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.