Dungeon craft was a post series meant to go through the process of dungeon making. In the process though I continually expanded until it became a campaign. It certainly has dungeons and a lot of combat for players, and hopefully is fun to run.
When making this I didn't have a solid grasp on how to properly give experience for encounters. I only saw that section in the DM's Guide when I was nearly done. With that in mind I make it clear several times in this module that whoever uses it can modify it however they want.
Revision is always important. Since the last post I have worked more on creating the campaign. I have also begun making it in a word document that could be linked on the blog, once complete, so anyone who reads this can see the module and use it. More importantly this post should talk more about the process of revising, and maybe even how I like to make custom hostiles/monsters with their own stats. After all using the average guard is all well and good, but the same mob gets boring, tweaking that into two other things the players can fight, gives a flavor to everything.
What initially started out as a dungeon has become its own campaign, which I did mention could happen. I've been working on making a well formatted document to link in the future, so people can use this module (a prepackaged D&D adventure), but its important to discuss the process too.
Figure 1: Draft of Bran
It has been mentioned before, but still vital to running a Dungeon and Dragons game, or any game that behaves similarly. Be flexible because you will never be able to plan for every outcome. In that same vein always be prepared to change things, which is why at the beginning of this post series it was advised to right down your core ideas.
For example Figure 1 is a draft of the capital City of Bran. It was drawn with a normal Staples #2 pencil, graphite HB for you art savvy people. There was a lot of effort put into making the city's layout believable, yet feeling constrained. This is partially why there are multiple sections drawn. It makes sense that the most defensible area is where the royal family is, a town rose around it, then they made walls, but the town expanded encouraging more walls with few transition space, entry and access areas like gates.
That way the players would have this relatively large area to roam and get into trouble with chances for random encounters, but they were walled into that area. What keeps them from simply moving from the canal district to the west over into the inner part of the city? For this I had to come up with some background, and the idea I came up with was that the city is under siege. Being under siege movement from quadrant to quadrant of the city would be much harder, especially from the outer sections which are much easier for spies and saboteurs to get into.
As more work was done on the backstory of the dungeon itself to give motivation for players, context, various reasons to use as many of their skills as possible, yet still be able to fight a bunch it morphed into a campaign. This isn't unorthodox as there is a beginner's guide module for Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition called the Lost Mines of Phandelver. Phandelver has only a handful of dungeons split out over an overworld map of the land southeast of Neverwinter in the base D&D world of Faerûn.
Figure 2: Map from Lost Mines of Phandelver
No spoilers. There are only maps for the first encounter, a cave system, the main town of Phadelin, Cragmaw Castle, some ruins, and of course the lost mines. The town itself has text highlighting key locations and anywhere else is considered unimportant and most players will go to the places named out, rather than say "no lets go to this unknown alley in town to see if anything is there"; it's up to the DM and improve at that point if anything is there.
That being said I'm okay that was meant to be a dungeon with a large amount of fighting is more of a short campaign than singular massive dungeon. At some point I'm sure I can make such a thing without issue, or even the final event of this module I've built over the course of these posts will be the players fighting on the walls, through the streets, and everywhere else against one or two of the factions included.
Figure 3: Preview of Bran Module
This might work out better because by then they'd have built an understanding of the city landscape, both geographic and even political with the numerous sub factions, and having a battle to defend or conquer it could then have more emotional impact.
Time will only tell with that as I've still been unable to get the group I initially was making this dungeon for together. I imagine though that I can simply use this at some point for my Saturday group though. It's always useful to take any premade adventures lying about one's home and tweak them for your own campaign, or maybe pull out one dungeon and change some of the enemies to fit your campaign's setting.
That's all for now but this has certainly been a lesson in creating new things, hopefully my next post will be a link or attachment of the pdf. Then all the Dungeon Craft posts will be used to create their own page talking about the process of creating a dungeon, most likely using my Wraithrest dungeon as an example to keep things fresh for the usual readers.
Welcome back to the Dungeon Craft series. Last time you were informed of various methods that can be used to create your dungeon map. From doing it all by hand, all the way to free generators on the internet. Now since we've decided upon the medium in which the players will view the world from, let us craft. I'm using the pen and paper method, so these are my tools of the trade.
Figure 1: My DM/GM toolbox
Don't worry you only need a pencil, normal paper, and an eraser. Everything there I got either as a present, found on the side of the road (like the old 1980's printer paper), in closet, or from a teacher trying throw out old supplies. The dice I did buy for myself. I'm fairly frugal, which why I use this method.
Now this may become confusing moving forward. The reason is whenever I start burning out on one thing I switch to another to keep going. Example: I'm drawing out a map of the dungeon, my hand starts cramping. In response I switch to the computer and with my off hand type out more background for major Non Player Characters (NPCs) for the dungeon. Still, I well attempt to keep my thoughts as clear as possible.
This dungeon is meant to have multiple factions for players to interact with. Best course of action is to write out how these factions relate to each other. If something doesn't seem right like "why would goblins ally with dwarves?" in your own dungeon then you can remove the plot hole by filling it in, or just getting rid of that alliance to where the plot hole never existed in the first place. This webbing technique is useful to more visually inclined people because then they can see how groups are reacting to each other.
Figure 2: Factions Web
This is my second form of. I actually opened a simple text document in notepad and typed out some general features. Royalists, Nobles, Paladins, and Mercenaries. Whenever I webbed it seemed too simple, and boring. We aren't going for a straight forward charge in and kill everything dungeon, we want airs of intrigue and clashing ideals. In response I added on and gave conflicting relations. The Mage's Guild being neutral okay, but being allied to both groups raises interest. Are they attempting to play both sides off each other, are they trying to mediate, or are they simply hedging their bets?
Figure 3: Notes
After the web I went to a random name generator and began coming up with NPCs for these various groups. I added, removed, and modified most of them. The main things I want are perhaps the reasons for the conflict. Nobles want rights returned to them, historically governments try to centralize and gain more power. Feudal lords aren't really victims themselves, but maybe this is something that has been simmering for a few decades. This would give some credence and humanity to the rebelling faction; I don't like villains who go "rawr I is evil SMASH MAIM DESTROY!" So villains with an somewhat understandable motive are more engaging. Especially if any of players have the Noble background for their characters, increasing their chance of being sympathetic.
Figure 4: Style Test
Next I sketched out a rough idea of what art style I would be using. I really had to consider where on this spectrum to go, and it revolved around whether or not the players would look at the map anyway. My Saturday group has maps to look at, but they tend to ignore them and just ask me if they're close enough, my girlfriend does the same. With that in mind the fancy looking isometric version, while lovely, would be a waste of graphite and ink. It also makes it much easier to trace out this ambitious dungeon I've concocted. If this was the wilderness I could just make the whole map first, and through the party in arbitrarily. A dungeon needs to feel confined, like there is only one or two directions the party can go. It is important to know where the party starts. I considered to give a few major factions their own starting points, that way it could be replayed from different perspectives if need be, but that seemed too confusing and wanderlusty. I decided to procrastinate on the idea and type more in my faction notes. Then I simply wrote down some general locations and rolled a dice at it. If it turns out a boring start while I'm working on it, then I will redo it and keep what was made as another portion of the dungeon.
The dice dictated they start with a character known as the Baron King. This might be useful as he is written down as part of the overall Mercenary faction. He is also called the Baron King because he owns through force of will, wealth, influence, and inheritance multiple baronies across this portion of the continent. This could be used to explain why the party, which will most likely be very diverse, would work for him. His reasons for jumping in could be that the conflict endangers some of his property in the area, or he simply wishes to give his forces to the highest bidder and profit.
We have a patron but we still don't have a starting place. Perhaps the Baron King owns a manor inside the city, or he is at a war camp outside it. From here we can imagine the players being in a safe spot to gather their bearing before venturing out. They might also be given different ways of entering the dungeon. Perhaps a large battle where they join the Baron King's other forces in taking a portion of the walls?
Figure 5: Baron King's Camp
The map itself isn't impressive because I decided my groups wouldn't actually be looking at the maps, and I would simply need to fill in what they see. For now we will sit on this and take a break from dungeon crafting. When making your own dungeon you should do this too. Whenever you comeback you might have a new idea come, or revise something, and so on. Perhaps by the next post I will have completely changed how we are doing things, but until then happy dungeon crafting.
Hello, last time we began work on a new dungeon. We figured out a few key concepts to work with. Deciding to begin constructing a city on the verge of collapse, with the players being placed somewhere in the middle. Before we go any further let's consider what tools you might want for your own dungeon. There are a few methods I've used in the past to great effect.
Autorealm is a software you can download in the link that is designed for creating maps for Table Top Roleplaying games. It can be used to create world maps, settlements, and dungeons. Autorealm is a versatile system that can allow for plenty of successful maps. It also has a steep learning curve, which may turn you off if looking for an easy way to start making the dungeon map.
Figure 1: Autorealm Map
Pen and Paper is self explanatory. All you need is paper and writing utensil to start working. I have switched over to this method as it allows me more control than I have with some of the other methods. It also allows me to work on things at any place with arm room, and not have to worry about my laptop dying. It's harder to make backups of these maps though, which might lead to a few instances of you desperately blowing on the paper to save it from the spilled drink.
White board, is another interesting method. Should you have a large white board you can lay it on top of the play area and just sketch out the dungeon map as the players explore it. Whenever the dungeon is done just erase it. The downside of this is that the DM would need to have a sketched out version of the dungeon on their own to work with in the first place, which means they are simply blowing up their initial dungeon idea.
Paint.net is a more robust version of Microsoft paint, which you can use that instead of downloading pain.net if you want. With paint.net though it makes it easier to add text next to certain rooms like, Goblin Den, and so on. It allows you to make simple lines and shapes, and number rooms. Only significant downside is that it doesn't allow you to do much more than that, unless you begin photo shopping pictures of fantasy places to make your map which would be more time consuming than all the other options.
Donjon is a site full of random generators. The above link is to the 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons dungeon generator. This is useful in that, you don't have to do much. All you would have to do is provide a link if doing a digital session, or print it out for your in person one. It does prevent you from giving your own personal touch to everything, but that might be something that's fine for your campaign.
Figure 2: Pain.net and Autorealm in tandem
Finally you can simply mix everything in whatever way you want. Figure 2 is a map I made for a forum game. I created to border in pain.net then saved the whole thing as a jpeg file. Next I inserted the jpeg into autorealm which allowed me to add icons and text. Then I saved that one as a png and opened it up in paint.net to fix up the lines, and create the sea color. After which I put a multiply overlap on top of the land in differing colors to create. Upon completion I had the Kingdom of Doumore with a political map of its duchies.
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figures 3 and 4 offer similar stories. In them I used donjon to create a world map I liked. After which I colored in and fixed edges of the continents, even copying pasting portions of other maps I disliked to create new continents. In figure 4 I placed the letters in autorealm, and figure 3 I added in counties which I planned for players to conquer with nations.
While those last three weren't of dungeons the point is that any method or culmination of them can work for you. Me, I'm sticking with pen and paper for this dungeon. I just need to figure out if I want a more abstract "bird's eye view" of the dungeon layout, or a semi-detailed isometric representation.
Next post we'll actually start creating maps for the dungeon and planning out the characters involved and so forth.
"When you set out to create a dungeon think about its distinctive qualities." (Crawford, Dungeon Master's Guide, pg. 99). Dungeons are a central part of the game Dungeons and Dragons. In the early days of D&D dungeons were just ancient tombs and abandoned ruins, over the last forty years they have evolved. Dungeons are encouraged to have a history, their own narrative, and a sense of purpose. Before making a dungeon we should consider this very important criteria though.
"Within a dungeon, adventurers are constrained by walls and doors around them, but in the wilderness, adventurers can travel in almost any direction they please. Therein lies the key difference between dungeon and wilderness; it's much easier to predict where the adventuring party might go in the dungeon because the options are limited- less so in the wilderness. " - Crawford, pg. 99
Chapter 5 of the Dungeon Master's Guide goes over how to make a dungeon, along with many tables to just randomly make one should your players be bored in a session, allowing the GM to toss a distraction their way. There are somethings that we are going to consider moving forward with this serial of posts.
Figure 1: Dungeon Know How
Keep this general information in mind whenever you move forward with a dungeon. You do not have to go in any particular order, just ensure those five point in Figure 1 are addressed before the dungeon is completed.
From now on I will be working on crafting a dungeon for the world of Akura, where both my D&D groups play. This may end up being a Mega-dungeon, or a whole campaign set in a dungeon, I don't know yet myself. Some things I post might be completely revised later on too. What you as an audience will see is the process of creating a dungeon, so I am crafting a large dungeon and will attempt to include as many things as possible to ensure you see them in action.
My favorite thing to do is world build. There is a pseudo spectrum for world building, it slides from the top down, to down up methods. Down up means you make a town, and expand the world off of that, top down is you make a general world with what common knowledge the inhabitants in locations have and craft the towns, characters, and dungeons after that.
With that in mind I like the dungeons I have to relate to the world. A month ago I had my Saturday group go to the Night Owl's Inn where they fought a sleeper cell of the Red Mask gang. The inn had always been on the map, I just used it at random to get them out of the massive city of Abrana for the first time. Soon they will be going to another dungeon, Wraithrest. An abandoned heretic monastery, turned castle by an affluent lord, then an asylum for plague victims, soon after a mass burial site, and finally a cursed ruined place embedded in the Erie Marsh to the west of Abrana.
Figure 2: Akura
Looking at Akura's map it really seems like there is a lot to work with. Now my girlfriend plays in Aelfland, and whenever we can get time to have her friends involved they will all most likely be in the vague western part of the world too. My Saturday group is in Abrana, which is the city intersecting those major river ways in the central portion of the land. But, I don't want them dealing with this yet. I want perhaps a dungeon I can work towards, that would be very fun and interesting. Or, have players start off in and play out portions of it. Flexibility is key to being a Game Master.
Now we have a meta purpose, outside this game world we know the point of the dungeon, so we can write that down and keep it in a safe space to always remember. Next comes an idea, what should the dungeon be inspired by? (Read my posts on inspiration and combining ideas if you don't think you are good at coming up with things).
Now in a practice run with my girlfriend I made a character called Edern of Bran. For his history I put that undead destroyed his home, and that is how a peasant became a Vengeance Paladin. In this world, Bran is a kingdom. In fact in a forum game I ran called Landfallen Age of Strife, Bran was a vaguely French kingdom with strong ties to paladin orders. Let us draw from that.
A kingdom with strife, western European-esque culture, paladin influence, and undead could be involved.
Now this makes me think of possible examples of cities bestruck by undead, my brother and father play Diablo III whose expansion deals with that, in a way. More so there is also an underlining conflict where the chaos is being used by a rebel faction to take over. That's interesting and we should write that down and keep it incase we want multiple factions in this dungeon.
We have added a city and division caused by the calamity. With my background in other games it made me consider Stromgarde from World of Warcraft. Stromgarde was set in the cradle of human civilization, and was a strong military force for most of Warcraft history. In World of Warcraft though it is a shadow. In it there are three factions the Roguish Syndicate, a Troll/Ogre alliance, and the Remnants of Stromgarde. (Wowpedia). This area was never completed so it always felt like lost potential, but we should consider this as something to build off of.
Figure 3: Kingdom of Stromgarde
Bran can be a former great nation that has recently come under such heavy burdens its collapsing in on itself. This idea combined with a potential knightly history caused me to also think of a specific scenario from Age of Empires II: Conquerors Expansion. In the El Cid campaign the scenario Enemy of my Enemy involves El Cid attempting to quell unrest in the city of Toledo, where the Moorish and Spanish population have risen up and begun an all out war against one another. (Age of Empire Wiki.) We can use aspects of this as well, giving players options to have a peaceful end to the problem.
Here is the review of what we have. A kingdom with strife, western European-esque culture, paladin influence, undead could be involved, set in the capital city, multiple factions all at war with each other, a potential for some to become allies, and the players thrown in the middle of it all.
There are no clear cut details, yet we have a location, a purpose, a history, and inhabitants. They may be all general ideas nor a creator, but with this is a foundation to what could be an extremely fun dungeon. With that over I leave you with a working synopsis to give the players once they are introduced to the dungeon.
Bran, a once mighty kingdom now on the verge of collapse. The capital is torn asunder by ill magic and vile ambitions. The great paladins of old are all gone, with only those willing to do what is necessary left.
Work Cited
Age of Empires Wiki. Wikia.com. 2016. Web. 12/17/2016. Accessed From <http://ageofempires.wikia.com/wiki/The_Enemy_of_my_Enemy>
Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Dungeon Master's Guide. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.
Wowpedia. Gamepedia.com. 2016. Web. 12/17/2016. Accessed From <http://wow.gamepedia.com/Stromgarde>
How do you set up your screen? What is a DM screen? Why use it?
Well an important thing to note is that you are the wizard of OZ now. The DM/GM is the person behind the curtain pulling all the little switches to make sure the players just see a big scary head. Should the curtain fall all sense of awe is lost. In a way that is what the DM screen is, a curtain. This can be a cardboard barrier obscuring your GM work area, the anonymity of the internet if you are playing over skype or some other digital medium, but my curtain is less physical.
Figure 1: This is my Curtain
I don't have my curtain standing in front of me, though that could be possible should I decide too do it that way. My personality does not pertain to deception, even for the sake of fun, very well. I never hide what I as the GM, therefore environment of the players' game world, roll. This has a few pros and cons.
Figure 2: Abridged Pros and Cons
This list is neither objective nor comprehensive. It is meant to quickly explain some things I've found in my own sessions with people. For me my curtain is created by player's distance from where I am at the table, along with how most information beyond monster stats is in my head. I'm not masterful, or even at a journeyman level, for improvisation. Yet, improve allows me to store and change the campaign whenever it is needed.
Players can argue if certain actions deserve different results more easily. You might be wondering, why is this a pro? I view the campaign as me helping the players experience a world and enjoy themselves. I am also incapable for accounting every possibility. For instance, today (12/10/2016) was my Saturday groups first D&D session in in three weeks.
A few of us had grown rusty, yet that allowed people to look into being more creative as they didn't remember what all their abilities did. The group had been strolling through the streets of Abrana, in the district of Eastbale. Suddenly the Human cleric Father Marks thought he saw a familiar face. Sharp instantly remembered an incident from two months ago.
Oakville park soon to be stained by the merlot of flesh and life. Father Marks having gone on a fervent attempt to break up a massive gang battle by converting both sides to Mishakal. Yet he tripped on the cobblestone of the poorly maintain path and fell in front of them. Sharp being a coweled Halfling female rushed forward and managed to convince both sides he was her deranged father. Amongst the leaders of the notorious Red Masks, the main villains of this portion of the campaign, was a red headed woman with a rapier and lute. Now she sits cross legged against the rough hewn brick of this narrow Eastbale street.
From around a nearby corner steps a tall black scaled male Dragonborn Barbarian, a stalwart male Dwarven Fighter, and behind them emerges a female Wood Elf Druid. They are the Red Masks' heroic adventurer party, here to remove the threat to their dominance of Abrana. Everyone rolls initiative and the battle begins with the Dragonborn unleashing a bolt of acid dragon breath damaging everyone.
The party fights hard. Father Marks works tirelessly to fend heal his comrades, while fending off the druid with a Warhammer. Olga the Dainty duels the great Dragonborn and Dwarf receiving numerous wounds, only saved by Marks' interventions. Sharp and Bruce Nightvale use bow and javelin to whittle the Dragonborn down as the enemy bard heals him. After 6 rounds of combat, 1 minute 12 seconds in game, the Dragonborn lays dead covered in his own black viscous blood, brutally decapitated and a great axe embedded in his leftward chest. The Wood Elf is on the defensive and the Bard is suffering massive blood loss, dropping her rapier whilst clutching a javelin embedded into her abdomen.
The player in charge of Sharp says she will attack, but the player in charge of Olga makes a joke. "Why don't you just ram the javelin into her and boing off?" They look to me the Game Master. I agree and Sharp rolls high enough on acrobatics to allow the action killing the Bard. Two rounds later the Dwarf Fighter sits with a javelin piece embedded in his skull, in incredible pain yet still able to fight. The player in charge of Sharp uses Shocking Grasp and asks if she gets extra damage from the attack as the javelin would have metal on it, and a lightning spell is used.
That above paragraph shows the player Sharp arguing for a cool stunt and extra damage based on the circumstances. This is good, there may be some players doing it only to take advantage of the GM's leniency but the player in charge of Bruce Nightvale had actually interjected stating that only the tip of the javelin was metal, so giving double damage wouldn't make much sense. Sharp also agreed to a 50% damage increase should she roll particularly high for her hit chance, as the character was aiming for the metal tip specifically, not the dwarf fighter.
She managed to get the right rolls and felt elated that it all worked. It is important to let players experiment, and to work with them. That same fight I had one of the more experienced players look at the Dragonborn Barbarian's stats to make sure I was using his Dragon Breath ability correctly. D&D is played with friends, so trust them to an extent.
This does cause moments where they break from emersion though. For instance before that fight they decided randomly to go to a tavern. I had to pull up a random names document I downloaded on my phone to just make up an innkeeper. I also couldn't hide information as easily as I was rolling low for things with the innkeeper. It isn't a rigid game though as they were gathering information on a new potential patron Ambrose Villacro, a powerful man in Abranan society, yet the innkeeper they were bruising up didn't know about Ambrose's political nature only that he was extremely wealthy. If I had a screen hiding my rolls I could easily have said "no you didn't roll high enough." Controlling the events more, to have them stop wasting time strong arming a random innkeeper for free booze.
That works to my advantage though, not hiding roll results, for instance at the steps of what is essentially the Parliament of Abrana Father Marks started proselytizing, as he always does. I had them suggest actions their cahracters would do while we were spending a month away from D&D, Marks had gathered 800 disciples for Mishakal, extremely high rolls I got for him. I decided to add in for flavor that the dominant religion of the city very much disliked this new cult.
So, I had his sermon interrupted by a dwarf in white linen robes with lavender colored trimming, a weighted scale emblem, and a half shaven face. Priest of the Olo, Uben Hafbeard, strolled up and managed to do a persuasion battle preventing Marks from converting 20 government officials. They of course tormented the dwarf and convinced the guards to take him away through Marks' silver tongue, but the player's couldn't really deny Father Marks lost the theological debate.
All of this helps make the players more trusting of what I as a GM tell them. Unfortunately that is double edged sword as they rely on what I have to say whenever in character too much. This really forces me to change how I go about their dealings with Non Player Characters (NPCs). The only thing I have so far is that their new patron Ambrose Villacro, will want them to take a valuable jewel in a few sessions. This jewel though gives people of certain bloodlines +20 to persuasion, people like Ambrose who wishes to become the Tyrant of Abrana.
Due to them being unlikely to question Ambrose, as they trust my honesty to bleed through into my characters, it will take them time to understand they only do things for him because they had no choice. Unless one of them decides to put their foot down and we need to roll persuasion, which just means they will learn not to trust a character just because I voice them even sooner.
Alright so my curtain is one of the mind, and in a way the players' mind if I can keep them guessing what I plan to do. I touched on how campaigns changed over time, both in the experiences gained and planned to varying extents in my posts on Inspiration and Chimeraization of ideas.
Due to this belief of mine, for my games there is planned flexibility. While everyone has their own preferences and methods, this reduces the work load for me. I am comfortable making things up, and telling the players to hold on while I skim through a random name generator. The players don't mind either as they all have children, and the players that usually host, Bruce and Sharp, have two large dogs that like to get everyone's attention. For more quiet groups making everyone pause the action could be less acceptable, yet my Saturday group is jaded to it at this point.
I have printed out and hand drawn maps for my group. I also have campaign and dungeon parts printed out and placed in an old blue binder with numerous book marks. The current map being used is a massive map I once used for a game I ran in a forum, called Factions of Abrana. The map itself needed to be freeform snipped and printed in multiple segments. It was created in auto-realm and took several hours of me procrastinating on more important academic assignments. I will simply provide the link here: http://i.imgur.com/PbJEwBX.jpg.
I also have some random names, from both the Player's Handbook and a lore document I made for a fiction story I've been working on, downloaded onto my phone for quick non-data-draining access. Also there are a handful of flash cards I keep with general story highlights to work toward and keep in mind should foreshadowing be needed.
Finally I don't throw campaign print outs away, or not yet anyway. You never know when you might need an old map or monster to pull out of your hat. For instance I used an old tavern floor plan in my latest session because the characters wanted to go to a tavern. I had not planned that, but I played it cool and took the map out maintain the curtain.
The most important part of my curtain is my mind, but the greatest tool is a sharp pencil. Pencil because things change often. My campaign packages have tables for monsters with their max health printed, and their current health in a fight being written down and erased each round. This lets me keep track of large fights much more easily, as I can write initiative numbers down too.
Here's a picture of a few of these packages I'm speaking of.
Figure 3: Campaign Packages
On the far left , taking up top and bottom, is a four page front and back document of tables from the Player's Handbook, on weapons, armors, kits, accessories, and other things a player can purchase. Along with some general shop owner ideas to use. The central left top is the current campaign package being used by my Saturday group. They only got through the first page, where they talked to Ambrose Villacro, and fought their Red Mask counterparts in a savage duel.
The central right top, is the previous campaign package that group did. It is thicker because it had the option for the players to either join the city guard, eventually Ambrose, or the Red Masks. In a way it is actually two campaigns in a single package. The far right top is a printed out jpeg of a Typical Tavern map I got by searching D&D maps.
The far right bottom, is a hand drawn tavern with an isometric image, a floor plan, and minimap location I used for a quest. In that quest my Saturday group fought the second in command of the Red Masks, dealt with new combat mechanics (Varying Elevations, Area of Effects, Bonus Actions, Custom Attacks, and Boss Phases).
The central left bottom is a starter campaign I made for my girlfriend. It is a short campaign, 7-12 hours, where one plays in the land of Faerun, specifically Velen. There they find that the outpost of Gloomgarde is caught in a three way struggle against the rowdy Wood Elves who refuse to adhere to the Human Laws, and the Black Spear Goblin Tribe seeking to carve out new land.
The central right bottom campaign package is more of monster compendium for a new group consisting of my girlfriend, her best friend, and the that person's husband who used to play Third Edition D&D. This campaign being more free flowing and wanderlusty than my usual Saturday group's campaign.
These are the fabrics of my curtain. Should I not have these I can potentially make up enough things to maintain the illusion of the scary Wizard of Oz, but they do wonders for adding the needed structure to prevent the seams from tearing. Whatever you decide to do for your curtain make sure it is flexible otherwise it's not a curtain, it's a wall.
There are a few videos I looked at before determining what curtain I wanted. I'll leave them linked below.
(Colville, YouTube) Disscusses use and history of DM Screens
(Tully, YouTube) How to build your own DM Screen
(Mercer YouTube) Discusses what to have behind a DM Screen
(Shea, YouTube) Discusses various other items one can use to help run their games.
Works Cited
Colville, Mathew. The DM Screen, Running the Game #10. Mathew Colville. March 21, 2016. Web. 12/10/2016. Accessed From <The DM Screen, Running the Game #10>
Mercer, Mathew. Setting up your Gamemaster's Screen! (GM Tips w/ Matt Mercer). Geek & Sundry. October 20, 2016. Web. 12/10/2016. Accessed From <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRMVTmbe-Is>
Shea, Mike. Tools of the Lazy Dungeon Master. Mike Shea. January 13, 2013. Web. 12/10/2016. Accessed From <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-leTrRFqiw>
Tully, Jeremy. Assemble your own GM Screen. Jeremy Tully. March 1, 2012. Web. 12/10/2016. Accessed From <Assemble your own GM Screen>
Chimeraization is a D&D themed way for me to explain hybridization of various thoughts to create. We have discussed already that creativity is inherent, and that inspiration can come from anywhere. Now what?
What really needs to happen is to combine your various ideas. Personally, I like to visualize what I'm thinking about. Sometimes I draw a rough picture, make an outline in a word document, or a table. To help I actually made a rough table, this site won't let me attach the document, so I have a base picture and filled picture for you all.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Now let us go through the process of creating a Chimera. There are a few options seeing how we have this table. Much like with the tables provided in the Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master Manual we can use any form of Random Number Generator (RNG). This can be dice, a program in excel or google spreadsheets, or seeing how we have eleven option we can pull from a playing card deck. Aces are elven, and we can ignore Kings, Queens, and Jacks.
After that it falls to you how many times you want to use your RNG. For an example I will draw three times. . . . . . . . I got a 4 of clubs, 2 of spades, a King which we don't care about, so I drew again and got an Ace.
Currently our Chimera has Elves as provided in the regular D&D mythos, A dwarf with half a beard, and Finally a plot which involves someone good murdering at night. Is this something we would want to use? Do any extra ideas or direction come from this?
That's what should be taken away. With world building things need to work and make sense within the world. Otherwise there will be no suspension of disbelief which allows players to get into this world being created. This process is arbitrary and constant, even as a game is being played.
For example, my Saturday group started their campaign in a squalored city. After a five sessions they've made a name for themselves and are learning to go out into the world. Initially they didn't need to worry about where to sleep, how to keep watch, travel time, nor how much food they had. The practical reason is because I wasn't sure how to track that. The reason I gave them is that in the city they were working with guards and simply sleeping in Broken Bridge Tower, which was a dilapidated guard barracks in the middle of gang territory.
This is also where I introduced random encounters to them. Remember this is a group that likes the fights the most. That means the more fights that happen the better. I wrote in some leaflet paper a few rough hostiles outline and simply rolled a dice whenever they left the city. Fortunately they got this one.
Figure 3
Now my inspiration for figure 3 was simply a level 3 ranger from the Player Hand Book, along with just how powerful my girlfriend's level one ranger was. Having enemies that behave similarly to a player is dangerous in this game, as players have more thought in actions and far more capabilities. But what does this have to do with continually modifying our Chimera?
Well the best example is that they never did anything for the first few days of travel to provoke a fight from him. A month before this game I had watched The Ghost and the Darkness, so I added elements of that. Wide open tall grassland without wildlife, just silence. All characters with high perception were told they were being watched. To throw them off I added the ranger ability of Animal Handler, which simply meant he had a pet. I already had a hawk listed elsewhere in my journal so I used that.
For the first two nights the party wasted time shooting at the hawk, and keeping an eye in the sky rather than on the ground. The party's warrior, Bruce Nightvale, decided that he should set the brush on fire. He attempted to steal some fire starter, an il flask, from another player and was kicked in the groin. This would lead to some issues later on.
Several hours later, in the game world, I decided they should just fight the guy. Looking at the table everyone thought they had gotten the strange hawk to leave, and they were all fine. It al started with the hawk appearing once more and an arrow hitting the human cleric, Father Marks. The Deranged Ranger had the player ability of favored enemy. What that means is he was more likely to hit a target that was his favored enemy. It could be a monster group like Giants, Elementals, or Demons. Yet, he's deranged. So instead he had the second option of two humanoid characters. His being orc, which wasn't anyone in the party, and human which was everyone except the Halfling thief Sharp.
Father Marks had such high armor, he never took damage before. This fight would lead to him almost dying, which when your healer/ heavy hitter is about to die, it makes people anxious. Bruce Nightvale, decided they should set things on fire again. He proceeded to prove how chaotic and evil his alignment was by attempting to steal Sharp's oil flasks to help start said fire. This actually set up four rounds of combat, in the game world 24-48 seconds but for the players 4 loops around the table of people spending their turn, so for them twenty minutes. This meant it was really Father Marks and the female barbarian Olga the Dainty fighting the Deranged Ranger, while the warrior and Halfling just kicked punched each other over an oil flask.
He eventually did start a fire, but ne where the barbarian and the cleric was in danger as well. Eventually though the Sharp managed to get into the fight. Not being a favored enemy the Deranged Ranger had a much harder time at hitting her than he did their plate armor covered Cleric. Then comes the next improvised twist.
The party thought that this person was too great at fighting to be a random bandit, rather than it from them not fighting as a team which was happening more and more, due to them feeling combat was too easy on average. This would lead to an exchange where Olga would take the Good aligned character Father Marks back to a wagon they had to heal. The two evil aligned character then proceeded to torture the ranger. Now I could have gone "I just hate ye homans *hacks and spits on your face.*" The players though speculated he was hired, so I went with that. He stated in lose terms that he was hired "to go kill me sum cantankerous adventuras." (I gave him a cliché old prospector voice).
That's the thing with Chimeraization. You are never really done with the adventure because something will always pop up or players will not act as you initially thought. Remember it isn't your story the players are in, its their story and you simply manage the world. The whole mythos being created is a collaborative effort. I didn't intend for the ranger to end up stalking the party for three days, nor that he would have a hawk friend, or even have been hired by the villain.
Figure 4
I've mentioned before that the game I play with my girlfriend is more free form than my Saturday group. I learned from the Deranged Ranger encounter that random encounters can be really fun. The point of them is never to be easy, its to make getting to and from places a feat in its own right. To accomplish that if I state a road is dangerous I better include something nasty. Goal is never to kill the party for me, it's to create a captivating experience.
Figure 4 shows a small booklet I made for her campaign. There is no set in stone overarching plot. This is the most Chimeraization for a campaign I can get. Her character wanted to know about a random giant she had to kill. She also felt bored cause there wasn't anyone else playing with us, it was just her and me as DM. When she was in a tavern I pulled out an old character sheet for a human Paladin, and asked her if she knew him and how.
I made up that he had just recently gotten down collecting zombie parts for a local High-Elf Magister, Garivald Kalic. Someone the barkeep told my girlfriend's character, Chandra Golondel, might know a thing or two about the giant issue. It was spontaneous but it didn't feel forced cause she wanted someone to bounce her character's personality off of. A human vengeance paladin, someone who is just obsessed with killing a particular thing to where they have fervent magic power, was great for an anti social half-elf ranger who hates humans.
Figure 4 shows some basic and custom non-player characters (NPCS) that I can pull out at any point. This means she can do whatever, and I won't be left confused and rifling through a pdf on my phone on what she should be fighting or seeing. That's more into prep work, so we'll end that train of thought.
How about a recap? Chimeraization is hyberdizing your ideas into something you can use. We really talked about using it to create enemies and a campaign setting, or world. We can talk about specifically creating a character at another point, as the character creation is often daunting for people. Just leave this post understanding how important and easy it can be to blend ideas, and that it is a never ending process.
Chimeraization is Hyberdizing your ideas into something you can use.
I recently talked aboutcreativity, now for inspiration. Inspiration is, “the process of
being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something
creative.” (oxforddictionaries.com).
In a previous post I stated, “The point of this is to relay that you already are creative,
just like K. is.” (Townsley).
Everyone is the sum of their experiences, even the greatest of fiction makers
spliced things together. J. R. R. Tolkien defined what we now call the high-fantasy genre. He didn’t make everything up though. Drawing off a documentary series called Clash of the
Gods, Tolkeien took inspiration from ancient mythologies,
his religious upbringing, and from his experience in the trenches of WW1.
(Tolkien's Monsters). Mixing ideas together doesn’t make a piece unoriginal; it
is a crucial aspect of creativity.
How do you become inspired?
Simple, take out a pencil, some paper, and jot the first few things that come
to your mind. Deceptively easy? Not really, we’re focusing on the first step,
which is getting ideas down. It is normal to view the first step with trepidation. This hesitation is known as writer's block. Everyone has their own ritual to get past it, but mine is to simply start vomiting words onto a page and edit later. Chances are you aren’t looking to
become the next Tolkien, Pratchett, Lewis, or Martin for a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) gaming session. For
now, let us work together on inspiring ourselves to become accustomed to the
act of inspiration.
With me, inspiration is
a slug, slimy and slow. What I do is keep my phone’s memo app on standby at all times. Once an explosion of
ideas hit me, I can contain the conflagration where the heat of creativity
cannot escape. Fanciful words aside, any form of journal or record keeping
helps. Before switching to the memo, I would throw ideas in texts at my girlfriend.
Not just for D&D but anything worth writing or making.
Figure 1: Ideas and Inspiration
The above figure should show that what is written
doesn’t have to be elaborate. It should also indicate where one can look for
inspiration, anywhere. Want a villain? Why not have them be like your favorite
one from a book, or base them off a person you don’t like? Need a setting? What
about a world other than D&D's Faerûn?
Speaking of, should you have the Dungeon Master’s Manuel for
D&D, you will be delighted by their numerous charts to assist in world
and adventure creation, chapter 3 on page 71. I didn't use those aids for my homebrew [custom] world Akura, but I have glanced through the parts on adventures for sidequests to keep my players distracted.
Figure 1: The
Dungeons Master’s Guide. Charts from page 73.
My Saturday group mainly cares about killing things rather than story, which allows me to guide them down a linear path without them feeling restricted, so long as fights are plenty and hard. The campaign I’ve started with my friend K. is far more free form. It’s what we in general gamer jargon call a ‘sandbox,’
which means there I no clear goal or path. Maybe minor goals but most are set by
the player. That leaves a lot more open, but I did it to get her used to certain other aspects of the game. Specifically, that she has dice to roll, when to roll,
and with dice can try anything.
As K. played, I had a journal where I tacked down
what she had done and who she met. For instance Thursday 11/24/2016 she ran into a Dryad. K.'s character, Chandra, actually spoke that creature's language. They ended up having a conversation where I made up a personality and an easy quest. I wrote down the highlights of the session incase Chandra was in the area again. The reason was both so I don’t forget, but
to work that into an actual narrative later.
I've digressed toward the end with those examples of note taking but let us recap. Inspiration is to be mentally
stimulated; more so, gaining it takes some practice. It also helps you gather
individual puzzle pieces from past experiences and personal knowledge which can
be used to create something later.
Inspiration takes practice; take notes whenever you get an idea.
Works Cited
Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Dungeon Master's Guide. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.
Oxforddictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. 2016. Web. <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/inspiration>. Accessed 11/25/2016.
“Tolkien’s Monsters.” Clash
of the Gods: Episode 9. written by Christopher Cassel and Ted Poole.
directed by Christopher Cassel. History Channel. 2009.
Townsley, Geoffrey. “Intro to Creativity”. Evitable Boredom. Blogspot, November 19,
2016. Web. <http://evitableboredom.blogspot.com/2016/11/intro-to-creativity.html>. Accessed 11/22/2016.
I have a class about document design. In it I needed to create an infographic, so why not one for the blog? This blog has me thinking more about D&D, and the new players I deal with have trouble coming to grips with how dice rolls work and why we even bother with it. Hopefully this helps you some as well.
What is creativity? You have to ask yourself that when dealing with role playing-games—such as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). The Player's Handbook for the game even states, "Your collective creativity will build stories that you will tell again and again. ranging from the utterly absurd to the stuff of legend." (Crawford Preface).
Oxforddictionaries.com states that creativity is "the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work." (oxforddictionaries.com). Well that is a nice broad definition, which one can expect of such a subjective topic. Now, what does dictionaries.com say?
The above is a tad bulkier, but we have more to work with it. Without having to break out ancient tomes or pdfs on philosophy we can see that creativity by definition is related to imagination. Now since we understand creativity deals with imagination,how do you even be creative? What's the difference between Mozart and a child banging pots together in rhythm, or Monet and doodles during a boring meeting? Skill.
Creativity is a means of molding what is before you. Taking that simple wooden stick with a core of graphite to paper and making a smiley face, then drawing an outline of a head around it, adding ears, hair, shadows, and so on until satisfied. The creativity adored in galleries is due to its quality, something derived from skill. Have you not sat and imagined what you could craft? That was the act of creativity; it falling short of the vision was an issue of skill—something that can be trained.
The same works for those both playing and definitely creating campaigns and scenarios for table-top-roleplaying-games. I wanted to start a campaign with a friend (K.), as I love being a Game Master. Being a closet nerd, I thought she might like to play D&D. One night we sat down together, printed out character sheets, and she did this
Figure 1: Backstory
She ignored going through the slough of crunching numbers for Ability Scores; I don't blame her. More interestingly, she forsook the quick build.
"Each class description in chapter 3 includes a section offering suggestions to quickly build a character of that class, including how to assign your highest ability scores, a background suitable to the c1ass, and starting spells."—Crawford page 11
K. took over an hour to create an elaborate backstory for a character. Whenever we talked about anything remotely related to D&D the following week, she got excited and stated new ideas and revisions to Chandra Galanodel—her character. That's what roleplaying-games are about, jumping off the ravine of reality into the bright abyss of swirling possibility that is your character.
Creativity doesn't just need to be with writing for D&D. Below is a map I created with K. because both of us like drawing.
Figure 2: Aelfland Map
I want to point out how one may be creative without realizing it. For instance, I drew the map but the initial map wasn't good. To build up my skill, I watched videos on map creation and examined real world maps. Though the map never became what I wanted it to in my head, it got closer because I practiced building the necessary skills. K. assisted by providing most of the town names and coloring.
K.'s main concern about doing a D&D game with me was less that she thought it'd be boring and nerdy, but more her fear of not being creative enough. I was already making maps for a homebrew (my own created world) campaign. To allay her fears, I texted her one dreary night. "Bae do you have any town name suggestions?" My phone blew up with, "Kugarstein, Sikhander, Beaurco, Madnuble, Vatry, and Jogan."
I initially thought those humans around Sikmland would be more Russian, but she gave an Indian vibe to them, due to her love of Bollywood movies, yet she added, "stein," and, "ander," at the end of some names. Most likely due to a class she was taking at the time that examined English's Germanic roots. I adapted and Sikmaland was fleshed out [outlined] into an Indian-Deutsch culture.
The point of this post is to relay that you already are creative, just like K. is. I'll make a post about inspiration at another date, but inspiration and creativity are cousins that work well together. So throw out the self-question, "am I creative enough," you are. The better questions is what does being creative mean?
For the game, it means you can play as intended. Rather than rolling a twenty sided dice and stating, "I hit it." You can increase your own fun by announcing "I pull out my bloodstained gladius and stare down the goblin. With a mighty roar I lunge and stab him through the gut ending its miserable existence." More entertaining to do and listen to, as there will be other people present.
It also will allow you to do more inventive thinking. D&D is a game where anything is possible—so long as the core rules and the present DM allow it. Remember the first quote I showed you, "Your collective creativity will build stories that you will tell again and again. ranging from the utterly absurd to the stuff of legend." (Crawford Preface).
Figure 3: Gang Hideout
Final example of creativity, I GM for a group of four players every other Saturday. Now, I had made a scenario where they would be attacking a large gang. The scenario was set up for the players to either sneak up and kill most of the gang, or would be ambushed in the main building, if they had bad stealth rolls or simply charged in. After killing three bandits in the courtyard the players stood before the entrance to the main gang building. The player Bruce Nightvale, and I will use character names for anonymity, asked, "What's the building made of?"
My bemused reply was, "wood with a thatched roof."
It was at this crucial point in the scenario where the players would, unknowingly to themselves, have walked into an ambush of twelve enemies. Bruce turned to the Halfling Thief and commanded ",use scorch hands!"
Character
Race
Gender
Class
Alignment
Level
Bruce Nightvale
Human
Male
Fighter
Chaotic Evil
2
Father Marks
Human
Male
Cleric
Chaotic Good
2
Olga
Human
Female
Barbarian
True Neutral
2
Sharp
Halfling
Female
Rogue
Chaotic Neutral
2
Sharp agreed. She walked to the other side of the building as Bruce and the other two players used a nearby picnic table to barricade one of the doors. Sharp eventually made it to the back of the building where most of the windows were and used her one magic spell to immolate that side of the building. Then they all waited and did rolls to keep the gang members from knocking down the makeshift picnic table barricade.
Being creative myself, I figured the gang would try to rush out, and loose considerable health as they remained inside the burning building. What would have been a tooth and nail fight, became the players killing the gang members one at a time as they coughed out of the only remaining exit.
Creativity its imagination plus the skill to realize the vision.
Works Cited Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Player's Handbook:5E. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.
