Mini Hooks for Fantasy Campaigns III

 Continuing on...

20. A recently reclaimed tome believed to be of great magical power whose pages turn blank if you read the words aloud.

21. A local mage's animal companion has been seen around town for the last several days but there has been no sign of his owner.

22. A Constable from a nearby town shows up with a "Wanted" poster and the picture looks remarkably like the constable in the PC's town.

23. A woman one of the PC's has never seen before shows up with an escort from the city guard at a PC's house looking for her brother that she claims is him.

24. A small group of the King's Guards shows up looking for "volunteers" of a certain age and the PC's fit the bill.

25. An old friend of one of the PC's tracks them down, visibly nervous and agitated they explain about needing help from the local ruffians.

26. As the local population awakes and begins its' day, the citizens find an Ogre asleep by the local well or in the middle of town square.

27. While doing research in the local archives, a local scholar has discovered information on the remnants of a lost civilization that was rumored to possess magical knowledge that has not only been lost in the modern age but is more powerful than the current spell knowledge. A local businessman is looking for a group of explorers to hire to investigate the ruins and bring back such knowledge.

28.  With the arrival of the latest New Moon, a constellation has disappeared from the night sky.

29.  During the last week the statues in the town square have been in different spots each morning. It was believed to be the result of some local pranksters until this morning.  The statues were not only in different spots in the town square but in different poses.

30. The PCs have been hired to escort a caravan with several sealed boxes and locked chests. Upon arrival at their destination, their contact does an inventory to discover that the contents of all the containers have been removed and they are now filled with rocks, sand, and hay. His guards have closed in and he is demanding answers from the PCs.

Mini Hooks for Fantasy Campaigns II

 Continuing on with mini hooks to use as ideas in your fantasy games...

11. A young child has returned to town with a few small gems he found in a hollow tree trunk in the woods outside of town.

12. The local witch living close to town has appeared in the town square warning of bad omens for the times ahead.

13. An eerie wolf's howling can be heard at night ever since a caravan of entertainers recently set up camp outside of town.

14. During a lull in the town's holiday celebration, a woman comes through the crowd with the local constable and points toward the PC's while proclaiming loudly "That's them!".

15. Small bands of soldiers have been turning up in town with no explanation for their arrival.

16. One of the Priests runs from the local temple screaming "We must renounce this faith!".

17. A bump has risen from the ground in the town square and has slowly gotten bigger over the last week.

18. A very large feather from what must be a gigantic bird has floated down and landed right on the entrance to the city.

19. Several townsfolk claim their fortunes have been read by one of the vagabonds performing in town and have turned out to be true.  One of the PC's is the most recent person to visit them and have their fortune read.

20. A recently reclaimed tome believed to be of great magical power whose pages turn blank if you read the words aloud.

More to come...

Mini Hooks for Fantasy Campaigns I

I like to keep a list of random hooks that may lead to adventure ideas in my fantasy campaigns so I thought I would share some of them here.  Maybe they will help some others come up with ideas to expand on these or ideas of their own. 

1. Strange lights have appeared in the nearby hills outside the city the last 3 nights.  These lights have showed up at the same time and last for one hour.

2. The cat population on the city streets has become noticeably higher in the last week.

3. The local crypt has been violated. The all evidence points to something breaking out of the crypt rather than breaking into the crypt.

4. A local group of youths have returned from a hunt with an abnormally large egg.

5. Graffiti from a long dead cult has appeared overnight on a local temple or church.

6. A local youth known for exaggeration has returned to town frightened.  He babbles on about an army of monsters passing in the nearby woods.

7. A small group of Orcs has surrendered themselves at the gate seeking asylum.

8. A caravan has entered the town rambling about a magical flying disc of silver that sat down nearby in the woods.

9. Mounds left behind by a large burrowing creature have started popping up close to town.

10. A local Priest has started acting strangely and appears unkept after studying a newly reclaimed lost tome of knowledge recently turned in to the local temple by a group of explorers.

More to come...

Does an "evil" alignment really make sense?

Alignment as many issues to deal with, but there is one that I am not sure has been commonly raised.  Would a PC or NPC actually identify itself as evil?  From an objective moral standpoint, we could say that an action is evil.  We could evil call certain people evil.  But, would these “evil people” actually call themselves evil?  Yes, there are occasional individuals who do use those labels, but it is extremely rare.  Even if a person is committing human sacrifice, they are not doing it with the thought that it is morally wrong.  They are doing it because they think it is morally right.  Professional assassins do not identify as evil either.  They are simply making money performing a service.  If someone hires them to kill someone else, that person probably deserved to die. 

In the PHB, Gygax argues that assassins must be evil because being paid money for killing sentient beings is evil.  As an objective moral truth, he may be correct.  However, it makes little sense to think that PCs would identify as evil even if the player selects an evil alignment.  Monsters would be even less likely to identify themselves as evil. 

The AD&D rules treat alignment as objective moral truth as well as self-identification.  Yet, it is virtually nonsensical to claim that a sentient creature would identify as itself as evil.  Right actions are the ones to be done and wrong actions are the ones not to be done.  When orcs raid human villages, they do not think they are committing a wrong.  They think they are doing something that is right.  In other words, orcs or any other “evil” aligned entity is likely to call itself and its actions as good. 

I would suggest that an altruistic and egoistic axis to replace the good/evil one.  Then you could have an order-freedom axis to replace lawful/chaotic.  An orc or assassin would be viewed as extremely selfish thinking its needs outweigh the needs and rights of humans.  This would resolve many, but not all of the issues.  At least in terms of what most PCs will encounter in typical D&D games, this would make more sense. 

A 5E Hit Die House Rule Idea

I have finished reading through the 5E Basic Rules I had printed out at Office Depot.  Although I was very skeptical before the release of any 5E product, I am very happy that my initial suspicions were unfounded.  I am looking forward to getting the Starter Set in several days and I have been coming up with ideas for adventures when I get a home campaign up and running. 

 

This is the first Wizards edition of D&D that I want to play by the book.  The course of D&D has been righted with this release and I am very much looking forward to getting the PHB.  I had originally intended to wait until I evaluated the Starter Set and played a few sessions but I am enjoying the Basic Rules enough that I am ready to dive in.

 

I am in no rush to get started on a big list of house rules.  I have not even played a session yet.  It seems like a pretty solid rule set and I do not want to go messing around with it before I give the rules as written a good workout.  That does not mean I have no ideas for any house rules at all.  I do, in fact, have an idea or two that I may implement in the future to see how well they work in actual play.

Hit Die

I think the Hit Die for Fighters (d10) and Clerics (d8) is perfect.  I think it makes sense that the Rogue and Wizard both use a smaller Hit Die than the Cleric and Fighter; they both use a d6.  I am thinking of changing the Hit Die for Rogues to a d6 and for Wizards to a d4 for no other reason than to fit my perception.  

Page 7 of the Basic Rules state that “…hit points define how tough your character is in combat and other dangerous situations.”  It makes more sense to me to have the Rogue less tough than the Cleric because the Cleric represents a type of warrior priest instead of a devout member of the clergy.  It makes sense for the Wizard to also be less tough than the Rogue and the other classes as well.  I wonder if a d4 is too low.  I did double check the B/X rules and both the Thief and Magic-User use a d4 for hit points.  Interesting.

Final Thoughts

Who knows if I will implement this change any time soon.  I can see a few things that I could start working on right now.  New races, classes, backgrounds, and trinkets come to mind pretty quickly.  I believe I will wait on most of these to see what is in the PHB.  Why duplicate something that is coming out in an official write up in a short while?  If I work on anything else it will probably be trinkets because that would be a small investment of time if something was duplicated.  Have any of you experimented with any house rules yet?  Do you have a new race, class, or a rules mod you would like to share?     

 

5E Basic Rules - Short and Simple

Like many in the role-playing blogosphere, I downloaded the free 5E Basic Rules document yesterday.  After a few minutes of browsing the information I got on the Office Depot site and looked into getting the document printed and bound to make it easier to read further; I am one of the old guys so I prefer physical books in my hand.  The price was right - just $14.06 for card stock covers and coil binding - so I ordered it and it was ready two hours later.  I have been reading through it off and on ever since I picked up yesterday.

I am not going to bore you with any details or a complete review in this post but I am going to keep it short and simple - Wizards, you have my attention and I am interested in seeing more.  My original intention was to get the Starter Set and evaluate from there.  That changed when I discovered that character creation would not be included in the boxed set.  Then I decided to go with these Basic Rules after it was revealed it would include character creation rules.  Now I WILL be getting the Starter Set when it hits my FLGS.

My Thoughts on the D&D 5E Starter Information...

As the information on D&D 5E is slowly coming out the blogosphere has been lit up with various posts about the cost of the books, release dates, the OGL (or lack thereof), and the upcoming $20 Starter Set coming soon.  My tentative plan was to pick up the Starter Set and see how well the rules match my expectations.  With the latest word of mouth containing information similar to "the Starter Set will be geared towards the DM" and "pre-generated characters instead of character creation rules" I am starting to re-think that decision.

There are several Basic Sets from the old TSR catalog that can serve as fine examples of how to do the 5E Starter Set correctly; Holmes, Moldvay, & Mentzer all have their own strengths and following in their foot steps would improve the quality of any new version.  I am going to touch on some of the information I have read from other blogs in this post. 

It has been pointed out that the 5E Starter Set will cater to the DM in several posts.  I understand this approach because there will be plenty of experienced hobbyists that use this set to introduce new players and the owner will most likely be the DM in those instances.  I do think that 5E would be better served by a  Starter Set placing equal importance on the role of player and DM by including a condensed PHB and DMG that are both around 48 to 64 pages in length.

The other bit of information I keep reading in posts is the inclusion of pre-generated characters instead of character creation rules in the Starter Set.  I realize that pre-generated characters could lead to quicker set up time if the characters were presented in a clean layout with notes about rolling, combat, skills, etc. on the character sheet.  I have heard that the character creation rules will be available for free online for people to reference.  Why not just include them in the Starter Set?  It was done with the old Basic Sets from the past and it was great so why not just do it again?  Character creation is one of the most basic essentials of a role-playing game so they should be included.  The Starter Set should serve as a snapshot of the full rules.  

I have flip-flopped a few times on whether or not I am going to buy the Starter Set or skip it.  I would like a "complete" product but with the exclusion of character creation rules in the box I am not sure.  Ideally, along with character generation the rules should cover the first 5 levels of play with the appropriate information split between a condensed PHB and DMG.  I would assume that they would only include 3 or 4 races with the same number of classes.  Of course, any DM information would only include information appropriate for the possible levels.  Throw in some dice and an introductory adventure and I am all over this.

Now I hear that Amazon has the Starter Set listed for $12.66 so maybe I will be buying it...

     

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Recap

The D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge is now over.  I completed every post and I enjoyed reading many of the posts by others.  I have participated in other similar events with a D&D focus but I think this round of questions was probably the overall best.  I noticed a strong trend of similarities on some posts while other posts were vastly different in experience.  

I attempted to break up the monotony of the posts related to the challenge by inserting posts on other topics at random intervals throughout the challenge.  I noticed something right away when I did so.  The "off topic" posts generated much more traffic than the posts related to the challenge.  I am not talking about a small margin of difference here; it was literally ten times or more for the number of views on the "off topic" posts.

I am not sure that I am going to participate in any more of these month long challenges in the future.  I may participate in a "different" way.  Maybe I will do a combo post every week combining all of the week's posts into one or do a post every 3 or 4 days with the previous 3 or 4 days all lumped together?  I am not 100% sure if I will do anything at all with them yet.  There is the upcoming A-Z challenge coming up and I will make up my mind about participating soon.      

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 28

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 28: What’s the single most important lesson you’ve learned from playing D&D?

Simply that variety is the spice of life even when it comes to a hobby that I enjoy tremendously.  I referred to this in my previous post for the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  My gaming group had a tendency to playing “just D&D” which meant AD&D or Basic D&D.  Even though we would occasionally play something else, the vast majority of the games we played were D&D-like in their rules or play style.  In short, we leaned heavily towards these types of games from 1980 to 1991. 

I took a long break from 1991 to 2000; basically, the entire time I was in the Army.  I played once or twice during that time but I was not excited about A/D&D or even fantasy gaming in general.  It somewhat felt like a chore to me and I needed a break at that point.  The reason for that break was that I had over played A/D&D and similar games to the point that I was not interested in playing anything at that point.

I have a much smaller collection at this point in my life.  Fantasy still takes up the most shelf space but it is a slight margin now instead of the vast majority.  I have a lot more variety with games like SteamCraft (a steampunk role-playing game) and Dead Reign (zombie apocalypse) as part of my collection.  It would be easier to GM some of these games now if I would have expanded my horizons back in my early days of the hobby.

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 27

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the 1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 27: If you had to do it all over again, would you do anything different when you first started gaming?

I would not change a thing about when I first started gaming.  There is, however, one thing that I would change.  We got into A/D&D mode and got stuck in a rut.  There would be other games suggested and people were always stating “Man, I need to keep playing my Elf so he can level up” or something similar.  It would be false to say we never played anything else.  For instance, FASERIP Marvel, V&V, Talislanta, and Palladium Fantasy all got their fair share of play.  We actually could have played many more games than we did.  There were several games that each of us bought but could not convince the rest of the group to give it a try.  At times, some of the content would definitely influence or inspire our other gaming but we seemed to stick to just a handful of games when we had many more available.  Just off the top of my head I know that we passed on GURPS and Middle Earth Role Playing just to name a few.

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 26

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the 1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 26: Do you still game with the group that introduced you to the hobby?

No, I do not still game with the group that introduced me to the hobby for various reasons.  I am still good friends with some of them and some of them live too far away for anything practical.  Of the ones that are close by, there are too many scheduling conflicts to make it happen.  I am currently in that spot “between groups” at the moment but I do have some potential gaming lined up with my cousin and his wife.  

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 25

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 25: Longest running campaign/gaming group you’ve been in.

The only constants in the longest running gaming group I have been in were Jamie King and me.  We began gaming together in the fall of 1980 and would continue to do so until the summer of 1991. That was the year that the majority of the gaming group was seniors.  Upon graduation, five of us had joined the military and would soon leave out for various destinations all over the globe.

Over the years, others would come and go at the game sessions.  There were times that my brother Mark would play A/D&D with us.  Our mutual friend Dan would join in but it was mainly when it was something other than A/D&D.  He was not fond of the class & level system because his older brothers had convinced him that other systems were “superior”.  The stoner kid down the street – I can not remember his name – would play but he was mainly into the live action events.  For several years, the Carman brothers (Ray and Neal) gamed quite a bit with us and that was when we played the greatest variety of games; Talislanta and Palladium Fantasy were some of the most often played.        

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 24

I will be really surprised if Krull is not mentioned several times by other participants.  My buddies and I were all excited by the Krull trailer and we talked my Uncle David into taking us all to see it.  The Glave made several appearances in our campaigns over the years. I always stop and watch for at least a few minutes if this movie is playing.  D&D comes to mind instantly because it was the first time all of us in the group went to see a movie that we related to our game sessions.

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 23

I must have borrowed this movie from my Uncle David "a million times" when I was a kid with D&D always on the brain.  I used to play this movie when I was working on D&D stuff.  I would get out some graph paper and just start knocking stuff out.  That is why O Fortuna from Excalibur makes me think of D&D when I hear it.

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 22

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 22: First D&D-based novel you ever read.

The first D&D-based novel I ever read was actually a trilogy; the Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman.  I do not recall a lot of the details around that time; did I buy them all at once or one volume at a time?  What I do remember is that it was summer time so there was no school to be worried about.  I started reading until I went to sleep that night. 

The next morning, I got dressed and then I started reading again.  I remember this so well because my grandmother was worried because I had “done nothing but sit there and read all day” for several days in a row.  I wanted to tell her to relax because this was not 1940 but the modern world; there are plenty of modern conveniences that make “working in the field all day” obsolete. 

I stopped reading and asked, “What do you want me to do?”, as I waited for an answer. 

She got a puzzled look on her face and replied, “Well…I don’t know.”, and went back to whatever it was she was doing at the time.

I continued on and finished the trilogy.  I would go on to read several more Dragonlance novels over the years.  For the most part, I think the Weis & Hickman contributions are the best but there are others that are just as good.  The one I currently need to buy and read is the final volume of the Dark Chronicles trilogy. 

I know some people do not care for these books but that does not dissuade me from reading them.  I choose not to get irritated or argue with them – different strokes for different folks sort of thing.  Not everybody is going to like everything I do and the opposite is very much true as well.    

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 21

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 21: First time you sold some of your D&D books – for whatever reason.

The first time I sold some of my D&D books was after a few years in the Army.  It was during the height of popularity for Vampire: the Masquerade and I could not find anyone interested in playing A/D&D.  I thought long and hard about but I eventually reasoned that I probably would not be playing again and probably should not hold on to stuff that would just take up space.  I sold quite a few items and I now wish that I had not done so.  Since that time, I have purchased some of the items again but nothing will replace the actual books that I had accumulated since the early 1980s.  Lesson learned!

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 20

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 20: First non-D&D game you played.

I am absolutely positive that the first non-D&D game I played was a science fiction game.  It was either Traveler or Star Frontiers.  I am leaning towards Star Frontiers because my brother got it one time when we visited the local game store so I could pick up one of the D&D boxed sets.  Neither of these games really caught on with our group but Gamma World did.  We played and enjoyed several editions of the game – my personal favorite is still the original – and it would directly lead us into picking up RIFTS years later.

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 19

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 19: First gamer who just annoyed the hell out of you.

The first gamer who annoyed the hell out of me was actually one of the originals of our gaming group.  He was a good player and DM but he started going through a phase as a player that just started irritating pretty much all of us.  For some reason or another, he became obsessed with his character being “the best” regardless of the situation.  It may not sound too bad but I will provide some examples.

One example is character creation – we used to just roll up characters and then bring them to the gaming sessions.  This guy started showing up with characters that had multiple scores of 17 plus and even showed up once with straight 18s!  The only answer he would give was that he had “rolled it all with my dice” which we knew was bogus.  The DM decided that we should all generate characters at the first session of the next campaign.  This guy takes out every d6 in his dice bag and rolls ALL of them.  Then he was pulling out three dice and assigning them to an ability score.  Keep in mind that boxed sets were really common during that time and most boxed games had at least a d6 or two in them.  It was not hard to see how he way rolling those scores with 30 or more d6s. 

Another example of irritating behavior was his decision to start solo adventuring his characters that he was using in campaign play.  He would get a module, his character, and his dice and just start reading through the module.  There was no attempt at impartiality in his dual role as DM and solo player.  He would show up to the game sessions with his character and there would be additional experience points, levels, treasure, and other stuff on his character sheet.  There were several players that got really irritated about that.

After a few of these episodes, he came around and started gaming like we had always done before.

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 18

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 18: First gaming convention you ever attended.

I have only been one dedicated gaming convention in my entire life.  It was the first year of Conjuration in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Once again, I owe that trip to my Uncle David.  I do not recall hardly anything about it except for a few details.  We went the cheap route and slept in my uncle David’s van.  I know for certain that Steve Jackson Games was one of the vendors as I bought Necromancer and Car Wars from their booth; Steve Jackson may have been manning the booth because the person looked remarkably like the pictures I had seen.  There was a vendor selling hand made swords.  Somebody was hawking the entire Man, Myth, & Magic series to people as they passed by his display.  There was some sort of Star Trek miniatures game going on in a rather large space but I have no idea which one was being played.  There were several people in costume running around the convention.  I remember it being fun but that is about all for the details.  I need to get out and go to another one some time…

D&D 40th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge Day 17

This post is part of a series of posts in the D&D 40^th Anniversary Blog Hop Challenge.  The information in many of these posts is related to events that occurred primarily in the1980’s. Since it is now 2014, I can not guarantee complete accuracy with such a large passage of time but I will present the events and information as best as I can recall.

Day 17: First time you heard that D&D was somehow “evil”?

I remember my step-dad made some sort of vague remark such as “I’ve heard some weird stuff about that game” when he saw my friends and I looking through our A/D&D books.  He did not insist on anything but just simply stated he had heard things.  It really was not a conversation at all.  The topic was pretty much dead at that point.  Fast forward a few months and then the television movie being played that night was Mazes and Monsters.

All of us sat around the living room watching the movie.  My step-dad made a few “yeah, that’s what I heard” comments but never really tried to push the issue with me.  He actually told me to “be careful” with the game!  I was intrigued by the bits of game rules hinted at throughout the movie but I mainly sat there with some quad paper drawing dungeon levels for the entire movie.  I would actually read the book years later; as usual, the book was better.  I even found it in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart a few years ago.