Disposing of illegal liquor By Unknown – Vintage periods, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5119649

The Story Of Prohibition

When Prohibition became law in the US in 1920, it was expected that, albeit reluctantly, the citizenry would simply obey. This was no mere law, after all; it was an Amendment to the Constitution, the very document that defined the United States as a nation, and hence an attempt to willfully modify that definition.

This was the culmination of decades of effort by the so-called “dry” movement, combining social progressives in the Prohibition, Democrat, and Republican parties as well as a large number of Temperance groups, especially the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, all coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League. The League was based in the Southern states and rural districts of the North, especially Methodists, Baptists, Disciples, and Congregationalists and other Protestant ministers and congregations.

The League’s ethos was to concentrate on the passage of legislation, not on whether or not it had the desired effect. After all, if the laws they passed were ignored or ineffective in a few cases, it was simply a matter of sufficiently draconian enforcement and perhaps some complimentary legislation.

In a consequence foreseen and publicly predicted by the leading medical examiners of the day, illegal alcohol consumption exploded in the face of the law. Not only did you have those who actually wanted to drink, but there was considerable opposition to the laws because the use of a Constitutional Amendment was seen as both excessive and social engineering.

It faced some strident opposition, too. Civil Libertarians, Brewers, those alarmed by the rise in criminal activity and organized crime, those distressed by the mounting death toll and number of emergency admissions resulting from the consumption of Methyl or ‘Wood’ alcohol, those unhappy over the tenfold increase in arrests for Drink-driving since Prohibition, and those discommoded by the loss of the tax revenues gained from alcohol sales, all pushed hard against the law. Since several of those movements were reactionary, they only grew in strength as the unwanted effects of the legislation mounted.

The reaction of those who backed Involuntary Temperance was to ‘spike’ the chemicals that were being used in industrial alcohol to make it even more poisonous, and if one then died as a result of drinking booze with deadly additives, having consumed it in full knowledge of the risks, that was the individual’s choice and tough luck. A chemical ‘arms race’ began, in the summer of 1926, between the chemists attempting to poison the ‘wells’ and those looking for industrial processes to at least minimize the dangers in a manner that was cheap enough that the Bootleggers would institute it.

Nicholas Murray Butler, the President of Columbia University became so disenchanted with Prohibition (and all the attendant social ills) that he decided to seek the nomination of the Republican Party on an anti-Prohibition platform. Already a strident opponent of the legislation – he didn’t oppose regulating saloons, but doing so by Constitutional Amendment, he said, was overkill – it was his contention that after seven years of the ‘social experiment’, “any idiot could see that Prohibition had been an enormous mistake”, one that could only be rectified by replacing the leadership that had brought the country to this position.

Ultimately, he failed to secure the nomination – in fact, he didn’t even come close, and doesn’t even rate mention as a candidate on Wikipedia’s page on the convention – and the nomination (and ultimately the Presidency) was claimed by Herbert Hoover, who promised economic prosperity and endorsed Prohibition as an “experiment noble in purpose”.

Hoover, despite this public endorsement of the policy, was not unlike the general public in his behavior, though he did not need to stoop to visiting a speakeasy; instead, he regularly paid social calls to the Belgian Embassy, which was technically on Belgian soil and not bound by US law; as a result, he could drink legally there and be guaranteed good-quality alcohol as well.

Did Prohibition succeed? Even today, that’s arguable. It did cut overall alcohol consumption in half, and did achieve a lasting reduction of 30-40% even after the repeal of the legislation. And yet, the increase in the number of fatalities and collaterally impacted people argued that while fewer people were drinking, those who were were consuming vastly greater quantities.

Every passing year saw support for the law eroded while opposition grew; it was inevitable that it would be repealed. Ultimately, the citizens of the United States told those in power that they would define the social and cultural nature of the country, and would resist any effort to have a definition foisted upon them, however well-meaning it may have been.

RPG Relevance I – The Official Rules

And that brings me to RPGs – which is what this blog is all about, after all.

A broken rule is like Prohibition: while it won’t be ignored by everyone, there will be enough people willing to do so that the rule will be largely recognized as a failure.

There will be an overwhelming temptation to ‘repeal’ the bad rule by creating and implementing a House Rule. And, a proactive GM is likely to be out in front of the players on the issue, possibly issuing his replacement rule(s) even before the official version has appeared in the course of play.

RPG Relevance II – House Rules

The institution of a House Rule is also not dissimilar to the imposition of the Volstead Act (which was the key legislation permitting the enforcement of Prohibition).

Each such rule has two inherent broad premises: that the affected rules need to be changed, and that this house rule is the change that needs to be made, or at least a step in the right direction.

If both premises are accepted by the constituency – the players and GM – then the rule will be accepted and will then stand or fall on its merits. If it fails, it will eventually be supplanted by something else, hopefully addressing the failures in the House Rule – but the option of falling back to the official rule is almost certainly a last resort.

If one or both premises are not accepted, then the House Rule is on shaky ground; the best that it can hope to achieve is a sort of armed neutrality, a grudging acknowledgment that however great a failure it may be, it at least is no worse than the original rule.

Responsibility

The responsibility for ensuring that the House Rule addresses a real problem, and that the House Rule represents a genuine improvement in the situation, belongs to the GM. And part of that responsibility comes down to public relations, to the GM selling the players both his definition of the problem and the solution.

It’s actually one of the tenets of modern advertising, especially of products like cosmetics and hair care, that a successful advertisement will create the problem in the minds of the audience and then ‘sell’ them the solution. This creates the desire for the product that translates into sales.

How should the GM address that responsibility?

The Ideal Case

Let’s start by looking at the ideal case, when you have time to prepare properly. In the perfect world, there are 11 steps to the process that I use:

1. Structure
2. Allow Time
3. Justification
4. Make Your Case
5. Failure Criteria
6. Player Copies
7. First Draft
8. Test-run (optional)
9. Preserve Rules separately to Justification and Failure Criteria
10. Schedule A Review (optional)
11. Fall-back Plan
    

    1. Structure

    Always collect and document your House Rules in a structured way, to make it as easy as possible to (a) find something when you need to, and (b) explain them to a new player if you need to. I use the chapters of the core rulebook as my starting point, but I know other people who use the page numbers. If there are multiple core rulebooks it’s always Player’s book first, GM’s guide second, and supplements thereafter including an abbreviation of the name. All these serve as a prefix; the sequential rule number serves as a suffix. That all gets followed by the actual rule. In monster guides, such as the Monster Manual, each letter of the alphabet is considered a separate chapter for these purposes.

    That means that an entry might read “17-004”, which means “Chapter 17, Rule number 4.” If there are only 12 chapters in the PHB (or equivalent) for the game system, you know that this refers to the 5th chapter of the DMG. That tells you where the original rule being modified is, and follows it up with the changed rule.

    You don’t have to use this system. You might decide that an abbreviation of the rulebook name is always appropriate, for example, and the chapter number always refers to “within that rulebook” (that would make the same rule listed above, “DMG-05-004”). The important thing is to have an official repository for your house rules and to give it a structure that enhances its usefulness.

    2. Allow Time

    Never be afraid to end a game session early or start one late if that gives you time to discuss the House Rule with the players to their satisfaction. NEVER implement a permanent House Rule without such discussion if you have any other choice. The caveat is necessary because of the “non-ideal case” when a rules change is needed “on-the-fly”, which is a whole separate can of worms to be opened a little later.

    3. Justification

    House Rules are always justified in the mind of the author. The key lesson from Prohibition in this context is that this isn’t good enough. The ‘public’, i.e. the other players (and, if not the author, the GM) need to be convinced not only that there is a problem, but that this is the solution. And that justification will need to be reiterated and reviewed from time to time, so write it down.

    4. Make Your Case

    Then, once you have it in writing, make your case to the others. Discuss the problem and the proposed solution until everyone is satisfied.

    5. Failure Criteria

    It’s not always easy to do, but I always like to have some failure criteria based on the originally-defined problem that justifies the House Rule in the first place. Start with the reference number so that you always know which rule you’re talking about. For example: “DMG-05-004: This rule will be a failure if repeated Skill Checks take more than 10 seconds to resolve.” Or perhaps you’re a little more generous, and make it a 15- or 20-second limit. This example would be the appropriate sort of criteria if the original justification for the House Rule is “Skill Checks take too long to resolve” – though I would prefer a hard number rather than the somewhat vague “too long”. “Skill Checks take >1 min to resolve” is a serious justification because it enables a specific comparison, identifies a specific problem.

    It also means that if the author of the rule is incorrect in their analysis of the cause of the problem, and the house rule is misdirected as a result, it will quickly become apparent when the House Rule doesn’t improve the situation. It might be that the real problem is in the way character sheets are written, for example, and the time taken to resolve a skill check is merely a symptom.

    6. Player Copies

    Whenever possible, copies of the House Rules should always be provided to the players in their preferred format (electronic or hardcopy). In today’s digital age, drop-box can be the perfect solution, sharing a folder containing the House Rules with everyone and updating everyone’s copies instantaneously.

    7. First Draft

    House Rules should always be considered a first draft, subject to revision. It can be presumed that the official rules have undergone considerable play-testing to iron out any bugs – it doesn’t always happen, but it is to be hoped! House rules certainly don?t undergo that sort of vetting, so it’s always prudent to leave the door open to further revisions or even a complete repeal in the future.

    8. Test-run (optional)

    Where possible, it’s a good idea to schedule a test-run of the new rule for the players to try it out for themselves. This should be as simple and free of added complications as possible – the focus should be on getting players familiar with the changes to the process before they have to use the rule for real. At the very least, you want everyone to at least remember that there is a House Rule – a problem that occurs more often than people think.

    9. Preserve Rules separately to Justification and Failure Criteria

    The justification and failure criteria should always be recorded permanently for future reference, but you don’t want the rules themselves to be cluttered with that information. Nor is keeping them in a separate section of the same document a great idea, because it’s always a pain to go back-and-forth in a document; you want to be able to read them both at the same time. For me, that means that there should always be two separate documents: the rules themselves, and notes concerning the rules. Sometimes there will be a third document with one or more examples, again so that the rules and the examples can be viewed at the same time.

    It’s to permit cross-referencing between these separate documents that the structure is so important.

    10. Schedule A Review (optional)

    I always like to schedule a time for the House Rule to be reviewed, usually in 6 or 8 game sessions time – more if it’s an infrequently used rule, perhaps less if it is frequently used. This is a simple process of asking, “is the rule having the effect intended, and if not, what needs to change?”, and the follow-up question, “have there been any secondary consequences of the rules change noticed, and if so, are they beneficial or not?” The goal is to determine whether the House Rule should be confirmed as it now stands, needs further modification, or needs to be replaced completely.

    11. Fall-back Plan

    It only makes sense, when tinkering under the hood of something as complex as a set of RPG rules, that you have some sort of fallback plan in case it all goes horribly wrong. This can be as simple as “revert to the rules as written” or even “GM to make ad-hock rulings based on the procedures for resolving similar problems within the rules” – the latter being especially useful as a guideline when the problem is a game situation that the rules, as they currently stand, did not envisage.

    Another situation that needs to be covered as part of the fallback plan is how the GM intends to respond to suspected or verified cases of players rorting the rule. This doesn’t happen often, and quite often players knowing that such a contingency plan is in place is sufficient deterrent. Critical to how such situations are to be handled is that non-offending players should not be penalized for the actions of a single rogue; the easiest way to achieve this dispassion is by assuming that all such cases are actually failures of the rules and not a breach of trust by the player. It can be argued (and often is by min-maxers) that exploiting an opportunity given in the rules is only smart playing, after all, and that players are under no obligation to conform to the GM’s assumptions of the limitations of their characters’ abilities.

    In fact, it?s mostly to avoid knee-jerk overreactions that a plan should be made in advance.

    There is a broader principle here that also deserves to at least be mentioned: whenever a GM creates a House Rule, or (for that matter) reads an official rule, he should always ask himself “How can this be exploited or abused?” No GM will ever foresee every possible circumstance, but every such situation that is anticipated can be prepared for, making the GM that much better-equipped to run the game.

Rules On The Fly

A lot of the time, it will emerge in the course of play that a rule or even rules subsystem isn’t working the way it should. Assuming that this is a situation not anticipated by the contingency plans of a House Rule, it is necessary to implement an adjusted variation on the process spelt out above, incorporating some additional steps and altering others:

1. On-The-Spot Innovation
2. Write It Down Immediately
3. Schedule Time
4. Discussion – Quick Fix vs Substance
5. Formalize
6. Integrate
7. Failure Criteria
8. Introduce
9. Player Copies
10. First Draft
11. Test-run (optional)
12. Preserve Rules separate to Justification and Failure Criteria
13. Schedule A Review
14. Fall-back Plan
    

    1. On-The-Spot Innovation

    An ad-hock solution needs to be devised right now to keep the game moving.

    2. Write It Down Immediately

    You can have the best of intentions to deal with the rules problem in a more substantial way as soon as play is over for the day, but the reality is that there is always a lot to do after play. You have character intentions and actions to document, GM plans in response to those actions to record (and to mull over), and other elements of game prep for next time to plan and schedule. On top of that, it’s always easy to underestimate the degree of mental effort involved in GMing, and the exhaustion that can follow. I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years, and it’s still a shock to me after every game session just how much effort I have put into actually running the game.

    Writing the ad-hock solution down immediately serves multiple purposes. It documents the ad-hock solution for reference throughout the rest of the game session; functions as a reminder of the problem, and that the rules in question need to be revisited; and it can even signpost the ultimate rules solution, or at least, the foundations of one. Not doing so opens the door to misunderstandings and a recurrence of the problem. Should these consequences recur a number of times, the players may even lose faith in the ability of the GM to run the campaign. That’s an extreme outcome, but why risk it when there are so many benefits to not doing so?

    3. Schedule Time

    I don’t like to interrupt play to discuss the rules problem – hence the need for an immediate ad-hock solution – but am perfectly willing to end play early, or – if I need more time to consider the situation – to delay the start of the next game session, in order to do so. This signals to the players that an ad-hock solution is not considered good enough, that you want certainty both for them and for your campaign. This is one time when the GM needs to be a leader.

    4. Discussion – Quick Fix vs Substance

    During that discussion time, the key question to be answered is “In what way is the quick fix an inadequate solution to the longer-term problem.” It almost certainly won’t be substantive enough, but it may well prove a workable foundation to a longer-term solution. I also like to ask if anyone else has any suggestions for dealing with the issue, and it can be informative to glance at the contingency plans that have been devised for any similar problems, if there are any. Above all, since the need for a House Rule has become obvious, a decision has to be made regarding what the priority for that House Rule should be. Is it more comprehensiveness? A more subtle nuance of outcome? Giving players more control over the way their choices of action will be interpreted? Faster resolution?

    To some extent, this will be made clear by the nature of the problem identified in the course of play, but it’s important to try and look beyond the obvious and identify a root cause for the problem if you can – otherwise you can end up merely treating a symptom, without addressing the real issue.

    Take Notes.

    5. Formalize

    With this guidance, you are in a strong position to draft a House Rule that achieves the objective (and may achieve one or more of the other possible objectives as a side bonus), based on the ad-hock ruling or upon a rule proposal made in the course of the discussion. This may represent a modification to the existing rule, or a refinement of the ad-hock rule, or even be something completely original. Where it derives from doesn’t matter. The main activity in this step is to formalize the thrust of the discussion into a ‘formal’ rule, with all attendant tables and rolls defined. You even have the notes as a reminder to do so – because the odds are that it will be some days (possibly even weeks) after the game play-day that you can actually turn your attention to the problem. You may have needed to look up other game systems to see how they handle the problem, for example, if those rules are to form the template for your campaign’s solution.

    6. Integrate

    It is always easier to work on a rule in isolation, without the distraction of other rules. This facilitates simple editing and sharing processes and rapid evolution of the rule. There comes a time, however, when the modified rule has to be considered in a wider context, a bigger picture.

    In particular, I always try to keep unapproved and draft House Rules separate from the ones that have actually been accepted and implemented within the campaign. Integration is when all of these processes begin – it’s the act of incorporating the rule into the list of approved House Rules, but in a format that enables it to stand out from the rest. It might be in a different color, or be in boldface or italics, or both, but the rule needs to be seen and considered surrounded by the other House Rules.

    Is it longer? Is it more complex? Does it require more explanation? Are there any unwanted interactions with existing House Rules? And, in particular, are there any unwanted consequences that require management through separate House Rules?

    A rule changing the number of hit points that a character has seems straightforward. But there are inherent assumptions built into that number regarding the average amount of damage inflicted in a combat round, the number of combat rounds that a character can survive, the effectiveness of enchantment in weapons, and so on. Even if you take all of those into account, there are also questions about the relative effectiveness of attack spells vs physical combat. That’s why having a specific purpose to be achieved by the House Rule is so important. Without it, too many such decisions are made ‘in the dark.’

    7. Failure Criteria

    We are increasingly going to find ourselves on familiar ground from this point in the process onwards. The importance of failure criteria and the setting of such criteria are unchanged, for example.

    8. Introduce

    One stage that should be a lot easier is bringing players on-board and getting them up to speed (perhaps those should be the other way around?) The House Rule has already been Justified, and consensus reached on the basic “shape” of that rule. So, unless you have completely reinvented the wheel or otherwise gone “off-script,” all that remains of the Justification stage is introducing the new Rule to the players and selling them on the notion that this is the solution to all of their problems – at least, to the ones that interrupted your last gaming session.

    9. Player Copies

    Assuming that the rule gets approval, the next step has to be getting everyone a fresh copy of the compiled House Rules – one that incorporates the new rule – as usual.

    10. First Draft

    Also, as above, the House Rule should never be considered completely finalized. House Rules are always a work in progress.

    11. Test-run (optional)

    As usual, it’s also a good idea to walk each of your players through an example or two of the new rule at this time, for three reasons: first, to make a final check for bugs or kinks; second, to familiarize everyone with the practicalities of implementing the new House Rule; and third, to imprint the presence of the new rule onto everyone’s psyche. It’s very easy, in the heat of play, to fall into doing things the same old way that you have become used to. Avoiding the complication of needing to interrupt and back-up real play, or fumbling around with the mere presence of the new rule, is worth the investment of a few minutes at the start of the game session in which they are introduced.

    12. Preserve Rules separate to Justification and Failure Criteria

    This advice is unchanged.

    13. Schedule A Review

    And ditto this advice.

    14. Fall-back Plan

    And ditto once again.

Both processes should take about the same length of time to implement, usually somewhere between 10 and 45 minutes, all told – though exceptional cases may go faster or take more time.

Based on ‘paper stack 1241478’ courtesy freeimages.com / Sarah Williams

In part 1, I identified AERO, four roles that the majority of significant NPCs occupy in most adventures or encounters:

• Ally
• Enemy
• Resource, and
• Opportunist

…and then considered the combinations, demonstrating how rich the in-game plot functions of characters became when one of these roles adopted one of the other roles as a secondary function.

We had allies working at cross-purposes to the PCs, and mercenary resources, and, well it’s quite a lengthy list, so go and read Part 1 if you haven’t done so already.

Everybody all caught up? Good! Then let’s dive right in, there’s only a little more to be said…

Everybody gets 5 minutes of fame

The goal of defining these roles is to make the NPCs more vibrant, more interesting, more rich in characterization, and to give them greater depth so that they can sustain repeated appearances within the campaign.

It might seem, at first, that it’s a waste of the GMs time to think about this for characters that are intended to be disposable, or to have one-off appearances. But that’s not the case; by making such characters more interesting, it facilitates them being the right-shaped “peg” to fill a plot need at a future time, and adds to their credibility and verisimilitude right now,.in their only scheduled appearance.

Enriching them in this way has to be done in advance, and can be enough to turn a one-off character into a recurring part of the campaign. The four plot functions (and their secondary combinations) are a way of synopsizing the characterization, enabling you to hone in on ways to make the character more interesting with minimal effort.

It can also be argued that its these one-night-only characters who are most in need of additional depth. More significant characters have generally been the recipients of additional care and design efforts lavished on them by the GM, anyway, so this analytic tool is less useful for them – though it can help cut through the fog of confusion to identify the most significant plot functions of even those characters.

The upshot is that there should be no NPCs who are exempt from this process of characterization. The benefits may vary, but every character will benefit. In general, if you are going to refer to a character by name or title, he deserves his five minutes of fame, and these role combinations give the character enough depth to withstand that level of scrutiny.

Avoiding The Mud

It might seem that if combinations of two are good, combinations of three would be even better. To some extent, this is true; but it’s easy to mistake complication for complexity. The more you add, the more you turn the characterization into a muddy mess.

You can see this illustrated in the image to the left. Note that I have enhanced the images to exaggerate the differences in color! Or, to put it another way – there’s only one way to combine the letters A, B, C and D four at a time. The only nuance comes from the sequence. A+B+C+D = D + B + A + C and any other permutation of the sequence that you can name. How many people remember in art class mixing so many colors together that what ended up with was this slightly grayish brown that wasn’t much use for anything, because it turned every color that was added to it into a minor variation of the same muddy color?

The practical reality is that combinations of two always work, and since that leaves two other traits to work with, there is usually one acceptable three-part combination for each primary-secondary combination. And yet, there is a way to nuance and finesse more complex combinations.

Avoiding the mud with clear objectives and motivations

Characters can be thought of as patchwork quilts, combinations of many different aspects of the central personality. Which aspect assumes dominance in any given situation is actually independent of the combination that usually comes to forefront. I have discovered that if you give each character a clear objective or set of objectives and a clear motivation for pursuing them, that combination permits you to sort through the various roles. The closer the result is to the dominant combination, the more comfortable and satisfied with his position on the issue the character will be; the farther removed from that primary combination, the farther from his comfort zone.

Still, it’s better to keep things a little on the simple side so that you can spare the maximum number of brain cells for other aspects of GMing. So I recommend combinations or two, perhaps with a weak tertiary role, most of the time.

Defined Profile-spaces

The next refinement to the concept, at least in theory, is that of extremism, This defines a relative strength for each of the three functions – for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that it’s a score out of ten to indicate how strong each element of the personality is. The result is the start of a characterization profile.

For example, a character might be defined as “Ally 2, Enemy 8, Resource 4, Opportunist 0.” This describes a character of strong convictions and personal code of conduct, whose ambitions are usually in conflict with those of the PCs. Under certain very select circumstances, he might ally with the PCs on a short-term basis, but he is more likely to supply needed resources and indirect assistance when the goals of the PCs and his own proclivities align.

Such profiles are useful in any number of ways. Entered into a spreadsheet, they permit sorting of available NPCs by interaction mode, making it simpler to select the NPC who is the best fit for the GM’s plot needs at the time. You can even think of it as a character sheet for the metagame level. They help ensure that you explore the entire metagame characterization space, rather than having too many characters who are too similar.

An obvious concept is to map the three non-zero elements into a three-dimensional space, something similar to an alignment grid but 3-dimensional and not two, as shown to the right. However, while the numeric profile can be useful, I have strong doubts that such a three-dimensional charting will have any practical value. I could be wrong, and if you come up with a way to make practical value of the idea, more power to you!

Part of the reason that I don’t think it’s going to be especially useful is that there’s more to a useful character profile than just the metrics discussed so far.

The Fourth Dimension: Eagerness and Reluctance

I’ve already said that the numeric score assigned to each profile axiom should represent the relative dominance of each role within the character’s profile. However, each of them should also have a separate measurement to indicate the character’s eagerness or reluctance to engage that profile role.

But that’s unwieldy and not all that practical. Instead, I recommend that a fifth metric be defined to represent the character’s eagerness or reluctance to engage an interaction mode other than his usual combination. This should only be employed when the encounter is not pre-planned and should never take the place of assessments based on the objectives and motivations of the character; if they become relevant to the encounter, they override this fall-back measure.

The Fifth Dimension: Fear and Courage

Or perhaps you would prefer “Caution” and “Brazenness”, as I do. This defines how much of a risk-taker the character is, which clearly influences the character’s willingness to escalate support or opposition from the resources level to actively supporting either the PCs or their enemies, as well as the demand for remuneration and reward in cases of opportunism. Note that a high degree of caution doesn’t mean that a character will never take an active role, it simply means that he has to be convinced that the risks have been adequately controlled or managed and that the potential rewards justify those risks. (It also probably means that he has an escape clause or some other way to back out if things take a turn in a unsatisfactory direction. A high level of Brazenness, in comparison, tends to indicate someone who will stick to their guns even in the face of reverses).

The Sixth Dimension: Preparation

The final quality that should feature in such a profile is how the character will assess unknowns, and to what extent he will extend himself to resolve them before committing. This is a difficult criterion to adequately label – I’ve gone through half-a-dozen variations without finding any that I’m completely happy with. Ultimately, I’ve (reluctantly) gone with Preparation, even though Prep usually means something completely different in an RPG context, and hence is susceptible to misinterpretation.

Some characters consider unknowns to magnify risks, a relatively pessimistic “glass half empty” perspective, and dislike committing themselves to anything without adequate research; others consider an unknown to be a variable, some of which will go their way and some of which won’t, and hence not as great a factor in their decision-making.

Complimentary Attributes

These are all complimentary attributes. None of them supplant or even guide the normal characteristics on a character sheet; they are all about the character’s attitudes and philosophies and how he will utilize his abilities, especially intelligence, wisdom, charisma, wealth, and so on.

Take a step back and assess

Whenever you create or categorize a character, always take a step back and double-check that the character will perform the plot function that you want in a manner that fits the adventure you have in mind. It’s very easy when dealing with the metagame level to take your eyes off the ball, and it’s even easier for your metagame profiling to have a logical disconnect with the actual capabilities described by the character sheet. For the optimum result, everything needs to be in harmony.

The Complete Metaprofile

So let’s recap: in the course of the two parts of this article, a number of qualities have been identified that define the role of an NPC in an adventure, and an approach to life in general.

A complete profile should like like this:

Allies ___/10
Enemies ___/10
Resource ___/10
Opportunist ___/10
Interpretation: ___________________________________________________________________

Eagerness(+)/Reluctance(-): ___/10
Brazenness(+)/Caution(-): ___/10
Preparation Insistence(±): ___/10

Put these ten meta-criteria together and you profile the way the character will function within the adventure. If you can synopsize the three text fields sufficiently briefly, a spreadsheet is the ideal format for tracking your NPCs, one to a line, enabling you to sort them by the different criteria and pick exactly the one that you need.

Used properly, the four roles and supplementary qualities that I have outlined are a great tool for managing your NPCs with the added advantage of giving them additional depth and richness of characterization. Give it a go!

‘One Model Four Ways’ based on beautiful-18279 courtesy pixabay.com (CC0 public domain)

Most NPCs occupy one of four niches in terms of their impact within an adventure or an encounter: Ally, Enemy, Resource, and Opportunist. I use AERO as a mnemonic to remind me of them.

The four roles

These four roles define, in broad parameters, how an NPC will interact with the PCs and how that interaction relates to the plotline (and sometimes to the setting, in a broader context). If that’s not entirely clear, a closer examination of the roles should clarify my meaning.

Allies

Allies provide substantive support and assistance to the PCs. Some allies are of convenience, and the alliance persists only until the situation in which both parties have a mutual interest is resolved.

Some are formal, and these can sometimes be superficial or even largely false, these allies-in-name-only are actually mislabeled enemies, and the balance of this section does not apply to them..

Some alliances are limited to actions in furtherance of mutual agendas or beliefs.

Still others are more deeply-rooted and persist until one party to the alliance betrays the other, or betrays the principle or agenda that they have in common – the distinction is highly nuanced, and the affronted party is will often not make any distinction between the two forms of betrayal. Of course, if the two allies truly have deeply-rooted values in common, such betrayal is extremely unlikely; it is more likely that some action will be misconstrued as a betrayal than that a willful betrayal will take place.

In any event, allies have a very broad role in any adventure in which they are encountered. They provide assistance that goes beyond mere resources, fulfilling an active role in helping the PCs complete their mission or quest, whatever it might be, potentially placing themselves at risk in the process.

Enemies

Enemies try to hinder the PCs, to prevent them from achieving their goals. Some opposition arises because the PCs goal, or their actions in furtherance of it, would inconvenience the enemy. Some is due to misunderstandings, leaving the door open for an eventual alliance; the more baggage accumulated in the form of active opposition, though, the harder this becomes to overlook and the more entrenched the positions become.

Some opposition is formal – i.e. one party is required to oppose the other because of some other alliance they might have in good faith. “The friend of my enemy will act as my enemy.” It can be true that before a true target can be effectively engaged, a key ally must be neutralized or even persuaded to change sides.

Most opposition, however, is more deeply rooted. Fundamental goals or philosophies may be in opposition, and historical actions may be too divisive to permit a gap of antagonism to be bridged, and the enemy has to be defeated so thoroughly that a fundamental change in nature takes place, permitting a reappraisal of the established relationship.

Resources

Resources are enablers, permitting the PCs to carry out some task in furtherance of their goal, but not actively taking part in the quest or mission beyond providing the tools, equipment, or knowledge required. The PCs have to do the actual work, a Resource simply gives them what they need in order to do so.

One peculiar thing that I have noted about Resource NPCs, as they have appeared in various games in which I have played, modules that I have read, and articles that have been posted through the years: It always seems to be the case that they are highly over-developed or under-developed, relative to other NPCs. In some cases, they are viewed as a disposable “resource delivery system”; in others, they are the most complex and complicated characters within the adventure. Neither is best-practice, in my book; and both are undesirable.

Resources may be cooperative or compelled; providing the Resource that they posses willingly or because they are forced to do so. Some resources span both, unwilling to assist except in exchange for some service or payment.

Opportunists

Which brings us to Opportunists, who attempt to use the PCs and their efforts to benefit some cause or agenda of their own. Sometimes, these side quests are tasks the PCs are happy to undertake, at other times they can be the cause of considerable angst and reluctance. Sometimes – probably the most boring times – they simply want to be paid a fair remuneration.

Using opportunists properly is an art form. There are times when a side quest will merely increase the players’ frustration levels, and there are times when they will greatly intensify the anticipation. More than anything else, the way the GM treats Opportunists at any given moment should be a function of their emotional intensity planning, a subject that is beyond the scope of this article – if interested, or you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out Swell And Lull: Emotional Pacing in RPGs Part 1 and Part 2 and the Further Thoughts On Pacing four-part series which specifically deals with interruptions, including side quests and the other demands of Opportunists.

The Other Types: Nobodies & Motivators

Strictly speaking, there are two other types of NPC: Nobodies, who contribute nothing but color and verisimilitude (which includes no-name grunts to back up the enemies) by virtue of their presence, and Motivators, who provide motivation for the PCs to undertake the mission/quest/adventure and sometimes context. Since they make no contribution to the adventure itself beyond these extremely limited roles, they play no further part in terms of this article – but I thought I should at least mention them.

Adding Color Through a secondary role

It was strongly hinted at in the descriptions of the primary roles given above that characters become more interesting when you add a second function into the mix. Since like doesn’t add anything when partnered with like – allies and allies, for example – there are twelve combinations to consider. Some of these have already been touched on, but this is a more discrete and comprehensive list.

Allies

The first category are allies who are nominally something else.

1a. Enemies who ally

A perennial favorite, it’s possible to overuse this concept (but you have to try really hard). The question is always about motivation. Does the alliance further some agenda of the enemy? Does the primary enemy threaten the temporary ally? Is the enemy competing or contending with the temporary ally for a resource? Does the temporary ally have some moral or ethical common ground with the PCs? Is it simply a question of mutual survival? Is it simply a case of the temporary ally preferring a known enemy who has already been factored into his plans to an unknown threat? And these possibilities are far from the limit.

One of the favorite recurring NPCs in the Zenith-3 campaign is Voodoo Willy, named for the character in Predator 2, who explores the inherent contradictions in the concept of an “Ethical Drug-lord”. He sells to white collar workers, and is quite prepared to use violence to protect his turf, but he won’t sell to children, and there are certain drugs that he so vehemently opposes that he is perfectly willing to assist the PCs either directly as an ally or indirectly as a resource in wiping them out. He employs long-term planning, and is not afraid to take a short-term loss or reduction in profitability to support a long-term customer. He even helps his best customers get and keep good, well-paying employment – so that they can continue to fatten his wallet in the longer term. He survives by perpetually making himself the lesser of whatever evils are around at the time. He even recently (and temporarily) suspended his whole operation to try and assist the team in dealing with a problem that was affecting both of them. (If the players haven’t figured out that there is a long-term plan for this character’s role in the campaign, they’ve been sleeping through it!)

In fact, one of the themes of the whole Zenith-3 campaign is “shifting alliances”, as friends become enemies and enemies become friends, compelled by cosmic events reshaping the underlying ideologies of the entire multiverse in the lead-up to what is informally known as “The Apocalypse”, which is the planned epic conclusion to the entire campaign. The fun of combining such a theme with an ambiguous character like Willy is that he could go either way, becoming a reformed ex-enemy or a serious threat who has been able to build up his power base by never showing his full hand to the PCs.

Actually, calling Willy “ambiguous” is a disservice – he makes no bones about what he does and at all times exudes clarity of purpose and motivation. It’s just that the PCs can never tell what’s going to happen with him next…

1b. Resources who ally

Here, too, motivation is the essential that has to be rock-solid. It could be as simple as a mercenary action on the part of the Resource, or a response to a mutual threat, or signing on to the mission in order to protect carefully-curated resources that could be placed at risk if the PCs step over a line. Or it could be a mutually-beneficial alliance in which the NPC garners additional resources, some of which he has pledged to employ in supporting the primary mission objective of the PCs. Or, once again, a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for now.”

This actually turns an over-developed Resource character into an asset by providing a showcase for the depth of characterization,
a definite benefit if you are guilty of this commonplace error in time-management.

The converse is also interesting to contemplate – an NPC who would normally be considered an ally but who cannot support or be seen to support the current endeavor in any official capacity but who nevertheless makes vital information or other resources available to the PCs (usually by looking the other way momentarily). By placing implied limits on the alliance, you hint at the prospect of the alliance ending, adding an overtone of potential future enmity.

1c. Opportunists who ally

Mercenaries will sign on for monetary gain or other reward, but sometimes they can change their mind about the fee they are charging when confronted with the stakes, or when other priorities usurp the primacy of the profit motivation. Some opportunists may recognize the chance to gain (even if it’s only the PCs owing them a favor) and deem it valuable enough for the effort and the risk. Only very experienced and creative GMs should ever adopt this path without a clear understanding of what the Opportunist stands to gain and how they will employ whatever benefit they receive as a result. In particular, GMs should always have a clear idea of when any favors will be called in and what the PCs will be asked to do before implementing this NPC role.

Enemies

The second category are characters who function as enemies, even though they may nominally be something else.

2a. Allies who oppose

As the old saying goes, “with friends like these…” allies don’t always agree, and even when supposedly on the same side, there can often be good (or bad) reasons for them to oppose each other. In particular, allies will often be uncomfortable at the prospect of being relegated to the demeaning status of “junior partner”. Consequently, when the PCs are, or are perceived to be, representative of one of the partners in an alliance, they may find supposed allies getting in the way for reasons of their own.

If the antagonism that results is strong enough, lines may be crossed that can never be un-crossed, and the alliance itself placed at risk. This is especially likely to occur when short term ambitions and goals say one thing is beneficial, and long-term ambitions and principles advise something as “wise”. Inevitably, one partner in the alliance will consider the immediate problem or situation to be of paramount importance, even if it worsens the long-term outlook (no-one can predict the future with complete certainty so who knows what the long term will actually look like until you get there), while the other side is more willing to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gain. Such differences in perspective are sure to maroon the alliance on rocky ground, as the short-term / immediate-problem solvers behave in ways that are detrimental to what the long-term thinkers want to achieve.

In the worst-case scenario, party A can sacrifice the short-term for the long term, only to find that party B has performed actions or implemented decisions that make their short-term more secure at the price of completely undermining any hope of party A ever achieving whatever it is that they have sacrificed in order to achieve.

There are other variations. Two allies might agree completely on the long-term vision, but have completely different and mutually contradictory approaches to achieving it in the short term.

In fact, there are a host of reasons why one party to an alliance might perceive the actions of another as betraying that alliance for their own benefit.

All this is as much about the personalities and perspicacity of the strategic planners and key advisers on both sides as anything else. Even oxymorons can posses a political and strategic reality when viewed from the right perspective: “To make all men free, we must first conquer all men, liberating them from the oppression they now experience,” for example. Or, as Toby puts it at one point in the West Wing (when discussing the imposition of American Ideals and Values on the Middle East), “They’ll like us when we win.” Every revolution sets out to correct some social or political wrong, real or perceived – though the leaders of those revolutions may have less pure motivations.

2b. Resources who oppose

Just because you know, and are supposed to tell another, doesn’t mean that you necessarily want to do so. Just because you are willing to help may not mean that you are willing for it to be obvious or public that you are cooperating.

There’s already a question, when it comes to Resources – why are they not allies? There is almost always a danger, real or perceived, involved, and if that danger seems immediate enough, a resource may refuse to cooperate or even lie rather than embrace the danger.

Equally, some resources are beholden to others, and no matter how inclined to assist the Resource might be, the attitude of that superior may be markedly different.

Resources who are supposed to help, but instead hinder, are a fact of life.

2c. Opportunists who oppose

“I’ve received a better offer.” Opportunists have no loyalty to the cause of the PCs, and only their own personal morality to guide their behavior – and that can be very shaky ground upon which to erect any sort of trust.

The more ‘honest’ and ‘honorable’ may state their (bought and paid-for) loyalties or opposition up front; the less reputable may play along, a fifth column in the PCs’ ranks.

Resources

Resources can be, supposedly, something quite different. This never fails to add depth and complexity to a campaign, provided that the characters and characterizations are consistent (if you aren’t sure of the distinction, character is what a person does, and characterization is why they do it – motives and thought processes and fragilities of logic and so on. The latter is rendered more complex by the fact that someone can do something for one reason and think their motives are something completely different; we all have our blind spots!

3a. Allies with resources

If a supposed ally provides a resource and nothing more, there are clearly limits to the alliance. The question of why they are not participating more substantive in the adventure becomes a defining one for the relationship between the PCs (and/or whoever they represent) and the supposed ally and whoever or whatever they represent.

The various intelligence agencies of the US Government are all supposedly on the same side, i.e. allies. but that implies that they never keep secrets from each other (something that 9/11 proves not to be rue, never engage in turf wars, never compete with budgets, never oppose another agency even if it risks an asset of their own, and so on. It is self-evident, however, that none of these things are true.

An alliance is never a total commitment of support, even in operational terms. The limits placed on cooperation and depth of support always define the party to the alliance as much as they characterize the alliance itself..

3b. Enemies with resources

Time to dance with the devil… sometimes, only an enemy has the resources that the PCs need. Here, it’s always a question of the quid-pro-quo. It must be remembered that if the enemy had a genuine interest in the outcome, they would either actively oppose as enemies or actively support the PCs as allies, however temporary. So this inherently blends in a little of the Opportunist role as well, for a richly complex situation.

That, of course, assumes that the PCs don’t take the bull by the horns and simply treat the enemy as an enemy and go in after whatever it is that they need – and that makes for fun storytelling, too, but it pushes everyone further into intractably opposing ideological corners. Some groups are fine with that, while others will want to leave themselves some wriggle room. Even the debate over the correct course of action makes for fun roleplaying – though the GM should be wary of players over-identifying with their character’s positions, because that can sometimes become a problem in the heat of the moment.

3c. Opportunists with resources

In a way, this is the purest of definitions of the Opportunist, and of the Resource. This role says ‘I have what you need and these are my terms’. As is usually the case with the Opportunist, it really comes down to what they are demanding in return for the expenditure of their resources, and whether or not the players are willing for their characters to pay it.

It’s a favorite tactic to ask for something relatively benign, a price that the players are willing to pay or at least concede is reasonable, only for that deal to turn around in time and bite them because there is a consequence that they haven’t factored into their calculations, some assumption that they are making that the Opportunist can exploit. This very much depends on the GM knowing the players and their thinking, and in particular, what they may have overlooked, and it can lose a lot of its impact if the players think about the situation in-between game sessions; it’s just not as much fun if they work out the consequences for themselves instead of letting the GM swat them between the eyes with a plot twist.

Because players get smarter over time, and more used to this sort of deep thinking, this is the sort of thing that can be done only so often, so I tend to save it for the times when it really will make life more ‘interesting’ for the PCs; be careful not to waste the opportunity.

Opportunists

There are circumstances in which other roles can function as opportunists within the adventure. This is the last set of the two-fold combination patterns.

4a. Allies with agendas

The most obvious ones are allies with agendas of their own, who attempt to take advantage of whatever is going on in order to further that agenda. Every group, faction, or individual should always have an agenda of their own, even if it’s simply to keep things the way they are. This places allies in a particularly interesting situation since they are more likely than an enemy to learn about something that is going on through the alliance; if the actions being undertaken by the PCs are not in keeping with their agenda, they may act to “contain” the damage, rather than becoming enemies. This strains the alliance, and may require some fence-building afterwards. But it’s equally likely that they will simply take advantage of the actions of the PCs to push their agenda forward – for example, the PCs negotiate safe passage through the Orcish territories in order to deal with the Goblin Necromancer who is their real target, but one of the PCs allies learns of this and takes advantage of the distraction posed by the PCs to raid the Orcs. This furthers the agenda of the ally, who expands their territory at the expense of an enemy, but it also looks to the Orcs as though it is a betrayal of the truce between them and the PCs, so they send the PCs a warning – curb their ally, and punish him for his impudence, or be targeted. This puts the PCs in the difficult position of taking direct action against an ally, giving their real enemy the chance to better prepare to face them, or pressing on with the added complication of bands of Orcish Assassins dogging their every footstep, and potentially gatecrashing the most delicately-poised situations along the way. It may even open the door to negotiations between the Orcs and the Necromancer, doubling the PCs headaches.

All allies have agendas. Any agenda can complicate a situation. This should spell opportunity to the GM.

4b. Enemies who take opportunities

Enemies are even worse. An ally might at least restrain themselves because of the potential harm to their allies or to the principle of the alliance itself; an enemy usually has no such scruples. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the GM should keep track of who enemies are, how they gather intelligence, what they already know, and what they are desirous of achieving, then review every situation that arises (or can be perceived or even mispercieved as arising) to see if it creates an opportunity for them to do something to further their cause while the PCs are busy and/or distracted.

Every plan the PCs come up with should include contingencies for dealing with Opportunistic enemies, or they are asking for trouble. They cannot commit their whole resources, or should not be able to do so, needing to keep something in reserve; which is a problem when it’s going to take everything the PCs have to deal with their immediate problems and priorities.

That’s a major reason why the PCs need allies – to watch their back and keep an eye on things while they are busy elsewhere. But, as noted in 4a, there is a price to pay for every ally…

4c. Resources who take opportunities

The final category of compound characterization to be considered is the notion of people providing resources to the PCs who perceive an opportunity for themselves in the process. It’s entire reasonable for a character to be helping with one hand (perhaps because he’s obligated to do so) while reaching out for everything that isn’t nailed down on his own behalf, perhaps even functioning as an enemy resource. Imagine this scenario: The PCs go to a resource for assistance, which he supplies – for a price. He then turns around and sells information about the PCs to their enemy, perhaps using an alias to disguise himself (so that the enemy can’t spill the beans)..

No matter who wins, the mercenary Resource will do quite well out of the resulting situation.

Adding Nuance with flexibility

The more roles that any given NPC is providing as a function within the adventure, the greater the flexibility and nuance that he has available for future appearances, and the more interesting the players will find those future appearances.

I’ve got more to say on the subject, but I’m out of time for this article. So I’ll just have to pick this up again, in part 2!

San Francisco Skyline by freeimages.com / Gerd Marstedt

The examination of the consequences to a community being located close to the center of administrative, political, and economic power that is a national capital continues. To recap: So far, I have looked at:

1. Proximity To Power
2. Proximity To Authority
3. Proximity To News
4. Access To Communications
5. Proximity To Trade
6. Proximity To Opportunity
7. Proximity To Fashion
8. Proximity To Style
9. Proximity To Expertise
10. Proximity To Comfort
11. Protection From The Outside (“Monsters”/Aliens in D&D terms)
12. Protection From Foreigners

Twelve down, eleven to go….

13. Shelter From Disruption

Civil disruptions are always a headache for the authorities based in the primary population center. They, quite understandably, do everything they can to prevent or minimize these problems, but their reach is both limited and grows weaker with increasing distance from the seat of authority.

Such disruptions are also a problem for ordinary people because they are often accompanied by violence. People die in such human disasters. That means that the steps authorities take to prevent or stop these disruptions have the side effect of protecting those living near the authority center from the incidental consequences of the disruption.

14. Protection From Disaster

Note that this is true of every type of disruption that I can think of, from revolution to slave revolt to famine, with the possible exception (depending the actions of the authority) of plagues.

There are a couple of special cases that need to be considered.

Earthquakes can strike anywhere, though mountainous terrain is more likely to experience this type of distaste, mainly because the same forces that cause earthquakes also build mountains. However, it’s relatively rare for central governments to be located in such terrain. Because they are often amongst the oldest settlements within the nation, they tend to be located in places where civilizations get a leg up on survival – relatively flat land, good for crops, and with at least one and possibly two rivers in the vicinity. Coastal areas also gain access to the sea as a food source, providing a further advantage. While it’s possible to have a major settlement with one of these factors being absent, any more would place the community at such a competitive disadvantage that better-situated populations will soon outstrip the deficient one in terms of growth, preventing it from ever becoming the administrative center of a nation.

More mature cultures are a somewhat different story; as they become more adept at transport of goods and managing resources, defense comes to assume a more dominant role in the selection of a central point of authority; while defensibility might well have been an additional factor in early settlement locations (especially in a D&D-type world with lots of wild creatures posing extreme dangers to the populace), they are a remote consideration compared to the other necessities for life and growth.

So, both the central point of authority and the surrounding local communities are equally at risk from Earthquakes. However, if one does happen to strike, the expertise and manpower needed for a quick recovery from the event are more readily available in the primary population base than anywhere else in the nation. So the principle of Protection From Disaster still applies.

The other special case is that of a Flood. Remember the terrain description offered when discussing earthquakes – mostly flat, with one or more rivers (in fact, often where a fork in a river provides protection on multiple sides)? This is terrain that is acutely and regularly susceptible to Flooding.

Under some circumstances, that’s not a bad thing. Annual flooding by the Nile was what made the Ancient Egyptian civilization possible. If flooding can be contained and controlled, it poses little threat. When that’s not the case, floods can do a LOT of indiscriminate and widespread damage to infrastructure.

Flooding is one of those events that are vaguely cyclic in statistical intensity. Once a year, you will have a ‘typical’ flood, give or take a margin of error, and most years, that’s that. But the longer you make that time period, the more scope you have for a flood of greater destructive power to materialize. A ten-year flood is the average of the worst flood over multiple ten-year time-spans; once a decade, you can expect a flood of that power to eventuate and have to be dealt with. Once every 25 years, there will be a still-worse flood, because there’s more time for the long-odds to show up. Almost all cities will have protections in place sufficient to cope with a once-a-decade flood event; many will have invested the time, money, labor, and engineering expertise that will enable them to cope with a once-in-a-generation (i.e. 25 year) flood. But each time you extend the time period, the costs of the required engineering go up, and the return on investment grows proportionately smaller. Only key areas and buildings within a city will usually be engineered to survive a once-in-a-century event, if that. A once-in-a-millennium flood event? Not a chance.

There’s a simple mechanism by which the statistics of floods and similar recurring disasters (hurricanes, etc) can be examined – all you need is a die. The optimum choice is somewhere around the d12 mark. Each year, you roll for the intensity of the flooding, but if you roll an eleven or twelve, you roll again and add 10 to the result.

Using anydice, I rolled 200 of them, and here are the results (where a result exploded, the original result and the additional die roll results are shown bold in brackets before the actual result): 3, 3, 2, 4, 6, 10, 4, 4, 9, 3, 3, 4, 9, 2, 4, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 2, 3, (11. 2) 12, 6, 4, 3, 6, 4, (12, 4) 14, 7, 8, 4, 7, (12, 3) 13, (12, 8) 18, 3, 12, 4, 5, 7, 4, 4, (11, 10) 20, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 10, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 6, 2, 7, 9, (12, 9) 19, 10, (11, 8) 18, 10, 10, (12, 10) 20, 8, 5, 2, 4, 4, 3, 2, (11, 10) 20, 12, 12, 9, 7, (11, 2) 12, 6, 9, (12, 7) 17, 9, 6, 5, 4, 7, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 8, (12, 7) 17, 4, 2, 7, 1, 5, 10, 7, (12, 9) 19, 2, 6, 2, 4, 2, 10, 4, 12, 2, 10, (11, 6) 16, 4, 9, 2, 5, 6, 6, 5, 2, 1, (11, 1) 11, 5, 6, 10, 10, 9, 6, 1, (12, 4) 14, 8, 9, (11, 9) 19, (11, 3) 13, 3, 2, (12, 8) 18, 7, 6, 3, (12, 11, 9) 29, 1, 2, 8, 3, 2, 3, (12, 6) 16, (12, 5) 15, 2, 6, 8, 3, 1, 9, 7, 2, 5, 9, 7, 2, 6, 1, 9, 8, 8, 5, 4, 3, 2, 6, 8, 6, 1, 4, 1, 1, (12, 11, 4) 24, 4, (11, 6) 16, 4, 10, 1, (12, 12, 3) 23, 8, 1, 4, 5, 4, 10, 7, 5, 9, 9, (11, 1) 11, 2, 2, 5, 6.

Ignoring all those numbers that ‘exploded’, I get an average of 5.135 from 170 results. If I average all 200, I get an average of 6.825. Since 30 of the results exploded, that means that the average interval between these results is 200/30 = 6-and-2/3rds years. Call it seven years. So, once every 7 years (on average) flooding will be worse than usual. How much worse? Well, the average of those 30 results is 16.4, and 16.4 is .almost 3.2 × 5.135 – so about 320% of the average ‘good’ year.

This is all rather arbitrary, the real thing wouldn’t be so linear, it would be a dumbbell curve of some sort with one side distorted – the sort of thing that you get from divided and multiplied die rolls. Something like [1d6 + (2d6 × d12)] / d6, round down, for example – which gives a result of 1 to 150, so we would then apply a numerical factor to get a more convenient scale. Which scale you use would depend on the number of results that were acceptable over the defining threshold value (the threshold in the simpler experiment was 10, and it gave us a once-in-seven years cycle; by choosing the number of results above “statistical normal” relative to the total number that you roll, you can define whether or not you’re scaling to get once-in-a-decade results or whatever). (If you use the averages of the individual die rolls, you can work out the mean result – [3.5 + (7×6.5)] / 3.5 = 14. On which basis, I would suggest that 28 is a natural threshold value. (Another big advantage of this approach is that there are a lot of results that will yield the minimum, effectively “no floods this year” – which is a lot more realistic).

Proximity here is the enemy of the neighboring community. What affects the population center also affects it, but it’s far less likely to be as well-resourced for recovery. So flooding is one case in which the protection of proximity fails, and in fact the opposite is true. But it’s very much the exception.

15. Exposure To Crime

Cities are notorious for crime. When I was growing up, in a small country town, we only locked the front door if we were all going away for some period of time. Going out for the day, or for an evening? No chance. We usually locked the door only when we went to bed for the night. I’m told that things have degenerate somewhat since, but it’s still a very safe community relative to the city in which I now live.

Being close to the population center means that you are also close to its vices, and that unfortunately includes crime.

16. Sensitivity To Disruption

There’s been a gradual general shift in emphasis from the positive to the negative in terms of characterizing the impact of proximity. That’s not entirely an accident. Back in item 13, I argued that a community in close proximity to the central authority was largely protected against the disruptions of chaos and anarchy that all human societies experience from time to time by the same mechanisms that the central authority uses to protect itself. But there’s a flip side to that coin, a converse case: if, despite their best efforts, the central authority is convulsed with some form of civil disruption, the impact on their regional neighbors will be almost as great. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that the central authority is the target of such unrest, and therefore a magnet for it, it would arguably be worse for the surrounding communities who don’t enjoy quite the same level of resources as the central authority. The only reason it’s worse for the central authority is because they are the natural target.

17. The Splash Effect

In fact, any measure aimed at the central authority is likely to hit the regional communities with a “splash effect”. This is to the benefit of the central authority, because it means that the neighboring regional communities have more in common with the central authority than they have differences, helping the central authority cement the loyalty of those from whom it would otherwise be in the greatest danger.

18. Conservatism

In modern times, it’s the populations farthest removed from central authority – “out in the sticks with the hicks” – that are notoriously conservative, while the relative luxury and leisure time afforded urban populations and exposure to foreign ideas permits the formulation of progressive, even radical, ideas. Things would not be so clear-cut in substantially different time periods. Protection and Shelter from so many potential dangers encourages support for the political power that provides that protection. The farther away you get, the looser the grip of that central authority, and the greater the self-reliance and likelihood of coming into contact with new ideas – so it is the areas closest to the major population bases that would be the most politically and ideologically conservative, and those remote that were the most progressive, independent of thought, and radical.

And yet, that’s not going to be true of all conservative values. Close to the central population bases, the economic pressured and opportunities are going to be disruptive to nuclear families to some extent. Those disruptive forces would also attenuate with distance, at least to some extent. That means that in terms of anything with a cause rooted in economics and opportunity, the neighboring communities are going to be more like the central urban population and less like the more remote rural communities.

19. Dependence

Another definite downside to derive from the close relationship between central authority and neighboring communities is also implied by the above section. More remote communities are generally accustomed to making what they need or doing without. But when any product you can afford is just a day or two away, the capacity to be self-reliant tends to be lost very quickly. It’s easier to go out and buy something than it is to learn how to do it yourself; and the work tends to be of a more professional standard.

All of which adds up to a growing dependence on the central authority. Farmers will start planting the crops that offer the greatest financial return, enabling them to trade their wares for goods and services, gradually becoming more of a suburban offshoot of the central population than an independent community.

The trend is for the residents to become, and to willfully aspire to become, more like their more urban neighbors.

20. Exposure To Inequality

There are a number of downsides to being closer to the main population base. One of them is that social and economic inequalities are going to be greater in frequency, in numbers affected, and in intensity, simply because the wealthy and connected can afford to gravitate toward that population base because they are amongst the few who can afford to do so. “Splash effect” then means that all the resulting social, political, and economic baggage that comes with such inequalities will spread out to affect the neighboring communities. Perhaps not to the same extent as the urban population, but to a nevertheless significant level.

The first consequence is that these inequalities will be replicated in smaller scale in the surrounding communities. Proximity to wealth and power always makes a lesser standard of wealth and power seem more inequitable. This only grows worse with increasing industrialization, because progress perpetually offers new pathways to wealth and power.

21. Exposure To Poverty

In particular, the gap between the richest members of the community and the poorest members of the community gets wider with every step toward the center of population. This, of course, is one of the reasons behind the increased exposure to crime (item 15 above) – you have a combination of inequity and a large amount of wealth in the form of the rich, the privileged, taxes, tithes, merchants and trade goods all funneling through these areas. It’s a combination that can’t help but attract criminals.

22. Exposure To Disease

With poverty typically comes disease, and disease is a great leveler in many societies. Anyone can become ill, and while the wealthy and privileged might be able to obtain better care, there are always limits to medical knowledge. In particular, many popular remedies are now recognized as having been worse than the disease. There have been times, for example, in which lead was in a great many products for the whitening properties of it’s compounds; there was a time when radium was in everything (including toothpaste!) because it’s glow was thought to symbolize vitality and energy; there was a time when arsenic compounds were all over the place because people liked the many hues of green that they contained (arsenic-colored wallpaper was especially popular and the rich green of Victorian times is still associated with that era)…. the list goes on and on.

And that’s before you even get to things like asbestos, considered a miracle material in its heyday. Then you throw in bloodletting, leeches, trepanning, electroshock, and prefrontal lobotomies, all accepted and recommended medical practices in their eras. So greater access to the medical profession is not necessarily a good thing! While many home remedies have been shown to be of dubious effectiveness, if not discredited entirely, for the most part, they at least did little or no harm….

23. Restriction Of Opportunity

I made a fuss in item 6 about residents having “access to opportunity”, and stand by it. But it is also true that opportunities are more easily lost or stifled, or appropriated by someone more wealthy or powerful. Many games are set in times and places where there was no protection of intellectual property, where you could come up with a good idea in the morning, develop it into profitability in the afternoon, and have better-resourced and opportunistic entrepreneurs move in on the idea in the evening.

The greater your proximity to those with the capacity to steal an innovation, the more likely someone of dubious morality will have the opportunity to do so.

The other form of opportunity is by way of discovery and exploration. In the capital, missions of exploration may be underwritten; in the fringes, one can go prospecting simply by keeping your eyes open and your wits about you as you go about your daily life. Opportunity is always somewhat stifled and restricted for those stuck in the middle.

The Reality Of Proximity

I can’t think of a single aspect of life that is not influenced, for good or ill (or both) by proximity to a major population center. It’s a factor that must be taken into account in assessing every creative decision you make. By shaping the external circumstances from which they derive, the effects on NPCs (and PCs) who were born or who reside in such locations are affected no less profoundly.

To some extent, both these truths reinforce each other; social circumstances are ultimately driven by people just as much as people are shaped by the environment around them.

And finally, any of these circumstances and effects can lie at the heart of an adventure, shaping it and the people encountered within it.

Part 3 of this series will follow in a week or two, in which the spotlight shifts to the remote fringes of a nation…

Brooklyn Bridge by freeimages.com / Piotr Bizior

When I started writing this article, it was expected to be another short one. I had only 3 or 4 impacts in mind… deeper analysis when I started detailed planning soon dispelled that expectation. Of necessity, I’ve had to break it into smaller pieces…

Being close to the population / administration / social center of a nation has great social impact. In the course of this article, I will list and analyze no less than 23 consequences, both for good and ill.

And when that’s done, I have a similar list of consequences of being remote from the center of power. There’s a lot to do, so let’s get busy…

1. Proximity To Power

Being located close to the central power base means that you are squarely in the gaze of that power base. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, or even both in different respects at the same time. Local problems come to the attention of power quickly, and they are predisposed to resolve those problems expeditiously because of the proximity to themselves. Which can be either good or bad, depending on the fastest way to solve the problem!

2. Proximity To Authority

The converse is that the local community are going to be amongst the first to experience the impact of any decisions made by the power-base, usually with no regard of that local community.

3. Proximity To News

One of the consequences of proximity to a central population base is that there is a steady stream of traffic both to the population center and from it, and travelers carry news. The local community will be amongst the first to learn of events within the population center and will often learn of events in the outlands even before the central bureaucracy.

4. Access To Communications

Clever people will always recognize the potential in the proximity to news to shape the narrative of events in a manner that they can exploit. Actually being located in the central power-base is often considered the ideal placement for such purposes, but being on the fringes of it can be almost as good if not better. That’s because, despite the proximity to it, the local community is not the central base, and no matter how closely scrutinized that local community might be, it is not going to be as closely analyzed as the residents and important visitors of the population center itself. If you want to operate from the shadows, it can be helpful to take a small step away from the light.

But there is also a legitimate impact: access to communications helps keep families and friends united despite any separation between them. The consequence is that key families will be distributed across key areas of the nation and nevertheless present a relatively unified family structure. That positions them as movers and shakers, able to wield considerable influence from behind the scenes while rarely being noticed. Once again, if you want to operate from the shadows….

5. Proximity To Trade

It’s incredibly rare for a central population base to be self-sufficient. Food and resources almost always have to be brought in from the outside. Where commodities are perishable, the source needs to nevertheless be as close as possible to the central population. That makes the local communities with physical proximity to the central population the primary suppliers, as well as funnel points for other commodities passing through en route to the capital. On top of that, the proximity means that exotic supplies from elsewhere are either continuously passing through (and accessible) or not far away. All this presents ready-made opportunities for trade.

What’s more, a central bureaucracy always carries an overhead cost. The hope is always that buying in bulk and creating favorable regulations counterbalance that cost and keeps trade with the central community attractive to merchants. Canny local traders can sometimes intercept products bound for the central market when demand is higher than the merchants expect, undercutting the central economy to make a profit. This is an example of employing the proximity to news and their physical position as a gate-keeper to the central authority to achieve a trade advantage – a scenario whose prospects are only enhanced by the second impact of the access to communications impact. This combination means that many of the financial and trade leaders of the nation, the equivalent of “the titans of industry”, will emerge from the local communities close to the central population base.

The faster and more secure bulk transport and communications are, the farther these entrepreneurs origin points can be from the central authority, because the liabilities of remoteness are minimized.

6. Proximity To Opportunity

There will always be more opportunities generated in a major population center than in any other single location in a nation. But life in the population center is often so much of a struggle that it can be difficult to take advantage of those opportunities. It is often the case that those best positioned to do so are on the fringes of that population center. At least, many of them will think so, anyway.

The reality is slightly different. While there are always some who are consumed with their existing lives in the population center, there are still many more people where they came from; the reality is that there is almost always someone in a position to recognize and take up the opportunity within the dominant population center.

This is sure to be the cause for extremely bitterness to those residents of the neighboring local populations of entrepreneurial bent, who would feel that at best, they got the dregs of what the main population center left behind, the crumbs from their tables. Still others would live in perpetual expectation that one day, the stars would align and they would be in the right place at the right time. And a few, fueled by jealousy, would be determined to make their mark and force their way into the prosperity that was “up for grabs if you wanted it badly enough”.

Proximity To Opportunity would be a key factor in shaping the hopes and aspirations of many of those living near the central community.

7. Proximity To Fashion

One of the deepest insults that can be offered to a local community is to describe the citizenry as “quaint”, because while this is a polite phraseology, it implies that the community are out-of-touch, behind-the-times, and – in a word – uncool, just as “queer” was analogous to “strange” until the mid-twentieth century came along.

The closer one gets to the center of power in a nation, the more deeply this insult bites, because they are in close proximity to the latest fashions and trends. Indeed, many will be prone to taking this aspect of their social lives far more seriously than those who actually set those trends in the urban capital itself, who can approach the subject far more casually, almost as a byproduct of life in a contemporary metropolis.

Those living near to the population center will be amongst the first to learn – and the first to actively seek to learn – of the latest trends and stylings. This is not a superficiality to them; it is a key element not in an appearance of sophistication so much as avoiding the appearance of a lack of sophistication and culture.

8. Proximity To Style

That goes for every other form of cultural expression, not just clothing styles and hairdos and the like. There is often a slight cultural arrogance that results, a sense that the surrounding communities are adopting and expressing the latest styles in their most pure sense, of taking the melange of cultural influences at work in the central population and distilling out the ones that matter, that are important.

To those outside the immediate proximity, and any of those in the urban center itself, these cultural elements are trivial and pretentious, the farthest thing from important that you could get, which only serves to underscore the impact that Proximity To Fashion has on those surrounding communities.

9. Proximity To Expertise

There are all sorts of reasons for expertise to gravitate to the central community. That’s where the patrons are who value the service that they provide to the community and can afford to underwrite it. That’s where the customers are for the goods and services that they have to offer. That’s where decisions are made that will affect them, and where they have the opportunity to shape those decisions, or at least have their voices heard.

One result is that the local communities closest to the central community will know that any expertise that they happen to need is only a day or two’s travel away. This tends to downplay any independent creativity and raw resourcefulness; there is less of a “make do” attitude. Instead, the local communities become accustomed to paying for things instead of making something that’s “close enough” for themselves.

10. Proximity To Comfort

Another impact on the local communities is that they have easy access to luxuries. Expectations of comfort will be higher as a base-line and exceptions to that base-line will tend to be in the direction of greater luxury, overall. As with several of these impacts, you can even get a rough indication of distance from the population nexus by charting the minimum standards of luxury expected across a consistent measure, for example in a prosperous home.

11. Protection From The Outside

While this effect is true for all nations regardless of genre, it is most clearly explained by translating it into it’s interpretation in one specific game/genre: D&D/Pathfinder, where it would be described as “Protection From Monsters”. Because the lands around the central authority are going to be the most “pacified” of the entire nation, the best-cleared, few monsters will trouble them in comparison to communities in the outlands. What’s more, this is where the nation is militarily strongest, and best able to respond to those incidents that do occur.

If Dragons were as fearsome as they are in a Tolkien novel, there would be times when that would not mean very much, but most such creatures, though both tough and dangerous, can be driven off by military force; enough archers pose a definite threat to such creatures.

12. Protection From Foreigners

The same principle applies to other nations (including armies of more socially-organized creatures like Orcs). Before they can pose a direct threat to the administrative center of the nation, they will have had to bypass or batter their way through layer after layer of defenses. The surrounding local communities will also lie within virtually all these layers of protection. From the point of view of external threats, the regional communities that lie just outside the central authority are almost as well protected as the central authority itself.

Twelve down, and so far, they have all been decidedly beneficial for the neighboring communities. That leaves eleven more to be covered in part 2, where it’s not all such good news…

“Inside My Head” by Andrew Mason (cropped), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11977375

Have you ever tried to run a prison-break scenario? Was it as successful as you would have hoped?

I’m betting that most readers will have answered “no” to the first question and that virtually everyone else will have answered “no” to the second.

There’s good reason for this state of pessimism: no matter how essential it might be to the plot, no matter how reasonable or realistic it might be, no matter how strongly it accords with the PCs personality profile and circumstances, no matter how characteristic the development might be of the genre of game, players will resist letting their characters be captured unto their dying breath. Or reluctantly and begrudgingly accede because it is expected of them.

Yes, you can force the issue – wither by employing overwhelming force or declaring a fait accompli (“You wake up the next morning in the dungeons of the castle…”), but players are apt to resent either solution as manipulations and plot trains.

You have just run up – hard – against the reality of player psychology.

The Psychology Of Players

There are some things that players will do only reluctantly, if they will do them at all, and letting themselves be captured is right at the head of the list.

It doesn’t really matter what genre conventions say – there is always a genre convention about heroic struggles that the players can claim to be adhering to. It doesn’t matter what characterization should demand, either; there’s always enough fuzziness about such things that a character can claim to have been acting according to the dictates of another personality trait, or even struggling to overcome the personality trait in question.

Bottom line: players can almost always find some reason not to do anything that they really don’t want their characters to do.

The problems for the GM start when one of these things-players-don’t-want-to-do is a central premise of the planned adventure. Which brings us back to the prison-break plotline I mooted earlier: you can’t put the characters into an escape-from-the-prison plotline without first putting the characters into the prison, for example.

The secret to success in such cases is to make the decision to let themselves be captured, and thence to stage a prison break, one that comes from the players themselves.

If it’s their idea and not yours, the normal defenses and reluctance are circumvented.

In fact, you can convince the players that they are on the right track to demolish all your fiendish plans by playing hard-to-get – the normally prickly town guards have just been given a pay rise and are inclined to let minor offenders off with a warning; the attempt to fake a snatch-and-grab goes woefully wrong when a good Samaritan with sharp eyes steps in to give the accused an alibi; someone who wants to curry favor with the PCs bails them out prematurely the first time they actually manage to get themselves arrested…

The harder you struggle against letting the players do what you secretly wanted them to do all along, the more this will seem to be the right course of action to them. Confirmation Bias already has the players inclined to think that their plans are the best possible choice; by making yourself appear reluctant, you play into that confirmation bias. Do it right, and when they finally do get captured, you will have players high-fiving each other in celebration. Only when it becomes apparent, perhaps in hindsight, that you were way too prepared for this result will the truth begin to dawn on them – and by then, they won’t mind, because you’ll have made them ‘earn’ it.

The trick is always to know what actions the players will find objectionable. There is no real way to predict this; even putting yourself in their shoes can give only the broadest of hints. You can only test and tease and probe, every now and then, and extrapolate your results.

I have better luck assuming that every action the players want to attempt is the right solution until they decide otherwise, regardless of the undiscovered flaws and holes that they will eventually stumble upon, and making them earn their success no matter what they attempt. Make player psychology work for you, instead of holding you hostage, and the result will be a better game for everyone!

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.svg By User:Factoryjoe, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7964065

A needs hierarchy for players

For some time, I’ve been advocating Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs as a tool for the creation of Alien character archetypes and characters (see “Creating Alien Characters: Expanding the ?Create A Character Clinic? To Non-Humans“). Perhaps a similar solution can be employed with respect to players in game situations?

5. The Physiological Needs Analogue

While PCs in-game and players as human beings in an out-of-game context might have survival needs like food and shelter, players in an in-game context do not. The best analogue for this need is in fact the potential for survival of the PC.- without the character, the player can do nothing. Having a viable (I almost said ‘living’, but a PC might still be ‘viable’ after death) character in a campaign is the most fundamental need.

4. The Safety Analogue

Safety Needs are all about personal security and potential for prosperity. Those mean very different things to a player with a character. There are three needs that potentially fit this description: the first is a GM who is not only fair, he is seen to be fair by the player; and the second, a consequence of the first, is the opportunity to improve his character’s situation in in-game ‘life’. The third is an expectation that the game world makes rational sense, when all the factors behind character and GM decisions are known and taken into account.

3. The Social Belonging Analogue

These are interpersonal needs. Again, the context creates a fundamental shift in the meaning of these requirements! At first glance, you might think that this refers to other PCs, but one-player games are not only possible, they can be a lot of fun. Them you might think that it refers to NPCs with whom to interact, but while roleplaying character interactions is an important element of most games, no-one would ever pretend that this was a ubiquitous requirement – you can have a perfectly satisfactory session in which no-one says one word “in character”, so that’s not it, either.

No, I think this is something more subtle – the sense that the character is part of the world and not some superficial and meaningless afterthought. This isn’t a need that the character has, it’s a need that the player needs to feel is satisfied in the case of his character.

There’s a whole lot of baggage that comes with that requirement – things that are needed in order to create that sense of belonging, or things that exist as a consequence of that subset of general verisimilitude. Society, Politics, Economics & Trade, Geography, Ecology, and so on – all the things that the GM should spend most of his time developing when he is “creating the campaign”.

On top of all that, there is the requirement for the PC to have a unique personality that expresses both the formative events of the character’s past and plausible and consistent reactions to those events. Characterization is also part of this sense of belonging.

2. The Esteem Analogue

The esteem needs are about the need to feel both self-respect and the respect of others, to be able to make independent decisions for yourself in areas of life that matter and are not just trivial. A game is not just about the character experiencing the story that the GM has laid before them, though that might be sufficient for the character’s needs; the player needs to feel that he has the ability to make decisions that affect the outcome of a situation, that in fact change the game world in however small a way.

1. The Self-actualization Analogue

Self-actualization is all about personal growth, and achieving potential, about being more than a job and a socioeconomic label. The player needs to feel that the character has both the scope and opportunity to develop as a characterization.

Validating the hierarchy

Probably the hardest part of interpreting the Hierarchy Of Needs was not devising the list of ‘needs’, but making sure that they are in the logical sequence. No step can be dependent on a higher step; in a nutshell, and satisfaction of the lower levels is a prerequisite for achieving the next.

5-to-4 validation:

Can a player have confidence in the fairness of the GM is his character is not a viable part of the game? If a legitimately-created character who has been approved for participation by the GM is not viable, does that not bring into question the fairness and/or competence of the GM? Does it not call into question the rational foundation of the game world (assuming that the character archetype is one of the principle character types of the game?) GM fairness and a rational world cannot exist with an nonviable character, because the GM should have recognized and pointed out the problems with the character instead of approving it as fit for the purpose of being played in the campaign. Check.

4-to-3 validation:

If the game world is not rational and predictable, how can a rational character create a sense that the character belongs to that world? Even a superficially mad world needs an underlying rationale. The player needs to be able to appreciate the presence of that underlying rationality even if the character can’t. Satisfying the third-tier need is impossible if the second tier is not adequately satisfied, at least at the meta-game level. Check.

3-to-2 validation:

Chaos theory is often expressed as a butterfly in Beijing flapping it’s wings and altering the eventual weather experienced by America or Europe. Unspoken is the assumption of a connectedness of the environments in question, a medium of transmission for the consequences of those flapping wings. That butterfly has zero impact on the weather of Jupiter, say.

The connection between player decision and game-world impact is the rationality of the game-world; without it, the consequences of any action would be random and unpredictable, in which case there is no rational basis upon which to make a decision. The third tier of needs is the equivalent of the atmosphere that connects the “butterfly’s wings” to the “experienced-weather consequences”, i.e. that connects decision to game-world impact in such a way that a rational decision is even possible. Check.

2-to-1 validation:

The final link to be validated is the easiest of them all. How can a characterization be developed if it isn’t defined in the first place? In order to develop, the character needs to be able to make rational decisions that have a measurable outcome on a situation. Check. In fact, the whole hierarchy seems to be on solid ground.

Where’s the fun?

It may be noted that there is no mention of the word ‘fun’ as an outcome of any of the needs beyond ascertaining that certain things do not prohibit it. Nor is there any mention of the many things that different gamer personality profiles enjoy. Why? Because these are all fundamental requirements to be achieved before the possibility of ‘fun’ even arises, no matter what form that individual’s ‘fun’ might take.

Application by example

With that done, let’s re-examine the problem of player resistance to PC captivity unless it’s the player’s idea.

The whole notion of surrendering control to the circumstances violates the second ‘need’ because it actively takes control away from the character, potentially risking fundamental injury to the first tier of needs. Forcing the issue violates the second tier need for fairness. These are the same drives that would be violated by locking the player up in real life without a fair hearing and giving them no way to improve their situation. Small wonder that they instinctively resist as though fighting for their very survival; they might well be doing just that!

The caveat, too, makes perfect sense in this context. A player choosing to let his PC be captured is voluntarily yielding control over his circumstances with the implication that this is a temporary measure that will enhance either the characters prospects for survival or prosperity (tier 1 and 2) in the long run. This is the sort of decision that can only be countenanced if the player has unshakable faith that the GM is, and will be, fair. There is also the implication that doing so will lead to validation and an enhancement of the character’s self-esteem, another tier-2 phenomenon.

If the GM analyzes a planned prison-break adventure with a view to satisfying the needs of the hierarchy, an action plan quickly suggests itself. First, he must ensure that the player is properly aware of the circumstances and how they will be changed by the outcome of the player’s decisions. Secondly, he needs to reiterate his fairness by giving the character the opportunity to escape if he chooses to take it; third, he needs to make it clear that capture entails certain risks, but also inherently makes available a reward of equal or greater measure, the furthering of one or more of the PCs goals, to wit, an increased satisfaction of his needs for esteem; and then fourth, he needs to leave it to the player to come to the decision in such circumstances and with a plan in place to restore the character’s independence. If the player then chooses to voluntarily surrender his character on his own terms, there is no problem. If he chooses not to, the GM must be prepared with another path to success in the adventure, though the price of that success might be higher. The adventure needs to be robust enough to survive a “no” decision by the player.

In other words, he needs to enlist the player as a knowing ally in his quest to deliver the adventure. If you can do that, the world – well, the game-world and the campaign – are your oyster.

Image courtesy Pixabay.com

I’ve read a lot of RPG content and advice over the years, much of it D&D related. I’ve contributed my fair share to that total, it must be admitted.

Every D&D supplement (that’s not explicitly a collection of monsters) contains new magic items. Websites and magazines abound in them. AD&D creatures, at least came with a “Treasure Type” that informed the GM what loot an encounter with the creature should yields – sometimes with a context, more frequently with a context simply assumed.

And (almost?) every one of these sources and references overlook something significant – the containers that the loot, magical or otherwise, comes in.

Once again, the AD&D DMG fares slightly better than average. They at least had a table for loot containers – part of the random dungeon generator, as I recall – and with absolutely no certainty that the treasure in question would actually fit within the container – but it at least listed several different possibilities.

My attention was first called to this situation by an article in The Dragon which looked at the specific volume and stacking of coins, both loose and tightly packed. But beyond this side issue, there was little-to-no acknowledgment of the problem. Sometime after that, containers seemed to degenerate into a parking place for traps, an obstacle between the party and the loot that had to be overcome, one final hurdle to clear.

Things improved ever-so-slightly in the latter days of 3.x, when enchanted scabbards began making token appearances here and there in selected supplements. But this idea seems to have made little impact and quietly vanished again shortly thereafter, thrown under the bus driving to fixed-magic-slot heaven. Pathfinder lists only two forms of magic container: Handy Haversacks and Bags Of Holding.

This state of affairs is intolerable, a collective failure of imagination on the part of published GMs everywhere. So let’s get some remedial action started…

Potion Bottles

• Lemarzixs’ Potion Bottles: A potion bottle that, when activated by the command word coupled with the removal of the stopper, flies through the air to an indicated target (friendly or otherwise) and pours its contents down the target’s throat. Range of 10′ per caster level, consumes a 1st level spell slot as though a 1st level spell had been cast. If the bottle is retrieved, it will be ready to be refilled with another potion from a standard potion bottle in 24 hours. Usually found in matching sets of 2-6, usually pre-filled. Minor Wondrous Item, 150 gp per bottle in the set.
• Lemarzixs’ Rogue Bottle: When a bottle in a set of Lemarzixs’ Potion Bottles is not retrieved, it becomes a Rogue Bottle. If the user makes a Will Save at DC 20, it behaves as usual, but the effect of the potion it contains is reversed (GM’s call on effect interpretation if necessary). If the save fails, the potion behaves as intended but the bottle targets a random character within a 20′ range of the intended target (which does include the intended target). Minor Wondrous Item, 50 gp.

Oil Flasks

• Kulkin’s Oil Of Inflammation: This magic item is a misnomer because it’s not the oil itself that is (necessarily) magical, it’s the flask. When the command word is uttered, loud enough to be heard at the location of the bottle, it shatters, and (if it contains ordinary lamp oil), 1-3 rounds later, ignites the oil. In addition to ordinary lantern oil, any potion with “oil” in the name can be used; when this oil is burned, through the magic of the flask, it becomes a cloud 10’x10′ which applies the magic of the oil to anyone passing through that space as though the oil had been splashed on the target via a thrown flask. 24 hours after use, the flask reforms and can be refilled. Minor Wondrous Item, 300 gp.

Pots

• Mannorkan’s Watched Pot: When this pot is filled with water and placed in a fire or on a stove, the water inside will never boil – it won’t even get warm. However, any water in a metal container of any sort that is brought within 10′ of the Watched Pot will boil within seconds as though it had been placed in the same fire for as long as the Watched Pot has been exposed to the heat. Removing the Watched Pot from the heat ends the effect but does not cool any water already heated. Minor Wondrous Item, 500 gp.
• Mannorkan’s Cooking Pot: Anything cooked in this pot is cooked perfectly; it will resist (STR 15) being removed from the heat until that is achieved. If a spice rack and a few handfuls of fresh or preserved herbs are placed within 10′ of the Cooking Pot, whatever is cooked will also be perfectly spiced and the flavor herbally enhanced. The result is a +8 to the results of the cooking check of the chef, enough to turn adequate ingredients into a royal feast, poor ingredients into a sumptuous meal, or an old boot into a deliciously tasty main course. What’s more, it can work this magic on up to three dishes at a time, magically separating each of the dishes into separate servings, simply by putting the ingredients for each into the pot in succession (but don’t get the order mixed up or the courses will also be muddled). Minor Wondrous Item, 500 gp.

Chests

In many ways, chests are the ultimate containers. They typically come in four sizes (the first of which is fairly rare):

1. Ginormous
2. Large
3. Medium
4. Small
   

   Ginormous Chests

   • The Many-fold Chest Of Things: This chest contains 6 layers of compartments. Any non-magical object or set of objects valued at less than 5 gp that is placed in one of the compartments of the bottom layer is magically replicated in similar compartments on the the other 5 layers. These objects must occupy a space of less than 2 x 3 x 3 inches in the case of 6 compartments, 4 x 3 x 3 inches in the case of a seventh, and 12 x 6 x 3 inches in the case of the eighth. Exception: For some reason, it doesn’t work with coins or gemstones, no-one knows why, and if such valuables are placed within the chest it will lock for eight hours, during which time the valuables simply vanish, seemingly into non-existence, though it’s possible that they are transferred into some extra-dimensional space that no-one has worked out how to access. The objects created by the Chest will last for eight hours before vanishing. Each time a duplicate is removed from the chest, the original object becomes more insubstantial; when the final copy is removed, the original vanishes. The chest is exotically decorated with inlaid woods and lined with soft velvet and a leather under-layer that makes each compartment waterproof. It weights 250 lb, which is considerably lighter than it looks like it should be from the size of the chest. It’s also notable that the volume of the compartments adds up to considerably less than the interior volume of the chest; what the “missing space” contains is another unknown. The scale of the difference varies from example to example, no two examples of this magic item are the same. Minor Wondrous Item, 500 gp.

   Large Chests

   • The Rummage Luggage: This is The Luggage from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. It contains at least one of every mundane item listed in the Core Rules (unless an item has been ruled culturally inappropriate by the GM). Finding any given item requires d12-1 minutes of rummaging around – there is a chance that it will be right on top! But, on a result of 11 (i.e. 12-1), the item cannot be found at all for the next 24 hours. The luggage itself is self-mobile and will follow its owner almost anywhere – though it might take it a while if it has to work it’s way through a stone wall. The luggage has 200hp, AC 15, and heals at the rate of 1hp a day; experts are divided on whether or not it is alive. Medium Wondrous Item, 20,000 gp.

   Medium Chests

   • Wakasham’s Portable Bookshelf: This chest is packed full of copies of books and (non-magical) scrolls, all related to the one subject. Once a book is removed from the chest, it locks until that book is opened to the last page or (if in scroll form) unrolled all the way; a magical sigil at the end of the ‘book’ then unlocks the chest and causes the book to evaporate. No more than one can be removed per day. Whenever the last book is removed from the Portable Bookshelf, it magically refills with books on a random variety of subjects; the next book removed from amongst those present “seeds” the Portable Bookshelf, replacing the rest of the contents with books related to that subject. Note that the contents are magically populated and can include any book ever published (but not books that have yet to be published). Making the Library even more useful is another property of the Portable Bookshelf; if, when it opens for you to take another book, you instead place a book from the outside into the “bookshelf” and close it for 24 hours, it will use that book as it’s “subject guideline” and repopulate itself with related books. GMs, take note: Any given book can be interpreted as relating to multiple subjects, it’s up to you to determine how a book’s “subject” is to be interpreted. Use this as a way to put relevant backstory in the hands of the PCs, not as a shortcut to secrets that you want to keep. Major Wondrous Item, 45,000 gp.
   • Manusian’s Compartment: This is a flat box about 1 inch in depth and 12 inches x 8 inches in plan size. When placed inside a chest, it forms an extra-dimensional secret compartment that can only be accessed by utilizing the command word that was written on the lid of the box. The chest must be large enough to contain the box, which will ‘stretch’ to the same size. Anything that will fit inside the chest plan dimensions and the one-inch depth will take up no space within the chest and have no weight. If it won’t fit in that space, it won’t go into the hidden compartment. Minor Wondrous Item, 15,000 gp.

   Small Chests

   Small chests are most commonly used for containing valuables, and these two magic items are no exceptions.
    

   • The Currency Converter: This is a small chest with the capacity to hold 500 coins. If it is completely filled with coins of the same denomination and closed for 24 hours, it will replace those coins with the same value (less 5%) in the next larger denomination. If fewer coins than the 500 limit are placed in the chest, they will be converted into the next lower denomination (again less 5%), (but any coins beyond the 500 limit are then lost. (NB: Money-changers would typically charge 10-20% for the same service per step in denomination) – copper to silver to gold = 20-40% in fees). Minor Wondrous Item, 3,000 gp.
   • Laphalion’s Strongbox: If you wrote advertising for magic items, this would be the dream product – “the world’s strongest lock-box, all but unpickable, keeps your hard-earned money safe, safe, safe”! Laphalion’s Strongbox holds 300 coins. The strongbox has 500hp and ignores the first 10+d6 points of damage from any attack (roll for each attack as it happens). The lock is partially extra-dimensional in nature and has a DC of 30 to pick, i.e. only the best thieves in the world have even a small chance. Any failed attempt to break into the box (i.e. actually inflicting damage or attempting to pick the lock) triggers a Magic Mouth on the strongbox that screams “Stop Thief! I’m being robbed!” continuously at the top of “it’s lungs” until the command word etched on the inside of the lid is uttered. Minor Wondrous Item, 6,000 gp.

Coin Purses

• Light-fingered Louie: This is a coin purse and matching pair of soft silken gloves (usually black in color but variations are known to exist). When the gloves are worn by a thief, he can make a pick pockets attempt on a target, and – if successful – the stolen item (be it coins, keys, jewelery, or whatever) will appear in the coin purse provided that the coin purse is within 25′ of the thief. While thieves who are confident in their abilities may choose to wear the coin purse themselves, most will entrust it to a confederate whose job is to stay within the 25′ range without getting too close to the thief. Minor Wondrous Item, 1200 gp.
• Light-fingered Limwicke: Exactly the same as a Light-fingered Louie except that the coin purse can be within 75′ of the thief. Medium Wondrous Item, 6,000 gp.
• Light-fingered Lusan: Exactly the same as a Light-fingered Louie except that the coin purse can be within 250′ of the thief. Medium Wondrous Item, 3,0000 gp.
• The Purses Of Pashtachus: Reaching into the bottom of this coin-purse, a DEX roll against a DC of 15 enables the possessor to find a hidden seam. Pushing the fingers through this seam enables the hand to reach through an extra-dimensional space to another location and retrieve an object, or emplace an object. This location is usually a tabletop in a secure place, or something similar. A will save vs DC25 lets the owner alter the location to another place, but the owner must be physically present with the purse at the new location in order to do this. Note that anyone gaining physical access to the location has free access to anything stored through the coin purse, or may leave something for the owner to retrieve. Other limitations: the character must be physically able to touch/grasp the item to be retrieved as though they were physically present at the location, and objects must be able to physically fit through the Purse, whose opening is 1″ x 3″ in size. The Purses come in ten varieties, distinguishable by the color of the lining (see below). Category IV and above can also reach the location from another plane, the separation (number of intervening planes) being equal to the Category number minus 4 (so a Category VII purse could reach “through” 3 intervening planes). What this means in practice depends on the Cosmology decreed by the GM. Inter-dimensional access raises the DC of the DEX roll required by 5 per intervening plane, plus 15 (so a Category IV at maximum ‘range’ has a DC of 15+15=30, a Category V at maximum ‘range’ has a DC of 15+5+15=35, and so on).
  &nbsp:
  Limits:
  • White (Category I): Location must be within 10 miles of the purse.
  • Gray (Category II): Location must be within 20 miles of the purse.
  • Black (Category III): Location must be within 40 miles of the purse.
  • Violet (Category IV): Location must be within 100 miles of the purse (or in an adjacent plane at DC30).
  • Blue (Category V): Location must be within 200 miles of the purse (or through a maximum of 1 intervening plane at DC35).
  • Green (Category VI): Location must be within 400 miles of the purse (or through a maximum of 2 intervening planes at DC40).
  • Red (Category VII): Location must be within 750 miles of the purse (or through a maximum of 3 intervening planes at DC45).
  • Copper (Category VIII): Location must be within 1,000 miles of the purse (or through a maximum of 4 intervening planes at DC50).
  • Silver (Category IX): Location must be within 1,500 miles of the purse (or through a maximum of 5 intervening planes at DC55).
  • Gold (Category X): Location must be within 2000 miles of the purse )or through a maximum of 6 intervening planes at DC60).

  Values & Classifications:

  • White (Category I): Minor Wondrous Item, 1,000 gp.
  • Gray (Category II): Minor Wondrous Item, 2,000 gp.
  • Black (Category III): Minor Wondrous Item, 4,000 gp.
  • Violet (Category IV): Medium Wondrous Item, 8,000 gp.
  • Blue (Category V): Medium Wondrous Item, 12,000 gp.
  • Green (Category VI): Medium Wondrous Item, 16,000 gp.
  • Red (Category VII): Medium Wondrous Item, 3,0000 gp.
  • Copper (Category VIII): Major Wondrous Item, 45,000 gp.
  • Silver (Category IX): Major Wondrous Item, 60,000 gp.
  • Gold (Category X): Major Wondrous Item, 100,000 gp.

  (Inspired by the magic bag of Nakor in Raymond E. Feist’s novel, Prince Of The Blood).

Scabbards

• Scabbard Of Linostas: This scabbard is richly decorated and alters its size to accommodate any weapon. It comes in five varieties (class 1-5), and has a value of 2,000 x class number x class number x class number in gp (so 250,000 for a class 5). For a number of melee rounds equal to the class number, the scabbard increases the magic plus of the weapon by an amount equal to the class number. Types 1 and 2 are considered Minor Wondrous Items, Types 3 and 4 are Medium Wondrous Items, and Type 5 is a Major Wondrous Item.
• Scabbard Of Restoration: This scabbard restores a broken sword to pristine condition as though it were never damaged, provided that the owner of the broken weapon still lives. This process takes an hour, during which time the owner cannot do anything else (including rest). Minor Wondrous Item, 500 gp.
• Scabbard Of Life: This scabbard links the life of the wielder with the ‘life’ of his sword. If the owner is ever ‘killed’, the blade shatters and the weapon is destroyed, restoring the wielder to 1/2 of his normal hit points. Major Wondrous Item, 50,000 gp.
• Scabbard Of Nine Deaths: If any weapon drawn from this scabbard scores a critical hit, in addition to any critical multiplier, the base damage inflicted by the sword can be increased from +1 up to +9 dice. Each such increase consumes one “life” from the weapon (including a magical plus 1 from any enchantment within the weapon); when the ninth “life” is consumed, the sword shatters, doing 9d4 damage to anyone within 30′ range of it, including the wielder. Once a weapon so affected loses all of its magical pluses it becomes a cursed weapon; any other sword held by the character is instantly destroyed, he can wield no other. If the sword so destroyed is also enchanted, a “life” may be restored in the process, but each time this occurs it requires a sword of greater “plus” to be consumed – a +1 the first time, then a +2, then a +3, and so on.Medium Wondrous Item, 50,000 gp.

Money-belts

• Nysterial’s Money-belt: This magic item is very desirable for merchants because it offers them two large advantages – one, it automatically exchanges coin denominations down one when a single coin is fed into the money-belt, and two, it limits the amount of currency a merchant needs to have on hand, minimizing his exposure to thievery. It is actually a two-part item, the Coin Box and the Money-belt. The coin box is left in a secure location of the merchant’s choosing within 1/2 a mile of the place of business and stocked with the merchant’s change supply. The money-belt consists of a series of bone tubes, one for each currency denomination; When a coin is placed into the money belt, it is transported to the coin box and replaced with the equivalent value in the next smaller denomination, if there is one, unless the coin tube for the appropriate denomination is already full, in which case the coin is simply transferred to the coin box. Placing a coin in a full tube transports all but one of the coins in the tube to the coin box. Coins can be retrieved from the bottom of each tube by actuating a catch. Using the money-belt takes a little practice, but can usually be picked up quickly – If the merchant is being paid one gp and needs 3 silvers and 4 coppers to make change, he places the gold coin in the money-belt, receiving 10 silvers back; he then withdraws 4 silvers, giving three to the customer and placing the fourth back into the money-belt, receiving 10 coppers back; he then extracts 4 of them and gives them to the customer. Once practiced, change can be made in seconds. This behavior means that at any given time, the belt contains just no platinum, 1-10 gp, 1-10 sp, and 1-10 cp, representing the entire “exposure” of the merchant. The third ability of the pair is less frequently invoked, but is very useful when it becomes necessary: the coin box can be used to track the money-belt if it is stolen to whoever has come into contact with it, in chronological sequence. Exactly how this function operates is up to the individual GM, every box-and-belt combination is different; this was the one aspect of the design of the belt that Nysterial was not completely happy with, and he kept trying different approaches in search of the “perfect” solution. Medium Wondrous Item, 10,000 gp.

Quivers

• Quiver Of Three: A favorite enchanted quiver amongst the few archers who posses one; any time an archer scores a critical hit with an arrow drawn from this quiver, two more fly from the quiver to strike the same target. These additional arrows do not gain any additional damage or effects from class abilities, spells, or bow enchantments (unlike the actual arrow fired), but they do benefit from any magical enhancement incorporated into the arrows themselves. Minor Wondrous Item, 7,0000 gp.
• Quiver of Capacity: This is a matched set of three quivers, two of which can be placed in the baggage of the wearer or carried by a second party. Provided the archer is within 100′ of these quivers when he fires an arrow drawn from the quiver, it is automatically replenished from the stored quivers, effectively tripling it’s capacity from 20 arrows to 60. Popular with archery corps because each of the quivers can be used by different members of the company and continue to supply another member of the corps even if an individual archer falls in battle. Minor Wondrous Item, 4,000 gp.
• Quiver of Retrieval: After an arrow drawn from this quiver is fired, it is retrieved if intact when a command word is spoken. If the arrow shaft is broken but the arrow head is intact, the head is retrieved and placed in a compartment at the side of the quiver. If the head has been shattered but the shaft has survived, that is retrieved and placed in a compartment on the other side of the quiver. NB: most editions of D&D and Pathfinder don’t include rules on arrows breaking. I’ve placed the rules that I normally use in a sidebar below. Minor Wondrous Item, 2,000 gp.

Sidebar: Breaking arrows and bolts

Arrows normally break on a 1 on a d6 (if they hit the target) or 1 on d12 (if they miss). Bolts strike with greater force, so these break on a 2 (wooden shafts) (on d6 or d12, respectively) or 1 on a d20 (metal shaft).

Magical enchantment of the arrow or bolt reduces this chance by requiring the rolling of a second die at the same time, which must also come up with a 1 or 2. The die size depends on the enchantment: d4 for +1 or equivalent, d6 for +2, d8 for +3, d10 for +4, d12 for +5. If you have one (and you can get them from various specialty dice suppliers on the net), you can continue this progression with a d14, d16, and d18, but whenever you run out of by-two die sizes, the rest are rolled on a d20. So, if you have neither a d14 or d16, it’s “+6 or better: d20”. If you have a d14, it’s “+6: d14; +7 or better, d20”, and so on.

Magical enhancements of the bow or crossbow increase the risk. It is assumed that 1/2 of the magical enhancement takes the form of improved accuracy or target-seeking, and 1/2 takes the form of increased force of attack. Therefore, each +2 enhancement to the “delivery system” increases the risk of breakage by 1.

If the arrow or bolt has a non-metallic head (usually wood, bone, or stone), it will break/shatter in 25% of cases and remain intact the other 75% of the time. Metallic heads are blunted/bent (destroying them) in 10% of cases and remain intact the other 90% of the time. GMs can roll for each arrow/bolt (not recommended) or simply apply the percentages and round appropriately. Technically, the first approach is more accurate, but the second is much better for game-play.

Over To You….

These 22 Wondrous Items are just the beginning of what’s possible, created in just four hours or so to illustrate the point of this article – the utility of containers as magic items.

Nor are these all the possible sub-categories within this overarching category – I haven’t done jugs, urns, barrels, hip flasks…. heck, even clothes can be considered a container for the body that wears them!

The original intent was to list one item in each sub-category as example and inspiration, but when you get on a roll… Even now, I’m thinking up new ideas – a trapped coin pouch that entices would-be thieves to steal it (in preference to any other that the character might be wearing, for example….

But there’s still more! A Post-script Bonus

Every magic item has an original creator. Sometimes those are unknown, or simply not credited; in other cases, the creator’s name is announced right there in the spell title. Each and every spell in the game tells you something about its creator, especially if your interpretation of the spell mechanics is such that spells are very hard to tweak and play with other than through the use of metamagics. The alternative is to treat magic as a form of physics in which the input conditions can be varied in any number of ways (e.g. component substitution) and doing so can profoundly influence or shape the resulting spell. The more rigid the definitions of the process, the more a spell is like a “recipe” or “blueprint” that must be followed, the more the peculiarities of the spell speak to the character and abilities of the spellcrafter who created it. The more flexibility there is, the more a spell may have been tweaked this way and that, customized and modified and revised by multiple hands, and the more diluted the original contribution becomes.

You can even have it both ways – the spells that still bear their maker’s name are still (pretty much) “as they made them”, while those who no longer have a creators’ name attached have been optimized and tweaked until a consensus developed as to the most efficient variation – and that’s the one that everyone knows.

Every spell or magic item with a creator’s name therefore also creates an NPC, either past or present (or in the case of Temporal Magic, perhaps future?) and tells the world something about them – hints and teases, if nothing substantive.

And every act of creation has a story attached to it. Was the discovery a happy accident, a paid-for work-product, or the fulfillment of a need, real or anticipated? When you create a campaign, what are the unique needs that arose and the magic items that can only have been created in response to those challenges? The trials of yesterday are reflected in the capabilities of today – and that makes every spell list a distillation of campaign history. At least potentially. Furthermore, each tells you a little something about the society and culture of the time, when collated in aggregate and examined for trends.

And each is also potentially the gateway to an adventure, if you think about it. What back doors may have been secretly incorporated to keep spells out of the wrong hands? What else is a spell or magic item designed to do?

It cuts the other way, too. If you have a significant NPC Mage, what’s he done to earn his reputation?

It’s up to you to unify all these things. The door is there, if you want (and have the time and creativity) to step through it!

“At the Monastery Gate” by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, painted in 1846. The work and the reproduction thereof pictured are in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

There’s an old saying: “you can choose your friends, but you cant’ choose your family.” I was thinking about that this morning and it suddenly struck me that there was an interesting RPG-related question that could be founded on that premise – the very question that forms the title of this article.

The Arguments for ‘Yes’:

The GM knows the campaign background and the experiences that the family have lived through far better than the player does, especially at the start of the campaign. He knows the prevailing trends in attitude and opinion, the philosophies that were current at the time, and the way events were impacting ordinary people at the time. All these developmental influences then define the way the PC relates to the history – is he/she a product of his time, or is he/she in rebellion against it? Is the character defined by his childhood experiences, or has he become what the player has in mind despite them?

This has several profound benefits for the campaign.

First, the player, and hence the PC, have a far greater connection to the campaign background, enabling them to hit the ground running when actual play starts.

Second, the player has a far stronger idea of the personality of his character at the commencement of play as a result of this interaction between character and campaign; quite often in a new campaign, it takes several sessions before the personality of the individual to emerge. This period of “semi-play” shortcuts that process, again letting the campaign start at something close to full throttle.

Third, the GM has a far clearer idea of the character of the PC as the player wants it to be in play, and can craft his campaign and adventures to suit, from the very beginning. It’s normal for the first adventure or two in a campaign to be generic and relatively bland in terms of customization to the characters – both players and GM have to feel their way forwards, groping toward the shape that the campaign will ultimately take as a result of the collaboration between the participants. Again, this gives the campaign a headstart.

Fourth, by defining the relationship between the character and his family, it gives the GM a domestic scene in which to introduce the character within the campaign. That won’t always be relevant or useful, but any gain over a zero starting position can only be beneficial to the campaign.

So far, it all sounds pretty compelling. But there are always at least two sides to every story.

The Arguments for ‘No’:

The player knows the character that he is creating, and the GM doesn’t. If the player designs the family relationships, he can ensure that they are consistent with the character that he wants to play, either as a supporting force or as a contrast. What’s more, there is no certainty, if the GM designs/creates the family, that they will provide the foundations of personality that the player wants. Ultimately, the family unit is a part of the character concept, and that’s part of the creative space of the player, not the GM.

If the family background is all wrong for the character that the player wants to play, a GM-designed family unit might in fact start the character off with a disconnect from the campaign – nullifying benefit one. It might be a benefit or it might not – and if it goes wrong, it will go horribly wrong. That’s too big a risk to take.

Sometimes the player has no idea of the personality of the character, and pitching him or her in at the deep end only confuses them. As with the first benefit, this one might materialize or might not, and having the GM design the family background might even be counterproductive.

The third and fourth benefits are real, but the risks involved in persuing them are equally real. Sometimes, when the stars align, they will be manifested, but the chance of the opposite occuring is at least as likely. And, when you factor in the number of PCs, these risks are compounded to the point where they are almost certain to materialize in at least some cases.

What’s more, there is one additional downside to the proposal that can’t be ignored: the potential for bland similarity between the families of the PCs. That’s always the danger when one person is creating so many iterations of the same thing. And trying to overcome that difficulty can artificially exaggerate the differences, putting the connection between PC and campaign under additional pressure.

So is there a middle direction?

I think that it should be possible to chart a middle course, in which there is a dialogue between the player and the GM about the family background. The player tells the GM what they think would work for their character, the GM tells the player how that would sit in the context of the times, and the concept evolves from there. Are the family conformists to the times, or rebels? This not only achieves all the benefits listed, it undercuts all the risks, and adds one additional benefit: putting the family into context of the background, not just the PC who is the focus of the exercise.

It’s also a far truer reflection of the collaborative nature of the game, giving the players an early opportunity to add their ideas and concepts to the campaign, helping the GM to shape it to fit the players and PCs.

Often, a compromise brings the disadvantages of both extreme alternatives. This is one of the rare exceptions, in which the compromise maximises the opportunity for advantaging the campaign.

Character skills can be divided into three categories (with some overlapping): skills that enhance the character’s ability to survive/succeed in adventures; skills that the character archetype is expected/required to have; and the oddballs from left field, which I refer to as Characterization Skills.

The last category also includes anything from the first two categories that the character has developed significantly more extensively than other skills in their respective categories.

Characterization skills representing defining personal traits and abilities of the character, things that make him or her stand out relative to their peers, a gold mine of characterization that GMs often fail to exploit.

Character Psychology

Why has the character chosen to learn the skill to the extent that they have? What does it say about the way the character thinks?

Take cooking – there are three basic approaches to the culinary art: precisely following directions, then tweaking it into perfection; throwing things together by instinct to construct a culinary tour-de-force; and incorporating a level of artistry into the finish of dishes. Each of these can be elevated to the point of being a master chef, but they represent very different philosophies.

Or take painting – there are multiple different schools and styles, but some of the key alternatives are minimalism (reducing a scene to its essentials), expressionism (using elements symbolically to provide additional information and context), enhancement (presenting images in a supra-realistic way), realism (presenting images as realistically as possible). Again, very different philosophies – and there are many more if you go beyond the styles that were developed after the reformation, which is the end of the time periods upon which most fantasy games are based. And, again, these can all be developed to the point of being a master painter.

In both of these examples, the philosophies can be extended to cover the whole approach to life of the character. They are representatives of an attitude, a way of thinking.

Sometimes, the player has given deep thought to how these choices reflect the character they want to play; at other times, it is incumbent on the GM and player to analyze the in-play persona presented by the character and interpret the skill retrospectively. Either way, these skills can be indicative of how the player want to interpret the character in play; the provision of opportunities to do so is then incumbent on the GM.

Character Background

Who taught the character the skill?s What did his parents and teachers think of the character learning the skills? What influence did it/they have on the character’s early life?

The answer to the last question might be ‘none’ – but the more tightly the character’s abilities and background can be entwine, bent to the purpose of making him unique and compelling, the better.

Character Activities

What do the skills say about the day-to-day activities of the character, especially those which take place in his leisure time? What opportunities for interaction with others do the skills provide? These are all opportunities to feed the character adventure hooks and roleplaying opportunities.

Character Socialization

Similarly, in in-game social occasions, these skills provide subjects for the character to discuss that are outside the normal expectations and clichés; they make the character more of an individual in such settings and less of a figurehead for his character class / archetype.

Character Knowledge

What associated and ancillary knowledge does the character posses as a result of having the skills? Scientific history is full of serendipitous combinations of seemingly-unrelated knowledge; the more of these that the GM can find/create and then incorporate into his adventures, the more the character’s role within those adventures comes to feel like an outgrowth of who he is, and not something that could have happened to any random character. If this occurs regularly, it can impart a sense that the current in-game situation (whatever it is) was always destined to happen to this particular character or group of characters. That can be a useful conceit to infuse into a campaign in which the PCs star to an extent that begins to strain verisimilitude (“Why does this sort of thing always happen to ME?”)

Character Challenges

Again similarly, the more a character can utilize these aspects of his uniqueness to solve problems encountered in-play, the more the game harnesses and reflects the uniqueness of the character, and his personal approaches to life. This never happens by accident; it can result from the player looking for opportunities to utilize a skill into which he has pumped skill points, or simply finding ways to match his expertise to the needs of a situation in order to find a solution to whatever problem has been encountered. But, by far, the most common reason such opportunities exist is because the GM has deliberately built them into the game that he is running.

It’s a reasonable assumption that the character is always looking for ways to exploit whatever skills and knowledge he has to get himself out of trouble; that should force the GM to do likewise when designing campaigns and adventures.

Intra-party relationships

There are three ways in which characterization skills can be relevant to intra-party relationships. First, one character can consume the product of the skill; everyone eats, for example. Second, relationships between skills can provide topics of mutual conversation, creating those relationships in the first place or providing them with added depth – a cook and farmer, for example. And third, once again, is the concept of serendipitous combinations of skills yielding a sum greater than their parts – an artist and a bureaucrat can cooperate to forge official documents more effectively than either alone, for example.

Once again, this won’t happen by accident; the players have to be actively looking for ways in which they can combine their different talents in response to the in-game situation, and that (in turn) won’t happen unless the GM first gets the players into the habit of doing so (by actively suggesting it as a solution to a problem that would otherwise be much harder to solve), and second by creating opportunities for the players to look outside the box, in particular by blocking more obvious approaches (or seeming to – quite often, one character can provide a means by which a second can bypass such blocks).

It is also often necessary to break up the party, at least temporarily, by requiring characters to be in multiple locations at the same time, then twisting the situation so that the skills that the players thought would be necessary to advancing the plot are no longer relevant, forcing the characters to improvise. After all, assuming they are playing intelligently, they will do their best to match ‘assignments’ to ‘skillsets’; it follows that the situations will usually need to be somewhat different to appearances if this sort of innovation is to become relevant.

Forcing Characterization Skills?

Characterization skills are so useful, indirectly, that some GMs actually mandate that characters take at least one. Players who are good roleplayers will often take one or more without prompting, whereas most Combat Monsters and Min-Maxers will have to be dragged there, kicking and screaming. I know at least one GM who offers extra skill points at character creating while restricting what they can be spent on, purely to encourage the selection of Characterization Skills. Still others threaten players with a reduction in XP awards (on an individual basis) if characters don’t contribute to solving the challenges of the day.

Personally, I find all three of these approaches to be heavy-handed (but better than nothing in the case of options one and two); a far better approach is to warn players that there will be times when being a rounded individual will be more important than focusing completely on character enhancement in areas they are already competent in, defining what is meant by “well-rounded” (it doesn’t mean a skill level in every possible skill, for example) – then following through by designing challenges that can’t be solved by force or simple skill rolls.

This is a lot more difficult than designing challenges that can be overcome in these more straightforward manner, but the rewards are fairly obvious. And, once players get into the habit of viewing their characters holistically, they will carry the approach into other games under other GMs, even into games of unrelated genres, where that GM will be educated in the significance of the approach – spreading the assumption of good roleplay as they go.

Can you name the Characterization Skills of each party member in your current campaign? Do you keep a list of them handy? Have you looked for the serendipitous combinations, and ways to exploit them? If you answered in the negative, perhaps you should think about doing something to remedy the lack. Look for the Characterization Skills and ways of taking advantage of them!

“Excalibur / Calbfwlch, Translucent” By BrittonLaRoche released to the Public Domain by the original uploader,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3013525

Readers may have noticed that the last couple of posts have been unusually short and to the point, instead of the usual depth that is the hallmark here at Campaign Mastery. There’s a couple of reasons for that.

First, I have a family function coming up in June and won’t be around to write my usual posts. Rather than letting readers down who may have been looking for something new, I’m trying to build up some lead time so that I can leave a couple of posts scheduled for publication in advance.

Second, being (mostly) cut off from the internet limits the amount of research that I can do, so I’ve deliberately chosen articles that don’t need a lot of it.

Third, when it looked like I might need to make my way during business hours to an internet cafe in order to post anything at all, I sat down with a pad, wrote the two articles you’ve already read, and came up with half-a-dozen more ideas that could be knocked out in reasonably short, sharp posts.

I’ve always written with the philosophy that an article should be no longer than it needs to be in order to address the subject of the article. It just so happens that these articles don’t need to be very long.

Today, I’m going to share with you a simple technique for creating interesting and original magical weapons.

As an added bonus, if you can find the right technobabble to explain the properties of the weapons, they can work in a sci-fi or superheroic setting. But the primary focus is fantasy gaming.

The heart of the technique is a simple question:

What can’t the weapon type usually do?

Let’s look at swords by way of example, and see some of the things that you can achieve with this simple conceptual technique.

Range

Swords don’t have any range beyond arm’s length, so a sword whose slashes and thrusts extend beyond the normal reach of the weapon is a wondrous weapon indeed. When you strike in the direction of an opponent at range, a cutting force extends out, traveling to the nearest opponent(s)in that direction. The weapon strikes as though the target were in the adjacent space, but for every 5′ between the wielder and the target, damage done is reduced by 2 to a minimum of zero. A blow can’t affect more targets than a normal sword could affect in adjacent spaces to the wielder.

This example also illustrates a couple of important principles of the technique.

Sounds good? Let’s do another one:

Returns To The Hand

The implication of the simple question are that you are imparting a quality to the weapon that you are “enchanting” that it doesn’t normally posses, but that another type of weapon does. This idea derives from an icon of Australia, the Boomerang.

There are several youTube videos demonstrating Boomerang Throwing; I’ve linked to one (3:05) which also has several more on the page. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to view any of them because the computer with the internet access is so old it doesn’t play youTube videos, so you may have to look at several of them if you’re unfamiliar with the technique.

The problem with applying this to a sword is that swords don’t usually leave the hand of the wielder. But throwing knives do, so why not a sword that has to be thrown like a knife? Make it a curved blade because the shape will add to the credibility and mystique of the weapon’s ‘special ability’.

What you end up with is a sword that you throw; the sword then strikes a single target at range, doing its full damage. Range interval would be about 15′, about half that of a hand crossbow, based on what I’ve seen expert boomerang throwers achieve. The weapon then returns to your hand as part of the same attack action. A Dex roll at DC equal to the attack total is required to catch the hilt; failure means that the wielder has caught the ‘sharp end’ inflicting 1+magical plusses damage. Damage includes the normal Strength bonus.

Of course, you might feel that this is altering the basic nature of the sword too much – in which case, apply this ability to something like a hand axe.

This illustrates another couple of important principles:

One more example:

Entangle

This takes the basic properties of a net and imparts them to a sword. I’ve picked it because there is a reasonable sci-fi variation, which I’ll look at after describing the basic fantasy weapon.

Instead of damaging the target, this weapon severs the planar bonds that hold the plane together around the target, which then curl back, binding the target. The attack roll total is the DC for a reflex save to avoid being entangled; the damage that would normally be inflicted is the damage that must be ‘inflicted’ by straight strength before the entangled character can wrest himself free of the tangling bonds of invisible force. This may take one or more rounds. The character is held immobile, but is still able to attack anyone within arm’s reach as usual (which inflicts no damage on the restraints, it should be noted).

On a critical hit, the severing of planar bonds is sufficient to open a portal into an adjacent Plane. Reality inflicts 1d6 damage per round on the opening, eventually healing the ‘wound’ in reality. The target, if not anchored, is sucked into the other plane, releasing him from his bonds in the process, but exposing him to the environment of that adjacent plane. If multiple planes can be considered adjacent to the Plane on which the target was located, the GM should choose randomly between them. There is a 1-in-20 chance, per round that the ‘portal’ is open, that something native to the adjacent plane will cross into the plane in which the attack took place.

Nets don’t normally inflict damage, so it’s necessary for the sword’s ability to do something else with the damage that a sword normally inflicts. Using it to resemble the behavior of a net in a more exotic way is a neat solution.

Sci-Fi Variant

The sword rips a hole in the space-time continuum around part of the target, binding him in the surface tension. So far as anyone else is concerned, that space ceases to exist; objects and missiles pass through it as though it weren’t there. This includes light – the affected part of the trapped character becomes invisible, as though it were in a blind spot. Mechanics are as described for the fantasy version.

Creativity Unbound – within reason

There are two big advantages to this approach.

The first is that it sparks creativity. The second is that it constrains that creativity to reasonable limits. This combination produces original creations that don’t overpower the game system, enabling them to be dropped directly into a campaign. And it takes only seconds.

On a note completely unrelated to today’s post: J.T. over at Ravenous Role Playing said some very nice things about recent articles in his most recent blog post. I tried leaving a reply at the site but this browser is so inadequate that his authentication routine won’t work with it. Here’s what I tried to say:

Thanks for the Kudos, J.T.! For some strange reason, I didn’t get any pingbacks showing up at Campaign Mastery when you posted your reviews, though, or I’d have said so sooner!

Regarding your problem with factions, having them all pursue their objectives is ‘morally gray’ but it’s also morally bland, which might have an impact on the way your players react to them. Try tossing in a faction who try to do the right thing, but aren’t always sure what it is, and so make mistakes every now and then. Or a faction that is loyal to their friends and allies to a fault – taking what is normally a positive virtue and twisting it to potentially negative ends. Of course, these need to be balanced with the occasional group who fall on the other side of the line – “So I’m kind to my grandmother – I still want to see the establishment BURN”, or “It’s all the Elves fault, we should obliterate the Elvish Pestilence from the face of the Earth!” A full spectrum of options includes the entire palette of choices – good for the right reasons, good for the wrong reasons, bad but honest about it, bad but tries not to look it…

I suppose, if you put his words together with the reply above, this could constitute a bonus tip for everyone else! Which is how I can justify publishing my comment here…

Jim Brochu and Steve Schalchlin – The Big Voice God or Merman By Bev Sykes from Davis, CA, USA – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=409330

Things didn’t exactly go according to plan in the Adventurer’s Club campaign this weekend past. Entirely my fault; I was running late and assumed that the adventure that we were about to start had been copied onto a USB stick as is our usual practice. After all, it was finished several months ago.

On top of that, transport headaches meant that several people arrived late and were going to have to finish early, myself included.

Decision

We were faced with three choices: abandon play for the day, despite everyone being there and ready to play; try to run a complex multi-part adventure with strong reliance on visuals with neither the adventure nor the visuals; or for my co-GM and I to put our heads together and improv something pretty much off-the-cuff.

It wasn’t a hard decision to make. The campaign was in-between adventures, which was why the adventure hadn’t been loaded onto the USB stick, but which is also the perfect time to drop in a ‘filler’ adventure.

Conceptualizing

To start with, we took advantage of the fact that this campaign has two GMs. We stepped outside for five minutes to brainstorm. Initially, Blair focused on what we could do while I thought about the limitations we faced. First up, the timing between the last adventure and the next planned adventure is fairly tightly controlled in a number of respects, so there wasn’t going to be enough game time for the PCs to travel anywhere; the adventure was going to have to take place in New York City. Second, this particular combination of PCs haven’t been together for very long, so if we wanted to connect the mini-adventure with their past, we had to work out how to involve everyone. I particularly wanted to avoid a situation in which only a couple of the PCs were involved for any length of time purely because they had been with the campaign the longest.

Blair’s initial ideas were for the PCs to be gathered somewhere, for something to happen, leading them into a chase situation through the city. Unfortunately, chase scenes are really hard to do well without adequate prep and planning, and the idea seemed a little bland. But, because we had a relatively small window of playable time, I liked the idea of starting off with the PCs already in one place.

I suggested a mole-men riff, which led to the thought of a ‘land that time forgot’. The very first adventure in the campaign – which predates even my involvement in it in any capacity whatsoever – took place on an island with Killer Apes. The idea was that the PCs had been involved in an incident in the course of that adventure that had been blocked from their memories until now. If the older PCs were to suddenly find themselves reliving that past adventure and acting accordingly, we could turn the dichotomy from a liability into an advantage.

It also let us pull in an exotic location without having to travel to it. Next, to why the PCs remember the events on the island. Several options commended themselves: the PCs did, and were just having flashbacks to the incident; or something was interfering with their memories now; or something had interfered with their memories back then. Again acting on the principle of turning a potential liability into an asset, I suggested that they discovered a mind-control crystal being used by a local warlord, but ended the threat; this not only made those present more sensitive to the effects of such a crystal showing up nearby, awakening those memories, but awakened a resistance to a ‘cloaking effect’ that prevented NYC locals from noticing the crystal until they were under its’ control.

With this notion that both sub-groups of PCs were being affected but in different ways, bringing them into conflict as the newer characters sought to protect the older ones from themselves, and the suggestion that one of these older PCs, once freed from the influence of the crystal, could use his defenses against occult evil to ward the PCs, giving them independence of action when all those around them were being controlled, the basic outline of the plot was complete, and we were ready to play.

Implementation

The lack of prep time invested in the adventure showed up almost immediately. One of the PCs assumed that he was hallucinating and tried to snap himself out of it, because we failed to make it clear that for those affected, the last two-and-a-half years hadn’t happened. If we’d invested prep time in the adventure, we would have made certain that our prepared text delivered everything that the PCs needed to know.

But that was the only real hiccup along the way, and – because they knew that the whole adventure was being improvised – the players cut us a little more slack than they otherwise would have.

The resulting day’s play wasn’t as polished or nuanced as most adventures in the campaign, but everyone had fun. Since that’s always the primary goal, we would have to rate the day as a success.

Feedback

Midway through, during a break, one of the players indicated that he was surprised that we had even contemplated an improv adventure, because it is the total opposite of the way we – and especially I – usually run games.

Long-time readers will probably know better; there was a period of time when I had zero time for prep, and had to devise the week’s adventures in the car on the way to gaming – not once, but every week for more than two-and-a-half years.

Like so many things in life, improv is a compromise with its own pros and cons. Some of those adventures were great, some were a bit so-so. When you improv, there’s no time to ponder, reflect, edit, and censor your ideas to weed out the rubbish. Any flaws or errors are magnified and in-your-face.

At the same time, though, you give yourself the freedom to throw in twists as they come to you, to extend those plot sequences that are working well, and to cut short those that aren’t.

That’s a good thing, because you will need to take advantage of that flexibility more often when you improv.

That’s not to say that pre-planning and prep are perfect. As demonstrated by An Experimental Failure – 10 lessons from a train-wreck Session, prep-heavy approaches run the risk of getting too close to a flawed idea and finding yourself trapped by it. In a lot of ways, it’s a line-ball judgment between the two. But improv has one final deficiency, and for me, that’s the one that makes the ultimate difference between the two.

If you have no time for prep, you also have no time for adventure logging. Even if the lack of prep is a choice, and not a necessity, adventure logging after the fact is a lot harder to keep comprehensive and up-to-date. The more that you can cut-and-paste from prepared notes, the better, in terms of having a continuity that you can build on.

Prep investment, in other words, creates more of a campaign than a series of marginally-connected adventures, and that broader tapestry permits more interesting adventures. Like improv, it makes everything bigger and stronger, emphasizing and building upon the positive aspects of preparing material at an adventure scale.

Lessons

For the right type of campaign, I wouldn’t hesitate to go full-improv, all the time. If the campaign plans are such that the strengths of an improv approach were maximized and the downsides minimized, it would definitely be the way to go.

Regardless of the adventure style that you choose, there are a number of lessons from this experience to take away for your games.

• Be aware of the plot limitations and plan around them.
• Be aware of the strengths you can draw upon and plan to make the most of them.
• Be aware of the weaknesses that you have to live with and plan to minimize their importance.
• Always look for a way to turn a liability or constraint into an asset.
• Both improv and careful planning have their strengths and weaknesses.
• The important thing is for everyone to have fun!

Image courtesy pixabay.com, provided under Creative Commons 0 license

Disaster has struck, and the laptop that I have been using to do – well, everything – has lost it’s visual display. It’s possible that this is simply a new symptom of the battery power problem that it’s been experiencing for some time, or it might be some new devilry.

This problem is complicated by the fact that it’s the only reasonably-modern computer in the house that recognizes my USB modem, so I have also lost almost all internet connectivity. I’m hoping to resolve that sooner rather than later, but it might be that the only way that I have been able to let you read these words is by utilizing an internet cafe for the upload. If that’s the case, it’s not something that I’m going to be able to do for very long. Look for an update at the end of the article that will advise on the latest information.

It also means that I no longer have access to the spell-checker that I have been using – so I apologize in advance for any misspellings!

How large should a kingdom be?

It’s not as straightforward a question as it seems. But if you look at the examples provided in most fantasy literature, you would get the impression that most of them are the size of modern France, or Germany, or China. A few might make the kingdoms the size of Great Britain, or India. Some have Empires the size of Europe, or even Europe plus the Middle East.

These are fine if you have a good reason for that size and know what you are doing. Most people don’t have the first idea. Historically, Kingdoms were often the size of countries like Belgium or Luxembourg or Switzerland. Italy once comprised several city-states (7 I think, but I’m not sure and without the internet, can’t check). Of course, these were not always actually named “Kingdoms” by the locals, though that is the way the word might be translated today.

Over time, marriages and conquests unified these into larger administrative nationalities. These were often conquests from the outside, forcing a new relationship onto the conquered peoples – and then falling apart. Kingdoms the size of France or Britain or Italy couldn’t exist without the Roman Empire.

Another mistake that a lot of people make are having firm, defined borders. Unless you’re on a major trade route or invasion path or something of that nature, borders – like citizenship – are rather more vague and unofficial. Technically, a border might be precisely defined – but there is a difference between what you can claim and what claims you can enforce.

Kingdoms, in order to be practical, need to be administered. The decrees of the throne have to be enforced, the taxes have to be collected. There are practical limits to how much of this is possible.

Transport Modes

Transport modes are vitally important to determining the size of a Kingdom or Realm. It’s one full third of the story.

Game systems frequently give movement rates for horses and other mounts but don’t write about how long they can sustain this rate of movement, and that’s what dictates how far they can travel. The same is true for characters.

I do most of my regional maps at a scale of 6 miles to the hex. That gives a daily movement rate on foot on roads, paths, and trails of 4 hexes or 5 for a forced march. Horses travel about 6 hexes in a day unless you change mounts regularly – which messengers often do but which is not an option for military and commercial traffic. I then adjust these movement rates for terrain and roads – -1 for a light impediment, -2 for 1 serious impediment or two light impediments in composition, -3 (minimum 1) for two serious impediments. Boats heading upstream can travel 2-4 hexes, those traveling downstream 4-8.

Another way of looking at these numbers is that an official can travel two hexes from his administration center and back again in a day. Every two hexes and changes in policy, in laws, in politics, are all a day out of date and a day weaker.

Roads & Settlements

The quality of roads is already factored into the above, but this is sufficiently important that it’s worth re-emphasizing. The quality of the roads is a key factor in determining how large a nation can be.

Settlements tend to be one day removed from each other. The average community in the middle ages was about 2000 people. As it happens, thats about the same size as the town I grew up in, so I can relate to such communities almost without thinking about it. Everyone knows all, or almost all, of the businesses in town. At least a third of the town is known by name, about half of that number by their first names.

The dominant factor when it comes to town size is the ability for food to reach the community. A ring one hex deep and seven hexes in total area would be enough to feed a community of 1000 people – if the people involved in the agriculture didn’t have to eat, themselves. To allow for this factor, we need to push out another hex in radius, adding another 12 hexes to the agricultural base, of which six hexes can be stored against future famines or shipped to feed a larger community elsewhere. The other 13 hexes worth are consumed locally (including stores for next year’s planting).

This requirement can be halved for especially fertile land, and doubled for especially poor croplands.

By an absolutely amazing coincidence, this is the same distance over which direct daily supervision is possible, and half the distance between communities.

Which means that a nation of arable land that is fully occupied with settlements delivers 6 hexes out of 13 needed for every 1000 citizens – two such towns are almost but not quite enough to support an extra 1000 people. Which should make it clear that towns with 2000 people have a substantial level of malnourishment in a poor social class.

The average size of 2000 people also means that a lot of communities are going to be smaller. In fact, communities tend to roughly follow a geometric expansion: 62, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000, 16000, 32000, 64000, 128000, and so on. For any community size, the next size down tend to be 5-20 times as numerous (these are very rough guidelines only).

The important thing to note about such communities is the number of hexes of arable-land-equivalent produce they have left over, because that is where the food supply for those communities larger than 2000 people come from.

Using these numbers, you can easily count up the number of farm hexes ‘left over’ from each community size category and how many of the larger communities they can support. Twenty towns of 1000 people on arable land gives a total of 20×6=120 hexes ‘spare’. At 13 hexes per thousand people that’s 9000 people that can be fed adequately, or 18000 people that can be fed at typical levels, on top of the base 2000. So one community of 20,000 people can be fed by the land around it and 20 communities around that.

The best approach is to work the size list from one size to the next – how much excess food out, how much excess food required. The geographic size and the relative quality of the land will thereby dictate the size of the communities contained within a kingdom.

These numbers also take into consideration the likelihood that some communities – perhaps as many as 1 in 4 – will generate some non-edible commodity. Logging and Quarries and Mines and so on. Fishing can also bump up the numbers considerably for communities on the coast, or which contain major river systems because a fishing fleet can exploit more hexes, and can also yield greater food densities (i.e. each fishing hex counts as 1.5 ‘arable land’ hexes). That means that a coastal fishing community can exploit areas up to four hexes away – if half the are around the town is water, that’s a total of 32 fishing hexes which is the equivalent of 48 ‘arable land’ hexes – plus the 5 hexes of arable land that they actually have for a grand total of 53. They need 7 of those hexes to feed themselves; the other 46 can either go to supporting a larger fishing community, or be shipped to support a number of other communities.

In practice, however, with communities 4 hexes apart, perhaps even less and smaller in size along the coast, no one community is going to get it’s entire potential allocation – their neighbors will get some of it. Trying to figure out which community gets how much sea is a waste of your time; simply add up the number of sea hexes within reach of any port and divide by the number of coastal communities to determine how much ‘sea’ each one gets, and hence, how much they can contribute to the population size of the kingdom.

Note that all this is a far simpler and less accurate method than others that I have seen. It’s a compromise between accuracy and speed.

Administrative Radius

Now for the fun part: Every whole number of towns supplying food for a single larger community can be considered under the control of that community. The lands administered by a noble are thus a function of the size of the largest community within that Noble’s domain.

It’s relatively easy to create a list of courtly ranks and allocate communities of a certain size to these ranks. A town of 4000 might have a count, 8000 an earl, 16000 a duke, 32000 a prince, and 64000 a King – or whatever. The important thing is to set King to the largest community that the Kingdom you have mapped out can support, then spread the lesser noble ranks through the rest. Titles in the capital city tend to get a “bump’ of one grade, so bear that in mind.

A Kingdom is all the lands beholden to the most highly-ranked noble, plus all the lands beholden to those below him in rank who have any part of their domains within the King’s administrative reach. Kingdoms thus tend to stretch out along rivers and trade routes, and be walled off by natural barriers.

Efficiency

The third major factor in the size of a Kingdom or Realm is much harder to quantify, and is far more abstract. All sorts of things go into it, from literacy and numeracy rates to theology to philosophy of government, but it can be summed up in a single pair of words: Administrative Efficiency. If the bureaucracy is poor, with records held only locally, administrative radii are of the size indicated. With each increase in efficiency, the radii expand. Good record-keeping permits accurate tallies of resources, incomes, and taxation. That’s how an Empire the size of the Romans becomes possible, and how nations the size of those larger geographic entities can function.

The British Empire achieved its growth by centralizing broad policy decisions and placing daily oversight in the hands of governors with considerable freedom of action – then making sure that those governors were loyal. China became the size it is today because of the Imperial Bureaucracy that was capable of administering a nation of that size, and through having sufficient military force under that control to expand. If the Bureaucracy wasn’t up to the job, lands would be conquered and the conquerors would then create their own little fiefdoms, effectively fragmenting the resulting nation back into manageable chunks.

With every hex you travel away from the administrative center, control weakens. That’s the lesson of the Roman conquest of England – they could get as far as Hadrian’s Wall, but no further.

This barely scratches the surface; there are a great many more complexities involved in Kingdom size. But as generalizations go, it’s a useful one.

Update:
I have been in contact with my ISP. They tell me that because my modem is more than 7 years old, installation disks are no longer available, but because I have been a customer for so long, they will ship me a replacement modem that my computers will be able to access, free. (It will also be fully NBN-compatible, which won’t mean anything to anyone outside Australia but which is a big deal, locally – without it, I would have had to replace the modem again next year.

In the meantime, I’ve been able to get a very slow internet connection happening with a very slow computer which has only an even slower and more limited browser – but which should be good enough for me to upload this post and the one that’s due to be published later this week, which I have also written already.

Normal Campaign Mastery service should be resumed by the weekend :)