Dungeon World

by

All Hail the Victorious Dead: Waking Playing Characters

Inspired by this post:

(PC funerals are an underutilized thing, I believe.)

I agree! Some ideas on adding some mechanical punch and oomph to waking an adventurer in a few games.

funeral procession

D&D

When a character is waked, every character who shared a memory can take an inspiration if they change either their Ideal or Bond to reflect how knowing their dead comrade changed them.

funeral procession

World of Dungeons

When you wake a dead player character and have recovered the body, all of the characters talk about a memory they have of the character. If they have the body and can put it to rest as per appropriate custom, the dead character will show up in the future. The player allows one character to have access to one of the dead character’s moves, showing how the ghost returns for one shining moment to defend an old friend.

funeral procession

Dungeon Crawl Classics

When reavers, cut-purses, heathen-slayers and warlocks lose one of their band to death and chaos, it is often an orgy of alcohol, drugs and other vices that blur their pain, allowing them to put it out of their minds that next time it could be them. Every character should give a remembrance, be it somber and respectful or loud and heretical. If the body is recovered and can be put to rest via the character’s religion (as understood by the other characters) any extra XP the character had is spread among the party in any way the player pleases. If the body was not recovered, the wake goes on just the same but in the end, the extra XP is lost to chaos. 1 Luck for every character level the deceased character had at the time of death is distributed among the party, as decided by the dead character’s player.

funeral procession

Apocalypse World

When you wake a dead character in Apocalypse World, the body with all the gear is sitting between you all.

Roll + Hot (+1 if you provided any grub or hooch for the wake or ever had sex with the deceased back when they were alive) when you want to lay claim to a piece of gear off of the body.

On a 10+ you take that piece of gear. There might be some grumbling but for now, it is yours and no one is saying shit about it.

On a 7-9 you take that piece of gear but someone has a problem with it. You’re going to have to offer them something or force them to back the fuck down.

On a miss, the wake erupts into screaming and bullshit and violence. Maybe this will be a two-for-one wake.

funeral procession

Art

General Research Division, The New York Public Library. “A funeral procession to a tomb beneath the western mountain of Thebes.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1837 – 1841. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-6fd5-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

by

Flat Game Diagnostic Tools

When  a game was flat, there are questions that I ask to try to diagnose what went wrong. Essentially, I look at the tools the game gives us to make the game hum right along and shift from third to fourth and fifth gears and consider how they were used. Games don’t just have one tool and sometimes the use of tools isn’t the problem at all but it is a place to start thinking.

Burning Wheel: What were the players’ beliefs and what kind of artha hit the table?

Sorcerer: What were the kickers and what was written on the back of the character sheet.

I think Apocalypse World, Dungeon World and Sagas of the Icelanders might be, “What questions did you ask and what kind of answers did you get?”

A flat session might also have something to do with hard moves chosen on failed rolls and what is offered on the 7-9 rolls but asking the players solid questions and using the answers feels like an important detail that is often overlooked (or at least, under-discussed where I’m reading).

This isn’t to say that there aren’t tons of other mistakes that can be made with any of those games. I’m just talking about first thoughts when  my or someone else’s flat session.

by

Welcome to Dis, letters to get started.

A Story Games Thread:

Ill-Met in Waterdeep

Dear Prime Newb Whose Home is still Digesting in Dis’ Guts,

Welcome to Dis.

You have what you could carry from your home and need to find some scratch so that you don’t have to sleep out under the alien stars.

Sure, this isn’t your first rodeo and you had plenty of adventures back at home but now you are in Dis. The trappings are familiar but the context is entirely new. Now you are all small fish in an ever-expanding pond that is constantly devouring other ponds.

Someone among you took the lead in getting you to Dis alive. Have that one roll +Int.

On a 10+, you either got out with a really amazing artifact or know someone in Dis who can help you settle in a bit.

On a 7-9, you have some remnant of your old world that isn’t immediately useful but you could sell it for 3d6 silver if you don’t mind it becoming a curio in a local parish’s shop window.

On a miss, trouble from the old world has followed you here.

There is a place for rent here in the Vecna Parish that has something that reminds you of the City of Splendors. Sure, all of the architecture seems to be littered with eyes and hands but something about this joint feels like home, dammit. Explain to the GM why you want to rent that place so badly. The owner, a one-eyed recovering wizard (recovering?), likes the idea of renting to new refugees, as it reminds him of when he first got here, fresh from Greyhawk City.

Chunks of your world are still floating on the top of the stew that is Dis. When your GM rolls on the job table, he will insert an element of the Forgotten Realms as either the Patron, Target or Job Type. The GM could describe a job and ask you what about that job is actually a piece of the Realms and how your character recognizes it.

The one-eyed former death cult wizard will hold the space for you for a few days while you do some honest or dishonest freebooting.

Hugs & Kisses,

Your GM

Please come to the thread and play along.

Planarch Codex Job List Table Results

After spending the past two years looking for a job (I start the new gig on Monday!) it is no surprise that the Planarch Codex job table spoke to me. It is fun and like any good random table gives you just enough detail to give your imagination an inspiring kick to the nethers.

Below are some results I rolled up on a lonely night when I still lived upstate with some GM’s notes below.

 

From the Job Table in the Planarch Codex:

Bloody business for those with the stomach for such things. Need highly skilled operators to get into an arcane library tower that is never in the same place two nights in a row and destroy an infernal item. Begin negotiations for employment at the Malsheemi Merchants’ Guild, where an array of eclectic arcane and mundane payment options are offered.

DM’s Notes: Malsheemi is a city in hell. These merchants are devils.

Holy work being offered, a delivery to a demi-god’s distant holy shrine on a distant plane so that my tithe might be delivered. Time sensitive. Pay can be in gold, gems, secrets, maps and more.

DM’s Notes:  Players in a play-by-post game took this gig, it turned out to be a gang leader wanting to send his tithe to a shrine to Prometheus, god of stealing from the high and mighty. Turned out  his home was being torn apart by a war betweeh Ghoul King and the Demon-Prince of the Gnolls

Professional adventuring party needed for bodyguard work for guild wizard. Please apply in person to the Wizard’s Guild Tower with list of appropriate references.

DM’s Notes: I’d ask questions about the players’ thoughts on wizards and riff off of that.

Guards needed for pilgrims walking the Kas Road. Food and pack animals provided. Payment in full upon reaching the City of a Thousand Swords.

DM’s Notes: Kas was the greastest swordsman who ever lived and is looked on as a saint to dedicated butchers who favor a sword. His pilgrimage is taken by swordsman on the verge of becoming legends but in order to take up this holy walk, they must put down all weapons and wear no armor. Here’s hoping their enemies don’t show up looking for vengeance.

Who squats in our harbor within those alien ships? Why are they here? I will pay you to find out! Inquire in the Manticore Tower and be prepared to discuss pay and begin immediately. How long can we afford to wait?

DM’s Notes: The players will be hired by a xenophobic shit-heel of a wizard very much inspired by Dying Earth books. The ships are woven, floating nests of giant spider refugees because I love giant spiders. I’d want to ask the players questions about how they feel about newcomers to Dis and/or how they felt when they first arrived.

According to the Laws of Dis we must inform any adventurers or freebooters who might consider the following job that it will put you in the midst of a holy war. When and if you inquire in person we will, by Dis Law, have to inform you one more time and then our lawful obligation will be met. The Holy Executioner, servant of Blind Justice is seeking the Trickster with 13 Faces for crimes perpetrated on several planes. Inquire about this work at the Gallows Temple.

DM’s Notes: Pretty self explanatory, a trickster deity known for disguise is hiding from a goddess of justice. I have no idea how I’d run this one.

Adventurers needed to aid a man possessed by an alien god. From what many of the best alienist summoners can tell us, the deity from another reality is seeking a pilgrim who ventured from this deep plane and is now in Dis. Inquire among the Nurse Warden’s Guildhouse.

DM’s Notes: I’d ask questions about the players’ past interactions with the nurse wardens and their brushes with alien gods.

Do a solid for the Captain of the Silver Axes and you will be paid well. Need freebooter scum who know the streets of Dis to find an obscure Temple.

DM’s Notes: I’d ask the players about their past tussles with the Captain before he asks them to find a roving temple that stiffed his merc company on a past bill. 

by

Silver Swords in Dis

No matter where or whom you come from, in someone’s eyes, you and your family are monsters.

– The Planarch Codex: Dark Heart of the Dreamer, Walton and Friends

The Silver Swords are named for the arcane weapons they carry into battle, forged from the astral chains that kept them in slavery for centuries. Since rebelling and gaining freedom from the psionic monsters who dared call themselves their masters the Silver Swords have founded a city in the Deep Astral built from the wreckage of a thousand cathedrals, the psychic detritus of dead faiths.

The Silver Swords put their faith in no deities but in the corpse of the young lady who liberated them. When she died, their warlock eunuchs set the body on their Dragon Throne and continued to rule in her name. If one of their own people should complete a great work, they are ritually sacrificed before her throne and their soul fuels the Corpse Queen, allowing her body and will to animate and rule. When she is in repose, the Silver Empire is run by the cruel warlock eunuchs.

When the queen is awake, the Silver Empire is ferocious, just and embraces change.

When the queen is dead the warlock eunuchs are in charge of the empire and the Silver Empire is then ferocious, myopic and fearful of anything or anyone who could upset the status quo.

The Silver Swords are not quite human. Maybe it was from the psychic torments under slavery’s cruel tentacles or from breeding with all manner of dragons and mythical creatures from a hundred different worlds along the astral deeps. They are humanoid in shape and most often bipedal but vary greatly in all other ways with only a single silver eye to unite them.

A Silver Sword is a monster with these moves:

  • Claim land for the Silver Empire’s Corpse Queen
  • Make a pact with a greater mythical beast (dragon, liche, etc.)
  • Free slaves from their bondage

P.S. There is a heretic off-shoot of Silver Empire, those who threw down their blades, refused to worship the queen after she died. They lead lives of contemplation in floating monasteries amidst the primordial chaos from which the ur-gods created everything.

The Chaos Monks are monsters with the following moves:

  • Release land from feudal bonds.
  • Give an enemy’s inner turmoil a physical incarnation.
  • Let others know how to destroy the economic realities that make slavery profitable.

DW Stats

Silver Sword

HP: 7

AC: +2

Damage: d8 (roll two, take the higher)

Tags: Planar

Chaos Monk

HP: 7

AC: +1

Damage: Fists, 1d6, Psychic Blast 1d8+1

Tags: Planar

Other things to stat out: The Corpse Queen, Eunuch Warlock, Silver Sword Dragonrider

Maps: Silver Empire Colonial Outpost, Silver Navy Astral Corvette, Silver Captital in the Deep Astral, Monastery in the Chaos Waste, The Deep Astral, The Chaos Wastes

Inspired by:

Githyanki

Russ Nicholson’s Githyanki

The Planarch Codex

Dungeon World

World of Dungeons

Link to Conversation over on G+

by

Planarch Codex, old school book cover ignition

World of Dungeons and the Planarch Codex have a firm grip on my inner freebooter scum.

I want to start a game by throwing some books on the table and asking:

How did you freebooter scum get into debt with this Efreet gangster from Blood River?

Are any of you sleeping with this guy?

Does one of you hold a grudge against him from back in the day for that gig with the thing and the other thing?

[Roll on Job Table, page 14 ]

Who is  up on the statue and who is standing guard?

Are you worried about the superstitions surrounding this idol?

Do any of you worship this deity?

Are you really going to fence the gems to your patron with the key necklace or do you plan a double-cross?

How did you meet this guy again?

Are any of you sleeping with this guy?

by

Pubs and Inns of Dis

Dark Heart of the Dreamer + Dungeon Dozen =

Roll a d12, Dozen Pubs of Dis

1) The Eye and Serpent: with a Crypt Thing barkeep it has some of the finest beer in town if you don’t mind using sarcophagi as bar-tops.

2) The Stone: run by a Blue Slaad and its human husband, who is pregnant with the Slaad’s eggs beneath his skin as he slowly turns into a Slaad.

3) The Dream: an inn started by the remnants of an adventuring party who were decimated, took their loot and started a pub. Each table is engraved with a dedication to a hireling or member of the party who passed away.

4) Slate and Spell: run for wizards, by wizards, the walls and tables are all covered in slate with bowls of chalk everywhere so the patrons can write down arcane formulas and debate their truth. The wait-staff are often summoned creatures.

5) First Pub: this was the outpost of Dis on this pub’s original world. They sold accepting the encroachment of Dis to the denizen’s of their world by using the motto written under the sign out front, “The food’s just better!”

6) The Eternal Stew: a pub built around a tremendous stew-pot that has been cooking, so they say, since the beginning of time. It is bad form to enter and not provide something you consider delicious to add to the stew.

7) People’s Free Pub: a co-operative inn, run by those who can’t quite get on the road just yet.

8) The Scroll and Spine: part pub, part book and scroll exchange. Don’t spill your drink, you heathens.

9) The Sleeping Dragon Inn: legend has it that a dragon is sleeping somewhere beneath it and when you sleep there, it slips into your dreams.

10) Death: Choose a pub or inn above and the joint is packed with mourners attending a local’s wake.

11) Taxes: Choose a pub or inn above and an official is there to either close the joint down or collect taxes.

12) FIRE!: Choose a pub or inn above but it is on fire.

EDIT: For 2d6, 1d6 is for the inn and the other 1d6 is for an event going on.

Inns

1) The Eye and Serpent: with a Crypt Thing barkeep it has some of the finest beer in town if you don’t mind using sarcophagi as bar-tops.

2) The Stone: run by a Blue Slaad and its human husband, who is pregnant with the Slaad’s eggs beneath his skin as he slowly turns into a Slaad.

3) The Dream: an inn started by the remnants of an adventuring party who were decimated, took their loot and started a pub. Each table is engraved with a dedication to a hireling or member of the party who passed away.

4) Slate and Spell: run for wizards, by wizards, the walls and tables are all covered in slate with bowls of chalk everywhere so the patrons can write down arcane formulas and debate their truth. The wait-staff are often summoned creatures.

5) People’s Free Pub: a co-operative inn, run by those who can’t quite get on the road just yet.

6) The Scroll and Spine: part pub, part book and scroll exchange. Don’t spill your drink, you heathens.

Events

1) Death: Choose a pub or inn above and the joint is packed with mourners attending a local’s wake.

2) Taxes: Choose a pub or inn above and an official is there to either close the joint down or collect taxes.

3) FIRE!: Choose a pub or inn above but it is on fire.

4) Bounced: You are walking in just as a regular has pushed it too far and is in the process of being escorted out.

5) Gold on the Table: A successful group of freebooter scum is celebrating an amazing haul.

6) Packed: A festival, gathering or rite is happening and the place is packed.

by

Githyanki Therapy: Signs of Past Apocalypses

What is Githyanki Therapy?

This is the act of posting a mad and beautiful idea on the internet, bonus points for posting it in such a way so that others can participate and/or post their own mad and beautiful ideas.

Githyanki Therapy is usually something I do after I have taken part in some kind of stupid-ass internet argument…

But not this time! I have been saving the drama for my mama.

Yesterday I tweeted: “I think any good D&D world has weathered a few apocalypses.” 

So in the comments or in your own blog posts linked back to this one, let’s show sign-posts of a world’s end, of climactic, often arcane relics and ruins that show the layers and epochs of a fantasy world.

Ruined Witchtowers – Once the proud towers of Tiefling witchlords, when they ruled the world at the head of devil armies led by warlock-generals now they are ruins whose broken parapets touch the clouds while their under-layers reach into the hells. Some say the towers were destroyed during a skirmish of the Blood Wars, other scholars say a sect of Bahamutish Paladins who send their greatest warriors into the hells laid siege to the towers with small elite holy teams.

Arkton – a small town built in the shadow of a cyclopean ship, nowhere near the sea. Scholars who study the ship say the greater part of it is buried in the ground and that its crash landing from the star-sea ended the Reign of Dragons.

The Hand – In the middle of a desert is The Hand, a festering hand cut off at the wrist, the size of the Tiamat Cathedral’s five grand doors. It is often covered in flies or cultures who peck at it. Those who can deal with the unholy smell and watch it have said the fingers and palm flex from time to time, as if only recently chopped off from whatever deity’s limb it came from.

 

by

An Autumn Lull

Our Dungeon World game is smacking its head on scheduling difficulties.  There’s something about the way the hack-n-slash, Defense and Avoid Danger movies bang against each other that vexes me and I can’t quite put my finger on what.  That combined with an XP system that is running lukewarm and I’m ambivalent about the game’s fate.  Maybe we’ll pick up something else that will catch fire, maybe we’ll stick with this and light it on fire or maybe we’ll all shake hands and figure out other ways to spend our Thursday nights.

The Apocalypse World set in the Hudson River Valley is happening once a month or so, if that.  My weekend schedule is hobbling that game, to be perfectly honest and that’s fine, my weekend traveling to see the lady-friend is far and away the priority and my buddies know that and understand.

The play-by-post game is going well.  Daniel and I have hit a more reasonable pace and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.  In a way, that game (along with a bunch of other personal things) reminded me how much I love writing and got me back to the keyboard in a disciplined manner.

The gaming table reflects the gamer’s life, I reckon.  I’m in-between things, not quite here and not quite there.  This isn’t one of those posts lamenting a slow gaming schedule.  I’m enjoying it, actually.  I’m fighting my usual instinct to quickly toss another game right onto the pile to fill a night of the week.

“Take it easy, Judd.  Get your car back, get back in the gym.  Keep writing.  And very carefully fill those time slots while getting resumes out and checking off tasks that align with goals that align with passions.”

How’s your autumn going?

by

The Many-Handed-Gods’ Many Faces

We played Dungeon World and in an effort to push things away from any kind of Tolkien vibe and more towards a Leiber/Vance end of the spectrum, I made up a creepy deity whose shrine they found in the Thieves’ Guild of Spanterhook called the Many-Handed God.  When an NPC with damage from a weapon that almost had to be a misprint butchered 3/4’s of the party, one of the players made a deal with Death to return.

He returned Evil (mental note: I need a better deal) and a disciple of the Many-Handed God, described as a thieves’ deity whose real hands are hidden behind and has dozens of hands on danging from chains dangling from his body.  I’m not sure why this deity pleased me so much as it was a riff on a character I played some years ago but it tickled my geek bone.

Before last week’s game was to begin, Anthony,  the newly Evil’ed priest’s player, said, “I think I know why the priest turned to evil.”

And I didn’t say, “Um, because he had to because he made a deal with Death, who is a concrete entity with mysterious goals all his/her/its own.”  I listened to my friend and roommate’s story about how the priest had come from a northern warrior culture where strength was prized above all, so when he died at the hands of a thief who worshiped the Many-Handed-God, he saw that this deity was stronger than his own and so he turned.  “And you could see the seeds of his evil in the beginning of the game when I kicked that one thief’s corpse.”  I nodded, kinda/sorta/vaguely remembering this key detail.

Once play began, Anthony began talking about the Many-Handed-God.  “He prizes strength above all else…”

“Anthony, its a thief’s god.  It prizes cunning.”

“Yes, cunning and strength!  He sees trial-by-combat as a hole rite…”

“Maybe if its a knife fight in an alley…”

“Yes, and wishes his worshipers to be strong and…”

We clearly had very different ideas and to be perfectly honest, I was about to stop the game and call him out for being wrong about his ideas concerning this bullshit deity who I made up and was overly proud of.  What the fuck?

Like many deities, the Many-Handed-God changed when adopted by his urban followers in the south.  Whereas in the north his hands will have axes, spears, swords, a compass and a fist, the urban shrines have knives, poisons, coins and forged writs.

 

There was another moment worth posting here, where Anthony was asking Aaron questions about his character, wanting to know why they were adventuring together, as the Bonds hadn’t bound them too much.  Aaron was really reticent to make anything up, his elf fighter had been butchered by the 9-damage mace misprint and while he loved his Ultra-Marine inspired take on the Paladin, he wasn’t about to become all invested.  “Listen, Anthony, this is a first level paladin who might get struck down after a few bad die rolls.  I’m not getting too attached.  I’ll come up with stuff as we go.”

I interjected an suggested that Aaron’s shiny deity was in fact the Many-Handed-Gods’ father and so it was natural for a priest of one to adventure with a paladin of the other.  Anthony was pleased with that but what Aaron said stuck with me.