Forget the Tavern: Boons, Part 2

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This is part of a series of posts on advice for starting a campaign.
Go to Forget the Tavern: Introduction or to Forget the Tavern: Boons, Part 1

Having described the edge case of boons, let’s look at some that better fit the concept. The first is The Weasel’s Favor. The scenario that introduces the boom reads:

The Weasel’s Favor

While guarding the sinkhole entrance to the Cartways, you and the party were confronted by members of the Redcloaks (one of Zobeck’s gangs) demanding you move out of the way so they could enter. As tensions heightened, Goldscale, Zobeck’s famous kobold paladin of Lada, beloved by most Zobeckans, kobold and non-kobold alike, arrived riding his giant weasel steed Shinespark.

With Goldscale’s appearance, the Redcloaks ran off, shouting vague threats of future violence to both the party and to Goldscale. As Goldscale made small talk with the party — if Zobeck has a folk hero, it is Goldscale — Shinespark started nuzzling you. “He likes you,” Goldscale said, right as Shinespark nipped your hand, not breaking the skin. Oddly, the spot briefly glowed with a golden light.

A few minutes later, some unholy, monstrous screech came up from the sinkhole, and Goldscale stopped talking mid-sentence and drew his sword. After a second screech, louder than the first, Goldscale moved to the sinkhole, quickly turned to you and said, “In the greatest darkness, speak his name,” and then he and Shinespark jumped into the hole. You heard sounds of combat, and while you waited, Goldscale didn’t return that night. A few nights later you caught a glimpse of him astride Shinespark leaping across rooftops, so you know they survived.

When you think of Shinespark, the spot where he nipped you briefly glows.

Goldscale is an established kobold paladin of the Midgard setting’s city of Zobeck, which is where the Empire of the Ghouls campaign begins, and Shinebright is Goldscale’s mount. The boon here is fairly clear, though the player may not be exactly sure what might happen when they invoke Shinespark. And, honestly, because the boons scale with level of the characters/tier of play, and because they are intended to be useful when they’re invoked, I couldn’t tell you exactly what would happen. The most obvious response would be to have Shinespark magically appear, but a paladin’s mount ready to fight might not be what that particular greatest darkness might call for. Maybe the player takes it literally and they are in desperate straights and need light. In that case, the little scar from Shinebright’s nip might shine bright enough to fill a vast cavern or shine a holy light that causes radiant damage to undead. Or maybe it’s a ghostly weasel that both illuminates the area and leads the PC to safety. Maybe things are really bad and it’s not just Shinebright but Goldscale too who answers the call.

It’s a one-time thing, so when the player chooses to invoke it, make it memorable.

One more example of a boon:

The Arrow

On your trip to Old Mikhail’s Inn in the Margreve Forest, after setting up camp for the night, you stepped away from your camp where the rest of your companions were and stumbled upon a shadow fey hunting party. Certain you were going to be running for your life, you were surprised when they invited you to join them. Not wanting to risk insulting them, you joined their hunt, helped take down a large boar, and partook in the feast, spending hours eating, drinking, and sharing stories with them. Eventually, worried that your companions would be looking for you, you told your hosts you needed to get back. They laughed, jovially mocked you for your concern, and warmly sent you off. One gave you an old arrow, telling you that you should never fire it from a bow but keep it always.

When you returned to camp and began apologizing for being gone so long, everyone else seemed confused, and you quickly realized they were all still engaged in the same activities they’d been doing when you walked away. And sure enough, it was as if you hadn’t been gone for no more than a minute. Everyone else considers your time with the shadow fey a fanciful story, and you sometimes doubt it yourself. You do, however, have the arrow they gave you.

So, clearly the arrow isn’t meant to be fired, but other than that, I had no idea what it might be or do. When trying to figure out how to navigate the Underdark, the player with the arrow decided it might work like a compass arrow and lead the party on the right path. That sounded reasonable, and since getting to the capital city of the Ghoul Imperium was a goal in the campaign, I decided the arrow would keep working, because it was what the player wanted to happen, so while the arrow didn’t always take then on the safest route, it took them where they needed to go, and the player who choose that boon got their spotlight time.

Other boons included an option for a player character to take a unique Warlock Patron with a custom subclass I cobbled together from the Great Old One warlock patron from the Player’s Handbook and the Elder Influence warlock from Sandy Peterson’s Cthulhu Mythos for 5e. It included the Yog-Sothothery skill and the Mythos Formula Caster feat and formula casting, both from Sandy Peterson’s Cthulhu Mythos for 5e, and while the player had to choose either the Great Old One or the Elder Influence pact as their base subclass, they could choose features from the other as they gained levels. In this case, I also let the players see the pact description before choosing boons so the player who chose it really wanted it.

While boons function more as cool spotlight time for each player/player character, they come with stories, some of which other members of the party were present (the situation that lead to the warlock pack), or resulted in things the PC carried and would get commented upon (the arrow, the light from Shinebright), or was a story to tell the party (the stranger — if the party hadn’t heard the story before Rufous’s return, they certainly would want to know who Rufous was after he showed up).

Ruins of Malbeth: Thoughts on the Brief Pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms

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This is part of a series of posts on about an old D&D campaign world called Malbeth.
Go to the original Ruins of Malbeth post, the first post about Micel Kingdoms,
or the Pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms.

One of the purposes of reexamining this campaign world I abandoned for Kobold Press’s Midgard setting is to think about what I might find useful as I begin world building a new setting, but I’m finding I want something different. I want a hex-crawl frontier/kingdom building campaign, and while I’ve thought about setting it in Midgard’s Arbonesse Forest that’s part of the Grand Duchy of Dornig. The saying amongst the Kobold Warrens is that the World Tree, Yggdrasil, has many branches, and on those branches are a multitude of Midgards, and I’m currently contemplating how distant this variation of Midgard might be, or if it becomes something else.

The pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms was written for players who like to delve into setting, and because of that, it’s fully of mysteries. Who are the Valaraukar? When kingdoms simply disappeared or were destroyed “overnight” is that figurative or literal? Where did the elves and the other humanoid species come from?

The first thought here is that while it’s useful — interesting — to create a world with mystery because that makes it interesting (to use that word again), and it can serve as inspiration for exploration and discovery. You don’t need to answer everything, even for yourself. That’s a world building lesson we can take from Tolkien. He never explored, even for himself, at least he didn’t write it down, the history of the two Istar (wizards) who went to the east because his focus wasn’t the eastern realms of Middle-earth. Nor did he work out exactly who or what Tom Bombadil was. In fact, he felt it was better that the question of Bombadil not be answered because not everything can or should be known.

That said, I do have some thought ands explanations.

Upheaval
The brief pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms is full of conflict, rising and falling civilizations, diasporas, and cataclysmic events such as the seismic activity that destroyed the elven kingdom of Alcarinbar to the seemingly supernatural ends to the dragonborn Second Kingdom of Sharmensharik and the Thramian Empire.

If you’re going to write a pre-history of your game world, make it dynamic, and dynamic in ways that can resonate well into the future that is your campaign. (In case it’s not clear, I’m using pre-history here as what happened before the present rather than before recorded history, regardless of whether that means the written record of history or remembered history that includes oral tradition.

A lot of this history is connected in ways that may or may not ever become apparent to players, and its all tied together through the Valaraukar.

The Valaraukar
In campaign player materials, the Valaraukar are mystery, something from the deep past, but also a current threat. In the player documents, I include a faction that calls itself the Watchers. In terms of character knowledge, the only characters who know about the Watchers are those who choose to join the faction, either as part of character creation or later during play. The Watchers are a secret society founded by elves after the Uplift (see the Age of Second Empires and footnote 2). Those who founded the Watchers had learned that the Uplift which had destroyed the elven kingdom of Alcarinbar and created the wasteland known as the Gwathimlad wasn’t a natural geological event. It was an attack by the Valaraukar, and they were a persistent existential threat to the lands of Malbeth, making periodic incursions to scout, recruit followers, and strike as they could.1

So, who are the Valaraukar? The Valaraukar are tieflings, only they aren’t standard D&D tieflings but infernal tieflings, mechanically fiends rather than humanoids, and they come from a different reality. Their first serious incursion that resulted in the Valaraukar-Kingdom of Sharmensharik war which ended in a scorched earth retreat. By unleashing a plague that killed everyone, humanoid, dragon, even Valaraukar, they hoped they could once again return to Malbeth and rule it unopposed.

The Cataclysms and Upheavals
The Uplift wasn’t the only cataclysm caused by the Valaraukar. The plague that decimated the later dragonborn of Khelekdraug was also engineered by the Valaraukar — this time, a more targeted attack. The attack on the dwarven kingdom of Frangang was also orchestrated by the Valaraukar, and the forces the dwarves fought included fiends. It was the Valaraukar that taught the secrets of undeath to the Lich-kings of Nor, and urged and aided the Lich-kings in their war with the human Kingdom of Syndala.

Any player character who joins the Watchers learns that the Watchers believe the Valaraukar killed off the dragonborn of Khelekdraug, and that they suspect the Valaraukar are behind the fall of Frangang as well as teaching the Lich-kings of Nor the secrets of undeath. They also know the Watchers have uncovered and responded to numerous smaller-scale or less successful incursions, as well as disrupted Valaraukar cults. But even the Watchers don’t know just how much an existential threat the Valaraukar pose to Malbeth.

By breaking through reality to enter the material plane to which Malbeth belongs, the Valaraukar fundamentally damaged the fabric of Malbeth’s plane’s reality. The “overnight” cataclysmic events such as the fertile lands of the dragonborn’s Second Kingdom of Sharmensharik turning to desert and the Thramian Empire’s population disappearing and its infrastructure turning to centuries-old ruins overnight did happen instantaneously. The “overnight” there isn’t an exaggeration of legend.

And much closer in time to the present of the present day, the island nation of Ossa appeared in the souther sea just about 100 years before in a well-traveled area of ocean. One day, the island and kingdom were just here, and the people of Ossa remember and their written records document hundreds of years of interaction with the Micel Kingdoms. In fact, before the island kingdom was found, people of Ossa appeared throughout the Micel Kingdoms. Likewise, nine years before the present, the elven kingdom of Uinen, another island nation, simply disappears. Examination found that the Uinen Islands upon which the elven kingdom resided showed no signs of habitation.

Not even the Valaraukar know that their incursions have caused this weakening of reality. That’s something for the player characters to uncover, if, in fact, one wants to go that route. Maybe instead other cataclysms just happen with no explanation to them other than they are part of the fabric of Malbeth that makes it a living, dynamic world , a Tom Bombadil if you will.

So, Thoughts
One thing I’m noticing here, beyond what I’ve already pointed out such leaving mysteries and creating dynamic history, is what Wolfgang Baur calls stacking gunpowder.2 A good campaign setting isn’t static; it’s not just there for the PCs to stroll through. Stacking gunpowder means world building with volatile elements that might or will go off whether or not the PCs light the fuse, but cause chain reactions. Changes to the world create ripples, sometimes strong ripples, that serve as triggers setting off other events and other ripples.

It’s not just the Valaraukar here or the rip in reality they created. The Lich-kings of Nor aren’t all dead, but are biding their time. The orcs and goblins around the Micel Kingdoms are periodically active, and not of the Micel Kingdoms get along even if open war isn’t currently underway.

  1. The Watchers established a mountain monastery where elven paladins, monks, and assassins trained to resist Valaraukar incursions. For centuries, they recruited agents who in turn recruited agents to watch for and report Valaraukar incursions, and to help resist them when they happened. That’s a hook at least one player jumps at.
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  2. Baur is founder and CEO of Kobold Press, and worked for Wizards of the Coast and TSR before that. After falling in love with Midgard setting and the early 5e material they were releasing prior to the 5e Kickstarter, I learned that Baur had written some of my favorite material for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2e in the early 1990s. ↩︎

Forget the Tavern: Boons, Part 1

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This is part of a series of posts on advice for starting a campaign.
Go to Forget the Tavern: Introduction or to Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! Part 1

Boons are related to the That Was Me! activity in that they consist of a past event that a player claims for their character. Unlike That Was Me! entries, only the GM writes them, and they tend to be longer than the That Was Me! options.

Here’s an example of one wrote for an Empire of the Ghouls campaign from Kobold Press. The game was set in Kobold Press’s Midgard.

The Stranger

One evening during your trip accompanying Zobeck city Councilor Halsen Hrovitz to Stefansfor Keep on the border of Morgau, you were gathering wood for the fire when a stranger shrouded in tattered clothing that enveloping him as effectively as deep-cowled robe, approached you, holding hands up in a sign of friendship. When you asked who he was, he replied in a raspy, hesitant voice, “I…I…I am…Rufous. Rufous, I think.” Concerned by the uncertainty and confusion in his voice, you asked if he needed help, and told him you had a camp nearby with food and shelter.

“I saw,” he replied. “I need no help. Just questions. Can you answer my questions?” You indicated that you would try. He first asked you where you were, and when you told him he replied, “Not far, then.” He then asked you what year it was, followed by the day when you told him the year. Finally, he asked if you would be traveling into Morgau. “25 miles beyond Stefanfor Keep,” he said, “is the village of Dunmore. Tell Nada that I am sorry.” When you told him you  weren’t traveling beyond Stefanfor Keep, he nodded, and suggested that if you told them in the keep someone might take the message to her. With that, he thanked you, turned, and walked away. You called after him but he didn’t respond, so you finished gathering the wood and returned to camp.

Before I ask players to choose a Boon, I tell them that each boons comes with a benefit. It might be a favor owed, or a reward of future aid. It might be a one-time game mechanic benefit, spell, ability, or magical effect. The effect is, in part, based on the narrative, but it will also be situational — if they call on their boon at 2nd level, it’s going to be of a different magnitude than if they call on it at 11th level. They’re encouraged to call on them when they think it’s appropriate, and I also have the option to invoke their boon at a particularly opportune time. When I write these, I have an idea of what the boom is, but I don’t have predetermined moment for the boon to be used.

After a player chooses their boon, I asked them if they keep the item, fulfilled the request, or whatever the boon involved. In the case of The Stranger, I asked if the PC did leave Rufous’ message at Stefanfor Keep. The player said yes.

So, what’s going on here in the example of The Stranger? Rufous is a newly revived darakhul and already strongly suspects he is a ghoul. Darakhul are free-willed, intelligent ghouls, and The Ghoul Imperium (the Empire of the Ghouls for which the published campaign is named), is governed by darakhul. Because they have free will, not all darakhul are innately evil, although they do suffer the hunger that drives them to eat flesh. Rufous, I decided, would maintain his neutrality, but realizing there was no place for him above ground, he will find his way into the Underdark and, eventually, to the Ghoul Imperium.

At some point during the game, likely when the PCs were in the Underdark or in an outpost or the capital city of the Ghoul Imperium, Rufous would be there at a time of need. Maybe when the party is lost and out of supplies. Maybe when they’re about to be discovered to be living beings rather than undead. Maybe they need a guide. Maybe they need to be broken out of prison. In that moment, Rufous can be there to repay what he feels is a debt.

Rufous is the oddball of the boons for that campaign in that I was much more likely to invoke Rufous than the player, and so I kept open the idea that Rufous might show up more than once. And a couple of times before Rufous was brought into play, I told the player that their character saw, or thought they saw, him but was too far away or the PC was too occupied to pursue.

Having introduced the idea of Boons and how they work, I’ll provide two more examples in the next Forget the Tavern post.

Go to Forget the Tavern: Boons: Part 2

Cosmic Dark: Character Creation

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You can read more about Cosmic Dark in this earlier post about running the game.

In Graham Walmsley’s not-yet-released Cosmic Dark, a weird space horror game based on the ruleset of his earlier Cthulhu Dark, character creation is almost entirely done through role-play. The one thing not established through role-play is a character’s occupation — their Specialism in the language of the game — which is defined by the role they’ve been trained for by the mega-corporation the character employees work for. As an example, in the introductory scenario “Extraction,” the employee specialisms are Medical Officer, Mining Engineer, Geologist, Communications Officer, and Team Leader.

Players choose their character by responding to the intercom page as their shuttle is descending to the asteroid they’ll spend the next year mining. The GM asks the medical officer to respond, and repeats the request until someone does. They’re the medical officer. These specialisms are defined by the scenario.

Likewise, as I explain in the earlier post, each character has only one stat: Their Changed score, which starts at 1.

So, how are the characters developed? Through role-play flashbacks. After the players quickly define their home planet upon which they all grew up together, each character gets two brief scenes. The GM sets up the scene and asks the players to play it out. For example, two characters, I imagine them as tweens in this scene, are in the school yard, and one says to the other, “You know what I’m better at than you?” and then the GM turns it over to the two players.

It’s simple and quick, but it establishes parameters about who these characters are and what their relationships to each other are. Having played a PC employee and run three separate games, this is enough character development to let the players play those characters who, of course, further develop through the course of the scenario. (Or campaign if you run all five scenarios as a campaign.)

As I’m writing this, I realize — I can’t believe I haven’t made this connection before — that Graham has designed Cosmic Dark on the Forget the Tavern twin principles of starting the game in media res and with a shared group history. The twin principles are obvious solutions to common problems for anyone who thinks about the challenges of starting a campaign, and I note in the start of that series, they’re ideas I stole from others.

Ruins of Malbeth: A Brief Pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms

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This is part of a series of posts on about an old D&D campaign world called Malbeth.
Go to the original Ruins of Malbeth post or to the overview of the Micel Kingdoms.

Light pencil drawing of a map of the Mickel Kingdoms which identifies geo-political boundaries and major geographic regions such as forests, swamps, hills, and mountains.
Map of the Mickel Kingdoms

According to the elves, they arrived on Malbeth’s some 10,000 years ago. While they found signs of civilizations — ruins — the continent was sparsely populated, mostly by hunter-gatherer tribes of goblinoid races, along with pockets of giants, fey, and a few aberrations. Based upon their exploration of the ruins and what they could piece together from the stories told by the goblinoids and giants, elven historians believe that Malbeth was once ruled by two vast empires: dragons and their dragonborn representatives in the east (the FIRST KINGDOM OF SHARMENSHARIK) and the Valaraukar (Shadow people) in the West. Goblin oral tradition tells the story of a dragon victory which coincided with a devastating plague that killed off the dragonborn population as well as much the goblinoids who served both the dragons and the Valaraukar.

As various humanoid races appear as hunter-gatherers, the elves establish their forest fortress of ALCARINBAR. Small tribes of humans first appear about 8,000 years ago. Non-elven agriculture is first established some 7,000 years ago by goblins living in the Mickelgeflowan River Valley. Dwarf and gnome legend claims that around the same time, the smith god Moradin forged dwarves and gnomes from the rock of the VILLAR CAVES and taught them the secrets of mining, forging, and engineering. Using this knowledge, the dwarves and gnomes establish the mythical KINGDOM OF VILLAR in the Fullangr Mountains. It will be another 2,500 years before elves have any contact with dwarves and gnomes. Meanwhile, some 6,400 years ago, a dragonborn society calling itself the SECOND KINGDOM OF SHARMENSHARIK mysteriously appears on the ruins of the original KINGDOM OF SHARMENSHARIK.

Age of First Empires

Roughly 6,200 years ago, the goblins of the Mickelgeflowan River Valley unite into a goblin empire. According to dwarven and gnomish legend, around this time orc tribes of the Fullangr Mountains unify, attack, and eventually overwhelm the KINGDOM OF VILLAR. Small humans populations, largely formed from people who escaped enslavement by the goblin empire in the west and the dragonborn SECOND KINGDOM OF SHARMENSHARIK in the east begin to settle in to southern Malbeth.

Some 5,800 years ago, the SECOND KINGDOM OF SHARMENSHARIK falls as the fertile plains upon which it stood turn to desert wasteland overnight. The dragonborn population is decimated, and its surviving members settle along both sides of the Gulf of Sharmensharik and northeastern Malbeth. Around this time, the first human cities are founded in what is now southern Ngwolne and northern Thramia.

About 5,600 years ago the goblin empire of the Mickelgeflowan River Valley splinters into rival kingdoms, plunging the region into 400 years of constant war. At roughly the same time, orc tribes move east out of the Fullangr Mountains and into the Wilwarin Steppe, driving out all dragonborn settlements west of the Gulf of Sharmensharik. Around 100 years after the orcs sweep through the Wilwarin, thri-keen and push back against the orcs. A war of attrition ensues, reducing the population of both. Also around this time the humans in southern Ngwolne and northern Thramia develop bronze working and unify into seven kingdoms.

Age of Second Empires

Around 5,000 years ago, a hobgoblin war leader unifies the goblinoids of the Mickelgeflowan River Valley, establishing the second goblin empire, while in the northeast of Malbeth new dragonborn kingdoms emerge, and war breaks out in the human kingdoms in southern Ngwolne and northern Thramia.

Roughly 4,700 years ago, human cities appear in the northwest of Nor. Not too long later, centaur appear in north Wilwarin Steppes as dwarves and gnomes move into the border region of the western steppes and the Fullangr Mountains. Humans also on the move begin to settle in southern Wilwarin. As these populations grow over the next hundred years, they increasingly come into conflict with orcs, who again unify under a war leader.

Humans, centaur, dwarves, and gnomes form an alliance, but even together they are not powerful enough to withstand the orc armies. Eventually, the elves of ALCARINBAR end their isolation and join the war against the orcs, drving them back into the Fullangr Mountains. Dwarves and gnomes teach their new human allies the secrets of engineering and of iron and steel working, and the elves teach humans, dwarves, gnomes, and centaur the secrets of arcane magic.1

Around 4,500 years ago, humans settle the southern region of the Mickelgeflowan River Valley along the coast of the Southern Sea, and in southern Malbeth the human THRAMIAN EMPIRE is founded. Aided by the knowledge of iron, steel, and arcane magic, humans begin to push north into goblin-held lands of the Mickelgeflowan River Valley.

4,300 years ago the kingdoms in Nor begin to unite, and roughly 4,100 years ago the human KINGDOM OF SYNDAL is founded in the southern region of the Mickelgeflowan River Valley. Also roughly 4,100 years ago. the elven fortress of ALCARINBAR Uplift, turning the once beautiful sylvan forest into the Gwathimlad.2 Malbeth’s elven population is decimated and the elven diaspora begins.

The Age of Nor and the Dragons’ War 

Around 4,000 years ago, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves work together and take the eastern half of the Mickelgeflowan River Valley, from the Southern Sea all the way north to the Cir Falls. Dwarves found the KINGDOM OF FRANGANG in the Fullangr Mountains, and high elves found the CIRTOL north of the Cir Falls. The EMPIRE OF NOR is founded by the High King of Nor, an archmage who sought but failed to find the secrets of becoming a lich. Around this time the elven and gnomish KINGDOMS OF EDHIL and EDHILDUN are established.

One-hundred years after the High King of Nor founded the EMPIRE OF NOR, his grandsons, powerful wizards all, discover the secrets of undeath and become the Lich-Kings of Nor. They raise powerful armies humans, goblins, giants, and undead to expand their empire south and east into Mickelgeflowan River Valley.

Roughly 3,500 years ago, the THRAMIAN EMPIRE disappears overnight, with hundreds-year old ruins left where the human empire once stood.3 Some 3,300 years ago the Lich-kings of Nor have conquered all of western Malbeth except for the human KINGDOM OF SYNDALA and the dwarven KINGDOM OF FRANGANG.

Roughly 2,400 years ago, the KINGDOM OF FRANGANG was attacked by the powerful united armies of the Underdark, while in eastern Malbeth the dragonborn of KHELEKDRAUG suffer a mysterious plague that decimates its population.4 Within a year, the Lich-kings of the EMPIRE OF NOR attacked the human KINGDOM OF SYNDALA, so neither the humans of Syndala nor the dwarves of Frangang could come to each other’s aid. The KINGDOM OF FRANGANG falls, and its survivors flee, resulting in the dwarven diaspora.

Meanwhile, the war between NOR and SYNDALA wages for a few years, and as forces of NOR seem to be on verge of a decisive victory, dragons appear in great numbers, coming to Syndala’s aid, marking the start of the Dragons’ War. The war lasted 7 years. While the forces of NOR were devastated, the victory was costly. The power of SYNDALA was greatly reduced, and few dragons survived the war. The Lich-kings themselves were never accounted for, nor heard from again, and few who traveled deep into the lands of Nor returned. 

The Mickel Kingdoms

Today, historians mark the start of the MICKEL KINGDOMS with the birth of High King Tslantyr, 1,504 years ago. In the Mickel Kingdoms, dating conventions indicate the year of Tslantyr’s birth as MK 1.

Go to Thoughts on the Pre-history of the Micel Kingdoms

  1. The scholarly magic of wizards as opposed to the innate arcane magic of sorcerers and pact-based arcane magic of warlocks, both of which were already practices in those communities.
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  2. The Uplift was and creation of the Gwathimlad (Shadow Valley) was inspired by the Lake County uplift in the New Madrid seismic zone and other devastating effects of the earthquakes along the New Madrid Fault of 1811-1812 (USA). The uplift is 50 kilometers long and 23 kilometers wide, and raised the earth up to 10 meters. What was once woodland became a geothermally active land of chaparral and fens, with frequent eruptions of geothermal and volcanic activity that create temporary boiling mudpits, fiery fissures (resulting in wildfires), and clouds of noxious and toxic gases that kill the surrounding flora and fauna. 
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  3. If you’re noticing a trend of cataclysmic events happening overnight (and I mean literally rather than figuratively) — the lands of the Empire of Sharmensharik turning to desert, the Thramian Empire existing as a thriving empire one day to nothing but old abandoned ruins the next — you’re not imagining it. The material plane upon which Malbeth resides is unstable. By design, I included this to create both a sense of mythic history — legends and stories to be assumed figurative rather than literal — and an existential threat to reality itself that could come into play with cities, populations, kingdoms, geography, all disappearing or becoming something else in the blink of an eye. Obviously, one doesn’t want to overdo this, unless your setting is a plane of dread, but it’s the kind of thing that will capture player’s attention. How they respond, on the other hand, is up to the players.
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  4. Deep history for players to discover should the campaign go in that direction: Both the Underdark attack the led to the fall of the dwarven kingdom of Frangang and the plague that decimated the dragonborn of Khelekdraug were orchestrated by the Valaraukar. And, actually, the Valaraukar also taught the Lich-Kings of Nor the secrets of undeath, too, as well as caused the cataclysmic Uplift that created the Gwathimlad, because seriously, if you’re going to create a shadowy, planar existential threat to your campaign world, they need to be doing things. And yes, they’re also the reason why Malbeth’s reality is itself unstable, though that is an accidental consequence of the Valaraukar breach into the material plane rather than one of their designs. ↩︎

Running Cosmic Dark

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I’m currently between sessions running Cosmic Dark, the 4th time I’ve run a Cosmic Dark scenario, and the third time I’ve run the introductory scenario “Extraction.” I had the great pleasure of being a play tester for “Extraction” which Graham ran in June 2023, and I’ve gotten access to the game piecemeal by supporting his Patreon account.

Cosmic Dark is Graham Whalmsley‘s not-yet-published weird space horror game based on his Cthulhu Dark ruleset.1 The mechanics for Cosmic Dark and Cthulhu Dark are simple in a really-rules-light sort of way.

A person in a sapce suit standing on a violet asteroid. In the background are a large celestial body (planet) and a number of smaller ones.

I want to talk about the Changed score, the tracking of how your character is affected by the weirdness of space, however, first I should probably explain a bit about the game.

Characters have an occupation that are tied to the scenario. (Cosmic Dark comes with 5 scenarios and “Extraction” is the first.) In “Extraction,” the occupations of the PCs, referred to as employees, are Medical Officer, Mining Engineer, Geologist, Communications Officer, and Team Leader. In Cosmic Dark, each character has one stat: Their Changed score (in Cthulhu Dark its their Insanity score.)

To do things, players roll one to three dice:

  • Investigating or doing? Roll a die (the Reality die in Cosmic Dark).
  • Is it related to your occupation? Add a die (the Specialism die in Cosmic Dark)
  • Willing to risk body and/or mind? Add a die (the Changed die in Cosmic Dark)

How well you do depends on the highest die roll. There’s slight variations to Cosmic Dark and Cthulhu Dark regarding how you interpret the higher rolls. In Cosmic Dark, while investigating, a 4 gets you all the information that you can learn. A 5 gets you a “record” from the company’s database that adds to the mystery or sets up for the horror. And a 6 gives you a glimpse into greater reality, a glimpse of the cosmic horror.

If you roll the Changed die and it is 1) the highest die, and 2), higher than your Changed score, you score goes up by 1 point. At Changed 6, your character is out: in capacitated, insane, dead, whatever is narratively appropriate.

Players are also encouraged to roll a Changed die any time they think their character is emotionally or mentally disturbed or physically harmed. And, again, if the Changed die is higher than your employee’s Changed score, your score goes up. And, of course, from the start the setting for “Exaltation” is unsettling. It’s low-key at first, but the employees encounter weird as soon as they step off their shuttle.

GMs are encouraged to ask players if they want to roll a Changed die as a way of reminding them that’s a thing to do, but players get to choose when they do so. As a player, deciding when my employee would be disturbed enough to roll was fun. I leaned into it, and, unsurprisingly, my character was the first to reach Changed 6. As a player and as a GM, it’s a lot of fun watching the other players go through the same decisions, and how they justify not rolling the Changed die. Some players explain how they brush something off or how they didn’t see what they saw. Others role-play denial. In the game Graham ran, I believe one character tried to shut out the world through media. In the first time I ran Cosmic Dark, a character hooked into a virtual realty game. Eventually, things happened and they had to engage with the world and other employees around them.

I really like Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold, both of which draw heavily on the basic Cthulhu Dark mechanics, and I’ve run both more than I have Cosmic Dark (those who know my love of Cthulhiana will likely be surprised to learn I’ve never run Cthulhu Dark — I will, I promise), but Ruin (the Trophy games’ version of the Insanity or Changed stat) and Ruin rolls in the Trophy games doesn’t involve a player evaluating the weirdness or horror of the moment. If you choose to do something risky, you automatically include a Ruin die.

Again, what I really like about how Cthulhu Dark and Cosmic Dark handle the Insanity/Changed score is that players decide when they make that roll. A lot of role-play just emerges as you feel your way through that choice, and as you watch and interact with other characters as their players role-play or explain why their character isn’t making the roll.

  1. You can download the original two-page version of Cthulhu Dark for free. ↩︎

Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! Part 4

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This is part of a series of posts on advice for starting a campaign.
Go to Forget the Tavern: Introduction or to Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! Part 1

How These That Was Me! Shaped Our NBA Campaign

As I said, each of these offered both clues and bread crumbs that would become meaningful as the player agents hunted Örümcek and responded to the vampire war however they decided to respond. I wrote twice as many That Was Me! summaries as player characters, and many of them included other themes. By choosing the That Was Me! summaries they did, the players were telling me what they found interesting. In doing so, they helped shape the overall arc of the campaign and the nature of the supernatural. I was playing with the idea of Angel Hair, which is associated with UFO sighting and manifestations of the Virgin Mary. By choosing the That Was Me! summaries involving the Santa Coloma Church and the Virgin manifestations and the cell mate screaming about angels, the players unknowingly directed me toward a supernatural vampires rather than alien vampires.

Likewise, by choosing the Mr. Bungle cover band, the Kiss of the Spider Woman, and the Triesen bartender That Was Me! summaries, the players gave me three ways to feed them information and three ways to draw them into the mystery. Clues and breadcrumbs that would catch the player’s attention because they’d chosen them. But again, who was the Mr. Bungle informant, what was their agenda, and who were they working for — Örümcek? Örümcek’s vampire enemies? a third party? I didn’t know at first. Likewise I didn’t know who left the Kiss of the Spider Woman in the PC’s luggage; just that I could drop Kiss of the Spider Woman references and use the novel as a cypher key. And the bartender of indeterminate gender. A phone call or text, or showing up in person, had potential. (As the game progressed, I decided the bartender was an innocent who just really hated the satanic Norwegian biker gang.) Also, while the player didn’t know it, they chose to add a satanic Norwegian biker gang to one of the two cospyramids.

None of these initial That Was Me! summaries, no matter how obscure or weird, were random events. As the PC agents were hunting Örümcek, they were caught up in its web. However, this wasn’t a Brindlewood Bay style game where the players’ interpretations of facts made them true. I had some specific facts set down after the players decided their One True Thing about Örümcek. Before they stated their one true things, the only element about Örümcek I’d chosen was its name. I don’t recall what rabbit holes I fell into, but after they’d defined their One True Things, I followed the Turkish spider connection to Bulgaria, and through Bulgaria to ancient Thrace as one path, and to Angel Hair as a second path.

I decided Örümcek was a splinter faction broken off and at war with an ancient group of 8 vampires who mostly hibernated in some strange quantum state and appeared as something like a menhir and where hidden away in secret caves. While hibernating, they could communicate with their servants, vampire cultists for lack of a better word, and supernatural creatures. The vampire affiliated with Örümcek was out of hibernation, and Örümcek had killed three of the other vampires. (At the start of the campaign, I didn’t know if Örümcek was a vampire, an organization serving that vampire, or a name for that vampire’s faction). With that knowledge, I wrote the This Was Me! summaries, focusing on the weird with the understanding that what they meant as we played.

As I said, this wasn’t a Brindlewood Bay type mystery. I’d decide how the This Was Me! summaries played out, but I let the narrative help me decide that. I decided the bartender would be an innocent because that not being affiliated with the vampire conspiracies seemed the most interesting option to play off the decision that the Norwegian satanic biker gang served one of the vampire conspiracies. (When I wrote them, I was focused on the bartender as a meaningful NPC and thought the bikers would be a weird red herring.)

Go to Forget the Tavern: Boons, Part 1

Ruins of Malbeth: The Micel Kingdoms Overview

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Light pencil drawing of a map of the Mickel Kingdoms which identifies geo-political boundaries and major geographic regions such as forests, swamps, hills, and mountains.
Map of the Mickel Kingdoms

This is part of a series of posts on about an old D&D campaign world called Malbeth.
Go to the original Ruins of Malbeth post.

While Malbeth was an entire continent, the focus of my Malbeth-based setting was the Micel Kingdoms. As with the Malbeth map, the embedded map to the left is a scan of a pencil drawing I intended to eventually use to make a hex map with Hexographer hex map software.

Referencing the Micel Kingdoms map as needed, I hope this summary overview of the Mickel Kingdoms will make some sense. As I consider what I might want to take from Malbeth for future D&D campaigns, in future posts I’ll look at specific locations within the Micel Kingdoms. In this summary, I used all-caps to mark political entities such as a kingdom and italics to mark geographic entries such as a forest or mountain range.

Overview of the Micel Kingdoms

The campaign is set in the western half of continent of Malbeth in the lands in and adjacent to the Micelgeflowan River valley, one of the most continuously settled regions of Malbeth. The lands of the Micel Kingdoms, all of which once belonged to the MICEL EMPIRE, include a number of human, dwarven, gnomish, elvish, and halfling kingdoms, duchies, and communities along the Micelgeflowan River as well as the Cir Gap, the Western March, the Western Wilderness, parts of the Eastern March Forest, and a few islands in the Southern Sea.

The Micelgeflowan River valley is bordered by the Onnar and Fullangr Mountains to the north. Between them lies the Cir Gap, a broad cleft in the mountains that is dominated by the Cirelin Lake from which the Micelgeflowan River begins. The Cir Gap is also home to the high elf island kingdom of CIRTOL and the independent city-state of CIRLONN, which includes the mountain dwarf and rock gnome community of CIRABLE. North of the mountains and the Cir Gap is the Lambuletal, a tropical rain forest, and beyond that are the Hringtor Mountains and the Northern Sea. Along the northern shore of the Cirelin Lake is the sparsely populated LAMBULETAL FRONTIER, in which the only permanent settlement of note is the town of Cliff on the northern shore of Cirelin Lake.

South of the Onnar Mountains and west of the MICEL KINGDOMS is the Galarr Forest, a vast forest home to various goblin races. South of the Galarr Forest is the Bay of Nor, and below that is Norwood, another vast goblinoid-dominated forest. The far northwest of Norwood, along the southern mouth of the Bay of Nor is the high plateau known as the Ruins of Nor, home of the Lich-kings who ruled the EMPIRE OF NOR. Little is known of the Gallar Forest and Norwood, and even less is known of the Ruins of Nor, although tales and legends of its powerful artifacts and wondrous magics almost outnumber the tales and legends undead armies, dragons, deadly monsters, and all manner of nameless horrors that reside there.

Stretching south of Norwood along the coast to where the Western Sea meets the Southern Sea is the Western Wilderness, a sparsely populated frontier region dominated by the three coastal city-states of the WESTERN LEAGUE, the CITY OF NOR, VINDSVAL, and SYNDALA. Between the Western Wilderness and the Micelgeflowan valley is the Western March, a region also lightly populated except for the hill dwarf Kingdom of DVARLINN, unique in that it spans a number of underground dwarven holds along with a number of surface dwelling halfling and human farming communities, all connected by a network of fortified and surface roads. 

The northeast region of the Micelgeflowan valley is bordered by the Southern Fullangr Mountains. The eastern region of the MICEL KINGDOMS south of the Southern Fullangr Mountains is the Eastern March Forest, home to the wood elves of THILCAMA and the forest gnomes of the EASTERN BURROWS. It is also home to the Gwathimlad, once the elvish homeland of ALCARINBAR, destroyed some 4,000 years ago in a cataclysmic event the elves call the Uplift.

Off the southern coast of the MICEL KINGDOMS are the halfling island KINGDOM OF KALBATHNOSS and the magocracy of OSSE.

Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! Part 3

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This is part of a series of posts on advice for starting a campaign.
Go to Forget the Tavern: Introduction or to Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! Part 1

In the first two Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! posts, I discussed how I use the That Was Me! activity to start a campaign in media res — with memorable action — and with a party that has a shared history. In those two earlier posts, I focused examples from a D&D campaign. Here, I want to talk about how I used it with a Night’s Black Agents campaign and the changes I made to better fit the context of our NBA game.

Night’s Black Agents That Was Me!

In the Night’s Black Agents game, our campaign frame was based on the organizing trope of Plegane Press’ The Gaean Reach RPG based on Jack Vance’s science fiction series (technically, it was inspired by Kenneth Hite’s article “Call of Chicago: Why Do You Hate Chandler Vaughn?” that applies the trope to other Pelgrane games. In the Gaean Reach, each character has been seriously wronged by an intergalactic criminal known as Quandos Vorn. The point of the game? Quandros Vorn must die! The PCs have banded together because each of them wants to kill Quandros Vorn. At the start of the game, each player gets to name why their character wants Quandros Vorn dead and they get to name one true thing about Quandros Vorn.

In case you don’t know, Night’s Black Agents is ex-intelligence and special forces operatives and criminals gone freelance who discover there is a shadow world behind the shadow world they operate in, and that shadow world is run by vampires.

So, as we began making characters, I told the players there was this figure Örümcek who might be an individual or a name for an organization, and that Örümcek was why they left their old job. Maybe Örümcek framed them and they were fired, or Örümcek killed a loved one and they’ve sworn vengeance, or maybe Örümcek was always two or three steps ahead of the PC, and the rules of their agency kept them hamstrung, unable to do anything but follow Örümcek’s trail of destruction and never able to catch and stop Örümcek. For whatever reason each PC was after Örümcek , the group had come together as they realized each of them believed Örümcek must die. Each chose what Örümcek had done to them personally, and they had a number of That Was Me! summaries to choose from to create a collective back story for their team.

As you can see, these That Was Me! summaries are longer than those I used with the D&D group, and you can also see that I included a question for the player to answer for their That Was Me! The third big difference between what I did for the D&D campaign and for the NBA campaign is that I divided theThat Was Me! summaries into two categories. The first round only included That Was Me! summaries that I wrote, and each of them had to choose one of those. The second round included those written by the players. Unlike the D&D That Was Me! summaries, the ones I used for the first round had specific connections to ideas I had for our campaign — the GM section of the core NBA book includes a chapter on creating a unique vampire (or vampires) for your game. I decided that Örümcek was at war with another vampire group. Whether Örümcek was an individual or a group, I hadn’t yet decided at the start of the game. So, I knowing the basic natures of these vampires, and a rough outline of how the war was being fought — a war in which the PCs were going to learn that they were pawns — I wrote each of the That Was Me! summaries as eventual clues and bread crumbs the agents could follow deeper into the conspiracy.

Here’s a few examples of what I offered them to choose from.

  • Laying low in Triesen, Liechtenstein while the team was trying to access 1873 bank records, you got restless and wound up in the Take 5 Club Lounge. The booze was reasonably priced, the food good, and the billiards tables busy. You were surprised when the bartender slipped you their phone number as you ran out the back after killing a Norwegian satanic biker gang member with a billiard cue. The team cut and ran, and you haven’t been to Liechtenstein since. 
    • Question: What did you do with the number, and what do you know about the bartender who gave it to you?
  • Tracking down a lead, you were given a backstage pass to a Mr. Bungle cover band gig in Venice. After the gig, you waited in the empty green room as instructed, and eventually the singer, still dressed in full clown costume, arrived. They handed you a flash drive and left. On the flash drive was a cipher key, instructing you how to decipher the set list of the band’s gigs. Since then, you’ve received tickets to six other gigs in locations across Europe. Each has given you good intel. For the most recent concert, you received another backstage pass, and like last time, it was just you and the singer, only you realized the person you were meeting wasn’t the singer you saw on stage or the person you met the previous time. When you raised the issue, the clown raised a finger to their lips to indicate silence, and handed you something.
    • Question: What did they give you? And what kind of clue is it?
  • After arriving in Manchester, England you found in your luggage a near-pristine first edition copy of El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman). Throughout the novel, individual letters have been cut out. Someone used gray ink to draw brackets around the section in which Molina recounts the third movie to himself. (You’ve identified the ink as Rohrer & Klingner scabiosa (iron gall dark grey) fountain pen ink. In the middle of the section was a note made of the letters cut out of the novel and glued to a Crane Stationery Wharton card. The message read: “Una historia encantadora, ¿no? Aunque prefiero la cuarta película.” The card was trimmed so that any personalized inscription was removed, and there were no fingerprints or other traces on the book or the card.
    • Question: What do you think the message is trying to tell you?
  • You ran into an old colleague drowning their sorrows at a street cafe in Barri Antic, the old quarter of Andorra la Vella, the capital of the small Pyrenees principality of Andorra. You’re not sure who was more surprised at the chance meeting, especially as you two didn’t like each other. Out of sympathy? Curiosity? Suspicion? You stopped and listened to their tale. They’d been framed for killing their lover. Woke up covered in blood and a knife in their hand. That’s when the visions started. They’re on the run, but they are too tired to keep it up. “The Virgin promised she’d show herself to me, just over there” they said, pointing down the street toward the early medieval Santa Coloma Church. “She didn’t come. Why would the Virgin lie to me?” They then looked you in the eye and said,  “You should go. They will be here soon. The police.” You got up and watched from a distance. It wasn’t three minutes before the police took your former colleague away.
    • Question: Why are you certain your colleague wasn’t lying about the visions?
  • After a botched mission in Bratislava, Slovakia, the team split up and you were caught. You know your cover was blown, only you weren’t sure if they knew who you really were. You were held in a cell with two others, one of whom was asleep when you arrived, while the other barely acknowledged you with a nod and kept silent. Eventually, the sleeping one started shouting about angels. It was clearly a nightmare. When they woke up, they took one look at you and lunged, screaming about you being an angel who had come to kill them. The guards eventually dragged your attacker away as they kept screaming about angels. About 30 minutes later, you were let go. You know the police had you dead to rights, and you have no idea why they let you go.
    • Question: In the bag containing your personal effects was $1,000 in unmarked $100 bills wrapped in paper with a small symbol drawn on it. It was the same symbol you saw tattooed on the back of the neck of the prisoner who had attacked you. What is that symbol?

In Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! Part 4, I’ll talk about how these That Was Me! summaries helped shape our Night’s Black Agents campaign.

Ruins of Malbeth: Religion, Part 3: Pantheon

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This is part of a series of posts on about an old D&D campaign world called Malbeth.
Go to the Ruins of Malbeth: Introduction post or to The Ruins of Malbeth: Religion, Part 1: Animism

The third pillar of Malbeth’s religious practices was a pantheon. As you can see here, I’d begun to revise the pantheon to incorporate elements of Kobold Press’s Midgard, working with the Deep Magic for 5e pdfs and Pathfinder campaign setting before the 5e Kickstarter was launched.

Major Deities of the Pantheon 

NameAlignment/WorshipersDomainSymbolNotes
Bahamut the Dragon GodLawful Good / lawful good, neutral goodLife, LightGolden dragon’s head in profileRepresented as a golden dragon
Baleygr the BrightLawful Neutral / lawful alignmentsLight, KnowledgeBlazing sunRepresented as a female with a blazing sun on her clothing
Tiamat the Dragon GoddessLawful Evil / lawful evil, neutral evilTempest, WarDragon’s head with five clawsRepresented as a five-headed black dragon
Sigrdrifa the ValiantChaotic Good chaotic good, neutral goodNature, WarSpearRepresented as a female warrior with spear
Motsognir the StormChaotic Neutral / chaotic alignmentsTempest, TrickeryForked lightning boltRepresented as a male with a lightning bolt on his clothing
Vargeisa the WolfChaotic Evil / evil alignmentsDeath, TrickeryWolf’s headRepresented as a black wolf
Gunnhrafn the RavenNeutral Good / good alignmentsKnowledge, WarRavenRepresented as a black raven
Simul the EternalNeutral / neutral alignmentsLife, Death, NatureTriangle within a square within a circleRepresented as naked agendered humanoid
Bakrauf the CunningNeutral Evil / neutral evil, chaotic evilTrickery, KnowledgeClosed bookRepresented as a male holding a closed book
Hluti the Weaver (of Fate)Neutral /worshipers of fate, weaversKnowledgeLoomRepresented as loom with a half-finished cloth or tapestry
Moradin the ForgerLawful Good / dwarves, smithsKnowledge, ClockworkHammer and anvilRepresented as dwarven or gnomish smith. Creator of dwarves and gnomes.
Farex the BountifulNeutral / agricultural and food workersNature, BeerAgricultural toolsRepresented by images of harvest or food
Sehanine, elf goddessChaotic Good / elvesKnowledge Crescent moonRepresented as female elf with a crescent moon diadem.
Again, the idea underlying the tripartite religious beliefs of animism, dualism, and a pantheon is all three were entwined. Very few people were a strict animist, dualist, or pantheist.