Treasure parcels from the Holy Roman Empire

You think you've got this nifty sword, having +400 vs AC, 1d100+1000 on hit? You think you've got some really cool treasure, 2 statuettes of 40,000GP each? You think you've got prestige because the local lord awarded you a medal? Think again.

I've just returned from a short holiday to Vienna and Munich, and have taken the opportunity to visit some of the old royal treasuries. All pictures in this post come from the treasure chamber in the Residenz, München.

Having seen these treasures, I make a promise to all my current and future players. Never again will a simple medal be a simple medal. Just look at the medal you got in Bavaria when you became a knight:


Never again will a statuette worth 1000 GP be a nameless statuette. Instead, it will be made of gold and coral, and show an archetypical pose of a well-known deity:


Priceless cups wil be made of a single polished precious stone and decorated with small depictions of even more deities:


And last but not least: whenever I feel like awarding you a bunch of diamonds, I will make sure some artisan has taken the trouble of increasing their worth:

The perfect skill challenge

For a long time, I've been struggling with designing good skill challenges. No matter how many articles I read, no matter how many examples I read, they never came out right. Until our last adventure. This time, it turned out to be perfect.

The challenge

The party had to "retrieve" (steal) a talisman from Carlos, an up-and-coming local crime lord, and his bodyguard Donnie. A simple storyline that resulted in the following challenge.

Retrieving the talisman

Difficulty: Moderate
Complexity: Requires 6 successes before 3 failures

Part 1: Recon - Finishes after 3 successes, or when the players decide to go on
Success: The players know the exact layout of the house and the location of the talisman
Failure: The exact location of the talisman remains unknown

Part 2: Breaking and entering
Success: The players retrieve the talisman without being noticed
Failure: The players are caught in the act, resulting in a combat encounter with Carlos and his brother.

Even before playing this encounter, I knew I was on the right track. The skill challenge involved a non-trivial task, and had clear and reasonable success and failure states.

I completed the challenge itself by choosing the appropriate skills and assigning DCs. Most of the recon would involve searching for the maid and pressing her for information; most of the breaking and entering would involve, well, breaking and entering. The details are not shown, because they turned out to be irrelevant.

The finishing touch

While designing the skill challenge I was browsing some DND-related articles. And I stumbled upon an excellent article about Personality Stat Blocks. Basically, the author suggests a simple format to define your NPCs:

Name: <the name of the NPC>
Key Traits: <about three defining personality traits>
Goal: <this NPC's goal in life>
Motivation: <the reason why this NPC values this goal so much>
Fears: <one or more fears, possibly related to the goal and/or motivation>
Weaknesses: <one or more weak spots, possibly related to the goal and/or motivation>

Being stressed for time, I quickly defined all relevant NPCs in the adventure using this stat block. An hour later, we started playing.

The fun part

Of course, this being a role playing game, nothing went quite as planned. Ignoring each and every hint on the existence of a maid, the challenge went as follows:

Part 1: Recon - Find Donnies favorite bar, seduce him, and get a guided tour through the house.
Failure: The party knew everything about the house, apart from the exact location of the talisman.

Part 2: Drugging and stealing - Have a date with Donnie, keep Carlos occupied, drug Donnie, search the house, steal the talisman, plant some false evidence, turn Carlos over to the local militia. 
Success: The talisman was "retrieved", and Carlos will spend considerable time in the local jail.

Lessons learned

The challenge was a big success. And I believe it was such a success for three important reasons.

As said before, the challenge involved a non-trivial task and was very open-ended. In my opinion, many published skill challenges suffer from the more-complexity-than-relevant-actions-problem where a party quickly runs out of ideas. Such skill challenges eventually revolve around redoing skill checks just to make the required number of successes.

The second reason was the personality stat blocks. Because each NPC had a concise set of guidelines, I could ad lib the seduction of Donnie without problems - in fact, my players even believed I had prepared for this specific eventuality.

And finally, most importantly, I viewed the skill challenge as a formalization of the role-playing aspect. Yeah, that sounds very professional and sciency. What I mean is that we played the skill challenge just like we'd play a non-combat part of an old-school AD&D adventure - the skill challenge just provided a framework to determine the DCs, the required amount of successful checks and the amount of XP to be earned.

In the end, this meant that as far as the party was concerned, we were just roleplaying. At certain points I'd demand a skill check, but they always felt natural. This was a big step from previous skill challenges, were we'd always end up with some forced, non-sensical checks that were just there to make the required number of successes. To be honest, it was liberating.

I'm not sure if this means I've finally mastered the skill challenge, but I'm looking forward to the next one.

Links

• The article on personality stat blocks
• A concise overview of personality traits

Pushing the storyline

It happens. You carefully construct your story, drop a ton of hints, and your players don't get it. Sometimes this can lead to a lot of fun; at other times, it's detrimental to your adventure. Even more so when you have only player. As a dungeon master, you sometimes need to spell it out.

Missing hints

If there's one thing players are very good at, it's missing hints or misinterpreting them. This is seldom a problem. For example. the entire session we played last weekend was caused by my player taking action on a misinterpreted hint. It was fun.

Never worry about players missing hints, just make sure you've got plenty lying around.

Missing the storyline

But sometimes it gets worse. Your players are not just missing hints, they are missing the entire storyline. When playing with multiple players, this can still be fun, because group dynamics usually ensure that the players will make up their own storyline. This in turn will make it easier to guide them back into the original story.

When playing with a single player, you are almost by definition engaged in cooperative storytelling. And this requires two people to have at least an inkling of the story that's being told.

I made this mistake in my latest adventure, and for one reason or another I did not realize my player had missed the storyline. Her response was to just trudge along and hope for the best, turning the adventure into a slightly boring railroad. It was during a short intermission that I realized she had no idea about my cherished story-arc.


Pushing it

To solve this problem, I've so far seen two possible solutions. The first solution is to step out of the game and explicily point out what your players missed. The second solution is to turn an NPC into some kind of vending machine for hints. Neither solution feels perfect, so I'm open for suggestions.

Marsember

My current campaign is placed in the Forgotten Realms. To be more precise, it is currently located in Marsember, Cormyr. This post is a summary of my online research into this city.

I really like the Forgotten Realms campaign guide. At the macro-level, it contains a wealth of information that helps me bring the setting alive. At the micro-level however, it's sometimes leaves too much to my imagination. Things like city maps, important buildings and important NPCs are described briefly, if at all.

Internet to the rescue!

After the Spellplague

Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide
The only current sourcebook on the Forgotten Realms. The section on Cormyr contains two paragraphs about Marsember and a small map severely lacking in detail.

Forgotten Realms Player's Guide
The player's companion to the Campaign Guide. The small section on Marsember contains some nice flavor text.

Backdrop: Cormyr
Released in Dragon magazine #365, it only mentions Marsember. It does contain up-to-date information on Cormyr as a whole, and the map of Cormyr is excellent.

Before the Spellplague

Volo's Guide to Cormyr
It's written for AD&D 2nd edition, fifteen years old, and describes the city as it was before the Spellplague. A good starting point however and as far as I know, it contains the only official Marsember map ever released. Thank you WotC for providing it on your website.

Enhanced map of Marsember
I love it when people share their hard work. It's basically a detailed version of the official map, and much more readable. Still, it's a map from before the Spellplague.

Forgotten Realms Wiki
A Wikipedia-like site about the Forgotten Realms. The article about Marsember only contains pre-Spellplague information.

Putting it all together

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The Spellplague has changed a lot, but cities are hard to change.

"Many of the higher canals are now planted with crops, or allowed to grow wild [...] Newer facilities nearer the lowered Sea of Fallen Stars keep alive Marsember's status as a hub of trade, though the volume of items moving through the port is much reduced [...] The navy never returned to that moorage.".

This quote from the Campaign Guide implies that the harbor-section of the maps will have to be redone completely. Some of the canals will have to be erased, and it's probable that some new islands have appeared. Starwater Keep and the Naval Drydock probably still exist, but what is their new purpose?

On the other hand, I think it's unlikely the city walls have moved, or that the King's Tower has suddenly disappeared. Looking at real history, it also seems likely most of the establishments remained; in some cases though, they might have a new patron or new clientele.

Bringing Marsember to the Era of Upheaval will take some work. I will keep you informed.

When combat is too easy

Writing good combat encounters is hard. Writing good combat encounters for a single player is very hard. Writing good combat encounters for a single wizard without a companion character is near impossible.

When we first started playing, we used Keep on the Shadowfell. For those who don't know it, it's a published adventure containing many combat encounters. At first I tried to ease the encounters by removing monsters, replacing monsters by minions and fudging the dice, but it soon became clear: my player needed a companion character. I gave her a fighter, who has since been known as Master Dwarf. Since that time, writing good combat encounters is merely very hard.

Fighting the Bullywugs

Take for example one of last weekend's combat encounters. Before it was played out, I was very excited about it, as I had closely followed all the tips I found on building encounters.

For starters, the terrain and situation were exciting. My player was escorting a trade caravan through the marshes, when they stumbled on a small river and a broken bridge. Combat started while she was busy hauling the carts to the other side.

She was attacked by Bullywugs, frog-like creatures that perfectly fitted the setting. To her, they were new and exciting monsters. I had carefully considered the roles of the different creatures, I had an elaborate tactical plan, and I was certain my player would have a very hard time.

Three rounds later she was considering opening a French delicatessen specializing in frog legs.

Lessons learned

I think there are three reasons while the fight went so much better for her than I had anticipated.

First of all, in the previous adventure my player had leveled up and gained a new encounter power: Stinking cloud. This is actually quite a powerful spell against certain opponents. As it turns out, Bullywugs are among them. During my preparations, I never even looked at the current powers of my player.

Secondly, the adventure provided ample rest between encounters. My player felt no need to use her powers sparingly, and managed to use all her firepower in just three rounds. In retrospect I should have upgraded the encounter to "quite hard" instead of "moderate".

And finally, there is the matter of luck. For example, Bullywug Muckers actually hurt themselves when failing a Bullywug rush. In the end, my player was lucky and the Bullywugs weren't. It is impossible to prepare for that.

Skill challenges and NPCs

This weekend my player encountered Loxar the Spellscarred, and the experience was even better than I hoped for. The encounter went well, my player survived, and Loxar has accidentally been upgraded to a major NPC.

Running the encounter

I wrote the encounter as an exercise in skill challenges, the way they are described in the Dungeon Master's Guide 2. If you're struggling with skill challenges (as I was) and don't have the book (as I did), get a copy of DMG2 right now.

The encounter was set up as a robbery - my player was escorting a trade caravan, and Loxar had set her eyes on the goods. The encounter could either be resolved by defeating Loxar, or by negotiating a way out. Each success would lower the amount of money required to pay off Loxar.

In the beginning, the encounter played out as planned. As soon as my player realized her adversary had some intelligence, she started negotiating. I let her roleplay the negotioations at her leisure and called for skill checks when appropriate. The pay-off had already been reduced to a meagre 400 gold pieces, when my player managed to surprise me completely.

She suddenly proclaimed that the Eladrin Courts in the Feywild had the means to cure the spellscar and proposed a deal: she would send Loxar to an Eladrin healer, and if that failed, she would reimburse Loxar by paying her the 400 GP.

I was stunned. My girlfriend is new to playing D&D, but she seemed to have grasped the very essence of the game: cooperative play when appropriate. For the sake of it I let her make another Diplomacy check, but in my head the matter was already resolved. Loxar agreed, and she will meet my player again.

Discussion

Afterwards, when discussing the adventure, my player made three interesting observations about this encounter.

First of all, during the skill challenge itself she had no idea she was playing a skill challenge. This can be partially explained by her limited exposure to skill challenges so far, but the fact that I used skill challenges as an underlying mechanism to roleplaying instead of treating it like a combat encounter also helped a lot.

The second observation was about metagaming. While I was composing the encounter and when I was writing my previous article, she had a lot of exposure to Loxar's picture. In her head this exposure translated to "must-be-an-important-character". So while I had envisioned Loxar as a minor NPC, my player considered her a major part of the plot she's unravelling. In turn, this was an important reason for her to compel Loxar to be cured.

The last observation worth mentioning was her own joy at the cooperative play. It gave her a chance to expand on her own background, and she continued to do so during the rest of the adventure.

Lessons learned

In the end, to me each encounter is a lesson in writing and running better encounters. Most importantly, this encounter taught me that skill challenges can indeed be fun, as long as they are played properly.

The other lesson was: don't be afraid. When writing the encounter, I opted for a skill challenge of standard difficulty with complexity 1 and worried that this might be too hard for my player.

It wasn't.

Loxar the Spellscarred

Inspiration comes from many places. For me, deviantART is one of them. Recently I was planning an adventure in which I wanted my player to encounter the effects of the Spellplague. I was writing, rewriting and rewriting again, until I stumbled on this picture:

At one, it all became clear. This was Loxar the Spellscarred. She used to be a promising swordmage from the Forgotten Realms,  until one of her adventures brought her to spellplagued land. An unforunate accident caused the scar below her eye.

At first, the effect seemed purely cosmetic. But soon she learned how the scar could give her additional powers, manifesting themselves in all-consuming flames of blue fire. And soon after that, she noticed how the spellscar replaced the memories of her training. Until all her remaining powers revolved around the scar.

Spellscarred people are shunned by society, and Loxar chose a new career. She became a highwayman in the western regions of Cormyr, earning a living by robbing trade-caravans coming from the Thunderpeaks and Sembia.

And so, the encounter wrote itself. Loxar will try to rob my player. Given the fact that she is a very intelligent women without a death wish, the encounter can be run as either a skill challenge or ordinary combat.

I'm very excited to see how my player will react to her...

 

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