Humpday Blog-O-Rama 6.12.19

Blogs are an integral, vital part of the RPG hobby. They serve as incubators for new games, sounding boards for fresh ideas, and platforms for up-and-coming talent. They keep "forgotten" games alive, foster discussions, and build communities.

Every Wednesday on the Thought Eater podcast and blog, I take a look at what is going on in the vibrant RPG blog scene. Check out previous Humpday Blog-O-Rama posts HERE.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS WEEK'S SHOW!!!

MAPS

https://cubeofquazar.blogspot.com/2019/06/planet-eris-gazetteer-world-map.html
http://files.meetup.com/286932/Planet-Eris-House-Rules-Revised.pdf

https://www.wistedt.net/2019/06/09/murder-house-fantasy-horror-dungeon-map/

https://rthorm.wordpress.com/2019/06/02/planetary-logbook-moon/

BUY IT HERE!!!

REVIEWS

http://terriblesorcery.blogspot.com/2019/06/review-stygian-library.html

https://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2019/06/review-forgotten-grottoes-of-sea-lords.html

https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=6032



RETROSPECTIVES

https://dmdavid.com/tag/dead-gods-1997-greatest-dd-adventures-since-1985-number-5/

https://dmdavid.com/tag/curse-of-strahd-2016-greatest-dd-adventures-since-1985-number-4/

https://dmdavid.com/tag/lost-mine-of-phandelver-2014-greatest-dd-adventures-since-1985-number-3/

https://rollingboxcars.com/2019/06/06/late-night-t-v-inspiration-fantastic-planet/

https://www.blackgate.com/2019/06/11/the-golden-age-of-science-fiction-heavy-metal/

http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2019/06/so-close-and-yet-so-far-strange-story.html

https://thoulsparadise.blogspot.com/2012/06/interview-with-mark-acres.html

https://thewanderingalchemist.com/2019/06/05/year-of-4e-rituals/



RANDOM TABLES

http://unlawfulgames.blogspot.com/2019/06/d100-bottled-things.html

http://skullboyrollsthedice.blogspot.com/2019/06/downtime-thieving.html

http://elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2019/06/gamma-age-urban-location-key.html

https://sheepandsorcery.blogspot.com/2019/06/there-is-no-xp-take-monster-drugs.html



CON SEASON

https://www.frugalgm.com/2019/06/north-texas-rpg-con-day-0-report.html
https://www.frugalgm.com/2019/06/north-texas-rpg-con-day-1-report.html
https://www.frugalgm.com/2019/06/north-texas-rpg-con-day-2-report.html
https://www.frugalgm.com/2019/06/north-texas-rpg-con-day-3-report.html
https://www.frugalgm.com/2019/06/north-texas-rpg-con-day-3-report_10.html

https://oldscouserroleplaying.com/2019/06/08/uk-games-expo-2019/



HACKS AND FREEBIES

http://www.goatmansgoblet.com/2019/06/homerules-document-knaves-guide-to.html

https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2019/06/investigations-in-dcc.html

http://3toadstools.blogspot.com/2019/06/weird-wayfaring-crowd-sourced-hexcrawl.html

https://lizardmandiaries.blogspot.com/2019/06/ashen-tumble-and-pit-house-1-page.html

http://natetreme.com/blog/2019/6/5/wander-a-business-card-rpg

http://dragons.ie/rewriting-the-b-x-spell-lists-1st-level/



MISCELLANY

http://wanderinggamist.blogspot.com/2019/06/dungeon-ness.html

http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2019/06/9th-anniversary-request-math-man-steven.html

http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/2019/06/japanese-song-of-ice-and-fire.html



PREP

http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2019/06/prep-time-poll-results.html

https://frothsofdnd.blogspot.com/2015/08/prep-is-for-ninnies-froths-sandbox.html


If you enjoy my free zine, podcast, and/or blog, please consider supporting my work for only $1 per month. 

Dungeons and Cthulhu

Though Dungeons and Dragons will always be my first love, a close second is Chaosium's classic horror RPG, Call of Cthulhu. Although these games are distinct and have many differences, there are still some ideas from CoC that you can port right over to your D&D game. Lets take a look at some ideas.

CoC-ESQUE CLUES IN SANDBOX PLAY

One of my favorite adventures of all time is Masks of Nyarlathotep. I cannot say too much about it because I will be running it soon for my home group. The reason I bring it up is that it is in a "sandbox" style; players can follow clues literally to all corners of the world, and it doesn't matter in which order they pursue them. Some are related, some aren't. Each chapter presents a little table of the clues in that chapter, and where they lead. That is the part I want to focus on.

Some DMs aren't ready to run a true "do what thou wilt" sandbox, or they simply don't want to do that in the first place. A DM sometimes makes a "pseudo-sandbox", where they have prepared several scenarios or adventures, and the players basically choose which one they pursue. It feels like a sandbox to the players, but it is actually under DM control. Other times, the DM has a specific adventure or scenario he/she wants the players to play, and all roads point there.

Whichever your style, consider using a "clue drop" to give your players options. In Masks of Nyarlathotep, investigators might discover 4 or 5 seemingly unrelated clues at once. They then have the freedom which to follow now and which to follow later. There are innumerable ways to do this. Maybe they find several disparate leads in the pockets of an assassinated lord. Maybe they return to collect a fee for a deed, and the benefactor's house is burned to the ground, with just a few smoldering clues. Clues could lead them to the ends of your "earth", to remote libraries, shady traders in dangerous port cities, or to dangerous ritual magic. Think of a few locales and scenarios that you think will be fun for both you and your players, and then drop a few clues leading there. Those apparently unrelated clues could eventually fit together into a complex plot line.


INSANITY

Ah, insanity. Perhaps the most ground-breaking mechanic of CoC. For the uninitiated, Cthulhu investigators slowly (and sometimes rapidly) go insane. It is really just a matter of time, as the more crazy stuff they discover, the more sanity they lose. Fun stuff. The Ravenloft campaign setting of 2e "stole" this a little bit, and added its own twist to it. I am suggesting using a totally simplified version.

Basically, if a PC encounters something truly weird, alien, and horrifying, you might check their sanity. In D&D terms, seeing creatures from the Far Realm or the Abyss might qualify for sanity checks. Have a PC roll a saving throw. On a failure, the PC might suffer some slight effect...at first. They might automatically miss their next attack roll, be stunned temporarily or immobilized, be forced to run a few feet in terror, etc. PCs will only have to make a check once per creature or group of creatures. If they fail numerous sanity rolls over a short period of time (multiple encounters), they might have a more permanent insanity or disorder. You can get funny or stark with this depending in the tone of your campaign. They could maybe develop something as silly as a fear of dwarves, or something as depraved as fecalphilia.

ATTRACTING THE ATTENTION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT

In CoC, the investigators might be armed to the teeth, but treating 1920's New England like the wild west is going to quickly draw the attention of local police. Consider making certain towns and cities in your milieu to be very anti-weapon/violence. Maybe PCs cannot even wear armor. This immediately adds an interesting pressure to the PCs; maybe they have no problem tracking down a villain, but with the risk of attracting 100 soldiers or constables, they have to get creative with how to take the villain down. Not every town appreciates having the hell blown out of it by adventurers.

DARK RITUALS

In CoC, using spells and magic gradually drains an investigator's sanity. It also costs "magic points", which are derived from an investigator's "power" or force of will. To keep this simple in D&D without requiring a lot of mechanics, consider dropping a few powerful ritual scrolls in a treasure parcel. While the power might be tantalizing, what the players do not realize is that the power comes with a price. Casting the spell might prompt a sanity save, and failure could cause temporary insanity, possession or whatever else you can think of.

UNKILLABLE FOES

One of the first things you learn playing CoC is that you stand no chance in hell of taking on a Great Old One with your little pea-shooters. It is best to run as fast as you can, but if you have already seen the entity, it may already be too late. I have talked before about players' sense of invulnerability, primarily in later editions of D&D. Fleeing an encounter is a completely foreign concept for many D&D adventuring groups. On rare occasions, consider presenting the PCs with a truly unkillable foe. This helps them keep perspective about their place in your multiverse.








OTHER IDEAS

Other ideas you can port into your D&D game from CoC include conspiratorial adventures, encouraging research (libraries, government records), and perhaps even designing your own Cthulhu-related themes (Professor, Antiquarian, Private Investigator).

CONCLUSION AND UPDATES

I hope you got a few ideas from this article. Those of you still waiting on the conclusion of my stronghold rules, I have made progress but I am still not done perfecting the costs and construction formulas. I am, sad to say, not the fastest writer in the world. It will be done eventually. For those that have followed me in anticipation of my 4e fanzine, I swear I am getting close. I am waiting on some material from others, maps, illustrations and the like, and as they are being provided free, as favors, I am just letting everyone take their time. It has blossomed to over 150 pages, and it will be worth the wait in my estimation.

At any rate, I hope everyone has a good weekend. If you have any ideas on how to bring some CoC goodness into D&D, please leave a post!

Wednesday Grab Bag: Monster Tips and Random Thoughts

Howdy all. I have been busy busy busy lately, but thought I would post a few of my recent ponderings. Rather than stretch these out into separate blog posts, I figured I would just mix it all together in a bucket.

Simpler Monsters = More Flavorful Monsters

I have posted a bunch of monster tips over time, but thought I would emphasize something that I have mentioned before but never really focused like a laser on. In 4e, it is very easy to overdo monsters. I think part of this is bc it is so easy to design 4e monsters. I remember the first game of 4e I ran. I was starting a new campaign, and I came up with this location-based adventure set at these mines. Anyway, the first bad guy that the players ran into was "Scalpel Jim", along with his entourage. Jim used-you guessed it-a scalpel as his weapon. I had built him out with four or five different scalpel powers, some encounters, some rechargeable, I spent some time on it, and ended up with what I thought would be a very memorable villain. Anyhoo, prior to the encounter, Scalpel Jim made a two-fingered gesture at the party's female Monk. The Monk promptly won initiative and walked over and critted Jim with "Open the Gates of Battle", killing him before he ever even acted.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Two actually. Don't cross bad ass Monk chicks, and do not over-design 4e monsters. Ask yourself what the essence of a monster is, and design accordingly. The more powers and doo-hickeys you add to a monster, the more diluted the flavor. You want monsters to be memorable. You want their flavor to come through in obvious, unmistakable fashion when PCs encounter them. Ask yourself what the monster does, then have it do that and nothing else. You might not have time to do much, so make it count.

Learning from Lareth the Beautiful

As you might be aware, I am running the Temple of Elemental Evil using the 81' B/X rules. It is going swimmingly. One thing that I must admit I like quite a bit about old editions that is missing from the 4e game is that the PCs encounter spellcasters that use the same spell lists and character creation rules as PCs. Now don't get me wrong; in most cases I much prefer to just build every NPC off of a monster template. 4e character creation is just a little too complicated for building NPCs from actual character classes, especially since they are usually going to get killed pretty quickly. You will spend more time building it than it will ever see on the battlemat. But what if you want that classic edition feel, where evil spellcasters, such as the ToEE's Lareth the Beautiful, have a juicy list of spells? I also love having classic edition spellcaster adversaries cast some spells in advance, like Guards and Wards, or Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound, etc. This way the "table is set" prior to an encounter. How can we get this feel in 4e without wasting a ton of time working through a grueling character creation process?

Turns out it is pretty simple. Give the bad guys rituals! And let them cast rituals ahead of time. As a player, I have hardly ever seen this done in 4e. You might have to stop a bad guy from completing a ritual, but it is rare indeed to see a list of rituals on a monster stat block. So, the next time you have your 4e PCs encounter a "spellcaster" (Cleric, Mage, or otherwise), give the caster a list of rituals. See if it would be advantageous for them to have cast one or more of the rituals already. This will add a nice layer of unpredictability to the proceedings. It can also serve to make an encounter much more difficult, emphasize flavor, or simply just allow you to use a ritual in your game for once. A party can trigger an alarm from a warding ritual, encounter odd summoned creatures, be teleported away, heck who knows. You can also make up new rituals, or use an old spell as the basis for a new ritual. Like Lareth the Beautiful's "Continual Darkness" spell. Anyways, I hope that this doesn't read too "rambly" and makes sense. Use the 4e Ritual Index from the mags, and see if you can't get something resembling that old-school caster flavor going for some bad guys in your game.

4e is Ideal for One-Page Dungeons

I spoke before about making tweaks to 4e to help it work better with megadungeons. Yet, no matter what you do, 4e will still never be the best system for megadungeons (in my opinion). However, the more I think about it, 4e is perfect for one-page adventures.

Not familiar with the one-page dungeon phenomenon? Man, you are going to love me then. They have a yearly contest where people submit their one-page creations. The winners over the years can all be downloaded for free from this website. There is some really awesome stuff to be discovered there. At another site, someone has put up some templates that can be used for one-page dungeon creation. Just look at the column on the right for the free downloads.

Anyway, I find that you only need one or two encounters for a good one-night 4e adventure. Thus, you do not need a lot of space. I never much cared for long, drawn-out, over-described encounter scenarios for 4e. I don't need everything spelled out. With a one-page template, you can describe a locale, give it some flavor, then go. Instead of trying to fit a stat block on there, just reference the book a creature is found in, or keep stats on a separate page. I think you will agree that 4e is really suited to this format. It is no wonder that the Dungeon Delve book was (and still is) so popular. Although the outdated monsters need to be boosted, and I would probably drop the first or second encounter from many of the book's mini-adventures, it does show you that just a little 4e adventure design goes a long way (partly because 4e combat lasts a little longer than other editions). Anyway, I found it inspiring, and I will be calling for some one-page 4e dungeons/adventures once I start taking submissions for 4e Forever.


So that is it. Just some ideas that have been bouncing around. Sorry for the rambly feel! As always, I would love to hear comments/thoughts. See you next time!

Encouraging Ritual Use in 4e

Howdy. Readers of my blog might have noticed me bring up Rituals from time to time, usually to opine the lack of Ritual usage in the games I run. Now, I am definitely generalizing; I have seen them get used a bit here and there, but overall I feel they are an untapped resource in many 4e games. I think there are many reasons for this, and we will talk about some of them as we go. So, let's explore Rituals and different ways to encourage their use.

Why?
I guess the first question that should be answered is "Why?". Why bother in the first place? For some campaigns or gaming groups, it might not be something you even want to do. And that is completely fine. But if you do want to encourage Ritual use, pinpointing the "why" will help you answer the question "How?". My personal opinion varies depending on the game I am running. I might want to encourage their use in order to add flavor to a setting. Perhaps I want to add unpredictability to the game. Maybe I have an entire plot or setting that is dependant on their usage. Maybe I want to give players more options for out-of-combat play. Think about your own campaign, or the campaign you want to run, and think about why you might want Rituals to get more use.

How?
Ok, so lets look at how to encourage Ritual use. Probably the first thing that pops into the mind is to make them affordable and available. But this is a double edged sword. If you just give them away like candy, and there is no real cost involved, you still may end up finding they never get used. I have had this happen myself. I have given out Rituals and Ritual scrolls in treasure parcels, I have given out residuum and Ritual components alongside gold; in short, I have put them out there. They still didn't use them.

This brings up an interesting point: some players just don't care about them, and nothing you can do will make them use them. And that is fine; god knows we do not want to railroad someone into anything. That said, I think that some players will respond to these ideas, so it is at least worth a try if you want more Ritual use in your game.

So basically, making Rituals available and cheap is not enough to encourage their use. In fact, it could have an adverse effect. If they are too available, they might lose some of their uniqueness, or become hard to track or remember. You also could lose out on some good role play and adventuring if you make them too easy to use. You also could lose control of your game if they are just unlimited with no restrictions. You might want that, you might not, but we should at least know how to maintain control if need be. So lets hold that thought and go back to the drawing board.

                                                  Checks and Balances

In order to encourage Ritual use while maintaining control of your game, you need to use checks and balances. We can look to the classics to get ideas on how to handle this. Take the Gygax masterpiece "Isle of the Ape". Many spells do not work on the island. In classic Gygaxian "dick mode", he suggests that you do not let your players know about this ahead of time, setting them up for some potentially hellish situations, such as having a spell fizzle just as a Gigantic Ape's foot is about to come down on your head. Settings such as Ravenloft provided laundry lists of spell changes; some didn't work at all, while others had different effects while in the Demiplanes of Dread. This is inspiring to me; in fact, in my own 4e campaign, I use this sort of idea as a plot hook: the party has several Rituals that used to work hundreds of years ago, but no longer do.

What this means is that you should think about your campaign setting and go ahead and define the limits of your PCs power. It is not railroading to say "If my players can just plane shift off of the island, the entire game crumbles, so screw that". See Gygax above. It isn't railroading to simply ensure there is an actual playable game. That said, you might want to play in a game world where PCs do nothing but plane jump. That actually sounds really cool. To each their own. The fact remains that it is a good idea to have an idea of any limits you need to place on PC power in order to maintain your setting's integrity. There are many extremely powerful Rituals. Which leads to the next point.

Acquiring Rituals
You need to make some decisions on Ritual availability. If Rituals can simply be bought and sold in "Magic Shoppes", you need to think about whether you want to impose limits. Maybe Rituals of certain levels are not sold, or maybe you provide players with a list of available Rituals. You will want to keep an eye on it, just so you know what you are dealing with.

If you do not allow magic items to typically be bought and sold, you need to find other ways to get them to players. This can be a fun, creative area. If the party ends up in a secret library, maybe they find a warding ritual; if they defeat a Lich, they might find some with Necromantic themes.You can suit the Ritual's flavor to the scenario. For example, in my 4e game the party was exploring a crypt. They found evidence of grim Rituals having been cast; there was a basin of blood and a pentagram drawn on the floor. They found a few flavorful Rituals in the chamber, such as Undead Servitor, that fit with the scenario. I think that this kind of synergy with the Rituals found and the circumstances in which they are uncovered helps encourage their use, simply by making them more interesting. I go into more detail on using Rituals as plot hooks later in this article.

Another way to control Ritual availability is to tend towards Ritual scrolls rather than Ritual books. This allows PCs that cannot otherwise cast Rituals to be able to use them, and you can be a bit looser with the balance if you know a Ritual can only be used once. This is especially true of some powerful healing Rituals. You do not want to lose the ability to challenge your players or to drain their resources. Otherwise the game becomes too easy, and nobody has fun.

To summarize, if you do not allow Rituals to be bought or sold, you always have control over what goes into your game. Otherwise, use a bit of caution, depending on what you want from your game. "But Froth, it sounds more like you are restricting Rituals than encouraging their use". Bear with me.

Ease of Use
One crucial aspect of encouraging Ritual use is to make them easy to use. I do not recommend taking away the casting time; that's one of the interesting pieces. Players absolutely should have to find a spot or moment that allows them the time and space to complete a Ritual. Still, there are some things you could do to make them easier to use. One thing is simple: write down the formula. Not every player has copies of the books, and not every player feels like getting on the Compendium between sessions to copy it down. If you maybe hand out a little Ritual card, it makes it cooler, and players will be more likely to retain the info, or remember they have the Ritual in the first place. As I mentioned above, giving out Ritual scrolls ensures that more than just the Ritual Casters can use them. Other alternatives include giving out the Ritual Caster feat for free if the party does not have a member that can use them; this feat makes for a flavorful reward. Or you could include one free use of a Ritual with the cost of purchase. This prevents it from feeling like you are getting "double dipped" (getting charged to buy the Ritual, AND to use it).

Presenting Rituals
There is a little overlap with some of these topics, but next I want to talk about how to present Rituals to your players. I think this influences how they will view them, and in turn can encourage or discourage their use. If you just say, "Here you find 300 sp and a Wizard's Curtain Ritual", you haven't really captured anyone's imagination. ALWAYS read a Ritual to a party when they find one. This is where you can go ahead and get their wheels turning, because they are not necessarily going to go home and read up on it themselves. Taking the time to write the Ritual down on a little card also adds a nice touch, and keeps it fresh in their minds. Finally, the context in which they acquire the Ritual is an important part of its presentation. I have covered some of that topic above, and it also leads to my next point.

Rituals as Plot Devices
One way to encourage or even guarantee Ritual usage is to include it in a plot hook or adventure. Many DMs can probably brainstorm a hundred ideas from this. An example might be something like the party needs to find the skull of a certain priest and perform a Last Sight Vision Ritual in order to get some crucial bit of information. Or the party and pretty much everyone else in the campaign world regularly use portal Rituals as means of transport. Or the only way to access some tiny room or area is through an animal host, so the party must all use Share Husk Rituals and be turned into mice!

You can literally just sit down and read through Ritual descriptions and come up with all kinds of cool ideas for your game. Sometimes when you just give out random Rituals, or let players choose their own on a shopping trip, you don't end up with much other than boring healing rituals, or Rituals that might never fit your storyline or world.

Alternative Ritual Components 
You might find it a little boring and stale to just use standard components for Rituals. By this I mean a player just trading in some gold somewhere for the components. Try developing a plot hook around acquiring odd Ritual components. Like for the example above, where the players need to find a certain priests skull to do the Last Sight Vision Ritual. Perhaps the components for that include hard-to-find items, such as the eyes of a newt. What this does is shift Rituals away from a standard money drainer, and adds a flourish of flavor. The currency for Ritual use becomes adventuring, rather than gp.

Final Thoughts
I hope this post is somewhat coherent and not too rambly. After you analyze it all, it's easy to see that the methods for encouraging Ritual use will vary between DMs and from campaign to campaign. It is hard to generalize about...but I will try to summarize.

After you decide how you want Rituals to fit into your world, you can facilitate their usage through their acquisition process, presentation, and the ease with which players can use them. Utilize plot hooks, props, flavorful descriptions, and alternative component costs as ways to encourage players to use Rituals. Resist just giving away the farm, because it not only doesn't work, it isn't flavorful and lacks creativity.

That said, I'd love to hear any thoughts and ideas from readers! Leave a post!