Jonathan Drain's D20 Source: Dungeons & Dragons Blog

World Building 101: The One About Monsters

2010-08-29T17:24:57Z

One of the most fun things about D&D and other roleplaying games is and has always been facing a wide variety of horrible and imaginative creatures. Monsters have been inspired by folklore and legends (such as vampires, dragons or minotaurs,) by works of genre fiction (such as orcs, or all manner of Lovecraftian horrors,) or from the twisted minds of game designers or DMs (Beholders, mind-flayers, and rust-monsters). Regardless of their origins, players love to encounter new and exciting creatures to outwit, outfight, or outmaneuver, and DMs love to pit their friends up against strange and imaginative creatures.

There is no shortage of choice for the DM looking for creatures to use in their latest adventure. With three Monster Manuals currently available, a Dark Sun-specific monster supplement, and numerous creatures presented in adventures or sourcebooks like Draconomicon, Open Grave, or Demonomicon, there are literally thousands of creatures ready-made to drop into your dungeon. The Monster Builder makes it even easier to make your own creatures and modify existing critters to suit your every imaginable need. Additional monsters are almost never unwelcome additions to the game. Like Jello, there’s always room for more.

On the other hand, while there may always be room in D&D as a whole for monsters, that doesn’t mean that you as a DM are obligated to include every creature in every source as part of your campaign world. Some creatures, like those in the Dark Sun Creature Catalog, are explicitly designed for a specific setting—while they can certainly be used in others without too much disruption, there’s no reason to assume that they exist by default. In fact, the choice of what types of monsters you include in your campaign can be a defining factor for your game. You may choose creatures to support a particular theme of your game, for example, or to suit the particular environments in which your campaign takes place. You may also want to select monsters to give your campaign world a specific feel, be it by omitting creatures common to other settings or including new monsters unique to your setting.

Choosing based on a campaign theme is fairly easy. If your campaign has a strong theme of fighting the undead, for example, you’re going to want lots of skeletons, zombies, and vampires. If, on the other hand, you choose to focus on the fey, you might lean towards hags, eladrin, gnomes, and fomorians.

Similarly, choosing environmentally appropriate creatures is relatively simple. A campaign set underwater for large portions probably isn’t going to feature a large number of fire-based creatures, for example. Don’t be afraid to play against type, though—while you might expect a frozen wasteland to be populated largely by ice or cold-based creatures, a tribe of goblins that have enslaved a number of minor fire elementals may be a very interesting threat, and can lead to interesting encounters.

Choosing based on what fits your vision of the campaign world is easy enough as well, since it is entirely in your hands. My current campaign world has no orcs or gnolls, for example, and dragons are so rare that most people believe they are myths. Goblins and drakes are relatively common, however, and my players have had repeated run-ins with a race of small, pale darkness-dwelling creatures with power over shadows. Creatures unique to the setting can be very useful in defining it. Draconians and kender would feel out of place in Dark Sun, but it’s hard to imagine Dragonlance without them. Another element of this type of creature selection is that you’re free to declare that a certain monster family simply doesn’t exist if you feel it’s too dumb—and D&D has definitely had its share of lame creatures throughout its history. If you don’t like owlbears, or think the tarrasque doesn’t make sense, then you can certainly create a campaign setting where such things never existed.

Be careful not to exclusively rely on one type of monster exclusively—it can be dull to fight the same thing time after time, and many monsters of given “types” share resistances and vulnerabilities that can make combat much easier or more difficult depending on how your players have built their characters. A party with no reliable source of radiant damage, or who rely heavily on poison or necrotic damage, for example, will find facing hordes of undead to be a much less pleasant prospect than other groups might. You may want to warn your players not to pick too many powers of a given damage type if you’re planning on relying heavily on a type of creature that resists it, and you may need to fill out encounters with creatures of different types if your party has a high proportion of abilities that exploit those vulnerabilities.

Another key thing to remember is that you can always “reskin” creatures to serve your purposes. I mentioned above that my campaign world has no gnolls, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t used them. I ran a few encounters recently where my party battled a group of cultists who had been magically transformed into “beast-men”—all of whom used gnoll statblocks. I’ve also run encounters where I have reflavored a variety of disparate creatures into a unified theme—leveled up versions of spiretop drakes, fire beetles, and a very heavily re-imagined dragonborn became a group of lightning elemental creatures guarding the power core of an ancient lost civilization, with the drakes acting as lightning motes, the beetles as medium-sized lightning creatures, and the dragonborn becoming a large lightning-breathing drake.

However you decide to select the monsters you use in your game, remember that that choice can communicate a lot about the game world or the themes of your campaign. Don’t be afraid to reflavor as needed, but never forget that variety is the spice of life; even if you’ve been reflavoring wildly, your players see what you tell them they’re fighting—and if it’s demons or zombies every time, no matter what’s going on under the hood they may become bored. Even with a strong theme to your game, never be afraid to throw in something different just for fun from time to time. That is what the game is about, after all.

Cheap Alternatives to Miniatures

2010-09-06T04:31:26Z

I was researching cheap alternatives to miniatures again and got some interesting results.

In 2007 I calculated from the RttToEE miniatures list that a twenty level campaign will use approximately 540 different miniatures.

In 4E you have thirty levels but fewer encounters per level, so 20 levels in 3E has as many encounters as 26 levels in 4E. That works out to 623 different miniatures over two years, and as D&D 4E uses more monsters per encounter you’ll often need duplicates.

Supposing each has an average of four, minis cost an average of $2.50, and you can use another mini as a stand-in half the time, you’re looking at 1,246 minis costing $3,000+ over two years or $30 per game session, most of which is footed by the DM.

Since miniatures are not optional like in 3E, this means the “proper” to play D&D is both more difficult and more expensive than its competitors: video games including WoW and and other RPGs including 3E.

In a search for alternatives I rediscovered Newbie DM’s post on “minis” made from Gametable/MapTools type pogs, printed out and affixed to metal penny washers. I’ve found 25mm washers for £1.82 per hundred, and a 25mm hole-punch for £5. At this price, your 1,246 minis will cost £30/$50 in penny washers and no more than £30/$50 in glue, printer ink and paper. This is so much more affordable that I’m surprised every D&D group isn’t doing it already.

I also discovered a German boardgame website selling coloured 25mm wooden discs for 13 eurocents / 16 US cents, about a quarter of the price of Alea Tools’ magnetic discs which are popular for tracking status effects in 4E.

World Building 101: Another Day at the Races

2010-08-28T06:04:16Z

Several months ago I discussed player character races, largely in terms of choosing which races exist in your setting and how they might differ from the bog-standard versions described in the core books. Today’s article will revisit that topic from a slightly different angle—I’d like to take a closer look at creating your own races specifically for the campaign world your game is set in.

The first step is to visualize your race. Who are they? Do you picture a people based on the classical satyrs, or perhaps sentient humanoid fungus-folk? Perhaps an insectoid race akin to beetles tickles your imagination, or a mystical fox-people who practice ancient magics, potent martial arts, and earthy wisdom? Or are they physically similar to another race, enough to be able to disguise themselves and walk among them undetected? You should have a clear idea of what they look like, since you will probably need to convey this information to your players in order for them to visualize this race, especially if you intend for it to be playable.

The next step is to decide where they call home. Often the answer to this is suggested by the physical features of the race—hawk-men might roost in the high places of the world, insect-people might dwell in underground holes, and satyrs might intermingle freely in the elven lands. If possible, make their homes as distinctive as possible, especially if they are near other similar races. A halfling and a beetle-man may each live in homes dug out from the hillside, but where a halfling’s hole is finished and furnished with the finest of frippery, a beetle-man may be more comfortable with rough dirt walls and simple furniture. This can help in describing the character of the typical member of the race, as well.

Making an interesting culture is key when you are trying to design a player character race. If your players have no interest in using the race, much of your work is lost—though not all, especially if they play a key role in your campaign world. Still, it can be disheartening to work on designing an option for your players to use only to have it ignored or declined. If you are really eager to have someone play a member of a custom race, it can be a good idea to collaborate with the prospective player on the culture of the people, both to expand it in ways you might not have imagined on your own and to ensure that it’s something they’re interested in using.

One barrier that may exist that could prevent your players from choosing a custom race is that they see them as being similar but inferior to an existing player character option. If you create a race inspired by classical satyrs in appearance, who dwell in the woodlands and excel at archery, then your players may well wonder what distinguishes them from elves, and rightly so. Worse, unless you have put a fair amount of effort into making them both mechanically distinct from elves and comparable in the amount of feat support you offer, then chances are your players will choose the option that gives them a wider variety of choices for feats. If you’re not particularly mechanically inclined, you might even consider running your campaign setting without traditional elves entirely, to further the example—simply let your players know that in your campaign world you are “reskinning” elves to represent the custom race. This may not be appropriate for all campaigns or races, but it may be the appropriate solution for some.

One reason that it may not work is if your campaign specifically calls for there to be interaction between your custom race and the existing races—perhaps rather than mingling freely with the elves, the satyr people have a long term rivalry with them, be it over space, resources, ideologies, or whatever other reasons. How your new race interacts and fits in with the other races that exist in your setting is another very important element to consider, both for players interested in using the race and for you as the DM to use in creating story hooks and ensuring that they are fully integrated into your campaign world. If you neglect to consider how and where the new race fits into the world and its other peoples, they may feel tacked-on.

As mentioned above, mechanical support is important for any player character race. The type and level of support you give to your custom races is entirely up to you, though it can also depend on the needs of your players. If a concept for a race is interesting or unique enough, there are some players who will happily choose it without regards to mechanical optimization, since there may be a sufficient number of feats available to support the concept they have in mind without needing racial options to work. Other players may be willing to collaborate on feat support—perhaps suggesting possible feats that they would like for their character, which you as DM might accept or alter as needed to maintain balance. You might decide to create a number of feats yourself, or you might cherry-pick racial feats from other races you may not be using in your game that fit the theme of the race you are creating.

Ultimately the most important thing about creating your own race is that it should be interesting and fun and add something to your campaign world. Everything else is of secondary concern—if your players don’t care about the fact that there are no feats, then don’t sweat the lack thereof. If your players don’t want to play a new race, you don’t have to abandon the idea; they may still be valuable for establishing a unique element of your setting or as an important part of the story in your campaign. A new or unusual race can go a long way to making your campaign world feel unique, and can be a great tool for involving players in developing aspects of the setting. Remember, though, that to completely abandon the familiar races might create a barrier for some players, who may have particular expectations about their options—replacing all of the races in your game with new ones you’ve designed may make it difficult for them to choose in some cases. In others, it could be an exciting way to present a truly fantastic setting. As always you should communicate with your players and decide what is most fun for the group as a whole.

Second Chance to Receive Free D&D PDFs

2010-08-28T16:24:43Z

The Le Games has generously given D20 Source permission to continue hosting this week’s PDF giveaway until the end of the month. You have until Tuesday to download these three expansions for D&D 3.5:

If you’re still hungry for D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder content, D20 Source has the full content of 17 Relics, originally published by The Le Games and written by Jonathan Drain.

World Building 101: Getting the Most From Your Players

2010-08-26T04:03:28Z

Previous discussions in this column have explored collaborating with your players on world-building efforts, mostly through character backgrounds and attentiveness to cues in their roleplaying. Not every player wants the same experience out of an RPG, though, which can lead to problems if the player character questionnaire is the only venue by which you obviously invite player collaboration in the world building process. Perhaps one of your players doesn’t really feel all that comfortable in the spotlight, preferring to take a supporting role; the questionnaire as a tool for drawing out that player’s collaboration can fall short, then, especially if it contains mostly questions about the character’s specific background. But what if that player has other areas in which they can assist in world-building?

This idea is one that may seem contrary to the instincts of player and DM alike. After all, traditionally the DM is viewed as the one who provides the world for the players to explore. However, while you may meet some initial resistance or reluctance on the part of your players to the idea of taking part in the world design process, once they begin to participate in earnest chances are they will have a better time in game as well. Use their imagination to help feed your own, and the possibilities expand exponentially.

Different players have different interests, skills, and needs, and identifying which of these you can make use of in designing or expanding your campaign world can be key. For example, a cartographically inclined player may be able to make a much better map of your world than you yourself can manage, and may add in some interesting sites or features that beg to be used in adventures. Perhaps he sketches in a city on stilts in the center of a lake where you hadn’t imagined one; deciding what made the citizens go to such effort and thinking up some stories that you might be able to tell there can give you fuel to work with for a plot or a base of operations, and will make the player feel excited to see his idea made real in the game world.

Other, similar ways exist to draw out player creativity to expand your game world for all manner of different skills or interests. A player interested in heraldry might be coaxed into designing and blazoning crests for the noble families represented in your game, or even for the players. There may be interesting stories to work out behind each of the elements of the crests, which you can work with the player to determine and flesh out. A player with a lyrical bent might be able to write songs or poems that flesh out the setting—from a common drinking song to a ballad of one of the heroes of old, or a song about the characters themselves and their adventures.

Even if the player is less creative or less comfortable in creating art or poems, ask them for input on the world. Maybe they have certain kinds of things they’d like to see, or certain themes they would like for the campaign to explore. If possible you should work to accommodate such things—barring ideas that wildly conflict with the game as the rest of the group envisions it, that is. If everyone else is dead set on a high fantasy game focusing heavily on courtly intrigue, having a futuristic space-warrior with a laser gun and a tank and a shoot first ask questions later attitude is probably not going to mesh, though creative or determined groups may well find a way to make it work.

The ultimate purpose of involving the players in worldbuilding is of course to make them feel as invested in the setting as possible. When their characters hear stories around the campfire based on their adventures, it’s great, but not every story can be about them—but if the story is one that the players created, then they get a similar sense of ownership. An involved group is a happy group, and a campaign with everyone working together to build the world can act as glue for otherwise disparate groups. Imagine what it can do for your group!

Free D&D PDF #3 – Last Chance

2010-08-23T03:25:59Z

If you’re following the RSS feed, you may have missed Monday and Tuesday’s free D&D PDF giveways to celebrate the 36th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons and the 10th anniversary of D&D third edition. Today D20 Sources the last of three PDFs graciously donated from The Le Games‘s line of third edition player enhancement books.

Today, you can download 17 Archer Feats. Save it out while the download is still available.

If you missed the previous two offers, the previous PDFs are still available for the time being: Monday’s expansive Treasures of Malevolent Magic and the comically named (but seriously useful) Pimp My Paladin.

Free PDF #2

2010-08-23T03:24:41Z

D20 Source Dungeons & Dragons Blog has teamed up with The Le Games to give away a D&D PDF every day until Wednesday to celebrate the 36th anniversary of D&D.

Yesterday’s offer was a free PDF copy of Treasures of Malevolent Might, a collection of 36 magic items including several artifacts.

Today, you can download Pimp My Paladin, a tongue-in-cheek titled collection of serious ways to beef up your divine warrior for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. Save now while the file is still available!

Free PDF Offer Celebrates D&D’s 36th Birthday

2010-08-23T03:24:35Z

Dungeons & Dragons is 36 years old today, and to celebrate, D20 Source has teamed up with publisher The Le Games to give presents to every reader.

Gen Con VII took place in 1974 from August 23-25. It was at this convention that TSR launched the original Dungeons & Dragons, in a print run of only 1,000 copies. This August also marks the tenth anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons third edition Player’s Handbook, estimated to have sold several hundred thousand copies per year.

To celebrate, we’re giving away a selection of The Le Games’ player-oriented third edition PDFs, one every day for the next three days.

Today’s release is Treasures of Malevolent Magic, a collection of 35 magic items for Dungeons & Dragons third edition. Right-click and Save As to download your copy – the offer won’t stay up for long.

World Building 101 – The Art of Artifacts

2010-08-19T15:42:42Z

Powerful magical items are a staple of myths, genre fiction and roleplaying games alike. Most D&D players will have heard at least of the Hand and Eye (or Head) of Vecna, for example, and who hasn’t heard of Excalibur or the One Ring? As powerful as these items are, it’s really the stories of where they came from and how they were used that captures the imagination. If your campaign world has similar magic items of incredible power, quite aside from the mechanical representation of each item it is essential to consider the story behind it as well.

Most magical items aren’t legendary on their own—they have well known owners as part of their story. Excalibur is almost always mentioned in the same breath as King Arthur, for example, and the One Ring is associated with Frodo, Sauron and Gollum—but also sometimes known as Isildur’s Bane after another ill-fated owner. Is there one user in the history of your artifact who is most famous for its ownership, or has it been passed through many hands? What became of the owner, and what role did the item in question play in that fate?

Another angle to consider is whether there are any locations or events that are tied to the item. Locations don’t necessarily need to be specific named places—Excalibur, for example, was granted to Arthur by the Lady of the Lake (and returned to the lake in some versions of the tale) but which lake in particular is anyone’s guess, as there are a number of lakes which fit the bill. This confusion of locations can be beneficial in your campaign setting, if you choose to make tracking down the item in question a major quest, especially if other treasure seekers are also after the same item.

Events can be well known, such as the battle in which Isildur cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand, or more vague, such as exactly when and where Smeagol and his friend Deagol later came upon it. Either way, these stories can provide both background on the item of power and potential hints on where it is to be found. Are there any locations or events that your artifact is associated with? Are the locations specific (like Mount Doom) or vague (like the Lake in Arthurian lore)? What is the nature of the association?

Some items are most often referred to in combination with other items. Excalibur and the Holy Grail, for example, have a certain amount of connection thanks to each having close association with King Arthur. Other storied items of legendary power—the Hand and Eye of Vecna, for example—are much more directly associated. Are there any other artifacts connected to the item you’re creating? What is the connection? How close an association is it? Are the items tied together as complementary, or are they equal and opposite in nature—opposed weapons of light and darkness, for example?

The question of what the item does is of course definitely a contributing factor to its fame and story. Some items, such as Excalibur, are obvious in their use from their form alone and the tales surrounding them are based on that clear use. Other items are of less immediately apparent purpose—The Black Cauldron’s appearance would not necessarily indicate to an observer its power to raise the dead as servants to its owner, even if it would be immediately evident that it was a powerful item. The shape and form of the artifact can be an interesting way to make them more interesting—magic swords are obvious and popular, but trying something more unique may have a more memorable result.

Giving your artifacts strong backgrounds and stories can help them stand out in your player’s minds, as well as provide further links to your world’s history and geography. It’s even possible to provide this kind of detail for more mundane magical gear—though the same level of depth is not necessary, especially if your game features frequent acquisition and replacement of lesser magical toys. In any case it certainly does a great deal to shift magic from being a collection of numbers towards being something special in your world, which is always a good thing.

World Building 101: That’s No Moon

2010-08-11T20:55:29Z

Mankind has a well-documented fascination with the heavens. The Sun, the moon, the planets and the stars, as well as other celestial objects like comets and events like eclipses, have all been a field of great interest. They have been used in all manner of divinations and believed to be able to foretell the future, for weal or woe. In your campaign world, celestial bodies can hold in truth all the fabled knowledge of yore, but there’s no reason to feel obligated to leave it at that.

There are a wide variety of possibilities for any of the features of the sky in a fantasy world. Let’s look at a few…

The Sun is often taken for granted, but it plays a huge role in the environment of your world. What if the sun is weak, or distant, and at best provides a twilight level of illumination for the world—what changes would that make to farming, wildlife, and society? What if two or more suns burn in the sky, and night is unknown—and what if suddenly one of the suns vanishes? Your world could traverse an odd path around its sun, one that leads to abnormally long seasons lasting years or even decades, or perhaps your campaign world is not heliocentric at all, but rather features the sun and all the other heavenly bodies rotating around the world. Playing around with the basic expectations of night and day can lead to a very distinct feel to your world.

The moon—or moons as the case may be—can affect a lot as well. In Dragonlance, for example, the phases of the three moons of Krynn affect the strength of magical spells. In the Ultima series of computer games, the phases of the two moons of Britannia were behind the secret of the moongates. In our own world the full moon is commonly associated with triggering the lycanthropic transformations of werewolves, as well as a general trend towards erratic behavior. Quite apart from that, in a fantasy setting the moon could be inhabited—perhaps the orbit is low enough for magical airships to traverse the distance between the world and the moon, leading to colonization and fantastic cities being erected. Alternately, a force of extraplanar invaders is using the moon as a beachhead for their invasion of your campaign world. Perhaps one of the moons is in fact a constructed citadel, home to a god or ancient power, watching over the world as guardian or tyrant (or both). What if the ancient citadel has been long abandoned, but contains magic artifacts of untold power waiting for someone to unravel the secrets of the lunar keep?

Other planets are possible too, though this depends on the assumptions of your setting. The default Points of Light setting for the current edition of D&D assumes a cosmology largely incompatible with a more traditional or realistic view of space, but there’s no reason your campaign world must be a part of the greater network of planes linked by the Astral Sea or other core assumptions. You might have other inhabited worlds in sailing distance of a flying ship, or you may decide that the world your player characters reside upon is the sole life-supporting world in the system, with others being hunks of lifeless rock. Still, such lifeless husks can be used to great effect in divinations, or in setting up some astronomical alignment—a time when great events or powerful magic may be possible due to the rare conjunction of all the planets for a short time.

Celestial events like comets or eclipses can be used in a similar fashion, of course. With enough preparation they can add a sense of urgency—“you must rescue the damsel before the eclipse”, perhaps, or “The demon-god will achieve apotheosis on the night the comet lights the sky”. Even if you as the DM maintain control and use the timing of the event as a narrative device, rather than a hard time limit on the adventure, it does contribute to the atmosphere and makes events feel more immediate and epic. By and large these kinds of events are more effective when planned ahead and the player characters are forewarned of the coming celestial circumstances, but an unexpected eclipse can lend tension and confusion to a scene as well.

The stars themselves are somewhat more distant, but can still be used for great effect. In our world, constellations are named for great heroes or deities, and the same can be true in your setting, allowing you an avenue to expand the myths and legends of your world. If your player characters manage to kill an evil deity, perhaps that deity’s constellation fades from the heavens, to be replaced by constellations representing one or more of your heroes. Other possibilities include the eldritch beings with whom certain warlocks form their pacts, or even strange invaders from other galaxies—though it feels like a science fiction premise, with spelljammers and other fantasy trappings it could be a novel approach to a campaign.

All in all there are as many possibilities as there are stars in the night sky. Spending a little bit of time thinking about what you could do with the heavens in your campaign can lead to a wide variety of new adventure sites, story hooks, or even full campaign plotlines.