victory that was required in order for him to have time-travel capabilities in the first place.

History, in that game universe, abhors a paradox; the consequence was that his intervention would be undone so that he could gain the ability to intervene again, with history oscillating back-and-forth repeatedly until some extremely low-probability coincidence arose by random chance to give the PCs one final shot at stabilizing the situation.

The actual adventure proceeded from that low-probability event; the PCs affected (and their players) were completely unaware of the failed attempt to intervene. It was only when they found a way to send information from one temporal ‘loop’ into the next that they could start to make progress, bootstrapping themselves out of the paradox – but with consequences, to wit a Dalek invasion of Korea – or maybe it was Thailand, I’m not sure anymore.

The key point is that this enabled the PCs to try various things that would fail, but to learn from those mistakes until they finally found a solution that “ticked all the boxes”.

Those with a lot of sci-fi in their personal backgrounds might recognize this as the basic premise of a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” plotline, but I also threw in some ideas from the original Terminator trilogy and some bits from Doctor Who, to make the whole thing more original.

16. Reflecting A Changed Reality

Something that I’ve only done twice, but that worked quite well both times, is to reflect the changed reality by using a completely different game system. On the first of these occasions, I went so far as to parachute in a ‘guest GM’ (while sticking around to act as a continuity advisor).

Picture the scene: I run the adventure up to the point where the character (who was ‘protected’ from the change by subsequent events) becomes aware of reality running like water around him. I then rise from my seat and the guest GM (who has been lurking somewhere nearby unobtrusively) sits down and hands the player a version of his PC that has been ‘translated’ into a completely different game system, while I pull up a chair to one side. Without explanation, the new GM then starts describing what the PC sees around him…

That’s A Wrap

Having reached the end of the article, I now have an update. The Broadband technician has come, and gone, and made arrangements for a proper repair to my telephone and internet – but it will still be two or three days before it’s working again. The intent at the moment is therefore to post this on Thursday – either using my own (restored) connection, or by means of an internet cafe. Either way, I won’t get to look at those Kickstarters that I mentioned at the head of this post – they will have to wait until next week.

I guess I’m fortunate in that I didn’t need to do a lot of research for this article, that I could pretty much just type (having already drafted the sequence of sections). Hopefully, the seams (and the interruptions) don’t show too badly.

It should be observed that this was going to be the subject of choice, anyway. It’s just a useful coincidence that it was on the agenda when circumstances permitted no other option!

UPDATE October 20:

So, still no internet connection (or telephone) and the latest word is that it will be restored ‘on or before’ November 7th. I’l do my best to post regularly, but all schedules are shot to hell and no commitments are certain. That includes promised Kickstarter reviews (apologies to the creators and publishers affected), and means that interaction between myself and the November 2022 Blog Carnival will be disrupted, at least at first (I should still have enough time to prep and publish an anchor post, though it might not have the depth of content I originally intended).

As soon as the connection is restored, which could be as soon as tomorrow (but probably won? be), things will start getting back to normal, but if the original internet issues also return, even that might be a protracted process.

It’s unfortunate, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Sorry, folks!

Hopefully, my internet connection is now fixed. It’s been functioning perfectly since Friday when a technician attended the hardware connection – at least, I assume they did; I was notified that they were on their way, and then notified some time later that the call was completed, without ever seeing them or being informed about what work they had done. Such a state of ignorance does nothing to restore confidence, but so far, so good.

In the first half of this article, I showed how D&D and Pathfinder were hostages to the connection between the “Magic” level of an object and its “Magical Combat Plus”. Disconnecting the direct link between these concepts creates undreamed-of flexibility for the creation of unique magic items in a campaign.

In the final section of part one, I looked at a system for ‘fusing’ two magical objects of like kind together to create an item of greater capacity and capability. But there’s a better, simpler way – and, ironically, it depends on a partial restoration of the link between the “Magical Rating” and the “Magical Combat Plus”….

Unused Capacity, Revisited

Let us start with this: Every item needs to have at least one point of Magical Rating that is not assigned to a power, ability, activation, or whatever, in order for it to be capable of ‘fusing’ with another one, as stated in part one.

Things become a lot simpler if we simply assume that it is so, and turn this requirement around completely, to say “Every item can be fused to another of its kind, assuming their power levels are not too far removed, save those in which the magic has been fixed or locked..

Locking a magic item removes the capacity for further enhancement, or for the item to be used to enhance another, but it also makes the magic item just a smidgen more powerful or useful. The details vary, but the magic powers contained can be a little stronger, or a little easier to activate, or functional over a slightly greater range, or a little harder to resist – they are, in some particular fashion, slightly better.

It can be assumed that any ‘unlocked’ magic item therefore must have a Magical Rating that is one higher than the number required to contain the enchantments actually placed within the item, but this is not taken into account in determining the cost of the item; since one capability (further enhancement) is being replaced by another (slightly better enchantment), the locked item has exactly the same value as an unlocked item.

For all intents and purposes, the ‘extra’ point of Magical Capacity might as well not exist, it’s an unnecessary complication to take into account. Treat it as being a theoretical reality that can be ignored in all practical senses.

Once you do that, you can simplify and abstract the process of fusing magic items considerably by disconnecting the process from the Magical Rating and reconnecting with the magical combat plus!

Forging Of Magic Items

All items made by sentient hands or will have the potential to be enchanted, but not all such objects are created equal. Some materials are better suited to some forms of enchantment, some types of object and shapes of object are better suited to this particular form of enchantment or that, and the craftsmanship of the maker also has a big bearing on the innate capacity for enchantment of an object.

Magic items are, therefore, forged just like any other, at least initially. And that’s true of everything from sculpted bowls to sharpened blades.

There are three factors to any item, and they add up to the potential Enchantment Capacity:

• Rarity / Purity / Perfection of materials
• Skill Achieved / Craftsmanship
• Suitability of shape and materials to Specific Enchantment

These values do not correlate directly with any other numeric variable – so a better skill roll result by the craftsman will yield an object with greater innate capacity for enchantment, but not by any specific numeric amount.

Using more expensive materials will also increase the enchantment potential, but doubling the value of materials will not add X to that potential, or double it from Y to 2×Y.

Enchanting An Object

To enchant an object, a mage or other spellcasting class must cast a spell into the item without incorporating the usual trigger phrase / word / gesture that would activate the spell. This embeds the magical power of the spell into the item. Each trigger that will activate the power must then be added to the ‘suspended’ magic within. In practical terms, this is the sum of:

• Spell Level (as modified by any included Metamagics
• Plus the base Spell Level (i.e. UNmodified by Metamagics
• Plus the total level adjustments of all included Metamagics, regardless of whether they increase or decrease the effective Spell Level
• Plus 3 for every Activation Point etc (refer part one of this article)
• Plus one.

The total is the target of an appropriate skill roll – it could be Spellcraft, or whatever. This should be interpreted according to your system’s Game Mechanics – it’s either a DC, or the amount by which your roll needs to be below your skill level, or whatever.

This successful roll embeds the triggers into the item that allow it to complete the Spell effect that has been suspended within the item under construction.

Enchantment Time Required

The process is time consuming.

• 3 hours per spell level for the basic spell;
• Plus one hour per Magical Plus used by Triggers, etc;
• Minus ten minutes per rank of ability in the skill being used for the roll previously described;
• Plus-or-minus 5 minutes for the actual roll (minus if low is good, plus if high is good, according to your game mechanics).

Only then will the caster learn whether or not the enchantment has been wholly successful, partially successful (spell suspended but activations failed, twisting the spell effect into a curse of some kind), or completely unsuccessful. On a critical failure, the entire object may be reduced to slag, i.e. destroyed.

Interrupting an Enchantment

It is possible to suspend the process temporarily – one day per caster level, minus 1/2 a day per effective spell level – and then resume it. It’s even possible to exceed this limit; simply increase the target difficulty by 1 and restart the clock.

It’s entirely possible to discover an object with a spell that was embedded within, centuries earlier, but then interrupted, with an accumulated penalty in the thousands, and attempt to complete it.

Most mages are unwilling to make such an attempt, however, because each such difficulty increase also does a point of damage to the mage making the attempt – and there aren’t many mages who can cope with 1000+ hit points worth of damage.

Liches and other high-level Undead often have great magical tools at their disposal because Necromancers are adept at palming this damage off to someone else (potentially several someone elses), sacrificing them to complete an object. Obsessive Cults can also sacrifice members (who go willingly) to achieve such enchantments as sane individuals would never dream.

Enhanced Spell Repertoire

Note that there are also magic spells that only function when cast into objects, and these account for any effects that may be found in magic items that do not correspond with the spells available to any particular character class. That’s how “Combat Pluses” get added to an item, for example. These are not usually listed as spells in any canonical list because they have only that one purpose. Simply regard the total combat plus (counting attack and damage separately) as one more than the spell level of the ‘spell equivalent” and away you go.

Similarly, every mage has a series of ‘unlisted spells’ to apply sensory triggers – basic sight is a 0th-level spell, +1 for every +3 ‘perception check’ increase. At 18 (3d6) or 21 (d20), there is no longer a need to roll a perception check for the item to ‘see’ an activation trigger, and it functions perfectly. Similarly, you can include hearing so that an object will be aware of a spoken Activation Word. This was mentioned in Part One as “Embedding a sense” into the object.

Enchantment Potential

Of course, it’s a little embarrassing if you spend fifty hours slaving over a +3/+3 Holy Avenger only to find that the unenchanted object doesn’t have sufficient capacity for the spell(s) required.

A simple ‘Detect Magic” – and a skilled interpretation of the results – is all it takes to estimate, within a point or two, the total Enchantment Capacity of an object. Some even suggest that this is the true purpose of the spell, and the fact that it makes already-enchanted objects detectable – the purpose for which it is commonly used – is merely a happy side-benefit.

Exceeding The Bounds

It’s even possible to enchant an object with more magic than can properly be bound into it (if you got your estimated Enchantment Potential wrong, for example) – the Enchantment Process will take whatever additional Potential it needs from the enchanter’s life force, permanently consuming their hit points.

Exceeding an estimate by just a point or two is painful but rarely debilitating. Deliberately exceeding an estimate by a hundred points or more is usually permanently lethal (at best, crippling) – but, fanatics….

The resulting magic item is inherently and permanently locked, obviously.

Reforging

Okay, so that’s the basic process. It’s also possible to reforge a non-locked magic item – changing the trigger mechanism or basic spell effect. This is known as Reforging the item.

You simply cast the spell that is already in the item, into the item, matching perfectly any Metamagics embedded within, while at the same time, casting the new spell and embedding the new trigger into the item.

Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

The difficulty comes with the casting check described earlier. Not only do you have to match the casting difficulty of the original spell and trigger, but also of your replacement spell and trigger, and any shortfall is experienced as hit point damage. Even if the spell trigger is to remain exactly the same, you still have to cover the original trigger and the new one; it doesn’t matter that they are both the same.

So it’s actually at least twice as difficult as enchanting an object from scratch. The time requirements are also stacked, so this is not something that can be done in the field.

And, reforging for a third time? Add the difficulty of all the previous spells to the difficulty of the new spell – at least tripling the original difficulty.

But, there is a simpler way…

Fusing of two magic items together

Merging one magic item (the base item) with one of equal or lesser enchantment (the donor item) undoes any magic in the donor item and transfers the resulting unused potential into the base item, as was explained in Part One.

This is relatively quick – where you might read ‘hours’ for Reforging an item, “Fusion” reads ‘minutes’ (but it’s still not something to be done in the field), where you might read ‘days’, read ‘hours’.

In most other respects, it’s the same as taking one magic item of the Potential of the end item and enchanting it. Same skill rolls required, same damage if you get it wrong, and so on.

The fusion of two magic items preserves the existing magic of the base item and adds the potential required for it to be enhanced at the same time, either adding a new magical power (with associated activation, etc) or improving the one that’s already there.

And, since one of the most common powers embedded into magic items is a Combat Plus, ‘improving the one that’s there’ is very often the whole point. And that’s why returning the ‘rules’ of Fusing objects together to the foundation of the Combat Plus or equivalent makes a lot of sense.

Degrees of similarity

Since the magic of the donor object is unraveled by the process, that doesn’t matter too much – a Speed item can become a Flametongue item, no problem. But the basic shape has to be similar (both longswords or chain mail or whatever).

So long as they have the same description in game mechanics disregarding any magical enhancement, they are similar enough for fusion. But if one is made of Mythril, or Shadowsteel, or Jade, or whatever, so must the other one be.

There is a side-effect of the fusion process that should be noted, however: the same basic equation (Materials + Craftsmanship + Suitability) remains as valid regarding the composite item as it was to the constituents. At least one of these, possibly more, will therefore have to improve markedly as a result of the fusion process. This can mean that exotic new decoration becomes etched onto a blade, or that the material the blade is made from is transformed into something else, or that the hilt changes color – but there is a visible consequence to the blending of two items.

With high magic as a status symbol, that would make the process doubly attractive to certain people.

But there others who like to fly beneath the radar. It is quite possible to embed a low-level illusion into a magic item that it is a worthless or poor representative of its kind – a wooden dagger of +1, for example. But when the command word is uttered, it becomes a +5 +5 Dancing Blade….

Degrees of Magical Similarity

The Enchantment Potentials must also be similar. They don’t have to be identical, though. The more closely matched they are, the more effective and efficient the fusion process.

This is summed up by two rules:
 

1. Plus N and Plus N fuse to create an object of Plus N+2.
    
2. Plus N-1 and Plus N fuse to create an object of Plus N+1.

 
…but it’s usually more convenient to rearrange the second one to read:
 

2. Plus N and Plus N+1 fuse to create an object of Plus N+2.

 
– you just have to remember that it’s the magic of the higher-plus item that is preserved in the initial state of the fused item.

All you then have to do is determine the Enchantment Potential that corresponds with the new item, and you’re ready to enhance / further enchant it.

Surprising complexity

These two very simple rules combine to result in surprisingly complex behavior. When working to combine multiple objects together, there can be multiple pathways – some far more efficient than others.

Obviously, fusing two matching pairs is inherently the most efficient method – the higher value of a mismatched pair means that it costs relatively more (by some margin) than fusing matched pairs.

• +1 and +1 make a +3 for a cost of two +1 items.
• +1 and +2 make a +3 but the difference of costs between +2 and +1 are significant, and reduce the cost-effectiveness of the +3 item.

But things become more complicated when you are hunting down those items in the wild rather than simply commissioning them. It’s still worth fusing a +1 and +2 item together to make a +3 when you already have both the ingredient items.

I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing the resulting enhancement patterns in order to spell them out for you, the GM – but players should be told only the basic rules above, and let to deduce the smarter upgrade strategies for themselves.

Symbology

To make these patterns transparent to the reader, once again, I need to expand the nomenclature.

2×+2 should be read as two items, each of +2.

This enables the representation of the fusion process in a simpler, more abstract, manner that’s easier to comprehend.

For example, if I have:

• +0, +0, +1, +2, +2, +3

items, all suited for fusion, this would be written

• 2×+0, 1×+1, 2×+2, 1×+3.

Sequential Fusion

Putting a string of fusions together in the most efficient way possible can be quite complex. After a lot of study, I’ve found that it’s easiest to work the process out in steadily-progressing values of +N.

You may be tempted to leap ahead because the path seems so obvious, but it’s easy to make a mistake.

Fusion Sequence

Let’s take those items and see what can be made of them, because it permits me to demonstrate the way that I will depict the fusion process.

1. Starting point: 2×+0, 1×+1, 2×+2, 1×+3.
2. +0 & +0 make +0+2=+2, i.e.
   2×+0 = 1×+2
3. 1×+1 and that +2 make 1×+3
4. The 2×+2 that we already had make 1×+4.
5. The +3 that we made and the +3 that we already had fuse to make 1×+3+2=+5.
6. The +4 and the +5 combine to make ×+6.

So all of those together can be combined to make a single +6 item.

Which One’s The Base Item?

To determine the base item (and there may be multiple choices), we need to track back through the sequence, looking for the thread that binds the higher-plus items together.

• +5 is higher than +4 so the +5 contains the base item of the +6..
• That means that either the +3 that we already had, or the +3 that we made, are or contain the base item.
• If it’s the +3 that we made, then ANY of the +2 items, including the one that we made, could be the base item.
• If it’s the +2 that we made, then either of the +0 items could be the base item.

So the potential candidates are either the 2×+0, either of the 2×+2, or the +3 that we already had. The way that we configure the fusion chain and the choices of the artificer constructing that fusion chain determine which. Only the +1 can be definitely exceeded from the list.

Same items, an alternative fusion chain

As I said, multiple items lead to multiple ways they can be combined.

1. Starting point: 2×+0, 1×+1, 2×+2, 1×+3.
2. Set aside one of the +0 items.

+0 & +1 make 1×+2.

3. With 3×+2, one of them has to be set aside for a moment because we have nothing to pair it with. The other 2×+2 make 1×+4.
4. Take the +2 that we set aside and combine it with the +3 that we already had to get 1×+4.
5. 2×+4‘s combine to make the ×+6.
6. And we still have that +0 left over!

Okay, so a +0 item isn’t going to be worth very much. But the same fusion chain applies if we add +2 to every plus shown:

1. Starting point: 2×+2, 1×+3, 2×+4, 1×+5.
2. Set aside one of the +2 items.

+2 & +3 make 1×+4.

3. With 3×+4, one of them has to be set aside for a moment because we have nothing to pair it with. The other 2×+4 make 1×+6.
4. Take the +4 that we set aside and combine it with the +5 that we already had to get 1×+6.
5. 2×+6‘s combine to make the final ×+8.
6. And we still have the +2 left over.

While the cost of a +2 item would pale in significance next to that of a +6, it’s not insignificant.

This permits the definition of a useful general principle: If the outcome is the same size, the size of the leftovers defines greater efficiency of process.

Parity

When you first start exploring a fusion chain, your overwhelming focus is on the plus values and trying to create pairs, because they are clearly more efficient.

After a while, though, you may start to become aware of the effects of Parity.

• Even # and Even # of +N and +N+1 are good.
• Odd # and Odd # of +N and +N+1 are okay.
• Mixed odds and evens are worst.

While this principles are not entirely incorrect (and hence are expanded upon below), they can also be misleading – but unless you pay very close attention, something you aren’t likely to do if you perceive the above to be the height of wisdom, you will not notice for a long time.

Evens and Evens

Having even numbers of both +N and +N+1 items yields a very simple strategy; both sets naturally break apart into perfectly matched pairs, fusing together in the most efficient process possible.

• 6×N = 3×N+2
• 8×N+1 = 4×N+3

As you can see, this forms a pair of natural progressions that alternate, with N → N+2 → N+4 → N+6, and so on, on one side of the ladder and N+1 → N+3 → N+5 → N+7, etc, on the other.

The temptation is to deal with each side of the ladder in sequence, ignoring the odd-valued +N‘s while working on the even ones, and vice-versa.

That’s a great way to reach a dead end.

You are far more likely to put together a logical and efficient fusion sequence – one that doesn’t ignore the second rule describing the possible steps of such a sequence – of you do them in order of increasing plus.

Odds and Odds

You’ll find that as you do more of these, you will start to find notational shortcuts, and these are bound to slip into this presentation – so I’m not going to try and stop them. They are still saying the same things, just not being as formal about them.

Odds and Odds are almost as easy to work with as Evens and Evens, but it’s more easily explained with a quick demonstration. Simply pair up everything that matches, and then combine the leftovers; with both numbers of items being odd, it’s inevitable that you will have one of each in the sequence.

• 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 is formally written 3×+1, 5×+2,.
• One pair of +1‘s becomes a +3, leaving one left over.
• Two pairs of +2‘s becomes one pair of +4‘s, with one left over.
• The leftover +1 and the leftover +2 combine to make an extra +3.
• So the result of these two steps up the ladder are 2×+3 and 2×+4.
• Another way of writing this process down might be by putting brackets around each pair: (1, 1), (1, 2), (2, 2), (2, 2).

Evens and Odds

Things get more interesting when you have an even number of +N items and an odd number of +N+1 items.

2, 2, 3 can be grouped in one of two ways: (2, 2), 3 or 2, (2, 3).

The first option produces (4), 3, while the second yields 2, (4).

+2 and +4 cannot fuse, they are too far apart; +3 and +4 can become +5.

It doesn’t matter what +N you use, the same principle will apply. Nor does it matter how many #&times you have so long as the one that describes the count of +N items is even and the one that describes the count of +N+1 items is odd.

Let’s look at a couple of more complex situations to prove the point:

2, 2, 3, 4, and then 2, 2, 3, 4, 4.

2, 2, 3, 4 first:

• Option 1: (2, 2), 3, 4 → 3, 4, 4;
• Option 2: 2, (2, 3), 4 → 2, 4, 4.
• Our rule about the efficiency of remainders clearly states that having a +3 left over is better than having a +2 [which should be pretty obvious, anyway]. So option one, matching the pairs, is clearly the preferred answer.
• Or is it? Option 1 produces two choices for the next step in the fusion chain, while Option 2 only permits one (because +2 + +4 is invalid):
  • Option 1A: (3, 4), 4 → 4, (5); (4, 5) → 6.
  • Option 1B: 3, (4, 4) → 3, (6).
  • Option 2: 2, (4, 4) → 2, (6).

  Hmm, so option 1A combines everything into a single +6, Option 1B combines everything into a +6 with a +3 left over, Option 2 combines everything into a +6 with a mere +2 remaining. Option 1A is clearly the least efficient, option 1B is the most efficient, and Option 2 is somewhere in between.

That confirms the principle of pair matching having priority, at least in this case. But if we have another +4 in the mix, is that still the case?

2, 2, 3, 4, 4:

• Option 1: (2, 2), 3, 4, 4 → 3, (4), 4; 4
• Option 2: 2, (2, 3), 4, 4 → 2, (4), 4, 4.
• So we still have the same choice between a +3 left over or a +2 remainder.
• Except that the +3 and (+4) can then combine to make a +5, and the two other +4‘s can make a +6, and +5 and +6 then make an +7. Option 2 ends with a , 2, 4, 6 – and +7 is clearly better than a +6. This is a clear example of the “Odds & Odds” rule given above.

So the rule for Evens and Odds is always to pair the Evens.

Odds and Evens

It’s so interesting that reversing the sequence does NOT yield the same result.

Anticlimax up front: After careful comparison of the alternatives, I have found that a useful rule of thumb is that it is always better in the long run to break apart a matched pair in order to form a better matched pair.

You may not have noticed it, but I’ve already demonstrated Odds and Evens – this is the difference between Option 1A and Option 1B in the 2, 2, 3, 4 example above. And it says to match the pairs and leave the unmatched odd N as a leftover.

Except that this doesn’t always work. Consider 3, 4, 4, 5;

• Option 1: 3, (4, 4), 5 Rarrow; 3, 5, (6) Rarrow; 3, 7. Looks okay, doesn’t it?
• Option 2: (3, 4), 4, 5 Rarrow; 4, (5), 5 Rarrow; 4, 7. What?

As I said in my anticlimax, it’s always better to break a matched pair (in this case, the pair of +4‘s) to achieve a better matched pair (in this case, the pair of +5‘s). And +4 is clearly a better remainder than +3.

But this only works because the number of existing N+2‘s is odd (one +5, and we are making it even (2×+5‘s)..

If we add another +5 to mix, the results are completely different:

3, 4, 4, 5, 5:

• Option 1: 3, (4, 4), (5, 5) Rarrow; 3, (6), (7) Rarrow; 3, ((8));
• Option 2: (3, 4), 4, 5, 5 Rarrow; 4, (5), 5, 5; then (4, 5), (5, 5) Rarrow; (6), (7) Rarrow; (8);

Both paths lead to a +8 item, but the path that was wrong without that extra +5 also leaves a +3 unused – which can be sold off, or kept to become part of another upgrade chain to improve that +8.

In other words, +3 is clearly better than nothing!

So the rule is that the right thing to do is to Make the better matching pair, even if you have to break a matched pair to do it.

That 3, 4, 4, 5 pattern is so common that it was recognized even before the general analysis of odds and evens, and initially considered an exception to the general rule that I was then using

Even now, I sometimes need to work through an entire fusion chain to verify the right answers.

A complex example

1, 2, 2, 3, 4

Path one:

• (1+2) Rarrow; 3;
• 2 + (3) Rarrow; 4;
• 3 + (4) Rarrow; 5;
• 4 + (5) Rarrow; 6.
• End result: +6, nothing remaining.

Path two – Ignore the +1:

• (2+2) Rarrow; 4;
• Ignore the +3;
• (4+4) Rarrow; 6.
• End result: +6, with +1 and +3 remaining.

Path three – Ignore one of the +2‘s:

• (1+2) Rarrow; 3;
• (3+3) Rarrow; 5.
• (4+5) Rarrow; 6.
• End result: +6, with +2 remaining.

Path four – Ignore the +3:

• (1+2) Rarrow; 3;
• (2+(3)) Rarrow; 4.
• (4+4) Rarrow; 6.
• End result: +6, with +3 remaining.

Path five – Ignore the +4:

• (1+2) Rarrow; 3;
• Ignore the other +2;
• (3+(3)) Rarrow; 5.
• End result: +5, with +2 and +4 remaining.

Path 2 is clearly the best path, followed by Path 4. Path 5 is clearly the worst, followed by Path 1.

Analysis, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4:

• 1, 2, 2 = odd & even, so the right choice depends on the count of +3‘s. In this case, there’s 1, so it is worth breaking the +2 matched pair to create a matched pair of +3‘s, yielding a +5.
• OR IS IT? Not breaking them creates a matched pair of +4‘s, yielding a +6.
• Because the +4’s are the better pair, that controls the pathway. Ignore the +1 and the +3, they are red herrings.

An even more complex example

I was thinking about tossing 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8 at you, but decided not to. Hint: Ignore the +3, pair the +5‘s into a +7 and join the +6 to that to create a +8; those are the leftovers. Everything else makes a +10.

Scope For Nuance

Over the course of this two-part article, it has yielded
 

• 3 scales of magic;
• 3 ways of pricing;
• Multiple activation choices;
• Multiple enhancement capacities;
• Multiple variations on the same basic item;
• Greater flexibility by creating extra space as combat plus increases;
• and two systems for fusing weaker magic objects together to enhance one of them.

But it’s not quite finished yet!

I thought that I would throw one more curve-ball at you: the person implanting the (suspended) spell and the one creating the trigger do not have to be of the same character class, using the same kind of ‘magic’. It’s perfectly acceptable to mix and match – clerical magic with Druidic magic with ranger magic, or whatever you want. You can even have one spell that modifies the output of another, as though you had two different spell-casters co-operating with each other.

My internet connection is still fraught. It will sometimes work for hours, and then not be available for days. Which makes this article fraught with potential problems. I’ll do my best – but it’s worth noting that less than an hour after last week’s post, the internet crashed and stayed down for about seven hours. If that had started just an hour earlier, the post could not have been published at all.

At something close to the last possible moment, I’ve decided to split this article into two, because if I didn’t, the second half would completely overshadow the first half.

“Uncoupling the Heisenberg Compensators” is some of my favorite technobabble from Star Trek: The Next Generation because both the character using it and the audience know that’s it’s technobabble created specifically to deceive the villain of the episode. Hence, it’s perfectly fine for it to mean absolutely nothing, in fact it doesn’t ever pretend to have any meaning whatsoever aside from that deception.

And yet, like all good technobabble, it readily hints at an implied significance while never stating anything provable outright. It sounds a little more scientific and technical and technological than “crossing the streams”, for example.

“Heisenberg”, of course, implies some relationship between the fictitious technology and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which places limits on how much we can know through direct observation. Since the technobabble supposedly relates to the teleportation technology of the show, and one of the Heisenberg limitations refers to the position of subatomic particles, this all seems to hold together.

In exactly the same way, linking the combat “plus” of a weapon to it’s magical bonus seems to make perfect sense, at least on its surface. But interesting consequences can result if you uncouple these two concepts, replacing the one-to-one identity relationship between them with a far looser, indirect, relationship.

The formal existing relationship

To the best of my knowledge, neither D&D nor Pathfinder ever state outright the equality; they simple assume it to be the case, and use the terms interchangeably if they even distinguish between them at all.

Once you become aware that the two things don’t have to possess such an equality, once you uncouple the two concepts, the game systems stop being hostages to this most fundamental of game mechanical assumptions.

What do I mean? Each magical +1 to arms or armor represents a step up an escalating power scale – either a geometric one or an exponential one, depending on who you ask. This numeric quantity is used to index the power level of the magical device, as well as being a direct input into the relevant game mechanics – armor class in the case of armor, attack bonus in the case of a weapon.

So ubiquitous is this approach that the same indexing is often used (unofficially) to describe relative magical power in entirely unrelated pieces of arcane hardware.

The assumed equality immediately saddles the game mechanics with three problems:
 

1. The increase from +4 to +5 is the same as the increase from +1 to +2 – or from ‘plus-nothing’ to +1, for that matter. The more things you have to cram into that space, the smaller grows the capacity for nuance, for making this +4 item different to that one.
    
2. The increase has to be reflected in a very steep progression in price and rarity, Quite often, this then has to be reflected in the capabilities of the object needed to justify that price- once again, restricting the capacity for differentiation from one object to the next.
    
3. Consistency across several objects becomes a problem that is most easily solved with a cookie-cutter approach, again squeezing life and flavor out of the magical items emplaced. This makes the game mechanics simpler to learn and use, but further squeezes the life and individuality out of the objects.

 
None of this is good news. It certainly adds impetus to the concept of separating the concepts from each other.

This is more easily said than done; but after quite a long time with the question at the back of my mind, I think I’ve cracked the problem. That solution is the subject of today’s article.

Section 1: A sliding scale of magic

Look, if this discussion is going to make sense, I need to lay out some ground rules for nomenclature before I do anything else. So, for the rest of this article:

• “+n” in italics will refer to the combat value of the magic item, the traditional interpretation.
• “+n”, not in italics, will refer to the “magical plus” of the weapon, which in turn is used to determine value, construction cost and difficulty, relative power level, etc.

Okay, so the basic concept is that each +x provides and requires +x to the magic scale. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But it’s a fundamental conceptual shift:

• +0 = + base
• +1 = + (+1) × x + base
• +2 = + (+2 +1) × x + base = + (3 × x) + base
• +3 = + (+3 +2 +1) × x + base = + (6 × x) + base
• +4 = + (+4 +3 +2 +1) × x + base = + (10 × x) + base
• +5 = + (+5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × x + base = + (15 × x) + base
• +6 = + (+6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × x + base = + (21 × x) + base
• +7 = + (+7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × x + base = + (28 × x) + base
• +8 = + (+8 +7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × x + base = + (36 × x) + base
• +9 = + (+9 +8 +7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × x + base = + (45 × x) + base
• +10 = + (+10 +9 +8 +7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × x + base = + (55 × x) + base

You’ll see why this is a useful reconstruction a little later on. Most people would also assume that “X” = 1 and “base” = 0, but it ain’t necessarily so. In fact, I recommend x=2 and base=3 for reasons that will become clear a little later.

Variation #1

Instead of +n contributing +n×x to the magic item, it contributes +(n+1)×x. Sounds like a small change, doesn’t it? But it accumulates to an amount of some significance.

• +0 = + 1 × x + base
• +1 = + (+1+1) × x + base = + (2 × x) + base
• +2 = + (+2 +1 +2) × x + base = + (5 × x) + base
• +3 = + (+3 +1 +5) × x + base = + (9 × x) + base
• +4 = + (+4 +1 +9) × x + base = + (14 × x) + base
• +5 = + (+5 +1 +14) × x + base = + (20 × x) + base
• +6 = + (+6 +1 +20) × x + base = + (27 × x) + base
• +7 = + (+7 +1 +27) × x + base = + (35 × x) + base
• +8 = + (+8 +1 +35) × x + base = + (44 × x) + base
• +9 = + (+9 +1 +44) × x + base = + (54 × x) + base
• +10 = + (+10 +1 +54) × x + base = + (65 × x) + base

Once again, my recommendation is x=2 and base=3.

Variation #2

Instead of +n contributing +n×x or +(n+1)×x to the magic item, it contributes +(n+1)×x for the first two +n levels, then +(n+3)×x for the next two levels, then +(n+5)×x for the two after that, and so on.

• +0 = + 1 × x + base
• +1 = + (+1+1) × x + base = + (2 × x) + base
• +2 = + (+2 +1 +2) × x + base = + (5 × x) + base
• +3 = + (+3 +3 +5) × x + base = + (11 × x) + base
• +4 = + (+4 +3 +11) × x + base = + (18 × x) + base
• +5 = + (+5 +5 +18) × x + base = + (28 × x) + base
• +6 = + (+6 +5 +28) × x + base = + (39 × x) + base
• +7 = + (+7 +7 +39) × x + base = + (53 × x) + base
• +8 = + (+8 +7 +53) × x + base = + (68 × x) + base
• +9 = + (+9 +9 +68) × x + base = + (86 × x) + base
• +10 = + (+10 +9 +86) × x + base = + (105 × x) + base

Clearly, this breaks the gap between +(#) and +(#+1) into smaller, more numerous pieces. But by varying the rate of increase, it also increases power levels within a magic item in a non-linear fashion.

My recommendations for x and base remain unchanged.

As you can see, these widen the gap – the number of magical pluses – between combat-plusses from one to many steps, with the separation from one combat plus to the next widening as the combat effectiveness, or its equivalent valuation, rises. It takes more to go from a +4 to a +5 than it does to go from +3 to +4.

The rest of this article will assume that the primary option has been chosen, with the recommended values, i. e.

• +0 = + 3
• +1 = + (+1) × 2 + 3 = + 5
• +2 = + (+2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (3 × 2) + 3 = + 9
• +3 = + (+3 +2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (6 × 2) + 3 = + 15
• +4 = + (+4 +3 +2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (10 × 2) + 3 = + 23
• +5 = + (+5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (15 × 2) + 3 = + 33
• +6 = + (+6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (21 × 2) + 3 = + 45
• +7 = + (+7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (28 × 2) + 3 = + 59
• +8 = + (+8 +7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (36 × 2) + 3 = + 75
• +9 = + (+9 +8 +7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (45 × 2) + 3 = + 93
• +10 = + (+10 +9 +8 +7 +6 +5 +4 +3 +2 +1) × 2 + 3 = + (55 × 2) + 3 = + 113

…but I will still try to mention the consequences of choosing differently as I go along (I may stop once I think I have the point across, though)

Section 2: Fixed Price increases

If you have a wider and increasing gap between combat plusses due to an increase in the number of intervals between one and the next, and a price that increases geometrically according to the number of magical plusses and not combat plusses, you need a much smaller increase to achieve a significant but predictable growth in value / cost.

As things stand, a fairly aggressive exponential increase is needed to reflect the rarity and increasing (and compounding) value of combat plus, so all +2 weapons look and cost the same (relative to the base price of the weapon).

The value that I am recommending for each magical plus as an increase might seem like a complicated one: × cube-root 2 or × 1.259921 but it’s one that I think will generate reasonable values. But there is lots of room for variations, so you can pick one that feels right to you.

Let’s translate the results:

• +0 = base × 1.259921^3 = × 2
• +1 = base × 1.259921^5 = × 3.17
• +2 = base × 1.259921^9 = × 8
• +3 = base × 1.259921^15 = × 32
• +4 = base × 1.259921^23 = × 203.19
• +5 = base × 1.259921^33 = × 2048
• +6 = base × 1.259921^45 = × 32 767.94
• +7 = base × 1.259921^59 = × 832 253.38
• +8 = base × 1.259921^75 = × 33 554 332.34
• +9 = base × 1.259921^93 = × 2 147 475 739
• +10 = base × 1.259921^113 = × 21 817 169 763 015.48

This scale of increase works for Pathfinder, where items can have up to +10 – though it does go a little off the chart at the end (but that’s because this is misstating the principle. Each level is actually defining the maximum of a range:

• +0 = base × 1.259921^3 = × 0 – 2
• +1 = base × 1.259921^5 = × 2 – 3.17
• +2 = base × 1.259921^9 = × 3.17 – 8
• +3 = base × 1.259921^15 = × 8 – 32
• +4 = base × 1.259921^23 = × 32 – 203.19
• +5 = base × 1.259921^33 = × 203.19 – 2048
• +6 = base × 1.259921^45 = × 2048 – 32 767.94
• +7 = base × 1.259921^59 = × 32 767.94 – 832 253.38
• +8 = base × 1.259921^75 = × 832 253.39 – 33 554 332.34
• +9 = base × 1.259921^93 = × 33 554 332.34 – 2 147 475 739
• +10 = base × 1.259921^113 = × 2 147 475 739 – 21 817 169 763 015.48

…).

For D&D, where items very rarely go above +5, you might want to use a larger value. Or a choice with more steps – one of the alternatives offered in section 1. The trick is always balancing the size of increases at the lower end of the scale with those at the higher end.

Variation #1: × 4th root of 10

The square root of 10 is 3.1622777, and the square root of that is 1.778279.

• +0 = base × 1.778279^3 = × 5.62
• +1 = base × 1.778279^5 = × 17.78
• +2 = base × 1.778279^9 = × 177.83
• +3 = base × 1.778279^15 = × 5623.39
• +4 = base × 1.778279^23 = × 562 338.34
• +5 = base × 1.778279^33 = × 177 826 588
• +6 = base × 1.778279^45 = × 1.7783 × 10^11
• +7 = base × 1.778279^59 = × 5.623 × 10^14
• +8 = base × 1.778279^75 = × 5.623 × 10^18
• +9 = base × 1.778279^93 = × 1.778 × 10^23
• +10 = base × 1.778279^113 = × 1.778 × 10^28

The utter ridiculousness of the results at +6 and above make this more suited to D&D.

Variation #2: × root 5

A simple alternative is to use the square root of 5, or 2.236068. Note that this will produce an even steeper growth curve.

• +0 = base × 2.236068^3 = × 11.18
• +1 = base × 2.236068^5 = × 55.9
• +2 = base × 2.236068^9 = × 1397.54
• +3 = base × 2.236068^15 = × 174 692.84
• +4 = base × 2.236068^23 = × 109 183 032
• +5 = base × 2.236068^33 = × 3.412 & times; 10^11
• +6 = base × 2.236068^45 = × 5.33 × 10^15
• +7 = base × 2.236068^59 = × 4.17 × 10^20
• +8 = base × 2.236068^75 = × 1.63 × 10^26
• +9 = base × 2.236068^93 = × 3.18 × 10^32
• +10 = base × 2.236068^113 = × 3.10 × 10^39

Variation #3: × ½ of root 10

This variation has a steeper curve still, but ameliorates that with lower values at lower levels thanks to the “½ of”. Root 10 = 3.1622777, and half of that is 1.58113885. The result is something that is somewhere in between the base version and the first variation.

• +0 = base × 1.58113885^3 = × 3.95
• +1 = base × 1.58113885^5 = × 9.88
• +2 = base × 1.58113885^9 = × 61.76
• +3 = base × 1.58113885^15 = × 965.05
• +4 = base × 1.58113885^23 = × 37 697.3
• +5 = base × 1.58113885^33 = × 3.681 & times; 10^7
• +6 = base × 1.58113885^45 = × 8.989 × 10^8
• +7 = base × 1.58113885^59 = × 5.4857 × 10^11
• +8 = base × 1.58113885^75 = × 8.3705 × 10^14
• +9 = base × 1.58113885^93 = × 3.19 × 10^18
• +10 = base × 1.58113885^113 = × 3.05 × 10^22

This would probably be my preferred choice for D&D, with some slight tweaking / rounding:

• +0 = base × 4
• +1 = base × 10
• +2 = base × 60
• +3 = base × 1000
• +4 = base × 40 000
• +5 = base × 4 & times; 10^7

Variation #4: × 1.25, 1.5, or 2

Some GMs and players might prefer a simpler solution – none of this “square root” malarkey wanted!

At 1.25:

• +0 = base × 1.25^3 = × 1.95
• +1 = base × 1.25^5 = × 3.05
• +2 = base × 1.25^9 = × 7.45
• +3 = base × 1.25^15 = × 28.42
• +4 = base × 1.25^23 = × 169.41
• +5 = base × 1.25^33 = × 1577.72
• +6 = base × 1.25^45 = × 22 958.87
• +7 = base × 1.25^59 = × 5.22 × 10^5
• +8 = base × 1.25^75 = × 1.85 × 10^7
• +9 = base × 1.25^93 = × 1.03 × 10^9
• +10 = base × 1.25^113 = × 8.93 × 10^10

At 1.5:

• +0 = base × 1.5^3 = × 3.38
• +1 = base × 1.5^5 = × 7.59
• +2 = base × 1.5^9 = × 38.44
• +3 = base × 1.5^15 = × 437.89
• +4 = base × 1.5^23 = × 11 222.74
• +5 = base × 1.5^33 = × 647 159.82
• +6 = base × 1.5^45 = × 8.4 × 10^7
• +7 = base × 1.5^59 = × 2.45 × 10^10
• +8 = base × 1.5^75 = × 1.61 × 10^13
• +9 = base × 1.5^93 = × 2.38 × 10^16
• +10 = base × 1.5^113 = × 7.91 × 10^19

(Once again, this gives reasonable numbers for +0 to +5, not so much for what happens after that).

At 2:

• +0 = base × 2^3 = × 8
• +1 = base × 2^5 = × 32
• +2 = base × 2^9 = × 512
• +3 = base × 2^15 = × 32 768
• +4 = base × 2^23 = × 8.39 × 10^6
• +5 = base × 2^33 = × 8.59 & times; 10^9
• +6 = base × 2^45 = × 3.52 × 10^13
• +7 = base × 2^59 = × 5.76 × 10^17
• +8 = base × 2^75 = × 3.78 × 10^22
• +9 = base × 2^93 = × 9.9 × 10^27
• +10 = base × 2^113 = × 1.04 × 10^34

This looks reasonable up to +3 but then gets a bit extreme for my tastes.

Variation #5: A progressive sliding scale

Under this proposal, the exponential increase in value is partially compensated for by reducing the increase that applies as magical plus increases. 2.26, 2.06, 1.86, 1.66, 1.46, 1.26, 1.06, 1.04, 1.02, 1.018, 1.016, 1.014, 1.012… I trust you can see the pattern. But this is intended to be a progressive scale – the new multiplier only applies to exponential increases not already factored in at the previous plus.

• +0 = base × 2.26^3 = × 11.54
• +1 = base × 11.54 × 2.06^(5-2) = 11.54 × 2.06^3 = 11.54 × 4.24 = 48.98
• +2 = base × 48.98 × 1.86^(9-5) = 48.98 × 1.86^4 = 48.98 × 11.97 = × 586.29
• +3 = base × 586.29 × 1.66^(15-9) = 586.29 × 1.66^6 = 586.29 × 20.92 = & times; 12 265.2
• +4 = base × 12 265.2 × 1.46^(23-15) = 12 265.2 × 1.46^6 = 12 265.2 × 20.65 = × 253 276
• +5 = base × 253 276 × 1.26^(33-23) = 253 276 × 1.26^8 = 253 276 × 10.09 = × 2 560 000
• +6 = base × 2.56 × 10^6 × 1.06^(45-33) = 2.56 × 10^6 × 1.06^10 = 2.56 × 10^6 × 2.01 = × 5.14 × 10^6
• +7 = base × 5.14 × 10^6 × 1.04^(59-45) = 5.14 × 10^6 × 1.04^14 = 5.14 × 10^6 × 1.73 = × 8.9 & times 10^6
• +8 = base × 8.9 × 10^6 × 1.02^(75-59) = 8.9 × 10^6 × 1.02^16 = 8.9 × 10^6 × 1.38 = × 1.23 × 10^7
• +9 = base × 1.23 × 10^7 × 1.018^(93-75) = 1.23 × 10^7 × 1.018^18 = 1.23 × 10^7 × 1.38 = 1.7 × 10^7
• +10 = base × 1.7 × 10^7 × 1.1.016^(113-93) = 1.7 × 10^7 × 1.1016^20 = 1.7 × 10^7 × 1.37 = 2.33 × 10^7

The above uses a fairly even drop in the multiplier until a change of order of magnitude and a similar pattern throughout. Starting at the +6 level, though, the increase from one plus to the next starts to get a little small, so perhaps a different pattern should then take hold. Remember, consistency of maths might be nice, but we want results that feel pretty right. This is intended to be proof of concept and demonstration / explanation of technique, not definitive decision.

Perhaps, then, the pattern should be 2.26, 2.06, 1.86, 1.66, 1.46, 1.26, 1.16, 1.11, 1.085, 1.075, 1.065, 1.055, 1.045…

At first, this won’t differ from what we’ve already got, but at higher plus values, it should make a profound difference.

• +0 = base × 2.26^3 = × 11.54
• +1 = base × 11.54 × 2.06^(5-2) = 11.54 × 2.06^3 = 11.54 × 4.24 = 48.98
• +2 = base × 48.98 × 1.86^(9-5) = 48.98 × 1.86^4 = 48.98 × 11.97 = × 586.29
• +3 = base × 586.29 × 1.66^(15-9) = 586.29 × 1.66^6 = 586.29 × 20.92 = & times; 12 265.2
• +4 = base × 12 265.2 × 1.46^(23-15) = 12 265.2 × 1.46^6 = 12 265.2 × 20.65 = × 253 276
• +5 = base × 253 276 × 1.26^(33-23) = 253 276 × 1.26^8 = 253 276 × 10.09 = × 2 560 000
• +6 = base × 2.56 × 10^6 × 1.16^(45-33) = 2.56 × 10^6 × 1.16^10 = 2.56 × 10^6 × 5.94 = × 1.52 × 10^7
• +7 = base × 1.52 × 10^7 × 1.11^(59-45) = 1.52 × 10^7 × 1.11^14 = 1.52 × 10^7 × 4.31 = × 6.55 &times 10^7
• +8 = base × 6.55 × 10^7 × 1.085^(75-59) = 6.55 × 10^7 × 1.085^16 = 6.55 × 10^7 × 3.69 = × 2.42 × 10^8
• +9 = base × 2.42 × 10^8 × 1.075^(93-75) = 2.42 × 10^8 × 1.075^18 = 2.42 × 10^8 × 3.68 = 8.9 × 10^8
• +10 = base × 8.9 × 10^8 × 1.1.065^(113-93) = 8.9 × 10^8 × 1.1065^20 = 8.9 × 10^8 × 3.52 = 3.13 × 10^9

Another alternative would be to specify a “floor value” below which the base of the exponent cannot drop, i.e. a minimum result on the series. Below, I demonstrate the effect that it has if the +6 value is the minimum result:

• +0 = base × 2.26^3 = × 11.54
• +1 = base × 11.54 × 2.06^(5-2) = 11.54 × 2.06^3 = 11.54 × 4.24 = 48.98
• +2 = base × 48.98 × 1.86^(9-5) = 48.98 × 1.86^4 = 48.98 × 11.97 = × 586.29
• +3 = base × 586.29 × 1.66^(15-9) = 586.29 × 1.66^6 = 586.29 × 20.92 = & times; 12 265.2
• +4 = base × 12 265.2 × 1.46^(23-15) = 12 265.2 × 1.46^6 = 12 265.2 × 20.65 = × 253 276
• +5 = base × 253 276 × 1.26^(33-23) = 253 276 × 1.26^8 = 253 276 × 10.09 = × 2 560 000
• +6 = base × 2.56 × 10^6 × 1.16^(45-33) = 2.56 × 10^6 × 1.16^10 = 2.56 × 10^6 × 5.94 = × 1.52 × 10^7
• +7 = base × 1.52 × 10^7 × 1.16^(59-45) = 1.52 × 10^7 × 1.16^14 = 1.52 × 10^7 × 7.99 = × 1.215 &times 10^8
• +8 = base × 1.215 × 10^8 × 1.16^(75-59) = 1.215 × 10^8 × 1.16^16 = 1.215 × 10^8 × 10.75 = × 1.3 × 10^9
• +9 = base × 1.3 × 10^9 × 1.16^(93-75) = 1.3 × 10^9 × 1.16^18 = 1.3 × 10^9 × 14.46 = 1.88 × 10^10
• +10 = base × 1.88 × 10^10 × 1.16^(113-93) = 1.88 × 10^10 × 1.16^20 = 1.88 × 10^10 × 19.46 = 3.66 × 10^11

As you can see, once the threshold is increased, the multiplier for each plus starts to increase again, but because the base of the exponent is very close to 1, this happens relatively slowly.

There are innumerable other patterns. Rather than the fixed minimum, you might decide that slowly increasing the multiplier was appropriate for values of +7 or more. I’ll forego offering yet another example as I have to move on.

Ultimately, what all of these variations are doing is altering the interpreted significance of each of the increases in magical plus. That’s an important concept (hence my taking so much time and trouble to demonstrate it) – because, if you can control the number of steps in the interval (Section 1) AND the significance of each step, however symbolically (Section 2) then you have almost total control over what a given plus actually means.

A radical but simple example combining everything discussed so far

Each plus up to +6 adds 5 to the plus of the item except the first two, which add 6; above +6, each adds 4. A +0 magical object has a base value of 8 (again, you will understand why in a little while). Magical pluses increase in value progressively using the following series: 1.24, 1.8, 1.65, 1.5, 1.4, 1.55, 1.7, 1.95, 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4…

Number of steps per plus:

• +0 = + 8
• +1 = + 6 + 8 = + 14
• +2 = + 6 + 14 = + 20
• +3 = + 5 + 20 = + 25
• +4 = + 5 + 25 = + 30
• +5 = + 5 + 30 = + 35
• +6 = + 5 + 35 = + 40
• +7 = + 4 + 40 = + 44
• +8 = + 4 + 44 = + 48
• +9 = + 4 + 48 = + 52
• +10 = + 4 + 52 = +56

This simulates a situation in which it grows progressively harder to increase the plus of an object or weapon. If the sequence were permitted to continue, it would probably be +3, +3, +3, +3, +2, +2, +2, +2, +1, +1, +1, +1 for an absolute maximum of +22 – but I very deliberately not going there.

Valuation per plus:

• +0 = base × 1.24^8 = × 5.59
• +1 = base × 5.59 × 1.8^(14-8) = 5.59 × 1.8^6 = 5.59 × 34.01 = 190.11
• +2 = base × 190.11 × 1.65^(20-14) = 190.11 × 1.65^6 = 190.11 × 20.18 = × 3836.3
• +3 = base × 3836.3 × 1.5^(25-20) = 3836.3 × 1.5^5 = 3836.3 × 7.59 = & times; 29 131.88
• +4 = base × 29 131.88 × 1.4^(30-25) = 29 131.88 × 1.4^5 = 29 131.88 × 5.38 = × 156 678
• +5 = base × 156 678 × 1.55^(35-30) = 156 678 × 1.55^5 = 156 678 × 8.95 = × 1.402 × 10^6
• +6 = base × 1.402 × 10^6 × 1.7^(40-35) = 1.402 × 10^6 × 1.7^5 = 1.402 × 10^6 × 14.2 = × 1.99 × 10^7
• +7 = base × 1.99 × 10^7 × 10^7 × 1.95^(44-40) = 1.99 × 10^7 × 1.95^4 = 1.99 × 10^7 × 14.46 = × 2.88 &times 10^8
• +8 = base × 2.88 &times 10^8 × 2^(48-44) = 2.88 &times 10^8 × 2^4 = 2.88 &times 10^8 × 16 = × 4.6 × 10^9
• +9 = base × 4.6 × 10^9 × 2.1^(52-48) = 4.6 × 10^9 × 2.1^4 = 4.6 × 10^9 × 19.45 = 8.95 × 10^10
• +10 = base × 8.95 × 10^10 × 2.2^(56-52) = 8.95 × 10^10 × 2.2^4 = 8.95 × 10^10 × 23.43 = 2.1 × 10^12

Section 3: Effect Rating

So, if the plus of an enchanted object is no longer connected directly to the plus of that object, what is it connected to? What justifies a value multiplier of (taking the base example from section 2) × 2048 for a +5 item?

The answer is that the magical plus of a +5 object (defined in section 1 in the designated example as a +33 Magical effect, which consists of that designated magical plus (applied to both attack and damage values, in the case of a weapon), plus everything else that the object can do.

That is to say, Effect Rating = Power Rating + Utility + Thresholds + Activations + Links to previous effects, all in combination, for each additional power in the item.

But first, a little housekeeping:

It’s always struck me as a little odd (not to say inequitable) for an armor’s plus-rating to only affect Armor Class while a weapon’s plus-rating adds to both attack (“to-hit” if you’re old-school) AND damage. Especially since enchanted armor tends to cost a great deal more than a weapon.

There are several ways of addressing this inequality.
 

• You could rule that an armor’s plus-rating also added to saving throws. That was one of my earliest solutions to the dilemma.
   
• If you thought that was being a little too generous, you could restrict the benefit to one chosen and appropriate save type – Reflex Saves for armors of speed or lightness, FORT saves for armors of special resilience, and so on.
   
• You could rule that an armor’s plus-rating also added to the wearer’s hit points.
   
• If you thought that was a little to generous, you could restrict that benefit to those character levels at which a character gained a Feat (3.x & Pathfinder), or equivalent. Thus fighters might get the benefit every 2nd level, while Mages might get the benefit every 5th. Or anything you like in between.
   
• Or, you could attack the inequity from the other side, by decoupling the attack bonus from the weapon damage bonus. A “+3 +1” weapon would have a total plusrating of 4, consisting of +3 to attack and +1 to damage. Of course, this means that a traditional weapon would suddenly have double the magical plus-rating that you thought it had, but that’s a small price to pay.

 
The solution that you choose to use is up to you. You can even employ multiple variations on the theme at the same time, so long as the equity balance is restored.

I would have no problem with a +7 rated suit of armor that gave +3to AC, +2 to Hit Points., and +2 to Reflex Saves – in a game where damage bonus and attack bonus were decoupled.

Okay, so where was I? Oh, yes: So for each additional ability conferred by or contained within an object, the Magical plus ‘consumed’ by that ability consists of the total of Power Rating + Utility + Thresholds + Activations + Links to previous effects.

It should now be clear why the various proposals in Section 1 offered a potential magical plus-rating for an object with a plus-rating of zero – it’s so that everyday objects without the equivalent of a plus-rating could still be enchanted to carry a permanent magical effect.

The higher the “base” rating in section 1, the stronger the magical effect that can be added to an object without incurring the equivalent of a plus-rating, and the more that an enchanted object – ANY enchanted object – is worth, as shown in Section 2.

The reason for doing all this is about to become clear, but it’s worth spelling it out explicitly: in a word, Flexibility. Not all +4 maces need to be exactly the same, and a +4 mace can be completely different to a +4 longsword. In fact, almost unlimited flexibility in design is achieved by the act of the Decoupling.

So, let’s put some meat on the bones – five types of Magical plus were listed; let’s define and discuss them.

Section 3a: Power Rating

Most power ratings are simple – it’s either spell level or spell-level equivalent, or it’s plus-rating.

There will be exceptions (there are always exceptions). But this should provide ample standards to permit the evaluation of any ability, especially if Metamagics are taken into account (speaking of which, there are some original metamagics that greatly enhance the flexibility of spells on offer in Broadening Magical Horizons: Some Feats from Fumanor and Shards Of Divinity. Using them and the standard Metamagics, you can customize any given spell to any effective Power Rating that is desirable).

The Power Rating of a plus enhancement is the value of the plus enhancement. Damage and Attack bonuses may count as separate plus values. However, such plus is considered an innate part of the item and as such is ‘always on’ for free.

If there is, nevertheless, some activation (see Section 3c below), subtract the cost of Always On (of the relevant sub-type) from the cost of that activation to get the adjustment to the resulting Effect Rating for the plus enhancement.

For example, if the ‘always on’ type is the bog-standard version that most of us think of immediately, that is a +5 value that is ‘built in’ to a magical Plus. If there is, nevertheless, an activation of value +3 let’s say, the Power Rating of the plus WITH the activation is plus +3 -5. So a +4 item of this type would have a Power Rating of 2.

Section 3b: Utility

This encompasses two disparate factors, each of which needs to be considered separately.

Enhancement of something that a character can be expected to be capable of anyway confers a -1 modifier to Effect Rating (but Effect Ratings can never be less than 1). The alternative is to confer on a character an ability that they can not be reasonably expected to be capable of (even if some individuals can possess that capability); this increases the Effect Rating of an ability by 1.

Secondly, there is a Contextual Appraisal. In any given game world, some abilities will be more generally useful than others; those abilities should attract a +1 Effect Rating which should provide some form of enhancement benefit to the ability. Other abilities may be less generally useful than others, and come with a -1 Effect Rating. For example, in a world in which Undead are a major factor, abilities to Turn or enhance the Turning of Undead are obviously going to be more valuable. In a swamp world, or simply a swampy environment, fire magic can either be more useful or less (depending on whether or not conditions hamper the effectiveness of such magic), and so on.

Section 3c: Thresholds

Requiring a minimum score in some numeric capability in order to use an ability or effect is called establishing a Threshold.
 

• If the Threshold is easy for the likely users of a magic item to achieve, that is worth a +2 Effect Level.
   
• If the Threshold is reasonably commonly achievable, perhaps at higher levels, that is worth a +1 Effect Level.
   
• If the Threshold is only achievable for characters of higher levels, that is worth a +0 Effect Level.
   
• If the Threshold is very difficult for characters to achieve, even at higher levels, that is worth a -1 Effect Level (but there is still a net minimum Effect Level of 1).
   
• Finally, if the Threshold is likely to only be achievable through the use of additional magic, either spells, potions, or magic items, that is worth either -2, -1, or +0 Effect Level;
   
  • -2 if the magic is likely to be very hard to obtain (even if a specific character already has it, because that’s something that you can’t assume to be universally true);
     
  • -1 if the magic is going to be uncommon but not unusually rare to obtain, caveat as above;.
     
  • +0 otherwise.

Section 3d: Activations

If you have to do something to activate or trigger the magic, the difficulty / inconvenience of doing so under normal conditions also impacts on the Effect Level. This consideration excludes any Threshold requirement (you only get one bite at the cherry).
 

• ‘Always On’ effects are a +5 Effect Value, which increases to +6 Effect Value if the character doesn’t have to be in physical possession of the object in order to gain the benefit of the effect – if it can be on a nearby shelf, for example. If the object can be even more remote from the wielder, that may be worth a +7 or even a +8 Effect Value.
   
• If the power / effect is activated “At Will”, that is worth a +4 Effect Value, which increases to +5 if the object only needs to be in close proximity, to +6 if the object only needs to be within earshot, or to +7 if the object only needs to be visible to the wielder. Some GMs may permit the latter to be activatable through Scrying, others will not, and some will regard that as worth an extra +1 to the Effect Value.
   
• If the power / effect is activated by a command phrase or word, that is worth a +3 Effect Value, which increases to +3 if the object doesn’t have to be within earshot (but still has to be commanded by a specific voice), and to +4 if anyone using the right word/phrase can activate the power/effect.
• If the power / effect requires a specific Skill roll to activate, the plus to the effect value is dependent on how difficult the challenge target is to achieve:
   
  • If the target is very difficult to achieve, the Effect Value of the Activation is +1.
     
  • If the target is moderately difficult, the Effect Value of the Activation is +2.
     
  • If the target is reasonably easy, the Effect Value of the Activation is +3.
     
  • If the target is very easy to achieve, the Effect Value of the Activation is +4.
     
• In addition, if the skill is relatively rare or unusual, the GM may add -1 to the Effect Value of a skill-based activation, whereas if it fairly ubiquitous, the GM may add +1 to the Effect Value.
   
• Finally, if the ability is automatically triggered by some other circumstance, but the owner has to be within a reasonable range, that is worth an effective +2 Effect Level. If the owner does not need to be present, that is worth +3 Effect Level. If the owner can specify what the triggering condition is and provide some appropriate sensory capability, that is worth +4 Effect Level; if the object comes with any required sensory capability already included, that is worth +5 Effect Level.

In general, the more easily the power can be activated, the higher the Effect Level that it reflects. Note that the activation “cost” may require the creator of a magic item to restrict its Power Rating or otherwise compromise it in order to compensate for a high Activation contribution.

Another way to look at it: the more powerful a magical effect is, the more it needs to be restricted in it’s Activation in order to be accommodated in a magic item of relatively affordable magical plus or equivalent.

Section 3e: Multi-effects

If an effect is already present in an item that is of a similar nature to an ability or effect, the second ability or effect is reduced in Effect Level by 1.

Multiple such are often ‘bundled together’, in sequence from least expensive to most expensive (in terms of Effect Level, disregarding such discounting).

However, these bonuses grow progressively harder to qualify for.
 

• One related ability is enough for a 1 discount.
   
• Three (=1+2) are needed to qualify for a 2 discount. Note that the second and third will still qualify for a 1 discount.
   
• Six (=1+2+3) are needed to qualify for a 3-discount on the seventh and subsequent related abilities. Some of those six will qualify for a 1 discount, some for a 2 discount.
   
• Ten (=1+2+3+4) are needed to qualify for a discount of 4, and so on.
   

The inclusion of unrelated effects or abilities has the opposite effect.
 

• One unrelated ability earns a +1 cost to all abilities, including this one..
   
• Three (=1+2) unrelated abilities earn a +2 cost to all abilities.
   
• Six (=1+2+3) increase the cost of all abilities by +3 each.
   
• Ten (=1+2+3+4) increase the cost of each ability by +4, and so on.
   

An example might be needed to make this clear.

Let’s say that a magic item has 4 fire-related abilities / powers and one that is not considered by the GM to be directly fire-related.
 

• The cheapest fire-related ability costs it’s normal Effect Level, +1 for the unrelated ability.
• The second-cheapest fire-related ability costs it’s normal Effect Level -1 for the related ability, +1 for the unrelated ability.
• The third-cheapest fire-related ability costs it’s normal Effect Level -1 for the first related ability, +1 for the unrelated ability.
• The most expensive fire-related ability costs it’s normal Effect Level -2 for the three related abilities, +1 for the unrelated ability.

Section 3f: Activation / Triggers for multiple effects

If the same trigger activates more than one ability, it costs +1 for each additional ability that it activates, but needs only to be paid for once. This further encourages the consistent theming of magical devices.

If the trigger is to be separate, even if of the same kind (two different command words, for example), both have to be paid separately.

Flexibility eats into power level, consistency does not.

Section 4: Unused Capacity

There are two actions that an owner may wish to perform with a magic item that they possess, and both require at least one magical plus of unused capacity. These are “Refining an object” and “Enchanting an object”.

Magical items without any unused capacity are considered fixed (sometimes labeled ‘locked’); they cannot be Refined or further Enchanted.

Refining an object

Refining an object increases it’s unused capacity. It does so by leeching the capacity of an equal or lesser object. Like pulling on a thread, this causes the object being leeched to ‘unravel’; it becomes a worthless lump of waste material. But it’s magical plusses are added to the capacity of the object being refined (less any unused capacity it may already have).

I’ll have a lot more to say about this in part two of this article.

For now, let’s start by defining some additional nomenclature – in particular, some symbiology to describe this process:

+a ⋃ +b ≈ +(a+b)

would serve to represent it, where

+a defines the object being leeched;
+b defines the object being refined;
⋃ describes the process;
≈ (approximately equals) connects the process to the outcome; and
+(a+b) describes the approximate outcome of the process.

So let’s look at a couple of examples:

+5 ⋃ +5 ≈ +(10)

+5 ⋃ +10 ≈ +(15)

+8 ⋃ +12 ≈ +(20)

+13 ⋃ +19 ≈ +(32)

…and so on.

But, given the approximation, this is not very helpful. So, having established the concept, let’s refine it:

+a+Δb ⋃ +b = +(a+b)

or even,

+a ⋃ +b = +(a+b-Δb)

This is exactly the same as what we had before, except that we’ve added a new symbol, Δb, to describe the unused capacity of object b.

Δb therefore HAS to be at least one, by definition, but it could be more, because what is actually increasing by (a – Δb) is Δb.

Again, an example or two should make this clearer.

+5 ⋃ +5 [Δb=1] = +(5+5-1=9), Δb = 1+5-1 = 5.

A +5 object is leeched to enhance another +5 object which has an unused capacity of 1. The resulting object has a total capacity of 9, of which 5 are unused.

Let’s say we then use a +8 object to further refine this one:

+8 ⋃ +9 [Δb=5] = +(8+9-5=12), Δb = 5+8-5 = 8.

The +8 object is leeched to enhance the +9 object which now has an unused capacity of 5. The resulting object has a total capacity of 12, of which 8 are unused.

This is exactly what you want if you want to add another ability with a net Effect Level of 7 to the item. But let’s say for a moment that you added a 4-point ability to the +9 object before leeching the +8; this reduces the unused capacity of the +9 object back to 1, as it now contains two +4 powers. And now:

+8 ⋃ +9 [Δb=1] = +(8+9-1=16), Δb = 1+8-1 = 8.

Again, absolutely perfect, with an extra +4 ability to boot. So, why would you bother with the initial refinement?

Well, let’s say that the only reason the 7-point power is only 7 points is because it’s related to the second ability that you’re adding. That means that if you push this power into the blending of the original object and the +8 object, you will end up with no points left, and a locked item – unless, of course, the existing power is unrelated to the +7 ability, which would push the cost of it from +8 to +9, which would not actually fit in the resulting magic item.

You need the first refining process to create the conditions that make the resulting object possible. But, the first power is still unrelated to the subsequent pair of abilities, which increases the cost of the +8 ability from +7 back to +8 – so the resulting magic item is now locked, and can no longer be approved.

As you can see from this example, this can get really complicated fairly quickly. Which is why there’s a lot more to say about it in the next part, when this will be a major topic of discussion. For now, though, let’s move on to the other use, Enchanting an Object:

Enchanting an object

This is the process of ‘filling’ unused capacity with ‘content’. Unsurprisingly, then, we’ve already been discussing it, because it’s central to the question of why you would refine an object.

There are two sources of enchantment: you can migrate the magical ability currently embedded in the object that you are leeching into the refined object, a process called “Fusion” or “Fusing”

When you do so, you need to recalculate the price of the new ability being added. It may have an Activation in common with the power object B already possesses; it may be related to the power object B already possesses; or it may be unrelated.

The Skill Involved

Of course, none of this happens automatically; there is a skill roll involved, against a DC of (a+b), and a skilled artificer can modify the magic being transferred in the process, easing an existing restriction to increase the capability of the fused object (increasing the Effect Value of the second magical power) or increasing one to reduce the overall fusion without ‘locking’ the resulting object (necessary if the abilities are unrelated).

If your game system doesn’t use DCs, the “DC” becomes the target that you need to achieve or the margin of success, as appropriate.

Each such change adds 3 to the DC / target / required margin.

Direct Enchantment

The other method of Enchanting an object is to cast a spell direct into the receptive matrix, substituting the intended Activation for the process normally used to complete and activate the spell (the way you would if you were casting a spell onto the object instead of into it.

This involves a more difficult roll, against a DC (or equivalent as described above) of 2×b + a – Δb. Fail, and the spell is wasted, and the unused capacity of the target reduced by 1.

The more enchantment an object already holds, the harder it is to direct-enchant it further, and the more skill is needed to successfully do so.

And, with that preview of what is to come in Part 2 (Forging and Reforging of magic items), it’s time to end this article and prepare it for publication (while my internet connection is behaving itself!)