Continue reading »]]>

The Dragon Statue by @Symatt

Background

This encounter is part 1 of 2. The second encounter will go up on the site next week.

The village of Grellonwood is in peril. The Birthmoon river – usually a raging torrent of an inexhaustible supply of water – has dried up. Investigations by some villagers have revealed that upstream some Goblins are using an arcane portal to divert the river somewhere else.

The villagers are frightened by the sheer number of Goblins around the portal and so they turn to the PCs to help. The villagers do have one trick up their sleeve. An ancient prophecy says that the bestial statues in the centre of the village would come alive at the village’s greatest hour of need but only in the presence of those that are worthy. So far, none of the villagers have been deemed worthy and the statues are as inanimate as they usually are. The villagers ask the PCs for help.

Animating the Statues

There is one statue for each PC (how convenient!). The PCs can spend 4 healing surges to animate a single statue. While infusing the statue with their life force, the PCs make checks. If successful the HP of the statue increases. If unsuccessful, the healing surge still counts towards the 4 needed to animate a statue but the HP of the statue does not increase.

When the PCs approach the statues read out the following (with X being the number of PCs):
X statues of dragon like beasts stand in front of you. Each one is in a different pose. The statues look like they are carved out of stone, but the lines are too perfect. No stonemason could have made such realistic looking beasts.

If the PCs make an Arcana check (DC 23). Read out the following regardless of whether they pass or fail.
The statues appear to have the barest whisper of an arcane life within. The statues need some kind of life force to nourish it and allow it to escape from its statuesque form.

If the Arcana check was successful then the number of HP the statue gains from a spent healing surge is 10 instead of 5.

If a PC spends a healing surge to help animate the statue they gain no HP for the spent healing surge and they make a Heal/Nature check (DC 16). If the check is successful, the HP of the Bestial Statue increases by 5 (or by 10 if the arcana check above was successful) and the healing surge counts towards the 4 needed to bring the statue to life. If the check was unsuccessful, the HP of the statue doesn’t change, but the healing surge still counts towards the 4 needed to bring the statue to life.

Once a statue has received 4 healing surges from the PCs, it bursts into life. Read the following:
The stone of the statue suddenly turns a milky blue colour as it busts into life. All 4 of the leathery wings flap about and the beast shakes off the dirt and dust that had gathered on its body over the years.

When in combat, each beast acts on the turn of the PC that is riding it and any action it takes is instead of the PCs own action.The Bestial Statues have the following statistic block:

This encounter was inspired by a scene in Assassin’s Quest

Find more art by @symatt here

Continue reading »]]>

Map of the campaign meta-region, much of which is only sparsely detailed still.

If you have been playing RPGs, especially DnD, for a while (or maybe you just started) there is a good chance you have at least considered creating your own setting. I started work on my personal setting back when 2E was the DnD of the day, and through the years it has undergone some permutations and tweaks. Sometimes the new rules have helped make the setting better (the 4E cosmology was a huge boon), and sometimes they have made things harder (the changes from Themes to Prestige Classes to Paragon Paths and the return of Themes). Now there are many solutions to these things, most obviously don’t change system (and truth be told I have enough 2E material to run it still), make house rules to cover the changes or start new campaigns and detail new parts of the setting expanding the world.

Fortunately for me I have had new groups of players for each edition change, and so I have been able to make sweeping changes to the setting; including completely redrawing the world map and re-defining large parts of the setting. 4E was particularly inspiring in this regard, the suggestion of the last great empire being in ruins and no single power having risen up to replace it solved a problem I had long been struggling with; the conflict between adventure and an over civilised world. With this idea in mind I burnt my major empire to the ground (or at least made it irrelevant to the areas I was starting campaigns in) and set up a great conflict that had spread monsters like orcs, ogres, giants and goblinkin across much of the world. It also let me legitimately have a lot more blanks on the map. I turned prior cities into ruins and they became “here be monsters” sites and removed many villages and generally increased the hostility of the world; in short 4E made my campaign world a place where DnD adventures can happen!

Using Published Material

I use published material for a number of reasons, firstly it is easier for me in terms of time management for the campaign, secondly it is often easier for the players as well than if I use a lot of homebrew stuff (particularly true for 4E). However published material comes with a lot of baggage that can make it difficult to use in a homebrewed campaign, and 4E material was no different from any other in this regard.

However 4E’s lesson of “leave things undefined” has paid off repeatedly over the last five years. After putting my setting through revisions in preparation for 4E campaigns I left large areas of the map only loosely defined, avoiding that temptation to burrow into each element and carefully detail every corner of the known world.  As I worked I then looked to the elements of official 4E that related to my setting and looked for ways to connect them so that as player’s read through the WotC material it would be easy to explain the connection between WotC material and my own homebrew setting.

In the rest of this entry I’m going to talk about my plans for my next campaign and how I have filled the “empty spaces” and incorporated published material in developing the campaign. Hopefully by looking over what I have done you will see how you can take published material and easily adapt it to suit your own campaign setting, assuming you cannot just drop it in without change (as I did with my Village of Hommlet campaign).

Campaign Inspiration

My next campaign, and indeed my DnDNext campaign is going to be focussed around the Undermountain products initially and eventually tie in the Neverwinter Campaign Setting, Night’s Dark Terror  (from Basic) and perhaps Against the Slave Lords (from 1E). However as I sat down to plan this my campaign setting didn’t have Undermountain anywhere, it didn’t even have a Waterdeep, but it did have a few places that could be Neverwinter. This latter part was important as much of the original idea of the campaign was to combine Neverwinter with Undermountain. Now I could have done this in the Realms easily enough (many of the Neverwinter Themes are tied to Waterdeep already), but I wanted to use my own setting, and doing so gives me the opportunity to develop it further.

Since the early days of the setting there had been a city that straddled a thin slice of land between a huge lake and the sea. The city was rich, cosmopolitan and perched on top of cliffs near the sea; that is all I really knew about it other than its name Kalatar. Well that matched Waterdeep closely enough, and gave me scope for putting Undermountain under the city. So I started considering the city and the campaign’s history and the seed ideas for the campaign. Waterdeep is huge and prosperous, Neverwinter is a city recovering from catastrophe. Well my history had a huge war 200 years ago, that seemed like a great opportunity to decimate the city and put it on the road to recovery and also introduce Undermountain to the setting. So that is how Kalatar, The Towers of Trade came to be in its current form as a great city with ruined suburbs still inhabited by orcs and such, with a great largely unexplored dungeon whose history is largely unknown underneath it.

Kalatar – The player’s background to the city which shows the clear relationship to Waterdeep and Undermountain.

Theming the Campaign

So I now have Waterdeep & Undermountain in my setting without really changing anything, instead I was able to add detail to an area of the map that was marked but not really explored before. But I still need more for the campaign as a whole, I need to tie in Themes to the campaign and provide hooks for the characters and flesh out some other areas around the starting point so that they can be drawn on later in the campaign as the adventures move away from the Halls of Undermountain starting point and start pulling in other more sinister plots.

The Neverwinter Campaign Guide is excellent in this regard; each theme, and many of its backgrounds are tied to the campaign in ways that seed adventures and motivations for the characters. This idea gives some immediate and obvious choices for the campaign the Noble and Dune Trader (ie Merchant) themes stand out as obvious choices for a Waterdeep like city. Then there were themes that stand out for Campaign reasons; Escaped Slave and Devil’s Pawn both have clear hooks that can be tied into the campaign. Looking at the adventures I was drawing inspiration from and the campaign setting area and the existing theme fluff I was able to come up with a list of 14 themes that with a small amount of fluff change (or even no fluff change) could easily become part of the campaign.

Now obviously these themes are all 4E ones, and so if I end up using this campaign for DnNext those theme elements will need to be reduced to back story for the characters (at least initially). Now a list of 14 themes may also seem restrictive and the truth is I’m open to the player’s choosing other themes, but I’ll work with them to create appropriate connections for the theme to the game (both this campaign and the setting as a whole).

The idea of building themes as needed is also one of the things I’m most interested in seeing how well it works for DnDNext; the idea of crafting a back story and using that to build a background and theme mechanic for a character can be a major boon for players and DMs in homebrew settings. It reminds me very much of Backgrounds from the Dragon Age tRPG and how easy it is to craft them for homebrew.

Night’s Dark Terror Themes – The 14 Themes and their campaign connection/fluff.

Campaign Race

With my last few campaigns I have developed a method of ordering races to express my preferences based on the expectations of the campaign. With this campaign I broke Race down into 3 tiers; Primary (Human, Halfling, Dwarf, Elf), Secondary (Deva, Dragonborn, Drow, Genasi, Goliath, Half-Elf, Half Orc and Tiefling) and finally Others (anything not on the list). The ordering has more to do with the DnDNext play test than the ideal ordering for the campaign. I want players to think first of ideas that will tie into the DnDnext play test so if they choose to follow through with it this will make things the easiest while we work through the play test. When the first two groups are combined they are the ones that make the most sense in the setting as a whole and this campaign in particular, and so if this was intended to just be a 4E game they would be one grouping.

The Deva and Drow are two races that the campaign setting changes around significantly in terms of their back story, while keeping familiar elements of the race mechanically. In the setting Deva have an entire kingdom, so they are quite numerous compared to normal DnD, yet they are also still the descendants of angels trapped in the Prime Material Plane millenia ago. They keep the reincarnation concept but it is reborn as a child, not reformed as an adult (except in special circumstances). Drow on the other hand are the descendants of elves that lived in a land that was devastated during the settings’ version of the Dawn War, their appearance etc relates to that rather than any connection to Lolth or curse by Corellon. They are desert dwelling nomads whose honor is stained by a group who turned to the worship of the settings’ major evil deity. The changes don’t remove or change the racial mechanics of either race, just their background to tie them more into the setting.

When dealing with races I find this approach to be the simplest, the less you mess with a player’s notions of the race from that presented in the WotC (etc) material the easier it is for them to get the differences for your setting and roll with the punches. If you change things too much then the players will constantly be pulling in DnD Lore that doesn’t apply. Clearly my drow run that risk, but that is why the istathi exist – “that is true of the istathi” is an easy correction to make as needed.

Campaign Gods

Like Race and Theme gods are another area where there is a lot of mechanics that is tied directly to various elements of the published settings from WotC (et al), and thus creating your own pantheon can be problematic. In creating my pantheon (done in late 2E through 3E) I did not worry about the official pantheons. At the time the mechanics were such that it didn’t matter significantly and it was easy to work around with domains etc. When 4e came this was very different. I have kept my gods and solved the mechanics issue by focussing on my gods’ portfolios/domains. For example Kelamar is a significant deity in my setting as the God of Justice (and Husbands) and to solve the mechanics issue the players can choose any deity related mechanics that tie to a god associated with Justice. In any given campaign this then sets the parameters for Kelamar and the powers he grants. This gives my player’s flexibility and options while also meaning the only thing they really need to remember is that he is called Kelamar not Bahamut or whatever they use as their WotC base.

In addition to this my setting started with 3 major dieties one of whom betrayed the other two leading to the settings’ Dawn War and her being chained by physically and magically away by her sisters. As I have read through 4E mythology I have been able to readily use many of the elements of the story that WotC uses for Tharizdun for my chained god. So now when WotC releases more content for Tharizdun I can choose to either adopt it or ignore it as I want for my campaign purposes. (I could run a campaign based around the Abyssal Plague storyline for example because that idea of Tharizdun trying to escape and some other horror being let loose upon the world works just fine, but currently I am ignoring it as I have enough other stuff happening at this stage in the campaign world with multiple parallel campaigns.)

Lessons Learned

Over the years I have learnt the following lessons for using “official” material with my setting:

1. A highly detailed map restricts your ability to improvise new setting elements when needed so leave as much of the map loosely or undetailed as you can.
2. Keeping broad concepts in tact is more important than minor details. For example drow appearance and racial abilities are more important than drow as servants of Lolth.
3. Associating villains in your setting with “official villains” makes things far easier. A lot of published material, especially adventures, is about the villains. So if you ensure you have analogs for the usual DnD suspects in your campaign (Vecna, Tharizdun, Asmodeus, Orcus, Demogorgan, Lolth and their associated followers for example) makes adopting material from official sources much easier.
4. Sometimes the easiest and best thing to do is change the names and run with it.

Continue reading »]]> It’s been a while since I posted on DailyEncounter, but Rob Schwalbs excellent werewolf theme article on the WotC site has drawn me out of hiding…

When doing the AngelicDnD experiment last year, I promised @matt_james_rpg a werewolf theme. I thought doing a theme for werewolves would be simple, it turns out its not. Even when @matt_james_rpg jokingly tweeted to me ‘Immediate Reaction. Trigger: Full Moon.’ I still had no idea how to build the theme. An encounter based transformation into a werewolf would seem too powerful, even if it was only until the end of your next turn. A calendar based transformation, allowing for multiple moons as many fantasy worlds have, too weak. I needed something in between. Here’s what I came up with:

Werewolf

There are two curses, inflicted upon a persons blood by dark creatures of evil and the night, that all adventurers fear. The first, vampirism, drives a man crazy with blood lust, while imbuing them with longevity and supernatural powers. The other, lycanthropy, is more hideous, for it does not totally change a man, leaving him physically and mentally unchanged, until something triggers the metamorphosis into a wild an untamed beast. Indeed, it is common for those afflicted to live for years in a safe community, before suddenly turning one day into a ravenous wolf beast that tears its prey to shreds.

Creating a Werewolf

The curse of lycanthropy runs in a mans blood, for some it is hereditary, inflicted generations ago, lying hidden and dormant until triggered. For others it is a constant affliction, a curse that affects their every day. Most adventurers with lycanthropy know about their problem, and do their best to keep it under control, with silver charms, and wolfsbane in their food. But when they need to unleash the beast within, they can do, becoming a almost berserker like creature with animal characteristics.

Starting Feature
Werewolves, when they have taken their cursed form, are often attributed with superhuman strength and senses, far beyond those of both wolves and men.
Benefit: You gain the Lycan Physique power.

Lycan Physique
“I cannot hold the beast inside back… Argh!, Howl!”
Daily * Shadow, Polymorph
Minor Action * Personal
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, or until you choose to end the effect as a minor action, you assume the appearance of a bipedal wolf. When in the form, you gain low-light vision, speed 8, and can only make the following attacks: Wolfen Bite and Wolfen Claws.

Wolfen Claws
“The sharp claws of your altered form slice through armour as if it were paper scrolls”
At-Will * Shadow
Standard Action * Melee 1
Requirement: You must be in the beast form of your Lycan Physique power.
Target: 1 Creature
Attack: Highest ability score +2 vs AC
Hit: 1d10 + Highest ability modifier +2 damage.
Effect: The target takes a -1 penalty (cumulative) to AC until the end of the encounter.

Wolfen Bite
“You sink your animal like jaws around your targets exposed flesh, tearing away their flesh.”
At-Will * Shadow, Healing
Standard Action * Melee 1
Requirement: You must be in the beast form of your Lycan Physique power.
Target: 1 Creature
Attack: Highest ability score +2 vs Reflex
Hit: 1d6 + Highest ability modifier damage, and the target takes ongoing damage equal to 1 + half your highest ability modifier (save ends).
Effect: You regain hit points equal to 1 + half your highest ability modifier.

Additional Features

Level 5 Feature
A vestige of the beasts senses remain, even when you are in your un-altered form.
Benefit: You gain a +2 gain to Nature and Perception checks.

Level 10 Feature
The beast inside you strengthens as you do, becoming deadlier in combat than you can hope to be.
Benefit: Your attack bonus for Wolfen Claws and Wolfen Bite increases from +2 to +4. You can use your Lycan Physique power twice a day, but only once per encounter.

Optional Powers

The more times a man gives in to the beast inside, the easier the transformation becomes, and the more capable they are at using the beasts powers.

Level 1 Encounter Power

Savage Maul
“You bat and pad at the target between your claws, moving it around with the strength of your strikes.”
Encounter * Shadow
Standard Aciton * Melee 2
Requirement: You must be in the beast form of your Lycan Physique power.
Target: 1 creature within reach
Attack: Highest ability score vs Reflex
Hit: 1d8 + Highest ability modifier damage.
Effect: You slide the target up to 2 squares.

Level 2 Utility Power

Stop Their Escape
“Once you’ve got teeth into your foes, yo aren’t willing to let them escape.”
Encounter * Shadow
Immediate Interrupt * Melee 1
Requirement: You must be in the beast form of your Lycan Physique power.
Trigger: An enemy adjacent to you shifts away
Effect: You can make a Wolfen Claws or Wolfen Bite attack against the target

Level 3 Encounter Power

Stalk and Pounce
“Swiftly moving across the battlefield, you leap at your target, causing it to loose its footing”
Encounter * Shadow
Standard Action * Melee 1
Requirement: You must be in the beast form of your Lycan Physique power.
Special: You can shift up to 4 squares before attacking
Target: 1 creature
Attack: Highest ability score vs Reflex
Hit: 2d10 + Highest ability modifier damage, and target grants combat advantage to you and your allies until the end of your next turn.

Level 6 Utility Power

Bestial Senses
“The smell of blood in the air awakens your senses”
Encounter * Shadow
Free Action * Personal
Requirement: You must be in the beast form of your Lycan Physique power.
Effect: Until the end of your next turn, gain Darkvision and a +5 bonus to Perception and Nature checks.

Level 7 Encounter Power

Wrath of the Beast
“When surrounded, you enter into a trance of animalistic rage, growling and biting at the foes surrounding you.”
Encounter * Shadow
Standard Action * Close Burst 1
Requirement: You must be in the beast form of your Lycan Physique power.
Target: Each enemy in burst
Attack: Highest ability score vs Reflex
Hit: 1d6 + Highest ability modifier damage and the target takes a -1 penalty to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.

Level 10 Utility Power

Defend the Weak
“Even when the beast inside has awakened, you know when your allies are in danger.”
Encounter * Shadow
Minor Action * Personal
Requirement: You must be in the beast form of your Lycan Physique power.
Effect: Allies adjacent to you gain +3 to all defenses.

Continue reading »]]> Culture is a strange thing. For example it is particularly hard to identify the things that make your culture what it is without having another culture with which to compare it. In DnD campaigns this manifests in cultures becoming homogenous, it is simply easier to have one pervasive culture than to create many unique cultures. This is compounded by the fact that largely the mechanics of the game have just not cared about culture largely, further enforcing the concept of a homogeneous culture on DnD settings.

I have just returned from a week in Japan, a place with a culture that is historically starkly different to my homes’ culture which is rooted in the UK and Ireland. Yet despite that historical difference modern Japan is very similar to any other first world country. This is a useful concept for us as gamers (especially DMs). A culture need not be radically different, just different enough.

Consider that at one stage I was sitting in Tokyo Disneyland outside the “it’s a small world” ride. It’s essentially the same experience as sitting outside the same ride in the US Disneyland. There is a long que, the family beside me is treating their little girls to pizza and hordes of people are streaming past. The differences are subtle, you don’t hear English, the fashions are subtly different, the park guides say sorry & thank you while bowing slightly any time they ask something and there was a samisen rendition of the theme music played.

Language & Culture

Written language can be just as important as spoken, but it is harder to use easily!

Language tells us a lot about a culture, and it is one of the easiest things to use in a game to delineate cultures. If you imagine English is Common, it’s a messy hard to learn language spoken in a wide array of accents that traces its rise as a common language to a powerful historical empire and it’s use by modern economic powers. So everyone knows at least a few basic phrases of it, hello, how much, numbers to 10, yes, no, where is, good, bad, but not necessarily much more than that. So people can manage simple business transactions supported by pointing and a small selection of hand gestures all over the world (& maybe beyond in DnD). There are places where it is the normal language and these places have fairly similar cultures (similar enough we can ignore the differences for DnD). But in other places other languages entirely are spoken and there is little use of common (maybe none).

For example the elven kingdom speaks elven and most elves have a smattering of common. This means that when adventurers visit the conversation can happen enough for people to get directions and buy things but interrogating that guard is going to require someone fluent in elven or it’s going to be really hard.

Now some may say that this isn’t fun, but I would suggest that if everyone/thing is going to be fluent in common there is no need for other languages. PCs have access to multiple languages and spells/rituals that will give them fluency in a language for a set period, making language matter in your game rewards players for investing in languages in addition to giving your world more depth. That is a good thing. The important thing is that for basic things like directions & purchases Common will do, languages should matter for important tasks not the trivia of getting around. (Though if that floats your group’s boat go for it!)

Further to the obvious difference of language, there are also accents which are of course a source of amusement for all at the table. Giving different real world accents to your fantasy cultures gives players a different perspective on those cultures, and can be a nice short hand as well. The elves with Russian accents are clearly different from the ones with Irish accents for example. (In Soviet Elfland the trees herd you!)

Clothing & Culture

This one can be hard to get with DnD because it can needs rt reference to back it up and sometimes our ability to find enough art that is right is hard. Still it need not be impossible and real world clothing can provide plenty of inspiration.

Armor of Kikkawa Hiroie covered in black bear fur!

Differences can operate on four main levels; colour, material, style and accessories.  Colour preference can be things like a trend to greens or blues, or even bright vs somber choices. In history we’ve even seen cultures where the more elaborate clothing is largely covered by a more somber layer. We have even seen colours that were restricted to certain groups of people, such as purple being reserved for nobility. Colour is also fairly simple to describe, and thus use in a game; everyone is dressed in worn greens except for the 3 men who stand at the bar dressed in scarlet. It immediately tells the players something without requiring a lot of time and if the players care to learn the significance of the colours all the better.

Materials that clothing is made from are also relatively simple to manage, consider the meaning of metal in Dark Sun as an existent DnD example, but there are also historical things such as the wide use of leather in Europe but it was rarely used in Asian countries (especially post Buddhism) for clothing articles. Silk is a very different fabric from cotton; and what about fantasy materials like starlight and moonbeams? Again these things can be simple to describe when it matters, the gnome in a robe of silk and starlight is very different from the one in cotton shirt and leather breeches with gems braided into his hair.

Which leads back to accessories. Jewelry is a common thing to decorate with, but who wears what, where and how much varies from place to place. Then there are more subtle things like purses, belts, and trinkets (like Japanese netsuke). All of these things can be tinkered with, and describe easily enough, to add differences to a culture. Using a modern example while I was in Japan I would often see small trinkets attached to the mobile phones of younger people (mostly women, but some men), yet here at home I rarely see these things, especially on smart phones where there is no ready way to attach them (the Japanese tie them through various holes in cases, or have cases designed to have such adornments).

Finally the hardest thing to manage with differences in clothing is styles, which can be subtly different (for example knee socks are common on young women in Japan, not so much here in Australia), to radically different. Consider the differences between European historical fashion (eg 14th century) and Japan (eg the kimono) the differences are large and stark, but are not easy to describe in a fashion that is useful at the table, except with pictures of course. Ideally art for the games would help us here, but we are very much stuck with very uniform examples of clothing for adventurers; even armor is all from a homogenous culture. Sadly the only time we really see a difference in clothing is when a game company decides to make a product such as Oriental Adventures or Al-Qadim.

(Note 4E actually did a fairly good job with making each race have a different appearance, but this then didn’t mesh with the fact that many of the cultures were supposedly long dead, or were otherwise entirely glossed over.)

Culture and Food

Breakfast in Japan (sorry I ate a dish and it was yummy!)

Another area where culture plays a big part is food, different cultures value different things in food, and even eat different things based on availability and other things such as religious strictures. Again this is a hard thing to describe easily in games, still these days you can readily access foods from around the world in most first world countries. The hard part is knowing how that food is eaten in the culture it is from and why it is eaten that way and what any customs around its eating are, for example in Japan chopsticks should not be crossed, stuck in food, or used to point but slurping noodles is perfectly acceptable behaviour!

Culture and Buildings

The appearance of buildings is another obvious way to define the differences between cultures, but like some of the other things mentioned can be particularly difficult; and it is an area where fantasy art with its largely psudeo-European settings has created a homogenous culture. Fortunately the growth of fantasy RPGS in digital media, and fantasy movies is giving us a growing access to art that can be used to show players (and ourselves) to create the architecture of cultures and give places a sense of identity.

However in addition to how buildings are built, what they are built from and how they are shaped, how they are used can be important as well. Customs such as removing shoes or not, leaving weapons at the door, or at the gate with a “sword polisher” and similar things all relate to how buildings are used. Aside from things like this position of buildings, and things like market stalls can be very informative as well. Calling on my Japanese trip one last time, one of the things that struck me as unusual was the presence of a large number of semi-permenant street vendor stalls on temple grounds, having grown up with the Christian tradition of keeping the marketplace away from the temple this was probably the most unexpected thing I encountered in my trip. It is also an example of the sort of easy to describe thing that can be added to a game as the players move from culture to culture.

Tourist market in Kuranda Australia compared to a similar area in Asukusa Japan showing how different cultures and environments make a space look very different, despite similarities in us.

World Building

All of this is most appropriate to consider when world building of course, and fortunately some google-fu and time on wikis should give you more than enough material to easily add cultural flavor to parts of your world without taking a lot of time.

Continue reading »]]> I’ve been thinking a lot recently about system complexity and player agency during a game as I have struggled to find a game I think both my daughters and I can enjoy fully as a game as well as an experience together.

Player Agency

When people talk about pre-4E fighters one of the things that often comes up is the idea that your fighter could do anything that you wanted it to do; in short this is player agency. One of the things that 4E did was make many of these traditional parts of player agency concrete, and covered by explicit rules. There are advantages and disadvantages to doing this, and I’m not going to examine those right now. However for me, right now I need a system where player agency is very simple and has a clear access to the rules as well.

System Complexity

Everyone gets this one, sometimes we like system complexity, sometimes we think its bad and usually those decisions are based on how we feel the system is affecting our agency. The problem is that sometimes system complexity is overt, and other times it is subtle. DnD is a strange system because at its heart DnD is a system whose mechanics can be summed up; roll a d20 add bonuses and penalties then compare result to a target number. That’s a pretty simple system; yes there are a lot of bolt-ons to that system that increase the system’s complexity but that beating heart is pretty simple to understand. Unfortunately system complexity links into player agency; if a system is too complex it can  limit the ability of players to use the system effectively, and thus limit their agency.

Running Games

For DMs both complexity and agency are important, and they come up far more often than what they do for most players (in most RPGs). The DM is a player, and he or she needs to be able to access their agency to create a great story. The DM is also the person that runs into system complexity the most, because the DM is the person that has to adjudicate the rules of the game when they don’t work for the moment that is unfolding now at the table. Further the DM also runs into the rules the most before the game, most notably when the DM is designing the encounters (combat or otherwise).

Different games handle this in different ways, one of the things that 4E did very well for those who cared to look was exposed a lot of the working parts of the system. The way the core concepts of level advancement moved across the game make it very easy to use the system, and tinker with it, and even better it means that once you understand it you know how it works and can trust it to work. In addition to this the 4E system is incredibly easy for a DM, and like most people with a full-time job and a family my time is precious, and I don’t want to spend a lot of time planing around the system, I want it to work for me.

Choices

Recently I’ve been looking at Dragon Age, and I’ll be honest from a player’s perspective Dragon Age has everything I want from a game right at this point in time. Its pretty simple, there is a wide range of choices that can be used to do a lot. That would be great for my kids. Unfortunately Dragon Age in its raw form is set up to tell a particular style of story, and while I enjoy the stories that Dragon Age is aimed at, they are not the sorts of stories I want to tell with my girls. Further with Dragon Age, were I to use it, I would need to depend on pre-written modules, and that limits the sorts of stories that I have available to me.

Why would I need to use pre-written modules? Because there is no effective way of gauging the difficulty of a combat encounter. Yes I like the rules for awarding experience in the game; judge the encounter based on how hard it turned out to be for the PCs, but that doesn’t help me plan the encounters in the first place. The frustrating thing is that the authors of Dragon Age spend time in set two discussing exactly how a DM can figure out the difficulty of an encounter so they know how to do it, they just haven’t done it for us. Now admittedly Dragon Age says right up front that it doesn’t intend to be a balanced system, but removing the ability to make reasonable predictions about the system from the DM is simply making the DM’s job harder. This is a common flaw in RPGs. Being a DM takes a lot of time and effort and good game design means taking some of that effort out of the game for a DM, and incorporating some sort of predictive system of monster effectiveness is a good way of doing that.

DnDNext

One of the critical elements for DnDNext for me will be the ease of DMing. How easy will it be to work out the approximate difficulty of an encounter. 4E has its table that gives the XP budgets for encounters, and I will say better advice on using that might have helped, but still the table works. Start with a level equivalent xp budget and spend and you will get a pretty good standard of encounter mostly. Of course Dragon Age does something great here as well, it says it doesn’t matter so much what you intended the encounter to be like, it matters more how the encounter ends up being.

In DnDnext I would like to see both those ideas; the 4E balanced and fine tuned system that allows the DM to make good general predictions about encounter difficulty and the Dragon Age outcome based rewards. These two systems can exist together, and they offer the best of both worlds. In particular combining the systems creates a situation where a DM has an easy time both creating the encounters for themselves before the game and adjudicating them after the game. The true strength of this is that it creates more agency for the DM in the game.

Still Haven’t Chosen

In my quest to find a system that works for my kids I still haven’t settled on a game they can achieve full agency through, and I will be happy playing. We are at vastly different points in our lives as gamers and so it’s not an easy thing. Right now I’m considering a 4E based system drawing from ideas I’ve been reading in Marvel Heroic Roleplay, Dragon Age, and of course 4E. 4E makes the DM side so easy its hard to pass on, so I just need to make the player side as easy to access and I’ll be golden. Perhaps this is why I’m still waiting, I’m waiting for the DnDNext public play test to see if it will meet my needs.

Continue reading »]]> Lady Kristryl is the second child of the Brightsilver family, and in her parents view a feckless and fey youth given to wandering aimlessly. She is undeniably a beautiful dwarven lass, a rare treasure in that regard, but at the same time she has been marked by Kord and is infused with sorcerous powers, especially magic that creates thunder. Due to this few in the clanholds can stand to stare into her eyes, which dance with lightning,  and so she remains unmarried.

Kristryl is a beautiful dwarven lass, with clear skin, fine (by dwarven standards) features, lustrous brown hair and strikingly blue eyes. Her hair is braided in the Brightsilver style, but unlike the usual silver rings that adorn members of the clanhold’s hair, her hair is held with rings of white oak. (It was found when she was a child that putting metal in her hair was particularly disastrous.) Kristryl dresses in fine clothing, often in rich blues with gold details, though she is wearing sturdy boots for travelling, she also has less practical shoes for when she is not “on the road”.

The one thing that makes Kristryl stand out from other dwarves (usually at least) is her constant companion Sharp. He is a magpie, about half the size of a common raven he flies around her, flitting from one perch to another, or landing on the ground and strutting about. He is quite the cocky bird, and often warbles and clacks his beak until Kristryl either feeds him or sings a snippet of song. Perhaps the bird would have been driven off some time ago, but he is terribly protective of Kristryl, treating her like another bird and will swoop at the face of those who threaten her regardless of their size or ferocity (if anything the more ferocious the more likely to be swooped).

While Kristryl is unusually bright and happy for a dwarf, with a ready smile and rare frowns, she is still a determined young lady. Others see her as frivolous and whimsical, especially with the comic sight of Sharp strutting around her warbling for treats of jerky or fresh meat, but Kristryl still has that dwarven grit and stubbornness, and when she is angry she is every bit the typical dwarf.

Notes:

• Training in Bluff is representative of her ability to spin a tale, sing, and play instruments more than it is outright deception, though she is familiar with deception as well.
• Her Hawk companion has been refluffed as an Australian Magpie, a songbird that reaches a foot or more in length (30-37cm) and that is well-known for attacking humans (during nesting season). They are also clever and omnivorous, and though in the real world they don’t domesticate “its magic”.
• Future Feats: Superior Implement Proficiency: Accurate Dagger (instead of Expertise as there is no expertise for daggers as implements) & Unarmoured Defence
• Due to very low defenses this character really wants to stay out of melee.
• Mark of Storm requires you hit with a power, this means you can hit with Static Charge and slide enemies adjacent to each other to trigger the bonus Charisma damage.

Character Summary

Kristryl Brightsilver
Race: Shield Dwarf (Light Shield Proficiency)
Class: Sorcerer (Air Elementalist) Level: 1
Background: Parentage – Noble (+2 to Diplomacy)
Theme: Animal Master (Hawk)
Alignment: Good

STR 10 +0 CON 16 +3
DEX 11+0 INT 10 +0
WIS 10 +0 CHA 18 +4

Defences: AC: 14 Fort: 13 Ref: 11 Will: 16
Health: HP: 28 Surges: 9 Surge Value: 7
Initiative: +0
Senses: Low-Light Vision, Passive Insight: 15 Passive Perception 10

Skills
Trained: Arcana +5, Athletics +5, Bluff +9, Insight +5

Untrained: Acrobatics +0, Diplomacy +6, Dungeoneering +2, Endurance +5, Heal +0, History +0, Intimidate +4, Nature +0, Perception +0, Religion +0, Stealth +2, Streetwise +4, Thievery +2

Attack Powers
Energy Bolt
Static Charge
Elemental Escalation
Distracting Attack (Animal Master)

Utility Powers
Dwarven Resilience (Racial)

Feats
Mark of Storm

Gear
Adventurer’s Kit (backpack, a bedroll, flint and steel, a belt pouch, two sunrods, ten days’ worth of trail rations, 50 feet of hempen rope, and a waterskin), Flute, Fine Clothing, Lantern, Oil (10 pints), Light Shield, Dagger

Continue reading »]]>

Battle at the Cliff by Rodolfo Guerreiro

Continuing with my discussion of art in DnD, this week I am taking a look at art for monsters and not just any old enemies but rather the sorts of epic threats that have been handled so poorly by DnD in the past (4E included).

Epic Threats

Epic threats need to be just that, epic. They need to be things that are so huge in scope that only true heroes or gods could hope to stop them from wrecking havoc on the world or universe or whatever. This is an area where 4E performed badly, epic threats were just more monsters like the ones in the prior levels, and epic threats need to be more than that and in order for DMs (and designers) to be inspired to create truly epic threats we need to see art that shows such threats.

A good example of where 4E failed in this is Allabar. Allabar is an enemy the size of a planet and the picture shows this enemy, but that is all it shows, nothing is there to really give a sense of the scope of the threat posed by the enemy; how much more inspiring would a picture of it breaching the atmosphere of a world with dragons and such fleeing in terror before its approach would it have been?

Epic Story

Before I show some pieces of art another thing about Epic threats is that they don’t just inspire an encounter; that is really the role of “normal” monsters (regardless of level), epic threats should inspire campaigns. They can build in the background growing closer to the PCs as they work to deal with other matters that are more urgent (and gain levels), maybe they are encountered and the PCs need to flee and so on. So in addition to art epic threats need more story to inspire their use, more than a normal monster. These are not enemies that you should just “run into” as you wander the lands, these are enemies you plan to face and seek out because only you can stop them!

God of the Forest by Noah_kh

 Size Matters

One of the things that sets epic threats apart from mundane threats is how big they can be, in the real world the greatest dangers might well be small even microscopic (or mere nanometers in size), but these are not great threats for a heroic campaign like DnD. So this is a case were bigger is better; even if it is not the ultimate evil of the campaign the gargantuan foe can shake the earth and trample cities to rubble so they offer a danger that is suitable for such powerful characters to triumph over.

Artist’s Gallery

Sikelgaita Battle by Alayna

Army of Me

Epic characters need not just fight a goblin or an orc, they can fight whole armies of them. Perhaps they do it alone, perhaps they have their own army at their beck and call, regardless an epic battle between the forces of the PCs and their foes is far more exciting than simply killing foes 1 room at a time.

Artist’s Gallery

Search for the Gods by Alayna

Gods, Demons and Devils

Sure at lower levels you might fight agents of the great powers of the cosmos, but by the time you are epic level you are a power that these beings are starting to notice, and they will quite possibly be your personal foes.

The artist’s comments on this picture on DeviantArt are particularly apt as well. “One day, the gods stopped answering the kingdom’s prayers, and the people were terrified they had angered the deities in some way.

They sent their most decorated warrior to go to the Citadel of the Gods, and after many moons he arrived. He found nothing but rubble, and something else…”

An epic campaign isn’t just about who the enemies are but what the consequences of the heroes failure to defeat them will be as well, and that description of this picture sums that up nicely.

Invasion by Kerembeyit

Mad Genius

Sometimes the bad guy is more mundane, but still appropriate for epic characters, especially when they create machines of war and destruction of suitable scale.

This picture is a good example of the sort of art that can inspire a campaign that leads into the epic tiers of play. Clearly some sort of war is going on, and the PCs could start off dealing with more routine elements of the war, reconnaissance and so on, only to finally come face to face with the colossal war machines of the enemy and be able to take them on and defeat them while riding fantastic mounts and so on.

Artist’s Gallery

Dragon Rider by M. Hugo

Dragon Allies

Well it need not be dragons, but by the time the characters hit epic levels of play they probably shouldn’t be riding around on normal horses so much. Epic play calls for appropriate companions, and really riding around on a dragon because you are individually powerful enough that the dragon is willing to let you is pretty epic.

Arist’s Gallery

Final Words

The astute will have noticed that some of these ideas can be used at different levels than 4E’s pre-defined Epic Tier, still using them changes the feel of the game and gives it a grander scope than is normal for DnD. In 4E, and even the prior editions this sort of art, art that inspires the epic scope possible with heroic fantasy has been limited. If DnDNext is going to support the idea of high level (or really high level) play then the art needs to embrace these ideas as well in places.

More Art

And here is some more art, just because its cool and appropriately epic.

Earth Colossus by Chase	Fire Colossus by cyl1981	Air Colossus by Steve Goad
Surtur by Sam Burley (also has awesome landscapes)	Good Colossus by Marta Nael	Touch of Death by TheRafa

Continue reading »]]>

Medusa with her dice

Save or have no fun?

The classic argument against save or die is that save or die effects are not fun. You either live another round or you are dead and out of the fun. The issue with this argument is that it hinges on the principle that your character dying isn’t fun. It doesn’t propose it is less fun, it proposes it is no fun. If character death isn’t fun, then no character death is fun. The problem with that is if there is no character death how can the characters be in danger and make the game more fine?

Having risk to your character adds tension, and thus investment, and thus fun, to the game. Further the effects of PC death and fun are not a matter of rules. Rules can facilitate fun at different levels, but the fun of RPGs is sharing the experience with other people; your friends at the table. If your character dies and you stop having fun I suggest that the issue isn’t your character’s death. Yes you have less fun when you character dies, but no fun?

Save for Tension

Another concern about save or die is that it lacks tension, one minute you are alive the next you fail a roll and your dead. This is again a false argument and ignores all the means of building tension around a save or die effect. Medusa’s ability to turn you to stone instantly with her gaze isn’t tense because its instant, its tense because you know its coming when you start seeing the statues. It’s tense because you need to do battle with her without meeting her gaze.

What isn’t tense is meeting her gaze and then being more likely to survive it than suffer its effects. This is the problem with 4E’s 3 save method, yes you might fail 3 saves in a row, but that’s a 9.1% chance. The only roll that is tense is the third roll and it is a simple save or die effect at that point, but even that third roll is more likely to succeed than fail. This means that significant tension is lost from 4E around character death, and thus danger.

Paul talks more about this in his ideas below, however I think Mike Mearls’ idea has merit for tension building, as your hit points decrease the likelihood of save or die goes up, can you kill the critter before you need to save? What precautions can you take to prevent the save or die effect if your HP are getting low?

DMs’ Save

It is worth noting that save or die as a way to simply kill characters is terrible. Save or die should be carefully controlled by the DM in the context of the game’s story. A good DM makes save or die fun, because it becomes tense and exciting, and it might well let character’s shine for their preparedness. A good DM uses save or die to build the game world’s story. This means that if WotC includes Save or Die in DnDNext they need to give DM’s advice on how to use it well, so that it doesn’t just fall into that worse case scenario of surprise you are dead, too bad.

Save or Die Mechanics (by @paulbaalham)

A very quick not-thought-out set of options for Save or Die that I wrote while on a coach for a couple of hours (most of which I’m sure have been put forward by others):

The first two are obvious and were put forward in Mike Mearls’ column:

1) Save or die as it existed in the game pre-4E

2) The save or die attack can only be activated when the target has taken X amount of damage or is down to X amount of HP.

The next ones try to emulate the growing threat of the Save or Die attack, so that isn’t a gotcha, but increases the tension as the fight progresses.

3) The save or die attack has a very low chance to hit (say a +1 or 2 if a “normal” attack has a +7). Then every time the save or die attack doesn’t succeed, it gains a +1 bonus to hit, making it more likely to hit next round.

4) The save or die attack does a normal attack as well as the save or die effect. Upon a successful attack, the attacker also rolls another die (for example a d8) and they need to roll the maximum number on the die to trigger the save or die effect. The number needed to achieve the Save or Die effect is lowered as the target takes more damage.

These all separate the save or die attacks into Mild, Harsh and Severe categories and have different levels of defense for the target.

5) On the character sheet/monster stat block the creature has number for each of the 3 categories; mild, harsh and severe. The target is only vulnerable to a save or die effect when they are down to that many HP (or have taken that much damage). This creates a general rule similar to triggering effects off the Bloodied condition in 4E.  Instead of Mild, Harsh and Severe, you might have the categories as source of attacks (fear, physical, etc.).

6) Similar to 5,  but instead of a number of hit points each creature has a target number on their character sheet/monster stat block for mild, harsh and severe save or die effects. The save or die attack has a die associated with it that the attacker rolls and they must get the target number for the save or die effect to work. So if a Fighter had a target number of 8 for mild Save or Dies and the attacker was rolling a d6, then it would be impossible for them to get the effect. However, as the encounter continues or the attacker makes more attacks or the defender takes more damage, the die used for the save or die effect increases or the number of them do, leading to growing tension as the attacker gets closer to being able to achieve the save or die effect.

7) As above, but instead of an additional die that the attacker needs to roll to achieve the save or die effect, the attacker merely needs to roll X amount over the attack on their initial attack. So for example, The attacker has +7 to their attack roll, and the target has a 15 defense and a 6 in mild save or die defense. The attacker rolls a 12 so his attack is 19 which beats the target’s defense, but isn’t enough to beat the mild save or die effect defense (15+6=21).

Continue reading »]]> Last week when I posted about art that I liked Rich Green asked about landscapes and it is a fair question that deserves a longer response. In visual media such as computer games and movies the environment is a critical element. For fantasy computer games and movies the environment needs to be designed from the ground up, production companies spend a lot of resources just having people create pictures that will be used to guide the production of levels or sets. Yet where is this background, this setting material in DnD?

Well 4E does have some good pieces of landscape art floating around, but mostly the art is dominated by characters, these days often small portrait pieces that are more at home on a CCG character card, or if present the environment is often obscured by all the exciting things happening in it. Sometimes we just need to see pictures of places. Those places might be given names (I like the labelling of pictures that started in the Essentials product line) or they might not. They don’t need to have action scenes, they can have scenes that tell the story of the setting when the adventure isn’t happening.

So here follows some pictures culled from DeviantArt that show the sorts of things I mean, with some comments on why I like these particular pieces.

CX Landscape by Chrisalienart22

Architecture is Culture

One of the reasons that showing settlements in environments is important is because the materials and shapes of the buildings tell us things about the culture of the people and even the environment at large.

Favourite Element: The small magical lights that line the path. They speak of a place where magic like a continual light spell is readily available, even if the grand magics for construction are rarer.

Artist’s Gallery

Gaia Mountains by dingding3

Ruins For Exploring

While settlements tell us about the living culture of a place, ruins tell us about the cultures that have gone before. Graceful towers and arches speak of different things than hard walls and battlements for example.  Further when talking about DnDNext one of the three pillars is “Exploration” and so having art that inspires people to say “I want to find out about that place” is important.

Favourite Element: The little details like the statue in the foreground, or the bell cupola in the background, and the way some of the buildings are apparently carved out of the mountain.

Artist’s Gallery (Note it is very sparse.)

Floating Rocks by Marta Nael

Fantastic Locations

Landscapes should provide inspiration for amazing places for adventures to happen. From scenes like the earthmotes with bridges and towers on them like the one here, to more fantastic locations. Consider the Elemental Chaos in 4E, is it easier to understand it by reading a bunch of descriptions or seeing pictures? Of all the places in 4E DnD that deserved to have landscapes that featured the terrain primarily that would be my immediate pick. In fact any location that is outside routine experience (and by routine I mean real world during  human history) deserves more art about the place than about the creatures or adventurers in it. The Shadowfell and Feywild are easier places to imagine with some inspiring pictures to accompany that wall of text for example.

Fantastic locations are where that old saw of “a picture is worth a thousand words” is most applicable for DnD. Taking players out of the ordinary and into the fantastic is done in a glance with a picture, and last longer in memory.

Favourite Element: For this picture it is 2 things, the towers and the birds in the background. This isn’t a place that is easily gotten to, and yet someone has built several towers there! This immediately provokes questions about who lives in them and why?

Artist’s Gallery. (I’d love to see some of Marta’s art in general in DnD, she has an interesting style.)

Fire-lit Thicket by Ralph Horsley

Lairs

While architecture is culture sometimes we need to see where things that don’t go in for much architecture live, and what their homes tell us about them. From hollow trees in swamps, to volcanic tunnels with obsidian walls and magma streams in the floor these places are part of the world and home to enemies the PCs might have to deal with (one way or another). Do they put out warning signs or is the only warning the uneaten bones of prior meals?

Favourite Element: The warm light of the fire from within the tree, and the goblin thing proudly holding up the catch of the day.

Artist’s Gallery (So much 4E art!)

Landscape Practice by hughebdy

Places to Visit

Aside from ruins, fantastic locations and lairs PCs need places to visit that are not dangerous. While some art should highlight architecture some art can just tell us things about the world and what it looks like.

Favourite Elements: The river that starts up in the mountain and winds down through the picture and the dragon mount (fantasy) juxtaposed against the mundane labourer with the cart.

Artist’s Gallery (a bit thin atm)

Other Inspiring Landscape Art

The following are pictures that hit one or more of the points above that I wanted to share.

Spire Fields by Jemovah-Art Artist’s Gallery	Castle & City Wall Village by Marta Nael	Fantasy Landscape by SkarValidus Artist’s Gallery
Snow by Marta Nael	Fantasy Matte Painting by Marta Nael	Landscape by Alayna Artist’s Gallery
Landscape by Grosnez Artist’s Gallery	Lost Among the Ruins by Marta Nael	Ghost Quarter by One Vox Artist’s Gallery

Continue reading »]]> View more art by Symatt here

by @symatt

Background

Caraluk, Strider of the Planes was a powerful Primordial before the Dawn War, so powerful was she, that the Gods were unable to kill her outright. Instead they used a ritual to split the source of her power into three segments. The Gods tied each segment to a different plane. Since the Dawn War she has wandered the planes trying to merge the source of her power back together so she can exact revenge on the Gods that humiliated her.

Caraluk has discovered the power of a young girl whose innate magical ability causes her dreams to manifest as reality. As Caraluk draws power from whatever plane she is in, she has devised a plan to trap the girl in sleep and force her to dream of the Mortal World, Feywild and the Shadowfell merging as one, thereby increasing her power. This merging of planes has caused localised dimensional instability.

Finding a teleportation circle, the players teleport in. Due to the localised dimensional instability [See Featues of Area section] they do not appear within the teleportation circle.

When the PCs first enter the area read:
As you emerge from the teleport you see your friends are not next to you as they should be. This could only happen if the area is filled with Dimensional Turbulence.

A young girl is curled up in slumber beneath the shade of a large tree in the centre of the clearing. A patch of lush grass, edged with wild flowers (Area A), a shallow pond (Area B), an old statue and the crumbling walls of an old building can also be seen.

The shadows beneath the tree draw together to form a huge humanoid figure made of coloured shadows. Little about it seems solid, although claws as long as a man’s thigh bone are clearly visible within its shadowy form. This is Caraluk.

She gestures towards the girl and 4 nightmarish hounds appear before you.

Before you have a chance to act, the girl convulses; and energy ribbons cut the area into four sections. The four sections rapidly shift between the Mortal World, the Feywild and the Shadowfell. Section 1 settles in the Shadowfell, Section 2 and 4 in the Mortal World and Section 3 in the Feywild.

The energy left over from the merging of the planes is manifesting itself as smaller versions of Caraluk. Three of them have appeared; one as vibrant as the Feywild [place a Feywild Planespawn in section 3], one as gloom laden as the Shadowfell [place a Shadowfell Planespawn in Section 1] and one that is somewhere in between [place a Mortal World Planespawn in Section 2 or 4].

Allow the PCs to make an Arcana or Nature check:
DC 19: Caraluk is magically causing the girl to sleep. She seems to be controlling her dreams.
DC 23: The more Planespawns that have been created, the closer the planes are to complete merging.
DC 27: The closer the planes are to merging the more powerful Caraluk becomes.

Features of Area

Illumination: The area is brightly lit in all planes.
Energy Ribbons: These ribbons of translucent energy briefly disorient characters as they pass through them and are therefore counted as difficult terrain. These squares do not count as any plane for the sake of game mechanics.
Dimensional Turbulence: Due to being in an area where three planes are merging, the entire encounter area is considered Dimensional Turbulence (DMG2 pg. 59). The area outside that shown on the map is free of Dimensional Turbulence.

Running the Encounter

The encounter area is in constant flux, with different sections in different planes at once. At the start of each round, roll a d10 for each of the four sections of the encounter area and consult the plane shifting table below determine which plane each section shifts to. Each section has a special feature whose effects are determined by what plane the section is in. These effects are listed in the tables below. Players can make an Easy Arcana/Nature check to identify these effects.

At the start of each round roll a d20 and consult the Planespawn generation table below. If a Planespawn has been created, the planes have moved one step closer to completely merging.

If a total of 10 Planespawn are created (including the 3 that are present to begin with), then the planes have completely merged.

The Planespawn will attack the PCs ruthlessly if they are in their own plane. As soon as they are in a section that is in a plane other than that of their origin (including energy ribbon squares), they will move to a section of their plane of origin as quickly as possible. If no section is in their plane, then they will move as far away from the PCs as possible.

The difference in the Planespawn in different planes should be played up so that the players realise that the Planespawn are vulnerable outside of their own plane. They visibly shrink in planes other than that of their origin and their movement is more sluggish.

The Nightmare Hounds are the result of Caraluk manipulating the girl’s dreams to produce her worst nightmare. The Nightmare Hounds attack the player’s Will with their ghoulish attacks and try to defend Caraluk from harm, by pushing back PCs who attack her.

Caraluk must stay within 20 squares of the girl otherwise she is out of the range of her Sleep spell.

Caraluk draws her power from whichever plane she is in and therefore has an encounter power that will only work while she is in a specific plane. As the planes get closer to being completely merged, the Caraluk’s basic attacks become more powerful and she will fight harder. She will fight to the death while the planes are merging but if the planes stop merging she will attempt to flee.

The girl will only wake up if Caraluk dies or she is more than 20 squares away from her and is therefore out of range of her Sleep spell. If she wakes up, the encounter area is completely returned to the Mortal World. The Nightmare Hounds and the Planespawn immediately disappear.

Ending the Encounter: The encounter is over when the girl wakes up or is killed.

Tables

.

Map

The map of the encounter area

A: Grass
B: Pond
C: Caraluk Starting position
T: Child asleep at the foot of a tree
Start Area: Where the PCs shouldteleport to, until the teleportation disturbance kicks in

Monsters

The girl is statted for completeness.