RPG Linguistics

In many editions of D&D, everyone learns a handful of languages at character creation, and then either never thinks about them again or never has the one they need. I propose an alternative, with 5e as a base.

Characters learn fewer languages.

Everyone knows common. There are no racial languages. Only learn a second language if your background calls for it.

Each language satisfies a narrative function.

Common—common is great. Everyone knows common unless there's something strange happening. Don't think about it.

Ancient—dead civilizations speak and write this language. You might know it if you're a treasure hunter, a time traveler, or a classics major.

Ceremonial—this language is a secret for religious or magical reasons, like Druidic or Hebrew. From a world-building perspective, I'd limit myself to one of these per setting, even if that requires some contortion.

Underworld—this language is a secret for reasons of discretion, like Polari or rhyming slang. Dialects change, but learning on-the-fly is built-in to its rhythms. Written, this is the ability to read hobo signs, notice graffiti, etc.

Technical—this is how experts in a field talk about stuff. Even if you're a published author on the topic of applied divination, you can still muddle through someone's notes on optimal well-drilling or drop some convincing techno-babble.

Otherworldly—aliens and old Gods speak this. (Angels, devils, and other outsiders speak common: they want you to understand them.)

Foreign—someday you will find yourself somewhere where they only speak French. Until then, it's a social signifier of a misspent education, a party trick or a bit of flavor.

Tomb of the Serpent Kings (Review)

The adventure I spent the most time with this year was Skerples’ Tomb of the Serpent Kings (TotSK), running it for a group of 5e players. I also made good use of Itai Assaf Raizman-Greif’s 5e conversion notes. There’s more of the dungeon to explore, but I’m reviewing what we’ve had the chance to play so far. Spoilers etc. below.

For the unacquainted, TotSK is a “learning” dungeon designed to ease new players into a classical, more lateral mode of dungeon exploration. It doesn’t have a gimmick, it’s not a full campaign, and it’s not a single-page blank slate. Instead it’s intended to be a mid-sized dungeon that’s simple to run and fun to play, and which is full of “lessons.” The lessons aren’t explicit, but they’re called out for the GM (for example, “valuables sometimes take unconventional forms” or “traps repeat”).

The plan for session one was simple: finish rolling characters and then play through the “false tomb” level to familiarize everyone with the rhythm of the game. The false tomb level works well for this: the players learned the patterns of the dungeon, exercised some creative problem solving, and won some small treasures. The draw of a low-level, “half-session,” discrete amount of dungeon motivated me to try the adventure in the first place.

We spent the better part of the year in the dungeon (and surrounds), and while we’re not done yet, we’re on hiatus for the moment. The players haven’t encountered Baltoplat or Xiximanter, but have met the goblins and explored most of the upper levels.

What Didn't Work

I’d read the hammer trap a dozen times and thought I’d figured it out. But as soon as I tried to run it, it escaped me, my descriptions were inadequate, and the players spent more time being frustrated than they should have. It really wants a rough diagram and just a couple clarifications (which way do the doors open, which side are the hinges on, that type of thing).

There’s a hidden room behind a statue, following the established pattern of hidden rooms behind statues. Two characters noticed that the statue was misaligned (they didn’t tell each other), but having only one other example to work from, and switching contexts, they left it alone. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but it’s not the clear-cut “lesson” the text suggests.

The 5e rules and playstyle also undermine some of the “lessons” in the dungeon, namely that combat isn’t always necessary. The players saw the Stone Cobra Guardian as a “boss fight” and proceeded to demolish it. The same thing happened to the basilisk. I hope they don’t try to kill the lich, but I'm not even sure they couldn’t.¹

In the 5e stat block for the Stone Cobra Guardian, it’s easy to miss the AC bonus from the shield attack. I’d put a reminder in parens after it, but I don’t think it ultimately mattered much.

For all the logic of the dungeon, some of the traps still feel a little fun-house, which leaves me walking an awkward line between the hammer trap (traps will be signposted, avoidable, interactive, etc.) and the stair trap (trust nothing, everything is dangerous, search everything, etc.). I don’t think my players noticed any incongruity, but I wonder what “lessons” they’ve actually learned about exploring a dungeon.

I used the “strange dreams” hook to get the party together because I had no idea what kind of characters people would be bringing to the table.² I’ve loosely worked out how the dreams work, but the players with the most elaborate backstories are dissatisfied that they’ve been delving so long and neither dreams nor backstory have been relevant yet. (I do have designs to tie it all together, but the characters just keep going the other direction.)

Part of the issue is that 5e combat is not only more likely, but also a bit of a slog. When the players fight the guardian, for example, that's going to take most of that session. So a lot of time is spent fighting, searching, detecting, and prodding which makes the dungeon feel less engaging than it might otherwise.

To help fix this, the 5e adaptation added “Smee,” a friendly goblin, who I ignored entirely. Eventually the players will meet other non-player characters and have the opportunity to roleplay (in the dungeon), but if I were to start again, I would give them that chance earlier.

What Worked

That said, it’s generally been fun,³ and a lot of things have worked really well:

• The sarcophagus of Franbinzar containing both a foul shifting liquid and also the glint of treasure caused much confusion, as the players dropped the lid back in place before getting a better look.
• The players have made full use of the unfinished room for stashing supplies and resting. It’s just a good feature.
• The players do not like the abyss, and take winding paths to avoid it.
• Killing the guardian means there are now wandering monsters throughout the dungeon, and it also affected the regional encounter table. I don’t know if the players will notice, but it’s satisfying to run.
• Unlike the hammer trap, the blade hallway was very well received. “That felt very D&D,” to paraphrase our rogue.
• As we left it, the goblins have just crowned their new king, and there are only three weeks to the next full moon. (The players know what happens then, but the goblins wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.)

Snakeguts

After the players killed the Stone Cobra Guardian, the artificer wanted to search the remains for parts. Between sessions I took the opportunity to think of possible finds:

1. Ornate gearbox. Runs perpetually, but ticks loudly, giving away your position.
2. Glowing emerald golem-brain. Evil, but powerless to act.
3. [Bulky] spur gear, a map etched into it.⁴
4. Internal repair sub-golem. Repairs other structures, but rebuilds the original golem if left unattended.
5. Incredibly articulated hand. Easily used as a prosthetic.
6. Parabolic golem-eye. Focuses surrounding magical energy like a 4-D camera obscura.
7. [Bulky] flywheel. Frictionless while spinning.

The characters ended up with the emerald golem-brain, discovered its nature, and proceeded to devise elaborate ways to dispose of it permanently. (They feared that destroying it would free the spirit in it, and that sending it too far away, for example into the abyss, would invite someone to recreate the golem.)

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1 Part of the issue is that there’s six of them, and they’re going to be level three next time we start. I decided to start with the milestone XP option, with each “cleared” dungeon level counting as a character level. This worked really well for the first level-up at least, and quickly gave the new players a feel for advancement. I had some other thoughts on 5e here.^back

2 It turns out sleeping is less universal than you think once there are elves and warforged in the mix.^back

3 Going back to my revolutionary theory that “games are fun.”^back

4 I’ve never cared to track encumbrance, but when I have to, I like Electric Bastionland’s system. Roughly, you can carry two [Bulky] items: one in your hands and one on your back.^back

Random Events

A random event or “random” is an idea I’m borrowing from the MMORPG RuneScape, although it may exist in other contexts or games also. I thought I’d see what I can learn from the design of RuneScape generally, and this is where I’m starting.

What is a Random Event?

RuneScape is an MMO with heavy repetitive elements. Where there’s repetition, there’s the opportunity to automate, so pretty quickly it was overrun with bot accounts farming resources, getting in the way of other players, and distorting the economy. Random events were an early anti-bot measure: whenever you’re doing stuff, there’s a chance that something strange happens. For example, if you’re chopping down a tree, maybe that tree is actually an ent right now, and if you keep chopping it will break your axe.

Maybe you were just running around, and a talking cat (“Evil Bob”) imprisoned you and asked you to play a minigame for your freedom. Sometimes a drunk dwarf appears and wants to share his kebab with you, but if you ignore him too long he’ll start attacking. You might find when you’re burying bones, that you disturb some existing grave site, and a shade attacks you.

These events were removed from the game as more effective anti-bot strategies were devised. However, a fork of RuneScape (Old School RuneScape, or OSRS) only includes updates that are voted on by the community, and after some revision, random events are still a significant part of that game.

My working definition of a random event will be: “a specific, rare, and unforeseen event that has some chance of resulting from a routine activity, and which demands immediate attention.”

“A specific…”
Random events are pre-defined. This could be considered a limitation of a computer game because it’s common enough to improvise exact rare circumstances in tabletop games. But the limited stable of random events means they have a different feel.

“rare and unforeseen event…”
A random event has to be rare enough that you can’t “farm” it or plan around it. Sometimes you can get a message in a bottle while fishing, but you don’t go fishing for one. Explosive gas might damage your pickaxe, but not often enough to bring two pickaxes.

“…that has some chance…”
My intuition is that they should not be more common than critical hits/failures (5%), and should probably be less common.

“…of resulting from a routine activity…”
In their current state in OSRS, most random events are truly random. They just happen whenever or wherever you are. This is something that computers can do great, but in a tabletop game, it would be tedious to check every combat round (say), for a range of infinitesimal chances that something utterly unexpected might happen. So we will use the older model of random event that happens when you are doing some specific, usually repetitive task.

“…and which demands immediate attention.”
A rainbow is not a random event. If we are going to go through all the work of checking for randoms, we’re going to make them impactful. In RuneScape, this is either because the event will cause you harm, grant you a reward, or literally remove you from your previous situation.

Random Events in D&D

In many ways, random events already exist in D&D. Consider random encounters while travelling: they may not strictly meet the definition above, but they come close. Critical successes might also come close, especially with some sets of house rules, but again fall a little short.

I think the closest thing to them in D&D “canon” as I know it is probably the divine interventions in Deities & Demigods. If you’ve never had the pleasure, Deities & Demigods is a mess of a book. Its purpose is unclear, it has questionable ties to its source material, and the information in it isn’t organized in any meaningful or useful way. Maybe it says something though, that I got rid of my AD&D core books, but never parted with this one.

These are the most promising random events I could find in it:

Action	Chance	Result	God (page)
A believer is reanimated.	2% per level of deceased	Arawn appears and fights against the reanimation (75%) or offers a substitute dead person (25%).	Arawn (p. 26)
An original composition is sung during battle.1	5%	The singer is granted a bonus level for the duration of combat.	Brigit (p. 27)
A believer flees from battle.	0.5%	The deserter is struck dead.	Morrigan (p. 29)
An original composition is performed/spread by others.	1%/5%	Great wealth is given to the creator by the lord of the hold, in the form of gold.	Oghma (p. 29)
An evil act affects more than 500 people.	0.05%	The evildoer is given a disease-causing gift.	Lu Yueh (p. 40)
Hastur’s name is spoken.	25%	Hastur sends 1-4 byakhee to slay the speaker.	Hastur (p. 45)
A tomb with Anubis’ image/consecration is robbed.	5%/10%	Anubis appears to kill the robbers.	Anubis (p. 50)
A cat is killed.	0.1%	Bast either kills the slayer or demands half of their remaining life in devotion.	Bast (p. 50)
A character takes a great risk.	5%	The gambler is gifted a luck stone.	Bes (p. 51)
A good person seeks righteous revenge.	5%	All of the avenger’s ability scores are increased to 19 until the deed is done.	Horus (p. 51-52)
Someone creates a new magic spell or item.	5%	Isis gives the creator a charm to resist the effects of one spell.	Isis (p. 52)
Someone/a worshipper/a cleric creates a device that is highly useful.	5%/10%/15%	Ptah gives the creator a Thet, an amulet that either allows you to become ethereal once/week, or acts as a one-way anti-magic shell.	Ptah (p. 53)
Dryads are in danger/Men are attacking the forest.	1%/5%	Mielikki appears to aid her dryads/attack the woodcutters.	Mielikki (p. 60)
A believer is reanimated.	1%	Tuoni comes to reclaim the resurrected soul.	Tuoni (p. 61)
Someone accomplishes a particularly difficult task.	5%	Epimetheus gives the person a ball of magic clay that can form itself into any 4th-level creature. The creature then fights the person (60%) or serves loyally until death (40%).	Epimetheus (p. 68)
Hermetic arbiters accept a bribe or graft.	15%	Hermes punishes the corrupt arbiter.	Hermes (p. 71)
A lawful-aligned person breaks an oath.	1% per level of oathbreaker	Varuna causes them to be punished.	Varuna (p. 79)
A being takes an unusual and great risk (in combat).	2%	The gambler makes all their saves and attack rolls for the combat.	Kishijoten (p. 82-83)
Beings that are neither lawful nor chaotic dig deeper than 100 ft.	5%	Darnizhaan attacks the diggers.	Darnizhaan (p. 88)

New Random Events

The interventions in Deities & Demigods are interesting, but mostly still fall short of our definition. For example, many of the activities are not “routine”, and many of the effects are still left up to the GM. So if we want to make our own randoms, let’s start with “routine” activities in D&D (assuming 5e). Skill checks come to mind first,² so for each skill, we’ll define one event that could happen whenever that skill is tested.

Acrobatics
Now you’ve done it. Whether through quick motion or tense concentration, you’ve slipped into the plane of shadow. You can exit anywhere you like, but the further you go the less accurate your exit will be.

Animal Handling
The king of the cockroaches is impressed by your empathic abilities. Would you be so gracious as to carry him and his retinue back to the outdoors or into the nearest structure? For this noble service, the king will grant you a knighthood! Knighthoods from the king of the cockroaches are not worth much, but are technically valid. Should you kill the king of the cockroaches, insectoid assassins will be sent for 1d6 nights following, but the new king does not bear a grudge.

Arcana
That thing you never quite figured out, you know the one? It just clicked. If you can find writing tools and drop everything you’re doing for the next 10 minutes, you can create a spell scroll of a random spell.

Athletics
Koroibos appears in a flash of lightning! Nude, oiled, muscular, he challenges you to a footrace. If you accept he insists on racing right now on the nearest suitable course (a hallway, for example). He wins and loses graciously, but gives one who defeats him an olive branch. When broken, the branch summons him to assist in one task (during which he automatically succeeds on any Athletics checks). In any case, he leaves in a similar flash of lightning.

Deception
I knew it, and this confirms it! Thou art that same villain! I demand satisfaction immediately! Whatever deception was just practiced, the duelist now believes that the character is responsible for the death of one of his twins, and fights to the death.

History
Whatever knowledge you called forth was an affront to the dead. They demand you retract any statement made, or fight to the death (again). If beaten, the answer to one historical question can be extracted. Nobody else can see the shade in question.

Insight
You understand the true nature of all things, and it is as though space and time stand still. Except for you, and if this was an opposed roll, the opposition. You both have enough time to speak a few sentences or take some decisive action (one “combat” round) before the rest of the world catches up, and after, nobody else will know.

Intimidation
You’ve caught the eye of Maxavogg, a lesser devil. He thinks you’ve got potential, kid. But you gotta learn the basics, review the fundamentals. Tell you what, he’s got a free seminar on the subject, take this card and burn it if you want to try. The seminar is 24 hours, but you’ll come back proficient in Intimidation if you weren’t already, and you’ll be known to a handful of [falling] stars in the infernal org chart. He won’t leave until he’s shaken everyone’s hand. (Thanks, Ancalgon_TB.)

Investigation
You find a tiny blue cog. These things just turn up sometimes and nobody knows why. Still, rich people collect them.

Medicine
Look, Ariel the djinn really meant to study for their mortal anatomy class, but they just didn’t get to it. If you could answer a few questions for them, they could definitely do quick favor for you, say a quick spell or sow some confusion somewhere. The questions are bizarre, but simple enough to answer. If Ariel is ignored, they might steal something shiny before disappearing.

Nature
Isn’t there a children’s rhyme about that lichen over there? “Purple fur and orange leaves / Death the drinker’s soul recieves” Maybe that wasn’t it, but you certainly recognize it. Given 10 minutes’ uninterrupted work, you could probably get a useful dose of poison from it.

Perception
One of the fair folk is hiding a cache. If you stand perfectly still and silent for the next 10 minutes, they won’t notice you’ve seen them and you can retrieve it after they leave.

Performance
A talent agent was in the audience (in the shadows if necessary), and would like to offer you a considerable advance. If you accept, 1d4 fiendish lawyers attack the next time you perform the same song again.

Persuasion
An impressionable dandy is not only persuaded by your arguments, but by your very lifestyle! They loyally follow you around, loudly agreeing and generally being obnoxious. If any sort of combat breaks out they throw one attack at random before fleeing. Left outside of your powerful presence, they quickly grow bored and disappear.

Religion
Clarence, a neophyte angel, needs to help some more good people before he’s allowed into the choir. Will the characters swear they’re really very pure of heart? (Clarence trusts them if they do.) That’s just great, is there anything he can do for them that doesn’t involve direct or indirect harm? Oh, uh, maybe not that big. Huh. Maybe like, he can carry a message or something? When this negotiation is finished, Clarence carries out the task unfailingly, but if no task can be settled on, he’s quite huffy and the character takes disadvantage on their next roll.

Sleight of Hand
No trickery escapes the watchful eye of Constable Dogberry, and that certainly looked like trickery. If you agree to cooperate he’ll issue you a very official looking, if incomprehensible … ticket? Court summons? It’s hard to say. But he’ll be detaining you for the next 10 minutes at least while he writes it up. Put up a fight and well, … Dogberry will probably flee after any amount of damage is dealt.

Stealth
You’re so sneaky! You’re practically invisible! Recall though, that Invisibility has duration of 1 hour. Good luck!

Survival
The hunter has become the hunted! For the next 24 hours, King Herla will hunt the character (sans the entire wild hunt, this is his day off). He can be defeated in single combat, or dissuaded by a boring hunt, but if a quarry evades him for the duration, he gifts them an antler. When broken, the antler summons him to assist in one task (during which he automatically succeeds on any Survival or Nature checks).

Implementation

Tying randoms to skill checks has a lot of potential. Whenever a player goes to roll, they roll a d% alongside, and on a 000, the random event happens. Only rolling when there’s a risk of failure prevents “farming” the events, and rolling multiple dice adds excitement.

Special consideration should be given to group checks. As they exist in D&D now, each member makes the check. To keep randoms rare, they should only be checked on individual tests, or alternative rules for group checks should be used. Similarly, they shouldn’t occur on passive checks.³

Because these events are so rare, they must be applied consistently. Even if the athletics check happens in an anti-magic field, the laws of the universe governing Koroibos’ appearance allow him in and out regardless. Religion checks don’t involve any action on the character’s part, but they can still attract Clarence.

These definitely aren’t ready to use as-is. Adversaries need stats, chases need rules, quizzes need questions, and wishes need limits. In the spirit of the original random events, the difficulty of any challenge should probably be scaled to the character that caused it, so that the event is always “relevant”.

Benefits

The events I sketched out here would fit a high-magic gonzo setting, but I do think some version of the mechanic could be worked into other settings. Even though they occur rarely, they define a setting by the types of unexpected things that occur. And because they have a chance of occurring to anyone, you can lean on them elsewhere in the setting. The cockroach court can be involved in unrelated intrigues, and the impressionable dandy might show up later following some NPC.

Challenges

Random events speak to a kind of story-telling that is rarer in 5e, but more common in OSR games, where the story is largely emergent. Even given some larger plot, a random encounter or roll on a table can recontextualize elements of it unexpectedly. These “story wrenches” still appear in 5e, but the reaction to them is largely negative from what I can tell (consider the wild magic sorcerer, for example).

At the same time, tying them to skill checks is a type of rules maximalism that the OSR does not usually go for. It would be easy to forget to check for these events, especially if there are any quantity of these always-in-play-but-seldom-relevant rules. One possible “clean” solution might be to hook them into a VTT, owning the video-game roots of the idea.

Personally, I think these challenges will stop me from using the idea in its current form, but it was a fun thought experiment, and I think the seed of the idea could be useful.

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1 As written, the player needs to sing an original composition for the whole of combat. Like I said, it’s a weird book.^back

2 Cantrips come to mind second, which could be a different, but promising avenue to explore.^back

3 I’d have to remember to use passive checks more often, to avoid perception having all the fun (or not).^back

Notes on Three Systems

I’ve had the pleasure to run three new systems in the last year or so, and I’ve collected some notes here.

Mothership

Mothership is a Science Fiction horror game in the vein of Alien or Event Horizon. The Player's Survival Guide is available from Tuesday Knight Games in print or from DriveThruRPG as a free PDF.

• Character creation is as easy as the character sheet makes it look. It was great for new players and they picked up the percentile system quickly.
• It is much harder to GM than it looks and I don’t think I did it justice. Coming from dungeon crawling games, I made a few mistakes:
  • You can’t foreshadow every encounter. Combat can start before players have a chance to run, without them necessarily doing anything “wrong”.
  • Remember to ask for saves. In a “normal” game, the players find a body and roll for loot. In Mothership they find a body and roll a save.
  • Familiarize yourself with the players’ tools or be ready to improvise. When players scan behind for signs of life, do undead show up? Do androids? Insects? Big insects? In D&D, I’m familiar enough to know what detect magic can and can’t do (or I can look it up for a whole page of detail depending on edition), but Mothership suffers doubly from being a genre I’m less familiar with and from still having such a brief rulebook.
  • The game has no “fallback” mechanic. If an action isn’t covered by stats, saves, or skills, then you have to come up with a consistent resolution on your own, and it’s just light enough that this is likely. If a character hides, you can have a negotiation about it or roll under the enemy’s instinct stat, but it would be nice if the game gave you some guidance.¹
• Make snacks. Figs can be quartered with a honey sauce to make xenomorph eggs, and green jalapeño jelly on chèvre looks “biological”. We had some more mundane snacks also, and for dessert, a chocolate olive oil cake with green matcha frosting.
  
• Impromptu reviews of Oneohtrixpointnever included “I feel like the music is attacking me.” Ambient sounds were more constructive.

The players all said they had fun, so I’d try it again, but it definitely still feels like it’s in beta.

Troika!

Troika! is some weird shit. You can get it from a few places, and there is also a free "demo" PDF on itch.io (it does not include the sample adventure Blancmange & Thistle).

• Character creation is quick, but some players were a little miffed at their backgrounds. (We had to really emphasize that gremlins are purely malicious.)
• Free form skills are a lot of fun, because they encourage players to really try anything and not worry about what they’re “good” at. Skills learned in the first session included jar fighting and high-fiving.
• Free form skills also distract from existing skills that players might not know about. For example, none of the players had etiquette already, so it didn’t occur to them that they could rely on the skill instead of their role-playing when they were stuck. A list of skills can equally serve as a generator for ideas and a limitation.
  
• Blancmange & Thistle is a nice little adventure that showcases Troika! very well, but the direction is loose. My players ascended the hotel and heard some calls to adventure at the rooftop feast, but there’s not a lot of momentum towards any of them.
• Troikan initiative is a lot of fun in practice. For playing online, there is Dave Schiuridan’s tool and a Discord bot, or you can list the initiative tokens in a numbered list and roll an arbitrary die (shrinking it by one side after every roll).
  

D&D 5e

Dungeons & Dragons is a BFD. The fifth edition has a few starting points, but weirdly, it doesn’t look like you can buy the Player’s Handbook as a PDF.

Fifth edition is the easiest game to get a group together for. Because of this exposure, I’m sure I won’t say anything groundbreaking here.

• If you don’t limit character choices before players start making characters then they will use anything they can find, and they can find a lot. Our party has a warforged, a tabaxi, and an artificer, so I'm mostly just letting them tell me how their characters work. The artificer was difficult because it's not always clear to a new player when things you find online are homebrew.
  
• I had been warned about the power level and amount of magic, and while these things are higher than previous editions, I don’t think they’re game-breaking. It just gives everyone lots of different tools to interact with the environment and stronger assurances that they probably won’t die.
• Some things that make sense to me (coming from older editions), and look fine at first glance, do not make sense at all to new players:
  • The step-by-step “building a character” section only works for that character. For more complicated characters, you will need to do the steps out-of-order and jump back and forth and add steps. When you’re finished, only about half the character sheet has been filled-in.
  • A lot of terminology is not explained. An “ability modifier” does not modify your ability score, but a “racial modifier” does, and then can indirectly change your “ability modifier”. When I write sixth edition, I will call the modifier a “bonus”, and scrap the score altogether.
  • Similarly, levels and spell levels have always been confusing. It’s not helped by every class having its own casting rules. I will call them “spell circles” when I am benevolent dictator of the next edition, as in “magic missile is a first-circle spell”.
• The index is awful. In the space that it takes for “temporary hit points” to direct me to “hit points, temporary”, it could have given me the page number. The whole thing is like someone copied the style of an index without understanding it.
• I think the GM tools are probably lacking, but I borrow liberally from everywhere, so it’s hard for me to judge.

There’s a lot of fun to be had with 5e, but I’m never sure how much is just the inherent fun of RPGs. Still, I think it’s got an undeserved reputation in some places.

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1 There is a Warden’s (GM’s) guide planned, in the future. I hold out hope that book does for the GM what the survival guide does for players, but I’m less sure given the Twitter thread. There was definitely room to own that some parts of the rules were just less finished than others, but also everyone says dumb stuff on Twitter.^back

House Rules in a Digital House

I've been running D&D 5e for a group of remote friends recently. These are the “house rules” that I've adopted to make things go smoother, or at least reassure myself. I'm sure I got most of these from other places, but I can only credit what I remember.

Absence

Characters of absent players will be ignored and their departure and return unremarked on. I will make no effort to explain this in the fiction, but in future sessions we can act as though they were there. So “remember that time we all burned down a fortress?” or “aren’t you those people who tried to murder my brother?” will still include characters of players who were absent at the time.

I don't plan to spend a lot of time balancing encounters, so I think “fading into the background” is a fine solution. I want to encourage roleplaying, but also a shared group identity, so this doesn't let anyone off the hook or force anyone to miss opportunities because of real-life concerns.

Experience

Experience will be awarded using the “Milestone” option. While we are in a dungeon, “clearing” a level will be worth one level of experience. Outside of a dungeon, other goals may be used. These are negotiable.

I started the game in a dungeon and expected the first level to be cleared fairly quickly (it was). So this gave us a quick level-up without math on my end, but still tied to a measurable achievement. For the first-time players in the group, the early level-up lets them engage with the rules differently and see possibilities for (mechanical) growth. Because I do not know what parts of the game this group will enjoy most, the “Milestone” option allows them to pivot away from the dungeon later.

Inspiration

Inspiration will be awarded at the end of each session by player vote for favorite moment.

This is something I borrowed from DIE TRYING, although I've seen similar things in other systems. The practical effect is a moment of reflection at the end of the session when players can say what they liked best and what they're looking forward to most. It also reminds me that inspiration exists.

Quorum

We will not play D&D with less than half the party. To keep the appointment, we can play other games with however many people we have.

It feels bad for the players who do show up when there aren't enough people to play, so I really wanted to get in the habit of playing even if we can't play the main game. Games under consideration for backup have to be lightweight. So far they include:

• Lasers & Feelings
• Three Black Crows, Three Dead Men
• Electric Bastionland + Some One-Page Dungeon

Timekeeping

Generally, I will assume an “exploration turn” of 10 minutes, which is enough time to fully explore a room and interact with all of its contents (excluding combat etc.). After 8 hours (48 turns) without rest, characters will take a level of exhaustion.

I didn't find timekeeping rules that I liked in 5e, and as long as we were in a dungeon I wanted to build expectations around that procedure. In practice, the biggest effect of this change is that ritual casting now carries some cost. It does seem like 48 turns is unlikely to be an actual concern.

Encumbrance

I haven't adopted these rules yet, but I'm considering something like Electric Bastionland (paraphrased):

Some items are [bulky]. You can carry two [bulky] items: one on your back and one in your hands.

The hope is that these rules are just enough to make looting things complicated, but not enough that I have to worry about weight or spreadsheets. The worry is that with six characters, this just still doesn't matter.

Hexcrawling

These are also rules still under consideration:

Travel 3 hexes (6 miles each) per day, walking 8 hours per day.
Roll a d6 2x every day of travel, once during the day and once during camp.
On a 1, an Encounter occurs (something interesting).
On a 2, an Omen occurs (signs of something interesting).
Difficult terrain (mountain, swamp) counts as 2 hexes.
Travel -1 hex to explore for hidden locations in one hex.
Travel -1 hex to forage, gaining 1d4-1 rations per forager.
Travel +1 hex on a road.
Travel +1 hex if everyone has fast mounts.
Travel +1 hex over another 4 hours but [take a level of] Exhaustion.

I didn't find any hexcrawl rules in 5e, so I stole these ones wholesale from Moonhop. Because we have new players, I'm trying to fit as many “modes” as I can into the game, to showcase it a bit. At the same time, I'd like to minimize the overhead of learning a hundred new subsystems and then abandoning them later. I might have to make it two levels of exhaustion though, in order for it to matter.

Other Notes

I've observed some other things about the group in particular and online play in general.

• Playing on a weekday evening, and given the limits of engagement online, 3 hours is about as long as I can go.
• Some players fare better than others with “theater of the mind”. There has been a request for a VTT system of some kind, which terrifies me, but I'm considering it. On the other hand, I'd like everyone to be on the same footing, so maybe I can strike a balance with a whiteboard of some kind or some more defined abstractions (“Zones” from Fate or “Abstract Distances” from The Black Hack).
• None of the players has actually used their inspiration yet, so I'll have to be better about reminding them when they can. The post-game ritual seems to go over well though.
• D&D is actually fun! This should be obvious, because why else would be be here? But it's always refreshing to play.

Chuckleheads and The ’Valizzi

Dan D. at Throne of Salt requests from the jackalope:

d6 Chuckleheads you have to deal with from the local wizard mafia

The Plan

This should be easy:

1. Binge-listen to Crimetown.
2. Define the Local Wizard Mafia.
3. Write up some chuckleheads.

Wizard mobsters are probably like normal mobsters, but with funny hats. (Funny hats are by Lorc and Delapouite via game-icons.net, used under a CC-BY 3.0 license.)

The ’Valizzi

Description

The ’Valizzi is the local wizard mafia, an organized magical crime syndicate. Even when their ends are mundane, their means are supernatural. They run extraplanar smuggling rings, deal in apotropaic protection rackets, and arbitrate disputes between wizards and godlings. Where magic is illegal or disreputable, they have business with necromancy, fortune-telling, and the manufacture of consumables (potions, scrolls, drugs, and so on).

There is no requirement of blood relation to join the ’Valizzi, only magical ability. Because of their persecution, proper members of the ’Valizzi are magically bound to never verbally confirm if an individual is or is not a member of the ’Valizzi. This curse is taken voluntarily, and has never been known to be broken. Current members will also never knowingly risk letting an outsider know who is or isn't in the ’Valizzi through other means.

Motto

Anything in the world is ours to take, and in exchange we offer order.

Beliefs

• Always repay debts.
• All magic and all crime should be conducted under our auspices.

Goals

• Enrich selves.
• Control all forms of magic.

Hooks

• The PCs need a divination, and the only purveyors in town are ’Valizzi.
• Returning to town, the lone guard at the gate doesn't remember them at all. He is being memory-wiped with some regularity by potion smugglers.
• The flood of magic items brought back to town by the PCs has upset a local wizard, who calls in a favor from the ’Valizzi to see about cutting off the supply.
• The PCs perform some minor magical service in town, for example a healing or a detection spell. The ’Valizzi won't be happy to hear about upstarts cutting in on their turf.

The Chuckleheads

1. Father Corx

Overview: Father Corx is a dapper priest who goes way back with the ’Valizzi.

Appearance: He has neat salt-and-pepper hair and a low booming voice.

Abilities: He has the spellcasting ability of a low-level cleric.

Talents: He assuages people's guilt, including his own.

Mannerisms: He takes long pauses between sentences (or as dramatically appropriate).

Interactions: He is very understanding of others, to the point of condescension.

Knowledge: He always knows how to make things right and who to set up meetings with.

Ideals: A strong, if twisted, belief in hierarchy governs his actions.

Bond: He is childhood friends with the current leaders of the ’Valizzi, and sees no conflict between his religious teachings and their actions.

Secrets: He has covered for the ’Valizzi in several large court cases, using his station to sway the jury.

2. Jerry "the Ferret"

Overview: Jerry used to be a smuggler and a burglar with the ’Valizzi.

Appearance: Even bent over a cane, his wiry frame is still tall.

Abilities: He can open a door to any other door in the same building, one-way, provided they both have doorknobs.

Talents: He misdirects at every scale.

Mannerisms: His teeth whistle slightly, enough to stop him casting spells (part of the terms of his release).

Interactions: Jerry is faultlessly polite and fabulously generous, so long as he thinks he might learn something from you.

Knowledge: He can get into and out of any building, or at least knows how.

Ideals: Jerry is a self-made man and values that independence.

Bond: Jerry's only loyalty is to his immediate family, to the chagrin of his former compatriots and cell-mates.

Secrets: Jerry knows where the gold from his last big heist is buried, and intends it to be his son's inheritance.

3. Nicalos, Old Fredward's Boy

Overview: Nicalos is a goon and errand-runner employed by the ’Valizzi.

Appearance: His personal grooming is impeccable, but he wears outdated, fraying clothes.

Abilities: Nicalos is slightly un-magical, and if a spell can fail around him, it will tend to.

Talents: Nicalos has a real knack for hiding and sneaking.

Mannerisms: His speech is heavily-affected cartoonish mob-speak (Nyah, see?).

Interactions: He always seeks to make himself look good, and to win approval from others.

Knowledge: Whatever the characters' business with the ’Valizzi, Nicalos will have a better understanding of the implications and repercussions than they do.

Ideals: Nicalos has aspirations to run the show, and will take initiative given the opportunity.

Bond: Nicalos keeps his mother sheltered from his activities a ways outside town.

Secrets: Depending on the characters' goals, Nicalos' are either exactly the same or exactly opposite. He will not let on to this.

4. Barb, the Lightning Witch

Overview: Barb is an electric witch, an invaluable asset to the ’Valizzi.

Appearance: Short middle-aged woman, long blond hair always floating on end with static charge.

Abilities: Barb can unerringly send one-way messages to the deceased.

Talents: Barb has a flair for the theatrical, which serves her well in séances and rain-calling.

Mannerisms: Cackles.

Interactions: Barb's interactions with others are purely transactional, and she works to maintain her image at all times.

Knowledge: Barb has a finger on the pulse of all the metaphysical movers and shakers, like who is researching what spells, where Excalibur was last seen, which godlings haven't been properly appeased, etc.

Ideals: Barb delights in the exercise of power.

Bond: Everyone owes Barb something, and it makes them uncomfortable, and she knows it.

Secrets: She can no longer charge the batteries that power her magical equipment, and is currently running on fumes.

5. Buddy, the Actual Elected Mayor

Overview: Not a wizard, not a mobster, but in deep with the ’Valizzi regardless.

Appearance: A broad-shouldered, square-chinned, deep-voiced, white-toothed perfect politician.

Abilities: Buddy commands local law enforcement and municipal services.

Talents: People trust Buddy, unless they know him well.

Mannerisms: When he's thinking, Buddy fiddles with a fancy gold fountain pen, occasionally dropping it and surreptitiously retrieving it.

Interactions: Buddy will readily agree to any seemingly-fair deal, but won't do any work to uphold his end of a bargain.

Knowledge: Buddy knows just the right words to sway an audience, or the right gestures to get their attention.

Ideals: Buddy believes in the status quo and in his city. He believes that all of its faults are necessary, and that he can protect it.

Bond: Buddy knows who got him elected.

Secrets: Buddy knows where the bodies are buried.

6. Ruby

Overview: Ruby is a promising young wizard that the ’Valizzi is actively recruiting.

Appearance: She has ankle-length black hair and wears baggy clothing, but she's in there somewhere.

Abilities: Ruby knows a charm to silence her movement at will.

Talents: Ruby learns quick, be careful what spells you let her see.

Mannerisms: When she's not talking, Ruby stands unnervingly still.

Interactions: You can rely on Ruby if she says she'll do something, but she doesn't say much.

Knowledge: She has some idea what the magical abilities of everyone else in the wizard mafia are, and how they work.

Ideals: Ruby values novelty, and will want to try anything new that she hasn't seen before.

Bond: The ’Valizzi bankrolled her magical education, and she's working off that debt one job at a time.

Secrets: Ruby wants out, and will leave once her obligations are fulfilled.

Thoughts

I really like the 5e method of defining an organization, which I first saw used in Krevborna and Cinderheim, so it was a natural fit for defining the organization. Then I thought I'd try the 5e method for defining NPCs also, which ended up being a lot more work than I would normally put into a single NPC.