Month: October 2024

Forget the Tavern: Boons, Part 1

by

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

by

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

by

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.
    ↩︎
  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. 
    ↩︎
  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.
    ↩︎
  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

by

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

by

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