T is for Trap

 "Mad Gort ran through the dungeon, his steel boots causing a ruckus. The howling gibbering mouther that chased after him suddenly stopped, turning down a different corridor with a hurried cadence. Mad Gort chuckled to himself, stupid aberration. As he started back his face smashed against something invisible and he fell on his butt. What's this nonsense? The far wall at the end of the hall suddenly made a loud stone-on-stone shifting sound and it started at him. The invisible wall remained where it was, undeterred by his hollers and fist pounding. It seemed Mad Gort had gotten himself into another trap."

Traps are a great tool for a DM with little time. There are so many traps in the history of tabletop games that I could not even begin to cover them all, and anyone can utilize them quickly to populate an area and make it more dangerous. I myself keep a short list of level-appropriate traps on a piece of paper that I can throw in at any time I am feeling the need to. It's great for when the players are becoming too complacent and forgetting to check for traps. Though one could argue it's unfair to place traps in places there weren't any before, that's really a topic I want to cover later.

One reason I am so fond of traps is also their speed of resolution. While one can always use traps as huge set pieces, if I need something to engage the players but not take too much time, a simple pit trap or poisoned chest will do it. Then it's on to the next encounter. Of course, some traps don't make much sense. Obviously a farmer's barn wouldn't be trapped and if it was, the explanation as to why would make an interesting story in its own right. But the point is not everywhere is trapped. Usually I reserve traps for dungeons, abandoned crypts, or a royal palace. Canonically I attempt to put their placement in a logical place. Trapping a broom closet seems tedious and odd. Unless the dungeon's creator happened to be insane. Then I have a free-for-all.

Some traps cost money, and there are some books that will create a budget for traps in a dungeon based on the size and danger-level of the place. I always ignore these rules and make whatever I feel I want to make. For me, focusing too much on reality kills fun. As a result, I sometimes like to create elaborate trap rooms where some traps set off other traps. In fact, if you like full-room and dangerous traps, I'd suggest reading a book called "The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps". It's a book famous for its particularly lethal traps. Most of them are better suited for an outlandish style that lends itself well to mad wizard dungeons or megadungeons, but it still has some laid back traps that can be put into most any situation.

Traps have a somewhat passive feel to them. They lie in wait until a hapless adventurer sets them off. But some traps can be used much more actively, like when paired with a combat encounter. A monster that knows of a trap can prepare themselves to stand in a safe spot, and set it off themselves, or they may already be in a trapped area and are immune to the effects. Some monsters are built into the traps effects itself. One trap I read about in the above mentioned book has a party fighting a flint golem in a room with wax and fumes. Every metal weapon blow against him setting off sparks that could set the whole room alight. Another from a different book had a beholder in huge circular room that oscillated like a teeter-totter when the trap was activated. The beholder floated above the room blasting the poor players fighting against the floor. These and other examples like them provides a lot more life to a trap.

If you've never used traps or prefer a more roleplaying style of play, I would still suggest integrating traps somewhere into a game. Evil plotting chancellors could most likely trap the door to their room or to the desk that holds all their information. I most recently used a spell that cast destruction on the player, and it terrified them so much they became paranoid and started to check absolutely everything they could just in case. This is something that traps can really do effectively. For a DM who is running out of time for content, a heavily trapped dungeon can slow things down enough for him to come up with something meatier. Speaking of which, I'm falling a bit behind right now, and my players are waiting for me to continue their adventure, so I'm going to cut it short for today and hopefully revisit traps another day. Thanks for reading, stay tuned tomorrow for "U is for Undermountain".

Relevant Links
D&D 3.5 Traps
Pathfinder Traps
Dungeon Deathtraps

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S is for Swarm

My players know: I love swarms. Without a doubt in my mind, they are hands down the scariest and most threatening of all monster types, up to a point. Obviously they have their limitations, but when used at the proper time, they are truly a terrifying force to be reckoned with.

From a DM standpoint, the swarms primary strength is that it cannot miss, as it occupies a character's square to attack. No matter how much armor, Dexterity, or dodge bonuses a player has, it amounts to nothing in the face of a swarm. Automatic damage each round is a great threat. At the same time, every swarm has a distraction ability that effectively nauseates a character if they fail a Fortitude save, denying them the ability to act. They sometimes are accompanied by things like fire, poison, or acid damage. The base damage of a swarm isn't very high; it increases by 1d6 every five hit dice, so players are unlikely to succumb quickly to one. But as mentioned previously, they make up for this fact by never failing to hit.

The next strength of the swarm is its malleability. A swarm can fit through any space large enough for its component creatures. This means that a swarm of fine creatures can follow players under doors, through unfinished walls, or past any barrier short of something completely solid and airtight like a wall of force. Obviously this makes simply running from a swarm a bit difficult. It states in the swarm subtype that swarms are 10ft on a side, meaning that if you're using a standard grid with a square representing five feet, a standard swarm fills four squares. These squares should be connecting at all times, but can take any shape they require. However if you feel you need a larger swarm, you don't have to bother with templates or size charts, simply add more swarms to the group, remembering to keep each square adjacent to another. To avoid having to remember stats for each swarm and keeping them separate, I'd just roll them both into a single unit, and combine their hit points. When I do this, I calculate their new combined hit dice and see whether they qualify for extra damage dice. This method is not problematic since a swarm does not dissipate until its hit points reach zero, but its still the same creature effectively.

Finally, in summarizing the strength of a swarm, they also have no discernible anatomy, meaning they cannot take critical hits, flanking, or sneak attacks. They are immune to spell effects that target a specific number of enemies, as there are literally thousands of their component creatures. Fine and Diminutive swarms take no weapon damage whatsoever, nor are they subject to combat maneuvers such as grapple or being tripped.

Swarms don't get to make attacks of opportunity, though a particularly merciless DM (i.e. me) could rule that every five foot square of a swarm that the player moves through simply does more damage as the swarm surrounds them. This doesn't exactly follow the rules as written so I'd only suggest using that method if you want swarms to have a particular bite (harharhar!). You can also apply templates to swarms, like making them skeletons or fiendish, but it can be kind of tricky, based on the peculiarity of their type. It can be difficult to know when to apply certain changes and when not to. For example, I tend to ignore the changes to damage or the addition of special attacks from a template, since their attack is nonstandard.

Swarms do have a few weaknesses, the biggest of which is a susceptibility to wind effects for Fine and Diminutive swarms. A simple gust of wind spell can cause a swarm of any size to have a really bad day. They also take extra damage from area of effect spells, so low level parties should always have a burning hands on them and then graduate to fireball. Other methods of dealing damage however are extremely ineffective, torches and lanterns can be used, but deal very low damage. Besides area of effect spells and winds however, a swarm is deadly effective, and very hard to kill. Most tactics suggest running, or attacking from range if possible. A party unprepared for a swarm can quickly find itself overrun and in a bad situation, as I have born witness to in both of the tabletop games I run.

I usually like to throw a swarm into the worst possible situation. For example at the bottom of an extremely deep pit trap, where the player is unlikely to escape. I've had them appear when a player wandered off into the desert alone after her errant camel, killing her instantly. I've had two spider swarms burst from a pair of webbed villagers in a horrifying homage to Aliens. I've had a swarm of crabs crawl onboard and attack a ship with little place to run to. I've had four swarms of bats appear in a tiny room with only one exit, while the players were trapped within and unable to get out. I would imagine throwing one at players who were already compromised in some way, like attempting to swim across a river, or while sleeping. As you can see, they are extremely versatile, and able to overrun and intimidate players of any level. In short, swarms are the best. Thanks for reading, stay tuned tomorrow for "T is for Traps".

Relevant Links
D&D 3.5 Swarm Subtype
Pathfinder Swarm Subtype

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R is for Rule

Rules rules rules! D&D has too many rules! Combat is a slugfest of counting squares and remembering what triggers an attack of opportunity; the wording of some of the rules directly contradict each other; spells are so confusing to keep track of their myriad of effects. Rules are the bane of my existence as DM, but I understand their use and in the case of my players, it is their only defense against me, so they are important to their survival. Rules are simultaneously what makes the game run smoothly and what makes it grind to a screeching halt.

Matthew J. Finch's "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming" states that the first zen moment he had about gaming was "Rulings, not Rules". The idea is that modern DMing has become too much about following rules, strictly following what the game dictates happens, when once it was more of a nebulous experience, with the DM as arbiter between the events and the players. To me, I see the game in the old days as the DM having all the power. As the game evolved and editions progressed, the power slowly started to shift to the players. In my opinion, 4th edition has the players having almost all the power. DMs exist mostly to tell the players what happens, not actually act as referees; there are too many rules (I'm not a huge 4th edition, if it isn't obvious). 3rd edition and Pathfinder has a healthy balance in my opinion, though still a bit too rules-heavy.

Its no secret that my favorite edition of D&D is 2nd edition. It was the first edition I ever played and it blew my young thirteen-year-old mind. The way I DM today tends to mix 3rd edition rules with 2nd edition heart. The game is difficult, with victory not guaranteed or even expected, but I'm not able to use rulings as much as I'd like to, as the rules are clearly defined. The players have a lot of power, and the rules act as their shield against the DM. I can see the point of this shield, as in a ruling system with little clearly defined rules, a bad or inexperienced DM can ruin a game. I'm sure when the game kept progressing, the designers were trying to make life easier for the DM, allowing for those inexperienced Masters to jump in, since there are already so few of them.

I personally feel that the game lost something in this change, a certain magic and fun that made it stand out from other games. Now players clamor about 'balance' and 'scale'. These notions when applied to games are a modern convention, brought about by video games in my opinion. In modern video games, a game is designed to be beaten. A player spends $60, he wants an experience he can see from beginning to end. Thus, the game has certain checks built in for balance, e.g. not attacking a level 3 party with a level 60 dragon king or some such encounter. The video game follows certain rules and cannot deviate from those rules. If this encounter ends up in a game, unless a programmer remembers to program a way around that encounter, the player must fight it and lose. In Dungeons & Dragons, the balance is as balanced as the DM makes it. If he chooses to attack his players with a fight they cannot win, do they stand and fight like programmed sprites unable to deviate from the rules given? No! They run their butts off, or come up with an ingenious plan to defeat the dragon king anyway, if the DM uses rulings, not rules, to allow them to do so. This is tabletop's ultimate strength, and why it has survived the test of time, and what it offers than no video game can ever reproduce. As the DM, you are what makes the game, along with your players. The books are just there to help the process along, but one should never see them as writ in stone, to do so is to deny yourself the glory of D&D.

In conclusion, I highly recommend reading "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming" if you get the chance. It's a free PDF, only 13 pages long, and has a lot of really awesome information for aspiring Dungeon Masters. If you're feeling like tabletop RPGs have too many rules, I would suggest checking out an older edition of the game, scaling back to just the core books, or integrating an "old-school feel" by making more rulings, not rules. Thanks for reading, stay tuned Monday for "S is for Swarm".

Relevant Links
A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming

Q is for Quest

Quests and adventures are the meat of the RPG experience. Some might consider them to be the same thing, but I hold that a quest is something that a character undertakes while an adventure might be undertaken or might have it thrust upon them. Quests have clear goals and ends, adventures might be more open-ended.

Some quests are simple; given to the party by a mysterious figure in a tavern. Speaking of which, when I first started DMing I tried to avoid the cliché of a mysterious figure in a tavern, not wanting to seem like I was using the same old ideas that had permeated the genre for decades. But oddly enough now I relish in clichés and enjoy treating my players to the typical D&D tropes. Mysterious figure, dragon terrorizing town, mad wizard's death trap tower, the king is in need, save the princess! Especially with new players, these tropes provide a basis of expectations from the game. The first couple quests they are given will set the tone for the whole campaign; they are vitally important.

For religiously aligned characters (or comically, non-religiously aligned characters), some quests can be given by the gods themselves. This is particularly potent as a motivator in Forgotten Realms, where the gods are a very real and influencing force. In that campaign setting more than any other the gods tend to interfere with the everyday folk, sometimes just for their own kicks. Nothing motivates quite as well as the threat of being smote into oblivion. When it comes to god-given quests, these tend to match a particular goal of the god itself, perhaps to retrieve a lost artifact, or destroy a cult that opposes their will. Obeying a good god can lead to rewards, but being commanded to obey an evil god could lead to some interesting adventures, or chances for role playing. Does a good character obey? What happens if they don't? Does the evil god hold something or someone dear to the party hostage? Is gaining the wrath of a god of hellfire worth the moral high ground? What happens to their good allies if they do obey the command? Simply accepting or not accepting a quest can lead to quite a lot of questions.

Not all quests are given though, some are taken on by a character themselves. I would put a caution on self-accepted quests, as they run the danger of dividing the players if not everyone shares their conviction. I once had an entire party begrudgingly travel several hundred miles to get somewhere they never actually ended up getting to; fighting the entire way. It was definitely a mistake to allow a singular character to hijack the party based on a self-accepted quest. I could imagine a general motivation like "kill all slavers" being okay, but anything more specific or time-sensitive being a problem, particularly if it consumes their entire character.

Quests can be long or they can be short, usually depending on the DM. A mixture of the two is a good balance, to prevent boredom. I personally like to mess with player expectations and make the simplest sounding quests unfold into epic dramas and the epic sounding ones end confusingly fast. That way one never knows what to expect from me. I'll cover more on that topic in a future post about meta-gaming. When a quest goes on for a long time, sometimes breaking it up can be relieving for the players. Chasing down the evil wizard king can really take it out of them, maybe let them save a farmer's chickens from dire weasels just to break it up a bit. Who knows, maybe there's a way to weave that plot into the larger one, making you seem like a story-crafting genius.

That's an important note to touch upon I feel. Interweaving your quests into one another. Sometimes the way a quest plays out can lead itself to eventually playing into another. Done deftly, this seems natural and thought-out, making the DM look really good. A character saved in a throw away quest may turn out to be a helpful aid in another, or a mysterious object in one quest may reveal additional properties when exposed to the rocks in an unrelated underground dungeon. There are thousands of ways to tie your campaign together and make it seem like a cohesive world.

Adventurers without quests are merely treasure looters, no better than grave robbers or highwaymen. A quest gives them purpose, gives them a direction to focus their powers and efforts. No quests means little directed plot, little story, which leads to bored players. A sandbox world works great to a point, but in my opinion every campaign should eventually lead toward a goal that the whole party can unify around. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned tomorrow for "R is for Rule".

Relevant Links
100 Adventure Ideas (it's actually 316)
101 D&D Quest Ideas
Another 101 D&D Quest Ideas

P is for Planescape

"Sigil's a cage for everyone: for the celestials, for the fiends, for the tieflings and the Clueless, and for the Lady. That's why the cutters who set their cases - uh, their homes - in Sigil call themselves Cagers. The Cagers who know the place best are us who teach; we're known as touts. My name's Etain the Quick, and I do my level best to tell a cutter everything he needs to know to survive in Sigil. Not everything there is to know, mind you: That'd cost extra."

Planescape. This campaign setting is in my mind, the absolute best expansion to the Dungeon & Dragons game by far. Most modern gamers, if they've heard of the setting at all, have usually heard about it from a PC game called Planescape: Torment. Unfortunately, it's hard to find much information on the setting that doesn't relate to the game without finding the actual books, as its quite an older setting, having been released in 1994 for AD&D 2nd Edition.

I first learned to play D&D during 2nd Edition, and it is unabashedly my favorite version of the game, no doubt due somewhat to nostalgia. Part of that nostalgia links directly to the planes, and their rather insane way of looking at the multiverse. Now, the planes had existed far before Planescape was created, but books attempting to describe them and create a unified vision for them before and since have lacked the level of detail and love that this setting had. This one had a completely different language, with words like "cutter", "berk", "jink", and "screed" that required a dictionary of terms to master. It was not unlike cockney in inflection and style. The box set had seventeen planes of existence of infinite length, not counting quasi-planes or meta-planes. It had fifteen distinct factions within the setting's main city, each with their own philosophical leanings. The setting was perfect.

The planes were each assigned an alignment that they leaned toward. If a visiting player was of the opposite alignment, they would find travel times to be excruciatingly long, while a player of the same alignment would travel at great speed. The way this worked was peculiar: each plane was infinite in length, and thus distances were meaningless, one's attunement to the plane was all that mattered. Magic was also affected in each plane. Some had entire schools of magic that were altered by the plane, while sometimes a singular spell would be affected. Some schools would be powered up while others weakened, some needed items called spell keys to counteract the negative effects of the plane. Traveling between the planes required gate keys, and entire adventures could revolve around simply finding out what a gate key was. In fact, I once had an entire campaign's only goal be to find the gate key back to the Prime Material plane of Toril. On the planes sometimes time flowed differently. One could go in to a plane for a day and emerge two weeks later. A few planes even had peculiar gravity or unbreathable air. Traveling the planes was a dangerous activity not fit for prime berks looking to stay outta the dead-book.

All these planes and wild adventures centered around a city at the top of an infinite spire called Sigil, the City of Doors. Yes, I said the 'top' of an 'infinite spire'. Don't ask. Ruling over the city is a mysterious being known as the Lady of Pain. No one knows anything about her, but the entire city fears her for her ultimate power to send anyone and anything to an endless maze from which only one being has ever escaped (sort of not really). With her power the city holds a tenuous peace, excepting the few times the Blood War spilled into the streets and the tanar'ri and baatezu claimed a chunk of the city as their own, or the time the fifteen factions all declared war on each other for a bit until the Lady saw fit to exile almost all of them.

Speaking of the factions, each one has its own philosophical opinion on the nature of the multiverse, and provide a service for Sigil related to that philosophy. For example the Fated believe that those that have strength deserve to take what they can. If you are too weak to defend what's yours, or too stupid to avoid being conned out of it, you don't deserve it. Thus, it's only fitting they act as the city's tax collectors. If they happen to squeeze more than the taxes require well that's too bad for the regular berks what let 'em do it to 'em. The faction called the Mercykillers acted as the police, believing that only two punishments existed: ten years of imprisonment for minor infarctions and death. They held to the belief that chaos must be culled at every turn, and only extreme diligence to lawfulness would stem the eternal tide of pandemonium. Needless to say, one tended to avoid the Mercykillers even when not on the lam. Each of the factions had certain ally factions and enemy factions, based on their beliefs, and it was entirely possible to set them off against the other for any number of slights.

When bringing players new to the realms into Planescape, I recommend starting in one of the other established campaigns like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms before bringing them in to the planes as clueless primes. That way the players will be as confused and wondrous as their characters when you introduce them to the strange worlds that are the planes. It's always best when players experience things for the first time along with their characters. Just be sure to include lots of the local cant or else they won't see it as that different from the Prime Material.

I'd like to take a moment to comment on the art of the campaign setting as well. The art for Planescape is phenomenal. The particular style that Tony DiTerlizzi and his colleagues brought to the planes speaks with such a unique dark madness; I have yet to see any edition match its presence. The art in all the editions has its own charm, but Planescape really speaks to me on a level that really identifies with the emotion and feeling the campaigns creator was trying to craft. Outlandish and strange, comically dark, and yet bursting with character. Not enough can be said for the beauty of the art. I'll end this post with a selection of art from the boxed set, because I simply could not limit it to just the three that I normally share. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned tomorrow for "Q is for Quests".

Relevant Links
Tony DiTerlizzi
Voila's Dictionary of Planar Cant
Pyramid Pick's Review of Planescape

O is for Ooze

"Mad Gort walked through the dark dungeon, the light of his torch barely able to see more than twenty feet in front of him. He briefly wondered why he was using a torch; Mad Gort was a dwarf. No sooner had he decided to toss the torch when he stepped on a false flagstone, crashing thirty feet down a pit. His fall was broken by something squishy, and with a loud 'GLOOP' he was absorbed into the green floor. Looking about, Mad Gort saw a skeleton in the green goop. At glacial speed it occurred to him that perhaps he was in a bad spot. Mad Gort had met his first ooze."

An ooze is an amorphous blob, possessing several traits in common with other oozes, jellies, and slimes, like their mindlessness and inability to be crit or sneak attacked. Some oozes dissolve metal, leaving flesh and bone intact, while others burn flesh with acid. Some give off magnetic pulses, and others can turn themselves into traps. All oozes are slow, and usually cannot chase a player down, meaning that they more often than not are lying in wait to catch an adventurer off guard, usually at the bottom of a trap.

Some oozes are the size of entire caves, filling an enormous space. I once had a party that was forced to move through an ooze so large it filled a tunnel, acting as a tenuous support system for the cave. If they killed it, it would collapse, so they ended up slowly making their way from one end to the other, taking damage the whole time. In another situation, I dropped the party into an area that activated a barred forcecage when they landed. On the other side of the room, two oozes squished through the bars to come at them.

It is important to note that while an ooze or slime is slow, unless it is outright killed, it is extremely hard to stop. Their amorphous nature usually means they do not need to retain a particular shape, and can squeeze into any space large enough to allow most liquids. They can chase after an unsuspecting party for quite a while, slipping under doors, floating on water, or even catching a strong wind with a little imagination.

There are some oozes that are so small they work best as swarms, overwhelming the players. One ooze type I once used was called a bloodbloater from the D&D Fiend Folio. I covered an entire underground lake in them, and attacked the party with an aboleth to drag them in. Very quickly they were attacked by the bloodbloaters, which didn't do anything but drain one single Strength point for each and every one, quickly making swimming in the inky water quite difficult. As an addition to a fight, or as an environmental hazard, oozes and slimes excel.

Some oozes are practically transparent, making spotting them difficult. A low-level party with not a lot of points in Perception or Spot yet may completely bumble into one, making the slime's search for food incredibly easy. That is the slime's primary motivation: food. Except for a few cases, it has not the intelligence or the desire for anything else. Rarely will it actively pursue a character unless it is extremely hungry and has little option. As characters, they are severely lacking, though a plot where a mad wizard manages to create a sentient ooze could be quite entertaining.

When planning an encounter involving oozes or jellies, I would highly recommend accounting for their shortcomings, and use them in a way that makes them difficult to avoid. One great way to prevent players from simply walking around them is to have them fill the available space, or to have something they want actually inside the ooze. Though they may be slow and possess animal-intelligence, a little innovation in their use can make a party begin to dread the appearance of an ooze. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned tomorrow for "P is for Planescape".

Relevant Links
D&D 3.5 Oozes
Pathfinder Oozes

N is for NPC

NPC stands for Non-Player Character. It represents any character that is not controlled directly by a player, usually falling under DM control by default. The character is not defined by any other qualities, so they may be allies or antagonists. In essence, if the players are the main cast, NPCs are the supporting cast.

I like to make my NPCs independent units from the players. They are not the supporting cast in their own story, they're the star! In essence any individual is always the main protagonist in their own story. Just because a ragtag group of ruffians with swords shows up, doesn't mean they get to have their way about town. If the players act out of the social and legal norms, they can expect a visit from the city guards. Adventurers frequently are the bane of polite company and civilization. NPCs do not exist to cater to the party, eagerly waiting for them to arrive so they can magically come to life. They have their own lives and desires.

A Dungeon Master can make an NPC interesting with different voices, but for those not gifted with the vocal talents of Robin Williams, they can give their characters unique physical or personality traits. For the liberal DM, characters can be homosexual or transgendered, to add some flavor. It can be an easy trap to make every tavern owner a gruff grizzled man of forty, and every wizard an old man with a beard. I find it important to try and break from these conventions to allow for more interesting characters and thus a more interesting campaign. Don't think that NPCs must be character races or even sentient, a dragon or a dog can be an interesting character. I've had a lesbian drow slave master, an alcoholic archmage, a blackguard with a penchant for long winded speeches, a necromancer who was a triplet, an ogre tavern owner, and a gay cockney thieves guild master. Characters are as interesting as their personalities, not as their voices, and a good DM will attempt to bring something new from each NPC they create.

Of course, other characters such as henchmen, followers, familiars, or animal companions can be NPCs as well. In the case of those, oftentimes the player will be instrumental in offering feedback on what their personality will be like. A DM can decide on his own how much control he wants over those characters, I myself keep it to a minimum, as I already have so much to do, controlling NPCs that are around the party at all times can be a lot of work.

If you're looking for ideas, Paizo has a number of books and chapters devoted to just NPCs, including the NPC Codex, the NPC Guide, the Rival Guide, and the NPC Gallery within the GameMastery Guide. I would highly recommend any of those books for inspiration for your own NPCs, or even making them up using a great program called Hero Lab, which will help reduce the amount of time you spend making characters from scratch. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned tomorrow for "O is for Ooze".

Relevant Links
D&D 3.5 NPCs
Pathfinder NPCs
d20 NPC Wiki
Hero Lab