d20 Questions for Adventurers

Each player rolls twice for their class. Of course you may add tables for backgrounds, traits etc. I made the questions simultaneously generic and somewhat evocative to the best of my abilities, as I believe this works best when they are made for the campaign itself to set mood.

Some questions assume social class as well. My reading of the starting money roll compared to the equipment list is that it suggests PCs as minor nobles, rural gentry, petty bourgeois and similar depending on how the campaign setting is presented (faux-medieval, faux-Renaissance etc.) The Thief is reasonable to assume as peasantry and the starting money as their latest big score. It also assumes domain game as an objective (and Fighters can start the domain game from level one, so there’s that.)

Play Report – Providence Session One

So, I started the Providence campaign this last week. The hook is “Silent Hill meets Gangs of New York”, as investigators from a strange organization deal with the supernatural dangers in a fantasy city that is an amalgamation of the last decade of the 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th. It’s a mixture of many cities, leaning closer to the 1910s mostly, although the first scenario leans later due to circumstances. It’s not a horror game by any stretch, it’s an adventure game with dark motifs.

Modern Dungeon – Doctor’s Orders

A small dungeon for modern times. Note: the above map uses the architecture of the first floor of the Alchemilla Hospital in Silent Hill 3, redrawn for utility.

There’s a medical unit hidden in a back alley, for members of a paranormal organization that can’t go to the hospital without raising questions. An agent, Alec Proust, was recovering here after bringing from a mission a blue velvet briefcase that supposedly can open ways into any place the owner has visited before.

A couple hours ago, something happened. Agent Agatha, a doctor, sent a desperate message to the organization asking for help. Silence after.

Node Dungeon – Cave Paintings

An improvised node dungeon. Slightly revised for sharing with extra description but unchanged gameplay wise.

Play Reports – Adventures in Improv

My New Year Resolution includes doing stuff that normally scares me in different parts of my life. In the tabletop arena, that includes running zero-to-almost-zero prep games, something I never did. I have optimized prep principles so I never give myself more trouble than it’s worth, but I just feel the burning need to have a fair amount of prep and decided that my skills as a GM could be improved by doing these experiments where it’s just me and my lovely ass on the chair. Ran two sessions (so far) to that effect this month. One was expected, the other was unexpected. Here are my notes and thoughts:

Skill Scores for Adventurers

(This is just a bit of system stuff. I feel better throwing it in a blog and letting it go than mustering on my files, especially because most of it ends never being used anyway)

Lots of discussion about keeping or removing ability scores. Personally, they don’t bring much to my games and I dislike asking for roll under a randomly generated stat unless as last resource (which feels like I failed to properly adjudicate the situation and took the easy way out to keep the game moving). Hell, I often prefer Searchers of the Unknown for that reason. But I’m still fascinated by the information they are meant to give the referee. I love opening an adventure and finding some small note about PCs with X in Y ability score automatically managing something.

While thinking about World of Dungeons, I often find myself wondering how each author from a hack imagined the difference between skills and special abilities fiction-wise, and how vague it looked. Some abilities looked like skills, or things that shouldn’t be gated behind a special ability. Parallel to that, I thought about how every BRP adventurer is presumed to have a base skill rating on everything. I got an idea (not tested):

Little Notes on Duet Gaming

I love duet gaming. At some point I realized it was my favorite play configuration. I enjoy a group – usually 3 total, 4 if really pushing – but duet games work on a different manner with their own challenges and advantages. Duets are not the little sibling of group play, or a desperate choice when you can’t find a group (although I predict long-running campaigns will become more and more duet oriented with the coming years due to social shifts), or something merely suitable to introduce your partner or someone else to RPGs. That means, however, that you need to mind their own issues, that arrive from their strengths:

Portraying OSR Characters II

Continuing from this post.

Character Creation

Character creation is the most important part of the play process.

The Fighter Who Was Promised

(Inspired by a conversation earlier today)

Fighters aren’t boring.

As expected from a game about simulating challenges in a fictional world, old D&D is informed by the logic of genre emulation (and a very idiosyncratic potpourri in its case), even when we aren’t using a game philosophy that tries copying the structure and dramatic beats from narrative media. Even in an adventure game, we understand things by what movie or comic or book made us excited to play that setting. I want to use the perceived Fighter’s blandness as a toll to understand the assumptions we can use for old D&D, and also how a campaign is set.

Follow-Up on Portraying OSR Characters I

So, this blew up. The positive responses humbled me and I’m thankful for the critical ones regarding writing so I can do better. This is a follow-up with more practical thoughts on how to set up an OSR table where deliberate characterization is encouraged, divided in two parts.