Totally Stereotypical Bard Instruments for D&D Races

At the last gathering of our merry band of gamers there were some jocular comments about various instruments likely to be used by bards of particular races.  I dredged those ideas back up just recently and decided to do a quick posting on what instruments seem to me to fit with some of the main D&D races. There are three instruments for each so you can roll 1d6 if you need a random result, plus combine that with a 1d6 roll for race if you need a really randomized bard.

1. Human           1-2/guitar; 3-4/lute; 5-6/fiddle
2. Dwarf             1-2/bagpipe; 3-4/tuba; 5-6/trombone
3. Elf                   1-2/harp; 3-4/flute; 5-6/recorder
4. Halfling          1-2/accordion; 3-4/tambourine; 5-6/hurdy-gurdy
5. Gnome            1-2/handbells; 3-4/xylophone; 5-6/hammered dulcimer
6. Half-orc          1-2/bass drum; 3-4/digeridoo; 5-6/bongos

Sword World JRPG

Okay, so I've always been interested in RPGs produced outside the English-speaking world.  But unless you know a particular language well enough to do internet searches in it, you have to hope someone somewhere has posted in a language which you do know that well.  My starting assumption has always been that the most likely non-European culture to produce a tabletop RPG would be Japan. Japan has a rich gaming heritage with lots of fans.  And anime. And manga. And of course pocky.

Eventually I came across the Sword World RPG.  There was very little information on it and (AFAIK) no official English translation. That felt like exactly the sort of authentic thing I was looking for.  So I poked around on Amazon and ordered a copy straight from Japan.

No I don't know Japanese (my bad), except for the kanji.  So, yes, I bought it as a neato-torpedo collectors item to put on my gaming shelf.

Later I came across a fan translation wiki.  Thanks for everyone who pitched in on that!  However some parts didn't quite make sense, particularly in the character creation section.

Anyway, judging by the character classes and races in the game (you can check out the wiki for details) it looks and feels very "Final Fantasy" looking, which is cool.

The White-Haired Witch Class for Neo School Hack

So in my buddy Steve's Pathfinder-based campaign I'm playing a witch character with the healer Hedge Witch archetype. The most recent hex I added to the character was Prehensile Hair, which allowed her to awesomely apply the finishing strike to a demon.  More recently, I was on YouTube, consuming some media, when I came across a clip of the scene from The Forbidden Kingdom (功夫之王) movie where the young punk Seeker battles the obviously more awesome White-Haired Witch (白髮魔女) and she takes the magic staff from him with her magic hair.  In that movie she's depicted as a villain, even though the character in the original novels Lian Nichang (練霓裳), nicknamed Jade Rakshasa (玉羅剎), is formidable martial arts vigilante fighting injustice.  And I thought to myself "Why isn't there a character class like that?"

Pathfinder does have an archetype for the witch class called White-Haired Witch, but all it does is swap out all the cool witch hexes--which are the core of the class--for a couple enhanced hair-weapon abilities and a handful of rogue talents. The class has no monk-style martial arts abilities. It would not play anything like the character in The Forbidden Kingdom.

So, since I'm still a bit OCD about my Neo School Hack rules, I decided NSH needed a White-Haired Witch class to remedy this glaring gaming oversight.
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White-Haired Witch

- The White-haired Witch is a female wuxia martial artist with unique powers to use her hair. She may appear as a dedicated avenger of injustice or an implacable tracker assassin.

Inherent: Magic White Hair/focus: you can magically extend your hair out 30 feet and grapple or roughly manipulate with it; however you cannot perform fine manipulation skills such as writing with a pen.

Classic Weapon: whip (In addition to normal Light Weapon attacks with it, the witch may trip, disarm, grapple, or choke an opponent following a successful whip strike.)

Martial Witch ("巫侠")/constant: the witch is trained in martial arts, allowing lethal unarmed attacks as a Light Weapon and a special dodge (spend your turn to pass a Cunning check against the attacker's dice score to flip or spin out of the path of an attack)

"Men are such liars"/constant: a witch can always tell if a male is lying

"Hmph"/focus: with a quick bad-girl smirk and slight snort, the witch summons qi for the fight; gain one temporary Awesome Point which can only be used in the current action scene

"Misfits following a misfit"/focus: after sizing them up for a few moments, the witch taunts her opponents, causing all of them to be Disadvantaged on their first roll against her in the current scene.

"Where have you flown, little Sparrow?"/rested: the witch has an uncanny ability to intuit where to find her quarry.

"Kill them!"/rested; a small gang of armed thug minions suddenly appear from nearby and perform acts of intimidation or violence for one action scene

Far Sighted/focus; taking a few moments to concentrate, the witch can see to three times as far as a normal person; this vision negates all distance penalties for ranged shooting attacks.

Lashing Leap/rested: the witch can perform a long, drifting leap covering up to 50 feet; she can double this distance if lashing her whip to generate extra qi.

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And, here are some awesome video clips from The Forbidden Kingdom of the witch in action which I based the character class on:

Scene at the inn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auGlY9fFvws

Scene in the cherry blossom orchard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5ThLvktqls

Scene at the Jade Warlord's palace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5uhElLMLbA

New Campaign Hex Map Early Draft

So I'm slowly working on the hex map for my Forest of Fiends campaign idea which may or may not actually be a real thing one day. I'm using Hexographer which is is a very simple program.  It makes getting started easy, but it's not long before you begin wishing it had more features. For most people making basic hex maps it perfectly adequate. For people who start making a crazy big map right away it leads to a lot of re-thinking your map as you go along, just saying.  The map is for a semi-sandbox adventure with a coast, deep jungle filled with adventure, and finally a great cliff atop which lies (reportedly) the homeland of the fey.

New Pathfinder Spell: Mage's Sanctum Privy

Mage's Sanctum Privy

School: Abjuration; Level: sorceror/witch/wizard 5

Casting Time:  1 round

Components: V, S, M (a sheet of lead, sheet of paper, drop of perfume)

Range: close (25 fr. + 5 ft./2 levels)

Area: 10 ft tall by 5' square

Duration: 5 minutes per level

Saving Throw: none: Spell Resistance: no

Description: This spell conjures an enclosed privy for when you really need to go potty right now. The privy is ornately decorated inside and out and large enough for one medium or large sized humanoid creature to comfortably sit. When the mage is done all necessary business, all unpleasant wastes are sent to an unknown plane, any noxious odors disapparated, and the mage's private parts instantaneously cleansed and lightly misted with a pleasant scent.

Anyone looking into the privy from outside sees only a dark, foggy mass. Darkvision cannot penetrate it. No sounds, no matter how loud, can escape the privy, so nobody can eavesdrop from outside or be discomfited by overhearing impolite noises. Those inside can see out normally.

Divination (scrying) spells cannot perceive anything within the area, and those within are immune to detect thoughts. The ward prevents speech between those inside and those outside (because it blocks sound), but it does not prevent other communication, such as a sending or message spell, or telepathic communication, such as that between a wizard and her familiar.

Google+ is Dead! Long Live Google+ !

     So in case you hadn't heard, Google has announced the shutdown of Google+ in August of next year.  That is still a good ways off but the migration is already underway.  I have been a heavy user (well, lurker mostly) of Google+ over the last two years or so and generally enjoyed it.   Most, if not all, of the people and groups I follow there are either moving already or looking around to move soon. The most talked about alternatives as far as I've seen are MeWe, Facebook, and Discord.  I totally don't trust Facebook, and Discord looks more like it's for live gaming, but MeWe seems promising. FYI, my MeWe personal link is www.mewe.com/i/edward.wilson6

    For now I'm going back to normal blogging, which suits me better than microblogging apps anyway.  My main need is an outlet to create content for myself and the gaming community.  Micro-blogging is so minimal it's almost a waste of time.

What If You Did Vancian Magic Like Tetris...

So I was reading an older post over at the Points of Light blog entitled D&D Doesn't Use Vancian Magic.  David's point is that although the magic system in D&D is often called "Vancian", it isn't actually an accurate simulation of how magic use is described in Vance's books, the Dying Earth novels in particular.  David provides this quote from Vance's work:

Maziriam made a selection from his books and with great effort forced five spells upon his brain: Phandaal's Gyrator, Felojun's Second Hypnotic Spell, The Excellent Prismatic Spray, The Charm of Untiring Nourishment, and the Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere. This accomplished, Maziriam drank wine and retired to his couch.

So, yes, the mage does go through his spell books and load spells into his brain. But there are not spell slots, or specified numbers of spells of particular levels--although the mages in Vance's books do seem to have a limit of how much spell power their brains can handle.

Therefore to make D&D magic more Vancian you would need to retain the spell books and spell prep time, but remove the spell slot grid where at any given level you may only memorize X number of spells of each level.  But this being a game you still want to have a way to limit the numbers/levels of spells which a mage with a given Intelligence and casting level can have mentally prepared at any given time.

And then I thought of giving each magic-using class a sheet with a grid and tiles of different shapes for the spells.  Larger spells would have larger tiles, thus taking up more space on the grid.  As long as there's room left on the grid to fit in a particular spell you can memorize it and place the tile.  That brought to mind the old game Tetris, where you have to fit tiles of different shapes (made of connected squares) into a rectangular space.  So what if the spell-tiles were not just larger, but also of more complex shapes (but probably still an assembly of squares) as the spell level increased?

That started sounding cool, until I realized that making up a set of spell tiles would be work, especially if you wanted more complex shapes.  And then I remembered those puzzles where you place geometric shapes (triangles, squares, and parallelograms) to make shapes or fill in a square: tangrams.  I think the easiest gaming aid would use magnetic pieces and a metal board.  The board would be big enough to handle your game's maximum spell-slot capacity.  I'd also want a quick reference guide printed on the back for each spell casting class showing the capacity area and how many of each geometric shape the character gets at each casting level.

Forest of Fiends: The Old Gods & Their Weirdings

[Here's another bit of setting lore for my Forest of Fiends campaign, with actual effects on play.]

Before the hex-priests bound the empire to the Maralith Queens, the land of Pra-Kryush had its own pantheon of local deities.  With the rise of the Queens their worship was suppressed, the priests broken or sacrificed, and the temples demolished.  Today, little remains of their faith and even the oldest amongst the tiefling elders remembers naught but odd references.  Nevertheless, the Old Gods are not dead.  Without mortal worshippers to sustain them they are so faded now as to be little more than wandering wisps.  Most are like dotards with fading memories of their former glory, some even forgetting their own names.  Some still cling to an abandoned shrine, idol, stele, cenote, or other lonely site in the jungle.  In that locale, referred to as a shrine manse,  they have some small power left.

Outside of these shrine manses, there are still many remnants about, such as building stones scavenged from their razed temples with some carvings left undefiled.  Here and there are troves of holy items stashed by faithful priests to keep them from destruction by the minions of the Queens.  A few of the greatest and oldest temples were so steeped in holiness that no corrupted being could enter, and so they were sealed by the demon-minions and forsaken.

The names of the Old Gods are long-forgotten, even to the gods themselves, for they have gone senile.  A person contacting one will experience strange visions appropriate to the deity's domains.  If the person tries to resist the visions, they must make a WILL save (DC 25) against each of the deity's three domains.  If they embrace the visions, or fail a WILL save against any, they will gain a "Weirding" (containing a boon and a curse) for each.

When each manse is contacted, the GM will secretly make three random rolls on the domain list for the forgotten deity's three domains.  The player of an affected character will then roll 1d6 (1-2/3-4/5-6) to see which of the three affects them.  The GM will note which weirding the character gains and reveal the effects when appropriate.

There are twelve domains on the list.  To keep things fun for the players, I'll just reveal one domain "weirding" as an example:

Domain: Animal
Wierding: you can speak with wild animals (boon); but domesticated animals panic near you (curse)

Forest of Fiends: The Homesteaders

As I continue hammering out ideas for my Forest of Fiends campaign, I'm getting to areas which I don't want the players to see or it will totally spoil the surprise.  One area which will be public knowledge (mostly) is that of the "homesteaders".  After the peoples of the Holy Realms overthrew the demonic empire of Pra-Kryush and drove their orc and drow allies back into the wilderness and the Everdark, there were a lot of undesirables left behind.  Many were executed, with or without a proper trial, but significant numbers remain.  These undesirables included half-orcs, half-drow, suspected heretics, sorcerers, shapechangers, and so on.

As the victors began to relax after cleansing their homelands, the priests of Lawgiver Tyr ruled that these undesireables could not be held culpable for the sins of the empire and brought an end to the executions.  However, they were still not considered entirely trustworthy.  It was clear they carried some measure of taint from the dark times.  Some of the undesirables took advantage of the lull in the violence to flee to wild and desolate places or risk living in disguise.  The rest were put under some form of supervision, such as apprentices to guilds or lay brothers in monasteries.  As long as they remained well-behaved, devout, and submitted to their new place they were tolerated.

When the continental homeland of Pra-Kryush was officially re-opened for the crusade, most of the rulers of the Holy Realms saw an opportunity to be rid of all manner of persons.  At first there were open calls for volunteers to fight, build, explore, and colonize in the new lands.  But soon roundups of the undesirables began.  Half-orcs, half-drow (half-elves), kitsune, gnomes, sorcerors, convicts, vagabonds, and beggars were given the "opportunity" to become homesteaders across the seas.  Those with money and possessions were allowed make reasonable preparations.  The penniless ones, who were the majority by far, were supplied with a few basic items and handful of coin out of charity.

So as far as the campaign is concerned, there will be affects both on the overall setting and on character creation.  Any characters of the half-orc, half-elf, or gnome race or of the sorceror class (I'm working on the assumption we'll be using the Pathfinder core classes only) must begin either as a "homesteader" or with their secret disguised.  Also, all homesteader characters start with the only the minimum starting money for their class.