30 Pounds of Graph Paper

Dungeoneering Environments 2

roninkakuhito — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 13:57:30 +0000

A key part of maintaining your play environment is keeping track of time. I write about this because I totally failed at that last night. We started late, which is not exactly uncommon among my group. Most of my players are old friends who don’t see eachother as often as they’d like. Two of them travel at least half an hour to get here. And we had been on Christmas Break hiatus for 4 or so weeks. Then apparently my computer locked up at 10:58. Now my computer is running Ubuntu and I’ve discovered some interesting things that never happened with my windows computers. When a program in Ubuntu locks the screen refresh, it tends to leave my mouse and the laptop’s powersaving mode untouched. So I can move the mouse, or hit the keyboard, the screen pops on. I’ll look and the mouse pointer is moving around, and I generally figure all is well until I try to use a program. This time I was just checking the clock. And the way I was doing it was sort of like:
Check Time
Is Time Before Midnight?
If Yes, oh good, keep playing
If No, End Game
Clear Memory.

I wasn’t paying attention to the number, just that it was constantly before midnight. I should have noticed as several of my players started flagging, but some folks came in tonight already a bit tired. One of the dangers of a Friday Night game. When we finally wrapped up, it was 2:30am. by the clock in the other room. My failure was one of attention, which is very easy to do as a DM. While I was checking the time regularly, I was not paying any real attention to the time I was checking.
Manageing your time use in game is important. It is a key part of maintaining player interest and energy and in my case where my players travel a considerable distance to play, safety.

Book Review: Pathfinder Player Companion Goblins of Golarion

roninkakuhito — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 04:24:18 +0000

Thus far I’ve been quite happy with all of the smaller format books from Paizo that I’ve read, and the Goblins of Golarion is no exception. It is a good resource for a player who wants a goblin PC who really stands out beyond “oh look, Paul is running another monster, what a shock” and helps you play a character whose way of thinking is quite different from that of the more traditional ways. It is full of feats and traits and gear that are uniquely goblin-centric.
But the real strength to my (biased) eyes is as a tool for DMs. The book outlines the psychology of the bloody little sociopaths. It helped me turn a handful of standard low level goblin fights into a memorable event where the party druid’s possession of a wheel of cheese was an important tactical consideration and the goblins managed to shift between comical and terrible effortlessly. I got to sing goblin songs and otherwise mistreat the players.
The book has a lovely section on goblin religion and variant goblin tribes that spawned all sorts of world building ideas which is something that I’ve always considered to make a book pay for itself.
Goblins of Golarion is an inexpensive book that gives a fresh perspective on a bog standard fantasy race and ought to fit into any D&D DM’s library.

NaMoDesMo 17: Cheese Puff Swarm

roninkakuhito — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 04:20:33 +0000

In the Temple of Processed Cheese, dark rituals call forth cheese like horrors from the far realm to serve the twisted ravings of the high priest of Cheese Food. When these summonings occur, sometimes matter from the far realm accompanies the summoned beasts, and one of the most common things to make the passage are the tiny spores of the Cheese Puff. The larval form of a cheese puff is harmless and nearly invisible, taking on the colors of its surroundings. As they grow they feed on local refuse and the toxic by products of other magical experiments. Eventually they grow to the size of a small coins at which point they begin to pupate. Their stationary phase begins to manufacture the cheese powder that gives the adult form its brilliant and unnatural color and the psychotropic effects that allow them to more easily infect new hosts and thus spread.
When the adult form is ready to breed, it sends out a chemical call that attracts all of the adult Cheese Puffs in the area. They swarm toward any warm living body and try to wriggle down its throat. Any cheese puff that manages to do that dissolves in the stomach acid of its victim, leaving behind a mass of eggs that of eggs to attach to the intestinal lining until they hatch, eventually killing the host, which then rots an helps the next generation grow and thrive.

Rime Wraith

roninkakuhito — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 05:03:13 +0000

Active only during the deepest nights of the winter, the Rime Wraiths are malevolent insubstantial beings that feed on the life of living creatures. The appear as nothing more than a low heavy fog with sparkling particles of ice suspended within them. They hunt only at night and during the worst winter blizzards, hiding underground inside the frost hardened soil itself during clear and sunny days. They are migratory predators, moving south with the spreading chill of winter and retreating north to rest within the permafrost through the hot months of the year.

A Rime Wraith will flow up around its victim and drain the life right out of them. They freeze solid , and the surfaces around them become covered in a swirling patterns of frost crystals, and the victims do not thaw completely until all of the frost and snow of the winter has fled the oncomming spring. Then they melt away into an organic sludge, nothing maintaining the solidity of their forms.. A Rime Wraith can enter buildings at will though a lit fire in a stove or or hearth produces enough heat to ward them away, as can a candle or a torch in a much smaller area. Only non-living heat sources seem to harm Rime Wraiths. Isolated Cottages have been found where the owners accidentally let the fire burn out over night and a rime wraith flowed in through chinks in the walls, freezing the inhabitants solid until well after the last frost had passed.

Rime Wraiths are not, as the name implies, undead, but fey creatures of deepest winter and thus bound by the same weaknesses as the fey, if you can find ways to apply them to a non-physical being. The only reliable way to destroy them is with fire, magical or otherwise and desperate hunters have been known to use prey staked out in the center of prepared firewood, or a well sealed abandoned hut that is then put to the torch to destroy a sorrow of Rime Wraiths.

Rime Wraiths are a part of the

Dungeoneering Environments

roninkakuhito — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 12:45:27 +0000

I’m running a game for the first time in more than 4 years now, and that has me thinking about some aspects of gaming that slipped my mind while I was doing this purely theoretically. The biggest is the environment surrounding your dungeons. Specifically how you can manage the environment to get a bunch of excited gamers to focus in on the game itself. I’m running a pathfinder/fate mash up at the moment, so visual representations of where the players are are pretty important. What I’ve done is I’ve set up a large table with a couple of extra leaves so that we have adequate table space. I’ve got solid chairs (which I just bought cushions for. They aren’t bad without them, but the cushions should make them more comfortable for those of me who aren’t, shall we say, skinny. I’m the only stereotypically overweight gamer in the group. The only other person who might weigh 14 stone in the group is quite a bit taller than I am.) So we have chairs that are reasonably comfortable but not so comfortable that people are lounging and falling asleep. I’m not quite back to the place where I am comfortable enough with my dming that having the party scattered across the living room on recliners and couches doesn’t seem like a recipe for disaster. Also, that mostly works better with games that don’t use a play mat. I’ve got one large table, though I am running into the limits of the table’s size already… I sort of want one of those multi-thousand dollar gaming tables designed to organize your play space while still being a good place to game, but my apartment is small enough as is. We don’t have cable, and I have no idea how to turn on the tv. (I could figure it out, but the need for tv has been weak in me for years) I’ve got all sorts of interesting diversions around the room, but they are organized in such a manner that they are visually interesting without being particularly inviting for the person who wants to pick them up (ferex, my wall of board games is just hard enough to access that you have to be intending to play a game to take it down.) I’ve got adequate lighting, though I would like one more very bright lamp in the room in general. And I am slowly developing a side table to put plates of food on. The table is big enough to eat on or to game on, but it really isn’t big enough to eat on and game on and serve food on. That is definitely one issue, make sure you feed your players. Not having a blood sugar crash in the middle of your expository text in the middle of the adventure means that people will be able to pay more attention and they won’t be as likely to wander off mentally while you are giving them the clues their characters will need to survive their attempt to kill the evil overlord. Also, make sure you eat too. As the gm that is essential.
One thing I’d love to try, but that I don’t think would work with this group and this game system is a long low coffee table and a bunch of sumo chairs and pillows. I suspect that it would become giggle o’clock even faster than it does now. With my current group, I have something I call “Giggle o’clock” It is when 2 of my players start looking at each other and giggling in unison. If it goes on for more than about 30 seconds, I know that it is giggle o’clock and I need to wrap up soon because it is late enough that everyone’s attention is about to unravel. You should absolutely try to learn your own party’s signs of these things.

Tactica Talarius 2ma of ?

roninkakuhito — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:43:38 +0000

This next one is a bit less cut and dry than the three Fs. Initiative control is a reasonably powerful tool in your kit. Explicitly, you want your opponents spread out among a wide array of initiatives. In modern warfare, weapons have the ability to strike a target from such a distance that their transit times can be measured in tens of seconds. A modern military may attack a target with weapons stationed hundreds of miles away from each other, and they practice a doctrine called time on target. Different weapons platforms will fire at different times in order to hit a target concurrently. It turns out that massive damage all at once is more effective than spreading that damage out over time. Now given that your party is often going to be outnumbered by their opponents, it makes sense to do two things: cluster the party’s initiatives by delaying and holding actions, and getting your opponents’ actions as broken up as possible. Now there are shades of grey here. Obviously, if the party all acts on the same initiative, then every opponent gets to act before any party member gets to act again, but there is a difference between acting concurrently and acting one after another all in a row. If your DM uses group initiatives for monsters try to discourage that. It is very easy to subconsciously have every initiative group of opponents act in the same manner and use the same targeting priorities, whereas if the DM is treating all of the initiatives separately, he has to consciously choose to apply concentrated fire on one character at a time. It isn’t a huge difference, but it is one that matters. (also splitting initiatives forces buffers and healers to think ahead. If everyone acts at once , the orc shaman can cast bull’s strength right as the barbarian is plowing into your line, where as with individual initiatives, your opponents must strategize.

The Weeping Mothers

roninkakuhito — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:33:42 +0000

This is one of the stranger foci of divinity in Na Essad.
Scattered throughout Na Essad, there are hundreds of enigmatic statues of a woman in the vestments of a unknown cloisterd priesthood. Her features are indistinct and her clothing does not signify any particular order. On the cheeks of each statue there are a pair of stone tears. There are at least 400 known Weeping Mothers in Na Essad, with nearly two thirds of them in isolated chambers and hidden nooks far from any established population. Each of the statues is made of white marble, which is not a native rock in na essad’s basalt walls. They each seem to have grown out of whatever surface they rest on. A weeping mother can only be moved by breaking it free of the surface it sits on, which is no harder than breaking any other similar piece of marble. Inevitably, a relocated Weeping Mother will disappear from the possession of the person who took it, sometimes returning to the place where it was taken, sometimes just disappearing.

Occasionally people thought long dead and items long lost are found resting at the feet of a Weeping Mother. This happens much more frequently in the case of newly arrived Weeping Mothers than in ones that have been in their place for a long time. The people found thus are always in a deep but escapable sleep. They never remember how they got there, and frequently believe it to be shortly after they disappeared.
Another, more grisly aspect of the weeping mothers is that corpses are found beside them from time to time. Some die in their sleep of dehydration and starvation, the found who were not found quite soon enough. Others died a more active death, pummeled or crushed, strangled or cut, rent asunder, bitten, poisoned, drowned, these and more are among the causes of death of those found beside the statues. No matter what signs of struggle there are in the place where they are found, they leave no mark on the Weeping Mothers. A room bathed in the blood of a dozen corpses will leave the Weeping Mother unstained. Blood poured onto a Weeping Mother stains the stone as usual, but when it next goes unobserved, the blood will dissapear.

There are few discernible patterns in who lives and who dies. Elders and children, saints and monsters, all have been found in the presence of the Weeping Mothers, some dead, some alive. The one group of people who are more likely to be found dead than alive is those who would steal or hire someone else to steal a Weeping Mother. They are occasionally found messily dead at the feet of the statue. A person found dead at the feet of a Weeping Mother can not be raised from the dead nor can they be contacted by speak with dead and other similar spells. They are just gone.

Though much is made of the mysterious appearances and deaths associated with the Weeping Mothers, far more common are minor uncanny happenings. Things change around a weeping mother, the contents of a room may be moved, items that are broken repaired and those that are whole sundered. These things never happen while a Weeping Mother is being observed, at least no one has ever told a reliable story of seeing these things happen. The Weeping Mothers themselves are usually stationary, resting in a single spot for years or centuries before suddenly dissapearing, though there are a few cases where a weeping mother has slowly moved through an area, relocating by a few inches at a time , again, never while anyone is watching. Sometimes these events happen while people are present, though never while they are paying attention to the statue. Some believe that the Weeping Mothers do move while being watched, only to slay those who have seen them.

No divinations seem to work on a Weeping Mother. They detect as regular, non-magical stone, and the gods themselves remain quiet as to their nature and purpose. No wards, spells, or fetishes have been proven to keep a Weeping Mother out of an area or locked in that area.

There are several cults devoted to the Weeping Mothers, each believing something different about the Statues. Those cults which believe in the Divinity of the Weeping Mothers often have priests who are granted spells by the object of their faith. No one, save the cultists of the Weeping Mothers, is sure that the magic is granted by the Mothers or by some other entity. The domains associated with the weeping mothers vary with the tenants of the particular cult.

Introduction to the Gods of Na Essad

roninkakuhito — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:20:02 +0000

Though the followers of nearly any god or primordial power throughout the multiverse have at one time or another been stranded in Na Essad, the majority of the people of the cavern worship one of the trapped gods. The gods of Na Essad come in four broad categories: The trapped gods, deities from outside of Na Essad. They seldom last long there. Either they act too overtly and are ensnared by the cavern, locked up eternally, or they become desperate and surrender their godhood so that they might die a mortal’s death and have a chance to pass back into the multiverse. Dozens of gods and primordials have tried this, it is unknown how many have succeeded. The Ascended are gods and primordials who attained divinity while living in Na Essad. It doesn’t happen often, but they do tend to be better at avoiding the attention of the demiplane. Most of the gods with significant followings in Na Essad are Ascended. The third tier is Aspects. Aspects are powerful mortal followers of a deity who, upon death, were offered a chance to house a fragment of the deity’s power and act as a channel of awareness. They lack the full divinity that triggers the traps of Na Essad, but they speak for their gods, and when they die, they are drawn through the realm of death to report on what is happening in the demiplane. Aspects often seem to be normal people until they are called upon to do exceptional deeds. Often, an aspect is revealed when their mortal guise is struck down. The fourth sort of object of worship is trapped supernatural creatures. Powerful demons, unattached angels, a few trapped fey, and other sorts of powerful creatures that can grant their followers boons. The worship of mortals empowers them, and in response they can gain the abilities to grant the same sorts of boons as a deity.

Character Backgrounds

roninkakuhito — Thu, 19 May 2011 02:40:37 +0000

So I love creating some character backgrounds, but no one wants a 5 page wall of text. A while ago I found a questionnaire online. You are supposed to fill it out in a few minutes, and you don’t have to fill them all out. I, admittedly, spent more than 10 minutes on it.

After I give the list I’ll post my answers for the character that got me to look for it.

Step 1: Write 5 background and concept elements that you feel are important to your image of the

character. These can be a concept overview, a list of important life events, a physical description, a personality profile…whatever you need to get an image in your mind. 5 is just a minimum…more elements are encouraged!

Step 2: List at least two goals for the character. At least one of these goals should be one that the character has, while another should be one that you, as a player, want to see developed over the course of the game.

Step 3: List at least two secrets about your character. One is a secret the character knows, one is a secret that involves him but that he is not actually aware of yet. This will help me in creating plots that center around your character.

Step 4: Describe at least three people that are tied to the character. Two of them are friendly to the character, one is hostile. If you like, you can include an enemy of yours here as well, so I have an instant NPC nemesis to throw at you.

Step 5: Describe three memories, mannerisms, or quirks that your character has. They don’t have to be elaborate, but they should provide some context and flavor.

Affiliations:

While not aligned with any particular Church, Nikodemos works alongside the Shadowguard, a joint project of the Churches of Pelor and Heironeous. He occasionally aids the guard and brings challenges that are too large for him to their attention.

Step 1: Write 5 background and concept elements that you feel are important to your image of the

Character: He wants to get to the point where he and Sigurn can be working on the same goals again.

Character: The world is getting darker, but he will hold the line here and now.

Known: Nikodemos and his wife are both members of an organization devoted to stop reality incursions. There are things beyond the worst parts of the universe that try to weaken the walls between reality by creating fear and parodoxes.

Unknown:

Allies

Sigrun Fidelis- Wife, LG Half Elf Rogue 3. Sigrun is a dedicated crusader against the darkness, but while Nikodemos tends to go out of his way to let the fallen redeem themselves, his wife is a little more practical. At present, she is working with the priests of Beccob to find a cell of followers of Vecna that ransacked a library-temple. Though their methods, their devotion to the light and their love for each other pulls them together and helps them form an effective team. While currently their duties keep them from fighting side by side, the day will come where they might face the darkness as a team.

Ulric Iovan LN Cleric 3 (Darkness and Travel Ulric is a Cleric devoted to a captive demigoddess known only as the Raven Queen. He receives his spells from his devotion, not from his queen, and fights to someday release her. Her captor is the god of the Dead, Neyrull, so he has his work cut out for him, but his interest overthrowing the dark lord of the dead in favor of the winter queen and lady of death means that he is often working toward the same purposes as Nikodemos. Where Neyrull is an actively malignant entity with mastery over the dead, the Raven Queen is neutral and if she overthrew her captor, she would be a goddess of death not the dead. Ulric comforts the dying and those who have lost, and faces the forces of darkness on their own ground. His devotion also brings him in conflict with the followers of Orcus. They see in each other kindred spirits and powerful allies, even if they don’t always see eye to eye on methods.

Enemies

While Nikodemos is a man of peace, his beliefs do not allow him to stand aside and allow evil to flourish. This makes him many friends, and more than a few enemies.

Grall CE Ogre Priest of Erythnul. Grall was the leader of a marauding band of ogres that wiped out several isolated villages during Nikodemos’s noviate. His teacher Eric Silverbright brought him and his other novice Theodis Giddeon out into the borderlands to stop the Ogre band. In their first forray against the ogrish forces, Theodis was captured and dragged off. They waged a several week long campaign to slay the ogres and retrieve their friend. Eric and Nikodemos defeated Grall’s war band, but Grall and his elite guard proved to be too much for the two paladins. Eric ordered him to flee and warn the local nobility about the band of elite ogres while he turned to hold them in place long enough for him to have a hope. When he returned with a band of knights, his mentor was tied to a tree, dead, with his entrails draped across the ground, and though there were several dead ogres near by, their leader and much of his guard still remained. He found no sign of Theodis.

Theodis LE Fallen Paladin/Fighter Nikodemus thought that his friend and ally had died at the hands of the ravaging ogre priest Grall, but something far worse happened. He was tortured until he went insane and then converted to the worship of evil and death. He has become a force of destruction and tyrrany across much of the realm, though fortunately as of yet he has failed to acchieve sufficient power to be a major threat. Nikodemus has faced him three times since his fall, with one fight going for him, one going for his enemy, and one ending in a draw. Theodis allowed his old friend to live after their first encounter, and he escaped his bindings and fled when Nikodemos captured him after their third fight.

Step 5: Describe three memories, mannerisms, or quirks that your character has. They don’t have to be elaborate, but they should provide some context and flavor.

Nikodemos is fierce in the protection of others, but quick to offer quarter when the threat is solely to himself.

He is unwilling to start a fight without challenging his opponents, but he is more than willing to let his challenge get his allies into position to take maximum tactical advantage and get in their best blows if talking fails.

“Yes. Paladin. Good Guy. Notice. Good. Not Stupid.”

“I ask you again to surrender. There is no shame in defeat when faced with the overwhelming light of justice.”

“That one, that one, and that one are mine. You can have the rest.”

“You have us outnumbered 3:1. That hardly seems sporting. Do you have any friends you could call to even this fight up?”

“You have heard the prayer ‘May the gods stand between you and harm in all the dark places you must walk’? Well, they are busy, so they sent me.”

Book Review: Misfit Monsters Redeemed

roninkakuhito — Tue, 10 May 2011 18:08:17 +0000

I’ve wanted to check this book out for a while, and while I was in my FLGS to pick up a copy of the Shadowfell boxed set, there it was, sitting on the shelf. This is part of the Pathfinder “Revisited” line, a book that was essentially developed on a dare after the success of “Classic Monsters Revisited” and Dungeon Denizens Revisited” The premise is “let’s take some of the dumbest monsters in D&D history, stat them out for Pathfinder without changing their abilities much, and make them interesting and usable creatures by writing evocative flavor text. The book tries to give a new take on the Adherer (a sticky mummy), the Delver (a giant stone dissolving slug), the Dire Corby (flightless bird men), the disenchanter (a camel thing that eats magic), the Flail Snail (A giant snail with 4 flail eyestalks and a magic resistant shell), the flumph (um, a flumph), the lava child (a mixed humanoid elemental with a scary grin), the executioner’s hood, lurkers, and trappers above (3 ambush predators that aren’t quite mimics), the Tojanida (crab turtle monsters), and Wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing (a tree stump that uses dead prey as lures for new prey) Some of these reboots are better than others, but all in all it does a fairly good job. I really want to use Tojanida, flumphs, and disenchanters in a game, and the other creatures are at least interesting ranging to intriguing. My one complaint about the book is how often these creatures are said to have “racial memories” instead of having to learn things. As a mechanic, it is fun for any one of the creatures that has it, but when several creatures in a short book all rely on racial memories, it makes them not special. I didn’t really love the Wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, though the story idea of them being a creation of the extramultiversal outsiders trying to gain access to the realm of fairy. That is really the best part about this book, each of the races has some actual reason to exist and potential utility in the story of a game, (<3 the Flumph harbingers of doom and the mad erratic Tojanida.)

All in all, the book is easily worth 20 bucks and I will probably be buying copies of at least the Classic Monsters, Classic Horrors, and Dungeon Denizens.