[Update] Comments are re-dis-enabled

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Nope. Sigh. Comments going off again for a bit due to the internet being the internet. 

I hope to post soon a discussion of why early Merovingian Gaul/France offers an excellent 'alternative vanilla fantasy sandbox' template for D&D campaign settings. Stay tuned. :-) 

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UPDATE: the stream of fake comments I had to delete today seems to have abated for now, so I've re-enabled commenting. That means you - yeah, YOU! - should leave a real comment on some posts! Make the internet safe for actual thoughtful dialogue again! 

Cheers. 

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 The blog has been bombarded with autobot fake comments. I'm temporarily disabling comments until the Necron overlords get bored and go bother some other blog, which I hope will occur soon. :-) 

Stay tuned ... my grades are submitted, the school had its Commencement today, and I may just need to slap down some fresh blog content in the near future. 

Happy gaming!

Dungeon Extraction Posse vs. the Chaotic-Body Snatchers, or: Another Reason to Go Back into the Dungeon

Here's a weird idea to address a practical problem: how to take any published, well-organized, ready-to-run dungeon or megadungeon 'off the shelf' - then increase opportunities for factional interaction while offering a coherent reason to go back into the dungeon again, even if the last four levels already should have made the PCs rich.

Let's say you've got some large dungeon or megadungeon you'd like to run, but it needs a bit more pizzazz. Factions always help, but not all published dungeons excel there. Or maybe the issue is one of motivation: explaining with a straight face why the bold adventurers who got 10,000 gold pieces in their last haul and can retire honestly now are returning to face nightmares unspeakable in even deeper holes. 

I dig many aspects of XP-for-gold, but coming up with some kind of mission or objective beyond just LOOOOOT can transform the feel of a dungeoncrawl (or any session). Games like Into the Dark or The Nightmares Underneath build dungeons around sources that leak evil or darkness into the world; PCs journey into dungeons to shut them down. I think that's a cool premise, but it's best suited to dungeons designed by GMs with that goal in mind. [NOTE: the DTRPG.com links on this page are Affiliate links].

I was thinking today about ways one might spice up something like, say, Gunderholfen - a megadungeon reputed to be very easy to run, but a little vanilla (I haven't read it, though it sounds good) ... and I struck on the idea of the interplanar fugitive network dungeon manhunt-crawl. 

Um, what? 

THEY LURK BENEATH US, GROWING IN STRENGTH...

Right, so bear with a little madness here. 

The fifteen fiendish lieutenants of Tartarus have long sought to invade our world, and failed ... but now, the Prophetess says, they have found a breach, a way in. They are among us. 

Or, maybe the Eleven Foetid Sorcerers of Yithang failed to seize the kingdom eight generations ago, but they swore they'd return - then projected their consciousnesses forward through time, seeking vulnerable hosts in their future (and our present).  

Or Githyanki, or Elemental Lords, or whatever. Pick your Evil-Bad Magical Conspiracy of choice. Horrible villains from Somewhere or Somewhen else are pushing their way into our space, our time, our reality - and if they are not stopped, they will destroy everything we hold dear. But they are just now arriving, and they need time to wax in strength before all their powers are present with them...

The following are true:

+ the villains find their way into our reality through fractured, warped prisms: via chaotic minds. 

+ thus, the baddies are not just chaotic body-snatchers; they are chaotic-body snatchers. They steal the bodies from chaotic/evil NPCs. In other words, pick a random dungeon: some of its intelligent NPCs or foes are actually possessed or replaced by the time/dimension-bending foes described above. 

+ there are multiple such infiltrators; they know of each other and are (only loosely) in communication with each other. They form a general network, hidden among the existing networks and factions present in the dungeons of the Realm. 

+ each such infiltrator lurks in the dungeon, like a dire chrysalis, waiting for their presence to be complete, their powers fully manifest, their will ready to crush the light above. That day has not yet come. It comes quickly. 

So, it's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the poor Chaotic Evil humanoid brutes down on Dungeon Level 4 are the first unwitting victims. 

GAMING IT

I've agreed to run a summer campaign for my kids and their neighborhood friends. It needs to be a low-prep, open-table affair. For true off-the-shelf readiness, it can be hard to beat a well-organized published tentpole dungeon. But sometimes endless dungeoncrawling can look a bit dry. 

What intrigues me about this post's idea is that it could add instant menace and stakes to any ol' dungeon. Pick a published dungeon that looks easy to run, pick any seven individual foes in the book, and suddenly you've got an investigative game with a hidden social network of interplanar terrorists layered right on top of that existing, easy-to-run content. You're not just running a big dungeon, you're breaking up a Night's Black Agents-style conspyramid at the same time. So now you've got a mega-faction to hunt, and any existing factions in the dungeon can pair up with those villains, or maybe even turn against them (can you convince the gnoll band to work with you against the traitor in their midst? What if that traitor is their own warlord?). 

Maybe you do this in one big megadungeon. Maybe each level has one Interloper. Or maybe you run an overland hexcrawl with many little dungeons, but about a third of your dungeons or ruins host an Interplanar Interloper. 

Maybe you keep XP-for-gold, but you also grant really significant XP for each fugitive Interloper killed. Heck, maybe you grant five times as much XP if you can bring the villain to justice on the surface - the Sages Royal really need to interrogate each one for intelligence about who else is coming, so trying to extract a prisoner from the dungeon becomes the real gold standard for earning XP. Each Interloper knows a bit about the others, and may yield key clues to the locations or identity of other members of the network (paging the 3 Clue Rule...). And of course you could run a series of Fronts or an Events table that moves the bad guys' plan closer and closer to Doom, so that the campaign stakes really are meaningful if the players dawdle too long. 

Oh, and in between searching for these interplanar doomsters, the PCs have a reason to head back into the dungeon over and over again, doing all that normal stuff they need to do to explore the dungeon...

Will I try running this? Shrug - not sure. But I am intrigued. 

What do you think, world? Pros/cons? Seen anything like this before in action? Am I crazy? Or am I just hosting one of the Foetid Sorcerers of Yithang? 

Even More Warhammer Miscellany

HUMBLE BUNDLE GOES SOULBOUND

Humble Bundle is running a big bundle of Soulbound RPG products. Soulbound is the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar RPG. In recent months, I posted a three-part deep dive into Soulbound, and would certainly recommend the system. If my review or other materials have piqued your interest, that Humble Bundle is a great way to dive into the system with .pdfs at a very affordable price, while supporting charity. 

GETTING ALL FONCY FOR XAOS

Back in January, I posted about some Warhammer kitbashing going on chez Gundobad. I mentioned some interesting Chaos Warriors I'd picked up second-hand at my FLGS - interesting because many of them are kitbashed hybrids, built using both Chaos Warriors and their mortal foes, the Stormcast Eternals. As I noted in that earlier post, I feel this gives many of them a great vibe - sort of like "paladins gone horribly wrong", like heroes who maybe still think they're on the right side of things...but they're very, very wrong. 

Anyway, yesterday I got some paint on one of the boys: 

I haven't worked much with purples, so this was a bit of an experiment. I'm not sure whether I'll ditch this scheme or paint up a whole mini-squad in similar colors. Overall, I'm pleased. 

HAVE YOU SEEN ARBITOR IAN?

One more thing. I've a new favorite Warhammer-themed Youtuber: the fun, funny, very well-informed, and thoughtful Arbitor Ian. It seems he's only been cranking out videos for about a year, but he's got some really excellent videos to watch, equally informed by Oldhammer sensibilities and the latest GW tidbits. 

Here, I'll recommend two quite different videos:

Warhammer Beer. Yep. 

Here's the best and most entertaining concise synopsis of 40K lore/history that I've seen. 

A great channel, recommended. Happy gaming, all!

The d20 lore-for-XP table: from my Iron Age Isle of Dread/alternate Nithia campaign

A while ago, I finished running a campaign set on the Isle of Dread - not just any Isle of Dread, mind you, but a heavily modified sandbox version, incorporating a variety of additional content from modules and my own imagination, and set in the same Iron Age alternate-Mystara setting that featured in my earlier B10 Night's Dark Terror campaign. 

It occurs to me that I should share here some of the things I ended up doing in that rewarding campaign. Today's post contains a lore-dump. Well, yes, but it's a lore-dump with a point. 

See, for this campaign, I made finding and collating lore one of the campaign objectives: PCs gained XP by finding ancient texts that could flesh out their knowledge of the past. They had two in-game reasons to do so: one character, with a background as a Scholar, learned that his sister had been kidnapped by an up-and-coming potentate who wanted to exploit a new court history for political leverage - so he was told to go research a history in exchange for his sister's return. But the other players were also investigating a series of mysterious, cultic killings around the Sea of Dread, killings apparently connected to a dark group with ties to something from the past. But what was that ancient evil, and what did it have planned in this age? And why had one of the PCs lost a year of memory "between campaigns", and was reported as having been active around the Sea of Dread during that missing time? 

In the canonical Mystara, Nithia was an ancient kingdom that "now" survives in the Hollow World. My version makes a deliberate shambles of the canon, and has the Nithian population as a more self-conscious remnant along the Sea of Dread (the Scholar PC was of Nithian ancestry, and he ended the campaign as the petty king of a new Nithian state on the Isle of Dread. It was pretty epic).  

In our Iron Age "Mystara", the players' antics in an earlier B10 campaign
left "Karameikos" divided in two.

Here's how the lore-tables worked in my campaign. At the start, I gave the players a King-List of Nithia-That-Was from the Great Library of Rothago (Minrothad and Ierendi were fused into not-Phoenician island city-states). The king-list contained the barest outlines of history, and a chronological list of the monarchs of Old Nithia. In other words, the players started the campaign knowing everything that appears below in the non-indented, non-numbered sections, but the rest had to be puzzled out as they discovered lore in random sequence [the notes on absolute chronology ("from 3,000 to 1,800 years ago" were added artificially for player convenience)]. What would make matters more complicated for the players to figure out was that some parts of the old Nithian lands now lay beneath the sea (it took them a while to figure this out as they worked with an old map they found, and tried to reconcile it with their exploration of the Isle of Dread).

Funny, that doesn't look like the Isle of Dread...does it?

As they explored the Isle's ruins and found a variety of preserved ancient texts, the players triggered lore rolls. I needed simply to roll 1d20 and feed them the resulting snippets of history, which they could place in the right chronological spot using their "king-list." When all was said and done, the "full story" below was known, the players confronted the ancient evil and saved the world from another cataclysm, and the Scholar led an assault to get his sister back from the Pirate Queen holding her captive. Amateur RPG archaeology, for the win! 

On my own version of the X1 sandbox, I removed a number of spots, tweaked many others, added in the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (renamed "Tharis"), added two new human settlements to the island and worked out their political relations, and replaced the X1 plateau "finale" with AA 35, Desert Shrine of the Sightless Sisters, also integrating it into the island's political network and the hidden cult threatening the world. THERE COULD BE SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR EITHER OF THOSE MODULES IN THE TABLES BELOW, though these will reflect my own substantial changes. 

Good times. 

d20 HISTORY OF NITHIA-THAT-WAS

First was Nithia’s Golden Age, lasting from 3,000 to 1,800 years ago. 

In this age reigned the kings from Ardaka I to Ardaka XII. 

And in the time of Ardaka I was the Royal Prophecy, that each lord of Nith should reign a century at a time, and their kingdom never fail, except that a firstborn heir fail to take his father’s throne after a hundred-winter reign. 

And from this age forward the Historiomancers of Nithia recorded their lore, hiding it away in deep archives to study and weave its patterns.

And in this age was the Priesthood Undivided, but also there came the Philosopher Kamuan.

1 + In the time of Ardaka XI there came the Philosopher Kamuan, teaching that material creation is but a prison for pure spirit. And, said Kamuan, “hate the lusts of the flesh and the flesh itself, for such bring only suffering; but seek instead enlightenment where pure mind wanders beyond the firmament.” And many called him mad, but some among the Priesthood Undivided heeded his words, and began to look to the stars - and beyond.

Then was the Age of Division, lasting from 1,800 to 1,300 years ago. 

Then reigned Ardaka XIII.

2 + In the time of Ardaka XIII, some among the Disciples of Kamuan made contact with beings who claimed to be extra-firmamental spirits; and from these, the Disciples harnessed strange new powers, thanks to which the Disciples’ influence began to spread widely.  

Then reigned Ardaka XIV. 

3 + Ardaka XIV was the first king to patronize the Disciples of Kamuan and to fund their research with royal resources. He took from the Order of Historiomancers their Archive at Tharis in the southern highlands, and gave that site to Kamuan’s Disciples. There, they began their experiments in projecting consciousness. 

Then reigned Ardaka XV. 

4 + In the time of Ardaka XV, the Disciples learned the arts of necromancy from their spirit allies. Seeing that they had such powerful knowledge, the king gave to the lords of the Disciples command of the armies of Nithia; and the sorcerer-generals pushed the royal banners deep into the northern mainland.

5 + But the son of Ardaka XV, being devoted to the order of creation, without his father’s permission selected for himself a private reserve among the army’s officers. And naming them his Falcon Guard, he charged them to uphold Order in the empire in wholesome ways, and to keep watch against any evil by the waxing Disciples.

6 + And Ardaka XV learned what his son had done, and was wroth; and he ordered that the Falcon Guard be disbanded after the execution of its leading men. But the king’s son defied his father, and vowed to share his officers’ fate. So for love of his son - and because of the Royal Prophecy - Ardaka XV relented, and the Falcons continued their watch. 

7 + But meanwhile, even as they grew in temporal power under Ardaka XV, the Disciples were frustrated in their greatest goal. So they began to dabble with flesh itself, thinking that by thus understanding the limits of flesh, they might better escape it. Thus they gained the name Flesh Lords, who wove themselves the more into aberrations of flesh, the more that they struggled against embodiment.

Then reigned Ardaka XVI, and the Falcon Guard with him. 

8 + When Ardaka XVI came to the throne, he gave to the Falcon Guard direct command of his armies; and he severed direct royal patronage of the Flesh Lords. But the Disciples now were too strong to force them to disband; and there was muttering against the king. 

9 + Because Ardaka XVI had robbed the Flesh Lords of their armies, they made dark experiments in laboratories in the priestly highlands and along the empire’s northern rim. And thus they bred vile armies of their own, crafting inhuman aberrations from human stock: beast-men, and snake-men, and jackal-headed legions, and the gobrach hordes. And these forces they held ready.

Then reigned Ardaka XVII.

10 + Ardaka XVII maintained his father's policies, yet with less zeal. Mainland barbarian tribes in the northeast threatened his coastal holdings and consumed much attention and many resources; and so he was distracted, and unprepared for civil war when it came. 

11 + Seeing that Ardaka XVII would not reverse his father’s decisions, the Flesh Lords despised the court. But they judged, too, that their age-long central aim - spiritual transcendence - had failed only due to a lack of adequate power. Therefore the Flesh Lords unleashed upon their Nithian brethren their undead and humanoid forces. Breaking like an unexpected wave upon the empire, these hordes slaughtered all in their path as human sacrifices; and with dark relics they gathered life force as they slew. Whole provinces were razed, and across the north, nearly half a million were slain.  

12 + At the time of the civil war under Ardaka XVII, the Flesh Lords also seized the southern Priestly highlands, and directed the war from their strongholds there. From that fastness they unleashed all the life-force they had stolen, hoping to rip apart the firmament itself and to cast themselves beyond it. But, wary after many setbacks, first their twelve lords anchored their consciousnesses to a simple brazen hand mirror; a way back, should they fail yet again. 

13 + The Flesh Lords’ bold venture against Ardaka XVII failed. The firmament held - though not a few star-elementals were knocked to earth, and some burned in the sea, while others wrapped themselves in the hatred of the Flesh Lords and became hidden tyrants of dark cults; and the wise say some linger to this day. The Flesh Lords themselves, however, achieved nothing, and as their strength was spent their wrath was impotent. 

14 + Then in dire anger, the Falcon Guard of Ardaka XVII moved against the Flesh Lords in their strongholds. Those they found they slew with cleansing flame and beaten bronze and the bright power of Order. Other Flesh Lords, hidden in a deep secret vault beneath their stronghold at Tharis, the Falcons could sense but not find. Reaching out with power, the Falcon Guard spent most of the might allotted to them to trap and bind the Flesh Lords where they lay hidden, and they sealed them beyond the reach of mortal man. 

Then reigned Namak-Ardaka, the Peerless King, who wed twenty-seven times, and sired no children. 

15 + Two-score years into the reign of Namak-Ardaka, a scavenger looted an old brazen hand-mirror from a ruined highland stronghold, and carried it away north to the plains. Through this theft, men unwittingly renewed contact with what should have been locked away, and with enslaved minds, men began secretly to worship hidden lords, and plot how to free them. 

16 + Meanwhile Namak-Ardaka continued to produce no heir, though he promised twenty-seven times that a new bride would ensure his legacy. More and more desperate he grew, until he welcomed those who whispered quietly of lost Flesh Lord arts, and he allowed their secret ministry even at his own court.

Then was the Cataclysm, and the Breaking of the World. 

17 + In the last year of Namak-Ardaka, the Flesh Lords’ puppets made dagger-wands from a Soul Worm’s fangs, and etched in them a labyrinthine glyph of life-binding. With these tools they secretly marked many, and through their marked vessels they grasped the life force of whole towns and city neighborhoods. Then, after the appointed year’s time, there came the second Great Killing. And the king himself was among the slain, and the line of true kings of Nithia failed; and all the life-force of that cull the cruel Flesh Lords drew through the mirror and turned against their bonds. 

18 + With Namak-Ardaka slain and the world in the balance, the Falcon Guard poured forth all its remaining power to keep the evil ones imprisoned. So terrible was that struggle, in which both sides exhausted their might, that the land itself was cracked and drowned around them, and the lands of the empire were overthrown, and chaos filled the earth, and waves overrode most of the empire. And the Flesh Lords failed and fell back into their prison, and their mirror was lost in a city drowned upon the plain, and forsaken beneath the sea. And the Falcon Guard spent nearly all its strength, and most of them perished in the strain of that contest. And now the world is broken. 

 

My House Rule for Identifying Found Magic Items

 In our current campaign, I've hit upon a convenient house rule for the identification of magical items found in treasure. I know that a purist would demand that players use trial-and-error to figure out what every potion, wand, and suit of magical armor does -- or use magic/pay a magic-user to tell them. On the other hand, my group has limited real-world windows for play-time, and I'm not really keen on spending those few hours playing "drink the potion and see whether it levitates you or kills you."

I used to 'solve' this problem by just telling the players what they'd found, and how it worked.  

This saves a lot of time, but it also means certain magic items just don't work - namely, cursed magic items, or even magic items with some unusual wrinkle or hidden cost of use! [Or, uh, I could just lie to my players, which I don't want to do]. 

But recently I hit upon a compromise solution that I've started using, and am pretty happy about. I don't know whether others have used it, but I'll share it here in hopes it helps someone else. 

GUNDOBAD'S SNEAKY DICEY MAGIC IDENTIFICATION HOUSE RULE:

When the players recover a new magical item, I roll a d6, where the players can't see it. 

+ If the die shows 2-6, I tell them exactly what the item is and does.

+ If the die shows a 1, I tell them they can't figure out what the item is, and they'll have to hunt someone down who can tell them - or experiment.

+ If the item is cursed or harmful...I roll the d6 anyway, but regardless of its result, I tell the players they can't figure out what the item is.

I'm not misleading the players; I've told them explicitly how the rule works. They know that in the rare cases that I won't identify a found magic item, it means either that it's cursed, OR they got a 1 on the 'identification' dice roll, and it's not cursed but something potentially quite useful. 

In play, this means that the players can decide when something is worth experimentation, but it becomes an unusual and interesting quandary, not a recurring grindy drag. 

So far, this rule has led to one cursed item that I refused to describe; there were enough contextual factors around it that the players fortuitously decided to destroy the item instead of trying to use it. Then, in our most recent session, they found a useful magic item but I rolled a 1, so now they've got an amulet pendant of unknown properties (a player tried it on, and nothing happened, so they'll have to try something else to see what this thing does...like go pay a sage to identify it). 

Meanwhile, we can get on with the business of looting dungeons, without nerfing cursed or poisoned items. Yay!

Happy gaming! 

In Praise of the Half-Blank Hexmap / Illmire + Brandonsford + etc. (contains SPOILERS)

This post reports on my new home campaign (a sandbox combining The Evils of Illmire with The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford), plus a comment on the enjoyable tension of GMing a hexmap with deliberate gaps. 

Please note: this post will contain SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS for both of those (excellent) published adventures. If you are a player and you read this, you will be sad, and you will lose all hope and reason to continue, and you will end your days wishing you had heeded my warnings. 

My latest home campaign is off to a rousing start. For rules/system, I'm using Knave as a chassis, supplemented by some serious house-ruling to shoehorn classes back into the game. 

I knew I wanted to run a sandbox/hexcrawl, but I've been burned in the past by my own tendency to over-plan. Various grognards on Ye Interwebs preach the good word of starting small. What do they know? Grumble, grumble...Oh wait, they DO know. Last time I was asked to plan a sandbox (for my kids), I toiled over an artisanally-designed campaign setting, poring over different adventures to seed across the map, etc., etc. Well, we ran one (very enjoyable) session in that campaign...and then it died. 

Sigh. 

But we learn. We grow. We try not to repeat the same mistakes. 

This time, I combined several useful assets. First, the cold voice of experience. Second: two really great indie sandbox modules, The Evils of Illmire and The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford (I've reviewed the latter here on the blog, and it has since received some updates, making it even stronger). [Oh - all DriveThru product links on this post are affiliate links, by the way - using them helps support this blog's activities at no added cost to you. Thank you!). Illmire is a compact but really packed hexcrawl involving a sinister cult afflicting a village ... though it turns out the cult is just the tip of the iceberg of what's going on in the region. Brandonsford is much smaller - the adventure's map scale allows the entire thing to fit in one 6-mile hex. 

So, for my new campaign, I decided to slap both microregions down near each other, and just let my players romp in a points-of-light sandbox. 

It's been REALLY GOOD so far.

WILL THE REAL CULT LEADERS PLEASE STAND UP?

We started with a Witcher-inspired campaign concept. The players are "Claws" - monster-hunters born with a birthmark indicating their membership in a strange group predisposed to adventure and well-equipped with the requisite competencies. Boom, instant reason to adventure together. I'm granting XP ONLY for treasure collected (though I use silver rather than gold as the standard). 

To kick off the campaign, I gave them a quick overview of the campaign area (in very sketchy detail) and offered three job hooks: go answer a covert plea for help from the Lord Mayor of Illmire, answer an open call for Claws from the leader of a logging camp near Illmire, or go check out these rumors of a dragon disrupting highway traffic near Brandonsford, further East. 

The players decided to start right in Illmire. They met the mayor, quickly realized things weren't right in town, accepted a mission to check out the nearby watchtower, had a bloodbath of a fight with the bandits posing as legit guards there, and wisely ran away from fighting the giant hideous awfulbeast in the basement. The strongest PC got knocked out twice on that mission - ah, the delights of old-school play. 

Then, back in town, the players learned more about the doings of the sinister cult afflicting the area, started freeing some locals from mind-control, and finally launched an assault on the cult's center of operations. Now the local cult leader is dead and the cultists have been driven out of town (for now), though one PC lost his left arm below the elbow...ah, the delights of old-school play. (Actually, the PC should have died, by rights, but I allow the "last stand" and "terrible bargain" death houserules from this juicy post on Boxfullofboxes). 

Then, the players went to check on a weird circus encamped near the town, en route to go hire out to the logging-camp leader. Here is my first modification to Illmire's basic structure. Esmeraldra, fortune-teller at the circus, is already described as an ancient sorceress secretly rivalling the Observer, who is sort of the ultimate power behind the scenes in Illmire. I have decided that the Observer was once a human mage-prince who accidentally fused himself with an interplanar being, and thus went mad - explaining his Beholder-shape now - and Esmeralda's real name is Smaragdia...she was the Observer's queen. So the war between them was a civil war between former lovers. The Witch in nearby Brandonsford, I've decided, was one of the witches who helped Smaragdia resist the mage-prince, so that will be a potential string tying the regions together, too. Smaragdia/Esmeralda has begun cultivating the PCs as agents; if they survive and keep working with her, she'll try to get them to storm her former citadel and take out the demons imprisoned there - I've decided that Smaragdia's main power has been locked down in the need to maintain that prison. In other words, if the PCs do 'solve' that problem, the grateful Smaragdia will be able to seize all her old power. What could possibly go wrong? 

All shall love me, AND DESPAIR!!!

The players can tell Esmeralda is something much more interesting than a random fortune-teller, but they don't know her backstory yet. Well, as of this past session, the players accepted a potion of underwater breathing from her, and have been using it to try to solve the Fishmen problem in the lake west of Illmire. To their credit, they tried hard to find a diplomatic solution, and eventually prevailed in talking sense into the fishman chieftain despite several flare-ups with the reaction rolls/dice. Now, they've just made a deal to spend 24 hours trying to figure out how to cure the cursed fishmen, before they get driven off again. 

And so, onward. I'm having lots of fun!

DESIGNING THE CAMPAIGN - KEEPING THE MAP JUUUUUST FULL ENOUGH...

The hexmap below shows how I've joined up the two published adventures' campaign regions, and situated them within a larger area. South of Illmire, there are two rival 'noble' territories at loggerheads with each other (I thinly sketched out their leaders' personalities using the tables in WFRP's Border Kingdoms guide). "Halfway House" is a fortified inn; "Longbridge" is an interesting settlement detailed in a Raging Swan village background settlement, torn between the nearby feuding powers. 

My normal instinct would be to go hog-wild and immediately fill in all those blank hexes. I have resolved not to do so unless I actually need to. Rather than repeating my earlier habits of over-preparation, this allows me to focus my energies on the already rich resources in the two published modules, while dangling some tantalizing question marks in front of myself. I have added an additional campaign baddie - a sinister noble warlord named Sir Volter Costanze, who I've decided sent the OG Illmire cult leaders into the region to begin with, before they betrayed and abandoned him. But I'm not really sure who Costanze is or what his agenda will be. And I don't need to find out until he becomes more relevant. 

Are there whole kingdoms across the mountains? Howling wastelands? Lands of tyranny and death, or urbane cosmopolitan cities? Who knows! Not me! Not yet! 

I'm really enjoying the sense of creative freedom and promise, but also restraint and discipline, in NOT fleshing out everything on my map. I realize that for many of you, this is just a "well, DUH!" insight, but it's been important and rewarding for me to implement. 

Anyway. Happy gaming!

[Review, Part 3 of 3] SOULBOUND RPG - Supplements, Scenarios, and Summing Up

 Well, this has become quite a series - time to wrap this up! Here at last is the final part of a three-post review of Soulbound, the Warhammer Age of Sigmar RPG (this post contains affiliate links). In Part 1, I introduced the game, talked about its role at my table, and dove into some interesting features of the game's setting. In Part 2, I talked about the game system's core rules and combat. 

Today, I'll close with:  

+ a quick overview of some of the game's rules supplements
+ a critical perspective on trends in the game's published adventure scenarios
+ a summary of my overall thoughts on Soulbound

DISCLAIMER - please note that Cubicle 7 provided materials for a fair and honest discussion of the game. I received free .pdf review copies of the core Soulbound game, the Bestiary, and the Champions of Order and Champions of Death supplements. I also liked the game enough that I purchased the GM screen and some other products. Please note that links on this blog to DTRPG.com contain affiliate links, which help support this blog's activities (at no added cost to you) if you purchase items from DTRPG.com. Those desiring physical copies of game materials can order them from Cubicle 7, at a local game store, or elsewhere online. Thank you! 

SUPPLEMENTS - FLESHING OUT THE RULES

Although Soulbound's core rulebook gives you a lot to work with, various supplements add still more to the game. Below, I address the rules supplements that I've had a chance to look through, noting which ones seemed more or less useful to me. 

The Bestiary: GMs, if you get into Soulbound, and you only get one other resource to help your games, pick up the Bestiary. As I noted last time, it contains some quick tips on encounter design (that really belong in the core book, in my opinion...). It also substantially increases the number and variety of foes at your fingertips. Many factions have a few entries in the core book, but see significant expansion in the standalone Bestiary ('Greenskin hordes', undead 'Ossiarch Bonereapers', chaotic forces of Nurgle, etc.); other factions are entirely absent from the core book but show up in force in the Bestiary (you gain Seraphon/Lizardmen; ghostly Nighthaunts; Ogor Mawtribes; and even a short but impactful section on giants!). The list of monstrous creatures/animals, mundane human forces, and champions of Order also grows here). Again, this book is my #1 pick for a GM wanting to expand beyond the core book. 

Through Fire & Smoke: Despite its small footprint, and because of its relatively low cost (sold in .pdf for 3 bucks USD on DTRPG), this is also an easy recommendation. It offers dozens of new ideas for environmental hazards or effects, which you can use to make different zones in your battle-maps much more interesting. This offers a nice way to add a bit more spice, variety, and challenge to combats. 

Champions of Order: Unlike the titles above, this is mainly for players. I'd recommend it highly for any player with the desire and budget to expand beyond the core rules. CoO offers new archetypes (basically, 'classes') across various elven, dwarven, human, and Stormcast factions [again, please note that I'm using normal-people names instead of leaning on in-game spellings like Aelves or Duardin]. It also adds rules for  an entirely new playable 'Aelven' faction/species (Lumineth Realm Lords, sort of 'mountain High Elves' who are part of Age of Sigmar). As much as those options expand player choices at character generation, this tome also adds a bunch of stuff for already established characters. We get new miracles, spells, talents, and equipment choices; new downtime options; and new info on the Soulbinding process and on the lives-cycles of Stormcast characters, along with additional XP-hunting goals for player characters. 

Of real interest, too, is this book's addition of new Sub-Faction rules. These may apply to any character, even retroactively. They offer small but narratively interesting and mechanically helpful ways to distinguish between characters of the same faction or even archetype. So, for example, we read of different kinds of Stormcast Eternals, different backgrounds across the mortal human cities of the Realms, etc. - and in each case, identifying your character with one of these backgrounds adds a Talent-like tweak of personalization. This is really neat. 

Champions of Death: Wait now, what? Yes, this dark cousin to Champions of Order does everything I just described, but for undead player characters - ghouls, skeletons, vampires, ghosts, wights, or human necromancers (who must have had really bad high school guidance counselors). Wow. This will leave some players cold (pun not intended?) while others will jump at it. Helpfully, this is more than just a guide to running 'the evil character campaign.' You could indeed play a team of walking corpses devoted to the dark cause of Nagash, Lord of Death - but you might also be an undead champion begrudgingly assigned to a team of Order's heroes to help fight off an even greater Chaos threat. Or, still further, you might play an undead character who is slowly realizing that Nagash ... isn't the hero of Age of Sigmar. Quite a few of the undead character options easily allow for champions who were unwittingly exploited by Death magic and are now coming to their senses, seeking redemption from their tragi-gothic fate. Ooooh. 

Otherwise, you can pretty much read everything I wrote about Champions of Order and apply it here: new archetypes and factions, cool sub-faction rules, new talent, miracle, spell, and equipment options, etc. Although this book's theme didn't really grab me, one of my kids really enjoyed the option of playing a ghost character (you can see his spectral miniature in the battle-in-progress photo of my Part 2 post). 

Based on online forum conversations, I believe that a parallel Champions of Destruction volume (orcs/orruks, ogres/ogors, etc.) is in the works, but Cubicle 7 has decided not to produce a Champions of Chaos (they are the ultimate villains of the series, after all). 

GM Screen: What can I say? It's got art on one side, and most of the rules you'll want in play summed up on the other side. I picked up a physical copy and find it helpful when running the game. This includes a separate booklet of adventure ideas; I'll talk about the game's published adventures separately, below. 

So, so far: if you want to expand the rules for Soulbound, I'd strongly recommend the resources above. The next one on my list left me feeling a bit more ambivalent. 

Stars and Scales: Playable Lizardmen (Seraphon)! Well, that's cool. If you're really into Lizardman lore, you'll probably enjoy the worldbuilding details and species-themed spells and equipment items found here. This also provides scaly sub-faction choices and two new archetypes, the bruising Saurus Oldblood and the wily, magical Skink Starpriest. These options are ... good. I just didn't have my socks blown off by any of this, and the limit of two archetypes felt a tiny bit underwhelming (though, again, those sub-faction options help). The book stresses that Seraphon should seem "utterly alien", making them effective NPCs, but perhaps a challenge to play well as PCs (or just an easy out for someone with zero interest in roleplaying beyond cracking skulls) :-). 

This resource also includes adventure seed ideas for the GM, but I'll talk about adventure scenarios separately, below. 

Supplements I haven't read: there are also plenty of other supplements I haven't read; one expanding gear and transport options, one addressing ancient relics, and lots of little mini-resources (like a discussion of hidden refuges players can find across the landscape). 

SCENARIOS - MIGHTY HEROES ... AND RUSTY RAILS... 

***Please note - SPOILERS FOLLOW for several published Soulbound adventures.***

Ok, gang - here, I'm afraid, I will offer my most critical points of the review. The situation is simple: Soulbound adventures offer many good points, but too often they show an alarming tendency toward railroads that minimize or suppress players' creative agency and problem-solving skills. 

Apparently, there's a market for that; I've noticed something similar in the few Warhammer Fantasy RPG 4e adventures I've read ... also from Cubicle 7. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to play this way - if this floats your boat, that's great - but for me, this undermines one of the primary benefits of tabletop roleplaying games. 

What am I talking about? Well, I'll give some examples. 

Reap and Sow is an intriguing introductory adventure (complete with pre-generated characters) with a cool concept, throwing PCs into a Seven Samurai-style showdown to protect a settlement from an undead "bone tithe." A cool concept - articulated in button-mashing, railroady style. Upon the PCs' arrival at the soon-to-be-threatened settlement, the GM is informed which NPCs will come up to talk with each specific pre-gen character; exactly what the PC must do to solve the problem presented by the NPC; what type of dice check this requires; and even (in some cases) *how* the player will actually go about doing so in the fiction (for example, telling a PC what they talk about while attempting to "sooth [sic] Wullum's frayed nerves, recounting tales of Sigmar's trials as he journeyed through Shyish"). No need for PCs to come up with their own solutions to problems, or even in-character color! Meanwhile, the party's Stormcast fighter "must" (the adventure's words) "rush to the site" of an industrial accident and make a specific skill check to lift some rubble so that someone else can free the laborer trapped beneath. Later, the actual scenario threat arrives: hulking undead constructs who demand a 'bone tithe' -- offerings of fresh human bones to honor the king of the dead and restock his skeletal armies. That's pretty epic! The module's handling of this problem? Less epic. A specific pre-gen character "can attempt to negotiate" to buy the town one extra day of prep time for a defense (they get two days anyway for free). Once the baddie envoys leave, the game imposes specific guidelines about which specific PC may attempt to sway the urban crowd in desired directions. Should your players have the temerity to suggest any possible response other than the pre-scripted Seven Samurai-style showdown, the module tells the GM exactly how to penalize them. In the end, as the game states explicitly, "there is only one option: make the settlement ready to defend themselves from the Bonereapers." 

Crash and Burn is another free starter adventure that also relies on Ye Olde Railroad. Here, it's a scene-based railroad that allows for the illusion of flexibility by allowing some scenes to occur in 'any order.' On the other hand (in a callout box specifically about 'choices and consequences'!!!!), the scenario shows the GM exactly how to punish the players (mechanically, via Doom) if they act in selfish or unapproved ways. 

Grr. Look, I get it; these are starter adventures, so maybe they're for tables with little practice running games or roleplaying. But no no no no nooooo. I remember the moment when I taught a friend to roleplay for the first time ever, and he singlehandedly stopped a kidnapper's stagecoach in his first roleplaying character action ever in his life by brainstorming a way to use a spool of wire he had randomly rolled up with his starting equipment. In the old-school-inspired way of gaming that I find most natural, the whole point is to present factions, situations, and challenges as the GM, then sit back and watch the PCs come up with some cool response (or die trying). Framing railroads in starter adventures just teaches bad habits to players and GMs, in my opinion.

Besides, the problem isn't limited to Soulbound's starter scenarios. "Little Rats Run" is a scenario seed in the Stars and Scales Lizardman supplement. It's basically a (rather painful-looking) railroad for PCs trapped in an ancient structure, who have nothing to do but walk to the middle of the structure, where they become hunted by a foe they can't damage or restrain in any way and which explicitly ignores all attempts at diplomacy, until the PCs catch some skaven with a missing macguffin who are trapped in there too, and do this ritual thing with the macguffin, and then do it two more times, and then get chased by the monster they can't damage up to the surface, and watch the monster finally vanish. Whee! Oh, and if the PCs decide this is all bonkers and they want to retreat, no problem - "the entrance that brought them here no longer exists." Are the "little rats" of the scenario title the hiding skaven, or the player characters as mindless GM lab rats? 

Don't misunderstand my rant: not all Soulbound adventures do this, not by any means. Between the Stars and Scales supplement and the scenarios published with the GM screen, I've got my hands on quite a few more respectable adventure seeds. Many of them could be fleshed out into something quite fun. It's just a shame that too many of them read like loose narrative excuses for the next pre-fab scene of combat and skill-challenges - given the epic scope of the game's premise, it really begs for something grander in the scenarios. That being said, I've noted before that I'm using Soulbound mainly as a kind of low-stakes, lower-prep tactical skirmish game when my regular game won't happen. It doesn't hurt me to have a bunch of fights + fluff, since that's the role I'm going for. But I'm not sure I have a great sense of what a full-on, well-rounded sandbox campaign, full of room for player choices, would look like in Soulbound.  I bet it could look really awesome. 

REVIEWING SOULBOUND - OVERALL SUMMARY

So. Here at last are my overall impressions, in a nutshell. Soulbound is a light-end-of-medium-crunch RPG. It's pretty easy to learn, easy to run, and fun to play. The books are well-produced overall, and enjoyable to read. 

I have really enjoyed running Soulbound as a tactical skirmish game; for me, it will probably replace D&D 4e in that niche at my table. I don't expect to run it as a proper campaign, using it instead as a well-crafted filler game for combat-focused one-shots. Combat is fast, dynamic, and full of interesting and meaningful tactical choices. Player characters tend toward the super-heroic, prompting some gamers online to call Soulbound an ideal Exalted-light RPG. The game offers rich variety for interesting and distinct player characters, albeit with a tendency (which can be resisted) to emphasize combat. 

Of the published supplements, I'd immediately recommend the standalone Bestiary, and would endorse picking up the Champions of Order players' supplement for any players able to get it. Other supplements (that I've seen) may be a bit more niche, but still offer lots of goodies. The published adventures (that I've seen) are sort of hit-and-miss, in my opinion, too frequently devolving into railroads or set dressing between pre-determined combats. 

Ironically, the setting itself is rich and interesting. This is an epic world for epic PCs with the ability to make a significant difference (all the more reason to avoid railroads...). I think it remains to be seen whether the product line will continue to empower local tables to make the world their own, or fall into the trap of scooting players through predetermined narratives -- a potential pitfall for any game set in an established IP environment. Age of Sigmar's relative newness, and the Mortal Realms' vast scale, do offer at least a chance for this setting to remain really fresh. 

At any rate, GMs remain free to do what they wish at their own table, and there's a LOT of fun stuff you can do with this game. Despite my few critiques, my overall impression of Soulbound is very favorable. I've really enjoyed running it and I feel I've only begun to plumb its potential depths. 

Thanks for reading - and happy gaming!