Music to Game By: Ink, Silence

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This last weekend I was a guest at the G.A.M.E. convention in Springfield, Missouri. While it was a small convention, I had a fantastic time. I met many wonderful people, and had an opportunity to run an Eberron adventure and a Phoenix playtest. While I’ve run both scenarios before, both leave enough in the hands of the players that it’s a different experience for me every time. This collaboration is one of the things I love about roleplaying games; it’s like rereading a favorite story but having it turn out differently every time.

Quite often, gaming at conventions means running your game in a huge room filled with other people playing games of their own. G.A.M.E. gave me my own room for my sessions. Having this private space gave me the bring music to the table, something that doesn’t really work in the open air arena. It made for a great session… and that inspired me to write a little about music and games.

Music can be a powerful tool, if you have an environment that lets it work. In a story-driven game, we’re creating visions in our minds — imagining a setting quite different from the dining room or basement we’re playing in. Music can help ease that transition, and it can also help drive the mood of the moment. If you know the basic acts of your story and have time to create appropriate playlists. When you switch from the soft, eerie music of exploring a graveyard to the more dramatic combat music, it’s an instinctive cue to the players that the situation has changed and this scene is more active. In long running campaigns, I often like to establish a theme song for the game itself, and set that going when the session begins; it’s a nice way to start that transition from table to story, and to draw people back to the last session. You can even tie themes to individual characters… when people hear the Imperial March, they know Darth Vader’s just around the corner.

I don’t always have time for this level of preparation. I didn’t have time for this in my Phoenix session at G.A.M.E. Instead, I just picked a few things I knew fit the overall tone of the story and set them cycling. With that in mind, I thought I’d talk about a few of the tracks that often find their way on my gaming playlists. There’s dozens of excellent gaming soundtracks out there, and I’ll look at others in the future; and I’d love to hear about some of your favorites. Today I’m looking at two of mine: Ink and Silence of the Lambs.

INK (Jamin Williams, 2009) is a film about dreams. The soundtrack is quiet, eerie, and works through a small set of repeated themes. The repetition works to its advantage, because it means that a shift in track doesn’t automatically draw attention away from the game. One advantage is that it’s a fairly obscure film; the Game of Thrones soundtracks are excellent fantasy background, but when the title motif comes up it’s hard not to think “Game of Thrones!” While the primaryInkmotif is very distinctive, odds are good your players don’t have any prior associations with it. As I said before, it’s fairly slow, ambient, and eerie; I like to use it for exploration, investigation, and general background. It’s not TOO creepy, and it’s certainly not dramatic combat music… but it makes for a good background that won’t draw too much attention from your story.

SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (Howard Shore, 1991) is also good for general eerie ambience and the building sense that you’re building towards something terrible. It’s an orchestral score, and slightly more complicated than Ink. It also has a few themes that serve different purposes, so it’s not one you’re likely to want to play straight through. The Main Title, The Asylum, and the Finale are all excellent building/investigation music, if a touch more dramatic than Ink. On the other hand, The Abduction and Lecter Escapes both have SHOCKING DISCOVERY moments that can be distracting if you aren’t in a shocking discovery place. This was one of my go-to soundtracks for running Over The Edge, and I expect it to see a lot of use in my Phoenix tests.

Needless to say, this is only the tip of the iceberg; I’ll talk about more of my favorites in days to come. In the meantime, what’s some of your favorite music to game to?

 

 

 

 

Dragonmarks: JorascoCare and the Mark of Snails

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It’s still convention season for me. I just got back from a fantastic weekend at G.A.M.E. in Missouri, and next weekend I’ll be in Seattle for GeekGirlCon. I look forward to writing about G.A.M.E. and about Phoenix, which I tested there and will be testing at GGC. But today seemed like a good time to address one player’s concerns about the deplorable state of healthcare in Eberron, so it’s time for another Q&A! As always, everything said here is just my opinion based on my personal campaign, and it may contradict canon sources.

I have a real problem with the ability of Artificers to outright heal people. I see Artificers as the inventors and creative geniuses of the magic world, being able to see the very essence of magic and it’s wondrous patters to infuse that energy into ‘wonderful’ toys. When I say magic I mean Arcane, as Divine is just something that is beyond the knowledge of the mortal being and unable to be manipulated.

Am I missing something? How is House Jorasco the ‘House of Healing’ if any artificer can throw around healing magic. I don’t see how Jorasco is still around with the prevalence of Artificers in the setting.

You don’t say what system you’re playing now, so I’m going to start with universal principles and then move to system specifics.

First major issue: There’s no such thing as “the prevalence of artificers.” The player character classes are rare and exceptional. If you go to the average temple, you won’t find a cleric or a paladin there; the priest will most likely be an expert trained in Religion, Diplomacy, History, and similar skills – someone who offers spiritual guidance, not magic. Where you do have magical healers – whether at Jorasco or in a charitable clinic dedicated to Boldrei or the Silver Flame – they’ll be adepts, not clerics. The vast majority of spell-workers employed by House Cannith (or anyone else) are magewrights. You said it yourself: Artificers are the inventors and creative geniuses of the world. The magewright is the magical equivalent of an electrician; an artificer is someone like Nikolai Tesla or Merrix d’Cannith—an innovator who can challenge the way people think about magic. There are AT LEAST a hundred Jorasco heirs for every artificer in the world… possibly considerably more.

Next, to quickly look to the original 3.5 artificer, there are no infusions on the default list that can directly heal organics. There’s only one way for an artificer to do this: to create a spell storing item. The whole idea of this is that you are literally creating a new prototype magic item on the spot—one that’s unstable and is going to be destroyed after one use. You have to make a UMD check to have it work at all, and if it fails, it might blow up in your face. Furthermore, it requires you to spend XP, which means it’s entirely possible that an NPC can’t use it at all, since NPCs don’t necessarily HAVE XP the way PCs do. Spell Storing Object is the infusion that truly represents the idea of an artificer as a creative genius: you are creating an item that CAN’T be created by a wizard, and you’re making it out of lint and pure determination. A wizard CAN’T create a wand for that – but you just did. It’s not a casual thing. It’s dangerous—and just as dangerous the second time as the first—and it costs you to do it.

If you’re talking about the 4E artificer, I can’t help you there. I didn’t work on the 4E Eberron Player’s Guide. The artificer isn’t my design; it was chosen to be a “leader” class, and leaders heal. But what I will point out is that healing in 4E means something very different than it does elsewhere. A warlord can heal you with an INSPIRING WORD. Literally. That’s not magic, it’s him being so encouraging that you get the will to get back up and get in the fight. So think of the 4E artificer’s healing as being more like that of the warlord than that of the cleric; it’s more that he’s giving you a shot of adrenaline than divinely removing your wounds. With that in mind, don’t think of “healing” as literally wiping away serious injuries; “hit points” are a very abstract thing representing morale, determination, and the strength to keep on fighting. Which brings me to the next major point…

MOST PEOPLE DON’T GO TO JORASCO FOR CURE LIGHT WOUNDS.  Loss of hit points is, by and large, a problem suffered by adventurers. Frankly, they make no sense when it comes to the idea of the health care industry. Consider that 90% of the population are either 1st level commoners or experts, and thus have three or four hit points. A sixth level dwarf fighter might have sixty hit points. What does that even mean? Can the dwarf literally stand there and get shot with a dozen arrows and just walk it off? Or are hit points a measure of his martial skill and ability to avoid damage in the first place? The short form is that a cure spell that heals 3d8+6 hit points isn’t a service that first level expert will ever require, and it’s questionable what it even MEANS in a physical sense. Most people are going to go to Jorasco for the same reason WE go to a hospital. You’ve got the flu. There’s a weird pain in your side that won’t go away. You broke your arm. Now, Jorasco DOES have the power to make these troubles go away instantly with magic, but frankly, most people can’t afford to pay for that, and most people don’t NEED the problem to go away instantly. They don’t go to Jorasco for magic; they go there for the mundane services of the Heal skill. When you go to a Jorasco healing house, you know that the people are professional healers; and you know exactly what to expect in terms of prices, because they are standardized.

Looking back to system, when the people of 4E go to Jorasco, if they aren’t just going for mundane healing they are likely going for a healing RITUAL, like Cure Disease or Remove Affliction. As noted in this Dragonmark, I actually restrict key rituals like that to the Dragonmarked. In the case of healing, I would make an exception for certain especially holy divine healers – but in my campaign, a cleric of Dol Dorn couldn’t actually learn the Cure Disease ritual. A cleric might be well versed in the Heal skill, and be able to help you through the disease that way – but the instant cure only comes from Jorasco.

Although given your concerns about arcane healing in general, I’ll note that you’ve got problems beyond Eberron; the 3.5 Bard is an arcane caster with cure spells on his list, which is the loophole that does let the artificer make an arcane wand of cure light wounds.

Now, given that we’re talking about Dragonmarks, I’ll throw an extra question in…

Do Aberrant Dragonmarks only do big dangerous things? Or are they just the ones talked about? Would people fear a rubbish one? If an Aberrant Dragonmark allowed me to control the actions of snails, would the cultural fear of the mark exile me?

The core idea is that true dragonmarks are constructive, while aberrant dragonmarks are destructive. The true dragonmarks deal with healing, communication, creation—and they do so in predictable ways. Aberrant dragonmarks deal with fire, plague, madness and more, and beyond that do so in unpredictable ways. One person’s aberrant fire mark lets them spontaneously generate flame; another burns enemies up from within; a third sets anything the bearer touches on fire. Furthermore, aberrant dragonmarks are often difficult or dangerous to the bearer. The person with the flame mark may suffer painful burns any time they use the mark, or it may activate spontaneously in times of stress.

There are exceptions to these rules; for example, the Mark of Storm has some offensive applications. But the mark is still predictable and doesn’t harm its bearer. On the flip side, take Brom’s mark in The Son of Khyber. It’s essentially localized reincarnation; he can survive almost any injury, but the wound heals with the flesh of a random species… so he has the arm of a troll, and it’s called out that he often regrows internal organs that don’t work with the rest of his physiology, requiring the medic to cut them out until they regrow in a compatible form.

Coercion is certainly a valid form of aberrant power. So it’s POSSIBLE you could have an aberrant mark of snail control. However, the key point is that aberrant marks are entirely unpredictable and never take exactly the same form. So no one is capable of looking at your mark and saying “Oh, that’s snail control.” All they know is that it’s aberrant, and that aberrant marks CAN spread disease, control minds, cause fire, and worse, and often cause the bearer to go mad. So yes, you will be ostracized and feared by many.

Some point out that the powers of least marks are easily mimicked by, say, a low-level sorcerer, and that’s true. The point is that generally, a sorcerer has to learn how to perform sorcery; it’s the result of training and discipline. An aberrant mark is thrust on the owner; is often difficult to control; and may cause pain or madness to the bearer. Essentially, people don’t automatically assume a sorcerer is a sociopath—while they tend to jump to that conclusion with aberrants.

With regard to the matter of true dragonmarks I have a question. If true dragonmarks are constructive in nature, what does that say about the Mark of Death? In terms of its role in the Prophesy/cosmology, is the act of creating undead a creative, potentially civilizing force? Or did the Mark have other applications and House Vol was simply doing it wrong?

I’ve written about this subject at length in a previous post on The Mark of Death. Here’s two key quotes:

…the Mark of Death should be about interacting with death and the undead, but I wouldn’t make it about KILLING, because that’s an aberrant path. Things like speaking with the dead; animating the dead; controlling or even laying undead to rest; these all fit. It could be that a dragonshard focus item could be created that would harness that power in a destructive fashion – but that’s not the innate power of the mark.

In 4E, I will say that in addition to providing access to focus items and any logical rituals, I’d probably allow someone with the mark to perceive ghosts and to use speak with dead as a skill challenge as opposed to a ritual. I’d likely put a limit on length of death, but I’d personally have the Mark of Death involve interaction with the dead… not to be confused with the Mark of Healing, which prevents people from dying.

Addressing your question specifically, look at your own phrase – “the act of CREATING undead.” Right there, it’s a creative act as opposed to a destructive one. Note that the Blood of Vol frequently uses undead to perform useful domestic labor; skeletons or zombies don’t HAVE to be used for aggression. Now, the Undying Court maintains that the creation of Mabaran undead harms Eberron itself – that negatively charged undead inherently consume the ambient energy of the world. But that’s a particular religious view that’s essentially like worrying about your carbon footprint; the UC believes it’s a serious threat and the BoV asserts that it’s nonsense.

Short form, though: The Mark of Death shouldn’t be about CAUSING death; it should be about INTERACTING with death and with the dead, just as the Marks of Handling and Healing interact with the living.

In light of your response, could the Mark of Death have been used to create undying, as opposed to Mabaran undead?

It’s possible. The line of Vol had been invested in the pursuit of Mabaran necromancy for thousands of years prior to the appearance of the mark. I wouldn’t say that the mark was inherently oriented towards Irian necromancy, but it could be that the mark was essentially “neutral” and Vol only explored its Mabaran applications.

With that said, bear in mind that there are some deep and fundamental differences between the two styles, which drive the reasons the different factions pursued each style.

First, there’s a basic mystical concept: creatures need energy to survive. An undead creature isn’t a zero-sum proposition; it has to have an ongoing source of energy to sustain its undead existence.

Negative necromancy is self-contained. You create a vampire and you let him go… from that point on he is self-sufficient and doesn’t need you to survive. Negatively-charged undead get the life force they need to survive by consuming it. In some cases this is obvious – the vampire drinking blood, the ubiquitous level drain. The Undying Court maintains that it is in fact the case with ALL Mabaran undead, even when it’s not obvious. A skeleton doesn’t APPEAR to be consuming anyone’s life force; but Court scholars assert that the skeleton actually absorbs ambient life energy from its environment – a theory that seems to be born out by the blighted areas around Fort Bones. In short, the UC believes that negative undead cause environmental damage just by existing.The key point, however, is that negative undead TAKE the energy they need to survive.

By contrast, positive necromancy requires energy to be given. The deathless can’t survive on their own. Deathless can be sustained by ambient energy in an Irian manifest zone, and many of the major Aereni cities (notably Shae Mordai) were constructing in Irian zones for exactly this reason. However, their primary source of sustenance is mortal devotion. The faithful of the Undying Court channel positive energy through their adoration of their elders. No one is harmed in this process – but it’s not something that can be forced. So if all the Aereni died or simply turned away from the faith, the spirits of the Court would dwindle and fade, clinging to their manifest zones just to survive.

The whole purpose of the Elven faiths was to prevent the future loss of the greatest souls of the elves. The line of Vol asserts that the Irian approach fails because it relies on continued devotion from the living… while a lich never runs out of power. While the Undying Court maintains that this is only because the lich preys on the living – and that if the people aren’t willing to sustain the undead of their own free will, it doesn’t deserve to continue.

Short form: Even if the Mark of Death COULD be used to create positive undead, bear in mind that those undead would still require Irian energy or mortal devotion to survive long-term; that’s the nature of positive necromancy.

Dragonmarks: The Gatekeepers

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I’m leaving for GenreCon in the morning and still have to pack, do another round of Phoenix edits, and all sorts of other little life things, so I’m only going to address one Eberron question today. Don’t worry – I’ll get to the others next week! As always, this is just my personal opinion and might contradict canon material.

I always hoped for more info on the Gatekeepers, especially on their Seals and ways of breaking them.

A relevant question that’s come up before is “How can you have Gatekeepers and Cults of the Dragon Below working side by side in House Tharashk?” The answer is that both Cults and Keepers are deeply ingrained traditions that define the culture of the Shadow Marches… but that neither are generally relevant in daily life. The Daelkyr conflict was over seven thousand years ago. Let’s say a third of the people in the Shadow Marches follow the Gatekeeper traditions… what that really means is that it determines the holidays they observe, the songs they sing, the oaths they make. The typical follower of “The Old Ways” knows that you blindfold the dead so Belashyrra can’t use their eyes… but he doesn’t necessarily BELIEVE it. Meanwhile, the true Gatekeepers—the ones who are deeply concerned with maintaining the seals, who dispatch rangers into the deep swamps to fight Dolgaunts, etc—are sort of like a cross between a modern-day Revelations cult and the Men in Black. The majority of Marchers think that they’re a little over the top and creepy… while the true Keepers, in turn, don’t bother the common people with the fact that they just eliminated a force of Dolgrims under Zarash’ak because, frankly, they don’t need to know.

So the short form is the Marches are filled with, essentially, non-practicing Gatekeepers; people who know the traditions and stories, but consider them to be just that. Meanwhile, the active Gatekeepers are almost a secret society. The fact that people know the Old Ways mean they can operate in the open; it’s just that people don’t realize that the local holy man really IS a druid with significant powers and not just an old storyteller.

It’s up to you as a gamemaster to decide just how many true Gatekeepers there are and how far their influence spreads. There could be a tiny handful of them hidden in the Shadow Marches, with the true mysteries of their faith all but forgotten. Or they could be a powerful, active force that has been hiding in the shadows of House Tharashk, using the House as a way to plant agents and observers across Khorvaire and taking a very active role in combating aberrant threats. Essentially, it’s a question of what you want them to be. Are they a handful of sages who can provide the PCs with information but who need the PCs to actually face a threat? Or are they an active, powerful force that could provide significant assistance (or pose a significant threat) to PCs?

THE GATEKEEPER SEALS

There’s not a lot of canon information on the seals that hold the Daelkyr at bay. The IDEA of the seals is a core part of the setting, but like the cause of the Mourning, they haven’t really been nailed down. So I’m making this up as I write it, but here’s MY answer.

The Gatekeeper seals are one of the great mysteries of Khorvaire. It’s well-established in legend that the Gatekeepers created the seals that hold Xoriat at bay and prevent the Daelkyr from returning to the surface. But what ARE the seals? Listen to a dozen stories and you’ll hear a dozen different answers. Some say they are dolmen structures found in the deep swamps, massive rune-carved stones infused with byeshk ore and placed in powerful manifest zones. In other stories they are small disks worn as pendants by the Gatekeepers. Each pendant is connected to a particular Daelkyr, and the bearer can sense the thoughts of the Daelkyr and draw on its power… though this carries the threat of madness. One story says that the mightiest druids turned themselves into trees, and that these guardian trees are themselves the seals. One song popular in the Marches claims that IT is the seal, and that as long as it is sung the Daelkyr while never return. Others believe that the seals are the light held in the dragonshards scattered throughout the Marches, and fear that House Tharashk’s mining of the shards will doom all. All stories agree that powerful magic was used to hide the seals, and that much is clear as divination magic has proven entirely unable to reveal any sort of useful information about the seals; whatever form they take, they won’t be easily found.

As a DM, I would latch onto the mystery. There’s a half-dozen theories about what the seals are. What happens when the PCs NEED to know the answer… or when someone is clearly taking steps to systematically eliminate each possibility? I’d take the approach that even the majority of the Gatekeepers don’t know the truth; the order is thousands of years old, and the elders intentionally dispersed and hid the knowledge so it would be difficult to destroy. And all of the things described above do exist—dolmen sites, ancient druids preserved as trees, disks tied to Daelkyr, a song of faith. Perhaps one of them is the REAL seal… or perhaps they all are, and releasing the Daelkyr requires all of them to be eliminated.

With that said, I do like the idea of leading players to believe that the seals are stationary locations, and then having them discover that they are easily portable pendants… and having one of them come into the PCs’ possession. So you have an amulet which is personally holding Belashyrra in Khyber. You can use the amulet to draw on a fraction of his power or to get a sense of what he’s up to – but if you do, you draw his attention to you and he learns what YOU are up to. In a sense, it’s like the One Ring, except you CAN’T destroy it, because that will release Belashyrra. So what do you do with it?

The idea of portable seals in really interesting, but it seems to me that leaving the seals in the custody of isolated or itinerant druids would be incredibly dangerous, since (from Faiths of Eberron) the rituals to maintain the seals must be conducted annually, and a druid who had an unlucky encounter with a chuul wouldn’t be keeping up with the rituals.

I’ll point out that in at the very beginning of this post I note that the ideas here are my personal opinions and may contradict canon material…. IE, this may not mesh with Faiths of Eberron. I suggest a number of different forms that the seals might take. The FoE material really only applies to the static sites – IE, the “byeshk-laced dolmens”. If the seal is a song, it can only be broken if people stop singing it, and it’s not tied to a particular tainted location. Likewise, with the pendants, the idea is that the pendant doesn’t automatically taint the world around it; rather, it’s when you choose to use its power that you risk corruption.

My point is that all of these things could exist. There are tainted sites in Eberron that Gatekeepers tend annually. There are songs that people sing. And there are pendants. But which one of them is actually the seal? Again, if I’m running it, I’d say that part of the point is that even the druids aren’t sure any more… that the druids who tend those sites BELIEVE that if they fail in their duties the Daelkyr will be freed. And they might be right, or they might have been taught that just to make sure that even they can’t reveal the true secret of the portable pendant seals to the enemy. SOMEONE out there must know the truth… but who? Part of the point here is to emphasize that the seals were made seven thousand years ago by a society that at the time likely relied on an oral tradition. That’s a lot of time for misinformation to take root.

Likewise, my point above is that you could have the Gatekeepers as isolated shamans who drift from tribe to tribe and have little connection… or you could say that they are a highly organized conspiracy that uses the modern largely-ambivalent faith as a cover for the dedicated, coordinated druids and rangers who are tracking aberrant activity. It’s all a question of what best suits your campaign and what inspires you.

Phoenix: Nine Deaths

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You’re going to die.

Your homeland is besieged by horrors. The dead are rising. Monsters are emerging from the wilds. The nights are filled with the howls of hungry spirits. And no one knows why. The world is falling apart, and it’s up to you to hold things together. And when you face these terrors, you are going to die.

But it’s not the first time you’ve died, and it won’t be the last.You’re a Phoenix, and each death makes you stronger.

Phoenix: Nine Deaths is a card-based roleplaying game in which you assume the role of a champion defending your beleaguered realm from a host of supernatural challenges. When you die you come back stronger than before, but as the name suggests, you only get to come back eight times. And death has many consequences. The nature and circumstances of your death determine the abilities that you gain in your next life; it’s a question of what lessons you learn from the experience. In addition, while you will return you don’t come back immediately. Your missions are often time sensitive, and careless death can result in the failure of a mission. Imagine you’re sent to put out a fire. If you all die, you may come back, but by the time you do that house will have burned to the ground. The same is true in Phoenix. The story isn’t over is you fail a mission, regardless of whether you live or die; but you will have to deal with the consequences. Death isn’t the end of your tale, but the challenge is making sure that it matters – that if you die, you don’t die in vain.

Aside from me, the current Phoenix team is producer Jennifer Ellis, co-designer Dan Garrison and artist Adam Levermore. We’re currently deep in the process of development and playtesting, and I expect to that to continue for months to come; I’m not going to discuss the system in detail until things have been refined. However, if you catch me at a convention you might be able to get in on a test. Eventually we’ll be crowdfunding, but we’re not going to start that process until we are entirely certain of the scope of the game, the costs of production, and our timeline; I expect that to happen early next year. 

To be clear: Phoenix is an entirely different project from Codex, the campaign setting I’ve discussed in the past. Phoenix is the story of a unit of soldiers in a time of crisis. There’s room for gamemasters to focus on different aspects of that struggle – to emphasize intrigue, action, or mystery. There’s lots of room for players to make unique characters. But it is a time of conflict and the players are on the front line. This is one reason we are creating a new system for this game, as opposed to simply adapting it to an existing system; the rules are specifically designed to tell this story, and to highlight the themes of this saga. This isn’t Eberron (or Codex), where you might play soldiers, inquisitives, explorers, pirates, or what have you; it is a campaign setting that is defined by a PARTICULAR campaign… though there will be ample opportunities to make that story your own.

More news to come in the days ahead, and I hope to see you at an October convention!

Always/Never/Now and Upcoming Conventions!

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I’ve just returned from a trip to LA, where I tested Phoenix out on a group of friends. Most of the survived the experience. I’m going to write more about Phoenix later in the week, but I thought I’d tell you where I’m going to be in the next few weeks so you have a chance to see it for yourself. Let me know if you’ll be at any of these!

Friday, October 4th – Sunday, October 6th I’ll be at GENRECON in Guelph, Ontario. Friday night I’ll be playing Gloom & showing off the new expansion, Unquiet Dead. Saturday I’ll be running Eberron, playtesting Phoenix, and taking part in a few panels & a QA session.

Friday, October 11th – Sunday, October 13th I’ll be at G.A.M.E. in Springfield, Missouri. Friday evening I’m doing two hours of Q&A, and then I’m running Eberron and testing Phoenix on Saturday. There’s a theme here!

Saturday, October 19th – Sunday, October 20th I’ll be at GEEKGIRLCON in Seattle, Washington. Jennifer Ellis, Phoenix co-designer Dan Garrison, and I will have a demo table where we’ll be playingPhoenix, Gloom, and whatever else we feel like.

But wait! There’s more! Saturday, October 26th I’ll be playing Doom and Gloom at GUARDIAN GAMES in Portland, Oregon. Come by and try out Unquiet Dead and The Doom That Came To Atlantic City!

In addition to playtesting Phoenix last weekend, I had an opportunity to play IN a game… Will Hindmarch’s Always/Never/Now. I’ll let Will describe the game himself…

You were the best. Underground, cyberpunk street samurai, burglars and breakers, agents of a mysterious spymaster with half a name, zero history, and a plan. He made the missions and you carried them out. You were the go-to crew for high-stakes break-ins, dangerous ops, and impossible escapes. You fought the megacorps, the tyrants, the killers—all for the sake of making a better future, of beating the Technocrats at their own game of shaping tomorrow. You always won, never quit, lived in the now. 

Until, eleven years ago, he disappeared…

Now he’s back—back in trouble—and it’s up to you to save him and maybe, along the way, change the world.

Always/Never/Now is a self-contained campaign, a cyberpunk saga that plays out in thirteen scenes. It is built around six characters that are provided with the campaign, and derives much of its mechanics from John Harper’s excellent Lady Blackbird. A few of the things I love about the system:

  • Every character has its own path to success. If I’m playing the comic-relief con artist, I get XP when I tell people a lie and they believe me; when I make players laugh; and when I escape from a bad situation. Unlike many games, where the best way for a blacksmith to become a better blacksmith is to kill a goblin, here I get better by doing the things that define my character.
  • Often, one or more of these keys apply to the players, not just the characters. The “leader” character gets XP if other players follow a plan he comes up with. So it’s not just arbitrarily stated that he’s the leader; it’s up to him to BE such a good leader that everyone chooses to follow his plans (and actually, there’s two characters with this key, so there’s competition for the role!). The first time I played A/N/N was just after playing a bard in another game. In that game it didn’t really make any difference if I was entertaining. As the con artist in A/N/N, I got experience when I got the PLAYERS to laugh – which meant being entertaining wasn’t just a color choice, it was something worth working at. Essentially, it helped blur the lines between character and player, and made me really feel like I WAS the character.
  • The system has many elements that encourage players to develop the story behind their actions. As con artist Alex, if I wanted to bluff someone, I could just roll a single die. But I also had a list of tags, and for each tag I worked into the description of my action, I got an extra die. So how could “cash” play into the scene? What about “That Smile”, or “Something Like Sincerity”? Determining which tags applied made a challenge more than just a roll; it got me thinking about the scene.

Some people might balk at the fact that the adventure uses pregenerated characters. There’s a lot of reasons for this. The six characters are a well-balanced, versatile team. Will’s put a lot of thought into their capabilities and tags. More than that, they each have a role in the story – and as the saga unfolds, you really get to know them. One fun twist is that each character has a number of flashback scenes that can be sprinkled through the story – glimpses of the characters’ lives before the spymaster disappeared (and a technique Will and I wrote about in 2004 in Friends of the Dragon for Feng Shui). There’s lots of room to make these characters your own. For example, Alex the con man is described as having tried to launch a “failed street food business.” When I played Alex, I decided this was Faux Pho – a diet vegan Vietnamese option for “when you want a taste that’s almost like food.” In this last session, John Rogers decided Alex was backing Happy FunCo Space Pizza And Sushi, and invented an elaborate story about people’s nostalgia for a failed moon colony that he hoped would drive business his way.

It’s a different sort of experience from creating your own story from scratch. But it’s like reading a good book or watching a movie. The characters help DEFINE the world and draw you into it. Combined with the keys (which encouraged you to act like the character) and the way that your abilities also encourage you to think about the character, it’s easy to get attached to this crew. After playing for just four hours, one of the players in the last session said that it was “one of those incredible moments in an RPG where you feel like you’re going to cry, because you’re so invested in the story.”

Anyhow, I could rave on for a few more hours about how awesome this game is, but why don’t you see for yourself? The PDF is available right now, for the amazing price of WHATEVER YOU WANT TO PAY FOR IT. If you enjoy cyberpunk, it’s worth reading just for the ideas. And if you have a chance to play it, well, it’s the most fun I’ve had in years. Of course, I had the advantage of having a Will Hindmarch in the box to run it – but Will or not, it’s definitely worth a look.

Dragonmarks: The Dragonmarked Houses, pt 2

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As always, this material represents my own personal opinions; it’s not canon and may contradict canon sources. I still don’t have any new information about official Eberron support in D&D Next, but I hope to have news soon.

I’ve talked about the Dragonmarked Houses and Aberrant dragonmarks before. Before getting to the current questions, I want to bring up a key point from the earlier article.

The power of the houses comes from the fact that they offer services that are unavailable elsewhere, at least on the scope and scale they can provide. While some houses do work to eliminate competition, for many of their services there simply isn’t significant competition. While clerics can heal, there aren’t a lot of spell-casting priests in Eberron, and they generally have a divine calling and a purpose in the world; it’s not viable to fully replace Jorasco healing houses with clerics. Likewise, while an individual spellcaster could learn and cast sending, that’s trivial compared to the network of Sivis speaking stones that deliver thousands of message each day. Magic is a form of science, and new discoveries require innovation; and it’s always easier to create a tool that enhances an existing power than to make one that generates the same effect from nothing.

So it is a default assumption of the setting that people simply haven’t found a way to create magic items that duplicate the effects of most dragonshard focus items without the need for a mark. In 4E, I suggest restricting many rituals to the Dragonmarked to reflect this. Groups like the Arcane Congress are always working on this, and your PC might be an innovator who can make some of these effects no one has until now. But the key point is that while the houses are monopolies, this is often because no one knows how to replicate what they can do on an international scale; only a few have to actively deal with serious competition.

What would happen to Eberron if all the Dragonmarks suddenly went dormant?

It would be a serious blow to the culture of the Five Nations. Swift long distance communication relies on Orien and Sivis. Orien and Lyrandar are cornerstones of mass transit and freight. Loss of Jorasco removes basic medical services, which would likely lead to plagues. Between loss of transit and Lyrandar weather control, you’d probably end up with famines when crops fail or food can’t be delivered. Loss of Cannith brings mass production of common goods and primary creation of magical goods to a halt. Breaking the Kundarak vault system suddenly cuts many people off from their wealth, which could seriously impact some nobles. If you look at my list of restricted rituals in 4E, suddenly those rituals just don’t exist in the world.

Now, it’s not the end of magic or civilization. You’ve still got magewrights out there; check this article for examples of services magewrights provide. The lamplighters who keep the streets lit aren’t using dragonmarks to do it. Some standard magical services would remain intact. Furthermore, there ARE skilled wizards and artificers outside of the houses. Nobles would still have access to some of those old services by hiring the best independent mages money can buy. But much of the system that provides magical services to the middle class would fall apart, and people would have to implement mundane systems to take their place.

Aundair would be in a strong position because of the Arcane Congress and the general effort to bring arcane magic into everyday life. Thrane has the highest percentage of divine casters and would thus have the best ability to counter the loss of Jorasco healing. Karrnath has a decent war magic program, but would be hurt by the loss of things like communication, transportation, and weather control.

I get the impression that the houses are everywhere, and if you open a business that’s within their “domain”, you either have to join the house or get stomped on. If my character starts a mercenary Company, would they have to eventually join with house Deneith? The problem with that, is that, if my character don’t possess a dragonmark or family within that house, he’ll only be able to climb so far within it.

First: It is entirely possible to operate a business without being affiliated with a house. There’s many independent mercenary companies, many smiths who don’t work for Cannith, many inns that aren’t tied to Ghallanda. One wizard who can cast Sending doesn’t pose a threat to House Sivis; it’s only if he actually comes up with a way to offer service on the same scale that they do that he becomes a real threat.

So, one independent mercenary company of 100 people based in Sharn doesn’t pose a threat to Deneith. But an independent mercenary army of 10,000 people with branches in multiple cities DOES pose a threat to Deneith, and they would attempt to stop it or assimilate it before it reached that level.

With that said, assimilation is always the preferred path. Most houses would rather just get a share of your profits that wipe you out. As described in Dragonmarked, Guild membership comes in three flavors. Most businesses are licensed. They pay a small percentage of profits and vow to uphold guild standards, and in exchange they get to show the guild stamp. So the average inn isn’t OWNED by Ghallanda, but it’s licensed by Ghallanda; the seal of the Hosteller’s Guild is an assurance that you won’t get food poisoning, be killed in the night, etc. Bound businesses are essentially franchises, and the nature of the services they offer are dictated by the guild. So an inn licensed by Ghallanda can serve whatever food it wants, as long as the quality meets Guild standards; but a Gold Dragon Inn has to serve the same core menu as all other Gold Dragon Inns.

So back to you: You want to start a mercenary company. You could be entirely independent and do your own thing, and as long as you don’t seriously threaten Deneith’s business they’ll leave you alone. However, you might find that clients pass you up and hire licensed Deneith mercenaries instead, because the Deneith seal assures them that the soldiers meet Deneith standards of training and discipline, and because they can go to the house for compensation if the mercs fail to perform. And if you decide to be licensed by Deneith, they aren’t going to try to limit your success; they’ll even send work your way. They’ll simply expect a share of your profits.

The houses do work to maintain their monopolies, but they’d rather be making money from you than spending money crushing you. They’ll only take ruthless action if they truly see you as a mortal threat to their overall success.
How do the different houses respond to a dragonmark going from least to lesser, lesser to greater, etc? There are system reasons why it happens, but does anyone in the game world have theories? Does anyone do anything to try to encourage/suppress the progression?

Well, now we venture into the realm of house rules. MECHANICALLY, marks are clearly delineated into four sizes. We have pictures of each of those four sizes. However, I personally don’t believe that you go to sleep with a Least Mark and wake up with a Lesser. I believe that marks grow organically over time. So take three people with Least Marks and they might all be different sizes and shapes – all clearly recognizable as somewhere between Least and Lesser, but different stages of development. You know you’ve reached the next stage when you are capable of performing the magic associated with the next stage, or using a focus item that requires that level of mark.

Now, that doesn’t change the question of why people think Marks grow and what affects someone’s potential. Most people believe it’s largely genetic, and that a child whose parents have powerful marks will be more likely to develop a powerful mark of their own; this also ties to the belief that children of two houses will develop aberrant marks. However, there are any number of other theories, ranging from diet and mental exercise to planar alignment and the influence of the Prophecy.

Which houses meddle in their members’ love lives, and why?

In dealing with this, it’s vitally important to remember that houses aren’t monolithic  entities. Every house is made up of multiple families; the Shadow Schism that created House Thuranni was a civil war between the Phiarlan families. The different Cannith factions are likewise largely divided along family lines. So with this in mind, I’ll give you some reasons, but interfering with your love life is something that’s more likely to be done based on the policies of your FAMILY than your house. One Cannith family may go out of its way to arrange political alliances or bring new blood into the house; if you’re the best artificer of the age & not dragonmarked, they’d like to convince you to marry into the family. Meanwhile, a different Cannith family may strictly forbid people marrying outside the house. Now, why might they interfere?

  • Dragonmarks. You’ve got a Siberys mark. You think we’re going to let you  waste that on unmarked trash? Elaydren Vown has a greater mark, and we’ve already made arrangements.
  • Race. You may love this elf, but think of your children. If they aren’t fully human, there is no chance they will manifest a mark. Will you damn them for your own selfish desire?
  • Politics. We have an opportunity to secure a connection with the Brelish aristocracy/end the feud with the Vowns/Arcane Congress etc. We’re not letting you waste yourself on some guttersnipe ex-soldier.
  • Recruitment. Flega is the finest artificer in the Five Nations. We need to bring her into the house, and you’re going to do it.
  • Prejudice. Your father was killed in the attack on Shadukar. I’ll see you excoriated before you sleep with a Thrane.

Vadalis is highly likely to arrange marriages for marks. Tharashk is remakably liberal and sees outside marriage as a good way to increase its influence. But beyond that, it’s really about your personal family.

Dragonmarks are seen only on the peoples living on Khorvaire. Why are there none on the goblin race, who lived before humans?

Good question. And why do they appear on half-orcs but not full orcs? And why not on gnolls or shifters or changelings? Nothing about the marks is clear. Bear in mind that they didn’t all appear at once; marks appeared on the Aereni and Talenta Halflings more than five centuries before they appeared on humans, and more than TWO THOUSAND YEARS before the Mark of Finding appeared on half-orcs. Who’s to say that the goblins won’t suddenly manifest a mark no one’s seen before?

And, of course, one answer is that the marks have only appeared at certain times and on certain races because they are an experiment of, say, the Daelkyr; they are actively picking and choosing who gets what mark.

Is there any reason why Greater Aberrant marks aren’t as common any more? Is the ‘bloodline’ that much weaker or another reason?

No one knows for certain. The common belief is that the strongest bloodlines were wiped out in the War of the Mark and that strength is simply gone from the world. But aberrant marks have never been strictly tied to bloodline, so it’s a little odd. So a secondary question would be “Why are aberrant marks becoming more common now?” I’ll give you a few possible answers for that:

  • The Mourning has wounded nature and increased the number of aberrant marks.
  • It’s a sign of the increased power of an overlord.
  • It’s dictated by the Prophecy.
  • It’s the work of the Daelkyr.
  • It’s just natural; the aberrant lines were weakened in the War of the Mark, and now it’s finally regaining strength.

If another house started to form, under what kind of mark do you think would be new and novel?

I’d probably start by saying that there’s been a changeling Dragonmark for over a century, but unlike most marks they can hide it by shapeshifting, so no one KNOWS about the changeling Dragonmarked House. I’d also consider the idea of the goblins developing a mark. With that said, I like the 13-1 structure… so what I might do is to have one of these two races develop the Mark of Death. There’s only 13 marks; the elves had their time with the Mark of Death; now it’s moving to another race. Is this a sign? Will the other marks start migrating too? If it’s about how long they’ve been around, the Mark of Shadow and the halfling marks would be the next to go…

Are there any houses /marks you would redesign or replace if you could? Any reason why, or ideas to that effect?

I’ve never been happy with the mechanics for aberrant dragonmarks; I’d change those if I had the opportunity. And I’ve already redesigned the relationship between marks and rituals in 4E, as noted in the previous articles. As for the houses themselves, I’m generally happy with them. I don’t think Orien has ever had the attention it deserves, and I could see doing more with Vadalis and eugenics. In general, I’d love to look at ALL of the houses in more detail, but I’m happy with the fundamental concepts.

I wonder what it’s like for non-creepy Vadalis who just want to breed a better pig.

Which is most of them. For that matter, magebreeders are only a small segment of the house; most heirs are ranchers, teamsters, veterinarians, handlers, jockeys, and more; people who love working with animals and whose animals can do amazing things.

Which house do you think has most potential as an outright villain? Would your answer be different for adventure v. campaign?

Certainly. Again, I think Vadalis has a lot of long-term potential because magebred humans are creepy (and an extremely logical source of homegrown Inspired for the Dreaming Dark to use). Lyrandar has tremendous ambition. And hello, by canon (which you can of course ignore) Zorlan d’Cannith of Cannith East is a seeker of the Blood of Vol; you could easily make him an ally of the Emerald Claw.

What is Cannith East’s greatest strength?

In my opinion? War. Cannith South specializes in warforged and manufacturing, but I’ve always considered Cannith East to be the arms specialists. They may not have manufacturing facilities to match South, but their unique form of ingenuity is building better weapons. Aside from that, they’ve been experimenting with undead, so consider the weird things you can do with that.

If all marks of a kind are the same, what about the Draconic Prophecy? Not every Mark of Making can indicate the same destiny, can it?

Not at all. First of all, speaking GENERALLY, the prophetic significance of dragonmarks isn’t tied to the individual; it’s about patterns. Think of dragonmarked individuals as tarot cards or runes. Someone who knows the Prophecy may walk into a bar, say “OK, I see Greater Storm, Lesser Making, and three of Least Healing. Which means… it’s going to be a bad day.” That bad day may not even involve any of the marked individuals; they’re just signposts for someone who knows how to read them. Having a Dragonmrk doesn’t automatically mean that YOU are significant to the Prophecy; in means that you are now a tea leaf others can use to read it. If you ARE personally significant to the Prophecy, your mark will be one of the things that identifies you, but it won’t be the only thing.

Do you think there is tension or rivalry between houses Tharashk and Medani given how both work with inquisitives?

Certainly. However, one issue here is that Medani is a very subtle house; its services also overlap with Deneith when it comes to bodyguards. Medani is the warning guild. Its specialty is counterintelligence and predictive work. You hire a Deneith bodyguard when you want muscle at your side; you hire Medani for defense when you want them to identify and neutralize the threat before it actually manifests. The same is true of inquisitives. Tharashk inquisitives are more of your classic private eyes. They are the people the innkeeper will hire to find out who stole his valuables, or who’s dating his wife. Medani’s inquisitives deal with more complex problems and generally, wealthier clients. They’re who you call in to negotiate with a blackmailer – or to prevent blackmail when you’re vulnerable but it hasn’t happened yet. Think someone might have spies watching you, or an assassin after you? Hire Medani. Short form: Medani inquisitives handle complex cases for wealthy clients; Tharashk inquisitives solve basic problems for a broader client base.

Likewise, Tharashk’s monstrous mercenaries overlap with Deneith, but don’t really fill the same space. Most of Deneith’s best clients won’t turn to ogres and gnolls instead of Deneith’s reliable forces.

While Tharashk is stepping on toes, it’s also the best source for the single most valuable resource in the magical economy: dragonshards. As a result, while Deneith and Medani are rivals with Tharashk, they don’t really want to get into an all-out feud with the house, and many other houses are willing to support Tharashk in conflicts.

I wonder why house Phiarlan does not seek to outlaw Thuranni. After all, both houses have the same dragonmark.

Among other things, because they are family. The Shadow Schism only occurred a few decades ago. The Mark of Shadow has been around for thousands of years, and elves themselves live for centuries. There are still members of the Thuranni families in House Phiarlan and vice versa. They are now professional rivals, and the wounds of the schism run deep for some; but they are still brothers and sisters. What they have largely done is divide up Khorvaire, so for the most part they aren’t directly competing in the same territories.

Moreover, why do not the sentinel marshals or national authorities imprison and prosecute those they know are killers from Thuranni? Granted, in the shadow war there is a place for spies and assassins, but an overt assassin organization should be frowned upon by the populace, and despite their alibies, many are aware of the true business of house Thuranni.

First, it’s the same principle as the Mafia or other major organized crime organizations: you may KNOW they do bad things, but can you actually catch them doing them? And as the Captain of the local city watch, do YOU really want to make a personal enemy of a family of professional assassins? Someone who starts a crusade to bring down Thuranni assassins will immediately become a target. Beyond that, their “alibis” are more than just alibis. You say that many people should be aware of the “true business” of Thuranni. But assassination ISN’T the “true business” of Thuranni. The Shadow Network is a guild of entertainers and artists, including many of the finest performers in Khorvaire. While the Network supports the covert ops that the house engages in, this doesn’t change the fact that the day-to-day business of the house is entertainment. As a normal person on the street, you can’t simply go to a Thuranni enclave to hire a spy or assassin; you go to the enclave to purchase art, to take classes (in music, acting, or other forms of art), or to engage the services of entertainers. If you want those other services, you have to know the right channels to take, and they will reach out to YOU.

With that said, if a Thuranni assassin just walked up on the street and stabbed the Mayor of Sharn in front of witnesses, Sentinel Marshals and Dark Lanterns WOULD be dispatched to bring them in (or simply kill them). Being in Thuranni isn’t a license to break the law. Again, it’s like organized crime in our world. You can get away with it if you’re careful and play by the rules that have been established, but if you’re clumsy you will get caught and pay the price.

Now for a perennial question…
Also, what happened to Cyre, really? You must have a personal Canon, right?

As I just said at DragonCon, no… I actually don’t. To me, the Mourning is much more powerful as a mystery. Once the answer is defined, it is possible to predict if it can happen again and whether it can be harnessed. Once that information becomes public, it will completely change the balance of the cold war between the Five Nations. I like the current balance of power, so I’ve never felt a need to run a campaign in which the answer is found. Meanwhile, I can think of a dozen answers that all could be true. One appears in The Fading Dream. But it could have been a Cannith weapon, possibly tied to trying to harness the power of an Overlord; or it could have been the release of an Overlord; or it could have been the natural result of using too much war magic; or it could have been the harbinger of Xoriat coming back into alignment with Eberron for the first time in thousands of years; or it could have been the beginning of the end that the Children of Winter have been talking about; or it could have been Khyber Herself finally straining against Eberron’s bonds; or it could have been a creation of the Lord of Blades, building a new homeland for his people, and he’s just about got Mourning Mk II ready to go; or… you get the idea.

I’ve always felt like the reason presented for the Mourning in The Fading Dream was not, in fact, the reason, so much as it was the “tea leaves” that indicated an event in the Prophecy was about to occur… I have always felt like the physical cause of the Mourning was still undetermined in the Thorn continuity.

The cause of the Mourning is DEFINITELY undetermined in the Thorn continuity. The Eladrin have advanced a theory, but Thorn herself doesn’t buy it. With that said, you are exactly right: this is exactly the way Prophetic manipulation would work. There could be an aspect of the Prophecy that says something to the effect of “If the Silver Queen wounds the Unknown Prince, his land shall share his pain.” Meanwhile, the Mourning itself could be caused by a Cannith weapon malfunction. What the Prophecy does is says “If event A occurs, event B will follow.” To us, there is nothing directly relating these two things – but the Prophecy lets you control one by controlling the other.

This last question is something of a spoiler for my novel The Son of Khyber. Skip over it if that concerns you.

The Son of Khyber appears in another novel prior to his appearance in The Son of Khyber. What happened between the two appearances?

If it’s not entirely clear, the individual in The Son of Khyber ISN’T the same person you’ve encountered before; he’s another soul occupying that person’s body. He’s the spirit of an aberrant leader from the War of the Mark, an ancestor of the body he occupies. He made his way back to Khorvaire, found House Tarkanan, and essentially took over. The house was a small organization, and the Son of Khyber has significant experience as a military leader, more knowledge of aberrant marks and especially aberrant focus items than anyone in the modern age, and a mark that’s more powerful than any modern aberrant. Having stepped out of time as the aberrants were being hunted down, he was pretty driven to turn things around.

Now, the other side of this coin is what happened to the original spirit that occupied that body, and that’s a good question. I had thought about him and his Jorasco companion making an appearance in The Fading Dream, as Taer Lian Doresh is both on Dal Quor and Eberron, but it was too much to fit in. But he’s still around on Dal Quor, and you can be sure his other companions are trying to get him back.

RPG Ramblings: Death and Games

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What follows is a random train of thought, so don’t come to this expecting a meaningful conclusion: it’s a ramble, nothing more. I hope that you’ll add your thoughts and experiences at the end.

Whether you’re designing an adventure or writing a novel, death is a tricky thing. If the players know that there’s no threat of death, then many things lose their bite. What’s the point of a fight scene if I know I can’t lose? Why don’t we skip all the dice rolls and just cut to the chase?

On the other hand, random death can be an even greater disappointment. I’ve developed this fascinating character. He’s the heir to a lost throne, and he’s got to follow this cryptic note from his mother to discover what happened to his vanished kingdom, and he–Oh, wait, he just got killed by an orc bandit on the road. Never mind.

In between these you have the typical MMORPG, in which death is essentially a speed bump; you lose a little experience or time, and then you’re back on your feet again. It’s a compromise that serves the needs of the game – it’s POSSIBLE to lose a fight, and there’s some consequences, but you don’t lose the character you’ve invested hundreds of hours in. On the other hand, it’s a necessary evil; again, if I’ve invested a hundred dollars and a hundred hours in this character, I’d be furious if I ended up losing it to some random unbalanced monster. But it certainly changes the story – and it’s not something I like in a pen and paper RPG. In my personal work on Eberron, I’ve tried to reduce the role of institutional resurrection. In Sharn: City of Towers, I added the following section (page 20):

In particular, raise dead is rarely used on Khorvaire, and it is highly unusual to find a cleric or adept who has the spell prepared. Followers of the Silver Flame believe that warriors who die in holy service join the Flame after death, while the Valenar elves believe their dead join with the spirits of their ancestors. Even among the followers of the Sovereign Host, using raise dead is viewed as a challenge to the will and wisdom of the gods. This does not mean that there is no hope for heroes who fall in battle—but it is not just a matter of tossing 5,450 gp at the local priest.

In City of Stormreach, I took things in another direction:

Strange events sometimes accompany the use of powerful necromancy in Stormreach. In a handful of cases, foreign spirits have seized the bodies of those being raised. When Jorasco sought to resurrect the Storm Lord Delera Omaren, the risen warrior cried out in the tongue of the giants and killed dozens with lightning before she was returned to the grave. Another time, a pack of marut inevitables appeared after a member of the Wayfinder Foundation (page 130) was raised. The outsiders slew the adventurer and devastated the enclave before vanishing. Today, Jorasco healers use augury before performing major necromancy. But divinations can fail, and at the DM’s discretion, resurrection might bring surprises.

These paragraphs were influenced by two things. First, Eberron is a world that seeks to explore the logical impact of magic. Institutionalized resurrection would have tremendous social impact – and Eberron isn’t designed with that in place. So I want reasons why, if the magic exists, it hasn’t become a part of everyday life. Beyond that, I want death to feel significant. You CAN be resurrected, but that should be a story in its own right and there should be consequences. In one adventure I ran, someone was killed in the monstrous city of Graywall and the group sought assistance from a priestess of the Shadow. She DID raise the victim… but he came back without a shadow. His shadow now belonged to the Shadow – and had the campaign continued, some very interesting things would have happened with it.

These three approaches – no death, trivial death, let-the-dice-fall-as-they-may random death – are just that, three approaches. There’s many other paths to generate tension even if the players aren’t personally worried about death. You can threaten allies or intangibles (reputation, rank, etc). Perhaps the danger isn’t THEIR death, but rather the broader impact of the failure of a mission. In one adventure I played in, our party was killed in battle & then resurrected by a traveling cleric – a perfect example of the MMO trivial resurrection style. But one of the PCs was pregnant, and it was an ongoing source of tension as to whether the battle had affected the child. I’ll note that sex and pregnancy in RPGs is an entire topic in its own right – “Life in RPGs”, if you will. I’ll simply say that in THIS campaign, it was a natural extension of a relationship that had developed organically and that it ended up being the driving story of the campaign, as opposed to some random DM caprice. As in this situation, where a threat to the child was a sufficient source of tension that it didn’t matter if WE weren’t going to die.

And even in a campaign where there’s no casual death, there’s always the opportunity for a GOOD death. I was a soft touch back in the day and would rarely kill players… but every now and then a situation comes up where a character SHOULD die: a heroic sacrifice, a shocking event that establishes the nature of the major threat, the successful completion of a character arc that really leaves no other story you want to tell. In such situations, it can be better to have the character die and move on than to live at the expense of the story. This is a strange thing about Fiasco. In most RPGs, we play characters we like or who we’d want to be, if we could. In many sessions of Fiasco, the point is to make a story about bad people making stupid decisions – and often these characters SHOULD come to a bad end. If you play your character as a hero and try to push him to a triumphant do-the-right-thing ending, you may well derail the story. It’s a game ABOUT exploring dark places and unpleasant consequences, and it can be a transition for people used to being the victorious good guys.

Another game with a different approach to death is Dread. In Dread, conflict resolution is done by pulling pieces from a jenga tower. If the tower falls, you die. First off, this means that at some point in the course of the game, you can be pretty darn sure someone will die. It doesn’t even leave the suspense in the hands of the gamemaster; the fate of your character rests solely in that tower. One way it does empower the player is offering the chance for a heroic sacrifice; any time you want, you can choose to knock down the tower, sacrificing yourself in place of another player having to make a pull. You don’t have complete control over your life, but you can always choose to die heroically

All this ties into my current project, Phoenix. In Phoenix, you are a unit of elite soldiers thrown into terrible situations. You may be in over your head, and there’s an excellent chance you won’t make it through your mission… and if you survive this one, the next one’s likely to be even worse. Luckily, you’re a Phoenix. When you die, you come back stronger than before; death is, in fact, the main method of character improvement. But you don’t come back right away… and you only get to come back eight times. This has two consequences: first, you can fail. Most missions are time sensitive. If your entire unit dies, the mission will fail. You’ll all come back – but the objective is lost and you’ll have to deal with the consequences. Second, while you CAN die and return, there is a clear end to the road. Your first death is no big thing… but by your sixth death, you need to start being careful. And without going into too much detail, the circumstances of your death affect your next life. What this means is that rather than working to avoid death at all costs, or ignoring death as meaningless or trivial, death becomes a critical part of the story. You are going to die, eventually – but can you make that death mean something? What lessons will you learn from it? Can you make it matter?

There’s a lot more to say about Phoenix, both the game itself and the other people working on it. It’s not an approach that would work for every campaign – but it’s ideally suited to the world we’re creating, and it creates an interesting and different sort of story. But more of that in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear your thoughts. How do you handle death in your games? What do you do to raise the tension?

Favorite Things: September 2013

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There are far too many things in the world. Books, movies, Kickstarter projects, snacks… How can anyone expect to keep up with them all? A list of all of my favorite things of all time would take more bandwidth and time than I have, but I figured I could start by talking about a few of the things I’m enjoying RIGHT NOW.

ADORABLE KITTENS. OK, these are a perennial favorite… and let’s face it, if you hate adorable kittens, you probably want to avoid the internet. One year ago today, Jenn and I acquired a pair of kittens from the PDX Animal Rescue & Care Fund. While Haggis has already used up two of his nine lives, they are an endless source of heartwarming youtubeable moments. Given how much joy my own rescued animals have given me, I wanted to share Anne Wheaton’s latest activities. She and her husband Wil are currently raising money for the Pasadena Human Society, and she’s put together a calendar for those who support the society. Here’s Wil’s blog about the project; the link to donate to the cause; and Anne’s video about the calendar. For the same cost as a backing a Kickstarter that might never actually happen, you can help dogs & cats who need good homes. And if you’re a PDX local, I recommend checking out the ARCF link above and the Pixie Project!

COMEDY. I’d heard rumors of Joseph Scrimshaw‘s amazing cheese-eating prowess over Twitter, so I attended a few of his panels at DragonCon. At each of those panels, I literally (and I mean literally) laughed so hard it hurt. I picked up his book Comedy of Doom, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to be emotionally prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse, anyone who wants to understand the deeper subtext of Superhero Mario Bros, or anyone who, like Joseph, wishes that Sid and Marty Krofft had produced an LSD-infused puppet show called H.P. Love’N’Craft.

GAMES I’VE PLAYED RECENTLY. As I’ve been at conventions, I’ve actually been playing a lot of my own games. Cryptozoic produced a great demo set of The Doom That Came To Atlantic City for GenCon, though they haven’t had a chance to create the minis yet. But as much as I love Doom and Gloom, this is really about OTHER peoples’ work that I’ve enjoyed. I had an opportunity to play Fiasco with game creator Jason Morningstar at GenCon, and if you haven’t yet encountered Fiasco, DO IT NOW. It’s a brilliant collaborative storytelling game that requires no preparation or gamemaster; it’s just a fantastic framework for setting a story in motion. I’ve actually used Fiasco as a tool in other worldbuilding projects, not to design worlds, but do develop details for cities and to see where players will go with particular concepts. Seriously, if you’re not familiar with Fiasco, you should be. Unless, you know, you hate stories. And fun.

Another game I’ve been playing quite a lot lately is Timeline. This is an extremely simple game that’s a cross between a historical trivia quiz and Uno. You have a hand of cards you need to get rid of, each of which is a historical event. There’s one or more cards in the center of the table, which form a timeline. One your turn, you have to place one of your cards in that timeline… and then see if you’re right. Which came first, the electric dishwasher or the electric dryer? What about Alice in Wonderland or the Colt revolver? It’s very simple, but that’s its strength; it takes less than a minute to explain and generally less than ten minutes to play, and it’s something that I’ve been able to play with family members who’d never touch something as complicated and exotic as Gloom. Of course, having compared it to Uno (in that it’s a card game in which you win by getting rid of all your cards), I’m now tempted to make a variant that includes skip/reverse/draw and other action cards…

KICKSTARTER, RPGs, AND KICKSTARTED RPGS. I recently backed a Kickstarter project called Tablets & Titans. Developer Steve Radabaugh is pursuing something that I’ve been interested in for some time: developing a tabletop RPG that is native to iOS and android devices. This isn’t about creating a solo rpg or even a virtual tabletop for playing at long distances, but rather to allow players and gamemasters around a table to be linked through the app and to have the app track and handle the mechanical elements of the game. Radabaugh’s goal is to create a modular system that lets the gamemaster slot in the elements that are relevant to a particular campaign – magic? Modern weaponry? activate the systems you want players to have access to. This isn’t supposed to supplant the imaginative and storytelling aspects of the game; the gamemaster still tells the story, and the app handles the mechanics. I haven’t seen much of Radabaugh’s system , and I don’t honestly know how deep he’s planning to go with it. But I’m definitely interested in seeing more products like this out there. These days I get most of my RPG books in PDF form, and I’ve worked on a number of projects myself where we’ve considered the possibilities of making the system tablet-native from the get go. Tablets & Titans isn’t shooting for the moon. Its goals are humble and at the moment you can get on board for $12. It’s not going to be Shadowrun Returns or Torment: Tides of Numenera, but I’m interested in seeing where it goes, and I’m supporting it.

My Dragon*Con Schedule

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Tomorrow I head out to Dragon*Con in Atlanta. If you’re going to be there, here’s the places you can find me!

Title: Game Design 101
Time: Fri 02:30 pm Location: Grand Ballroom West – Hilton
Description: Designers from the table top and digital worlds talk about creating and testing games, from inception to final product.

Title: A Brief History of Online Gaming
Time: Fri 04:00 pm Location: Grand Salon E – Hilton
Description: In the beginning, there was NetHack…and Empire, NetTrek, MUDs, and a whole bunch of other games that became the MMOs you know and love today.

Title: It’s All in the Game
Time: Fri 07:00 pm Location: Embassy D-F – Hyatt
Description: Game writers and designers discuss how to break into this fascinating market.

Title: Fantasy World Building: Ultimate Edition
Time: Sat 04:00 pm Location: Grand Ballroom West – Hilton
Description: Some of gaming’s greatest designers on paper and in the digital world discuss how they make fantastic worlds.

Title: Eberron & Beyond
Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: Grand Salon C – Hilton
Description: Eberron creator Keith Baker talks about the creation and evolution of this Dungeons & Dragons setting and the new RPG he’s developing.

Title: High Level Gaming
Time: Sun 11:30 am Location: Grand Salon C – Hilton
Description: The lead designer of Pathfinder and the creator of Eberron talk about how high level games work.

Eberron and 13th Age

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A few years back I had a chance to work with Rob Heinsoo, Jonathan Tweet, and Lee Moyer on the roleplaying game that eventually became 13th Age. While I was only involved in the early concept phase, it was a great opportunity with an amazing team. After many delays, 13th Age is finally in print. Since some people may be interested in running a 13th Age campaign in Eberron, it seems like a good time to repost something I wrote back in 2012.

If you were to run an Eberron game using 13th Age, what would you use for Icons?

Some of you may be saying “What’s 13th Age, and why does it need Icons?” So let’s clear that up. 13th Age is a new roleplaying system developed by Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet, with a little bit of help from yours truly in the very beginning. The Icons are central part of the default setting of the game and of the system itself. The Icons are thirteen powerful NPCs who exert a tremendous amount of influence on the world, and who in many ways embody central themes. The High Druid is a force of nature, while the Archmage and the Emperor are forces of civilization and order. The Priestess speaks for all the deities of light, while the Diabolist traffics with all manner of dark forces.

OK: there’s some powerful people in the world. What makes this central to the game? Why would you need to have Icons if you wanted to use the 13th Age system to play Eberron? During character creation, you get three points to spend on connections to Icons, and these connections define your character’s background and affect ongoing gameplay. Consider the following example:

Lyssa Calton sets her connections as Emperor 2 (positive), Lich King 1 (negative). Discussing things with the GM, she works out the idea that she comes from a powerful noble family in the Dragon Empire, and that her ancestors were instrumental in one of the Lich King’s worst defeats. As a result, he has laid a curse on her family: whenever someone of her bloodline dies, they become undead servants of the Lich King. Right from the start, this gives the GM lots of hooks to work with. Lyssa obviously will want to find a way to break the curse. Family honor calls on her to oppose the Lich King. And in the meantime, due to the position of her family, she might be called on to serve the Empire in some way, or used as a pawn in a scheme to dethrone the Emperor.  However, these relationships can also have in-game effects on the fly. For example, when the adventurers are stopped by an Imperial patrol, Lyssa could see if her connection with the Emperor allowed her to influence the guards and command their assistance. And while the relationship with the Lich King is a negative one, she can still be creative with it; perhaps the curse can allow her to infiltrate a band of undead, as they already perceive her as one of them.

So: a relationship with an Icon helps define a character and drive a story, but it is also a concrete in-game tool in the character’s arsenal. If you’re using the system in Eberron, you’re going to what something to take its place. What will it be?

It’s not a simple question. In many ways, Eberron was intentionally designed NOT to have figures like the Icons. There’s no clear equivalent to the Archmage or the Emperor; all the human rulers are about equal in power (well, except Queen Diani of Thrane). Keeper Jaela is the most powerful priestess, and yet in many ways Krozen matches her in influence… and where the Priestess of 13th Age speaks for all the gods of light, Jaela is tied only to the Silver Flame. There is no one Elf Queen or Dwarf King.

Given this, I think the best choice is to try to address the underlying role of the Icons—defining the background of your character and giving you influence within the game. With that in mind, I think the list has to be based on your campaign. Who do you see as the major players? Consider the following.

Hands of the Twelve: From start to finish, this campaign is going to revolve around the Dragonmarked houses: their internal rivalries, the balance of power between the houses and broken Galifar’s nobility, the growing power of House Tarkanan and the aberrant dragonmarks. Each house has its personal agendas; as the PCs rise in power, they will need to decide whether to embrace that goal and bring it to pass, or whether to change the direction of their house. The Icons are each of the individual dragonmarked houses, the Twelve as an institution, and House Tarkanan. Each character is a member of one of the houses they are tied to and bears the dragonmark of that house; when they use the mark in a creative way, use Icon relationship dice to determine how effective it is. When a player takes a point of relationship with a house, she should also pick an individual who’s her personal patron/ally/enemy/rival in that house; this puts a human face on things in addition to reflecting a connection to the house as a whole.

Return of the Host: The Sovereigns and Six Don’t manifest in the world directly. But following the Mourning, they can no longer sit idly by – so they have chosen mortals to serve as their hands in the world. Here the Icons are the gods of the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six; you could choose to add in other divine or immortal forces, such as the Silver Flame or Undying Court. Relationships reflect alliances or feuds, and these don’t have to all be on the obvious sides; while a Player Character may serve Aureon, it’s possible that he has angered Dol Arrah and the Shadow. Alternately, an artificer could be chosen by both Onatar and the Traveler; over the course of his adventures, he will have to decide which path to follow, and bear the consequences of that choice.

Lords of Sharn: The DM has declared that the entire campaign is going to be set in Sharn. As a result, the Icons for the campaign are on a much smaller scale that you’d normally expect. Instead of the Prince of All Thieves, you can have the Boromar Clan and Dassk as Icons. Even here, the GM should decide who the major players are going to be: by the book, Daask, House Tarkanan, the Boromar Clan, and the Tyrants are all influential criminal forces; however, she may decide that the Boromar Clan is the only one that is going to get full recognition as an Icon, and that a relationship with the Boromar Clan reflects overall ties to the criminal underworld. Similarly, I’d pick one or two dragonmarked houses (probably Cannith and Tharashk, personally) as worthy of being Icons in the campaign; you don’t want to dilute the list by offering too many choices, and you can use this relationship to determine influence with allied houses. So following this, my personal Sharn list might be:

  • The City Council
  • The City Watch
  • The King’s Citadel
  • Morgrave University
  • The Boromar Clan
  • House Cannith
  • House Tharashk
  • House Tarkanan
  • The Church of the Silver Flame
  • The Sovereign Host
  • The Blood of Vol/Order of the Emerald Claw
  • The Aurum
  • A Nation (Choose one)

I’ve thrown on “A Nation” as a way of suggesting a character with a strong connection to a nation’s government – from a gnome who’s got friends in the Zil embassy to a Brelish nobleman. Tarkanan and Tharashk could be pulled if you didn’t plan on having a lot of dragonmarked hijinx, but I think that they each bring good story potential to the table.

As with the Dragonmarked example, I’d have each character choose a specific ally/patron/rival/ally to be the face of each Icon they choose. They have ties to the Silver Flame – are they agents of the corrupt hierophant or of a more lowly but dedicated priest?

There may seem to be some significant gaps here. What about the Chamber? The Lords of Dust? The Dreaming Dark? The list of possible Icons goes on and on. In part, I dropped these because the longer the list, the less impact each Icon has. Another reason to drop these groups is because they are secretive. Part of the point of the Icons is that everyone knows who they are and that their names alone carry influence; with the Lords of Dust, a player character tied to their schemes probably won’t even know it for a long time, let alone have an opportunity to do name dropping.

In general I encourage you to decide which groups will be the most influential in your campaign. Yes, the Lords of Dust and the Chamber are both powerful forces capable of exerting global influence. But do you want them to do so in this campaign? An Icon chosen by a player character will potentially play a role in every session – are you prepared to use the potential Icon in that way? Just as a player’s choice of Icons defines their personal story, your choice of Icons defines the story of the campaign. If the Daelkyr are available as an Icon choice, people should expect them to have an impact; if you’re not interested in that, don’t put them on your list.

I’m not sure I 100% agree with choosing a specific patron, personally… while an Icon may be killed, the advice given was that that should probably be a very major event, maybe even a campaign conclusion. This would still apply to a house or organization falling. It doesn’t really apply if your patron is a lowly priest.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear. When I suggest choosing a patron, it’s not to have that patron serve as the Icon. A lowly priest doesn’t serve the same role as the Priestess. However, the same can be said of Ythana Morr – and the fact that she is technically the leader of the Silver Flame in Sharn doesn’t mean she’s the one who’s going to be the best story match for your character. The ICON in this case is the Church of the Silver Flame. That is the force you are connected to; you should establish the basis of that connection; and it’s your connection to that entire organization that should be taken into account when you use your relationship dice, not the patron. The patron is simply a bonus, in part to make up for the fact that these organizations DON’T have a single face; again, Ythana’s no more the true face of the Silver Flame in Sharn than Flamebearer Mazin Tana, and as you say, the death of either one of them won’t be the end of the Silver Flame in Sharn; if you lose your rival, I’d just sit down with you and pick a new ally/rival/patron tied to the force. For example, say you’ve got Mazin as an ally, and because of the work you do together he dies; you might now gain an enemy in Ythana Morr because your work has been exposed, or perhaps Mazin’s daughter will blame you for his death.

So again: the ENTITY is taking the role of the Icon, and you need to define your history and relationship with that entity. The idea of adding an individual – whether a patron, rival, friend, or enemy – is simply a further way to develop the history of your character. In particular, if you look to the Hands of the Twelve idea, the point is that three characters could all be from House Cannith and make that their most important relationship – but they may all have secondary relationships with different individuals in the house.

I noticed you didn’t address one (I think common) campaign type, though: The international intrigue game.
Correct, because it’s not a question with an easy answer; it’s what I was covering with the last paragraph of the first answer. I feel it is important to limit your list of icons to around 10-15, both for the sake of the players and the story. If I simply listed every possible force that COULD be considered an icon, it would be way over that; in the Thronehold nations alone you hit that number, and that’s not including churches, dragonmarked houses, groups like the Emerald Claw or Aurum, or potentially the more secretive manipulators. As such, I really feel that you need to decide which of these forces are the REAL movers and shakers in this campaign. A global game may involve every nation in some form. But are Q’barra and the Lhazaar Principalities actually as significant or influential in the story you envision as Thrane or Aundair? Will the faith of the Sovereign Host actually play an Iconic role? For that matter, will the Church of the Silver Flame play a role that isn’t covered by, say, Thrane or Aundair? Do you want the Twelve as a single Icon, or do you want to pick one or two houses that are going to be particularly important to the action of the campaign?

So let’s look at ONE EXAMPLE of a political intrigue game.  I’m going to use this list of Icons.

  • Aundair
  • Breland
  • Cyre
  • Karrnath
  • Thrane
  • Darguun
  • Droaam
  • The Eldeen Reaches
  • Valenar
  • House Cannith
  • House Thuranni
  • The Aurum
  • Blood of Vol/Emerald Claw
  • Church of the Silver Flame
  • The Lord of Blades

This campaign is going to focus on the cold war between the Five Nations and the threat of a new war, which will be assured if the mystery of the Mourning is solved. Droaam, Darguun, and Valenar will all have active roles, and the potential of open conflict with any of the three is possible; the relationship between Aundair and the Eldeen Reaches will also be an issue. The Church of the Silver Flame will have a role to play outside of Thrane; for example, a Brelish character could be a respected templar with a significant relationship with the Church yet who opposes the theocracy in Thrane. While all of the dragonmarked houses will be involved, only two will have major roles. Cannith may be critical in solving the Mourning, and with war on the horizon, every nation is trying to forge stronger ties with the House of Making. Meanwhile, Thuranni is going to be acting as a significant opposing force to the national intelligence agencies… but who are they working for? As noted before, the Chamber and Lords of Dust are both involved in this campaign, but both are deep enough behind the scenes that I’m not including them as Icons.

Players don’t actually have to have a relationship with a nation to be from that nation. A relationship implies a close tie to the powers and interests of that nations. A tie to Breland may make the player a noble, a ranking agent of the Citadel, a prominent member of the anti-monarchy movement… or of course, it could mean that he’s made powerful enemies in that nation or has some other form of negative relationship there.

But I could easily come up with an entirely different campaign model. One point I’ll make is that 13th Age only runs through character levels 1-10; In planning a campaign story, you’re not looking for a 30-level arc.

What do you think should happen with Icons that are secretive, like say the Scar that Abides?

Personally, I don’t consider them to be “Icons.” I was involved in the early concepting stages of 13th Age, when the list of Icons was being developed. One of the possibilities we considered was an evil force in the underworld that was the source of aberrations, not unlike the Daelkyr. Ultimately we decided that while such a thing might exist, it didn’t fit the role of “Icon.” While it might have a significant role within the world as a threat, people couldn’t interact with it directly; only a few of the other Icons interacted with it, and even then not directly (little possible beyond “hold it at bay”) and there was little possibility of friendly interaction. Could you have a story/background tie with it? Sure. You’re a half-blood aberration. Your family was killed fighting the aberrations. But overall, its impact on the world is one-sided and limited. By contrast, the Lich King’s impact on the world is obvious; he has history with the other Icons; and it is actually possible for other forces to negotiate with him or interact with him or his lieutenants. Someone could form a temporary alliance with him; the Dragon Empire could decide to go to war against him; the Archmage could reveal that the Lich King is his father; the Prince of Shadows might have the Lich King’s heart in a chest.

So in other words, secret forces can be part of backgrounds and they can be tied to unique things whether they are Icons or not. They could be just as powerful or even more powerful than the Icons. But for me, the purpose of an “Icon” is that it shapes the world both in its own right and through its constant interactions with other Icons. Looking to the Diplomacy game, having Aundair, Thrane, and the Church of the Silver Flame as separate Icons shows that you’re dealing with the way all three of these affect one another as separate forces. It may be that the Chamber and the Lords of Dust are pulling the strings of all three of them – but if none of them KNOW it, then the story as the world perceives it remains about the interaction between church and nations, and those are what I’d choose as my Icons.

But your mileage may vary! It’s just a question of what it means to be an Icon.