honestly care that much about. The artificiality of companions in 5e bothers me in general so I'm much more likely to take a subclass that doesn't include them. The ranger, regardless of subclass, has a bigger problem: it eliminates the thing that should be it's spotlight.
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
A (Hopefully) Unique Complaint About the 5e Ranger
honestly care that much about. The artificiality of companions in 5e bothers me in general so I'm much more likely to take a subclass that doesn't include them. The ranger, regardless of subclass, has a bigger problem: it eliminates the thing that should be it's spotlight.
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
More Adventures in Cuccagna!
From out of the past comes a legend - a legend of a mysterious island of wizards called... Cuccagna! The greatest wizard in mortal memory, Prospero the White, created this land of eternal summer, where strange beasts and stranger people roam endless, enchanted gardens. Then, in a fit of madness, he divided himself into many parts and spread them amongst the island - a Prospero for every color! Now you have been invited to explore this strange isle. Delve into the depths of the Lapis Vaults, last refuge of wizard gone mad! Battle the cult of Apollyon, beautiful demon father of snakes! Rob the House of the Gnoles, where no other thief is brave enough to tread! Raid the Palace of the Sea King, where mermaids swim through the very air! Cuccagna is a sandbox campaign inspired by the fiction of Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, and William Shakespeare. Players will take the role of adventurers in a hex crawl and dungeon campaign on a strange island full of wonderous wizards and beasts from medieval legend. The games rules are based on Old School essentials with custom classes for non-humans and rogues. HIGH ADVENTURE IN THE LAND OF PLEASANT LIVING!
So if you're up for it, why don't you join us?
Stocking Procedure Appendix: Playful Void
A little after I posted my stocking procedure, Idle Cartulary at Playful Void posted hers. I find hers very interesting because it helps with initial ideas about what the rooms are going to be, which I sometimes struggle with. I was also pretty sure that they could be used in tandem and so I've decided to do some very simple (and probably fairly dumb) math to see how that would work out.
My procedure is based on the idea that a dungeon will be 30 rooms. Hers is based on the idea that the smallest area* she'd be stocking is ~6 rooms and the largest is ~12. Makes sense to me. Going down her list I find that my usual 30 room dungeon would have 11 monsters - one more than I usually would have - and probably 10 treasures - the number I would normally have - so the math is about the same.
Therefor one could easily combine our methods by populating her rooms with stuff from the lists you'd make for my method. Neat!
Notably her method also works extremely well for geomorphs or the complexes from the Pettigrew Selections, both of which I've recommended using before as the basis of a megadungeon.
Shorter than usual from me, but I wanted to see if the two could be combined because I think her method could vastly improve the speed of my stocking.
*There usually being multiple areas a level.
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Jennell Jaquays Memorial Campaign
Friday, January 12, 2024
Jennell Jaquays Memorial Game Jam
Sunday, January 7, 2024
Games to Run Before I Die
Recent events in my life have made me think about things I'd be mad about in Hell if I didn't do them before I die. Some of them include games I want to run. There are also games I'd be ok with playing, but my favorite roll is definitely Referee and even playing in them would largely just make me want to run them. So here are the ones I want to make sure I run before I die:
Aquelarre
In the lost days of G+ I waxed poetic about how much I wanted it to be translated into English and when it finally was I put my money where my mouth was. I am apparently even the first non-Spanish speaker to make something for the game. I've still not gotten to run it. My players have wanted me to use it for the World of Nightwick, largely to keep me from switching campaigns and to keep me focused on my baby. This makes a certain sense - there is some overlap in terms of historical material culture and devilry - but a lot of the mystique of the game to me is in the historical setting.
Though that comes with its own perils. I am far more versed in medieval France than Spain and would probably want to run it in the Languedoc, but that is probably a way to procrastinate and make the game impossible for me to run while convincing myself it's going to be easier. This is a common ailment among DMs.
I may be able to overcome this one as I have asked if some of my regular players would be open to playing it on Candlemas, but I'm worried the scenario I have devised is too big for a single session.
Pendragon
Oh hey another medieval historical one. So shocking! Specifically I want to run the Great Pendragon Campaign with it. It might be a good year to start what with Chaosium putting out a new edition, but promotional material says that they're cutting the Uther parts out of the GPC and I'm a bit sad about that.
I just worry my ADHD and "gamer ADD" will mean that any attempt to start this up will be doomed to failure. However I've been running Nightwick for almost 80 sessions now so who knows.
This is likely a lot of people's white whale. It's one of mine.
Kult
I doubt it will surprise anyone that I'm a big Clive Barker fan, and Kult seems to be "Clive Barker the RPG." The newer PBTA version is very outside my wheelhouse but I also sort of want to try it because of that. I suppose I might be ok playing in this one, but I also have a scenario idea for it that I think is suitably dark.
Karse
Karse is my "Shittye Englande" setting. This one isn't that different from the Dark Country if I'm honest, which is probably why I haven't run it yet. However, I bellyfeel its vibes very strongly and it combines a lot of the things that got me interested in fantasy in the first place.
Barrows filled with bogeys, lots of fog, turf houses, the king of the faeries. That sort of thing.
There are a few others I thought about including here - Harn, the Enemy Within, Masks of Nyralthotep - but I figured if I ran Aquelarre or Pendragon I probably wouldn't feel bad for never running Harn, WFRP has lost some of its shine for me recently as I've decided the kind of city shenanigans games I like to run with it work perfectly well in D&D, and I'd probably rather play Masks than run it.
I'll probably revisit this in a few months and see if I still agree with it.
Monday, November 6, 2023
My Stocking Procedure
Step 1: I take the map I am going to use (whether drawn by me or someone else) and count the number of rooms - excluding sub-rooms that are marked with letters. 2 gets counted; 4a-4d is all just one room. I take this number and divide it by 3, possibly rounding up or just adding one if I'm feeling frisky that day. This is the number of monster encounters I will spread throughout the dungeon. It's also the number of treasures I will place. To get the number of traps, I divide the new number by 2. Easy peasy.
- Boss
- Miniboss
- Miniboss
- Grunt
- Grunt
- Grunt
- Mook
- Mook
- Mook
- Mook
I decide what each of these encounters is going to be so that a level one dungeon might have...
- Boss: Ogre
- Miniboss: Grey Ooze
- Miniboss: Tarantella
- Grunt: Ghoul
- Grunt: Orc
- Grunt: Orc
- Mook: Goblin
- Mook: Goblin
- Mook: Stirge
- Mook: Skeletons
- 1 Ogre
- 1 Grey Ooze
- 1 Tarentella
- 2 Ghouls
- 4 Orcs
- 3 Orcs
- 6 Goblins
- 8 Goblins
- 10 Stirges
- 10 Skeletons
I generate the treasures assuming 250 x Dungeon Level or Assumed Level of Adventure for the treasure parcel. If I have a lair from step 3 I instead use the treasure type conversion guide in the doc. I count 19s as well as 20s as magic because that seems more fun to me but your mileage may very, as they say. For half the hoards I roll the size of the hoard without modifiers, but knowing half the hoards will be ungraded I only generate those as 1d3 parcels.
Step 5: I spread the monsters and treasure among various rooms, having half the monsters not have treasure (other than perhaps pocket change I'd roll in session) and having half the treasure be unguarded by monsters.
Thus ends the stocking procedure. I of course add specials and tricks and dungeon decor, but that stuff is harder to make procedures for.
If you want to know why I have such a rigid schema, it's because it 1) Quiets the Voices in my head. This is it's primary function but 2) it works. I am at least going to get a solid session (or more likely several) if I follow this procedure.