WordPress has a lot going for it – that’s why we use it for Campaign Mastery! For a long time now, I’ve been thinking that it has many of the advantages of a campaign Wiki, and a few more on the side, that would make it an ideal platform for game documentation – with the right plugins, of course, something that I’ll get to shortly.

I once investigated the potential for using a Relational Database (Crystal Reports, from memory) to hold the campaign logs for my superhero campaign, and quickly came to the conclusion that it was simply not feasible. There was software that could cope with the 100K entries required for proper cross-indexing, no problem; but it could not cope with the estimated 2-10K words of synopsis, never mind providing the full functionality of a word processor for the adequate display of the resulting material. Sure, there was far more expensive software available that could achieve these purposes; but nothing anywhere close to affordable.

What I only slowly began to realise after we launched Campaign Mastery is that it provides full, if limited, relational database functionality through the use of a combination of categories and tags; it only requires designing the “blog” in an appropriate way. So that’s what this post is all about – configuring WordPress to serve as a fully cross-indexed relational database of game notes and play synopses.

GM Notes: Private posts

One of the options that WordPress offers is the ability to mark some posts private and some public – and to change that designation with a couple of mouse-clicks. That makes it perfect for a GM’s prep and in-session notes, because the post can be edited afterwards and turned into a game synopsis; the notes act as memory prompts, and any flavour text only needs to be typed once. Such notes should be placed in a suitable category, “GM’s Notes”, so that the GM can call up just them and no others.

Category: Post-play Adventure documentation

When such a private-to-public conversion takes place, the post should be assigned to a new category. Or, alternatively, instead of making his session notes public, he can simply copy the content from his private post to a new public post in this new category. This doubles the number of entries, some of the content of which are redundant; but it does enable the GM to keep quiet about things that the players did not learn in the course of the adventure and that therefore should not be made public. Frankly, it’s six-of-one-and-half-a-dozen-of-the-other which is the better approach.

And, of course, there is also a third option: the Emerson Option. Isaac Asimov, when struggling to edit the biochemistry textbook he was co-authoring, came across a quote by Emerson which ran, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” Thereafter, whenever one of the trio of authors came across a minor inconsistency or spelling error in the galley proofs, they would simply write “Emerson!” in the margin and ignore the error.

In this context, the Emerson quotation implies that users should not feel obliged to adopt one solution or the other wholeheartedly, they can pick and choose according to circumstances. If there is “secret” information in the private post, use the copy-and-paste solution a new public post; if there is nothing in the notes that is not known to the players, convert the existing post and save yourself additional labour.

At the same time, the post can be renamed to whatever is desired.

The first plugins

All of which brings me to the first plugin that I would recommend to anyone contemplating this use of WordPress. Actually, it’s a pair of them: “Organize Series” and “Organize Series Publisher”, both by Darren Ethier. (Plugin Website: http://organizeseries.com/). We use this combination here at Campaign Mastery (thanks to Johnn, who found it for us). It adds a third tier to the categorisation/tagging capabilities, a third indexing scheme that is only applied to designated posts. When you add a new post to the series, it automatically increments the entry number of that post when it is published, or you can specify the part number.

There are restrictions: a post can only ever be part of one series at a time, and strange things can happen if you remove a post from a series after it’s published. But for providing a sequentially-organised subset of posts, the combo can’t be beat.

With these two plugins, you can do something remarkable with your play synopses:

Make each adventure’s synopses part of a series!

Most GMs I know group their days of play into adventures. By making them part of a series dedicated to that specific adventure, all the synopses of that adventure become threaded, connected by an automatically generated menu contained within the post. It doesn’t matter how many of them that you have; to the best of my knowledge, you can have an unlimited number of series. For example, Running The Game III: Rules And Combat is part 10 of the series GM Toolbox. If you examine that blog post, you will find an area at the top of the post stating that it is part 10 of the series, with a link – click on that and you get the opening lines of each post within the series, in sequential order (you can see it by clicking on the series link I just quoted). And, at the bottom of the post itself there’s another box which lists all the parts that have been published, with links to each, that is automatically updated each time a new part is published.

Better than a category

This is better than a category because it avoids polluting your category list with dozens of entries, one for each day’s play. For my “Seeds Of Empire” campaign, so far, I would have 19 series, because there have been 19 adventures in the campaign to date:

• Distant Rumbles
• Devastation Scene
• Dead Hands
• Rights & Rites
• Captive Audience
• Troubled Waters
• Sage Advice
• Digging A Hole
• Air
• Earth
• Water
• Fire
• Negative
• Positive
• The Laboratory Of Tenga Mort
• Columbus Verde
• Broken Bonds and Lost Worlds
• The Garden Of Shimono
• On A Larger Scale

We’ve been playing this campaign about 10 times a year, on average, since mid-2006; about 55 game sessions. That gives an average of almost three sessions per adventure. “Earth” was turned into a standalone adventure and published as part of a Blog Carnival here at Campaign Mastery in March 2009. The PCs are about to start the next adventure, “Specter Of Defeat”.

So, if the title of each day’s synopsis was [Adventure Title]+[Play Date], and each blog post within the “Post-Play Adventure Documentation” category, then you could:

1. See a list of all play synopses within the campaign by clicking on the Category
2. Be able to identify by title, the adventures within that list and when each was played
3. Have a hot-linked list of all play synopses within a specific adventure attached to each part of that adventure.

What’s more, by adding a standalone page on which you (manually) list the adventure “series”, you have multiple ways to navigate through the past history of the campaign – all without using tags or subcategories – which reserves their functionality for other purposes.

All this functionality becomes even more significant if applied to a campaign like my Superhero game – which started in 1982 and has averaged roughly 20 sessions of play a year since. That’s almost 600 sessions of play! There have been at least 300 adventures in that span of time – some long, some short – and hundreds, if not thousands, of NPCs have appeared. On top of that, there have been side adventures and fictional adventures and spinoff campaigns and crossover adventures – between them, these would easily add another 200 adventures to the total. At one point, for a couple of years, we were playing 8 game sessions a month!

The use of comments

There’s one other advantage to this structure: players can add out-of-game comments and clarifications and ask questions of the GM simply by commenting on a post. And there is a permanent record of both question and answer for future reference. And the GM can supplement the synopsis when later events clarify events within an adventure simply posting a comment with a link to the clarifying blog post. For a trivial amount of effort (get link, copy to clipboard, locate post being clarified, start comment, paste link, post comment) yet another layer of cross-indexing can be incorporated.

But that brings me to:

The Second Vital Plugin

Campaign Mastery simply could not function without Akismet (Plugin Site) or some equivalent – if there is one. To date, it has trapped 272,131 spam comments for us – it takes only minutes each day to confirm that the automated selection really is spam, and to de-spam any false positives – and the rest then get despatched into the electronic never-never with a single mouseclick. If not for this plugin, those 272K spam comments would have polluted our blog posts, or required individual handling – so, instead of a couple of clicks every couple of days – maybe 400 clicks by now – we would have faced 272K clicks.

That’s the difference between having time to do something and having a full-time job just dealing with the comments.

It’s easy to spot a blog that doesn’t use Akismet or Captcha or something like them to auto-moderate spam – and I will never post a word to one bearing the stigma; I get enough spam in my inbox already.

Category: PC write-ups

As another set of posts, in a new category, I would put up copies of the character sheets for my reference, and get the players to provide a written summary of personalities, ambitions, etc, for use in planning future scenarios. These can be perpetually edited to keep them up-to-date, or a new post can be created using copy-and-paste so that “the way things were” can be referenced at any time. More usefully, this permits the GM and players to have conversations via comments about their characters – and, once again, the results are permanently stored for future reference.

Category: NPC write-ups

Even more usefully, a category can exist for NPC write-ups, which consist of a private post by the GM containing stats and other pertinent information, and one or more posts describing everything the PCs know about the NPC. What’s more, by using the NPCs name as a tag for both these posts and any synopses in which the NPC is mentioned, referenced, or participates, a complete log of the NPCs presence and role within the campaign can be maintained. With a single click on the relevant tag cloud entry, everything related to the chosen NPC is immediately available.

Clicking on the category entry gives the GM a list of every NPC in the campaign to choose from, with the first few lines of the character’s write-up – perfect for the GM to pick through the list and extract the right name and details any time he needs it.

It’s the cross-indexing that results that is so valuable; the GM can start with a synopsis of play post, identify the name of an NPC from it, and just by clicking on the corresponding tag cloud entry, have the entire history of that character open to inspection.

Category: Exotic Goodies

Every campaign accumulates these. They might be magic items in a fantasy campaign, high-tech gadgets in a sci-fi campaign, or whatever. Giving them a description in a dedicated blog post, and using tags in the same way as NPCs, means that the location and disposition and history of any given item can be found. And, of course, if the item is in the possession of a specific character, because there are entries for each of them (PC or NPC), the tag cloud can also be used to cross-reference goodie with possessor.

Category: Location Descriptions

In the same way, there are certain locations that are going to be significant time and time again. A description of the location and any events that occur there within the game – especially any damage – means that there will never be a problem with keeping those locations dynamic. Just change it a little bit from what it was each time you use it. You can incorporate the consequences of past actions into your location descriptions without even thinking about it – “a number of the awnings still show the scorch marks from Flimwyn’s Fireball three years ago, when you fought the Gorgolich Ascended on this street corner.” Similarly, consistency becomes automatic.

Both these add tremendously to both the verisimilitude of the campaign, to the players feeling that they are really present within the world, and that it has been changed by their presence – that they Matter.

Those are fringe benefits – the real benefit is that you have the location details at your fingertips whenever you need it.

Category: Custom Monsters

Any Fantasy Campaign will have these, as will many other types of campaign. Giving them the same treatment means that the details are always at the GMs fingertips, just a click or two away – which means that should they ever be needed, a consistent and fresh example can appear in play.

Category: In-game Politics & Societies

And, of course, politics is a natural subject for any and every campaign to track in this manner. By now, though, the tag cloud is becoming so clogged with entries that it would be impractical to dig through it for the entry you want.

Who cares? Use a search engine to find a post which contains the referent you’re looking for. Each post will have a list of the tags under which it is indexed; so any one of them gives you access to the totality.

Category: Game Theology

At first glance, you might think that this is only needed for Fantasy Games, but I would beg to differ. Theology has been important in my superhero campaign, my pulp campaign, and in almost every campaign that I’ve played in – be it Travellor, Paranoia, or Lord Of The Rings. Sure, in some campaigns it’s referents are literal, and in others they are simply what characters believe, but either way, theology matters. And that means that a GM might have need to refer back to what has already been established within the game.

Entries within this category might be by religion, or by Deity name, or both.

Category: Magic & Mysticism in the campaign

The same is obviously true of this subject. Branches or practitioners might be the logical subjects of posts, and the significant myths, legends, and relics. That means that quite frequently this category will be used in conjunction with another – rather than having three posts on the subject of “Felix Theonamlous” – one as an NPC and one relating to his arcane practices and one or more on his accoutrements and trappings and artefacts, the “Magic and Mysticism” category would get attached to the existing NPC and item-description posts.

Category: Cosmology

This, on the other hand, is genuinely a category that won’t always be needed – I would argue that even in campaigns where the Cosmology doesn’t matter, such as Western Campaigns, a statement to that effect should be recorded under this category, however!

Category: House Rules

Here, for the first time, I would advocate the use of subcategories, using the chapter numbers of the core rulebook as the subcategory titles. Most house rules could be contained in an ordinary “blog post” – leaving them free to be annotated at any time by revising the post, and offering the facility for players to discuss them through comments. This keeps the House Rules more-or-less structured by relatedness of subject, makes it easier to determine if a given rule in the sourcebook is modified by a house rule.

In terms of tags, there are only four that I would use for such posts: “Proposed” or “Draft”; “Trial”; “Approved”; and “Rejected”. What a lot of people who don’t use WordPress may not realise is that it’s very easy to add a new tag retrospectively, and even easier to remove an existing tag. So the status of any given rule can be verified instantly by means of the tag, and rules can be recalled either by subject (using the subcategories) or by the status of the rule (tags).

Category: Downloadable Props

Once again, these are things that every campaign accumulates over time. A GM usually only has at hand those that he considered directly relevant when preparing for the day’s play; the rest are too bulky and get in the way too much. Giving each it’s own blog post is the perfect solution that would enable the GM to have it both ways.

As with the “Magic and Mysticism” category, this category should rarely be used in isolation; it should always connect or correlate to the game session synopses in which it was relevant, and/or to the location posts or item posts or NPC posts with which the prop was associated, or to the House Rules.

Category: Miscellanea

There’s always going to be something that you haven’t thought of, or that doesn’t quite fit any of the existing categories. Other possible names for this category are “Esoterica” and “Exotica”. Links to online generators, for example. Extracts from research. References, quotes, whatever. A calendar if the campaign uses one.

Each campaign and each GM would use this category differently, but they would all need it.

At the top of the list for me would be the Monster Generator that I reviewed here way back in March 2009 (Building The Perfect Beast: A D&D 3.5 online monster generator) and the results would heavily populate the Custom Monsters category.

The final critical plugin

That brings me to another plugin that I would incorporate into such a setup, and the last one that I will mention. It was this plugin that actually prompted this post, though it’s a subject I’ve been thinking about off-and-on for a couple of years now.

Hey guys, I’m with Awesome Dice — we just released our new dice roller widgets for WordPress blogs and I’m hoping you could give it a shout out (or give it a spin). It’s available from WordPress.org or can be installed straight from the admin, to provide dicing to the diceless masses straight from any WordPress blog.

The die roller plugin works a treat. if you roll multiple dice, it automatically sorts the results from lowest to highest and shows the sum in parentheses; this is often useful, but it would be even better if the sorting was optional. I would also like to be able to roll more than 1d% at a time. But those are minor quibbles, and the product is in constant development.

The plugin is available from http://www.awesomedice.com/wordpress-dice-roller and you can check it out for yourself at Awesome Dice’s blog (and oh, yes, they also sell dice). As of right now, they don’t have a variant for Hero Games damage rolls, and there’s very little ability to customise the die rolls via mathematical expressions, but what they have done works very well.
Once a full suite of such die rollers is on tap, there is nothing to stop WordPress from becoming a key administrative tool for your campaigns – maybe even the best such option.

Why not another Option?

Wikis are another way of approaching the same thing, but they lack the relational indexing attributes of WordPress, and by their nature they tend to be entirely open or closed – though there may be exceptions. They also lack the relatively user-friendly GUI of WordPress.

Another possibility to consider is a more website less blogsite oriented approach using Google Docs. We use Google for a lot of our planning, and migrated the planning and administration/development of Assassin’s Amulet to Google after our first choice of site (ClockingIT) fell apart on us. To be honest, Clocking IT was both more user-friendly and had more options – the integrated chat system was quite useful for example; but it was not reliable enough and when that started getting in the way of the project, we took the hard choice to move. Google Docs offers better document control, and was far more reliable. But if ClockingIT got their act together I’d use it again in a heartbeat. (Not for more Legacies Campaign Setting work, I’m afraid; with more than 90 pages of content and planning to migrate, the LCS project is just too big to migrate again).

But here’s the thing: When you’re looking for a site to host your campaign, you have different needs to what you need when collaborating on a book. If you take advantage of what WordPress brings to the table, it’s better for that job than anything else I can think of, hands down.

A short time ago, we received an ATGMs question that made me stop and think for a minute. The question was straightforward; Angeline wrote, “I need some help, I’m a starting DM and I just have so much trouble coming up with Campaigns or good plot lines. Please help!!”

Last week, in Part One of this response, I talked about adventure creation, and how to structure various plot elements into a single adventure.

This week, I’m going to talk about the basics of linking adventures into a larger structure.

This is a subject that I’ve written about before, but one about which there is always something more to say. Most of those previous posts will be more advanced in technique than today’s discussion, and in many ways, this can be viewed as a primer for those more detailed and complex approaches.

For the benefit of our readers (and Johnn, who was asking me for just such a list a day or two ago), I will close this article with a list of my previous articles on the subject, arranged in logical sequence. But, right now, let’s get into the subject at hand…

Adventures generally consist of a number of simple elements:

1. subplots and plot hooks that build up a context and an atmosphere concerning a subject;
2. an introduction that connects those subplots and plot hooks to some immediate problem or situation that is going to be the central focus of the adventure;
3. a partial resolution of the immediate problem by the PCs;
4. a plot twist and/or setback that increases the tension surrounding the problem, and sometimes its significance or context, transforming it into a different, often more difficult, problem;
5. a resolution of the resulting problem by the PCs;
6. after-effects and consequences in the form of further subplots.

That, in a nutshell, is the essential shape of an adventure. Some of these items, especially stages three and five, can be quite extensive, and may even be composed of smaller mini-adventures and subplots. If the adventure is a dungeon, each room or encounter would be a mini-adventure.

The key to integrating miniadventures into a larger adventure, or adventures into a campaign, is for the after-effects and consequences to become part of the context and circumstances for a future plotline. In other words, a campaigns structure is defined by how the elements of one adventure relate to, and interact with, the elements of another adventure.

Sequential Episodes

There are a number of ways in which adventures can be strung together; Sequentially is the most obvious and least interesting way to do so.

In this structure, one adventure comes to a complete close before the next begins. This makes the campaign a series of easily-digestible chunks. It doesn’t matter whether an adventure takes a day or a year to complete; a new one won’t start until this one wraps.

This structure has only one real benefit to commend it: because both subplots and consequences are fully contained within the one campaign segment, there is time for character establishment and campaign background exploration while these are taking place. There can be game-time gaps in between of anywhere from seconds to decades or more. There is not even an absolute need for the characters in one segment to perpetuate into the next.

Plot Ladders

By incorporating subplots and preliminary encounters to the plotline preceding the main plot, the structure immediately assumes a ladder-like structure in which each adventure foreshadows the next.

Technically, there are two obvious ways to achieve this: either the subplots foreshadowing the next plotline coincide with the aftermath phase of the current or adventure, or they coincide with the preliminaries of the current adventure or the aftermath of the preceding adventure. With experience, ways can often be found to insert them into the main action of the current adventure, expanding the possibilities. Either way, the result is a series of overlapping plotlines that are nevertheless fairly straightforward and simple for players and GM to understand.

Complex plotlines

The next step forward in plotting sophistication comes with the realization that a little planning ahead means that subplots can relate to a more distantly removed plotline.

There is still an obvious pattern to this structure when the segments are arranged in this fashion. Plotlines are designed to be resolved sequentially, the only requirement being that the initial conditions relating to each have been established at some point prior to the adventure.

Connected Narratives

It’s not long after the development of complex plotlines – and sometimes even before it – that GMs start stringing adventures together to form a larger narrative. Subplots can be spread out, smeared across whole adventures. And what looks like two entirely separate adventures can dovetail to form one much larger and more complicated narrative.

One trend that is fairly clear at this point is that the more complex the campaign, the more slowly individual adventures and situations resolve. That’s because there are more things going on in the course of a single adventure; not only might it now have preludes and foreshadowing of the plotline to immediately follow it, but it might have plot threads connecting it to adventures that are two or three or more removed into the future, plus aftermaths and consequences that are two or three adventures removed into the past.

In fact, it becomes quite easy to construct a campaign that is so rambling that the PCs and GM lose track of what’s going on, get confused and tangled, and bring the campaign to a crashing halt. Structure can become so anarchic that it is now detrimental to the success of the overall campaign. What’s needed is some new organizational principle to start tying plotlines together in a more systematic way.

Plot Arcs

I call these plot arcs, Johnn has sometimes referred to them as loops.

But what they really are narrative superstructures that connect a bunch of related plots together into a single super-plot. Each plot arc is designed to overlap with several others. The only real difference between the campaign structure depicted above and the one that precedes it is in the identification of the individual adventures – instead of being treated as isolated units, a new level of organization has been incorporated to identify several adventures as being part of the same plot arc.

Even so, this is no longer the most efficient way of planning a plot arc. I’ll get to the subject of a better planning and design structure a little later.

Phased Campaigns

If you were to divide your campaign up into tenths, then schedule one or two plot arcs to have their major action (and hence their resolution) in each tenth, and to have their preliminaries subplots and establishing encounters coinciding with earlier phases, you end up with a phased campaign. Within each phase you can totally sandbox the campaign as you see fit, you can alter the sequence of resolution of adventures in response to PC choices and actions, and so on. When you reach the division between phases, there will be a relatively small number of divergences from the overall plan, usually taking the form of an additional plotline to be resolved or an unexpected outcome to complicate a future adventure. If such a structure has been plotted out carefully, with future dependencies carefully outlined, it is relatively quick and easy to update the plan to accommodate these variations.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I’ve been preparing my next superhero campaign for a couple of years now – actually, all I was doing in that respect for most of that time was coming up with plot ideas. Most of these were described no more fully than an adventure seed – a line or a paragraph each, nothing more.

Recently, the time came to start compiling these ideas into a set of plot arcs and thence into actual plot structures. A key principle to bear in mind in designing these plot arcs is that outcomes must never be preordained; at best, some intervening step on the way logical path to a point of ultimate resolution can be predetermined. I can’t presume that The Astonishing Ant-gorilla’s scheme to shrink a population of apes to millimeter size will be successful or will be defeated; only that he will obtain a supply of Compound Vanilla, the key component of his shrinking potion, in advance from where it is located in Laboratory 23, the super-scientific think-tank. I can happily construct a subsequent scenario based on the consequences of the security failure, or on another application of Compound Vanilla, or on the existence of Laboratory 23; I can even presume that if Ant-Gorilla is captured, he will be able to escape if needed for a subsequent adventure. But I can’t assume that his scheme will succeed or fail; remember, no plan survives contact with the PCs!

Step 1: Themes

I started by grouping them into overall themes – there is a mutagenic drugs theme (about drugs that, instead of being just mind-altering are also body-transforming); there’s a cybernetics/computer-crime theme; and so on.

Step 2: Character Arcs

Next, I came up with at least one (and preferably two) major plot arcs that focus on a single character. That doesn’t mean that the other PCs won’t get involved in them; they certainly will, since they form a critical part of the circumstances of each adventure within the plot arc, i.e. they are part of the context of each adventure; it’s just a question of where the plot spotlight will be focused.

Step 3: Character Plot Threads

One of the opportunities that I offer new characters comes in the form of additional character building points for each plot thread that they build into their character backgrounds. There are so many points for a closed plot thread – one that doesn’t have potential for multiple adventures – and more for an open plot thread that go in many directions. Making a list of these, then picking and choosing a few to become major elements of the campaign and expanding them into a series of specific adventures, is the third step.

Step 4: Villain/NPC Plot Threads

The penultimate stage of arc generation consists of the creation of extended plotlines for a handful of selected villains and NPCs as though they were PCs.

Step 5: Overall Plotline

With these plot arcs as raw material, and in broad strokes within my mind, I can then construct a rough overall plotline, with an overall campaign theme.

Step 6: Allocation Of Plotlines

The next step is to take the general plot arcs that were created in steps 1 to 4 and allocate the plot threads to different phases of the campaign according to how they fit into the overall plotline.

The result, in the case of my superhero campaign, looks something like this:

(It doesn’t look exactly like this because this is actually the result of a few more process steps). The colored bands running across the page depict the six phases of the overall plotline from step 5; these are groupings of (more than 10) stages, but most of the stages are very small. Plot arcs run across the page; yellow indicates that events relating to that plot arc occur in that stage of the campaign (dark yellow in the darker bands, lighter in the lighter bands) while white and gray are used to indicate an unresolved plot arc that has no significance within the stage. Note that most people will use a much simpler system of coding, which is what this started out as – blue for no, yellow for yes!

It can be seen that there are a lot of plot arcs that start in stage 1, but some are immediately resolved. For a while, plotlines seem to multiply faster than they are resolved, but that isn’t actually the case – a lot of them are inter-related and inter-connected, with significance that doesn’t get recognized until later in the campaign. This is a map to tell ME what is going on, not the players.

Other users might like to distinguish between subplots and main plot developments with colour coding, but I deal with that at a later stage.

Step 7: Flesh Out The Plot Arcs

It takes a lot of context to properly build a plot arc. Take the example I offered earlier of the Astonishing Ant-Gorilla – simply to use this plotline, I would want to have the option of:

1. establishing the villain (or, at least, his expertise in the relevant science)
2. establishing the existence of Compound Vanilla; and,
3. establishing the existence of Laboratory 23.

Sure, a lot this material can be introduced in the plotline, but the campaign achieves far greater consistency and verisimilitude (within genre-limits) if these are handled in advance. So I’ll go looking for plot opportunities in the other arcs in which Compound Vanilla can be important, other plotlines where Laboratory 23 might be useful, and other plotlines where Ant-Gorilla could be the villain. Oh, and shrinking.

Since there is no guarantee that Ant-Gorilla will be around after this plotline, just to be on the safe side, if he has anything else significant to contribute to a plotline, it should be scheduled to happen before the Shrinking Apes plotline, UNLESS it relies on that scheme’s outcome – and I can be reasonably sure that the PCs will trash the bad guy’s plans, even if he gets away – in which case it has to happen AFTER this plotline.

By building up interactive narrative structures that logically establish everything that’s needed before the main plotline, the plotline becomes a listed sequence of events and facts for the PCs to learn.

Step 8: Generate a single timeline of events

Once you have a complete concordance of the important facts of every major plotline pre-scheduled, you can construct a timeline for the campaign, a blueprint that tells you what every major NPC is doing at any given time and every fact that has to be revealed to, or uncovered by, the PCs, because it will either explain the significance of something that’s already happened, or will propel them into a new adventure, or both. For the Champions campaign, that list is currently 29 pages long – but I’ve compressed it into a tiny little graphic and rotated it 90 degrees to get what’s shown above.

This chart uses colour coding. It divides each step in the adventure process into three phases: subplots before, main action, and subplots after. Each of these is divided into columns for each character, and colour coding used to indicate yes or no – bright green for subplots, pale blue for incidental involvement in another PCs subplot, pale yellow for active involvement in another character’s subplot, bright purple for no subplot for that character at that time for whatever reason, red for no subplots at all because the next main event will follow immediately with no time gap. Main events are colour-coded – bright yellow for yes, golden yellow for yes but away from their main base of operations, dark blue for no main action for anyone, bright blue for no involvement in the main plot expected for that specific character. Each line represents a day, game time, or less.

Again, I expect most people to use a much simpler colour code; this is an especially complex campaign.

Let’s take a closer look at just a few lines of the timeline (I’ve broken it into five separate parts to get it to fit across the page), and to enable discussion:

The first column, “Apocalypse Phase” refers to what phase of the overall plotline these events are part of. Session # shows how far I expect to get in a single session of play (4-5 hours). “Early Ranking” lists the campaign stage, counting down from 9 to -3 (with 0 being a major event), the start of the Big Finish. “Plot Arc” is a numeric code that identifies which plot arc the event is a part of – if any. And Plot Code is an index entry that points me to both my concordance notes and the full description of the event. “V01b”, for example, has a concordance entry of: “follows v01.2, precedes v01b1”. The concordance also lists the emotional impact the event is expected to have, the cosmic and fantasy ratings, and the tone – as described in an earlier post on this manner of plot organization. It also has a synopsis of the event for my benefit – in this case, “team research who Vala is – mission logs, media reports, etc”. In essence, this about a new PC describing what is publicly known about the character. I doubt it will take more than 10 minutes, real time.

Other points of interest in this excerpt: notice that multiple plot points can be contained on a single line; notice that a single line might advance one, two, or three plot arcs (in fact, some advance even more plotlines, but those are exceptional events); and notice that one event has been highlighted as taking place in an unusual location. In fact, this example contains an error, as the first event line should also be so colour-coded, as might be surmised by the plot arc number that they have in common.

The second set of columns in the table shows a lot of information. First, note the column title at the top: these depict subplots – often just a few minutes or seconds long in real time – focusing on a specific character. Underneath that (in blue) are abbreviations of the main character names – the first four are PCs, and the next two are recurring NPCs. The first line shows a shared subplot for everyone (DP39) – that’s actually not technically correct, as two of the characters will not have entered the campaign at this point, but this indicates that I want them to know of that event (because it will also serve as a general introduction to the campaign, in this particular case). This is followed by a sea of red (no subplots because there is no time for them) and occasional splashes of purple (no subplots for some other reason); in the midst of which, there are three subplot events listed: v01a and v01d1 focus on Vala, while RA09 focuses on Runeweaver.

Beneath the red section, in the last three rows, a different pattern (more normal) emerges – there is a shared subplot (v04) for two characters before one event, there is a shared subplot (er02) for almost all characters before the next event, and there’s a single subplot (v07a) for one character prior to the event after that. White space means that I can fill the space with whatever seems appropriate – I have a list of mundane activities that would normally pass without notice, which can be used to answer the question, ‘what were you doing while this was occurring?’.

Notice that I need have no fear in showing this information publicly; without the key, and the corresponding plot summary, these codes mean absolutely nothing to the players.

The next set of columns are for the main plot, which is usually identified by number in the first batch of columns, and so doesn’t need to be referenced here. The structure is similar to the previous section, with character names in sub-columns. Light Blue indicates non-participation, Dark blue indicates no main plot, gold indicates a main plot that occurs somewhere other than the main adventure venue – in a fantasy game, you might distinguish between dungeons, wilderness, and urban settings, in this case it indicates something occurring in deep space or in a different dimension. The only other really significant observation to make is that at one point, a subplot affects the main plot, as shown by the codes displayed; these really stand out because they are the only codes shown in this section of the table.

At times while compiling the event plan, there have been occasions when I’ve had to insert clarifying notes in this section. I’ve split cells into separate rows as necessary, because that is often less work than merging multiple rows and columns. Oh, and I’ve used the table construction systems within Open Office for this table – I find it more customizable with less effort than the Word equivalent, which I use for other kinds of documents.

This shows subplots that follow the main-plot events. It’s also used to contain teasers for the next piece of the main plot. Once again, it is organized to show the principle characters of the campaign in individual columns. What this shows is a whole-group briefing event (DP40); then 4 characters having a subplot (v01.2); then no characters having subplots; then two characters having a subplot (v01c) with the possibility that other characters may be passive observers or secondary participants (v01c?); a single subplot for one character (v01d1) and a whole heap of red (no subplots because one event follows immediately after another). Finally, there is a whole group subplot (SB05), quite possibly a teaser – you might just be able to make out that it precedes an off-world adventure. Then there’s more white-space room for mundane events.

Also noteworthy is the fact that one NPC character is not expected to be involved in any of this activity beyond that initial briefing event.

There are just two columns left to examine: Featured Villains (if any) and Featured NPCs. VW is an obvious abbreviation for someone who will be a regular villain/NPC within the campaign. “Major Journalists” indicates that we have a substantial press conference at which some of the leading journalists of the western world will be involved – this is a blanket label to save listing them individually, and a reminder that I will need to compile such a list. “Baron Varnae” is a vampire who gained superpowers by drinking the blood of a superhero; he was thought destroyed, but since when does that stop a Vampire? “Ringmaster & The Circus Of Crime” is a homage and variation on the classic Marvel villains from the 1960s – and as for Red Shanahan, well that would be telling – but it’s not a name the players will recognize!

Critically important is the fact that if there is no featured villain, there is not going to be any combat – and battle is what eats up time in any game.

You can’t get the full impact of this column structure with it all broken up like this, so now that you know what’s in any given column, here’s a somewhat-reduced version of the whole section – the text will be illegible, but the relationship between colour-coded sections becomes clearer.

All you need to know to interpret it is that time proceeds across each line and then down to the next, just as though you were reading a line in a book. So the two whole-team subplots occur in succession, and then there is a main event for 3 characters, a subplot for 4 characters, then a subplot for 1 character, a main event for four characters, another main event for 4 characters, a two-character subplot in which other characters may be present, a five-character main plot event, a single-character subplot, a single-character subplot which occurs to the same character, and a main plot event for 5 characters – and that constitutes everything that’s expected to happen in the first session of play of the new campaign.

The second session starts with a single-character subplot, then there’s a five-character main plot event, which is followed by another five character main plot event in which subplots complicate the situation. This is the plotline with the “Major Journalists”, which might give a clue! (No, i’m not giving anything away – on learning that their [NPC] predecessors logged each encounter with the media as though it were a combat mission, the players’ comments were, “very sensible of them!” They already know that they will have to feed the voracious press machine regularly and often – or the media monster will eat them alive…)

Complex Structure Interactions

Another way of looking at a campaign structure of this type is as a function model.

• The subplots form an initial set of conditions.
• The introduction sets in motion two or more parallel functions that will modify those conditions in some way that has been defined as ‘interesting’ by the GM.
• Each major NPC, and the PCs, represents an individual function. These parallel functions collide and either oppose each other or unite, coalescing into larger functions; if they interfere with each other, then each confrontation forces the weaker function to to give way to the stronger.
• Because each function is altering the conditions within which the adventure simulation is occurring, the conditions that exist after each interaction are different to those that initially existed – the background situation is perpetually evolving in response to the functions.
• This means that the actual conditions that surround the final climax are different to those which existed when characters made their initial plans; plot twists are inherent within this structure.

“My Campaign’s already running…”

It’s not too late to implement this sort of plot structure, to whatever depth you want to take it. The secret weapon that makes it possible are index cards – or a virtual equivalent.

Make up one card for each of the PCs. It should consist of just the name and any ambitions that character wants to satisfy in the course of the campaign. Code each by an abbreviation of the character name, just as I have used “St B”, “V”, “BW”, “RW”, “K”, and “BC”.

Next, make up a card for each major plotline that has developed in play. Use about half the card to synopsize the plotline – you want only a very brief description. Focus on the current situation more than the ‘how did we get here’. Give each plotline a one-or-two word title, and a code that consists of an 2-character alphabetic abbreviation of that name.

Add another card for each trend that you have observed developing – is there a general rise in anarchy or are taxes getting out of hand? Again, give each a one-or-two-word title and a code based on it. If you already know the cause, synopsize it.

Finally, add cards for the major villains, NPCs, and organizations. Note any involvement or responsibility they have in any of the cards by listing the relevant codes. Synopsize any major ambitions or plans they have, and their current status within the game.

Playing The Cards You’re Dealt

1. Arrange these index cards in four neat stacks, each stack consisting of the card categories described above. It’s time to play ‘spot the correlation’.
2. Take the first card – it will be a PC card – and place it to one side. Now go through the rest of the cards trying to think of any way to involve that character’s ambitions to the material on the other cards, and if you find it, add it to a list. That list should have the primary code (the character code from the first card), the code of the ‘matching’ card, and a synopsis of the way or ways they can combine. Leave a tiny bit of space to the left, you’ll have an additional number to write down later.
3. When you’ve tried to match that first card with all the other cards, return the other cards to their stacks.
4. Set aside the first card and repeat the above process for the second card. Continue until you have listed all the ways the existing plotlines can interact and intersect. At first, you may find this process slow; it will quickly grow very rapid.
5. Do some quick tallies of the number of times each code appears. You are looking for the code that appears most frequently. It can be preferable to list the top three or four.
6. As a first cut, the most-connected code will be the overall plotline and the source of the campaign’s climax. If it doesn’t seem sufficient dramatic for the purpose, try the second most-connected code, then the third, and so on – unless some master plan has started fitting itself together in your mind while you’ve been examining your campaign from all angles, which happens more frequently than people might expect.
7. For each card, draft a plotline to resolve the storyline, using – as much as possible – the plot ideas on your list. Plotlines should be listed as a sequence of events, none of which have to be carried out by the PCs – it should all be either information the PCs learn, or something an NPC does. Events should be listed in the most logical sequence, and given a code number that consists of the alphabetic code plus a two digit number. If you have to, insert additional logical steps.
8. It should now become possible to construct a concordance for the rest of your campaign, and from it generate a master list of events.
9. The players don’t have to follow your proposed schedule. Your list of linking events serve as stop signs; the players are free to proceed as far as they want to in each of the plotlines you have running until they reach a stop sign – at which point, get out the other card indicated and make sure that any events required before the stop sign occur before permitting the players to take that next step. Refer to the diagram below, and it should be immediately obvious what this means – the characters are free to follow plotline#1 until they reach the stop sign (p1e05), at which point an NPC or outside circumstances have to push them to complete the unresolved events of plotline#2 to the same stage – that’s P2e01 and 02.

The wrapup

That’s everything you need to know to create complex and inter-entwined campaigns. With these organizational principles, it all comes down to how good and creative your plot ideas are.

But wait, we’re not quite done yet….
Next time, in part three, I have a couple of practical examples to offer that just wouldn’t fit, this time around: The White Tower and The Belt Of Terra!

In the meantime, as promised, I am closing this blog post with a list of my past articles on the subject. The list starts by dealing with adventure creation – items that probably should have been included last time, but I ran out of time to compile it. Later entries deal with campaigns and how to connect one adventure to another using these adventures as logical units. But there’s a lot of overlap between the two subjects. Links will open in a new tab or window.

• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Adventures On The Fly talks about constructing adventures without prep.
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Six Foundations Of Adventure continues the discussion by listing several sources of adventures and subplots. But it does talk about broader structures as well, particularly in the section “A character idea”.
• Forging Unexpected Connections: Putting PC Dossiers To Work is about organizing character information in a way that makes it easier to generate connections between characters and adventures.
• Eight Lifeboats for GM emergencies has a large section on solutions to the GM Emergency “The Absence Of Plot Direction”. Essentially, this is the last third of the article.
• Monday’s Post, Melodies & Rests: ‘Euphoria’ by Def Leppard used some of the same techniques to derive a stack of plot seeds from a CD chosen at semi-random from my collection, the last of which was expanded into a more substantial plotline.
• Directed Plots, Undirected Narrative, and Stuff That Just Happens examines the ways in which different Narrative Styles and techniques combine with different Campaign Structures to produce eight distinctly different combinations, and how each can be effectively Sandboxed.
• Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background relates one of the most significant lessons I’ve had from the TV series, concerning the passage of time within a campaign. This is something to bear in mind throughout planning and structuring a series of adventures.
• Ask The GMs: An Epic Confusion, or how to stage a blockbuster finish is the first of three articles about big finishes to campaigns.
• A Grand Conclusion: Thinking about a big finish is a post about giving campaigns a big finish – designing the adventure, building up to it, and so on.
• Theme vs Style vs Genre: Crafting Anniversary Special Adventures talks aout putting together those special scenarios for occasions that require a little extra zing above and beyond your usual – when you want to pull out all the stops. These can often take some time to build up to their climax, so there are implications for campaign design and structure.
• Ask The GMs: In it for the long haul discusses campaign longevity and the implications of a long-lived campaign. It contains advice for getting a campaign to last that long, and on how longevity affects the structure of a campaign.
• When Good Ideas Linger Too Long: Compacting Plotlines discusses a problem that can cripple a campaign and how to restructure adventures to solve it.

Melodies & Rests is intended to be an occasional recurring column at Campaign Mastery in which Mike plucks a CD at random from his collection and sees how much creative inspiration for gaming he can squeeze out of it. You don’t have to agree with his musical tastes – but play close attention to the techniques…

As the prototype for this new column, I’ve picked a CD that more or less leaped out as an excellent starting point: Def Leppard’s 1999 album “Euphoria”, Available from Amazon. Released after the group’s heyday, this was a deliberate return to the sounds and production techniques that at one time made them arguably the biggest band in the world. But that doesn’t particularly interest us here – you can read more about the band on their Wikipedia page .

Cover

Sadly, nothing much to get us excited here. The good stuff is yet to come.

Back Cover

Oh dear, this isn’t getting any better. A reasonably vanilla photograph of the band members against a black background.

Interior Art

More pictures of band members. All fairly bland. Until you actually take the CD out, and then there is a rather intriguing image:

(I fear the scan doesn’t do the image justice). It may bear no relation to the actual intent or production of the image, but what I see when I look at this are two possibilities:

• Shambling mounds of light
• Beings constructed of energy waves

Both these can be jumping-off points for the imagination.

Shambling Mounds Of Light

Monsters made of solid energy, these things look slow but aren’t. Brainlessly destructive and virtually mindless, they would make great cannon fodder for a villain or a generic accidental creation from a lab accident. In fantasy-oriented campaigns, they might result from a miscast Light spell.

In general, we associate light with purity and – in the case of 3.x, with positive energy. That offers an entirely different slant on what these things might be – beings from the Positive Energy Plane that human eyes can barely comprehend. Or perhaps this is a city in such a place – a real “city of light”. Suddenly, I’m reminded of the Angels in James Blish’s “The Star Dwellers” (a limited number available through Amazon) and what their celestial “playground” must have looked like.

Beings constructed of energy waves

The big difference between this idea and the preceding ones is the question of solidity. Whereas the “shambling mounds of light” were solid but didn’t look it, these are ephemeral, and therefore immune to most of what a PC can throw at them. Energy, they would simply absorb – it would be just another meal to them – and matter would pass straight through them. In a superhero or space opera campaign, these would be dangerous opponents.

The fantasy equivalent would be beings constructed of pure magic. Able to cast virtually any spell at will by sacrificing hit points equal to the spell level, or perhaps to the caster level, they would be equally dangerous. The difficulty lies in coming up with a reasonable origin for them – where do they come from? None of the inner planes really seems to fit, and any outer plane would have to be fairly exotic for these beings to be at home there. Perhaps they inhabit the boundaries between planes? I mean, those boundaries have to be made of something, and pure magic would certainly be as likely a concept as anything else. Perhaps some of these get dislodged when there is too much gating between planes in a particular location?

The Track List

Taking song titles in isolation can often be a spur to creativity. With 15 tracks on the Australian version of this CD, let’s see what we can make of the titles in this case.

1. Demolition Man – Aside from immediately bringing to mind the Sylvester Stallone / Wesley Snipes sci-fi action movie – which has lots of ideas to plunder – this suggests a character who goes around knocking things down or blowing them up. But that’s a little pedestrian for most campaigns; to make it interesting, the character’s targets should be something unusual or exotic. Perhaps he demolishes the boundaries between worlds, or is trying to do so? Alternatively, there’s the potential for a tragic figure whose “demolition” activities are am unwanted side effect of his mere presence – metal fatigue, structural collapse, windows shattering… that could make for an interesting variant on the Frankenstein myth in a sci-fi or superhero campaign.
2. Promises – Anything that brings to mind the whole question of debts and obligations is a rich source of ideas, but the word alone is not particularly inspiring. Expect to get better ideas from the lyrics in such cases.
3. Back In Your Face – The only thing that this really brings to mind is the return of a threat or NPC that the characters thought they had solved. But that’s not a bad notion – a contemporary enemy might well rejuvenate or restore a past menace to the PCs and offer them the chance of revenge purely to distract them from what He’s up to. That’s not a bad plot hook…
4. Goodbye – I had to dig for ideas derived from this title. My initial thought was “Goodbye… to what?” Answering the “what” could turn this into an interesting plot hook. But that got me thinking about angst-ridden death scenes, and Shakespearian tragedies, and operatic climaxes. How do characters face death – their own, or someone close to them? Or perhaps we’re talking about a romantic attachment being broken off – that’s the “Shakespearian tragedy” component. “Why is the person saying goodbye?” could be an equally strong source of ideas, especially if one or more PCs were directly involved. Further, there are two possible options: saying goodbye to someone or something voluntarily, or saying it involuntarily. The first is well-catered for already; the second brings with it connotations of hidden secrets and blackmail – and that can take an otherwise bland NPC that the PCs know and trust and make them interesting, or an already-interesting NPC and make them very interesting. And then there’s the possibility that it’s a PC who is being blackmailed into leaving the party. The ideas may have been slow to come to mind, but once they started flowing, there were plenty of them.
5. All Night – There is even less to get excited about concerning this title. All that comes to mind is a strange phenomenon that lasts all night, every so often, or a character with curse that afflicts them at night, or something that is intended to delay or occupy the PCs ‘all night’ to prevent interference in something more important.
6. Paper Sun – Now here’s a more provocative title. A two dimensional world… or perhaps reducing our world to two dimensions, enabling the villain to reach ‘past’ any barriers (very pulp-ish). Or a tabloid newspaper (or fantasy equivalent, a Tabloid Bard?). Or the seal on a treaty, perhaps?
7. It’s Only Love – Ideas stem from this title only relative to the tone of voice that one imagines being used when saying it. The phrase takes on quite different connotations if spoken in a wistful sense, or in a dismissive tone, and so on. The common message is that love doesn’t matter, but there are four huge variables: the person making the statement, who it is being said to, who the emotional connection being dismissed is with, and whether or not the speaker means it, literally, or is trying to convince either himself or someone else of its truth. And that’s taking the term “love” literally; what if it is used in a more general sense? The phrase could be used by a hobbyist to describe how they feel about their activities or an addict to express their addiction. Whenever I come across a phrase like this, that is so mutable in meaning, I generally like to come up with an adventure in which each PC experiences the phrase in a difference sense or permutation, so that the phrase itself becomes the common thread and theme linking the subplots together. This sort of idea is great for a ‘non-adventure’ that is all about roleplaying, which can be a great change of pace.
8. 21st Century Sha La La La Girl – To make anything from this title, I need to first discard the “Sha La La La”. The remainder, “21st Century Girl” sparked a few ideas, by way of the different implications that could lead to someone being described in that way. From the notion of someone who is ahead of their time, to someone who was so obsessed with a romantic connection to the character that they travelled back in time to be with them, there are a number of possibilities that result.
9. To Be Alive – This is the sort of title that scratches my philosophical bump. What does it mean “To be Alive”? This line of thought leads to the associated notion of “To Feel Alive” which suggests thrill-seeking. I haven’t seen many thrill-seekers in fantasy campaigns, though they make the occasional appearance in more modern campaigns – does that suggest that modern life is more boring to the populace? Or simply that there is a character archetype that’s under-represented in fantasy gaming? But, I really can’t go past my first thought, which connects the phrase with those immortal words from Frankenstein, “It’s Alive!!”; the whole concept of life beyond death, i.e. undeath, when associated with this phrase, gives forth some wonderful ideas. There’s the dramatic announcement of the newly-resurrected Lich/Demi-Lich; there’s the wistful and somewhat melancholy statement of an Undead regretting all the things that they have left behind. And there’s the interesting thought of an NPC experiencing that transition from celebrating a victory over death, to realising that it is a Pyrrhic victory, to covertly seeking to have the PCs end their unnatural existence despite the demands and desires of the entity who has provided the means, and who insists on a fair return on their time and trouble. Faustian Bargains are always such fun!
10. Disintegrate – A title that promises much but delivers little in the way of inspiration. What disintegrates? Without context, this doesn’t really go anywhere in terms of generating ideas. I must admit that I can never hear the word without remembering the classic Warner Bros cartoon, “Duck Dodgers In The 24-and-a-halfth century”, and the duel of disintegrating pistols. Trying to capture that tone might seem a fun diversion for an otherwise straight-laced campaign, but it requires the cooperation of the players – if they don’t have the appropriately Looney-Tunes mindset, the adventure can quickly grind to a halt. The trick, then, would be getting the players into the appropriate headspace. Maybe taking a leaf out of “Roger Rabbit” and having the PCs enter a strange world where this sort of craziness is the way things work – or perhaps stealing a beat from “Westworld” and having a Warner Bros theme park go out of control or otherwise come to life?
11. Guilty – The whole genre of legal drama fascinates me and has done so for a very long time. So much so that I have stirred these plot elements into my superhero campaign extensively and at least touched on them in my fantasy campaigns. The players in the former were overjoyed when a character’s superhero identity was given legal recognition by the courts under international law – and not at all so thrilled when unexpected consequences of the law created even more problems than there had been before the law was introduced. Another example is the time when one of the PCs was on trial for murder, being defended by a young Denny Crane (Boston Legal), who was opposed by Special Prosecutor Perry Mason – a genuine clash of the legal titans, as anyone familiar with both series will immediately recognise. In general, it doesn’t matter what law you make about super-powers or costumed crime-fighting, it will have massive and unwanted consequences. All of the above flashed through my mind when prompted by this title, but the most interesting ideas that stem from it that have occurred to me all relate to the distinctions between being guilty, being apparently guilty, and feeling guilty, especially when two or more of those are in contradiction. There are numerous combinations – being guilty and not feeling guilty, being guilty and appearing innocent, being innocent and appearing guilty, and so on – and they all make good plotlines. So much so that it is necessary to warn against overuse!
12. Day After Day – this title implies repetition and repetitiveness, and reminds me of a ST:TNG episode in which they were stuck in a loop in time, reliving the same events over and over. I shamelessly stole and modified that idea for an adventure in my previous superhero campaign entitled “Force 13”, which ended up precipitating a Dalek Invasion. Another possible idea is a character who is cursed to relive the same day for eternity (Groundhog Day) until the PCs intrude into his time bubble and become equally trapped.
13. Kings Of Oblivion – Now, we’re cooking. I don’t care what game or game system you are running, in what genre – except possibly western – there is room in it for a group calling themselves the Kings Of Oblivion. The title could be metaphoric or literal. Whether they rule over “oblivion”, are destructive on a cosmic scale, or are simply highly-skilled killers, this is a Great Title!
14. Worlds Collide – This bonus track from the Australian release of the CD is another excellent one for inspiration, because “Worlds” can mean so many different things. It could be taken literally, or it could refer to the personal “world” that two people inhabit, or any number of other interpretations. It can refer to two people’s worlds colliding, or one person’s world coming into conflict – for example when a character’s professional and personal lives are at odds.
15. Under My Wheels – The album I have closes with this bonus track, a cover version of an Alice Cooper track. If interpreted metaphorically, there are a number of plot ideas that can derive from it – from the unintended crushing of innocents by side-effects and unwanted consequences to a character who simply dismisses those caught “under his wheels” as unimportant. Since the latter is more-or-less stock villainy, the first of those two is a more interesting adventure concept. There are still variants to consider – are the PCs doing the crushing, are they opposing the crushing, are they the ones being crushed?

Selected Lyrical Content

I’m running short on time, and this post is already brimming with ideas for our readers to expropriate. So I’m going to restrict myself to lyrics from just two of the songs on the album. I’m sure there are more!

Promises

The first line of the chorus of this song runs “I won’t make promises that I can’t keep.” That’s a very suggestive lyric when you consider the full gamut of people who might be making the statement. Everything from an honest politician, to a lying politician, to a demonic being with a sense of ethics. Is the speaker being truthful? Is he not? How much grey area is there in the character’s assessment of what promises he can and can’t keep? Where are the lines drawn?

Or you can put a completely different spin on the phrase by inserting other lines before it. Try, “I promise you a painful death – and,” or “I will make your life a living hell – and,”. Or, “This is prime real estate – buy it now and you’ll make a fortune, and”. Or even “I’ll find you a beauty, only driven by a little old lady on the weekends,”. Or “I won’t live without you”.

From sinister to oily to creepy, this phrase can mean everything or nothing. And it’s up to the character to work out which.

Paper Sun

Finally, there is the second line of the chorus to “Paper Sun” – the first runs “Because we’re living on a paper sun,”, and the second, “Blind to all the damage done.” This suggests that the song is about environmentalism – and Def Leppard are well known to include one “serious issue” song on each album in amongst the usual pop-rock, so that fits their profile. This line immediately reminds me of the St:TNG episode late in their 7th season in which a group of environmentalists prove that high-level warp speeds are damaging the interstellar “environment”. The episode itself is rather lame, easily the least interesting of the final season, because it never really goes anywhere and doesn’t give the heroes a chance to be heroic. My immediate thought on viewing it for the first time was how effective a handicap it placed on the Federation – exactly what their enemies would choose to do if they were to use Starfleet’s superior morals against them.

So what would be required in order to achieve this? Well, you need an environment in which there is a lot of high-speed traffic – check. Next, you need a local race scientifically advanced enough to detect the phenomenon and belligerent enough to force Starfleet’s attention to it – check. Then, you need a means of artificially creating the effect that you want the enterprise to detect – not all that difficult to achieve in any environment where pseudo-science gobbledygook can substitute for the real thing, so long as it sounds plausible. Deploy the device, which makes the adjacent regions of space “sensitive” to the supposed high-warp effect, and simply wait. Hey, presto! You have caused immeasurable constraints on their military preparedness, rate of scientific advancement, and economy. Not to mention the psychological damage you’ve done. And, of course, this coincides with belligerence by several enemies of the Federation, as shown in concurrent episodes of Deep Space 9, any of whom could have been responsible.

It would hardly be the first time that a group’s morals or ethics had been used against them as a military or political tactic. Even if the ruse were eventually discovered, the damage would be done.

What’s interesting about this premise is that there had never been any concern with these environmental effects until this episode. The environment ‘damage’ did not even exist, so far as the Federation knew, until they were thrust into the middle of the situation. By the same token, there is no need to have a pre-existing environmental concern in the game or game setting – one can be manufactured and introduced as a motive for belligerence, exactly as was the case in the Next Gen episode.

For example, let’s consider translating this premise into a fantasy milieu. A group begins targeting spellcasters, no-one knows why. The PCs – all high-level characters – are hired by the King to investigate the matter. They have a confrontation with the group responsible, who explain that the casting of high-level spells is damaging the environment in some semi-plausible and serious-sounding way that can be easily tested and verified by the PCs. The group making the attacks on spellcasters offer a deal – they will stop their attacks if the PCs will present the problem to the King. When they do so, he outlaws the use of any spell of higher than 6th level without express written permission from the throne. Give the kingdom a few months to imprison anyone who breaks the law, and for a number of the best and brightest of the kingdom to emigrate elsewhere for the equivalent of “scientific freedom”, and then the people responsible for faking the environmental damage can invade with a pronounced tactical advantage.

The key is the type of damage supposedly being caused. The most obvious is something affecting birth rates or other fertility problems, but that’s too hard for the PCs to verify. Something that breaks down the barriers between worlds, permitting abominations and devils and demons easy access is less emotive, but more easily verified by the PCs, and gives a nice justification for some more action by the PCs.

An utterly plausible adventure, in which the high morals of the PCs – and of the players – gets manipulated. Of course, only a truly evil GM would contemplate it… so that’s at least 90% who are in, then. Are you one of them?

Remember, this column is on trial until we see how many people think it should continue. If you enjoyed it – or think that the next time might be more interesting than this choice – please comment on it, or tweet about it using the buttons at the top of the post, or give it +1 on google or a facebook ‘like’. All of these will be tabulated and used to decide whether or not the column strikes a chord – no pun intended, but I’ll take it! Have fun…

A short time ago, we received an ATGMs question that made me stop and think for a minute. The question was straightforward; Angeline wrote, “I need some help, I’m a starting DM and I just have so much trouble coming up with Campaigns or good plot lines. Please help!!”

Every now and then in this game you have to ask yourself if you are neglecting the basics that really help newcomers to the hobby. And, since you can never really do enough in that regard, the question generally results in a “not really,” answer. The trick is always finding something with enough substance that more experienced readers will get something worth the effort of reading your post as well as the relative novices who are the core target.

My standard solution to this dilemma is to ensure that I have packaged something new in at least some part of the process – some new thought or insight that can help any GM out there that hasn’t thought of it themselves. Hopefully, I’ve managed that, but a review of the fundamentals can always be helpful.

This article will be in two halves – part 2 (which I’ll post next week) will deal with Campaign Structures. The subjects for today are the adventures that go into a campaign.

Adventure Sources

Adventures can come from anywhere. An adventure is simply a matter of the PCs having an objective – either one they have chosen for themselves or one that in-game circumstances have thrust apon them, usually in the form of a piece of bait attached to a plot hook. Once the PCs nibble at the bait, you have their attention – and all you have to do is collaborate with the players on telling the story of how that objective was achieved, or how they failed to achieve the goal, by lobbing complications and personal interactions at the plotline.

All plots are narratives describing the transition from A to B. Your main job as a GM (aside from rules refereeing and providing the context within which that transition occurs) is to make the process of transition as interesting as possible.

Objectives

Obviously, the place to start is usually by defining the objective the players want their characters to achieve.

External Objectives

Objectives that the GM sets up are the most common, and often the most problematic. Most GMs will be familiar with the concept of a ‘plot train’ in which it doesn’t matter what choices the players make, the PCs still end up going where the GM wanted. There was a time when this was considered the epitome of good GMing; I can remember reading articles in the Dragon about how to get a campaign back on track when the PCs get themselves tied up in something going on over on the side.

That’s no longer the case. Players are not content to be led by the nose, and it’s even easier for a plot train to lead to bad GMing than it is to a great campaign. In general, as long as the players agree with where the GM is taking them, there’s no problem, but as soon as they want to linger and smell the flowers, or go in a different direction, the wheels start coming off.

For that reason, I always define external objectives in terms of what an NPC is doing. I can usually forecast with some accuracy how players will react to those developments, and with somewhat lesser accuracy how they will have their characters react to them. That means that instead of furnishing the characters with a prefabricated objective, I am simply prompting them to come up with their own objective in response to a change in circumstances.

Internal Objectives

The big advantage of that approach is that it removes much of the distinction between external objectives – prompted by outside circumstances – and those that the players choose for themselves. In fact, the only time the distinction comes to matter is when an external objective contradicts or opposes an internal one.

Nor are the distinctions always quite so clear-cut. Internal objectives arise from the interaction of world-view context and player ambitions, as expressed through their characters. The player wants to change his character into a half-dragon demi-lich? This should not be something handed to the player on a silver platter, it will require planning and many smaller steps in order to achieve, because even making it possible will usually entail considerable opposition, and has broad implications for the campaign.

It must be remembered at all times that anything a PC can do, an NPC can also do, and NPCs were active before the PC took his first steps as a small child. While it’s possible that a goal is so audacious that no-one has ever even conceived of it before, it is far more likely that some NPC, somewhere, sometime in the campaign world’s history, would have shared the objective or something analogous.

Logically, it follows that if such an objective is readily achieved, the PCs would have encountered someone who has achieved it, or was trying to achieve it, already – or, at the very least, heard of such. If they have not done so, then the player is asking the GM to enlarge the fundamental concepts of the game world to accommodate their desire – and verisimilitude demands that this be a change that takes place in-game, with causes and effects and consequences. The objective itself becomes a defining part of the campaign as a result.

Of course, not all PC objectives are so grandiose, and are therefore more easily accommodated. If a character wants to become a casino owner, that should be far more readily achievable – involving nothing more than gathering some political favors, a substantial financial outlay, and some fitting into the local business, social, political, and religious community.

The key is always to make the transition interesting and entertaining. If you can achieve that, you will have a successful campaign, no matter what the goals are.

Conundra

“Conundrums” is technically correct English but it didn’t have quite the same ring. In this case, the big conundrum is that your campaign structure will alter the structure of your adventures, which makes it hard to talk about adventure structure without also talking about campaign structures – a subject that has been reserved for part 2 of this article.

Adventures in a campaign don’t have to resolve everything with a nice, neat, bow-ribbon. You can have unresolved side issues that lead to other adventures, the end of an adventure itself might have consequences that will unravel in one or more future adventures, and so on. This is generally known as “continuity” within a campaign, which is a fancy word for connecting one adventure with another. If there isn’t much of a connection, the campaign is described as more “episodic” in nature.

It’s quite common to talk about the additional work that comes with maintaining a continuity-rich campaign, and there can be a fair amount of it; that additional work is usually justified in discussions about continuity by the additional rewards that come with it, such as verisimilitude (I’ve done so, myself).

But I just wanted to point out that an often-neglected attribute of continuity-rich campaigns is that they can be less work than more episodic campaigns, simply because one adventure can create another which creates another which creates still another, and so on. You can even think of such a campaign as branching from a central trunk like the branches of a tree.

And, to maintain balance, episodic-rich campaigns also have a benefit that’s often neglected in discussion of the subject: it’s easier to throw away anything that doesn’t work. If you have a bad adventure that doesn’t quite work for whatever reason, it doesn’t leave poisonous tendrils for future plots to become entangled in. Adventures in high-continuity campaigns contain the totality of the legacy of all past adventures – both good and bad.

The subject hasn’t changed; these are all considerations to be incorporated into an adventure structure.

Mood and tone

Once the objective, the A – to – B journey, has been identified, the next consideration to be taken into account is the desired mood and tone of the adventure. The distinction between the two is quite subtle, so much so that the terms are often interchangeable – and sometimes interchanged when they shouldn’t be.

The mood of an adventure is the overall flavor of the adventure. It might be playful, lighthearted, silly, grim, dark, dramatic, serious, farcical, earnest, calming, even therapeutic – all sorts of adjectives can and have been used. Mood comes from the demeanor of the GM, and the phrasing and tone of voice used in conveying descriptions and describing events. It can be enhanced by props and decorations and soundtracks and all sorts of other gimmicks, and it’s all about how you want the players – and their characters – to feel.

The tone of an adventure is more concerned with how you interpret character actions, the types of actions that they contemplate, and the actual subject matter and content of the action within the plot. Tone is the difference between a splatter movie and a more ‘comic-book’ horror plot, for example. One tries to genuinely terrify or shock, the other simply employs the trappings of horror to tell a different type of story – action-adventure or dramatic or whatever.

Dynamic Mood and Tone

You don’t have to listen to many DVD commentaries or watch many “making of” documentaries before you pick up on the term “beats”. A “beat” is a moment or section of the plot in which a particular emotional overtone becomes dominant – none of which makes sense unless you have first assimilated the concept that mood and tone are not and should not be static, they should be dynamic. The music that swells when a heroic character is about to do something heroic is a cheap and effective way of establishing a beat. The term actually comes from (in my opinion) the combination of “upbeat” and “downbeat”, which are the obvious generic contrasts in types of beat.

Within the overall mood and tone, there should be highs and lows, bright spots and dark spots, there should be a period of rising tension and then a release – to be followed by another. Each moment of maximum tension should be more intense than the last, and should generally build up more quickly, until the climax of the adventure. This is the generic recipe for a blockbuster, and that’s exactly the sort of roller-coater ride that we usually want for our adventures; there is a reason why movies of this format are the biggest-grossing in the history of cinema.

With more experience, and a little care, more sophisticated transitions are possible. A comedy can turn serious, a grim-and-gritty piece of noir can become deep, melancholy, and introspective – and then switch to high-octane action for the climax.

With a lot more experience, and a lot more planning, you can extend these sophisticated transitions over the course of an entire campaign. I’ve been working on my next superhero campaign a lot lately, stealing as much time as I can from other projects. Part of the design has involved a very deliberate trend in the mood and tone over the course of the campaign, from lighthearted generic superheroic romp at the start (with moments of high emotional contact for the different characters) to very dark and grim toward the end. My previous campaign was almost the exact opposite: the characters started with the weight of the world on their shoulders, and everything was life-and-death serious; as they got on top of the problems they had encountered, one after another, the mood began to lift, overall. The big finish to the campaign was cosmic in scope and blockbuster in style and tone, but nevertheless had a fairly ‘romp-ish’ mood to it. The players were on top, and the central villain was desperate, and took desperate chances. Had they failed, it would have radically changed the structure, content, mood, and tone of the next campaign; they didn’t.

In many ways, then, the initial tone of the new campaign will represent the fruits of victory. The darkness has been beaten back, and while there are problems – some of them even reaching the point of being a crisis – there will be an overall lightness to the situation, even a slight air of frivolity. The time will come when they will look back on this period as ‘the good old days’ (if I do my job right).

Enriching the plotline

The Mood and Tone of an adventure are tools to enrich the plotline by giving it emotion – passion, anger, fear, humor. This is achieved by correctly matching these emotional overtones to the subject matter of the plotline, which will in turn shape the ideas and reactions of the characters and players.

Have you ever noticed how, once you’re in the mood to laugh, almost anything can seem funny – if delivered the right way? Comedians refer to this as the buildup and the punch line. Even just repeating the punch line from an earlier joke can bring an audience to hysterics.
The same thing happens with rock concerts – the warm-up act is there to get the punters in a mood to party, the main act to take them over the top. When this works properly, the mood and tone enrich the plotline by creating the right atmosphere, a context in which events make sense.

Sometimes, it doesn’t work properly – the mood or tone, or both, are a mismatch to the subject matter. A rapper – no matter how good they might be – is unlikely to get the audience ready for a death-metal act; a hard-rock act is not going to be a satisfactory warm-up for a piano recital. When I saw Alice Cooper in the early 90s, the choice of opening act was fine – but they were louder than Alice, and that undermined the whole show. The mood was fine, but the tone mismatched.

The more unique or quirky the main act or plotline or plot structure, the more difficult it is to get the surrounding mood or tone right, but the bigger the payoff in doing so; instead of the game being a purely intellectual exercise, the players can suspend disbelief and buy into the plotline despite its exotic nature.

Contrast creates impact

There are two ways to release accumulated plot tension: maintaining the tone and mood, or deliberately using a contrasting tone and mood to give the main emotional context more impact. A moment of levity in a horror scenario can elevate the horror content when continuing in the same thematic vein simply leads to exhaustion.

By way of example, contemplate the following: The PCs have just come face to face with the enemy, the architect of all their woes. Since it is far too soon for the final confrontation between the two, the GM needs to separate the two – the purpose of this initial contact is simply to lay metaphoric cards on the table and build up a sense of anticipation. So the bad guy, weapon at the ready, crackling with energy, steps out of the shadows and utters an ominous threat or two, then points his weapon at the characters – a weapon against which they as yet have no defense, and they know it. And then the battery falls out, or the weapon misfires, or an NPC backing away trips over a bucket and mop (startling the villain and giving the PCs the chance to run away – for now). The sort of freak occurrence that gives the PCs a skin-of-their-teeth reprieve, breaks the mood, and releases the tension. The bad guy spouts another weedy threat and makes himself scarce – with or without his dignity and pride.

In my TORG campaign, the climax of the first adventure saw the PCs in action against a gigantic Dragon. They were badly outmatched, and they knew it. One of the PCs started climbing the Dragon’s back, distracting him momentarily, and managed to hold on as the Dragon tried to shake him off, at least until he reached the head. The dragon, with a violent snap of his neck, tossed the hapless character into the air with the intent of taking a bite out of his problems – if not swallowing them whole. The PC made an acrobatics roll and managed to land, feet-first, on the Dragon’s lower lip, arms swinging wildly as he tried to maintain his precarious balance. The Dragon exhaled, ready for the massive intake of breath required to unlimber its breath weapon… things looked grim! Until the character on the dragon’s lip shoved his arms as far up into the Dragon’s nostrils as he could and hung on there for grim death.

I could have ruled that the dragon exhaled, coating the character in napalm-like dragon spittle and igniting it. I could have ruled that the dragon sneezed, blowing the character off the lip and sending him crashing toward the floor 50 feet below. Instead, I decided to reward the audacity and humor of the situation and had the dragon collapse into a fit of coughing until the character was dislodged – which gave the other PCs the chance to inflict some serious damage. From a tone of desperation, through a wave of cathartic laughter as the tension broke, a wave of optimism and sudden hope swept the party. The Dragon got to use its breath weapon, but it was on the ropes already by that point.

The ultimate victory over the dragon would have had a LOT less impact if the mood had been maintained throughout; but that moment of levity transformed the outcome from a grim counting-of-the-cost to a jubilant celebration. I paid careful attention to that…

Opposition Definition

Okay, so you have some idea of what the objective of the adventure is going to be, and you have a general idea of the tone and mood of the overall adventure. The next step is to decide what complicating circumstances are going to stand between the PCs and achieving that goal. There are a whole raft of possibilities, from unexpected implications or plot twists that undermine the reasons for pursuing the objective in the first place (complicating the resolution), all the way through to ignorance of key facts or other circumstances that make the objective unclear or more difficult to achieve (complicating the initial circumstances). But, most commonly, the difficulty will take the form of some opposition that have to be overcome, and that’s the type of difficulty that I’m going to focus on.

Assigning Motive

When defining the opposition, the key question that always needs to be answered (at least in the GM’s mind) is always “Why are they opposing this?”

Assigning a motive tells the GM how far the opposition will go, and how hard they will fight to prevent success by the PCs, and how they will react to PC actions, especially unexpected ones.

On one occasion, in an early AD&D game, the opposition were good guys being used as dupes by the real villain, who had been convinced that even listening to the ‘artfully honeyed’ words of the PCs would shrivel their souls and condemn their families to an eternity of painful torture. While the confrontations between the two were physical in nature, that was fine; but the PCs slowly came to realize that their opposition were not evildoers and resolved to attempt to negotiate at their next encounter. They knew they were in a fight to the finish when the PCs lopped off each other’s ears rather than permitting themselves to hear what the PCs had to say, and comments to one another in the process made it clear why they were performing these acts of mutilation. It’s really hard to negotiate when the enemy would prefer to cut out his tongue than speak with you, or cut off his ears rather than hear what you had to say. The PCs had to wipe out groups of innocents that they would rather protect and ally with, resulting in alignment problems and all sorts of secondary difficulties. They were extremely angry when they finally confronted the architect of their problems…

By assigning a motive to the opposition, the GM permits the characters to explore non-combat solutions to the problem if they so desire, greatly adding to the mood and tone of the adventure.

Which brings me to another key point: the opposition’s motives must match the desired mood and tone. If the mood is to be grim and serious, you can’t give the enemy a silly reason for getting in the way. Who, and why, must both fit the emotional context of the adventure.

Alignment is not enough

One point that I want to specifically emphasize is that conflicting alignments is not enough reason for a group to oppose the PCs. “You’re chaotic good and I’m lawful evil” just won’t cut it. Alignments are expressions of personality and motive and objective and a whole bunch of other things, no matter how you define them, or – more practically – are a guideline for ensuring that these things are consistent from an individual or an organization. They need to be given concrete manifestations, and those are the reasons for opposition. “He doesn’t care about anyone but himself” might make someone evil, but that isn’t enough for a committed opposition to the PCs. “He’s greedy and ruthless, with a history of underhanded behavior” is a different story.

Balancing Opposition with Objective

In the real world, the strength and determination of the opposition have no relation to the objective that is being opposed. In a game world, a mismatch in this area is not as acceptable, because it makes for a poor story. Consider the possible mismatches and this becomes obvious:

• Opposition too strong for the objective: makes the GM seem hardnosed and authoritarian, denying the PCs the chance to achieve what they want;
• Opposition too weak for the objective: makes the objective seem unimportant to the GM, as though he couldn’t be bothered.

Neither of these is all that desirable. The only solution is to get the opposition’s power level about right for the task.

That’s more easily said than done. The best approach is to consider the achievement of the goal to be a reward for success in overcoming the opposition, then beef it up to get an appropriate reward for the power level of the characters, assuming approximate parity of opposition, then adjust.

Let’s say that the objective is that Casino that was mentioned earlier. The GM should look at the end product – which is not the Casino itself, but the ongoing income that it generates. If that amount of wealth is the reward, what is the appropriate opposition, given the character’s current power levels? Will that level of opposition pose sufficient challenge to the characters? If not, you will have to increase the level of opposition and supplement the rewards.

It’s important to remember, in considering this example, that the casino is the objective of just one player and his character; if the party works together, it will be relatively simple to achieve, because the opposition should also be geared to oppose a single character and not a team. If the GM wants to challenge the entire team, he will need to provide rewards for the other characters as well.

Make the opposition interesting

Above all else, make the opposition interesting. Give them some point of uniqueness that goes beyond mere abilities and make sure that it will expressed in the course of the encounter.

This goes beyond simply giving the opposition a personality or a history. Nor is it as simple as making the character more complex, though some discussions I have read would make one think so. No, the most important attribute to making a character interesting is to provide conflicting ways for the opposition to interact with the characters. A villain can be as evil as sin itself and still be interesting if he has a gimmick that interacts in unusual ways with a PC. Or so complicated that he isn’t interesting, just confusing.

Some methods of making a character interesting target one or more PCs, while others target the players in back of those PCs. A “neat” gimmick appeals to the players, while a personality connection is aimed at the characters.

You don’t need all the answers

Another idea that sometimes surfaces in this sort of discussion is that the character needs to be fully fleshed out; that the GM needs to know what he can do, and why he might do it, and what he won’t do, and what he can’t do, and who his friends and enemies are, and how he became the way he is, and on and on and on. Make no mistake, all of that can be useful – but there is no need to have all the answers at once; you can make up answers as you need them, provided you are careful to ensure that those answers are logically consistent with what has already been discovered and revealed about the character. Being in a state of ignorance provides room for inspiration to strike.

It’s generally better to be in ignorance regarding something than it is to have a pedestrian answer on tap.

This does place a premium on careful note-taking, though. At one point in the last campaign, I created an NPC named Lionheart, a seemingly helpless, somewhat mousy, ordinary person in fancy costume who had been built up by media hype and expert PR into ‘the greatest hero in England’. As the scenario developed, it transpired that the character had in fact tremendous powers but only in proportion to the belief in those powers of the general populace, and the closer the physical proximity to Lionheart, the better. The character thus had more power if he made sure the TV cameras were on him, and even more if there were supporters present to see him make his rescues. The other factor in his powers was his personal confidence in them, which had to be unshakeable or he could not be convincing to his adoring fans.

When the character appeared in-game, I had the personality – a shy, retiring, arrogantly self-assured hero who looked for all the world like the worst sort of publicity hound – and the name – and that was all. Everything else was worked out on the spur of the moment – but not written down. So, about five months later, the PCs suggest calling on Lionheart for assistance with another problem. While I could remember what I have written in the previous paragraph, I could remember nothing else. What were his actual abilities? What were the mannerisms that I had used to convey his personality to the PCs? What were the weaknesses I had given the character? I had no idea. Still don’t, for that matter.

A definitely-interesting character has been left virtually useless because I didn’t take notes at the time. All I can remember now is that the abilities were as unique as the character concept…

It’s better to have a pedestrian answer on tap than it is to come up with something brilliant – and then forget it.

The best answer is to be in ignorance until you need to be creative – then write it down. Right away, before you get distracted – or you’ll eventually forget it.

Opposition Tactics

Once you have the opposition nailed down, it’s time to think about how you’re going to use them. There are a plethora of choices, as usual, but they boil down in the end to attack or confront or conceal/confuse, and surprise or intimidate.

Attack with surprise means exactly what it says on the label – the opposition attacks the characters without warning. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a physical attack, it could be an attack on their reputations or allies or a number of other vectors.

Attacking to intimidate is just as varied. The objective here is to persuade the characters to back off; blackmail and all sorts of coercion fall into this category. Including the often-overlooked premise, “let’s buy them off.”

Confrontation is also an intimidation attack, but described the opponent showing off his power in hopes of causing the players to hesitate; it’s more of the “back off or else” level of intimidation, and that always works with PCs, right? Didn’t think so.

Finally, there are the “misdirection twins,” conceal and confuse. These are all about delaying the characters or attacking them indirectly with traps. This approach works best when dealing with time-critical situations.

Adventure Structures

With the jigsaw pieces ready to assemble, it’s time to consider the different shapes that can be constructed with those pieces – the Adventure Structure.

Most writing books and websites on creative writing will talk about three- and four- act structures that essentially come down to introduction, setback, and resolution. This information is so pervasive that I’m not going to repeat it here – just search for “three-act structure” and you’ll find more than enough on the subject to satiate you.

Simple Structure

The simplest sort of adventure structure is to pitch the characters straight into the action. They set an objective and then go for it, running head-first into the heart of the scenario. “Character learns of dungeon; character explores dungeon; character beats bad guys in dungeon; character loots dungeon. Repeat as necessary.” Or a non-D&D equivalent: “Superhero witnesses crime being committed; Superhero confronts criminal; Superhero fights villain; Superhero captures villain.”

Structure: Action Teaser

The next type of adventure structure comes from the structure of James Bond movies (though it has also been used elsewhere). The adventure starts in the middle of an action sequence that often has no relevance to the main plot (though it can be related). There is a tremendous upside to this structure: it gives the plot a real adrenalin kick. There is a downside that is potentially commensurate: it can require the GM taking control of the PCs long enough to get them into combat.

The GM should go out of his way to avoid the downside if he can think of a way of doing so. Players will be far more forgiving if the GM forces their characters to carry out a mundane task like going down to the market for fresh fruit and lets them control their characters from the moment the enemy for the action teaser shows up, or from just before it.

Even with the downside minimized, the GM should avoid using this plot structure all the time. It is best reserved for those occasions when the teaser is an important launchpad into the scenario and not merely tacked on.

Structure: ‘Permit Me To Introduce Myself’

A scenario structure that is far more accessible is to start with an introduction between an NPC and the PCs. The NPC acts as a mouthpiece for presenting news of a situation to the PCs. Variations include messages left for the PCs, telegrams, and the like. This structure presents the PCs with the problem and catapults them straight into the plotline, but (unlike the Simple Structure) there is a brief separation between problem and confrontation. Players like this because it gives them time to prepare for whatever’s coming.

In effect, this presages the adventure with a simple subplot that gives the characters at least part of the foundation of the adventure.

Structure: Subplot Paradise

Clearly, if one subplot is good, more can be better. For one thing, they allow still more complex structures, in which hints and rumors reach different characters about what is to come; hints and rumors reach different characters about what the opposition is already doing; subordinate encounters can fill in necessary context and background, and connect everything that’s going on with the forthcoming plotline.

With a little more forward planning, these subplots can even be presented within earlier scenarios, creating a far richer campaign structure – something that will be fundamentally important to the second part of this article.

Complex Structures

These structures are relatively straightforward. Using them as building blocks, more complex plot structures involving multiple encounters can be assembled. As part of the forthcoming superhero campaign, there is a “Time War” which consists of eight major phases and a number of subplots separating them. One phase of that Time War occupies a single adventure or encounter; the rest are more complex, comprising a number of encounters. More significantly, since the PCs are to be caught between the two antagonistic forces that are carrying out these hostilities, and both the antagonistic forces have a high degree of mastery over time travel, the sequence of events the PCs experience will be completely out of step with the overall timeline of the conflict – Part 2 will be followed by part 1 and then part 4, then part 5, then part 3, and so on (NB to my players: The sequence listed is NOT exactly the same as the sequence of events in the game!).

With subplots in between each phase in many if not all cases, plus additional encounters to establish who the combatants are and what they can do, and a non-linear plot structure, this is a clearly complex plot structure.

Structure: Resolution & Mystery

One final point to note in this section concerning adventure structures: there is no need to tie up every loose end in an adventure. Leaving some mystery to be resolved leaves a point of connection that can be exploited in later adventures. Tell the players what their characters would know, and what they can reasonably deduce, and what the villains admit; nothing more. And if that misleads the players, give them some sort of intelligence check to realize the fallacy of their deductions; otherwise let them charge off in the wrong direction to their heart’s content.

Sometimes, you may even like their answer better than your own – in which case, congratulate them on ‘seeing through’ your plot camouflage to the real answer, while quietly expropriating their solution!

A consistent format

As much as possible, it is advisable to adopt a standard and consistent format for the adventures you run. This regularity permits players to plan their own activities in line with the format, and by giving you a set of standard ‘content boxes’ to fill in planning each scenario, ensures that no opportunities for play are passed up. Filling those boxes with plot-critical information when necessary and plot-irrelevant information the rest of the time avoids a situation in which the players can identify what is important to the plot simply by the means of presentation. Ironically, being consistent prevents the campaign from becoming predictable.

…varied to suit the occasion

That is not to say that variations should not be employed whenever they better fit the plot. I start some adventures with subplots, and others with team meetings, and still others with a character hearing a news broadcast or two characters gossiping. Some adventures are designed with a structure that will deliberately mislead the players; some have false endings, and others feature deceptions and betrayals.

Numerous books and websites on writing give information on plot and story structure. Most of these lessons are directly relevant to adventure structure.

Part 2 of this article will discuss the assembly of adventures and single encounters into larger tapestries: Campaign Structures.

What tools go into your GM toolbox?

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane.

GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments about your own tools, tips, and techniques at the end of this post.

In this category I want to talk about tools you use during the game. A GM has to do a lot of things when running a session.

In part I, we covered creating and establishing the right mood, for both the player and the GM, since being in the right frame of mind will significantly improve the experience of the game.

In part II, we covered how to handle notes and note taking, which every GM should get into the habit of doing.

In this part, we will explore rules and combat resolution, which is one of the main tasks a GM has to deal with during the game, and often at the heart of running a game.

Character Information and Quick Rules

In a lot of systems you want to do rolls for your players. To do this, it is practical to have character information of the PCs at hand. Also, quick rule cheat sheets often help a lot for the GM and players.

If there are rules which you can’t remember or frequently refer to, or which include rather large tables, sometimes having them at hand outside from the rule books is much more practicable than skimming through the books again and again.

Typical tools here are the laptop or the traditional inside of the GM-Screen.

Michael: In my Cthulhu campaign I use the GM Screen. I like it, because it is in landscape format which does not so strongly separate you from your players.

In my D&D campaign, I use a laptop, hence I have a PDF file of short rules. One can find these on the net, or you can write these up yourself.

For the Savage World campaign, I don’t have a short rule system yet, but I provide my players one of these free test-savage-world-right-now-booklet, and am thinking of marking the most important rules with post-its in the books.

For keeping track of the PC information I need, I just create a table and let it get filled in by the players.

Da’ Vane: At the start of each session, I normally collate relevant PC information so I have it on hand during the game. Depending upon the system I am running, I will normally use whatever quick rules sheets are provided.

Besides that, I try to make my notes as complete as possible, by including short rules for my encounters directly in the encounter information. A common trick here is to make sure all the relevant abilities for a character have details for how they are used. For the encounter, I expand this for terrain and other rules as well.

I also like to maintain the character sheets for my players, and as part of this I will include quick rules for their abilities as relevant, so they have little need to go near the rulebooks at all.

The only time we’ll normally have the rulebook open during play is when we’re learning a new system, which we normally do together, so everyone can see what’s going on. Otherwise, I’ll translate what the PCs want to do to the rules as best I can, and when in doubt, I’ll simply make it up to keep the game moving.

Running Combats

Running combat is somewhat like a game inside the game. Depending on the rule system, you will have to crunch numbers, keep track of hit points and initiative, use ammo and spell slots, keep track of distances, and record a dozen or so different possible modifiers and conditions for your PCs.

As GM, you may be responsible for a lot of different factions with totally different abilities, which make this even more complicated.

There are many tools out there for helping you run combats.

Michael: I trust in my players here and outsource as much as possible. In the D&D campaign, they have to keep track of their hit points, who is coming next, ammo, spell slots, how to resolve their magic attacks and so on.

This lets me focus on using the feats of my foes to their best and give players a tough time (and a fair battle).

In addition, a combat matrix is helping a lot. It’s a table with the combat rounds as columns, and Effects/PC/NPC/monsters in the lines. Everything that has a start or an end can be put in here, like durations of spells.This gives me a nice overview what is happening in each round.

Da’ Vane: Since I am dyslexic, I find running combats difficult, as I am slow at processing all the information and keeping track of everything that needs to be maintained.

I try to find a way around this, and the best tool for this is actually a custom built spreadsheet. In this way, I can record information and update it, while taking notes about statuses and other things.

One of the advantages of using a spreadsheet is that I can sort the characters into initiative order, making the information a lot easier to process. It also allows me to use a number of initiative variants that I have, which I feel improves play for various styles.

Minis/Whiteboard/Battlemats

Using minis with a whiteboard or a battlemat brings many advantages to your gaming table. One can use minis not only for showing relative distances, but also absolute distances, effects on the terrain, and conditions of the characters.

A whiteboard or a battlemat not only gives you a place to position your characters in a combat, but can also provide rough and quick maps, can be used as a spreadsheet, or to jot down some other relevant information, like initiative or hit points.

Michael: In my D&D campaign, I use a self-crafted battlemat. For my Savage-Worlds group, I also use this, but besides that I also use a big three-dimensional model of the ship the PC own built by LEGO-blocks.

It’s a cool model, and every time I bring it to the table, I can see the expression in the eyes of my players when they realize their characters have something really cool: Their own ship!

My Shadowrun group has a big classroom-size whiteboard on the wall, which is awesome. We used it to build a huge diagram resulting from a complicated adventure with a lot of factions. I just love this diagram. Every time we look at it we laugh about the crazy names we gave certain persons and places, and about the wild complexity of it.

Da’ Vane: Space has always been a premium in our games, so we’ve never played using minis or battlemats. We’ve only ever managed to get the room to play board games a few times before running out of space.

So, we normally have to make do with mapping via paper, and using dots to mark our positions on the map. This way, we get to use it at a scale related to the size of the space we have available.

These makeshift maps can get messy at times, but they are fun, and they are better than nothing.

Most of the time we play games where maps and minis are optional anyway, which reduces the tactical options but also the tactical complexity of encounters. It makes for quicker encounters in a playing style that we tend to prefer.

Mapping

Like pictures, a map can say a thousand words. You may give out large, nice looking detailed maps of countries or continents to give an overview of the setting.

Other times you want to hand out a scribbled goblin map, showing not much more than a few lines. There might be mysterious treasure maps, full of puzzles, leading from one danger to the next.

Sometimes you just need an overview of the combat location. For different levels of detail, you may need different mapping tools.

Michael: Cthulhu is a great product. It provided me with all maps I need, so no work for me here.

Where I actually use a tool for creating maps is in my D&D-campaign. I got a tablet notebook and drawing maps on this thing is just enjoyable, even with the ordinary paint of windows 7.

The thought of using a real drawing program on a tablet notebook blows my mind, so I haven’t tried it yet.

For spontaneous in-game maps, I use a small piece of my battlemat. I seldom use maps not drawn by myself, when I do, I find them here.

Da’ Vane: I suck at drawing maps, so I generally avoid them at all costs. If I can’t get around them, I will normally use one of two approaches – I will either hand draw them on squared paper, and scan them if necessary, or I will use a simple bitmap editing program to create simple maps.

However, I have recently picked up both Dungeonographer and Hexographer – two great mapping programs I have already had much enjoyment playing with, although I can’t say I’ve actually used them in a campaign properly just yet. But from what I have seen, it is only a matter of time before I do.

About the Authors

Michael Beck considers himself a novice GM, but is encouraged in sharing his tips at www.spielleiten.wordpress.com (German language). Having played RPGs for roughly 10 years now, he accepts the challenge of living with his girl-friend, two cats, a non-finished PhD-thesis and two running roleplaying campaigns.

Da’ Vane, or Christina Freeman in the real world, is the owner of DVOID Systems, and the primary writer of their D-Jumpers series of products. With an academic background in science, especially socio-psychology, she is what many would regard as a “know-it-all.” However, the truth is that she doesn’t know everything about everything, but she knows a lot about a lot, especially about her passions which are games, stories, learning, and people. She is a consummate geek goddess, and yes, she is single if you feel like tracking her down and hitting on her some time….

Paul, about three years after the events described. Click on the banner for games suitable for kids.

Today I’m going on a journey a long way down memory lane, in support of the Kids In Gaming initiative at RPGNow. Specifically, I am trying to remember what it was like GMing for my brothers Paul and David.

It must have been around 1981, which means that David would have been about 15, and Paul must have been ten, though in my mind he was younger than that. And it would have been late in the year. I had returned from my first year of University studies disillusioned and reconsidering the path I was taking toward my chosen career. But I was completely captivated by the new hobby I had encountered, Role-playing games, and for the next several weeks or months I introduced them to the hobby, and to the game at the heart of it in that era, AD&D.

You may have to bear with me a little, as my memories of 30 years ago are a little fuzzy now. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.

Play proceeded virtually every day over that spring & the early part of summer. I remember that Paul at the time was a few years younger than was considered the minimum age for the game, and for that reason I was initially a little hesitant about including him, but his enthusiasm convinced me. I can clearly remember sitting down with Paul early in the character generation process and talking with him about how we could customize his character to make it easier for him.

Paul had chosen a human Fighter – probably the simplest class in the book to play. We talked about whether or not he wanted his character to be a little less smart so that he wouldn’t have a case in which his character understood a situation and he didn’t, and offered to trade some of the character’s INT for a better Strength. He thought about it for a while and wouldn’t have a bar of it; instead he suggested that his character come from the country and not know everything that was going on.

In many ways, selling the fantasy and wonder was an easier job with Paul than with David; already a craftsman with his hands, my middle brother had a very different take on Gaming. To him, it was closer to a more traditional board game – without the board and with a lot more flexibility. But for Paul, the fantasy world in which his character adventured was as real as the one around him, and a lot more interesting.

After a brief framing narrative, I pitched my pair of players into module S1, the Tomb of Horrors. Despite being five to ten levels short of the recommended character standard, and two instead a full party of four, and lacking any serious magical capabilities – either clerical or arcane – they managed to hack their way through it, defeating challenge after challenge with grit and determination.

While David was old enough to consider the practical aspects of game circumstances – hit points remaining, healing potions on hand, and so on – Paul was all exuberance, except when approaching something a little more supernatural. At such times, David was compelled by his interpretation of what a Paladin was like to charge in while Paul hesitated and held back with a little more caution. On at least one occasion, each of them had to bop the other over the head and stun them to carry them physically out of the dungeon.

In the latter part of the campaign, David’s character got into the politics of the kingdom, and trying to hold together an unstable alliance against Drow subversives and their Bugbear catspaws, while Paul dug deeper into the high fantasy, trying to understand the way the Elves thought and why they sometimes did things that even he could see were stupid – like celebrating “beardless day” (when they won their last war with the Dwarves) while encamped in the Dwarven capital (having been chased out of their forests by Bugbears and Orcs under Drow control).

There were definitely times when David had trouble visualizing what I was describing, because he tried to build up his picture intellectually, while Paul seemed to get the idea very quickly. There was sometimes a pronounced conversational lag in which Paul and I would be several minutes ahead of his grasp of the situation and staying there. By the same token, there were occasions when things went the other way, and David’s greater experience with the world enabled him to grasp things more quickly. Of course, as soon as I realized that one of them wasn’t keeping up, we would pause to let the other get a handle on whatever the situation was.

While to David, the game was just a pastime, and a novel diversion, Paul’s interest in the game continued after I left home and went to work, and after the family had moved, finding his own group to play with. After high school, he had to let gaming go to concentrate on his planned horticultural business. He might have eventually found his way back to the hobby but for the intervention of a terrible car accident; he stopped breathing for eight minutes, was in a coma in critical condition for two weeks, and suffered considerable brain damage as a result. One of the things that I most regret about my life is that I was unable to be with the family in this period. Paul went on to make a recovery that was nothing short of miraculous, but he was still changed by the experience; though I know from conversations with him that he still looks back on those days around the kitchen table, hacking through the Tomb of Horrors, with pleasure and affection.

Some lessons

There are a number of lessons for anyone else contemplating gaming with kids that can be extracted from this reminiscence and the experiences that accompanied the events it describes.

• Don’t compromise more than you have to. I’ve seen a number of people GMing with children in the years since, and they all seem to pitch their narrative at the youngest in the group. Don’t. Instead, pitch the narrative towards the average age. Those who are younger may not fully understand what’s going on, but they will extract an age-appropriate interpretation of events from what they perceive anyway; and kids can smell condescension a mile off.
• Don’t talk down to them. Just as would be the case with any other player, respect them as people and participants.
• Mind the rating. That doesn’t’ mean that you shouldn’t censor yourself just a little – aim for a G-rating or (at worst) for a PG-rating for cartoon violence. In many ways, D&D and other fantasy games have an uphill battle being age-appropriate, though kids seem to mature faster these days so it is less of an issue; a superhero game might be easier, because morality is easily simplified and the action-adventure aspects of the game have a greater chance to shine.
• Play to their strengths. If you don’t think they have any, you aren’t paying enough attention. Whether it’s immersion, or a more free-wheeling imagination, or simply an enthusiasm that can’t be matched, find what they are bringing to the table and work with it.
• Design the character, not the character mechanics, to suit the player. This is exemplified by Paul’s suggestion that his character be from the backwaters instead of made more stupid. This works because kids grow up fast and learn faster, and tomorrows’ limitations are not going to be the same as today’s. If the limitation derives from the character and not the characteristics, it can still be accommodated as the child grows.
• Be Patient when necessary. Kids aren’t stupid; it just takes them longer to understand something, sometimes. Be prepared to explain things a second time or answer questions a little more readily than you would when gaming with an older player.
• Don’t forget the funny – or the fun. But beware of the silly. Children are more sensitive to the entertainment value of what you’re offering. There will be times when everything else should be sacrificed on the altar of fun, like the time Paul tried to catch a ghost in a glass vial that had held holy water and had both David and I rolling on the floor with laughter. Silly, on the other hand, undermines the fun because it makes the kids feel foolish; in the long run, silly will categorize the hobby as juvenile, something to be discarded.
• Take your cues from what they read and what they watch. This is the best way to avoid over- or under-pitching to a child’s intellectual level – pick something they like to watch or read, and talk to them about it. The characters, the plotlines, why people do things. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you’ll find yourself revising your targets upward in terms of complexity and depth and characterization. And, as a bonus, you’ll gain referents that you can use to help them connect with the game. Two of my abiding memories are watching The World At War in the early 70s and Life On Earth in the late 70s with David – neither subjects that interested him particularly before or after, but things on which we connected at the time – and both of which helped me couch game events in terms that he could understand.
• Give ’em what they want.Everyone games for a reason, finds something that they want to experience in the course of a game session – or stops playing. Part of the GM’s job is to identify what the players want (even if neither side can articulate it) and deliver that. Nor should he exclude himself from this, either – there’s no game without either players or GM.

What tools go into your GM toolbox?

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane and Johnn Four.

GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments about your own tools, tips, and techniques at the end of this post.

In this category I want to talk about tools you use during the game. A GM has to do a lot of things when running a session.

In part I, we covered creating and establishing the right mood, for both the player and the GM, since being in the right frame of mind significantly improves the experience of the game.

In today’s part, we will cover how to handle notes and note taking, which every GM should get into the habit of doing.

In part III, we will explore rules and combat resolution, which is one of the main tasks that a GM has to deal with during the game, and often at the heart of running a game.

Making Notes

During the session, you will want to take notes for remembering what happened and to jot down ideas as they come along. This can be strongly related to the way you organize your GM notes.

You want your notes to be easily and quickly done, and you want to find and understand them, when the session is over and some days have passed by. This sounds easier as it actually is.

You may write something down during session using shorthand, because you think, “This is clear, I will remember.” Then time goes by, maybe the next session-date gets cancelled, and one day before the next session you look to your notes and have completely forgotten what the circumstances have been, when you took your notes.

Michael: In my D&D campaign, I try to put new ideas directly into OneNote, since this is the main reason for the category: “Reminders”. I force myself to not only to write down the crucial information, but also the circumstances. This takes a little bit more time, but it helps a lot.

In my Cthulhu campaign, I use a totally different method: I record the sessions and listen to them afterwards, taking notes as needed in all the time I need (this helps also a lot in judging your own game from a different perspective).

In my Savage Worlds group, I stick to old-fashioned pen and paper. Nevertheless, currently I’m learning to write in shorthand (not especially for GMing though), and this will hopefully improve my notes here.

Da’ Vane: If you use a campaign wiki, such as Obsidian Portal, then you can often find this a useful tool for note-taking during the game, as well as recording information afterwards.

Formatting and polishing of the information can be done afterwards, and it’s got the added advantage that if you are in practice of using a wiki anyway, you will already be creating the topics you need to write about to share with the players.

I find this an incredible boon for online games if the players don’t mind a slightly slower pace, since you can write up descriptions and details and copy-paste them to various programs as needed.

Also, encourage players to take their own notes at the table as well, since this not only eases the burden on you as a GM, it gives you an indication about what they feel is important in the game, as well as their own perspective on events, including their own theories and ideas of what is going on.

Johnn: I too have used all the methods: PC at the table, iPad, players, index cards, Post-Its. I’ve also tried a ton of software, including journaling software, OneNote, Word, My Info, Access Database, Hero Lab, WeatherMaster, Masterplan, and more.

Use what works for you, because as Michael says, the only gotcha is your note capture solution renders your notes useless in the end.

Here is the ultimate combo that works for me. During sessions I just use a lined note book and pen. The note book is spiral bound so I can flip the book in half to take up less table space.

Here’s the key: I write a fusion of point form notes and mind maps. Mind maps might feel awkward at first, but GMs you need to try these out and master them.

Mind maps make note-taking a little easier and faster sometimes, but their true value lie in reference and recall. Our brains work with the word pictures better than lines of text. Our brains are wired for image recall in a big way, and mind maps breach that gap to turn your notes into something akin to a graphic. And you brain loves that.

Between sessions, I mine my session notes for details and update my My Info campaign file. If I have time, I also write a campaign log for Roleplaying Tips. Re-counting a session’s events helps me remember a campaign’s details better, and it often inspires ideas as I write.

Organizing GM Notes

Normally you will need some tool for organizing your GM notes. If you think about how many sections we already talked about in this series, most of them come along with some notes.

Having a practical system to organize these notes will make your life as GM a lot easier. Lots of GMs start out having only a minimal system for organizing GM notes for a relatively long time as they learn to be a good GM.

By getting their notes in order, they take one of the biggest steps forward in GMing they will ever manage.

Michael: My best organized GMing notes are in my D&D campaign. I use Microsoft’s OneNote here and I love it.

Having categories like “NPC”, “Locations”, “Adventure”, links between pages and easy copy and paste methods is just awesome.

A similar approach would be using some kind of wiki. These solutions require a PC at your gaming table.

In my Cthulhu campaign, I use a non-electronic method. I have a binder using a similar structure as in my OneNote for D&D here.

Because I think this to be quite important I will give you the complete list of my categories:

• Reminders (small bits of information I want to use in next sessions)
• NPCs
• Lists (including a timeline, where to find the name generators for different cultures, a list of buildings which can be found in cities, and so on)
• Locations
• Metaphors (as said I’m using the newspaper-method for world building)
• Maps
• Monsters
• Items
• Prestige-Classes
• GMing Tips
• Players
• House-Rules
• Tales and Myths
• Log

Da’ Vane: If you use the same system for organizing notes as you do taking notes, you will have saved yourself a lot of trouble, but this is not always the case.

The best system to use will always be the one which is most effective for each person, and that means organizing it for the purposes that you use it for. There’s a lot of things to consider when you design an organizational system for yourself – and this shares a lot of traits with creating an effective work or studying environment where you can deal with information.

The top priority should be your ability to get to information quickly and easily. A GM only has a limited amount of time for various things, such as world building, and if you spend all your time trying to find the notes on a certain place brought up in last week’s session, that link on your laptop regarding tribal customs, or that reference book on castle layouts, then your system isn’t efficient.

Another top priority should include how you intend to use that information. Storing it is one thing, but if you never go back to it, it’s a waste of time. So, your organization system should make it useful to bring that information to bear to generate lists of ideas for plot hooks, encounters, world building, and everything else you need.

If you can put all this in one place, so much the better. For example, if you can use an information organization program to create bullet points of plot hooks, then being able to print out the plot hooks for use as rumours that you can literally provide as handouts is great.

But failing this, even if you have to rewrite sections by hand, being able to create a list of bullet points for rumours to include in future sessions is still a very handy outcome for your organization system.

Johnn: Good point Da’Vane. Michael, I used OneNote for a campaign as an experiment, and I agree that it’s great GM software.

I prefer MyInfo. I find it more flexible than OneNote. I started with a plain text file. That worked awesome, and was cheap. J

But as Da’Vane predicts, my text file soon disintegrated into sections and little hacks to make reference easier. Eventually, my plain text file collapsed under the weight of what it was trying to do for me.

However, My Info has never let me down and I use it for every campaign, world, NPC, adventure and session.

Check out a separate article I wrote about how to use My Info for becoming an organized GM.

Recap Previous Session

Recapping the last session is a basic method to get the players focused on the game. There is hardly a group that comes together that sits down at the gaming table and starts playing without doing at least a few minutes of chatting and catching up.

By having a recap, you bring the players into the game from this relaxed social mood, and refresh important details of the last session, along with whatever plans that were forged at the end of the last session. This is useful so that the players don’t have to rediscover the events from the previous session once again.

Michael: In my different campaigns I use different recapping tools. The classic way I use in my Savage Worlds campaign: I let a voluntary player tell the others what happened last time and watch out that he or she is not forgetting anything important (or unimportant, just to make sure my players don’t get to know the difference that easily).

Of course, this requires some notes from my side. In my Cthulhu campaign, there is one player who likes to make detailed notes about the sessions. So she is the logbook of the group. I start the season by playing the same mysterious song and she reads out her notes to the others. I can lean back here and prepare in my mind evil plans to scare my players.

Da’ Vane: I often use the recapping of the past session as a means to give me a little extra time to finalise the last decisions about what is going to happen in this week’s session, and try my best to get my players engaged in recapping via a question and answering process.

That way, I can see if there’s anything the players misunderstood and that needs clarification, what they considered important and not important, and so forth. I quite often like to close sessions with a recap of the session in a similar manner, since this is an ideal time for taking notes and getting a handle on what the players thought of things, while handing out session experience and rewards.

Johnn: We do session recap the classic way, as well, with one or more players describing what happened last session and the current state of the group.

In addition, players update their campaign wiki and I often publish a recap at Roleplaying Tips.

My Riddleport campaign started with the introduction of a large number of NPCs and hooks. So my players created a special section on the wiki called Loose Ends, which is a to do list of people to talk with and places to go. They recap what’s on that list during sessions, as well, if the group needs focus.

About the Authors

Michael Beck considers himself a novice GM, but is encouraged in sharing his tips at www.spielleiten.wordpress.com (German language). Having played RPGs for roughly 10 years now, he accepts the challenge of living with his girl-friend, two cats, a non-finished PhD-thesis and two running roleplaying campaigns.

Da’ Vane, or Christina Freeman in the real world, is the owner of DVOID Systems, and the primary writer of their D-Jumpers series of products. With an academic background in science, especially socio-psychology, she is what many would regard as a “know-it-all.” However, the truth is that she doesn’t know everything about everything, but she knows a lot about a lot, especially about her passions which are games, stories, learning, and people. She is a consummate geek goddess, and yes, she is single if you feel like tracking her down and hitting on her some time….

First Impressions

The Hero Labs Character Generator for Pathfinder is an easy to use piece of software both to install and use.

Creating a character with it is as simple as selecting the appropriate action on a series of tabs. Each item has a window that can be brought up to describe the mechanics of the item in question, making decisions and understanding the mechanical applications easy. The help menu is well laid out and easy to follow, though I found myself not needing to use it all that often.

Game System Accuracy

One of the biggest targets that a character generator must achieve is that the mechanics and maths are all correct. This may sound like an obvious observation to make, but all too many characters have erroneous mechanic entries and do not factor in all appropriate numbers. Fortunately, I have yet to come across any mechanical or mathematical errors in the Pathfinder character generator, so that is a big tick.

Visual Appearance

The screens are fairly bland, the graphical interface being no frills and basic. The left half of the screen contains the work menus and the right half contains the numerical character data.

This arrangement manages to be both simple and crowded at the same time, and may be a problem at lower screen resolutions – mostly a thing of the past, but if you are stuck with an older monitor, it’s something to take into consideration. While the interface simplicity helps with speed of use, application size, and shortens the learning curve, it makes for a bland experience. When all is said and done, though, this is a character generator and not a computer game, so many won’t take issue with this.

Click on the image for a larger version in a new window

Operation

This is a screen-shot of the first screen you come to after loading the program. It lets you choose what game system content you use and don’t use, as well as choosing the starting level of the character and starting wealth.

Next are the main generation screens, the first of which covers class selection, and gives you the option to increase the number of levels your character has (if only it were that easy in-game!)

Click on the image for a larger version in a new window

The left half of the screen is the work area where you make your selections and the right half holds the specifics of your character based on your selections thus far.

Pay special attention to the warnings down the bottom of the screen, they serve as reminders of areas where you still have to make a selection. The status message at the bottom of the screen-shot reads: ! You must pick an Alignment for your character. **Hero: You must pick a Race for your character. **Hero: You have enough XP to gain a level. It’s time to level up! ** Warnings Encountered.
The panel to the right – divided here into Basics, Skills, Feats, and Weapons – shows both the best and worst of the user-interface. Everything is there, it’s a complete summary of the character; and yet things run off the side of each column. The less experience you have with the game system, the harder these will be to interpret. “Sleight of Har”? “Use Magic D”? “Handle Anima”? A beginner might find these confusing.

Click on the image for a larger version in a new window

You will notice at the top of the page a row of tabs; to assemble your character you simply go into each tab in succession, selecting the desired options for the character, and moving on. This is the “fighter” tab, where you choose fighter bonus feats. My GM would like the way it specifies at which level the feat was received, and therefore the order, rather than just lumping them all into a list.

Once again, the message in the status area serves as a reminder of tasks that are not yet complete, and other warnings, and that are relevant to the content of the page. In this case, there is only one message: ! Fighter: Add more Bonus Feats. ** Warnings Encountered.Having been critical of the usefulness to beginners when describing the right-hand panel of the window, I have to admit that the left-hand panel shown here represents the other side of the coin: Not only are the mechanics of each bonus feat summarized, but throughout the character generation process you will notice small grey circles with white question marks in them. Clicking on one of these brings up a description of the game mechanic it is attached to. This could actually help a beginner learn the game system.

The menus above the tabs are utilized mainly for saving, printing, importing, exporting and adding further content for the software.

Click on the image for a larger version in a new window

At the end of the process, you are left with a preview of a 2-page character sheet, which you can print or save. This is the one and only character sheet you can get from the process.

Customizability

Aside from the “what supplements am I using” menu when you open the program, there isn’t any at first glance. My GM is very fond of another character generator because – while you can’t tinker with ALL the game mechanics to incorporate house rules – you can alter some of them, and you can input new magic items, new languages, new character classes – and you can bundle the availability of these variations by campaign, so that they are all available. (He’s not sure whether you can add new feats, but given that list, it would not surprise either of us).

In fact, flexibility is the biggest issue with the Hero Labs product. It doesn’t appear to let you do any of this. The product description page suggests that the functionality is there, I just didn’t find it. That in itself might indicate a problem.

That said, I’m a lot less of a fan of house rules than he is, so this particular problem bothers me a lot less. For him, it would be a deal-breaker; for me, it’s just cause to say “meh,” and move on.

The Output

My single biggest issue with this software is the character sheet. To be more precise, the fact that the layout of the sheet is unalterable. I know that most character generators share this fault, but I am sure many people using these generators would like the ability to alter the character sheet layout to suit their personal tastes. I would at this point settle for a choice from several set layouts rather than no choice at all. The default isn’t at bad – but there’s not enough flexibility. You can’t even insert space to make room for my GM’s beloved house rules – or for anything else.

Click on each image for a larger version in a new window

Verdict

The software loads quickly and smoothly and is very stable. I have yet to have any faults due to software whilst using this generator, and (as my hardware and operating system is fairly basic) I do not envisage many others having issues either.

Overall I give the Hero Labs Character Generator for Pathfinder a seven out of ten. It is quick, accurate and easy to use, and yet it’s bland and the character sheet issue is a real let-down.

About The Reviewer

Ian Gray resides in Sydney Australia. He has been roleplaying for 25 years, usually on a weekly basis, and often in Mike Bourke’s campaigns. From time to time he has GM’d but is that rarest of breeds, a person who can GM but is a player at heart. He has played many systems over the years including Tales of the floating Vagabond, Legend of the five rings, Star Wars, D&D, Hero System, GURPS, Traveller, Werewolf, Vampire, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and many, many more. Over the last couple of years he has been dirtying his hands with game design and is currently eyeing the idea of module design. He was a significant contributor to Assassin’s Amulet, the first time his name has appeared in the credits of a real, live, RPG supplement.

What tools go into your GM toolbox?

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane.

GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments about your own tools, tips, and techniques at the end of this post.

In this category I want to talk about tools you use during the game.

A GM has to do a lot of things when running a session. In this part, we will cover creating and establishing the right mood, for both the player and the GM, since being in the right frame of mind will significantly improve the experience of the game.

In part II, we will cover how to handle notes and note taking, which every GM should get into the habit of doing.

In part III, we will explore rules and combat resolution, which is one of the main tasks a GM must deal with during the game, and often at the heart of running a game.

Getting Into the GMing Mood

An enthusiastic GM brings the game to a much higher level than a tired, distracted or even bored GM. Hence having tools, which get you into the GMing mood, can increase the fun of your games, for all involved.

Michael: Here are a random collection of tools I use for getting into the GMing/PCing mood: Being fit (GMing while ill sucks…); Don’t be hungry, but also don’t eat too much.

Drink a beer, but don’t get drunk; Caffeine may help. Watch some cool/funny action scenes or movie trailers. Remember game-sessions that went great and awesome (as player or GM).

Da’ Vane: Remember that being a GM is supposed to be fun, not a chore. Therefore, you should only do what you need, concentrate on the parts you enjoy.

If necessary, find someone to co-GM with so you can focus on what you enjoy doing. For example, if you like creating worlds, but don’t enjoy running so much, team up with someone who prefers running over world building and adventure preparation

Failing that, try to find way to make it fun, and limit the things you don’t enjoy doing as much as possible. The GM also needs to be having fun at the gaming table, and beyond it, otherwise they are more likely to suffer GM burnout and cause the game to break up.

Johnn: Images offer great mood food. Hit Deviant Art, find your genre, get inspired.

Another mood trick is Tarot. Give yourself a reading. It can open your mind to new possibilities.

Creating Moods Like Horror and Tension

This is somewhat a setting-related tool, but even in settings which do not go explicitly for horror can benefit from a horror scene now and then for a change of pace.

Creating an atmosphere of horror or tension is much harder than it seems, and it’s hard to grasp sufficient conditions for creating that atmosphere, in which every player becomes very quiet, leaning forward and almost falling from their chairs, occasionally cold with fear.

Sometimes it just works and sometimes it doesn’t, no matter how hard you try. It’s like being too relaxed and happy to get scared by a horror movie.

For tension, it is a little simpler, but here there are no works-for-sure tools either (at least not known to me. If you know, please share!).

Michael: For building up a horror scene, I loosely follow a three stage plan.

Foreshadow the bad thing by some stories. This could be spooky stories told, an entry in a diary or an article in a newspaper. It should roughly describe something terrifying without actually naming it.

The information gathered from this should be vague.

In stage two, I go for a mild encounter or a witness of the bad thing, again giving only vague information. This is for excluding rational explanations and poking the fantasy to come up with bad imaginations of the bad thing.

In a third step, the actual confrontation takes place.

This three step process works for me quite well.

For creating tension, I follow just some rule of thumbs: Put players on the clock, go for big stakes (more than just the life of the characters), and foreshadow the dangers (similar to creating a horror atmosphere).

Da’ Vane: Creating horror and tension comes from instilling a sense of fear into the characters, and often the players. This can be hard to do, because there is always the idea that this is just a game, the GM is invested in the game and doesn’t want to wipe out the party, and if all else fails, the players can always create new characters.

Plus, most systems have a sense of transparency between the GM and the players, with players knowing the rules as well as the GM, and therefore able to call the GM out on abuses, such as creating enemies the PCs cannot handle.

Most of these are crutches for players, and horror games simply do away with them – bringing back that sense of fear.

Therefore, the easiest method for creating horror and tension is to do the same thing – without telling the players beforehand.

A GM can smite players for no apparent reason, but it’s the threat that creates the fear, not carrying it out.

Think back to some of the more devious, lethal tricks of “old school” roleplaying games to learn how to create fear. A room that instantly kills without warning upon entry doesn’t create fear, because there’s nothing to be afraid of, and no survivors around remain scared.

However, legends of a dungeon with such rooms beyond which lies ancient treasures – now that creates fear. The PCs know about the rooms beforehand, but they’ll never know exactly which rooms are safe and which aren’t….

Handling Music and Sound

Music is key for creating a certain mood at the table. It is the soundtrack for your game.

Imagine a movie without a score and you see (or rather hear) what your game is missing. Music isn’t the only thing that can be used. Sound effects can also produce atmosphere, for example in a tavern.

You actually need two tools here: One for handling the music during the session, one for getting the music/sound effects.

Michael: My favourite source is www.audiomicro.com, especially for sound effects.

For handling the music, I successfully use my cell phone, which helps a lot since I don’t use a PC in every group, nor do we play always at my home. In my cell phone I have folders for the different moods, like confrontation, creepy, and so on.

Da’ Vane: I rarely use music or sound effects when I run my games, because the majority of my games take place either online or in public places, at a roleplaying games club where there is normally more than one game going on.

But this doesn’t mean that I never use them. Even simple sound effects generated at the table by the GM can be effective when used properly. For example, tapping a glass or slamming a book can put a dramatic touch to an otherwise bland encounter.

The key is to use what you can to enhance your game, rather than feel that you must use everything or you are losing out. Be aware of the simple sounds you can easily make already at the gaming table; it helps immensely.

You can always hum a soundtrack, snap your fingers to a beat, drum on the table with your fingertips, or stamp your feet to make appropriate sound effects and music.

Johnn: I ask my players to make soundtracks. I have an MP3 dock from a couple Christmases ago, and players plug their MP3 players into it and queue up their playlists.

I would love to do sound effects some day. I purchased a CD set of effects ages ago, but have yet to use them during a game.

About the Authors

Michael Beck considers himself a novice GM, but is encouraged in sharing his tips at www.spielleiten.wordpress.com (German language). Having played RPGs for roughly 10 years now, he accepts the challenge of living with his girl-friend, two cats, a non-finished PhD-thesis and two running roleplaying campaigns.

Da’ Vane, or Christina Freeman in the real world, is the owner of DVOID Systems, and the primary writer of their D-Jumpers series of products. With an academic background in science, especially socio-psychology, she is what many would regard as a “know-it-all.” However, the truth is that she doesn’t know everything about everything, but she knows a lot about a lot, especially about her passions which are games, stories, learning, and people. She is a consummate geek goddess, and yes, she is single if you feel like tracking her down and hitting on her some time….

Well, it’s that time of the month when, following a Blog Carnival, the hosting site compiles a list of the blogs posted on their chosen subject and officially passes the baton on to the next host. Hold on a minute – this month the person that has to do that is me! I guess I had better get busy…

The subject this month was “Making The Loot Part Of The Plot” and a lot of people had a lot to say on the topic. In fact, we had 39 submissions…

Campaign Mastery

I’ll get our contributions out of the way first! We kicked things off with a post entitled Making The Loot Part Of The Plot which was – to be honest – little more than a list of possible articles relating to the subject. As the person who populated that list, you can imagine that I had something to say about each subject, but time was limited. I include this link more out of a sense of completeness than anything else, and to show how much more there is to write on this subject!

Despite being distracted by the then-imminent release of Assassin’s Amulet (have you bought your copy yet? and if not, why not?), we were able to tackle a number of them in the month that followed. In Loot As A Plot Mechanic, I wrote about changing the way GMs think about the loot, and then listed many different types of reward and how they could be used as Plot Mechanics.

This was followed by a two-part excerpt from one of the eBooks we’re preparing in support of Assassin’s Amulet, A Player’s Guide To Legacy Items: Part 1 summarized the concept of a Legacy Item, how they come into existence, how characters acquire them, and the process by which the item moulds and shapes the character. Part Two talked about the powers a Legacy Item could contain, how players could access those powers, what the effects were, and how the presence of the Legacy Item became part of the campaign’s overall plotline.

In Making, earning, Finding, Analyzing, using, Selling, and Destroying Loot, I looked at all the things that characters might want to do with ‘the loot’ and the plot potential of each (I also vented a few times on issues that annoy me every time they crop up – and talked about ways around them).

This was followed by The Value Of Magic, I attempted to come up with a rationalized basis for the value of Magic Items – a big topic in itself! – and came up short. But along the way, I described a nine-step general classification scheme for ranking magic items in terms of their value to a character, listed all the other factors that should be considered in pricing a creation cost, and showed that this was a useful contribution to the subject even without being able to take the final step.

Johnn closed out the month with Why I Fell In Love With Staves Again After 10 Years, in which he discusses the myriad aspects of using, recharging, and designing staves in terms of the plot points they contain. Then, as a cherry on the top, throws in another half dozen or so great ideas on making the command words plot points, and giving them non-magical functions – each of which gives a staff a further plot point. While much of the article is devoted to Staves as they appear in the Pathfinder RPG, an awful lot of it is good advice in D&D as well.

Elthos RPG

VBWyrde uses the baking of loaves of bread as a metaphor to describe ways of making the loot something the PCs want to interact with in his post, also entitled Making Loot Part of the Plot. The metaphor might be slightly quirky but there’s some solid advice in this post.

Dungeon’s Master

Ameron offers 7 Adventure Hooks for Making the Loot Part of the Plot which are worthwhile in themselves, and even more so if you analyze each looking for the reasons the Loot is significant in each case. But the piece-de-resistance of this article is the “related reading” on offer. Since it’s entirely possible that this was automatically generated and not-handcrafted – our system works in a similar way – I’m going to list the suggestions on offer when I checked out the post:

• Even a Regular Item can become and Adventure Hook
• The Little Details make a Big difference
• Intelligent Magic Items
• Your Coin is No Good Here

All relevant, all worth reading.

Hunter’s Quarry

Medieval Mike offers Loot as Part of the Plot in which he talks about how he personally achieves this in his game, and some really interesting ideas that he’s come across for doing the same. The “Book Of Martial Forms” that he describes is so similar in principles to our Legacy Items that it would be easy to convert, but Mike offers a wrinkle that hadn’t even occurred to us – custom-designing each new power to fit the character’s objectives at the time it is granted. The article is obviously written from a 4e point-of-view, with its mention of Healing Surges and Action Points, but the advice is solid for any FRPG – and the ideas are top-notch. And be sure to read the comments for even more ideas!

Game Knight Reviews

Fitz’s contribution is The Gassy Gnoll: Where’d that come from?, in which he posits the notion that an item’s history might be its magic – and that this magic can only be accessed once you know about that history. That summary really only scratches the surface of a really great idea. Once again, check the comments for some added brilliance courtesy of the RandomDM.

In a seperate article, Fitz links to a new ‘Legends & Lore’ article by Monte Cook at Wizards of the Coast which he thinks is relevant to the Blog Carnival, and I have to agree.

The RandomGM, Johnn, and I discuss in the comments section of Making The Loot Part Of The Plot (and yes, that is a redundant recurrence of that link) the results of the survey discussed in the article, given in the follow-up ‘Legends & Lore’ post, and their significance.

Fame & Fortune

In all that glitters…, Satyre warns against overload, then offers six suggestions for adding plots through loot that can really capture your player’s attention. Some of the advice is, quite frankly, brilliant. All of it is worth the time to read it.

Berin Kinsman’s Dire Blog

Berin has also entitled his post Making Loot a Part of the Plot, but don’t think that he is treading the same ground as everyone else – he isn’t. As his article shows, there mere fact that there is loot to be had at a location, and that there will be something trying to stop the PCs from getting it, is enough to make past loot part of the plot – and yet, this is a post about what tomorrow might bring to the PCs. Every player and GM should read this contribution!

The Githyanki Diaspora

have offered Mo’ Gold Pieces, Mo’ problems in which Judd The Librarian expounds on the possibilities of plots that begin where most GMs would think the story ends. I’ve done this myself for my Rings Of Time campaign, and it provides a great way to jump-start an adventure. And I love the dilemma posed by Verrain in the comments: “the only thing left to decide is if I want to run this or beg someone else to run this.” You don’t get much higher praise for an idea than that.

Casting Shadows

Runeslinger (great name for an arcane supervillain!) gets deeply philosophical in Looting Characters about what makes a great game, and how “loot” factors into that question. If you’re looking for quick-fix simple solutions, this is not the place to find them – but if you’re looking to go beyond those in any direction, with any game system, this article will be thought-provoking, stimulating, – and, perhaps, a little daunting. Highly recommended.

Five Fictive Fantasies

FiveFictiveFantasies seems to have been genuinely inspired by the subject and has offered many posts to the blog carnival.

The first is Mark Of Station which posits the consequences of making “the loot” badges of office, and how that immediately makes it part of the plot – no matter what the relationship is between the wielders and the PCs. An elegant proposal that I will have to make greater use of in my own campaigns!

Second up, we have No Printing Press in which literacy combines with the concept of ‘books as treasure’ in a number of extremely useful ways. If you can’t draw new inspiration from this article, you have no imagination.

The third in this series of posts is The World Is Loot, and it describes the insight of a paradigm shift in the perspective of the players. Whether we realize it or not, this is the goal that we all strive for as GMs of our campaigns – but it’s a lot harder to reach a destination if you don’t know where you’re going.

Next up, we have Magic Shouldn’t Work So Hard. I have to agree completely with these proposals – consider them snaffled for my campaigns!

And this blog isn’t done with the subject yet: Overpaid Killers (an ironic title, given that I’ve just co-authored an e-book on assassins) talks about the art of painlessly separating PCs from their accumulated coinage. This post works brilliantly in conjunction with the submission from The Githyanki Diaspora cited earlier.

Zombie Toast

Orion’s first foray into a Blog Carnival, The Importance Of Branding, discusses the use of symbolism and historical context to add to the allure of treasures and makes the loot a conduit to game history and culture. This article touches briefly on some of the same ground as the first of Five Fictive Fantasies’ first blog post, but only tangentially, and is an excellent contribution. Again, the points that Orion makes are things I’m going to have to keep more strongly in mind in the future!

Sea Of Stars Design Journal

Sean Holland offers Magic Items as Plot Devices in which he breaks down this variety of plot device into three types, then considers the strengths and weaknesses of each, and the style of campaign for which they are best suited. There’s some very practical advice here. Sean also touches on the risks and liabilities of using goodies as plot devices, an important point to consider.

Houserule

Edward at Houserule poses questions about the value of money, and the impact of character wealth on a game, in If I Were A Rich Man. His tips are definitely worth considering, especially when setting up a new campaign.

After notifying us about the article above, Lee Dvorak was sufficiently inspired to add Iconic Weapons, or give everybody the Sword of Kas!. This article also tackles the subject of Iconic treasures, but takes the conversation in a slightly different direction – in the process inadvertently offering a solution to one of the vexing problems that I vented about in one of my own posts for the carnival, and one that should have been obvious to me. Absolutely topnotch.

And then another of the bloggers at Houserule, Jeff, was inspired by Lee’s post to write Loot: Mystery and Freedom, which also tackles the proposal for iconic treasures, and moves it into an interesting and innovative direction. For those that care, be warned, it contains some Drizzt spoilers.

Exchange Of Realities

What Loot Can Do With Your Plot is another blog post to take a look at aspects of the overall picture and the types of plot that loot can engender. The key point to emerge involves the relationship between successful use of Loot as a plot device and forward thinking and planning. Success is not something that often happens by accident!

Ravyn followed this article up with a second, Impress Me With Your Shinies, describing how GMs can make their items iconic. This is essential advice for exploiting many of the other carnival posts to the full. And, as a bonus, the implications of one of Grimtooth’s traps (discussed in the comments) are totally fascinating.

Late in the month, Ravyn added a third article, Impractical Applications (Swag!), which offers a couple of interesting items, and how they figured into the plotlines, and by extension, how someone else can do the same. For someone who was “almost surprised [he] made it to this month’s [blog carnival]”, she certainly made a substantial contribution – well done!

Hack & Slash

Another writer who seems to have been genuinely inspired by the subject, -C weighed in with no less than 5 posts for the carnival, starting with On Magic Weapon: A Table part III which offers a d% table for giving your weapons a purpose. This is the sort of thing I’m hopeless at producing, so this was a nice contribution to the carnival! Oh, and there are links to parts I and II of the table at the bottom of the post. Oh, and don’t forget to check the links on the RHS of the page for “On The Magic Amour: A Table” parts I and II, if this stuff is your bread-and-butter.

This was followed by On Riches Causing Ruin. Actually, this post preceded the other, but I’m listing them in the order -C did when he advised us of his blog’s contributions. This article poses the question, “have you ever ruined a campaign with treasure?” – too much, or too little. As a consequence, much of the value lies in the ensuing discussion.

The third post for the blog carnival at Hack & Slash was On The Distribution Of Wealth which tackles the placement of loot within an adventure or campaign – and offers a great deal of game-mechanics insight and history along the way. It’s those insights that power most of the comments, so don’t skip the discussion.

Continuing the line of discussion concerning the placement and distribution of treasures is On Sample Hoards, which offers two sample stacks of loot, old-school. Personally, I thought the cannibals (“Exhibit A”) had too much coin but everything else was reasonable. I’d have cut the coin allotment and replaced them with a pouch of herbs on one of the cannibals that – when chewed like tobacco but not swallowed, functioned like a healing potion – after five minutes of chewing. Divide the value of the removed coinage by the value of a healing potion, round up (because you’ve made the potions slightly less useful) and you have the number of doses or ‘charges’. Add an extra one or two to that tally for good measure, and to keep the players happy. These examples are worth studying because they show how to integrate a treasure cache with the environment of the encounter – a key part of old-school gaming that is all-too-often overlooked.

The final submission from Hack & Slash completes the discussion of the placement of treasure with On The Generation of Treasure, which walks the reader through the process of treasure placement that -C uses. Again, this is old-school stuff, and -C specifically warns new players against reading the post – something I disagree with. C’s approach is very similar to a proposal I articulated a while back in Objective-Oriented Experience Points –
he’s talking GP-value and I was talking xp, but according to the old-school paradigm, they are one and the same. The approach still works even in a modern campaign (with, perhaps, a little less randomness to the process) – you just have to recognize what it is that you are distributing, and into how many ‘parcels’. Rather than suggest non- old-school readers turn away, I would encourage them to read the post and see what they can glean from it to benefit their games.

Surprise Round

4649matt connects the topic with that iconic event of the month of October (at least in North America, and spreading) – Halloween. His article, Trick or Treat contains lots of good advice and interesting ideas, some of which can be taken even further than the blog suggests – such as using the ‘allure of the shiny trinkets’ to lead players into traps and away from something that is to be protected. Another must-read.

The Random DM

The Hoard Project was an ambitious project to prove that tables can build a cohesive story and emergent behaviors. Still incomplete, and clearly something that RandomDM is determined to finish, even the tables that have been completed so far offer value to the carnival, offering a bunch of tables to help develop a big pile of loot – with meaning.

Wrathofzombie’s Blog

This almost got missed because WrathOfZombie didn’t send CM a link to the post, which would have been a shame – it’s a great contribution. Fortunately, I noticed it as a “related post” while revisiting one of the other submissions. In Loot Part of The Plot, the suggestion is made for the loot in question to come as a choice: a tangible reward, or a favor to be called in at a later time. A convincing arguement is then mounted that “favors” – which would include debts and obligations – are under-represented in many campaigns. Finally, the post shows what those campaigns are missing out on.

Roleplaying Tips

In addition to his post at Campaign Mastery, Johnn also offered a carnival entry through his other site, Roleplaying Tips, How To Create Great Magic Items In Just Three Minutes. This offers a system for the generation of memorable, even iconic magic items.

To go with it, he is also running a
contest to create items using the system. While he intends to compile the entries and give them back to the gaming community afterwards, if you want something to use in the meantime, there are several offered in the comments to the contest, and a few more offered as comments to the template that he posted, so be sure to check the comments to both articles!

(I would echo the advice of Satyre from Fame and Fortune and warn against placing so many of these unique items that the uniqueness gets drowned out. Choose your targets carefully! One per PC per adventure, plus (perhaps) one for the big bad guy per adventure, should be ample).

The Wrap-up

The October 2011 blog post barely scratched the surface of this topic and still produced some great posts. Every single one of them had something that the others didn’t, and that’s absolutely brilliant! I hope that everyone enjoyed the carnival, and my thanks to all the contributors.

From here, the Blog Carnival migrates to the website of one of this month’s contributors, the Elthos RPG Blog and their subject, ‘Tricks & Traps, or How to think like a Villain’. Take it away, VBWyrde!

(Oh, and don’t forget – you can sign up to host a round of the Blog Carnival (2012 dates have just been opened), and check out all the past carnivals, at the Archive Page hosted by Nevermet Press).

Staves have not been part of treasure piles in my recent campaigns, which is a travesty. I’m not sure when I stopped using them as treasure or NPC possessions, but that’s going to stop today.

When I played first edition D&D, staves were given out like candy. Oh how we loved to roll them on those treasure tables in the DMG. Staves were so darn useful. With their range of spells and powers, they were our magical Swiss army knives for adventuring. Then times changed.

It’s time to bring them back again. Here are several tips on how you and I can get the most out of staves our Pathfinder games. (Some advice is useful to D&D 3.5 GMs too.)

A New Staff Holds 10 Charges When Created

Staves offer excellent game balance. Hand them out more often without fear of building undefeatable PCs.

10 charges is pretty balanced. Consider how wands have up to 50 charges, and rod powers are usually on demand or on all the time. 10 charges offers limited impact on an ongoing campaign.

Even better news is many staves have powers that cost 2 or 3 charges. The Staff of Life has a function that costs 5 charges! The PCs will blow their wads in just a few encounters and the magic items gets spent.

There’s a big campaign design opportunity here: hand out staves more often.

Here’s why.

1. Character Uptake

First, more supply encourages PC use. When supply is low, PCs tend to horde, then forget. When supply is generous, they’ll use up charges freely.

2. Up the Fantasy

Second, with staff powers flying around, encounters become more fantastic. Cool magic creates cool effects. That’s a sure recipe for fun.

3. More to Think About

Third, deeper puzzle skills come into play, which delights many types of players. With a wide range of options for each staff, characters have more ways to make an impact. Groups have new options to trick or harm foes, rescue the hostages or overcome hazards. Imagination gets rewarded.

Those are only a few reasons. With some staves, combat goes faster, characters get more adventure out of a day, or more roleplaying takes place during encounters.

Note I said a new staff holds 10 charges.

Hand out staves with less than 10 charges to tweak more balance if you need it. Plus, when do PCs get magic items that have just rolled out the factory doors? The previous owner would have likely used the staff at least once (just to test it works, at the least).

All optional, though. You pull the strings. Could be no one has figured out how to operate the staff since its original owner lost it to war, bandits, gambling….

Oh, I neglected to mention what I think is the biggest benefit to increased staff use in your games.

Variety. With more staves floating around, getting used and getting used up, you have more magical things of different types happening in your games.

I don’t care who you are, a +5 Vorpal sword becomes just a numbers bump after a hundred swings. But when a new staff enters the game, something cool and shiny captures everybody’s attention again.

Recharge Your Game

You can recharge staves. This puts a bit of a concern on game balance, but not much. Here’s why.

First, you need a spellcaster who knows a spell from one of the staff’s powers.

Second, the spellcaster must be able to cast a spell that’s at least as high as the highest level spell the staff can cast. That means you can’t farm out recharging to a low level caster.

For example, the Staff of Adjuration can cast Repulsion, which is Wiz/Sor 6, Clr 7. The PCs would need access to a 13th level wizard or sorcerer, or a 15th level cleric to recharge the staff.

Third, you can only recharge a staff with one charge per day. It’ll take awhile to get an expended staff up to 10 charges again. That also means at least a two or three day delay to regain 2 and 3 charge powers in a fully spent staff.

Fourth, a caster can only charge one staff per day. That means get in line buddy, if more than one staff needs a boost.

Fifth, the recharging caster loses for a day a spell of the highest level the staff can cast. That is a big deal for adventuring spellcasters.

And if the PCs are hiring a caster for recharge service, the caster will charge them according to the spell slot expended, not the actual spell cast, and that gets expensive. Actually, it gets terribly expensive.

How Much to Hire A Recharger?

Let’s say the PCs need to put 10 charges again into their Staff of Abjuration. The highest level spell the staff casts is Wiz/Sor 6, Clr 7. The PCs, only 7th level, opt to pay a 13th level wizard over the next 10 days to power up their beloved magic twig.

Spellcasting costs: the caster level x spell level x 10gp. So, 13 x 6 x 10 = 780gp.

10 charges will cost 7,800gp!

On the bright side, that’s better than paying 82,000gp for a shiny new one.

And it will take 10 days, hardly the fast food style of service that adventuring PCs demand.

The GMing Opportunities Here

That brings us to yet more campaign design opportunities.

Let’s assume the characters have one or more staves that need recharging. A simple rule of thumb is one staff will need a recharge per adventure completed.

The characters can spend their loot to recharge an empty staff or top up a used one. In my campaigns, that means cashing in other magic items, equipment, gems, and valuables earned while traipsing around helping people solve their problems or questing for the Big Kahuna (which, with any luck, is a staff that needs future recharging).

That gives you a great campaign economy. Not only are the PCs spending their treasure, but they are using it to make something they already have useful again.

I would also offer recharge services as reward. NPC favors or bartering makes great plot hooks, plot lubrication and roleplaying. It makes interacting with spellcaster NPCs worthwhile for yet another reason.

Going outside the box a bit, let’s look at another GMing opportunity.

Treasure that recharges other treasure. This sounds like excellent quest material to me. How about you?

• Perhaps a sacred spring in the wild north is rumored to recharge divine staves with a simple ceremony.
• Perhaps a special oil, whose recipe requires rare and dangerous ingredients, can be crafted to recharge a staff three charges per batch (I’m always on the lookout to use monster parts to fuel rewards).
• How about a Staff of Charging?
• What about a legend of an ice volcano that charges arcane staves?

Here’s a bizarre one. What about an NPC with the gift of recharging a staff once per day just by laying hands upon it? What would happen to that NPC in your world and campaign? Would he be kidnapped by villains, cloistered away by greedy priests or seconded into towers by powerful wizards? Would the NPC try to escape or seek help? What kind of plots and adventures would the presence of such an NPC spawn? And, naturally, the great reward at the end is a recharge of the party’s staves. Wow, that could be worth 6 figures in gold pieces to the PCs!

Wide Range of Physical Properties Gives You a Rainbow of Flavor

The rules say staves are 4 to 7 feet long. Think about that for a second.

The first thing that comes to my mind, design-wise, is you can tailor staves to suit individual PCs. Players love stuff designed just for them. For example, short characters get short staves, tall PCs tall ones.

Further, short or long, a staff is going to be hard to hide or stow.

And a PC will need to carry his staff in his hand when he wants to keep it ready for use, which will likely be always. That’s noticeable.

Roleplay to the Hilt

There’s a roleplaying opportunity there. First, the staff can become part of the PCs’ identity. What would happen if you walked into work each day with a 6’ staff that you parked in your cubicle? You’d become known as that staff guy.

So too it could be with NPCs reacting to the staff, asking questions about it, talking about it amongst themselves, and best case…speculating about it. “What is it? What does it do? It doesn’t look like a regular walking stick, so what powers does it have?” I love juicy NPC gossip!

Then think about the tallest staves. 7 feet long. Holy cow. That’ll make an impression.

Impressive Thickness

Did I mention the rules say staves are 2 to 3 inches thick?

A 7 foot long staff that’s 3 inches thick is going to make a huge impression. It’ll be heavy, strong and imposing.

Even a 2 inch diameter, 4 foot long staff – the minimum specs – is cool. I’d be tempted to go to the hardware store, buy a piece of dowelling, and cut it to length. Great prop, especially painted and engraved. At the least, your player will get a real feel for this thing his PC carries and brandishes.

Construction Material

Now we get to the best part yet. “Many staves are wood, but an exotic few are bone, metal or even glass.”

This great range of materials lets you further customize rewards to PC kits. It also lets you keep rewards interesting. The number of materials you can use to make each staff distinct is amazing.

• Just think about the different types of metals there are in our world, not to mention the possible fantasy metals.
• And wood–how many types of trees are there, including special ones unique to your world?
• There’s a type of bone for every boned critter out there.
• Even glass comes in different colors and opacity (get out your old marbles or look at your kitchen glassware for design inspiration).

Hand out a swirly purple and white glass rod, then an oak one, then a stonewood staff, then a tarnished copper one formerly used as a stewpot stirring stick.

Shape is Up for Grabs Too

“A typical staff is like a walking stick, quarterstaff or cudgel.”

Even more design options, with two of them as potential weapons.

Imagine the great surprise when a player who gets the magic cudgel realizes it’s also a staff. Double the love by giving a quarterstaff Staff of the Woodlands to the druid, or a cudgel Staff of Conjuration to the wizard (assuming the wizard can wield a cudgel like a club).

NPCs should always use the tools at their disposal, not hide them away in treasure chests. So give staves (intended as treasure) to NPCs who initially surprise PCs when the magic item gets used. The leader of the alley ambush suddenly uses his cudgel to summon a swarm of spiders. That’ll sap the strength of the PCs, for sure.

As an aside, when NPCs wield magic items, try to make the most of the opportunity to build up excitement or suspense.

For example:

• The PCs might hear about deadly swarms of vermin afflicting the area in the past two days.
• In a later encounter, they meet a witness who saw a swarm of spiders just disappear into thin air, which clever players can deduce were magically summoned creatures.
• Then, talk about a robbery reaches the PCs. People say robbers brandished a strange medallion and threatened to summon demon spiders to kill the victim unless he gave up his purse and jewelry.
• Finally, the group gets robbed by this gang. The medallion is brandished and the game is on. The leader will use his cudgel Staff of Summon Swarm only if necessary.

As GM, you can play up the fake medallion and look for opportunities to deceive the PCs for maximum surprise. Maybe the rogues have captured five black widows and release them as “the swarm” if combat erupts, further muddying the truth.

Add Chocolate Sprinkles and Nuts

“A staff often has a gem or some device at its tip or is shod in metal at one of both ends. Staves are often decorated with carvings or runes.”

This is icing on the cake. A special GM treat. You can dress up your staves with all kinds of cool end pieces to truly make your magic items cherished.

“…some device at its top…” gives you leeway to put a skull on your staff, a wondrous snow globe, a flag or anything else you can imagine, be it functional, valuable or for decoration and roleplay only.

Further, you can put runes and carvings on the item. That gives us the exciting opportunity to turn staves into puzzles! This just keeps getting better and better.

You can make a rune puzzle reveal the command word. You can make the runes into a prophecy puzzle, in which the staff is a key piece (leading to plot advancement or a new plot).

You have a one-two punch opportunity here to make understanding the runes or carvings the first puzzle. Then you make the message they deliver into another puzzle or plot. This is great GM stuff.

Activate More Gameplay

Staves use the spell trigger activation method. That means just a command word and class casting ability of the same type the staff uses. So, spellcasters only, please.

This gives you opportunity to reward some classes where magic treasure is a bit harder to target. Druids are sometimes tricky to find that something special for. Now you can give them a staff – or three.

Here’s an old GM trick you can use a number of clever ways. The command word that triggers the staff is up for grabs for each design. The rules advise not using common words else risk the staff going off unintentionally. (But if that happens which spell power releases? I’m not clear on this logic.)

Nevertheless, you can do neat things with the command word.

• You can give the command word a second meaning. Turn it into a clue.
• You can make the command word for multiple staffs form a sentence (when ordered correctly) that is the command phrase for something new and awesome.
• You can make the command word something awkward for the group. “Die humans!” is a nice one when in the city, for example.
• You can make the command word awkward for a PC. “Orcus, come to my aid,” is a good one for, well, good people.
• You can also make the command word important to NPCs, especially enemies. Imagine an enemy who learns the command word of a PC’s new staff might be a clue for him. If the bad guy has brass balls, he might attack the PCs (or have his minions attack, more likely) just to get them to use the staff and command word. Nice encounter hook, that one.

The rules advise making the command word gibberish or something foreign. I advise you turn it into a great game element.

Play Staves Up

The wielder must hold his staff in at least one hand. That seems like a good opportunity to use disarm. Foes might want to steal the item. Build a NPC or two with Improve Disarm, then attack and see how it goes.

Along similar lines, challenge the PCs with foes who have Improved Sunder. There’s nothing better than scaring players with destruction of their prized possessions.

Give leaders in various parts of your world magic staves. Make them part of a leader’s symbols of power. Give them ceremonial uses, especially during holidays and political events. Give them to kings, popes, and leaders of creatures and cultures. In this way, staves are celebrated and woven into the fabric of your world. They help world design, and are part of your world’s design.

Create a Staff Today

Hopefully I’ve built a good argument for bringing more staves into your campaigns.

I suggest we go to our GM place right now and create at least one using the tips above. Make something special and unique for a PC and drop it into your campaign as treasure.

While you are at it, submit this creation to my Magic Items Contest over at roleplayingtips.com. Over there I blogged about a 3 Minute Magic Item template. With this effective template you can work on your campaign during the commercials of your favourite TV show.

Great RPG books and software are up for grabs. Check out the template and enter your staff creation for a chance to win.

3 Minute Magic Items contest >>

How much is a magic item worth? Well, there’s the book value, which can be obtained by cracking open the sourcebook to the relevant page. But that just gives its price – I want to talk about how much it is worth. What is it’s value to its owner? What’s it worth from a character point of view?

This is a much harder question to answer than it first appears, even taking the most general perspective and classification system possible. In fact, it is so difficult that I can’t even begin to answer it in any universal fashion; what I can do, and have done, is attempt to craft a classification scheme, assign an approximate order of values within that classification scheme, and focus the issue into some more specific questions of valuation that can then be discussed and considered.

A Classification Scheme

The place to start is with that general classification scheme, and with the ordering of relative values. This ordering is necessarily a little vague and fuzzy, for some very good reasons.

Number One: as will be discussed a little later in the article, when I look at the internal hierarchy of values within a category, each of these actually represents a range of possible values combining a number of different factors and considerations. An item that scores highly within that range in a less valuable category will almost certainly be of greater value – probably vastly greater value – than a low-level entry in an inherently more valuable category.

Number Two: there is a difference between perceived value and actual value. Some characters will want one magic item over another simply because it better fits their character or plans and ambitions or style.

Number Three: Item functions are often founded apon fuzzy, misunderstood, or imperfect game mechanics, and that vagueness translates into a difficulty in valuing a quantified improvement in capability within those game mechanics.

There are other reasons that could be mentioned, but those three are more than enough to illustrate the situation.

So, with those caveats understood, let’s look at the general classification scheme. It consist of 9 categories, ranging from the undesirable to the most desirable. Some of the categories will not be obvious in definition, but they will make sense once those definitions are understood. The nine categories are:

1. Impairment Items
2. Useless Items
3. Abilities that grow
4. Capped Abilities: Specific
5. Capped Abilities: Universal
6. New Options
7. Tactical Boosts
8. Foundation Shifts
9. New Abilities

Let’s take a look at each one in detail:

1. Impairment Items

At the bottom of the valuation ladder are items that impair the character. That seems obvious, but there are some subtleties possible within this category; it contains everything from outright impairments, like cursed items, to mixed blessings, to items that offer a short-term gain for long-term penalties, to items that offer long-term gain for short-term penalties. What? You’ve never heard of those last two? Well, let’s deal with them in order:

Outright Impairment items are useless to the character unless he can get them into the hands of his enemies. Characters frequently have to pay to get rid of such items, their values lie in the negative, or at best are a token worth.

Mixed Blessings are items that have a positive effect on one factor or ability and a negative effect on another. I have these in my Fumanor campaign: Sigils and seals that can be bonded to weapons that grant -x on one ability (usually damage, but there are exceptions) and +(x+1) on another (usually to-hit, but again there are exceptions). A limit of one to a weapon, and the ability to move them from one weapon to another as a full-round action makes life interesting by opening up new tactical questions for the players to consider.

More subtle combinations are possible. Impairing reflex saves and boosting movement rates, impairing a characteristic bonus (and hence all skills and abilities based on it) for a boost in another characteristic bonus or a boost in a specific skill of value (or vice versa)… the limits are those of the imagination. Clearly, some of these will be desirable to some characters, while a different character could not get rid of the item quickly enough.

Short-term gain for long-term pain items offer a quick boost when the character needs it and a balancing detriment later. Consider, for example, the value of a potion that grants a character an extra X dice of hit points (NOT an extra X hit dice, which carries connotations of improvements to hit and so on) – but which remove, permanently, 2X dice of hit points when the potion wears off. This clearly has value when the character is in a tight spot, enabling him to survive fights he would otherwise be forced to flee – but the price is a long-term infirmity that will hinder and impair for a long time to come, and that price will certainly mitigate the value.

Long-term gain for short-term pain items are the other side of the coin. An item that permanently removes X dice of hit points, but that increases the number and/or size of the character’s hit dice for the next X+1 levels can be tempting. The smaller the hit dice size of the character, the more tempting it becomes, in one respect; a mage might certainly be tempted to give up 2d4 hit points in order to gain d8 or d10 hit points for his next three character levels. On the other hand, a character with a lot of hit points, like a higher-level fighter, might not miss 3 dice of them all that much, and would certainly consider such a Faustian bargain.

Clearly, not all of these are worthless to the character – though they fact that they all come with a price-tag attached is enough to give characters pause.

2. Useless Items

Simply because some of the first category of items have values of less than zero, the second category has to be those with an inherent zero valuation – items that are by definition useless to the character.

Even these are not completely worthless, of course; the item will have value to someone else, and hence can be traded for material worth (at least in theory), or given away for influence and goodwill.

3. Abilities that grow

Advancing one rung higher on the valuation ladder, we come to items that grant a bonus to numbers that go up in time anyway. With each level (or every X levels, in the case of some character classes) saves and to-hit values go up. Items that boost these numbers have an obvious value to a character.

The shortcoming of such items is that they are very vanilla in flavor.

They also have markedly different valuations in epic vs. non-epic campaigns – simply by virtue of the fact that when you can no longer gain in levels, your ability to improve over time is also curbed. As characters approach the level cap for the campaign – whatever it might be – these items actually shift out of this category and into one of the two categories that follow.

4. Capped Abilities: Specific

The next highest valuation class belongs to items that improve an ability that is capped or maxed out, save for improvements in a base stat. This class has actually been split into two subclasses – Specific, which refers to a capped ability that only a specific type or group of character classes can access, and Universal, which anyone can access. An example might be increasing the number of fighter bonus feats that a character can achieve provided that the character can access fighter bonus feats in the first place. Or an increase in the number of Favored Enemies a Ranger could take. Or an increase in the number of extra dice of damage a rogue does on a backstab. Or an increase in the number of spells of a given spell level a wizard could cast, or something similar for a sorcerer. This class gives a character more of some ability that is unique to his class or to a group of classes which includes his character class.

The value comes in offering more of something the character can have no more of, a trait that makes these items quite desirable – and that increases that desirability as the character approaches those limits.

But the value is limited because not everyone can access the benefits – you have to meet the conditions, whether those be character class, or a characteristic minimum, or alignment, or whatever.

5. Capped Abilities: Universal

The Universal variety of boosts to capped abilities is slightly more valuable because of that universality. And, interestingly, this is where the damage bonus of magic weapons resides – anyone (whether they have or can access the proficiency requirements or not) can use any weapon, it’s only a question of how clumsily they will do so – and that means that anyone can access that bonus. But this also applies to other capped abilities such as initiative.

There is a further subcategory within this area that is very hard to pin down to a label. I call them Metagame Magic Items – but that term also comprises items that fall into some of the categories that are still to come, so it’s not a fully adequate term. These are magic items that permit a character a specified number of exceptions to a specific rule, and they are rare in any campaign. In the context of this category of magic items, they refer to the rules concerning stacking limits on numbers.

Consider an item whose only ability was to permit the change of definition of one bonus that must be inalterably chosen at the moment this item is activated from whatever type it already has to a Miscellaneous bonus.

The idea is both arcane (in a non-game sense) and abstruse, but once you get your head around it, the appeal to a creative player is obvious. These are potentially campaign-wrecking items, so they should be approached with caution – and always with the philosophy of ensuring parity of opportunity between PCs and their enemies (that’s the principle that says ‘if a PC can do it, so can an NPC, and vice versa’).

6. Mew Options

The next category in this journey of valuation are items that grant a character new options. That’s not to say new abilities – those come a little later; these items simply offer a character doors that he can choose to open.

In my Rings Of Time campaign, for example, there was a Belt of Dwarvenkind. It’s sole power was that it permitted the wearer to be considered a Dwarf in matters of racial heritage, access to feats, and access to character classes (there were a few such). The same privileges could be conferred by the Dwarvenking by naming characters citizens of his Kingdom, even if this was an honorary title.

These ideas grew out of the conviction that the “flavor text” describing feats and classes were rules just as much as were the game mechanics of character advancement. If that flavor text said or implied that only Dwarves had access to the capacity in question, that was the rule concerning it. Coupling that with the concept that magic items existed to violate or distort specific game rules and mechanics in precise and defined ways made this new type of magic item inevitable. This had the effect of moving the qualification requirements for unusual feats and classes out of the realm of game mechanics and into the realm of roleplaying – where the overt approach might be blocked, a more circumspect approach might be available, should the right NPCs be approached in the right ways. A character could attempt to be anything he wanted; the only questions were how difficult it would be to achieve, and where the path to success would be found.

Quite obviously, these are Metagame Magic Items every bit as much as those discussed in the previous category.

7. Tactical Boosts

There are a number of categories at the high end of these valuations that are susceptible to one common, extremely broad, definition – that of permitting the character to do things he would not be permitted to do without the item. That such a broad definition is even possible indicates that, even more than at the lower levels, the valuations of these types of item overlap, and relative minutia of differentials are what decides whether one item is more valuable than another.

Occupying a section of middle ground in the heart of that broader spectrum are the magic items that grant characters a tactical boost.

• Items that mean the character is always considered to be flanking anyone with whom he is in combat – useful in the hands of any melee specialist, priceless to rogues or anyone with Backstab capabilities.
• Items that grant the character a free standard action if they perform a full-round action – either limited to a specific free action or a universal choice.
• Items that permit an extra attack in melee under certain circumstances.
• Items that permit a quick-change in choice of weapons or otherwise make a specific type of action a free action.

….the possibilities are endless, and often extremely subtle. The reason, of course, is because the game mechanics relating to combat are so detailed and well-developed that it is easy to craft an item making specific alterations to the game rules for a given individual.

Because such items grant an ability of some sort to the character using them immediately, they are inherently slightly more valuable than those which merely grant a character opportunities for development that they would otherwise not have; but the sheer variability of value in the tactical options opened means that the value of these items is also extremely variable.

8. Foundation Shifts

This category contains a few magic items of highly abstract conceptual natures. An extension of category 6, “new options”, this category contains items that recast abilities that the character already has. This not only opens new options in the same way as the examples within category 6, it provides a retroactive conceptual alteration to the character’s existing abilities. For example, the ability to cast clerical spells as though they were arcane spells, while prohibiting the casting of any spell castable only by sorcerers and wizards results in a very different character architecture, stripping the clerical spells so cast of any theological content.

In some of my campaigns, clerical spells have contained the ‘signature’ of the deity invoked, something that is invisible to non-clerics but instantly recognizable to other clerics. Some magic items (and some spells that could be cast in advance) would disguise or inhibit the perception of this signature, but by-and-large, as soon as a cleric let fly with a spell, you knew which God or Demon or whatever stood behind them.

These items require some original thought on the part of GMs and players in order to extract the value from them, because they are abstract in nature, and have to be perceived in relation to other concepts within the individual campaign while at the same time shaping those concepts. They can be extremely powerful weapons in the individualizing of campaigns while still retaining the absolute rules and game mechanics contained within the core sourcebooks, or they can achieve absolutely nothing.

Provided that the GM has thought the implications through with sufficient thoroughness, they can be wonderful tools for dealing with rules lawyers, taking their propensity for ‘the letter of the law’ and turning it both on its head and to the benefit of the campaign. I have seen one instance of such a player personality shocked into silence for the entirety of a game session while he tried to come to terms with the implications.

A similar, and related, type of magic item can shift the foundations of an ability. Consider the implications of a magic item that permits or forces characters to base their ability to backstab an opponent on their INT instead of their DEX or character level. Or a character’s Attack modifier on their Wisdom instead of their STR. There are precedents in the class abilities of Paladins.

This is a way of packaging house rules that keeps them neatly contained and accessible, and that is generally acceptable in any campaign for that very reason. It can be as blunt as a giant’s club or as precise as a scalpel; but ultimately they have the effect of transferring power out of the published rules and into the creativity of the GM while still retaining the structures and game mechanics of those rules.

Their abstract nature clearly means that the value of these items depends on how useful a given character will find the shift, which in turn bases the value of the items on the perceptiveness and creativity of player and GM. To those who are very literal-minded, they may have virtually no value; to those who are prepared to seek out the potentials, they may be exceptionally valuable.

This category is in eighth place within the rules because these items are clearly more valuable than the equivalent items of the sixth category, by virtue of the fact that they do everything those items do and something more. That something more can be either more or less valuable than the items of the seventh category, so they clearly belong above that group as well.

9. New Abilities

The final category of magic items are those that grant a new ability to the character who uses them. Often, these are class abilities extracted from other classes, and this can be an excellent way to bring some of the concepts of a class into a campaign where the class itself is too powerful, too weak, or simply unsuitable for some reason. Items that grant a Sorcerer the ability to Turn Undead as a cleric, perhaps of lesser level. Items that permit a cleric or Druid to lay on hands, as per a Paladin. Items that permit a wizard to use a longsword or plate mail without penalty.

These represent a selective blurring of the distinctions between classes when the abilities are those of a class already present within the campaign, and an expansion of capabilities when the powers of the magic item derive from some other source. Because they immediately grant a character an ability that they did not have before, and all the tactical and gaming options that go with it, these can be the most valuable class of items of all.

Questions Of Valuation

So, with the different categories of magic items defined, we next come to the different criteria that control absolute valuations within each of the category. Once again, I’m going to consider each, without regard for relative merit compared to each other.

Gradated Scales

This is quite straightforward: +2 is better than +1. More is better.

How much better? Is it a straight multiple? Is it the square of the improvement? Suddenly, it’s not so straightforward.

Resistance

Some effects are more easily nullified or resisted than others. The more easily the effects can be overcome, the less valuable the item.

Repeatability

Potions are one-shot. Scrolls are usually one-shot. Wands have limited charges. Some items have limited uses per day, or per week, or per battle. And some work each and every time unless there is something unusual going on. The more limited the number of charges are, the less an item should be worth.

Convenience

Some items are convenient to use, and some aren’t. This is more than just activation mechanisms; it’s about magic item slots and relative effectiveness of different items.

Difficulty Of Creation

Some items are more difficult to create than others, or at least, they should be. Caster level should be part of this factor.

Why does it matter?

So, who cares about understanding why items have a particular value? What’s the significance, why does it matter – especially given that the intent to create a universal master system of valuation didn’t survive the practicality test? There are some really good reasons…

The emplacement of loot of desire

The first is that by understanding the relative value of items, you can discern the relative value of items to your players and their characters – and that means that you can emplace loot that they will want. It also means that you can deliberately place loot that is valuable but that a character will not want if they are progressing too quickly. This can be a more subtle and less contentious way of adjusting the power balance within a game. (One reason why I have tackled this subject is because I haven’t done as well in that regard as I would like; this is an attempt to develop a system and perspective to improve that performance.)

A spur to originality

I’m quite sure that amongst the examples I’ve offered in the different categories, there are some that most GMs have never heard of. Any classification system, by its nature, reveals holes in the existing list of objects within that system, which spurs creativity to fill those holes. In other words, knowing what’s possible can be inspirational.

Making The Loot Part Of The Plot

And here’s the ultimate reason: by selectively enhancing character capabilities, the GM can make the loot part of the plot by making the characters part of the plot.

Sounds obvious, right? The best tricks always are.

Consider, for example, a clay tablet in which the characters can ask the Gods one question a day, with only a yes/no answer permitted. Any other response, or if the answer cannot be answered clearly with a yes or no, yields no answer. How could that be used to enhance the GM’s ability to bring the plot to the characters?

Or how about a book that reveals one random fact a day? Sometimes it would be trivial, sometimes it could give the players a clue or piece of background information, and sometimes, just sometimes, it could be used to lure them exactly where the GM wants them to go – because he controls what the ‘random fact’ is, and whether or not it is truly random.

A system of classification of magic items – which is what we’ve ended up with – offers a new way to make the loot part of the plot: by simply putting it in the game, and letting it simply be – the loot!