Gary Whitten
Elves, Shipbuilding and Forestry
In my homebrew world I have my elves thriving on a continent they have to themselves. In order to protect it, there is a substantial navy. I read an article about the USS Constitution needing 60 acres of forest to be clear cut to build her (different types of wood for different purposes of course).
Oviously that’s in mid/late 18th century on Earth; in my game, there are only three greatships (think Santa Maria) in various levels of construction and those need rather less wood to build.
That being said, in a magical society that reveres the forest, how would you handle the balancing of the need for vast amounts of wood vs keeping lush forests? I asked this question in an online forum and here is a post discussing all the answers that came up.
Forestry (with Magic)
By and large, the most common response was some variant traditional mundane forest management supplemented by magical spells available in whatever game system you’re playing in.
Cut to thin, not to clear-cut
The general concept is that some trees are removed to allow nearby trees to flourish. The remaining trees get more of what they need to grow because they are no longer competing for them with the removed tree. It can be a bit harder to pull out full trees between other trees than clear-cutting but nothing that competent foresters can handle.
Plant as you cut
As you cut trees, plant more. It isn’t out of the question for some societies, especially those who revere forests, to have their own tree nurseries. Planting young trees as others are cut is a good way to ensure the forest continues to thrive.
Forests grown for harvesting
If thinning isn’t going to provide sufficient wood, or the wood isn’t near where it might be needed, plant forests just for the sake of harvesting. In my campaign, there is such a forest not far from one of the shipyards. It has a number of different types of trees in it because different parts of the ship need different types of wood. The elves plant them in certain arrangements beneficial to all the species inloved. I didn’t feel the need to really to think out that arrangement myself, I mean, they’re the elves and they know better than I do, right?
This type of arrangement is very beneficial as it leaves the homeland forests untouched, at least for the potentially great needs of the ship builders. The ship builders, having the forests close at hand, can select the trees they need personally without straying too far from their shipyards.
Magically-enhanced forestry
All of the methods described above can benefit from spells that enhance the growth of plants and trees. In many fantasy settings and rule systems, there are classes or professions that can enhance the growth of plants, usually something akin to a druid. With spells that enhance the growth of plants or affect the weather, many plants and trees can see exceptional growth, perhaps taking decades off their growing times. Often, these spells have an effective area that increases the more powerful the spell caster is leaving those casters in great demand, possibly even having their training sponsored by families, clans or companies that require large amounts of wood.
Don’t use wood cut from elven forests
The general ideas presented along these lines were about trading for the wood from other cultures and/or using deadwood branches or trees that fell on their own to make whatever is needed. There are more than a few permutations, like anything else really, how this could work but primarily elves have things other races want and could use that to trade for wood they could use to build things without having to despoil their precious forests. Fallen deadwood could then be used to make smaller pieces of the ships such as things in the interior.
Treesingers, Sungwood, and Shaped Growth
Many people pointed out that some fantasy cultures from books and games have those that could ‘sing’ wood into being something useful for building ships. This could be as simple as urging a tree to extra tall, broad, or straight or as complex as asking the tree to grow a specific piece of a ship. Such a piece could be a curved rib that goes between the keel and the deck, to which the hull planks are then attached to. Communication between the shipwrights and the singers would be crucial as the ribs wouldn’t all be the same size and would vary depending on where they were along the hull.
Depending on what the need is, the singers could use different songs. A simple song of health and strength could be used for accelerating growth or promoting strength or breadth. However, a song asking for a specific part would likely need to be far more complex, needing to describe the details of the needed part. Alternatively, telepathy could be used; the singer could link with the shipwright and the tree to convey the need to the tree in a more exacting way.
The ultimate extension of such techniques would be the entire ship being ‘built’ directly from trees. This would likely entail many singers, perhaps orchestrated a ‘grand master’ singer who guides all of them and is the interface with the shipwright, or is the shipwright themselves.
The ships would likely be built in the middle of, and from, a group of trees of varying types. Evergreens, for example, have been prized over the centuries for masts and could be sung to grow the necessary spars and such as branches in the proper places. Several ironwood could be persuaded to grow low and parallel to the ground to lay the keel, and so on. Your world could have special woods suitable for such a purpose, or maybe they will after you’re done reading this article.
Magical items intended for ships could be incorporated into grown ships. Something like having vines grown out of a tree to hold such an item in place until the trees assimilate them into the overall ship entity, which would then gain the benefits from the item. If this were to be in my own campaign, I would probably have extra, and higher, difficulty checks to do this kind of thing, probably scaling with the power of the items to be incorporated. To avoid this check, the items themselves could be created with this kind of melding in mind, and the extra difficulty is on the item being made, and not the incorporation into the ship.
Ships as a Living Being
Another popular suggestion was to have the ship themselves be alive, which doesn’t automatically mean sentient. There wasn’t a lot of input in how it exactly became alive although some attributed it to the above process of outright growing the ship.
Alternatively, various rites and rituals by druids and elders of the elves could be used, imbuing the ship with Olde Magicke or some such. This could be done as each piece is harvested or grown, if it is an assembled ship or if a grown ship, periodically during its growth.
An extreme example would be an elf willingly giving up his or her life and having their soul bound to the ship. Some cultures could have such elves identified in prophecies, at birth or in childhood, by means of some desirable trait and thereafter the elf is raised with the purpose of being bonded to a ship. Special training could be imparted on the elf that could be transferred to the ship like self-healing or direction sense, allowing the ship to repair itself or never be lost. Something less drastic would be an elf, tired of living, could choose to bond with a ship willingly and thus escape the (im)mortal coil yet with a new purpose.
Captain Bonds with Ship
A related idea that I really liked was that the captain bonded with the ship, Likely would need some sort of blood ritual or other significant means to do so. This would then allow the captain and ship to ‘feel’ each other. This might allow the ship to wake the captain if it detected, say, a skiff with a boarding party in the dead of night trying to sneak aboard or, perhaps, the presence of large or unnatural creatures nearby as it traverses the boundless ocean, far from shore.
Such things are not without a cost, however, and the ship and captain cannot be separated by too much distance or each will suffer ill effects. If the captain dies (especially suddenly), the ship will surely suffer deep mental anguish and perhaps its own soul will perish as well unless extreme measures are taken. If the captain wanted to retire, the captain would have to find a replacement that would have to be approved by the ship. The bonding rituals for the new captain would need to be performed and, perhaps, some for the separation of the retiring captain from the ship. There are so many possible situations that the GM would likely need to make it up on the fly (which is, of course, what GMing is all about).
The Kitchen Sink (or the Galley Basin)
There were many other ideas/concepts that were tossed out that I thought deserved a mention as they may spark ideas for your campaign so here is where they’re presented.
What’s the Hurry? Elves and trees can live centuries, so what’s the rush? In truth, there’s a lot of merit to this concept and definitely there are elven cultures that would definitely do this.
Trunks Grow Anew One idea I thought was interested that a trunk of a cut tree could be coaxed into growing a completely new tree. In theory, since the root structure was already in place, the tree could devote most of its energy in growing up rather than some up and some down as a tree normally does. Likely, this concept would need some special care during the harvesting of the tree to allow the trunk to do this, and then further encouragement for a year or five to get the process going.
Crystal Ships/Don’t Use Wood A number of people mentioned various game systems and rule sets that had ships made of crystal or other substances. Other substances mentioned included silver or a light stone.
I protest! Several people mentioned protesters that were objecting to, or trying to protect, various facets of the discussion. Reading the topics above, there are a number of them that could easily be the subject of protests. The binding of souls to a ship, making a ship living in the first place, even the use of trees from the sacred forests in armed ships – all of these could be grounds for a protest of some sort.
Carve It / Enlarge It – There were a couple of people who suggested some sort of a carving/manufacturing of a small version of a ship and then using spells to increase the size of it. There’s only so much one can do with a something so small so likely some refitting would be necessarily once the correct size was achieved. Multiple spells may be needed, if allowed, to get it to the proper size.
Polymorph / Fabricate / Something? – The suggestions for this idea were basically take something else and magically transform it into what you needed. Nothing fancy but the scope of a full-sized vessel might be a bit daunting for these spells.
Use in Campaign
For me, I was doing some fictional writing and that’s where most of what I came up with will be used. One of the elven characters in my campaign knows the family who runs the shipyard I was writing about but that’s about the extent of it. For you and your campaign, it could be a similar thing; a small blip of background but it could also be so much more if the bent of your campaign(s) were more aligned. A couple of thoughts on that are:
The party encounters an adolescent teen who is running away from her family and culture. as she doesn’t want to endure her destiny of being the soul of a ship
The party encounters trees of seriously bizarre shapes. As they examine them, they encounter a tree signer who explains what she does and then mentions an odd magic blight, and maybe you can help?
The party is asked to sail on a ship bound for elven lands to protect its cargo of wood.
The party encounters some druids distraught over some trees in the forest that they claim are too precious to be cut, and are putting their lives between the trees and those who would harvest them.
Wrap Up
The information in here, like so many other gaming material, can be used in so many ways. Nothing above has to be used as is, and I’d be honestly shocked if it was. I have this premise in my mind that there are very few truly new ideas/concepts. Rather, it is which ones you choose to use, how you combine them, and how you implement them in your game. So take the ideas above, toss them into the wondrous pot known as your brain where you have all your gaming stuff, the books you’ve read and smoothly mix it into your campaigns, stir gently and then let it simmer and see what comes out.
What’s in a Village? (part 2)
Intro
Part one delved into many of the places that might be in a village and a bit on how a village might be placed in relation to larger communities or perhaps castles. This part will explore the people who populate a village.
The Basics – People in the Places
It goes without saying that most of the places you put in your village will need to have people placed in them. How deep you make them is, of course, totally up to you just like anything else in your campaign. Few things are more frustrating than creating an amazing setting, full of life, people living their daily lives while underneath are plots, rumors and undercurrents for the party to explore only to have them fixate on some insignificant NPC that was just passing through that you never even assigned a name to. In a later post, making your villages reusable will be explored so as to preserve your hard work when this happens.
It goes without saying that most of the places you put in your village will need to have people placed in them. How deep you make them is, of course, totally up to you just like anything else in your campaign. Few things are more frustrating than creating an amazing setting, full of life, people living their daily lives while underneath are plots, rumors and undercurrents for the party to explore only to have them fixate on some insignificant NPC that was just passing through that you never even assigned a name to. In a later post, making your villages reusable will be explored so as to preserve your hard work when this happens.
As previously discussed, it’s nice to have ‘something’ stick about each village (or town, etc) your party passes through, so try to make at least a couple people or places stand out in some manner or fashion. Think of your family, friends, coworkers, or even strangers you interact with throughout the day. What makes each unique? There are so many things to choose from. Some examples: how they dress, laugh, walk, or talk are different mannerisms someone might have. What about personal appearance? Hair or eye color, hair style, tattoos, missing body parts can all highlight one NPC over the rest. Watching random people can be very inspiring for creating your world’s cast of characters.
When you go to create the people in your places, you want to keep your world’s background and concepts in mind. For example, in earlier centuries in the Real World, people had (much) larger families than they do today. There were a number of reasons for this, but largely due to infant and childhood mortality rates being very high. Sometimes only one in five children would make it to adulthood. Whether or not you consciously have this in your world, you may want to have an idea of average family size for each race just to make it smoother creating later.
As morbid as it might sound, it’s also an opportunity for roleplay encounters. For example, after passing by Grick’s pig farm, you inform your party that they see a screaming and crying boy of about ten years old yelling ‘Ma! Pa! Jynnie got stuck bad!’ as he races down the road. The party hurries to investigate and you find a teen girl on death’s door, huge gashes in her side, being hugged by other kids screaming ‘Please don’t die!’. Your party now has the chance for a simple heroic deed, probably with the simplest cure spell your cleric has.
Getting back to family size, when you create a family-run farm for example, you’ll want to have an appropriate number of kids, more younger than older. You may also want to consider multiple generations under the same roof, or at least on the same property; grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins are all possibilities. “Ye need potatoes? Go round back of the small barn and see old Sarl. Go easy with him, he’s my mom’s brother and ain’t been right after that bugbear smacked him in the head twenty-odd summers back”
It goes without saying that most of the places you put in your village will need to have people placed in them. How deep you make them is, of course, totally up to you just like anything else in your campaign. Few things are more frustrating than creating an amazing setting, full of life, people living their daily lives while underneath are plots, rumors and undercurrents for the party to explore only to have them fixate on some insignificant NPC that was just passing through that you never even assigned a name to. In a later post, making your villages reusable will be explored so as to preserve your hard work when this happens.
As previously discussed, it’s nice to have ‘something’ stick about each village (or town, etc) your party passes through, so try to make at least a couple people or places stand out in some manner or fashion. Think of your family, friends, coworkers, or even strangers you interact with throughout the day. What makes each unique? There are so many things to choose from. Some examples: how they dress, laugh, walk, or talk are different mannerisms someone might have. What about personal appearance? Hair or eye color, hair style, tattoos, missing body parts can all highlight one NPC over the rest. Watching random people can be very inspiring for creating your world’s cast of characters.
When you go to create the people in your places, you want to keep your world’s background and concepts in mind. For example, in earlier centuries in the Real World, people had (much) larger families than they do today. There were a number of reasons for this, but largely due to infant and childhood mortality rates being very high. Sometimes only one in five children would make it to adulthood. Whether or not you consciously have this in your world, you may want to have an idea of average family size for each race just to make it smoother creating later.
As morbid as it might sound, it’s also an opportunity for roleplay encounters. For example, after passing by Grick’s pig farm, you inform your party that they see a screaming and crying boy of about ten years old yelling ‘Ma! Pa! Jynnie got stuck bad!’ as he races down the road. The party hurries to investigate and you find a teen girl on death’s door, huge gashes in her side, being hugged by other kids screaming ‘Please don’t die!’. Your party now has the chance for a simple heroic deed, probably with the simplest cure spell your cleric has.
Getting back to family size, when you create a family-run farm for example, you’ll want to have an appropriate number of kids, more younger than older. You may also want to consider multiple generations under the same roof, or at least on the same property; grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins are all possibilities. “Ye need potatoes? Go round back of the small barn and see old Sarl. Go easy with him, he’s my mom’s brother and ain’t been right after that bugbear smacked him in the head twenty-odd summers back”
People Outside of the Places
There’s almost always going to be people outside of the ‘usual places’ that you’ve already whipped up for your village. Some of examples of these people are reclusive mages, rangers and druids in the woods, healer on the edge of town who concocts remedies from local plants, woodsmen who hate civilization, maybe even a lady of the evening somewhere.
Like the people around town, each of them will have their own life going on with a roof (probably), a family (perhaps), talents, daily routines, likes, and dislikes so you’ll probably want to fill those in as you’re writing.
Making your Village (or something else) Reusable
Rotate the Map / Directions
One of the easiest things you can do is rotate the village map, which your region map may force you to do anyhow. If your players are heading northwest towards the Nvelk forest and come through the village, the main road will likely go something like southeast to northwest. If your party decides to push right through and not stop for all the roleplay goodness you packed in there, you can place it again near the Ospaa Swamp, where the road is generally west to east.
Flip the map
This is easier if you have your maps in electronic form, but you could just flip to a mirror image of your map. You can flip it either horizontally or vertically. Your road that was going 60 degrees left off the main road is now on the right. The small river on the top side of the map is now on the bottom, etc. It may be hard to do a key at the top of your notes for this, so just carefully go through them and change any references to the changes you made.
Placeholder Labels
When you write your notes, instead of putting in a reference to the Eldt River, just put in RIVER. The same for things like roads, forests, notable landscape items. Then, when you go to place your village, you can fill the various landmarks near it.
Move Roads or Landmarks
Side roads, notable hills, or similar landmarks can be moved around if needed to alter the look and feel of a village. This really only needs to be done if you mentioned the item while the party was busily ignoring the awesomeness of your creations.
Extra Names/NPCs
When you’re creating your village for the first time, you might consider creating extra names for NPCs. It could be a pool of extra names or extra names for each specific NPC. Generally, the more individualized or significant NPCs should have a pool of their own so you can choose those with more care. Farmers, their kids, tavern/inn staff members, and other more generic NPCs would be more likely to pull from a pool of extra names.
Where Did I Use This?
If your memory is anything like mine, you may want to consider a page/entry at the beginning of your notes on the place to log different things mentioned below. Consider it similar to a changelog page in a technical document. This way, you can better keep track of what you put where and not confuse the players, especially that one who has the ridiculously sharp memory.
Each entry would include at least:
* Where the village was placed.
* What was the village name.
* How the map was oriented.
* What were the placeholder names.
* Where you put the roads/landmarks
* Names of encountered NPCs.
Wrap Up
There’s a whole lot of ideas in here. Some of them will resonate with you and some won’t; it’s the way of things. Like any other game concepts or methodologies, use what you think works best for you and discard the rest. I certainly don’t prepare the same way I did two, ten, or twenty years ago. It’s an always evolving process, and I hope that some of this is useful enough to you to add into yours. Happy Gaming!
What’s in a Village? (part 1)
Intro
Of all of the types of places you have in your world, few will be more numerous than the common village. Communities of roughly four to nine hundred people, they exist near crossroads, water sources, and natural resources. Some will eventually grow into towns and some will dwindle away into a collection of abandoned, overgrown, buildings and others may simply exist for centuries as they are.
One of the hardest things in running a game is to make common things distinct and memorable and have people and places make an impression with the players. Not every place needs to do that, of course, but it’s always nice when you mention a name of a village, you see blank faces, and then someone says ‘Oh yeah, where Baclan lives!’ and everyone’s face lights up with recognition.
The Basics – The Places
In the era in which fantasy games are run, there is no refrigeration, fast transportation of goods or any modern conveniences whatsoever. This is obvious, of course, but what it means is that almost everything perishable for daily life has to be brought to market (if not sold directly from the source), wait to be sold, brought back to the buyer’s place, and used before it spoiled. Generally, this isn’t a concern, but if you’re laying out a region, say around a castle or city, you may want to keep this in mind.
Everyone needs to eat, so there’s a lot of farms. They likely grow a little bit of everything, have a variety of livestock so that they can have their own supply of food and then extra to sell. The proximity of your village to a large town or city may affect just how many farms there are, how big they are, or both. The reason for this is that such towns and cities will need to import most of their food from nearby farmers. Some farmers will specialize in something, whether it’s a certain type of livestock or specific crop, that’s up to you. You don’t have to really make a point about trying to figure everything out but if you want, you can have your party ride past a spacious fenced-in area of sparse forest and see several sizeable hogs fattening themselves up, and then meet Grick, the pig farmer as you pass his barn.
Like food, everyone needs water, so put a well in a few central locations. Many farms will also have their own so if you’re detailing a specific farm then add one in. Unlike in larger communities, the water in a village is probably reasonably clean and safe to drink, especially if the townsfolks have a druid or wizard/sage advising them to have the tanner and other such businesses downstream from the village or on the fringe of the community.
Various shops and laborers will be in a village as well. Weavers/seamstresses, leatherworkers, tanners, ropemakers, smiths, sawmills, cart makers – all may be in a village but each village may not have everything. For some things, your players might hear ‘Nay, ye need to visit Alzid over in Baer’s Crossing east of here. She’s on the far side of town, mind ye’.
There’s going to be at least one tavern, probably two or three depending on how spread out the village is, and likely an inn as well. The inn will likely be along the main road going through town to be easily accessible to travelers passing through. Each of these locations is a possible location for you to put a community board for quests, rumors, etc. It’s up to you if each of these has their own brewer or not. It’s also possible there is at least one independent brewer in town. In the Real World, many brewers in the medieval period were women (hence the word alewife), so these brewers may be the wife of someone else or a single woman making her own way in your world. Similarly, you can add a distiller or even a vintner to your village. You might also add a cooper to the village to provide containers for the beverages, rain water, nails, etc.
Many villages have a larger building or two in the center of town that can be used for different purposes throughout the year. For instance, a sizeable room could be used for festivals, parties, or village meetings but also for group protection in a weather emergency or goblinoid invasion. Smaller rooms in the same building could be used by village elders for basic government functions. If the geography allows for basements to be dug out, that could hold emergency food or equipment stores, maybe even a jail cell or two. These types of buildings are also possible locations for a community board.
Also in the center, you may find some fields set aside for mutual grazing, often called ‘commons’, one of the previously mentioned wells should be located here if you add them.
Other miscellaneous buildings that might be found in a village is a granary to store community food, mills (water, wind or both), or shrines to various beings or forces.
Next up: What’s in a Village? The Basics – The people
A look at the people you might consider putting in your village to help it come to life.
Winging It!
Winging It – Preparing for unexpected player actons
On a Facebook group I follow, there was a post about a GM who was very methodically planning out the adventures for his players, trying to predict what different things the players would do and prepare things for each of them. Recently his players informed him they want to essentially ‘Take the map of Faerun (of the Forgotten Realms) and do and explore what they will. This GM was asking for advice on how to handle it. A very helpful discussion ensued and hopefully he’ll have a good basis to move forward.
Since this is a subject I know quite a bit about, I decided to write about it. The original poster was could be describing a Sandbox Game, which is when the whole world is open and the players can do whatever they wish within the rules. This post will cover just the concept of how to ‘Wing it’ which can be used in any situation when the game goes into an area or situation you’re not prepared for.
Prepare In Advance
I can almost hear you say “Wait, the discussion is about ‘Winging It’ and you’re starting with ‘Prepare in Advance’?” Yes. If you’d like to have your players twiddle their thumbs while you create everything they run into, however, you can skip this step, though.
The first step is to evaluate the types of things you’ll want to have available. Not a list of each thing, but just the types. Things like different types of names, inns/taverns, adventure hooks/ideas, etc. You’ll almost always want small to medium-sized population centers of all types. Larger ones like cities and metropolis’ are likely already placed, if not at least sketched out.
The next step is to work out your methodology of storing all your information. This can be as simple as binders or a computer program like Realm Works by Lone Wolf Development or MyInfo, both of which I use. You will also want to take into consideration how you run your game. You don’t want to cover the gaming table with binders or constantly be digging up reference documents. Whatever you use will need to be organized to allow quick retrieval of information and not eat up all the real estate at the table. Don’t stress this too much, however. If you’re totally new to this, it’ll be a work in progress anyhow, and if you’re only picking up a couple tips and tricks from this article, you’ll likely have most of your system worked out.
So now you have your list of things to create and a way to store them, so now you want to establish how you want to create them. This is something I’m just now starting to implement myself, actually documenting how I create each thing in my world to improve consistency. It sounds like a lot of extra work, but like all of this, it’s an investment for a better game.
Where do you find these things? Many game books have the means to create and flesh out various things and magazine articles have provided random generation tables for you to use at the table and with technology exploding, there are many, many resources online. There are too many to list, but three sites I use are www.rinkworks.com, Donjon and the Seventh Sanctum. Also, a very detailed city generator can be found at https://www.rpglibrary.org/software/rpg_city_map_generator/ .
Be Flexible and Place Very Little
Now that you have everything sorted and ready to go, it’s time to actually create. As you do so, one thing to keep firmly in mind is to lock very few things into a specific location or situation.
Names? You’ll need lots and lots of names. I keep spreadsheets full of names; I find that they are easier to manage when they are in grids with each tab a different type of name. Elves (male and female), dwarves, places and taverns are all examples of types of names you’ll need. Inns and taverns? Donjon has a great generator for them which include menus, patrons and rumors.
The key is that “The Sage’s Meadhall” can be anywhere the players are going to travel to next, it doesn’t have to be along the Belic River just outside the small town of Urden. Just keep it floating nebulously in your knowledge store until it’s ready to be placed. Those rumors? Whether they’re from that Donjon generator or somewhere else, they’ll likely have names and places in them. When you go insert them, if you’ve already created relevant places, simply substitute what you want to use in their place. The names you take out? Save them for later use.
There’s a lot more that could be added to this but the concepts are all the same.
- Identify your needs
- Create a system to store what you create
- Document how you’re going to create what you need.
- Create your content in a flexible way
- Have a great session playing, even when the players toss a curveball at your head.
Happy Gaming All!
Dusting It Off
Dusting It Off
by Gary Whitten
Darkness.
Soon, though, a door creaks open and the dim glow of a candle pushes back the darkness a bit. A shuffle of feet and a bespectacled face appears behind the candle’s flame. The door is pushed mostly shut and the middle-aged man moves across the room past shadows that reveal shelves and a drawing table until a desk is reached. The candle is tipped forward towards a lantern which flares to life, eliciting a murmur of surprise from the man. The desk is illuminated fully, revealing a tome, and some unbound parchment. A colorful map is carefully affixed to the wall over the desk. He settles into a chair, coughing slightly at the dust that swirls around as he does so.
Looking at the desk for a few long moments, he picks up a couple pieces of parchment, turns to the side and gently blows a generous helping of dust off of them. A pair of sneezes from the floor causes the man to look down, seeing a pair of cats, one pure black and one a gray and white mix. His blue eyes sparkle bemusedly and he turns back to the desk, dispensing of other layers of dust from the surface. Looking at the last entry in the tome, he grunts in surprise, speaking for the first time, “Three years! Where does the time go?” Shaking his head slightly, he picks up a quill and inkwell, looks at them and then discards them. After selecting a new set from a desk drawer, he dips the quill in, thinks a moment and then begins writing from where he left off.
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Three years. Where DOES the time go? Like life, my campaign still goes on, mostly with the same players as when I last wrote although with a new set of characters and actually a few months earlier in time. I love the creative outlet it gives me, not to mention the pleasure it gives me creating adventures for the players. When I started this blog, I was intending on using this as one of many pieces to help generate a second stream of income selling adventures and setting products, based in my campaign world. It’s only taken me 40+ years but I’ve finally firmly admitted to myself that I work far better for someone else than I do for myself. Like many creative types, I have some level or flavor (undiagnosed) of ADD/ADHD so it doesn’t take much to get me distracted. Shiny! Squirrel! Sound familiar? The players I currently have in my campaign, and those in the past, have almost all seemed to vastly enjoy my games and I have created some great content to entertain them. When it comes to created products worthy of sale from that content, I could make 40-70% of 20 great products. However, that leaves 30-60% of not-so-great portions of 20 products and that’s just not going to do it. So, unless I get some serious self-discipline for my 47th birthday and develop a sudden distaste for MMOs and 4X games, this is all going to be about recreational blogging.
But, as I like GMing, I also enjoy writing these blog entries. I also thought I had a few written already but they’re either on paper somewhere in one of my many notebooks, or they’re a victim of a failed auto-save somewhere. So here’s the deal: I’m going to write when I can and I’ll write about whatever subject comes to mind. No worries, it’ll be about gaming, and it’ll likely be related to my campaign in some shape or fashion. Oh, one other thing. It will be quality.
As I mentioned, the campaign is still ongoing. We play using Fantasy Grounds 2 software. I have players in three different time zones, with me in a fourth, usually playing early afternoon (for me) on Sunday afternoons. I have still maintained the entirety of the campaign in (or under) the boundaries of the 30 by 20 mile campaign area known as the Valley of Aesri although this hasn’t stopped me from biting off more than I can chew by imagining vast, cool ideas. I’ll probably write about this tendency and how I (sorta/kinda) get myself out of it. In the three years I’ve been silent, the main members of the party have gone from first level up to tenth (remember, with Fantasy Grounds, almost everything is text, or at least it is with us) over about 65 sessions. One member did his last military deployment overseas, has safely returned and is now retired. At one point, I’ll write about how I handled his departure from the game including a polished excerpt from the game log. The player wanted to surprise the rest of the party with the news so they were NOT in on it; the reactions were incredible.
All content Copyright 2009-2015 Gary Whitten
Starting a Local/Small-Scale Campaign pt 2
Starting a Local/Small-Scale Campaign – Pt 2
by Gary Whitten
The first blog about this really focused on starting a setting but less so on the actual Local/Small Scale facets of it. That’s what we’ll cover here.
Keeping it Local
One of the challenges is to ensure that everything that your players need to have and do stays in the campaign area. This is where player buy-in can really help because we all know that players routinely throw GMs curves by going where you hadn’t planned for but you really don’t want them going outside the campaign scope. With legitimate buy-in from the players, they should avoid saying ‘Well, we need to go visit Loeni the Master Alewife’ , just because you happened to have a special keg of her spiced mead brought across the sea to the local pub for a mid-winter festival.
That being said, you need to have things make sense as well. With my Valley of Aesri campaign, I had made a potential mis-step by introducing a shortage of iron in the valley, which brought up imports and exports to and from the campaign area. Trade is a normal activity in most campaign settings but it’s often behind the scenes as one of those assumed activities like visiting the outhouse.
To ‘recover’ from this, I created the Inn of the Warm Hearth, which sits on the Beltest Road which runs roughly north-south between the Valley and several cities south and out of the campaign area. The Inn also operates the ferry over the Sast River which has its source in the Sliri mountains to the west and runs through the eastern half of the continent before reaching the sea in a large port city. Because of this key location, it’s in a perfect place to facilitate trade into and out of the campaign area, so I wrote the Inn to be conducive to trade with storage space, meeting rooms and a large carriage house for coaches and wagons.
Give Them a Purpose
If the party has a purpose and a role in the local area, there will be less reason for them to leave. One option would to be to have the party obtain a home base and run a combination LSSC/HBC. For example, in my campaign, which is a combination, the party got hold of an abandoned manor that that had been built by a master Dungeon Delver as a dungeoneering school. The party took over the place in fairly short order but it was in ruins and had an active dungeon beneath it. They’re now clearing out the dungeon while a staff they hired is recovering the manor from disrepair.
Another option is to have the party be the primary defense of the area, whether it’s official or otherwise. If you go with this route, you have many options in front of you for any kind of threat to the campaign area should be dealt with by the party. They would either do this directly or by acquiring the aid needed to do so. The options available to you in this situation are vast. Threats could include flooding, famine or other natural disasters; invasions or rogue beasts; diplomatic impasses or trade embargoes or even locating the Lord’s favorite hunting hound which got lost on his last expedition.
It Isn’t a Lifetime
As I mentioned in another entry, neither the LSSC nor the HBC is necessarily an infinite situation. If you and your party are ready for a change, start writing the necessary material to move the campaign in another direction.
You may go into the LSSC/HBC with a finite goal in mind such as ‘The party needs to stay in the region long enough to locate the long-lost Tiara of Civkoa which is needed to make peace between Seli and Werr’. In such a case, you’ll know when they’re getting close to their goal and can be ready with options and hooks for the next stage of the campaign.
And In Closing…
I hope that these two articles have helped you in some way or fashion. Whether they inspired you to create such a campaign, or just provided you with some cool ideas for your current campaign, I thank you for reading.
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All content Copyright 2009-2015 Gary Whitten
Using PC Wrede’s questions to add depth
Using P C Wrede’s World Builder questions in setting design.
by Gary Whitten
Patricia C Wrede is a fantasy author that, in the infancy of computer networks (FIDONET), posted a number of questions and guidelines over time to be used in creation of fantasy worlds for authors. They also are handy for the creation of game worlds. For the full story of the questions and Lars Eighner’s efforts to pull them together, go to Lars’ site.
I have used these guidelines to add immersion to my game worlds in the past, and they are quite helpful. Lars has organized them into 36 topics, with a number of questions being in several different topics.
The topics are:
Arts and Entertainment
Architecture
Calendar
Crime and the Legal System
Daily Life
Diet
Fashion and Dress
Eating customs
Education
Foreign Relations
Gestures
Government
Greeting and Meeting.
Language
Magic and Magicians
Magic and Technology
Manners
Medicine
People and Customs: Ethics and Values
Physical and Historical Features
Climate and Geography
Natural Resources
General History
History of a Specific Country
Politics
Population
Religion and Philosophy
Rules of Magic
Rural Factors
Science and Technology
Social Organization
Transportation and Communication
Urban Factors
Visits
War
Wizards
When you’re working on your game setting, these can be used to spark imagination, break writer’s block and fill in gaps in your setting. You should pick and choose which categories to work with based on what your current needs are. I have caught myself working on some of these for my own Valley of Aesri setting when I really didn’t need to do them, and some other areas of campaign work with more immediate needs were pushed aside. So keep a firm eye on the categorized and prioritized list I talked about in my previous blog entry.
It’s also important to realize that when you pick a category to use that you don’t have to answer every question in it immediately, or even, at all. The questions are guidelines, nothing more. Some of them, such as Rules of Magic, are likely going to be much less useful as you’re likely going to be using a game system with the magic systems already defined.
Some of these I definitely recommend be considered as you design or enhance a setting.
Climate and Geography
Architecture
Daily Life – interesting questions you might not think of
Religions and Philosophy – When doing Pantheon
Calendar – Probably not used when modifying an existing setting.
Natural Resources –
I’ll be doing some additional posts regarding the use of these, each one exploring one or two of the sections. When I do so, I’ll be altering the questions some towards adding immersion. I’d like to start with Climate and Geography:
* What is the arrangement of planetary bodies like? How do these differences reflect in the culture, climate, flora and fauna?
On Earth, we clearly have diurnal and nocturnal creatures because we have clear day and night even on the brightest moonlit nights. With the questions below, the light may be different. With multiple suns, there may be two ‘nights’ per day, no complete darkness at all on the surface or some other effect. How does this affect plants and animals? How does this affect ‘normal’ species like deer and foxes? What about nocturnal creatures like possum? What effect does this have on fantastic creatures like faeries, dragons, etc?
* Is it like Earth with a sun and a moon, maybe multiple moons? Multiple suns? Or what about no moons and a small distant star providing little warmth or light?
* Do the moons have any tangible impact aside from gravity like in the DragonLance world of Krynn where they altered the strength of magic?
* Is the world your on actually a moon of a planet, which in turn orbits a sun?
* Are other planets clearly visible?
On Earth, a number of planets were visible with the naked eye but often mistake for stars and were mentioned when they were visible during morning or evening. “I’ll be back when Mars is an evening star again.”
* How are all these bodies treated? Are they ‘just there’, associated with deities, or perhaps demons or personality traits? Are they real or just fokelore
“I hear he was born when Hrice was ascending, beware of his temper!”
* Are conjunctions and eclipses portents of certain things, either good or ill?
“Be careful on your trip, it’s only two days until Kolzin crosses Qes!”
* Have human activities affected climate, landscape, etc. in various regions? How? (Example: Growth of the Sahara Desert has been increased by over-farming.)
* Where are mountain ranges? Rivers and lakes? Deserts? Forests, tropical and otherwise? Grasslands and plains?
Even in a LSSC, terrain can be highly varied. The Valley of Aesri is only 20×30 miles but it’s between two mountain ranges with much dense forest. Still there are the source of two major rivers, some marshland and even the forests have some sections where the normally dense deciduous trees thin some and have small orchards.
* If there are imaginary animals (dragons, unicorns, etc.) how do they fit into the ecology? What do they eat? How much and what kind of habitat do they require? Are they intelligent and/or capable of working spells, talking, etc.? How common are they? Are any endangered species?
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All content Copyright 2009-2015 Gary Whitten
Starting a Local/Small-Scale Campaign
Starting a Local/Small-Scale Campaign
by Gary Whitten
As was discussed in the first entry of this blog, sometimes a local/small-scale campaign (LSSC) is designed that way from the start, or is a phase an existing campaign. This post addresses starting an LSSC from scratch.
Player Buy-in
One thing you really need to do with any campaign you want to run is to get a feel for what the players want to play. It’s their game as much as yours and there are few things that are more frustrating than putting hours of work into a campaign and having your players hate it.
Some GMs go as far as to do a formal survey on various ideas for the campaign, but if you have an urge to do specific type of campaign, flat out ask the players even you do a survey for other items later. When you have the answer, you can then customize the survey for other facets of the campaign.
Own Setting v Purchased Setting
Purchased Setting
One of the next decisions is if you’re going to use a purchased setting or one you wrote yourself. There’s no ‘right’ answer save for the one that is right for you. When you use a purchased setting for a LSSC, there is another decision to be made, and that is ‘which area to use’. This should also be a decision that’s made, at least in concept, by both the players and the GM.
For example, if you’ve decided to use the Forgotten Realms and your players want a city campaign full of intrigue, then you could possibly use Waterdeep. But if they want something much smaller, then perhaps a Dalelands campaign. Obviously, there are many other options, but no matter where in the published setting you go, you have the core features of the world, like the currency and the pantheon taken care of for you while you customize the piece of it that you’ve chosen for your campaign.
Writing Your Own Setting
When you write your own setting, the good news is that you get to do everything the way you want to make the game you want. The bad news is that you get to do everything in the setting. I hate when that happens! It’s so easy to get overwhelmed, but there are techniques to use to avoid it.
- Start small! Even with a LSSC, there’s much to do, so always ask yourself if what you’re working on is needed at the stage of design that you’re at.
- Get ideas! You’re not the only one who’s ever done this, so rummage through campaign guides of published settings that you own and see what they have and think about that in terms of what types of things to include.
- Brainstorm! Keeping in mind what your players said they wanted in a campaign, your style and what you found in the campaign books, brainstorm up lists of things to include.
- Categorize and Prioritize! What you have in your lists is dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of work. So invest a few hours before you start actually creating, you need to make a game plan to make the time you do use the most worthwhile. This is probably my own biggest challenge, I’m very much a ‘ooh, look shiny’ person, sometimes to my detriment.
- Set a Starting Point! At some point, you need to start your campaign, so set that point before you dive in.
- Create! Dive on in and start bringing your setting to fruition. It is inevitable that you’ll think of things you didn’t come up with in brainstorm. Immediately write it down, but keep going on what you were working on. At regular intervals, take these new ideas and add them into your prioritized plan. Take care not to overly delay your start date when you do so.
- Play! Start up the campaign!
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All content Copyright 2009-2015 Gary Whitten
Using supply chains to add campaign depth
Adding Immersion by Using Supply Chains
by Gary Whitten
Ever go into a shop and see the selection of goods and wonder how they all got there? It’s likely that we’ll never know all the people behind the loaf of bread in the plastic wrap or the box of frozen peas. In a medieval-era fantasy setting, however, it’s much more likely (but not a given) that at least some of the other people involved will either be known or at least accessible.
Supply chains can be used for a number of things in a campaign. They can simply be used to add depth to the game by dropping a name or to, as an adventure hook, or as a lead to introduce an NPC you’ve been wanting the party to meet.
Picture an encounter where the PC’s party is in a general store stocking up before their next adventure. Instead of the normal rummaging around, writing in the new purchases and adjusting a number in the ‘coin’ area of the character sheet, you throw in:
“While you are seeking out the next item on your list, you notice a tall, strapping young man with intense brown eyes walk in with a large sack over his shoulder. He quickly scans the shop and approaches Fesli, the shopkeeper, and proffers the bag to him. Fesli looks in it briefly, then counts out some coin and hands it to the young man who departs immediately.”
One of your players may approach Fesli, asking “Who was that?” Fesli replies, “That was Oteri, son of Ehlen the ropemaker delivering my latest ropes to me. Say, was it you who was looking for that 100′ length?”
In this brief encounter, you’ve added two new names to the list of people that the players know about in the area. To some, this won’t matter, but to others, they’ll file it away in case someday it does matter.
If you wanted to add in a hook to this encounter, you could change the last sentence to this:
“You know, this rope isn’t as good as he normally makes, and I heard a rumor a couple times in the last week that nobody has actually seen Ehlen in quite a bit. I didn’t even think to ask when Oteri was just here. I wonder if something is wrong.”
This might peak the interest of those who wish to help (or meddle as the evil-doers often say) and take a wander out to visit Ehlen’s shop where they might find Ehlen sick, missing, replaced by a shape-shifter or maybe just simply hitting the bottle, forcing Oteri or others to try and pick up the slack.
Lastly, if the PCs have been managing to avoid meeting that NPC that you really want them to meet and you don’t want to overdo it by clubbing them with a +3 Clue Stick, you could add something like this into the encounter:
“I hate to impose, but I’ll give you 10% off all those rations you’re buying if you could maybe do a small errand for me? I need to get this small bag to this person named Disol. He lives a bit off the beaten path north of here but it wouldn’t take you long at all and I’d really appreciate it.”
Obviously, there are many other possibilities available with things like this. I hope the few I’ve put out here will be of use to you and that they spark additional ideas.
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All content Copyright 2009-2015 Gary Whitten
Preview of Coming Attractions
by Gary Whitten
The three primary topics that will be covered in this blog are Local/Small-Scale Campaigns (LSSCs), Home-Base Campaigns (HBCs) and increasing campaign immersion.
LSSCs and HBCs may be some of the lesser-known or used campaign styles, so let’s take a quick look at them.
LSSCs are campaigns that, by design, are going to be run in a very limited geographic area. The one I run is about twenty by thirty miles in size in a location called the Valley of Aesri.
HBCs are campaigns that have some sort of central location at the heart of the campaign, almost like a meta-character. The campaign I mentioned above is also, at the moment, an HBC based around an abandoned and dilapidated manor estate whose owner perished in a battle between his loyal staff and those who wanted his money.
Campaigns run in either of these styles are not necessarily permanent, as it’s totally possible for a campaign in its normal evolution to change into one or both of these type, or to start out as one and morph into something else.
LSSCs lend themselves to increased immersion simply because the campaign is spending so much time in a small locale, so that almost anything the GM creates has the potential to be re-used any number of times. When this happens, the additional content begins to layer upon itself adding detail and depth to the setting, regardless if it’s one of your creation or if you’re enhancing one you purchased.
HBCs often are, but are not exclusively, also LSSCs. This is because the players are usually anchored to the central location to one degree or another. Like a campaign that is just designed to be in a small area, the GM of an HBC will often end up writing additional content for the setting creating better immersion.
Over the coming months, various things to help a GM with each of these types of campaigns will discussed.
Ok, so we talked about the campaign styles but what is Campaign Immersion? A gaming synonym you probably heard of is ‘Suspension of belief’. One on-line dictionary puts immersion thus: involvement, concentration, preoccupation, absorption – “long-term assignments that allowed them total immersion in their subjects”. Some people learn languages in this way, going into a school or even the society, where they only speak and live the language instead of just taking it in a class.
There are some really simple things that you can do to add to immersion to your game and in this blog, we’ll be talking about more than a few of them in the coming months.