Elaborating in Gothmagog.

Another entry for the “Fantastic Locations” RPG Blog Carnival!

I recently ran an adventure in Gothmagog, and while I had sketched out the basics, I embroidered and elaborated and expanded during actual play. I like having the basics down in writing so my creative energy can really flow, instead of using that energy to track the basic direction and events and names etc. of the game.

Student Living

The University of Gothmagog is rectangular, with walls out from the corners and bowed walls connecting those corners, creating four courtyards flanking the venerable institution. The walls radiating from the corners are actually long buildings. Half of one of those ray walls is taken up by Student Living.

The huge tavern is three floors, but each one is two stories tall. At the bottom, the entry area is quite large, and to the side is an area with abundant seating at trestle tables, and alcoves built into the walls. The light comes mostly from a central shaft about 10 meters across that communicates from the top to the bottom.

To the right, upon entering, see the bar. It is three broad stairs up above the floor, so the rowdiness struggles to get up there, and the wait staff have a more protected area for retreating when it gets rough. The bar is a box, with one side connecting to the kitchen (which is out of sight of the main area.)

To the left, the next higher floor was knocked out on that side, and massive zip lines attached in an “x” shape over netting. There is seating on the corners not involving the zip lines. Wooden “horse” seats are mounted from the zip lines, and students can “tilt” over the net, whizzing down the lines and crashing into each other at the cross (if well timed.) This was instituted as an answer for student duelling that occasionally gets out of hand (and there is an area for duels behind the tavern as well, secluded and with easy access to medical aid.)

The second floor has more private dining, for those who come to study or date. It is pleasant enough.

And then the top floor. There is a net spread over the central shaft separating the second and third level. It collects broken furniture and broken students. The beadles (university rent-a-cops) do not go up to the third level. Anything goes, up there. People get flung out into the net, or broken furniture, or there is wild brawling, or other unspeakable activities that are more educational than academic.

My group of adventurers walked into this building looking for any clues about the location of a missing student.

The Gulldaw Amphibious Prison

Keith Davies is hosting the blog carnival this month, over here, on “Fantastic Locations.” I just recently created and ran a fantastic location, but it was not for the squeamish. My hardened veteran players (one of my game master style tags is “disturbing”) found it to be a bit wrenching to adventure through, and we didn’t stay there any longer than we had to.

Gulldaw Amphibious Prison is an undead turtle about 100 meters long and 75 meters wide. It slowly swims through the churning sea, leaving a swathe of stench and bobbing flesh that rotted off. Sharks swim in its wake, eating from it; if they eat too much, they become undead in turn, attacking the still-living sharks. Still, the swarm does not abate.

The flippers have been gnawed and rotted to massive stubs. The undead flesh continues to regenerate, so as abused as the massive corpse is, it doesn’t fall apart. It repairs itself over time.

The head is encased in a scaffolding, so that you can stand above, below, or on either side of the head. Clerics of the sea god stand there and channel divine energy into one side or the other, to control its movement; it is a slow process, but the undead turtle instinctively shies away from the energy, so you can steer somewhat.

The interior of the turtle is the masterpiece. A faction of elves took over, and have shaped the interior to hallways and cells; stretching membranes across doorways, they create cell doors that they can slit and trust to regrow behind them, over time. The prisoners are shackled in these cells.There are three levels inside, the balconies shaped and adjusted with the same techniques the elves use to grow trees into fanciful shapes, applied to undead turtle corpse flesh.

Air flow is regulated by loosened back plating; it rattles and sighs as the gasses of decomposition escape, and fresh air seeps in. Each level has a few loosened plates that can be lifted to tilt waste out, to slide down the shell and plop into the sea.

Inside, elevators are installed and attached to muscle tissue; on lower levels, a prod is provided to shock the muscle so it contracts, raising the elevator, and on higher levels there is a sack with a nozzle to squeeze a relaxing lubricant on the muscle, so the elevator lowers. (The players were particularly…impressed…with this innovative technique.)

Eels the mass of a human torso live in the rotting flesh, burrowing as they will, assisting with security by making it dangerous to not be a guard or to be outside the meaty air pocket cells. Crabs with back shells the size of coffee tables also lurk in the putrescent pools of the lower levels, making escape or rescue ever-more problematic. Only a few elves are on guard inside, and to get this posting, you really have to badly annoy the wrong elven leader.

Mounted on the turtle’s back is a howdah fortress, with ballista and a contingent of guards. This is enough to repel most ships, and to discourage boarders.

The prison swims around, so its location is not perfectly known by anyone (though it is very slow, and its trail easy to find and follow.) It regenerates damage done to it. Squeamish rescuers will never even set foot on it, much less in it. So while it is corrupt and awful, it is a high-security operation; it tends to severely punish those locked within it. Since the elves don’t have the death penalty, they needed to find something equally discouraging, perhaps worse than death. Gulldaw is their answer.

Where did it come from? Speculation is that it rose from the deeps to fight in an ancient war, and when the war was over, it did not sink again, and was not claimed, until the elves of the Pembriss Scholars took it on and converted it to a maximum security prison.

I came up with this location for Old School Hack. Of course.

October Blog Carnival is Kind to This Site!

I was privileged to participate in the blog carnival in October, and the wrap up summarized my articles and said nice things about them! I am mostly putting them here so I do not lose track of them in the future, because this is just great.

Click on the picture to go to the wrap-up and see all the other really great articles posted on the topic of loot as part of the plot. Meanwhile, here is their review of my stuff:

Five Fictive Fantasies

FiveFictiveFantasies seems to have been genuinely inspired by the subject and has offered many posts to the blog carnival.

The first is Mark Of Station which posits the consequences of making “the loot” badges of office, and how that immediately makes it part of the plot – no matter what the relationship is between the wielders and the PCs. An elegant proposal that I will have to make greater use of in my own campaigns!

Second up, we have No Printing Press in which literacy combines with the concept of ‘books as treasure’ in a number of extremely useful ways. If you can’t draw new inspiration from this article, you have no imagination.

The third in this series of posts is The World Is Loot, and it describes the insight of a paradigm shift in the perspective of the players. Whether we realize it or not, this is the goal that we all strive for as GMs of our campaigns – but it’s a lot harder to reach a destination if you don’t know where you’re going.

Next up, we have Magic Shouldn’t Work So Hard. I have to agree completely with these proposals – consider them snaffled for my campaigns!

And this blog isn’t done with the subject yet: Overpaid Killers (an ironic title, given that I’ve just co-authored an e-book on assassins) talks about the art of painlessly separating PCs from their accumulated coinage. This post works brilliantly in conjunction with the submission from The Githyanki Diaspora cited earlier.

Overpaid Killers. (Blog Carnival: Loot as Part of the Plot)

Players and their characters love getting all that shiny loot. In older D&D editions, that loot is how they get experience, and in most games, that loot is how they improve their gear. Loot is great!

Until you reach a few problematic points.

Where are you keeping your loot? Do you mean to tell me you are schlepping around a couple backpacks full of coins everywhere you go, O Homeless Wandering Killer? Do you take it into the dungeon with you, and if so, how do you plan to carry out more?

Second, they wreck the local economy. “Nice village you have here. I’ll take it. No no, I mean pay for it! Your mayor’s house will be a good starting point I can build up to my mansion… For when I retire.”

Third, they might get a little blase and lazy. “And for this you’ll pay us what? So, what does the dragon probably have? Eh, I have that much gold  in the other room, in the museum for racehorse hats…”

I have some solutions I’ve used in my games, to drain loot from characters without inspiring a chorus of complaint. Let’s use a principle based approach.

1. The benefits of civilization and religion come at the expense of taxes and tithes. (The great thing here is, when they are doing a favor for the church or state, then offer “duty free” treasure and watch their eyes light up.)

2. Your standard of living has expenses that can be lumped together into tiers of expense, because nobody at my game table wants to go through coin by coin. (The great thing here is letting them really live it up–that makes their characters feel cool even if they aren’t stabbing things in the face at the moment. Best example ever–Lord Bowler, from Briscoe County, Jr.; and his butler, and his crystal.)

3. Gold can unlock goodwill, training, and favors with powerful people if properly applied.

4. It kind of sucks to be homeless. (When the characters have neighbors, or become rulers, or whatever, they get built into the world, and the world gets built into them, and loot for personal gain fades compared to loot for the community’s sake.)

Using these four basic principles, characters can quickly be reduced to the amount of coin they can carry or plan to lock in their basement.

Here is a disconnect between what players and characters need, and what they want. They need to stay a little bit hungry, and to have their game experience enriched by their wealth. They want to have their cake and eat it too. In other words, they should have goods and services that rack up impressive bills as signs their adventuring careers are taking off, but they want to have those goods and services and keep their loot.

There are models that can offset some of that anxiety without ending up with a lot of book keeping.

Conan. Each story, he began in a different life circumstance; a novice thief, a pirate captain, a fugitive, a mercenary, a king, a survivor of a crushed army, chief of a tribe. It was not about the loot he carried, or the station he aspired to hold, but instead about how his innate vitality and experiences gave him the edge where others fell. That is a “loot” that comes from a combination of the character sheet, the player’s ingenuity, and the DM’s willingness to showcase and acknowledge the character’s strengths. Then blow it all on wine, women, and song.

Buried and Built. Early on, a character buried treasure in the woods, and made a map. The efforts of the party led to increased stability and peace, which led to increased building of homes. The character was annoyed to find that a peasant family built a cottage over their buried treasure! But by that point, they were wealthy enough to be philanthropic; they dropped the family a note with the treasure map, and enjoyed the flabbergasted delight of the peasants who became fabulously wealthy with what to the character was a meager score, against current standards. In other words, the loot is, in the long run, possibly less valuable than the peace and stability the character group’s efforts inspired. Also, this tale is a reminder that player characters should make stashes and caches, but not always be able to retrieve those goodies without complication later. How much fun is it to adventure for the same treasure twice!?

Feeling Superior. Let them see others who rely on their magic stuff, who are rendered impotent by the loss of their equipment. Let them see Iron Man stripped to become Tony Stark. Offer them ways to build their careers on chutzpah and more common gear, then show the bully-like helplessness of NPCs who rely on their magic gear and cry like little girls when forced back on their own resources. Or, if that is your group, reverse it; perhaps inspire them with others who make do with less.

Magic Shouldn’t Work So Hard. (Blog Carnival: Loot as Part of the Plot)

In Dungeons and Dragons, you want that magic sword. It adds to your utility–your ability to hit, and to inflict damage, even against the incorporeal and weapon-resistant. The magic weapon is a sign you’ve truly begun your heroic journey.

As a person who favors low-magic settings, that irked me to no end. So when I got to work in my own system, I dipped into the Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons concepts of craftsman and master craft items. By allowing equipment created by experts to be more functionally useful than normal items, but still non-magic, I manage a middle ground in my campaign.

The sword forged by elves is so sharp it can shear through armor. But it is not magic. The armor forged by dwarves encumbers you less, or adds protection beyond its type–but it is not magic either. Still, these are highly desirable.

Then you can make magic equipment that does remarkable things, but may be actually less functional than these mastercraft items. Then you must decide–the sword that can burn like a torch, or the sword that can shear armor with its masterwork blade?

One thing I love about Old School Hack is that there are different flavors of weapons, but it is not a progression from terrible starting gear to awesome “I have arrived” gear; they are different tools in a toolbox, choose the one that fits your setting best.

So, to conclude, it is good to have magic items that are tools in the toolbox, instead of being stepping stones to having the most uber-epic equipment.

VS

The World is Loot (Blog Carnival: Loot as Part of the Plot)

I have a campaign I’m working on right now that has 5 enchanted skulls needed to be placed into an inter-dimensional lock to open the way for something really neat.

The great thing about that is, there are 5 enchanted skulls that the characters must collect. So, whether they like it or not, the characters are going to go into dangerous situations, trading present comfort for future gain.

Sometimes one of my players will say “but I don’t want to go to x location,” and I shrug, because I know they will want to go. Why? Because in their list of options, going in that direction will be the least unpalatable.

“I dislike death, however, there are some things I dislike more than death. Therefore, there are times when I will not avoid danger.” – Mencius

What do the characters desire more than survival? At the beginning, or in a grubby dungeon crawl, that answer is loot–and more better loot. But when you get to the point where the characters are more realized, where they are invested in their setting, then offering them a way to make life better for those who will otherwise suffer needlessly… That is when the possibility of what is “loot” expands in helpful, story-building ways.

A cup with jewels is expensive and nice. A cup that can heal the suffering king and the whole kingdom? That’s better.  But to stop at this level of insight is to risk missing the biggest point.

Because the greatest treasure is when characters belong in a world strongly enough that they will sacrifice for it with no thought of reward, because the world is valuable to them. They have a chance to protect what they have come to cherish.

In short, the world is the loot. The McGuffin is a way to protect that loot.

If this is a useful insight, then the question becomes, how can I make their game world, its diversity and beauty and culture and history, the thing they most want out of the game world? Then you’ve got something special.

 

No Printing Press. (Blog Carnival: Loot as Part of the Plot)

In feudal Europe, a book was worth about the same as a small farm. Hand-written, usually illustrated (as a high-price item, might as well go all the way!), variously bound, these objects containing knowledge that required no teacher were precious. A library was a sign of wealth, education, and power.

When you add ancient mysteries, lost cultures, scholarly works, grimores of spells, and research into supernatural power into the mix then you have books that serve even better as treasure.

I was always captivated by the idea of wizards adventuring to find scrolls and spellbooks with magic they did not yet know, to expand their power. The idea of looking for a scholar’s shocking work in a lost book is neat. You start mixing Cthulu mythos tomes with their sanity-blasting knowlege into the mix as a model, and books get pretty exciting.

In my geomorph dungeon stocker, in the loot section, I have a variety of different books; journals of adventurers, treatises on otherdimensional locations, a book that contributes information on a gap in historical knowledge, and that sort of thing. We haven’t even gotten to books with magic effects yet.

Also, think about how the books should be found. A chain library, with a loop of iron depending from each book spine and a chain down the row, so no one can steal one. Books with locks, possibly magic locks, and protected hinges. Scrolls so brittle they crumble beneath the touch, but must be removed in an athletic way from a dangerous resting place.

A quick way to discourage the worn cliche of a homeless adventurer is to start giving them books they’d rather keep than sell. They have to put the books somewhere, inside, protected. Might as well sleep nearby.

This is also a loot item the characters can MAKE. Consider the Red Book of Westmarch, Bilbo Baggins’ record of his journey There and Back Again. If the characters faithfully record jotted maps, notes on monster strengths and weaknesses, out-of-place elements of their adventuring, sketches of the glyphs on the wall of an escape tunnel of a long-dead civilization… not only can that become more loot as the relevant knowledge is connected to their raw data, but that also adds a persistence and continuity to the setting.

One way to encourage this is to ask players to make note of what goes in the book. The players don’t have to create the book themselves; this is generally too much to ask of players. But if they have a point list of what they’ve recorded, then if the ideas are slow coming sometime, you can get your hands on it and review it for hooks.

Don’t forget to make these rare objects interesting. Reptilian skin, never-cold brass hinges, a daemon bound into the meat of the book so the cover seems to writhe and scream, a coral spine with the pages tied around it–then there are scrolls, and folios, and so forth.

Size matters. For books on stands that were not meant to leave a library, make them big! For a rogue’s spellbook for the two spells he learned, make it pocket sized. For a monster hunter’s record of experiences, put each expedition on a piece of the adventure–hide, a broad bone, a withered but huge leaf, etc.

In generating book loot, efficiency can be the enemy of effectiveness. This is a great place to go all gonzo on your players. The better they remember it, the better a story it will someday be.

Mark of Station. (Blog Carnival: Loot as Part of the Plot)

In a Dungeons and Dragons game, I had elves that were the Borderguard, looking after the eaves of the forest to protect the softer settlements deep in the forest from being attacked. I used “loot” as badges of office.

Cloak. Those honored to become members got an elvencloak. Therefore, the Borderguard earned a rep as being invisible in the woods.

Boots. Those trusted to lead small groups got elvenboots. As the elite pulled together for commando raids etc., they needed that stealth boost when hunting monsters and invaders.

Bracers. Those respected to lead operations or be responsible for areas got bracers of archery. They needed to inspire the others by shooting straight and not missing, and also for top priority missions small groups of these tip-of-the-spear warriors were sent.

Therefore, if you clashed with a group of elven Borderguard, in looting the corpses you’d get awesome magic stuff.

The downside? Those badges of office would be recognized anywhere remotely nearby their territory, leading to a lot of awkward questions. The upside? Elven characters might join and advance in the ranks, having these items given to them as signs of regard and trust instead of being trophies stripped from corpses.

Another example. To help players learn the rules, I held a tournament, open to any who wished to participate and could muster up the entry fee.

Each elimination level granted rewards to those participating. The first level was a long, long red sash embroidered with the mark of the Tower sponsoring the event. It turned out to also be useful for cloakfighting.

The second level, they got tough embroidered leather boots ideal for adventuring in places where you can’t be fussy about what you step in, and your feet/legs need lots of protection. The third level, (finally!) a well-crafted dagger with the Tower symbol on the pommel. By the end, the finalists got a leather coat that provided significant protection, and the winner got an enchanted shortsword.

So, the stuff is nice, whatever. The cool thing is, when others see these guys walking around, they can see the marks of the Tower; they know these people did well in the tournament (because it is regionally famous.) Further, those who have the dagger, coat, or sword are known to have advanced quite far, and the one with the shortsword won the tournament and should not be messed with.

Suddenly a paltry handful of utilitarian objects with a minimum of magic become sought-after trophies. They represent earned respect.

In talking about Mark of Station, the heart of the issue really is respect. You can steal a sword that helps you fight better, you can hoist a sack of someone else’s coin away, but those things make you a thief, and now a better equipped thief. These objects tie the character into the game world and stand as symbols of success, trust, and backing.