Raven Crowking's Nest

The following ideas are completely appropriate for the Dungeon Crawl Classics game and were written with that lens in mind, but are similar to my approach with magic items in earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons and their simulacra. You can find similar ideas in my work in Dragon Roots Magazine for 3^rd Edition, and in Petty Gods or The Dungeon of Crows for other OSR-type games. D120 Treasures also contains (unsurprisingly) some items with a similar philosophy of design.

Design Principle 1: Magic can do anything. It doesn’t matter what your system of choice allows or does not allow. Magic can break the rules. In fact, arguably, that is the thing that makes it magic. Now, you know and I know that there are games where, when a magic item is introduced, the GM is expected to know what the PCs would need to recreate it. Perhaps a combination of feats and spells. Perhaps something different. This is a straight jacket on what magic can be, and you should ignore it. If you want to include a magic bird bath that attracts avian creatures, go for it! Likewise, if you want to include a ring with a weird power no spell can match, you do not need to know what was required to create it. Perhaps the gods don’t even know. Or, if they do know, perhaps the gods work to keep that knowledge from mortals. You don’t have to justify it.

Design Principle 2: Follow a theme. Even though magic can do anything, it is all the better if the item in question follows some form of theme both in form and function. My answer to the wand of wonder, for instance, not only creates random affects, but has a random appearance whenever you look at it. If you decide to make a powerful necromantic item look like a child’s stuffed bear, you may wish to make its powers linked to children or childhood in some significant way. The players should experience a frisson with your item; it should feel right. A wish from an angel should not feel like a wish granted by a demon.

Design Principle 3: Use the mechanics. Expressing a magic item into game terms requires engaging with the mechanics of the game, however obliquely. Consider how to put whatever it is into game terms, even if it is to say “the angel will not grant selfish wishes, but will grant selfish wishes in the best possible way”, you need to know how it will play out at the table. If your game has Luck checks, corruption, patron taint, mercurial magic, or similar effects, feel free to use them when designing magic items. For that matter, consider designing items that affect those systems. A ring that changes your mercurial magic effects to one of 20 frost-themed effects would be cool. So would a portrait that assumes your corruption for you until, one day, it has had too much and comes out of the frame….

Design Principle 4: You can steal mechanics from other games. If your game doesn’t have feats, for instance, you can have an enchanted earring that allows its wearer to gain the effects of a feat. You can be blatant about that or disguise that as you wish. And you don’t need to limit this to other d20-based fantasy games, either. The item might offer a Gamma World mutation, so long as you can express that mutation in the mechanics of the game you are playing.

Design Principle 5: Limited Use Items are Cool. Potions, scrolls, a hunk of magic cheese, a globe that must be broken to release its power, a glass sword that shatters on a fumble. All of these can have cool powers, with the interesting choice for the players being “When do I use this?” If you want the choice to actually be interesting, make sure there is some way that the players can figure out what the item does before using it! Which leads to….

Design Principle 6: Magic cannot solve all of your problems. No matter how powerful an item is, it has limitations. Those limitations might be that they are single-use or have a set (or random, as for instance with the glass sword example) number of uses available. It may be because the item is only usable under specific conditions (at night, under the full moon, when the user is undressed, on a beach, etc.) – avoid easily met conditions like “in a dungeon” here! It could be because the item weighs several hundred pounds and is difficult to carry around. It could also be because using the item offers a significant drawback. This in turn leads to....

Design Principle 7: With Great Power Comes Massive Drawbacks. You can do this wonderful thing, but every time you do, you suffer corruption. At first it is minor corruption, but the type of corruption has a chance to grow with each use. The sword offers you power, but it offers the same to everyone around you, on the off chance that one of them might take it off of your corpse. The ring does some neat things, but if you die while wearing it you will return as a vampire to plague your friends. Every time you use the staff it permanently removes one (or more!) of your hit points. The item demands sacrifice to operate; the greater the powers, the larger the sacrifice. Suddenly the question is not “How do I use this?” but “When should I use this?” or even “Should I use this at all?” If you get the balance right, the temptation to use the item, and the reluctance to use it, should almost balance out, so that the players are always faced with an interesting dilemma.

That isn’t all that goes into designing a magic item, of course, but 7 is a thematically potent number when discussing magic. I hope that these principles are of some help!

Sunday, 10 January 2021

Signal Boost

If you are interested in computer games, Vagabond Dog has a Holiday Pack, which may or may not be as exciting as watching the shenanigans going on in Washington D.C., but will almost certainly be more fun and do you less harm!

Also, the creators are good people.

Saturday, 2 January 2021

Journey to the Crypts of Orderly Death

IF YOU NEED A PREGEN AND HAVE NOT RESPONDED TO MY EMAIL, CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDER!

For the first time ever, I will be running the same adventure more than once at a convention. For the first time ever, I will only be running that same adventure. It is a playtest; first run at Storm Crow Manor before the pandemic, and planned to have run at last Gary Con before 2020 became what it was!

You find yourselves at the Inn of the Twisted Horn, about a mile east of Blacktree Dale, where the road east meets the road to the north. You have been here before, but never has it been so quiet. Even the innkeeper and his daughters are often gone to the pantries, and it is hard to get anyone to take your order.

Saturday, 26 December 2020

Kovacsian Wizard Snowman

Kovacsian Wizard Snowman: Init +4; Atk scratch +0 melee (1d3) or snowball +3 ranged (1d3 cold plus possible Stamina damage) or harmful spell; AC 12; HD 6d8; MV 20’; Act 2d20; SP snowballs, harmful spells, burst, immunity to cold, fire vulnerability, hat; SV Fort +5, Ref –3, Will +8; AL C.

These evil snowmen can hurl snowballs up to 30 feet away, which cause 1d3 points of damage due to intense cold. If the target does not make a DC 10 Fort save, he also suffers 1 point of Stamina damage due to cold. When a snowman is slain, its three snowballs burst into a spray of cold in a 10' radius which causes 1d3 points of temporary Agility damage unless a DC 10 Fort save succeeds.

A Kovacsian Wizard Snowman can also cast spells, and prefers this method of attack. Whenever a Kovacsian Wizard Snowman casts a spell, roll 1d7 to determine the result:

1. The snowman creates a ball of green energy and hurls it at a foe with a +3 attack bonus. If it hits, it does 2d6 damage and the green energy turns blood red before dissipating (Fort DC 15 for half damage).

2. A Green Whisp is summoned, and remains for 1d5 rounds before folding in upon itself and vanishing. Green Whisp: Init +4; Atk bite +2 melee (1d5); AC 8; HD 1d3; MV fly 40’; Act 1d20; SP immunity to heat and cold, immunity to non-magical weapons; SV Fort +0, Ref +4, Will +0; AL C.

3. A Green Whisp is summoned (as above), but it continues to attack the snowman's enemies until slain or otherwise dealt with.

4. The snowman creates a green portal field and hurls it at an enemy. The enemy must succeed in a DC 15 Reflex save or be captured by the portal and sent elsewhere. The judge may choose where the hapless adventurer is sent, or may roll 1d5: (1) The depths of space, (2) the Meat Planet, (3) Flammable Hospital, (4) on the track of Inferno Road, or (5) a lonely asteroid ruin in the midst of a Dog Storm!

5. A barrage of 3d3 emerald icicles shoots forth, each of which can target a different foe! They are +3 to hit and do 1d3 damage on a successful strike.

6. A great wave of cold washes out from the snowman. All within 30' take 1d12 damage (Fort DC 15 for half).

7. One target within 30' must succeed on a DC 20 Fort save or take 1d12 points of cold damage each round until the Kovacsian Wizard Snowman is slain. If the unfortunate target should fall to 0 hp before the snowman is defeated, they are transformed into a second Kovacsian Wizard Snowman, which immediately attacks their former allies!

Kovacsian Wiazard Snowmen are vulnerable to fire, taking twice the normal damage from heat-based attacks. A snowman who dies due to fire damage does not burst into a spray of cold, either.

The hat of a Kovacsian Wizard Snowman can be removed with a successful Mighty Deed. This causes the snowman to slow down (a cumulative –2 to initiative count each round), and its magic becomes less powerful (roll at -1d on the dice chain per round to determine spell effects, so 1d6 on the 1st round, 1d5 on the 2nd round, 1d4 on the 3rd round, and 1d3 on the 4th round; the snowman cannot thereafter cast spells unless it recovers its hat). The snowman ceases to be animated when its initiative count reaches 0, unless it can recover its hat. Placing the hat back upon its head restores the snowman to its original initiative count. A Kovacsian Wizard Snowman is not “slain” if it stops moving because of losing its hat, and does not burst.

(This creature is based off of the evil snowmen in The Perils of the Cinder Claws and the awesome artwork of the fantastic Doug Kovacs, which is used here with love but without permission.)

Friday, 25 December 2020

Killer Christmas Tree

Killer Christmas Tree: Init +4; Atk spinning slam +5 melee (2d6); AC 14; HD 2d8; MV 20’; Act 1d20; SP camouflage (surprise 2 in 3), festive music, can destroy intervening objects, construct (immune to poisons, mind-affecting, paralysis, etc.), vulnerability (x2 damage) to sonic attacks; SV Fort +4, Ref +4, Will +0; AL N.

Saturday, 5 December 2020

Frodo, Bilbo, Conan, and Aragorn

A lot of the advice I write is for Game Masters, because I spend a considerable amount of my gaming time on that side of the screen. The other night, though, I was thinking about Sword & Sorcery characters, Appendix N, and the Fabulous Baggins Boys.

Frodo is a character fleeing from danger and into greater danger. He does take responsibility for his choices, but he is largely reactive to the greater forces acting on and around him. He loves to talk about adventure with his uncle, but his greatest achievement is his willingness to sacrifice himself. Interesting to read, yes. Interesting to play? Probably considerably less so.

Conversely, Bilbo, while initially a reluctant adventurer, really takes to it once he has decided his course. He tries to pick the troll's pockets due to a sense of professional pride. Once he has escaped the goblins, he really does consider going back under the Misty Mountains to look for his party. And, of course, he ends up having plans of his own - eventually becoming the driving force of the narrative (at least until the Battle of Five Armies). If you don't know what I am talking about here, forget the movies and read the book.

Frodo is driven by the pressures of the narrative. Bilbo takes the pressures of the narrative, and bends them to meet his personal goals. The closest that Frodo comes to this is when he chooses to accept Golum's aid - and, in the movies, this is played as though Frodo is a patsy to the wily Smeagol, whereas in the novel, he knows exactly what he is doing.

It is completely okay to play a reluctant hero. Both Frodo and Bilbo are examples of that trope, but unless you want the GM to continually drive your character's decisions, it is better to model a PC off of Bilbo than Frodo. Don't allow the needs of the Valar to move you; allow your own goals and dreams to determine what you do.

It is important to have goals.

Robert E. Howard's Conan is a fantastic example of a character who drives his own fate. Even when others hire him, or attempt to manipulate him, Conan always has his own goals. There is more than one Conan story where a fundamental source of tension occurs because Conan's goals are not those the people around him want them to be - even is their coin is in his pocket!

It might not be obvious the first time one reads The Lord of the Rings - and they changed it in the movies! - but Aragorn is not a reluctant hero. He is, in fact, eager to sit on the throne of Gondor. Only when he is king can he wed Arwen, who he has loved for decades. The need to thwart Sauron is an impediment to his goals. Once he is able to finally act on them, he never loses sight of either the need to defeat Sauron or his hopes for the throne and marriage thereafter.

In game terms, a PC like Frodo is reacting to whatever the GM throws at him, whereas a Conan is actively forcing the GM to react to what he does. And an Aragorn or a Bilbo is actively trying to turn the narrative toward the direction he desires.

Have goals. It makes the game more interesting for everyone involved. And, if you have goals, the GM can use those goals as adventure hooks, making a game far more personal for your character (and, by extension, you). It doesn't even matter if your goals sometime conflict with those of your party members - that tension will add spice to the game so long as it remains in the game, and we all try to remember that everyone is there to have fun.

If you want to make the game more fun, have goals. Be prepared to add goals. Be prepared to turn the game to meet your needs. Take possession of it. Just don't do so to make it worse for the other people at the table. And be prepared to meet a particularly grisly or heroic fate if your goals demand it.

"Quest For It" is the beating heart of Dungeon Crawl Classics. Really, it is the beating heart of role-playing games. Quest for something.

Friday, 27 November 2020

How to Read Your Character Sheet

I created a simple pdf for an event I am running on December 4th. It is intended to make a Purple Sorcerer Index-Card style 0-level character sheet comprehensible to someone who has never played DCC...or even a role-playing game...before.

Then I thought, "Hey! Someone else might be able to use this!"

So I put it here.

Enjoy!

Saturday, 21 November 2020

DCC Choker, Darkmantle, and Roper

From a request on Reddit.

Choker

Choker: Init +4; Atk tentacle +6 melee (1d3+3); AC 17; HD 3d8; MV 20’ or climb 10'; Act 2d20; SP infravision 60', reach, hiding, throttle; SV Fort +2,Ref +5, Will +4; AL C.

This halfling-sized creature can reach creatures up to 10' away with their elastic tentacles. They tend to attack from hiding, often clinging to ceilings, gaining a +6 bonus to any stealth-based check. They are enormously strong (+3 bonus to opposed Strength checks), and can throttle creatures once they are successfully hit. Throttled creatures cannot speak, and take automatic damage each round unless they succeed in an opposed Strength check to get free.

Darkmantle

Darkmantle: Init +2; Atk grab +3 melee (0); AC 15; HD 2d8+2; MV 20’ or fly 30'; Act 1d20; SP infravision 30', camoflage, cling, automatic bite (1d4+1); SV Fort +5,Ref +3, Will +0; AL N.

These creatures camouflage themselves among stalactites, gaining a +10 bonus to hide. Their initial attack is to cling to their victim's head, automatically blinding them. The tentacles of the darkmantle wrap around their victim, requiring a DC 20 Strength check to remove. Worse, the victim takes 1/2 damage from any successful attack targeting the darkmantle. While clinging to a victim, the darkmantle can automatically bite with its parrot-like beak for 1d4+1 damage each round (no attack roll is necessary).

Roper

Roper: Init +2; Atk tentacle +8 melee (2d6) or bite +10 melee (3d10); AC 20; HD 5d10+10; MV 10’; Act 6d20; SP infravision 120', reach, surprise, constrict, draw; SV Fort +10,Ref +3, Will +14; AL C.

These creatures can reach up to 50' away with their tentacles, surprising foes fully 50% of the time due to their stalagmite-like appearance (before they move). A creature so struck is held by the creature, who can use an Action Die to automatically cause constriction damage (2d6) or draw the victim 1d3 x 10' closer (opposed Strength check vs.+4 negates). The creature can only bite victims drawn adjacent to it.

10% of ropers have a special ability. Roll 1d7:

1. Stony Carapace: +4 bonus to AC.

2. Spellcasting: The roper has the spell abilities equal to a level 1d3 wizard.

3. Extendable Mouth: The roper can bite victims up to 10' away. If this is rolled again, the range is extended by +5'.

4. Better Camouflage: The roper has a +10% chance to surprise.

5. Stronger: The roper gains a +1d5 bonus to opposed Strength checks. Each of its attacks has its damage increased by the same amount.

6. Increased Hit Dice: The roper gains +1d3 Hit Dice. For every full 3 HD, it gains a +1 bonus to all attack rolls, a +1 bonus to Fort saves, a +2 bonus to Will saves, and a -2 penalty to Ref saves.

7. Roll twice and keep both results. This result can occur any number of times.

Sunday, 7 February 2021

Tuesday, 2 February 2021