All over the place

Been a while since my last update, and I've been working on a lot of random stuff.

Abulafia is on a new webhost (the name is growing on me, once I memorized it), and the speed has improved nicely. Unfortunately, the move kind of derailed me and I haven't worked on my project there since.

I wrote up a high level history for the area, but I found it kind of trite and boring. Eladrin get kicked out by tieflings who take over the humans in the area. They eventually fall, and a good human empire springs up in its place. I'm going to go back over that and make things a little more gray. I also had the 4e origins (as much as we know) of the eladrin/elves and tieflings worked in to the history, but that probably isn't necessary. I want to make the tieflings less evil and the humans more ambiguous. I want the tiefling empire ("dominion" sounded good) to be the founding force of "modern" civilization in the area.

I'm also trying to figure out the scale and map I want to work in. I don't want to make it too large to deal with, or too small to be quickly outgrown. I'm also seeing the need to fill in other surrounding countries, but I can alleviate some of that feeling by working on the nobilities lands within the Empire. I need to start looking at example maps. Fortunately, I've been collecting digital maps for quite some time, so I'll either just steal one or use it as inspiration.

The last two days I've been playing with Inkscape, a free vector-based drawing program, similar to Adobe Illustrator. It's a really neat program and is very powerful, but there's a learning curve. I'm also not much of an artist and I don't have a pen tablet, and that makes working in it a little harder. Anyway, Inkscape has a couple of nice features that work great for map creation. You can draw a shape or a line, then "fractalize" it, which means it becomes randomly jittered, which is perfect for terrain. The clone/duplicate object feature is pretty good too. If I make a terrain symbol, I can clone it and put them all over the place. If you clone something and change the original, all the clones change as well, so you can update everything simultaneously. You can also find features like that in some of the "real" mapping programs, but I also want to learn Inkscape for fun.

Hopefully with this nice down time for Christmas, I can get some more work done on the game.

Abulafia

I've been contributing to Abulafia for the last few days, ever since I realized that the generators on that site were perfect for creating interesting and unique loot. I've had the idea of a complex treasure generator kicking around in my head for a long, long time. Imagine my surprise when I found that Abulafia already did what I wanted, and that someone had already done 90% of the work.

Abulafia's generators typically create natural text descriptions. Jewelry is a good example. Here are some examples:

• A platinum costume mask, with the image of a scarab beetle.
• A matching pair of Magically Treated Platinum toe rings, each with the coat of arms of a city, nation, or other location and set with 3 Jargoons. It appears to be of Wood Elven make.
• A electrum breastplate, with the symbol of Servants of the Dark Lord (a pentagram).
• A bronze comb inlaid with giant crab chitin.
• A copper knife handle with the image of a diving falcon and set with a Feldspar. Much of the piece's value comes from the fact that it is obviously quite old.
• A mammoth ivory sickle, etched with a twisting, vine-like pattern and set with a Malachite. It is of ancient workmanship.

Imagine a player cracking open a chest of pirate treasure and finding that list instead of "5000 sp, 1000 gp, and 2 diamonds." Treasure like this generates adventure hooks without even trying. The site had already secured a permanent place in my GM's Notebook, but once I get my own stuff in there, it'll be a must-have.

The generator tables are all housed in regular MediaWiki pages, making them really easy to edit. You have to Edit a page to get a look at the generator tables for a page. Since you need an account to edit, here's an example. A generator looks something like this: (I had to replace angle brackets with curly braces so it would display correctly.)

{sgdisplay iterations="5"}A [main]
{/sgdisplay}

{sgtable}
;main
5,[JewelryMaterial] [Item][Predicate]
1,matching pair of [JewelryMaterial] [Item]s, each [Predicate]

;Predicate
4, set with a [Utility.GemType]. [Craftsmanship]
3, set with [Dice.2d6] [Utility.GemType]s. [Craftsmanship]
4, [Design]. [Craftsmanship]
2, [Design] and set with a [Utility.GemType]. [Craftsmanship]
2, [Design] and set with [Dice.2d6] [Utility.GemType]s. [Craftsmanship]
4, with [Utility.Symbols]. [Craftsmanship]
2, with [Utility.Symbols] and set with a [Utility.GemType]. [Craftsmanship]
2, with [Utility.Symbols] and set with [Dice.1d12] [Utility.GemType]s. [Craftsmanship]
2, with the inscription "[Inscriptions.main]" written in [Inscriptions.Language]. [Craftsmanship]
2, with the inscription "[Inscriptions.main]" written in [Inscriptions.Language] and set with [Dice.2d6] [Utility.GemType]s. [Craftsmanship]

...
{/sgtable}

This might seem complex, but if you've ever worked with computer language grammar or parsers, it's very intuitive and powerful. Basically, any time you see an item in single brackets, like [main], it gets replaced by a result from the table with that name. You can freely mix text and table names within a table. The numbers indicate the relative frequency that an item will be chosen.

So from the initial call of A [main] it could become :

1. A [JewelryMaterial] [Item][Predicate]
2. A gold [Item][Predicate]
3. A gold bracelet [Predicate]
4. A gold bracelet set with a [Utility.GemType]. [Craftsmanship]
5. A gold bracelet set with a [Utility.SemiPrecious]. [Craftsmanship]
6. A gold bracelet set with a Spinel. [Craftsmanship]
7. A gold bracelet set with a Spinel. It is of exquisite workmanship.

[Utility.GemType] is just a list of other tables that contain gems, so it was replaced with a call to one of the other tables. It also happens to be on another page, which is very convenient for making multiple generators that all reference the same sets of tables.

The SGDISPLAY tags are how you call the generator to display items. SGTABLE indicates the beginning of the generator tables and the items in single brackets are references to table names. The actual tables start with a semicolon followed by the table name. Each line after the table name starts with a number that indicates the relative frequency of the item, so on the [main] table you're 5 times more likely to get a result of [JewelryMaterial] [Item][Predicate] than you are to get matching pair of [JewelryMaterial] [Item]s, each [Predicate]. The comma indicates the beginning of the text or table names.

The hardest part of making the tables is choosing exactly how to phrase each chunk so that you get a readable result. It's possible to get results like "A Adamantine cloak pin" and "A matching pair of pair of spectacles", and there's not an easy way to fix it. Still, if you can overlook little glitches like that, Abulafia can be an incredible resource

Right now you might notice that you can't sign up for an account or edit Abulafia (the generators are still working). The database of the site has been locked so that the owner can move it to another web host, hopefully a faster one. I'm not sure how long it will take, but Dave (the owner) warns that it could take several days.

GM's Notebook, pt 3

I've been fiddling with Google Spreadsheets, but it looks like it's not sufficient for my needs. It's slow, the toolbars take up too much space, and it doesn't look like I can do some of the useful randomization features I can in Excel. Excel is faster and I can customize it more too, so I think I'll go with that for now.

I also took a step back and changed sources. I'm using Kate Monk's Onomastikon for most of my names now. It has some unfortunate formatting problems with some names, like Arabic, but it's good for the most part. Plus, since a lot of the names are divided by source, I can leave out sets of names I'm not interested in, like Biblical names. I realized I don't care about name meanings, so I removed those.

I started gathering Romanian and Arabic names, for the Tiefling and Elven areas, respectively. I had to fall back on 20000-names.com for readable Arabic names. I also made a simple combination generator for them: FirstName RelationshipConnector FirstName Connector PlaceName. This produces full names like Sa'Id ibn Faiz al Aqabâ or Hana bint Farah el Fugayrâ. Not historically accurate, but perfect for my needs. (I envision my elves like the Valenar of Eberron. Skilled warriors and horsemen who venerate their ancestors.)

Right now, I have 5 random names generated for each of the following: Empire (German based) male, female, surname, city name, the same for Tiefling (Romanian based) and full names and city names for Elven (Arabic based).

When looking for Arabic city names I found the Geonames site. It's a great resource for this kind of thing. There's only a few city names for each country, but I grabbed them from multiple sources. It's also got multi-language glossaries and a ton of other similar things. I grabbed the months of the year in German.

I've added some Spanish and Maori names too, but I haven't decided who they will apply to. I also grabbed some random text generated by a Barsoomian name generator. I'm thinking those will make good intelligent monster names. I need some goblin/orc names, but I haven't found a source that's right yet. I tossed in some links in the sheet to other random generators on Abulafia, just so they're available when I need them.

GM's Notebook, pt 2

I spent some time filling in bits of my GM Notebook. I started with people's names.

20000-names.com had a lot of German first names and meanings, almost 1000, I think. That's actually too many. I need to go through that list and pull out some of the similar variations and dull names. I should probably randomize the list occasionally too, so I don't see all the "A" names first. The site was kind of lame and trashy, but the content was good.

For last names, a good article on German Names from About.com had a few dozen good ones. There was also a nice little find that had German root words for place names.

I also found some good first and last names from the Story Games Names Project. Here's a link to the index of all the names.

Lastly, I rediscovered Abulafia, which is the worst name for a site ever. Fortunately the URL is http://www.random-generator.com. Abulafia is a wiki with some special code to make random generators really easily. If you want a generator that they don't have, you can try to make one. Or you can add options to an existing one. I've bookmarked several of their generators in case I need them in-game, but I'm not going to bother pulling out individual entries ahead of time.

After I was done with names for a bit, I hit up some of the Wikipedia articles I found earlier and used them to compile a list of common vocabulary that I can drop in. Stuff like Herr, Frauline, schnell, meister, etc... I also went poking around for German terms for weapons and armor. I didn't do so well on armor, but for weapons I found zweihander ("two-hander", greatsword), katzbalger ("Cat brawler", short sword), kreigsmesser ("war knife", falchion) and some more like that. MyArmoury.com was also good resource for info on weapons. I may hit it up later when I'm working on other areas.

I got a few town names as well, and found a site that cross-referenced modern German city names with a 16th century Czech list of cities in the HRE. I just pulled out the modern names, that's good enough. I'd like to mix up some of those names with the usual English descriptive names, so I should probably trim that list down as well.

I started looking for tavern names, but I ended up back at Abulafia and I think their generator will be sufficient. Next up, I might start looking at food and drink.

GM Notebook, pt 1 - Addendum

After reading some more about the "Secret" method of plot building, I'm changing the "Random Secrets and Plot Hooks" tab to be just "Secrets and Plot Hooks". Basically, build the campaign and apply a secret to major plot points. Then foreshadow these secrets. I was misunderstanding the random part. Choose a random secret to foreshadow, not roll for a random secret to give something.

Dungeoncraft

I read through the Dungeoncraft articles yesterday and today, and did a little more planning. It kind of derailed my GM Notebook, but it's good info to get down.

Dungeoncraft has several "rules" to guide campaign creation. These are the important ones:

1. Never force yourself to create more than you must.
2. Whenever you fill in a major piece of the campaign world, always devise at least one secret related to that piece.
4. Always challenge both the players and their characters

I walked through the creation process for the early articles. I didn't spend a lot of time coming up with lots of details, so it's a bit sparse. The rest of this post is pretty brainstormy. I haven't cleaned it up much. Some of this info conflicts with previous brainstorming, and I'll need to reconcile it later.

Setting: Earth-analogue, focusing on the Holy Roman Empire for a Germanic feel.

Home base: Hammerstein, a hamlet of about 250 people, focused around a well-known regional brewery. Residents grow barley and hops locally and sell beer to buy other food. Hammerstein is governed by a burghermeister who is appointed by the local count. Secret: The recipe for Hammerstein Premium Ale has been stolen and is being held for ransom in the form of regular gold payments.

Government: The Empire is a monarchy, but the ruling family has not been consistent, and in times of strife a new ruling family has been elected by the other nobility. The "Empire" is really a collection of culturally similar principalities and free cities with close economic and cultural ties. Secret: The first Emperor wasn't the man who unified the principalities. The unifier was killed by his lieutenant before the Empire was fully formed. The lieutenant blamed enemy assassins and became the first Emperor.

Other areas: Wild and strange Arab-influenced elves to the south. Dark Slavic tieflings to the East. Goblin hordes to the West.

Religion: One of the major LG or LN gods, TBD, is the primary religion. Some other gods have prominence in smaller areas, particularly those in remote and isolated areas. The God of Trade is widespread, but not widely worshiped outside of his knighthood and the merchant class. Yondalla or Ehlonna is particularly worshiped in Hammerstein. Secret: A LE god is growing increasingly popular among the young nobility of the Empire.

(Idea: Map Roman gods onto D&D gods. Attributes, domains of D&D gods, names of Roman. Seems to fit existing 3e pantheon pretty well.)

Names will be Germanic (Hans Miter) or English compound (Blackwood).

Home Base: Local authority will be a Man-at-arms, appointed by the Mayor. The Man-at-Arms organizes the local militia for defense of the town. He also acts as a constable, but the mayor is the local legal authority (judge). Man-at-Arms could be a PC mentor. Secret: the Man-at-Arms is a good man, but his daughter is a criminal (and ran away from home).

Critical Townsfolk: Brewer, Mayor, Man-At-Arms (Warden? Captain?), local Priest, Trading post (run by foreign (slav) Knight of the Trade God)

Fantasy Element: A small tribe of a dozen or so peaceful kobolds live nearby. They scavenge and do menial jobs around town. Their lair is a junk-yard. They are not well-liked by the rest of the town, but tolerated because of small numbers and because they haven't done anything wrong. Secret: One of the kobolds found an object of real value. He hid it in the woods and sneaks off to look at it regularly.

Rumor Mill: The local inn/tavern, the Hammerstein Inn. It's the only place in town, but it's always got the best Hammerstein beer, and all the steins are stamped with the Hammerstein logo. The Inn is also the largest building in town and doubles as a meeting hall. Secret: The innkeeper is in love with the daughter of a prominent townsperson.

Stuff in town: Brewery, Inn/Tavern/meeting hall, Temple, Trading Post and market square, in-town housing for approx 75 people (the rest are farmers), mayor's home.

GM's Notebook, pt 1

I'm taking a look at the various resources I've seen for GM's Notebooks and Binders. There are some similarities in what to include, but I need to figure out what's appropriate for me. First, I'll be using a laptop and I'm trying to avoid paper resources. I also don't know a lot about 4e, so writing up NPC and monster stats is going to be right out.

The last link (on http://www.roleplayingtips.com) talks about picking the purpose of your Binder before you begin, and how you plan to use it. I'm planning on using it mostly as a Campaign Reference but also an Idea Generator. I don't need in or out of game references, since I plan on using the SRD, PDFs or just the books themselves for most things.

The "binder" is actually going to be my laptop. It's going to sit on the game table and be my primary resource. I will be taking (short) notes in it, and possibly doing some combat tracking. I'll be using Google Docs (Spreadsheets and Docs to begin with, but I can export local copies if there are problems with it.

The sections that I think I'll start with are:

• Names
• Empire (Germanic) names
• Barbarian humanoid names (i.e. goblins and orcs)
• Nearby countries
• Place Names
• Taverns and Inns
  
• Towns and Cities
  
• Shops and Businesses
  
• Flavor
• Food and drink
• Other "localized" names for items
  
• Germanic Words
• House Rules
• Random Encounters
• Regional Troops
  
• Loot
• Trade Goods
• Art Objects
• Game Log
• Potential Plot Hooks
  
• Random Secrets and Hooks

I'll explain a few of these since they're not obvious.

"Flavor" is all that stuff that makes your world just a little more memorable, like dire boar jerky and Hammerstein Premium Ale. Citizens of the Empire call a greatsword a "zweihander" and a master (as in craftsman) is a "Meister."

Random Encounters is possible random encounters for a particular region. These will be rough outlines until I get 4e. Regional Troops will be sample encounters with a little extra detail, like military dress and ranks.

Loot has been a pet peeve of mine. There are no really good random treasure generators that deal with trade goods and art objects, and those are the two areas that are the most interesting. The random generation probably isn't going to work that well, but I have some lists of items, materials and themes that I already have made up, so I can just pick some at random and try to work them together. I'll just use values from the DMG for the worth of the items, and break it down as I see appropriate.

The Game Log is a log of what the party did, who they met and what they killed.

Potential Plot Hooks should be a list of things I can just throw at the party randomly when they hit a tavern and look for rumors. Hopefully there will be things there that they've instigated or have had foreshadowed previously.

Random Secrets and Hooks is an interesting idea from Nightcloak's GM Notebook. Whenever you design an adventure or NPC, attach a random secret/hook. It's OK if the players don't find it right away, or just get half the hint. The idea is to come back later and turn that secret into a major plot point. It gives the campaign complexity and seeming depth.

I'll start fleshing these out later.

Brainstorming

Here's some brainstorming I did over a few days. I've been keeping my notes in Google Docs so I can access them everywhere.

I started off with a high-level view of the setting.

• Larger state composed of smaller states, free cities and a mercantile league that controls cities (like Hanseatic League)
• limited elective monarchy, where a Kaiser is elected by the Reichstag (Imperial Diet) from among the noble houses.
• Currently there is a deadlock in the electoral group and the country is without a Kaiser.
• Kaiser is not all powerful.
• Free states might be feudal principalities (governed by princes) or Free Cities.

At this point, I realized I was starting to make a lot of major decisions about larger aspects of the campaign, and I wanted to start small. I shifted gears and started on the town where the PCs would start.

• Small town, primary export is beer
• hops, barley grown nearby as cash crops, other food crops too
• Hammerstein beer is regionally famous, but not hugely popular.
• Townsfolk of note: braumeister, brewery owner, burgermeister and family, PCs relatives, smith, general store owner, largest two landowners, innkeep, priest of primary temple
• Establishments: temple to agricultural god, inn (doubles as town hall), brewery, smith, general store, 2 large farms, many small farms, mayor's home, brewery owner's home
• mayor is hereditary role in this town
• near the foot of the mountains, with farms spreading out away from them
• main road leads east towards a larger city.
• Near the edge of the Empire, but not in a particularly hostile area.

That's a little better.

A few days later, I was back to some high-level overviews. I had this stuff kicking around in my head and I needed to get it out. I also need some of this stuff sketched out, but I want to make sure I don't get down into the smaller nitty-gritty details of say, the personalities of politicians in the Hanseatic League equivalent.

• Hanseatic league = merchant guild of wizards and alchemists, with political control over several cities. (Needed to work in more magic - I don't want this to be a historical game.) The wizards use divination and magic to control trade ("futures" is sometimes quite literal - they know where to be to make a profit). I want a good name for them. Leauge, trust, syndicate, cartel. Maybe "brotherhood of diviners and braziers" shortened to Braziers, altered to the Brazen for their business techniques. The Brazen (symbolized by two brass orbs), are the dominant mercantile power in the north. They control a few free cities and have immense influence in some others.
• The other main mercantile power is a group of Knights that follow a god of commerce and trade. They started out as a group escorting caravans, and eventually started running the caravans too. Now they provide protection for travelers all over the empire and even to surrounding areas, but only for a price. Their warriors are considered one of the finest fighting forces in the empire. Priests and monks handle the trade and actually run the order. The order is very rich. The only reason previous emperors have allowed them to continue is because their vows require them to take no direct part in the governing of a state, kingdom or other political body. However, that doesn't stop the Knights from influencing politicians...
• The symbol of the Empire is the double-eagle (same as the Holy Roman Empire), but it will be referred to as the double-raven (doppelraben).
• In Hammerstein, there is a temple to the god of trade and a representative of the knights. He's a former caravan guard, and mean but fair. He holds official weights and measures used in business, to insure fairness. He employs an acolyte to record business transactions.

I've found that if I write down my ideas, they get out of my head and are now permanent on (e-)paper. That's good in that I can move on and think of other things, but it's also bad because I stop thinking about it. It derails my though processes, so I need to find a way to get it started again.

GMing assessment

Last weekend I ran my regular Savage Tide game. I noticed that I wanted to do a lot of high-level explaining about the setting to give context to certain events. I also didn't do very much in-character style roleplaying. I said a lot of things like "he says that no one else has been in the room since this morning." Makes me think I need to fill out my Naughty List and do some self-evaluation.

The Knights Templar

I just watched a History Channel documentary on the Knights Templar. I happened to notice it on Netflix and tossed it on my queue, thinking it might be some good inspiration.

The documentary itself wasn't really all that good. Their primary scholar seems like the kind of guy who gets off on conspiracy theories and can't make a logical argument, but maybe that's just how he got presented. Anyway, it works great for stuff that requires no historical accuracy.

Here's some quick ideas I got out of it:

Templars protected travelers - Knights protecting travelers on their way to a holy site, eventually evolved into general protection for travelers. Need a reason for the warriors to have gone where they went originally?
Templars were rich and established letters of credit and lent money to the nobility - perhaps they are Knights of the god of commerce? It would explain their involvement in trade, and it's a nice twist on the Lawful knight.
Many rumors of secrets within the Templars - perhaps they worship an evil god of secrets like Vecna?
Templars were rumored to hold the Mandilion, which is somehow related to the Shroud of Turin and was attributed healing powers. Maybe the order has a healing shroud artifact? (Good rumor.)

So right now, I'm thinking of a knightly organization that is also an economic power in the region, probably a counter to the Hanseatic League equavalent I'm pondering. I'm not sure how to keep them from being removed by the Emperor, but that'll come later.

Preliminary Research

I have recently seen the movie "The Illusionist," which takes place in Austria in the late 19th century, and I think that settled in to the back of my brain. When I started thinking about my campaign, the Austrian nobility jumped to the forefront and I started thinking about Germanic royalty in general, especially titles like Markgraf (Margrave), Graf (Count) and Duke. But I didn't want to start big, I wanted small to start small. I also don't have a lot of experience with political games, so I wanted to skip that for now and start on easier things.

That got me thinking of Germanic culture in general. I don't know a lot about German history, so a trip to Wikipedia started to get me up to speed. The country we know as Germany hasn't really been around very long. The cultures and the peoples have been there a long time, but "Germany" is a pretty recent arrival. I was thinking about medieval Germany at first, and that is actually the Holy Roman Empire. That looked good, and that's where I really started my research.

Unfortunately, that article is really kind of dry and has a lot of names and dates, and soon my eyes started to gloss over. Poking around for related articles didn't get me much at first. I turned to some experts for help, and posted a thread on EN World asking for German-themed game resources.

Based on the feedback of some of those folks (a number of native Germans, I gather), I looked in to some more specific things about the HRE. The HRE was composed of many smaller states that were very different from each other - feudal states, free cities, and the Hanseatic League. I adjusted the time period I was looking at slightly, to a more modern 15th to 17th century. (D&D is typically considered "medieval", but the technology level is usually quite a bit higher than the medieval period, and the social structures more complex.) I started to poke around at the German states to get a better idea of individual cultures. I mentioned the Templars as a knightly order of the time, and someone else mentioned the Teutonic Knights, a Germanic knightly order. I noted some non-Wikipedia sources for more info, but haven't looked through most of them yet.

Other resources mentioned included the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game. I grabbed a copy and read through the section on the Empire, which was obviously based on the HRE. Unfortunately, I didn't find as much material as I had hoped. I'll also be borrowing the Empire Sourcebook to see if there are some good ideas to swipe there. (And I've just now discovered that Warhammer Fantasy has a surprisingly detailed network of Wikipedia articles, so I'll poke through those too.) There were also a few tidbits from other game systems and campaigns, including Terra Veijo and Codex of Erde.

I should clarify that right now I'm still in information gathering mode. I need to build up my knowledge of the subject so that I can make better decisions about designing the game. This will also pay off later when the PCs go to new areas and I need to come up with stuff on the fly that still fits the setting.

Translations

I found a psuedo-German phrase in the Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing book, "drakwald" and was trying to translate it. I figured it meant Dragon Wall or something similar (Dragonwood), but I realized that a really easy way to come up with good German place names is to take English words and translate them using Google's Language Tools. Voila, instant flavor in the language of your choice.

I also noticed there are Translation Browser Buttons, which let you translate part or all of a web page pretty easily, and the Dictionary gives you all of the possible words, plus interesting phrases that use it. Check it out for sword. A suggestion of "flammenschwert?" It's like it's reading my mind!

Just for the record, I don't know any German other than the few words I've been able to pick up here and there.

Welcome

You might be wondering why I'm blogging all this. Maybe not. People blog a lot of crap they think is interesting. I'm hoping this is interesting and useful.

I've been reading Treasure Tables for a while now, and there's really a lot of insightful stuff there. I'm hoping to try and apply some of that to my next game. This blog is me trying to test some of those ideas and get feedback.

I also want to give some insight into the process by which a game gets created. I don't think there's enough information on this. There are guidelines and tips - the various incarnations of Dungeoncraft are a great place to start, but they are only part of the picture. What's really lacking is examples.

So, what's going to happen here?

I'm going to rough-sketch a campaign world, work on some techniques for minimizing prep, recruit some players and, in about 6 months, run my first game with D&D 4th edition. After that, I'll continue to use this space to plan my campaign plots and expand the setting. You, dear reader, get to see how I do it all. A behind the scenes view, so to speak. Hopefully I'll be able to generate some good feedback. Feel free to contribute tips, tricks and techniques that you've tried.

Thanks for reading!

Session Notes

DNAPhil has some great thoughts on writing session notes. There are three sections, but the last is the one with the real gold. I will try to apply some of his techniques later.

Link by way of Treasure Tables.

Getting started

Inspired by James Wyatt's Dungeoncraft article in Dragon #151, I want to start a new campaign for 4e D&D. Typically my games have been in Eberron, a detailed published setting. I start with a large plot and go top-down in developing it (or use a published adventure). Then, after I've figured out my plot, the players create characters which are wedged into the format I've already decided on. This is sub-optimal for many reasons.

My goals in this game are to have minimal prep and character-driven plot. I want to try to do more on-the-fly. I want to avoid overly complex plot lines that the characters never really pick up on. I want to avoid spending time onbackstory and plot elements that will probably never come into play. I don't want to use a published setting, because there's actually too much information there. I don't get the feeling that the players are actually exploring the world or interacting with it. They make too many assumptions. If they own the books, they already know all the interesting bits. I think I'd like there to be a theme to the game, to help me choose events and bind things together. I don't know what that theme is yet.

D&D 4th Edition is supposed to have monsters that are much easier to run and develop, so that will hopefully help with a lot of the on-the-fly work. I'd like to revisit some of the classic elements of D&D - goblin raiders,orc tribes, evil necromancers with skeletal minions, etc. Stuff that seems cliche now, but it's been such a long time since it was used that maybe it can be new again. The basics, like "rescue the princess," "save the children from the goblins" and "orc and pie" are simple plots, but can still be effective. I also like the idea that people aren't going to be reaching for supplements right away (mostly because they won't exist).

The bottom-up approach James uses for developing his starting town is appealing to me. Develop elements of the setting as needed and as appropriate, rather than all at once. "Points of Light" is a major theme in the default D&D 4e world. Small pockets of civilization surrounded by darkness. A journey even to the next town over has a real element of risk to it, and characters don't know much about what's outside. The PCs will start at first level, in a small town, to minimize their exposure to the wider world. As they move out from the town, they will be introduced to the wider world a piece at a time.

Culturally, I think I'd like the world to be Germanic in influence. I want the players to think "hey, I'm in a fantasy Germany" instead of England, France or just "Europe." I'm hoping the Germanic feel will make things a little bit different and interesting while leaving many of the basic assumptions and elements the same, like an alternate style sheet over a web page. Same content, different colors. A message board post on EN World helped me find a few sources of info, and it sounds like the Warhammer Fantasy Role-Playing game has a heavy Germanic/Holy Roman Empire feel to it, so I'll be looking to that for more inspiration. Wikipedia has lots of historical information like names and dates, but it's hard to find cultural elements that are useful. More on the Germanic feel later.

While I intend for the plot to be mostly character driven, I will still have a larger plot in place to give them something to fall back on or cling to. I'm going to try to keep it very simple. Here's a rough outline of what I've come up with so far.

1. Characters get established in town.
2. Town gets raided by orcs or similar. Many dead, but many missing.
3. PCs go after missing townsfolk.
4. PCs rescue townsfolk, discover that orcs are part of larger army or dangerous group.
5. That group, in turn, is part of a larger plot. Possibly invasion of the region by a hostile army.
   

The nice thing about this kind of plot is that it grows in scope as the PCs grow in level. It's also vague enough to easily change or adapt to the current situation, and if the PCs take off on their own tangents, it can be fairly easily abandoned - or worked back in later to bite them in the ass.

For my NPCs, I'm going to try to use Conflict Webs, a neat idea for PC interaction. (The blog where the conflict web post originally happened (http://bankuei.blogspot.com) went defunct and the archives lost. The author has a new blog (http://bankuei.wordpress.com) and the old archives areaccessible on the Wayback Machine at http://archive.org.) Basically it's a relationship map indicating general reactions between people (or political bodies, or whatever): friendly, antagonistic or indicative of some kind of obligation. Anyway, I figure this is a good, relatively easy way to map out a town, or a nation, or a group of nations. That, combined with short descriptions of character, personality and notable appearance, should hopefully be enough to keep my prep limited.

I'm tentatively calling the game Hammerstein, after a possible name for the starting town. One idea I had for the town was to have it heavily economically dependent upon a brewery, which I'm sure will pique my player's interest. The Hammerstein logo will be a hammer embossed on a stein, which will feature prominently on the kegs.