15 Things That Influenced Your Campaign?

I was about to be a cranky contrarian and post the 15 games that had NO influence on me, but it would also make me a hypocrite since I already caught the wave over at someone else's blog.

So how about something a little different. What were the top 15 things that went into the intellectual stew of your campaign (actual existing or the Platonic Ideal one you are cooking)?

Hill Cantons:

1. Lyonesse and Dying Earth books, Jack Vance
2. Gray Mouser and Fafhrd stories, Fritz Leiber
3. Darklands CRPG
4. West Marches campaign
5. The Drawing of the Dark, Tim Powers
6. The Hussite Wars (book, but also all medieval European heretical movements in general)
7. Averoigne stories , Clark Ashton Smith
8. "Shadow over Innsmouth" (and the rest to a lesser extent), HP Lovecraft
9. Barsoom books (an influence starting to make itself known), Edgar Rice Burroughs
10. Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns and Blood Meridian
11. With Fire and Sword
12. Russian and other Slavic fairy tales
13. The Thirty Years War, CV Wedgwood
14. "Red Nails" (and other Conan to a lesser extent), R.E. Howard
15. The players (probably should be on everyone's list as a reminder)

Homebrewing New D&D Classes

Designing new classes for D&D is tough work, as I have noted before. Balance is tricky. It's phenomenally easy to either design a character that upsets the delicate balance of the core archetypical classes—or one that feels rather lame or mundane in comparison.

When farting around with class-design myself, I keep wishing that there would be some kind of simple metric to help keep a class from floundering on either of those poles. Fortunately, Michael Curtis of the Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope pointed some time ago on his blog to an article in Dragon magazine #109 by Paul Montgomery Claburgh that laid out some guidelines to tricking out custom classes. Duly tracking it down late last week I was pleased to find a number of useful charts to help scratch my itch.


Note, like Michael, I have done some heavy modifications of my own to fit my own tastes. Some costs are a increased to protect the core classes; many other guidelines are simplified; and more specific detail for the meat of any custom class—special abilities and restrictions—are added.


Tomorrow I will spend some time talking about the non-mechanical backside of class creation such as creating a coherent concept; tailoring a class to pulp fantasy archetypes; experimenting with new special abilities; and the like.


Design Steps:
Draw up a class concept. What is the basic idea behind this class? What is this class capable of? What are the ability requirements? Prime requisites? Alignment restrictions?

Work your way with through the tables starting making choices that fit with your class concept. Tally up the various percentage amounts as you go.


Add the combined totals to a baseline cost of a 100 percent. Multiply the total to the baseline experience level for each level to get the final cost for level advancement.


Example: the Delver class has a combined percentage of 280%. This is added to the 100 base cost for a total of 380. This total percentage is multiplied against the baseline experience costs (500x3.8) for a grand total of 1,900 to progress to level 2. The cost for each level is doubled after this, 3,800 to progress to level 3 and so on down the line.


Table A: Level Advancement

Starting Level	Baseline Exp.	Next Level
1	500	2
2	1000	3
3	2000	4
4	4000	5
5	8000	6
6	16000	7
7	32000	8
8	64000	9
9	128000	10
10	256000	11

Table B: Hit Dice

The default hit dice is a d6.

d4	-25%
d6	N/A
d8	+50%
d10	+100%

Table C: Armor

Default is no armor allowed.

Shield	+10%
Leather	+20%
Chain (and below)	+30%
Any	+40%

Table D: Weapons

Magic User appropriate weapons is default.

No missile weapons	-10%
Additional d6 damage weapon	+5%
Additional d8 weapon	+10%
Additional d10 weapon	+15%
All blunt weapons	+20%
Any weapon	+75%

Table E: Racial Abilities

Default is Human.

Halfling (Half Orc, Half Elf, Gnome)	+10%
Dwarf, Elf	+20%

Table G: Magic-Item Use

Default is only potions. More than one class set can be used at an additional cost.

Fighter-appropriate	+20%
Thief-appropriate	+20%
Cleric-appropriate	+30%
Magic User-appropriate	+40%

Table F: Saving Throws

Magic User is default.

Cleric	+10%
Dwarf/Halfling	+35%
Elf	+25%
Fighter	+20%
Magic User	N/A
Thief	+5%

Table G: Combat ability

Fighting as level 0 Normal Human is default.

Fights as Magic User	+30%
Fights as Cleric or Thief	+50%
Fights as Fighter	+100%

Table H: Special Abilities

Default is none.

Individual thief skill (pick locks, backstab, etc)	+10%
All thief skills	+80%
Mundane skill (barter, glassblowing, archivist, etc.)	+5%
Special mundane skill (tracking, outdoor survival, sleight of hand, etc)	+10%
Minor spell or spell-like effect (charm person, protection from evil, hypnosis, etc)	+20%
Major power (turn undead, fly, regeneration, spell over 2nd level, etc.)	+50%
Cast Magic-User (or Illusionist) spells	+200%
Cast Cleric(or Druid) spells	+150%

The cost of an ability can be modified by introducing that skill at levels past the first. Note that the minimum cost for any special ability is +5%.

Ability introduced at levels 2 or 3	-5%
Ability introduced at levels 4, 5, or 6	-10%
Ability introduced at levels 7 or higher	-15%

Tsathoggua Awakens From His Slumber

"They’ve been inside the earth, too — there are openings which human beings know nothing of — some of them are in these very Vermont hills — and great worlds of unknown life down there; blue-litten K’n-yan, red-litten Yoth, and black, lightless N'kai. It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came — you know, the amorphous, toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton."

—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness"

Experimenting with Experience Points Awards

Perhaps one of the most well-traveled topics on old school D&D blog and forums is the awarding of experience points. It's a topic that seemingly no single GM likes to do in the same way as the next guy--and least of all completely by the book. To be sure there is a good deal of buy-in on the need to keep gold for experience as a standard objective marker and spur to exploration, but there seems to be a persistent need to tinker around this standard.

I am no exception. I like the feel of good for experience, but could never really see a way around to what to do with all the player-accumulated swag. At first I fell back on my old simple stand-by, handing out either incredibly stingy amounts of treasure or finding creative ways to make it difficult to convert back into hard cash. The players were progressing at painfully slow rates though and it seem to undermine rather than spur the whole exploration impulse.

Moving from there I began to be won more and more to the “pay to progress” school of thought. Not the unsatisfying AD&D first edition of route of demanding high sums each time that level light bulb went off, but the old player-tailored ways of Arneson and company. What follows are the house rule system we've been using in our Labyrinth Lord tabletop campaign.

Experience Points

Players will receive small bonuses for each real-time hour spent in active exploration of a dungeon, wilderness or other dangerous environ. The baseline rate is 100 exp per hour, adjusted by the GM for the relative rigor of the hour.

Instead of simply earning experience for treasure, PCs gain experience from spending the treasure they have acquired. The rate of experience points to gold pieces spent varies by how a player opts to cash in his loot.

Ways to burn gold for experience:

1. Carousing. PCs can receive 2 exp for each 1 gp of treasure spent in sword-and-sorcery-hero style debauched spending sprees (food, drink, romantic partners, fancy personal accoutrements, etc). Only 100 gp/per level can be spent this way. Obviously, no mentor or training down time is necessary, but there is a 1 in 6 chance that a “complication” may follow (mammoth hangovers, duels, hostile constabulary, angry spouses, etc). Roll on Jeff Rient's Carousing Table for results.
   
   
2. Training/research. PCs receive 1.5 exp for each gp worth of treasure spent on training or research. The PC must find and recruit a mentor of the same class that is at least three levels higher than their current. Game time spent on training sessions will be determined by the GM. There is a 5% percent chance per 500 gp spent in such a way that a player will discover an “object of note” (a well-balanced sword, scroll, treasure map, or the like)
   
   
3. Gear. Finally PCs can receive .5 exp for 1 gp spent on any other possessions mundane or otherwise.

Example: The Swordsman With No Name is a 2nd level fighter returning to the town of Marlankh flush with loot after a sojourn in the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. His share of the treasure amounts to 633 gp. He promptly spends the maximum amount he can, 200 gp, on a drunken rampage and receives 400 exp. Fortunately he rolls a 5 and is free and clear of the worst aspects of said rampage.

Sobering up he enlists the help of a crazy old coot of a dwarf on the outskirts of town to help train him in the delicate art of sword-play. He spends 300 gp on this and nets 300 exp. Before the party's next outing to the dunes, he decides to buy 100 gp worth of gear, a new shield, iron spikes, an ungodly number of oil flasks, etc for which he gets 50 exp.

By the time of the next adventure into the Weird he has squeezed a total of 750 exp from the 600 gold he contributed to stimulating the fantasy economy.

Tekumel and the Use of the Weird in Campaign Settings

An often-heard complaint about the Empire of the Petal Throne setting is that the thing is just too damn exotic: too many strange names; too many details on obscure religions and culture; too many odd beasts; too many damned diacritical marks, etc. These objections are just as often met (at least in the written and online material I have seen) by the hardcore fans of the setting with a dismissal of small-minded role players not able to cope with a more imaginatively robust non-faux medieval European (or Tolkien-esque) setting.

Both sides get it a little wrong--and a little right--in this.

The problem with the wider accessibility of Tekumel, beyond ill-fitting game systems or canonical behavior, is not that it is too weird, but perhaps that it's weirdness doesn't get sufficient enough contrast with the everyday (our everyday that is, not that of the Tsolyani clan house obsessed about it in later game editions).

The thrill of D&D at it's very best was the sense of sheer mystery and thrill of exploration at it's visceral core. You felt the fear and excitement in your gut as your character ventured out from that achingly familiar and comfortable Platonic-ideal inn (you know the wood-timbered Tudor one complete with roaring fire, tankards of mead, rolly-polly innkeeper, etc) and then into the dark corridors of the unknown. Sadly the sheer success of the game and the trail-along popular cultural acceptance of vanilla fantasy have buried, or at best obscured, this tension--enough where exploration of the weirder edges of pulp fantasy become liberating again.

But it's the edge that helps make the contrast meaningful, a concept with a long pedigree in pulp fantasy. Think here of John Carter, a Virginian ferchrissakes, thrust into the bizarre societies of Barsoom or the veneer in Howard that just barely covers the historical nations of Hyboria.

In the very first issue of Dragon magazine (#40 in case you actually give a crap) I picked up was an article by Douglas Bachman that stamped itself on my young impressionable kid DM mind. Leaving aside the article's misguided and overly-complicated Chivalry and Sorcery-fueled desire to inject High Fantasy (capitalized of course) into rpgs, there was an intriguing notion that wormed its way into my consciousness about the desirability of having a stark—physical even—separation between the mundane and fantastical parts of your setting. Human civilized life right here, the life of adventure over here.

As Bachman puts it:

“...There is an essential element which will determine the success or failure of a game as High Fantasy: the division of the world into Home Areas and Wyrd Areas (“wyrd” is an Old English word meaning destiny in the sense of an inward potentiality in process of becoming, with an approaching inevitable end; it eventually was changed through use into “weird”). A Home Area is one in which everyday life as we know it exists; it is the Primary World.

A Wyrd Area is the realm of the Dark, the actual world of Faerie. It is in Wyrd Areas that one encounters monsters and has adventures. All AD&D dungeons are Wyrd Areas...

The boundary between Home Areas and Wyrd Areas should be set out clearly. The use of mile stones, walls, magic barriers, hedges, toll gates, rivers, and ditches all serve to clearly separate the Primary World from Faerie.

Home Areas are populated by humans. It may be appropriate for a few elves, dwarves or halflings to be visiting a Home Area, but they should not live there...

It is imperative for players and DMs to understand the need for this division, and to handle the separation creatively. For instance, all adventures are appropriately undertaken and all experience points gained in Wyrd Areas. Bawdy houses, government, trade, agriculture, law & order, and military orders/units—the entire ambiance of En Garde! or of a feudal society (or any other historical culture/society)— are appropriate to Home Areas.”

It's also a contrast that unsurprisingly some of our more creative gaming brethern have been articulating more as of late. James Raggi, for instance, finds it important enough to tackle it in his own ever-opinionated game treatment of weird fantasy. In the more interesting parts of the LotFP referee book you'll find paragraphs like this gem of a flame-war starter:

“The ability to create...mystery is why a verisimiltudinous campaign world is recommended. If everything is fantastic (as it is in Sword and Planet stories and genres), then nothing really is. It's exotic, to be sure, and this isn't to disparage the enjoyment of such things but it becomes very difficult to differentiate “normal” from “abnormal” in a game world that is fundamentally alien from the start.”

And again this tension is repeated by the creator of one of the more alien, exotic, and beautifully-imagined settings, Geoffrey of Carcosa fame (or infamy depending on your point of view). He devotes a recent blog post—which seriously deserved more play in the blogosphere—to a move away from all-strange, all the time feel of Carcosa toward a new Clark Ashton Smith-flavored setting, now fittingly-titled Isle of the Unknown, that explicitly embraces this contrast.

So a very long-winded way to justify some of my own campaign choices (which are, of course, at the end of day a matter of personal taste). The Hill Cantons are a borderlands area in which characters pass from the a human-dominated civilized world so dull and stolid and rooted in our historical, late 15^th century stand-in institutions that magic, demi-humans, and all that is weird are almost forgotten. While town adventures might happen they only do so in the border towns that the swirling chaos is starting to encroach on—the core lands themselves have little to show for them adventure-wise.

That is until something comes along perhaps to upend the apple cart...

Firearms, Cossacks, and Polish RPGs

I have been enjoying a series of posts by Jonathan Becker on firearms and D&D a little too much as of late (when one begins arguing about whether or not the cylindrical shape of a smooth-bore musket ball has an effect on the gun's accuracy, you know you have a problem).

JB's mention of Polish hussars reminded me of one of my favorite early black-powder periods the Wild West-like time period that the sprawling Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth experienced in the early to mid 17^th century. With an anarchic southern borderlands and a gallant sword-playing nobility, the period was ripe for adventure stories which the Nobel prize-winning author, Henryk Sienkiewicz , captured marvelously in his three novel adventure series that begins with With Fire and Sword. I'm throwing a clip below from the 1999 film version just to see if that doesn't inspire you to want to throw in a Cossack barbarian incursion into your own campaign (ok, maybe that's just Slavophile me talking).

Which gets me to my second tangent, I've been a fascinated with a number of foreign-language role-playing games such as the French rpg based in Jack Vance's Lyonesse and all the Euro D&D spin-offs. Needless to say, I was doubly stoked to find Dzikie Pola, a game based in the very same period, which is all the more frustrating because I have not figured out a way to get a copy of the damned thing. Any ideas out there from our globe-trotting brethren? (Word on the Lyonesse game by the apparently now defunct Belgian company, Men In Cheese, will get you extra credit.)