Brevity vs. Bloat
I just read Wolfgang’s editorial “Keep it Short” in the latest issue of Kobold Quarterly. In it he extols the virtues of short books with lots of impact. I don’t disagree with him – short and clear is good – but his article rails against long works as though they are bad in and of themselves. Maybe he’s used to seeing writers pad their word count excessively because they’re payed by the word.
In any case, his editorial got me to thinking about the subject of word count, brevity, and bloat and about how I approach writing RPG supplements, specifically in regards to what I see as one of the biggest pitfalls in RPG writing – skimming over material the DM needs to run the adventure.
When I write an adventure I have several goals in mind. Of course, I want it to be fun, fantastic, compelling, believable and exciting. That almost goes without saying. Beyond that one of my number one goal is to make my adventures easy for DMs to run. I want my adventures to leave a casual or first-time DM and their players saying “that was great!” instead of wondering how to start.
In my many years as a player I’ve read lots of adventures. Some do a great job of laying out the adventure for the DM, other less so. The bad ones are the adventures that have weak introductions or transitions, and require the DM to ad-lib or completely make up sections of the adventure to keep the story moving along. Many DMs are up for this task, but for many DMs, especially new DMs with less experience, being left hanging by the adventure you’re trying to run can really demoralize you. I feel like this just adds to the steep learning curve that new DMs face, and I want Unicorn Rampant to produce adventures that ease this learning curve, increase the fun everyone is having, and help the hobby grow.
To that effect, when I write an adventure, my goal is to provide the DM with everything he needs to present the story from start to finish. Many DMs may not use all of this material, especially the hook or introduction material. But for a first time DM, I want to make sure they have something that they can use to get the action started without having to rely on telling the players that they’re all gathered at the inn and see a wanted poster. Remember, not all of us are in the midst of playing epic campaigns. Many players, especially those new to the hobby, can really use a way to get the story rolling easily.
Now, including summaries of the course of the adventure and read-aloud text for every transition and important location in the adventure can add to the word count, but all of it is included for a purpose. Organizing it cleanly and keeping the summaries brief and clear is all part of making the adventure easy to run. If that adds to the word count, so be it. I would rather provide DMs and players with more than they need then not enough.
-Adam A. Thompson
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged about Unicorn Rampant games, ale break by Adam A. Thompson with 1 comment.
Lord Dunsany’s The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories is the influential third book by Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, aka. Edward J. M. D. Plunkett. Dunsany’s stories have been major influences on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula LeGuin and many others writing fantasy today. This collection of stories was first published in hardcover by George Allen & Sons in October, 1908, and has been reprinted a number of times since.
Some of the short stories in this collection are linked by Dunsany’s invented pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegāna, which were the focus of his earlier collections The Gods of Pegāna and Time and the Gods. One of the stories, “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth,” was afterwards (1910) published by itself as a separate book, a now very-rare “Art-and-Craft” style limited edition. A scene from “The Highwaymen” is very similar to a scene I’d written a few weeks back in one of my Proppian adventures.
To me Dunsany is a true master of the fantastic form. His collection, The Hashish Man has been a major influence on my writing and my own thinking about creating interesting characters in role playing games since I first read it back in 2000. This heightened imagination continues to inspire me to this day.
This collection is well worth finding at a used book store for $2 (thanks, Half Price Books!), but also available for free online at Project Gutenberg. Check it out for inspiration in your fantasy role playing games.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged fiction, inspiration by Stephen Hilderbrand with no comments yet.
Memory Eater
This floating, mostly-mandible creature eats memories, dealing XP damage rather than normal damage. Watch out for crits!
Memory Eater
Size/Type: Small Aberration (Evil, Psionic)
Hit Dice: 8d8+15 (50 hp)
Initiative: +7
Speed: fly 60 ft. (12 squares)
Armor Class: 24 (+1 size, +6 Dex, +7 natural), touch 17, flat-footed 18
Base Attack/Grapple: +6/+3
Attack: Bite +8 melee (1d3+1)
Full Attack: Double bite +8 melee (1d3+1)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Psi-like abilities, steal memory
Special Qualities: Blindsight 60 ft., damage reduction 10/adamantine, immunity to fire, power resistance 23, resistance to electricity 15, vulnerability to protection from evil, shift alignment
Saves: Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +8
Abilities: Str 15, Dex 23, Con 15, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 14
Skills: Bluff +15, Concentration +11, Hide +16, Listen +16, Move Silently +16
Feats: Combat Manifestation, Toughness, Up the Walls, Wild TalentB
Environment: Underground
Organization: Solitary or pod (2-4)
Challenge Rating: 8
Treasure: standard coins of various sorts; double goods; standard items
Alignment: Always chaotic
Advancement: 9-12 HD (Medium), 13-16 (Large)
Level Adjustment: +7
Memory eaters understand common and all the tongues of the Dream and Astral Planes, and can understand any of the languages of prey whose memories they have stolen.
Combat
Steal Memory (Su): Upon a successful critical hit (range 18-20) on a creature, memory eaters steal memories from the creature, dealing 5d20 xp damage. Exactly which memories are taken is up to the DM. If the memory eater is killed, the memory is split among the party, who all feel as if they have the memory all to themselves. The XP taken is also split back among the party.
Psi-Like Abilities
Like their rival yet much smaller brethren, intellect devourers, memory eaters have supernatural mental abilities, including: at will—cloud mind, compression, detect psionics, ego whip (2d4, DC 16*), empty mind (+5 on Will saves*), id insinuation (three targets, DC 16*); 3/day—body adjustment (2d12*), intellect fortress, painful strike. Manifester level 7th.
The save DCs are Charisma-based.
*Includes augmentation for the memory eater’s manifester level.
Blindsight (Ex): A memory eater can use nonvisual means to ascertain all foes within 60 feet as a sighted creature would.
Alignment Shift (Ex): Memory eaters’ alignments shift based on the experiences they have experienced second-hand.
Skills
Memory eaters have a +4 racial bonus on Bluff checks. They also have a +8 racial bonus on Move Silently checks and Listen checks. Finally, they enjoy a +8 on all Knowledge checks, since they have learned more than their physical bodies have experienced.
Posted in Creature by Stephen Hilderbrand with no comments yet.
Issue 17 Released!
As you know, Claw/Claw/Bite is a magazine devoted to developing new material for Pathfinder and d20 system role playing games.
This issue of Claw/Claw/Bite includes the following:
Note the new landcape design, complete with 3-column presentation.
Buy the new issue at rpgnow, or if you simply must have it for free for review purposes, email us at clawclawbite AT gmail DOT com.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged CCB issue, release by Stephen Hilderbrand with no comments yet.
A Journey on the River Styx
And so the journey begins. Throwing off the mooring ropes and raising the anchor, the Sea Wyvern leaves the docks and sails upstream on the river Styx.
Thick fog blankets the moors and cliffs of hades. As the hours pass the cliffs to the right fall away and the flow of the Styx slows. The sky above is black, broken by several orbs of different sizes – some large as platters, other smaller than Greyhawk copper half-pennies. Sarial’s skeletal styxian linnorm and conjured hell-wind continue to propel the ship upstream through the swamps. Green, gray and black foliage stretch out as far as can be seen. Hunger and thirst come to some, sleep to others, but there is no measuring of days here. No sun ever shines in the middle underworld.
But eventually there is a dawn, of sorts. The swamps run against a range of moutians, and the river you sail upon flows down out of a valley between the peaks. A stronger wind is summoned and the ship sails up into the mountains. Behind the peaks the sky is lit by a fiery radiance. As you sail into the mountains you see a bleak and lifeless landscape, punctuated by pits in the ground. Atop one of the mountains you spot a iron fortress with horrible winged things aloft above it. You have returned to Pazunia – the plane of infinate portals. Soon a braying of hounds is heard echoing against the steep rocky slopes. A pack of wild dogs, their bodies aflame, run along the ship for a time snarling, barking, and aventually stop to let their tongues of flame drape over their fangs.
More days pass sailing across this barren hellscape. Eventually the river’s course winds into a mountain-side cave, and you sail in. A wind picks up and quickly escilates to a howling roar. Conversation is only possible by shouting, and Sarial’s conjured wind fails. Only the linnorm’s tireless swimming pulls the ship against the sometimes raging current in the tunnels you now navigate. Some take refuge from the wind below decks but even in their fitful sleep’s dreams the wind screams.
After a maddening eternity of deafening wind the tunnels you follow open up onto the middle of a steep cliffisde. Rock looms above to to port. The river runs along a jagged channel on the steep slope, and to starboard a vast void is filled with twisting rivulets of flame, floating rocky debris, and globules of liquid, all constantly stirred by a whipping wind. As you sail beside this sight the elemental mixture you see changes constantly, fire becomming water, only to vanish into air, then to solidify into stone again.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Savage Tide by Adam A. Thompson with no comments yet.
DnFnD #1 – Bards
Bards are the quintessential fantasy role playing characters. They are the ones who tell the stories. They write the songs that make the XP ring. In a way, the players playing DnFnD are bards.
I’m not suggesting you sing at your games, but you know what I mean. And why rule singing out? It’s a heck of a way to liven up a session. Not recommended in apartment complexes with thin walls…
As stated in Appendix II of the PHB, in 1st Edition DnFnD, …
Read the rest of the article here.
Posted in 1st edition D&D, Editorial and tagged dnfnd by Stephen Hilderbrand with no comments yet.
Statue of Limitations
Each statue of limitations appears to be a humanoid statue between eight and twelve inches, with one feature diminished in size. These features correspond with which stat attribute they limit to a highest value of 14. Greater statues of limitations limit these values to 10, lesser to 18.
When the figurine is worn around one’s neck, its effects radiate 5′ in all directions, affecting others.
If a statue of limitations is broken or destroyed, its effects are nullified, its power departed.
Each feature on the statue that appears diminished on the statue is so limited. Figurines with all six attributes limited appear with all six features diminished.
Price: 8,000gp, lesser 4,000gp, greater 16,000gp.
Posted in Magic Item and tagged cursed, necklace, statue by Stephen Hilderbrand with no comments yet.
Healing Call
You call out to your companion, inspiring her to fight through her wounds.
Level 1 Utility • Conjuration, Divine
Encounter, Minor Action • Close Burst 5
Effect: You allow a companion within the burst to spend a healing surge and heal an additional 5 hit points.
Note: This power is similar to Healing Word, except the effect’s range scales instead of the d6 with each tier, reaching 10 at paragon and 15 at epic.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged power: heroic cleric by Adam A. Thompson with no comments yet.
Map Pins
This campaign flavor is also a nice trap, or in the modern parlance, a hazard. Have a map available on a desk or pinned to a wall in a mage’s tower, with a map pin corresponding to the current location. As the characters remove the pins and place them in new locations, the tower teleports them to the new location.
See how this can be used in various forms and in various environments, for instance representing the location of a large floating disk in a catacomb riddled with pit traps. The party will have to play with the pins on their confusing map (where are they, for instance?) until they find which one will bring them the disk. Meanwhile, other pins correspond to beholders and other nasty creatures, which the party inadvertently teleports in in their search for the disk.
Posted in Magic Item, Trap and tagged campaign flavor, hazard, map by Stephen Hilderbrand with no comments yet.
The Ruins of Soguer – River Journey to the Ruins
Presented below is the first leg of the adventure The Ruins of Soguer. Previously the players had been tasked with traveling to the nation’s fallen capital to find the old king’s sword so that their liege can be coronated.
Previous sections of the adventure can be found here:
The Ruins of Soguer – Introduction
The Ruins of Soguer – Start of the Adventure in Aguies Town & Castle
Running the adventure – This section of the adventure details the player character’s travel from Aguies town to the ruins of Soguer. There is an important encounter along the way, where they meet a ship crewed by Aurochs who are searching for a kidnapped member of their royal family. There are also a few encounters with dangerous creatures and terrain as they travel the wild marsh near Soguer.
Goal – rescue the Auroch princess – Iejir’svern.
level 10, XP 2000 or 3000
This is an encounter with crocodiles in what were once the surrounding farmlands – now swallowed by the marsh. As the journey continues, read or paraphrase the following:
Free Action Melee 0
Target: Creature in a trapped square
Attack: +14 vs. Reflex
Hit: The creature falls into the quicksand, is restrained until they escape and begins sinking (see Effect – Sinking below).
Miss: The character is slowed in the quicksand square but is not yet sinking.
Effect – Sinking: After one hit, a character sinks up to their waist. A second hit or a failed Athletics check means they sink to their neck. A third hit or failed athletics check indicates they sink completely and begin suffering the effects of suffocation (DMG p. 159).
-A character wearing light or no armor can make a DC 24 Nature check to know that if they hold still they will float, and can then do so. While floating in this way the character is not subject to any more attacks from the quicksand. Any move or standard action will end the float and cause the character to be subject to further attacks by the quicksand.
If you wish to add a greater threat to this encounter, feel free to add a few hungry stirge swarms to up the threat.
Creatures – stirge swarms – XP 700 each.
Posted in 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, Adventure and tagged encounter: skill challange level 10, subplot: Lament of the Aurochs, The Ruins of Soguer, trap: hazard level 11 (elite) by Adam A. Thompson with no comments yet.