Lore and Legends of the Dezzyverse

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  • These Are The Voyages…

    These Are The Voyages…

    Using Traveller to Run a Star Trek Campaign (Part 1)

    Traveller and Star Trek role playing have been borrowing from one another since the beginning. FASA’s Star Trek License had a lifepath generation system that was very much built on the foundation of char-gen laid by Traveller (for example). Even today, Modiphius’ Star Trek License echoes those early FASA roots.

    Adapting Star Trek to Traveller is a huge project. More than I can fit into a single article. So this is gonna be a series for next few weeks. Also I’ve dipped a toe into using Star Trek for roleplaying over in the Triangle.

    Of course with a perfectly fine Modiphius’ game, and at least two other licensed games we haven’t mentioned and of course FASA being available (if not currently in print)is why do all this work? Well, because it’s fun, of course, and it’s an opportunity to go through some old notebooks I’ve written in from back in the day. That’s a long way of saying that a this in no way, shape or form is anything but fair use. Paramount, please don’t sue me I have nothing you want.

    Rank and Presence

    Starfleet is a huge institution. Blue, Red, Gold (and sometimes Avocado Green) tunics cover more than what the “Navy” career covers. We will be using several careers to describe the crew and personnel that can be found on most Starfleet vessels.

    The Federation does not have a Social Standing in the same way Traveller does. Instead, in a Star Fleet campaign, Characteristic 6 becomes “Presence”. Presence is a combination of personal charm, and reputation. Like Social Standing, Presence affects a lot of social interactions in the setting.

    Rank in Star Fleet is universal, Commision and Promotion climbs the following (very simplified) Rank structure:

    • Enlisted Ranks
      • 0 – Spacehand
      • 1 – Specialist : Mechanic /1
      • 2 – Petty Officer 2nd Class : Vacc Suit /1
      • 3 – Petty Officer 1st Class
      • 4 – Chief Petty Officer: +1 END
      • 5 – Senior Chief Petty Officer : Leadership /1
      • 6 – Master Chief Petty Officer
    • Officer Ranks
      • 1 – Ensign: Melee (unarmed)/1
      • 2 – Lieutenant: Leadership /1
      • 3 – Lieutenant Commander
      • 4 – Commander: Tactics/ 1
      • 5 – Captain : PRE 10 or +1 PRE whichever is higher
      • 6 – Admiral : Admin /1

    Starfleet Academy and Higher Education

    There are several options for “Pre-Career Education” in the Federation. The Vulcan Science Academy, the Cochrane Institute, Utopia Planetia Institute of Engineering, and the list goes on. These schools would be termed “Universities” in the core rules. We’ll address those later on. We’ll start with Starfleet Academy

    There are multiple military academies in the Federation. The Andorian Imperial Academy, The Lunar Military Institute, but the most prestigious and well known of the Military Academy is Starfleet Academy.

    Starfleet Academy has four curriculum that correspond to the Army, Marines, Navy, and Scouts. The Army curriculum leads into the Federation Defense Corps, which is the planetside armed branch that specialize in conducting military operations on planetary, or moon surfaces. The Marine cirriculum leads into the Starfleet Marines, many Marines serve in the Starfleet Security branch (the infamous “redshirts”). The Navy branch lead directly into Starfleet, usually into Operations Branch and Command Branch. The Scout branch leads into the Exploration Department of Starfleet.

    Admission into Starfleet Academy is a check of 8+ based on different characteristics for every curriculum. Army applications are very physical and use STR as the check stat. Marine applications are likewise very physical and use END as the check stat. Navy applications test mental ability and use EDU as the check stat. Scout applications test mental adaptability and use INT as the check stat. If this is the character’s second term, apply a DM of -2, if it is their third term or later, apply a DM of -4.

    Once accepted into Starfleet Academy, cadets get all service skills for their curriculum at level 0 just like basic training. Graduating Starfleet Academy requires an INT 7+ check with a DM of +1 if END is 8 or higher and a +1 if PRE is 8 or higher. If the Graduation check is 11+, the cadet has graduated with Honors. If the cadet fails their graduation roll, they wash out of the Academy without any Graduation benefits.

    Graduates of Starfleet Academy receive the following benefits

    • When entering the branch their curriculum leads into, the graduate chooses three service skills to advance to level 1.
    • EDU +1
    • Graduates enter their service branch automatically
    • Graduates enter their service branch as an Officer Rank 1
    • Honor Graduates get PRE +1
    • Honor Graduates enter their service branch as an Officer Rank 2

    Graduating other Military Academies get a DM +2 to their Qualification roll when entering a branch that corresponds to their Academy’s specialty.

    Universities function the same way as described in the Traveller Core Rulebook except for the Vulcan Science Academy. Entry to the Vulcan Science Academy are restricted to Vulcans. Even the legendary Spock found their admission obstructed because of his human heritage.

    Admission into the Vulcan Science Academy is an INT 10+ check. (The Vulcan Science Adademy does not entertain applications for admission after Term 1) Once admitted, the student picks four Science specialties at Level 1. Students gain EDU 8 or +1 EDU whichever is greater. Graduating the Vulcan Science Academy requires an INT 8+ check, if a 12+ is rolled, the student graduates with Honors. Graduates receive the following benefits.

    • Increase two of their chosen Science specialties to Level 2.
    • +1 EDU
    • +1 PRE
    • Graduates can automatically enter the Scholar (Field Reseacher or Scientist) Profession at Rank 1
    • Graduates can automatically enter Starfleet Science branch as an Officer at Rank 1
    • Honors Graduates receive a further +1 EDU and +1 PRE
    • Honors Graduates who choose to enter the Scholar Field Researcher or Scientist) Profession at Rank 2
    • Honors Graduates who choose to enter Starfleet Science branch enter as an Officer at Rank 2

    Explorers, Diplomats, and Adventurers

    Starfleet branches correspond to Traveller Careers.

    Operations Branch: Operations (or “Ops”) are technicians and systems operators on board a starship. They maintain and work with the starships major systems. Everything from deflectors to the transporters and replicators. Navy: Line/ Crew and Engineer/ Gunner

    Command Branch: The Command branch covers various leadership roles within Starfleet. Not only commanders, but diplomats, communications officers and department heads. Navy: Line/Crew and Noble: Diplomat.

    Engineering Branch: The engineering department works with a ship’s power systems and engines. While the technical specialists in Ops perform maintenance and effect minor repairs, the Engineering branch are the crew that modifies and overhauls the primary ship’s systems. When the Captain is demanding more from the ship than what she’s built to deliver, it’s the Engineering Branch who work miracles. Navy: Engineer/ Gunner, Marine: Support, or Scholar/ Science

    Exploration Branch: This branch of Starfleet are more common among the smaller vessels with crews of less than 50. But most cruiser-sized vessels on deep space missions have a full department of Exploration Branch crew. Scout/ Surveyor and Explorer. Scholar/ Field Researcher. Navy/ Flight

    Science Branch: Science Branch is the largest and most diverse branch in Starfleet. Science Branch covers departments for dozens of Science disciplines of study. From Astronomy to Xenology and more. Scholar/ Field Researcher, Scientist, Scout/ Surveyor

    Medical Branch: Field Medics, Nurses, Doctors, Surgeons and Medical officers. Starfleet medical serve everywhere Starfleet operates, entire classes of Starfleet vessel are designed as Medical vessels. Every Starfleet vessel has a Medical Department and a Chief Medical Officer (even the small Exploration Branch ships, though the CMO on those ships are often the entire Medical Department and hold low officer Ranks. Scholar/ Physician.

    Security Branch: Starfleet Security covers both the Security personnel on board most vessels and starbases, and Starfleet Marines. The marines, while using similar tactics to the Federation Defense Corps when planetside, are used as ship’s troops and a specialist military option on Starfleet defense vessels. Marine/ Support, Star Marine, Ground Assault, Agent/ Law Enforcement, Navy/ Flight

    Flight Branch: Starfleet maintains squadrons of small and auxiliary craft. Couriers, Shuttles, Runabouts, and Fighters. Starfleet’s Pilot Corps not only has pilots, but the entire support crew, mechanics, engineers and technicians. Navy/ Flight, Scout/ Courier

    The Federation Defense Corps

    Starfleet is primarily a scientific and exploration organization. The Federation Defense Corps has its roots in the various planetary armed forces of Terra (the Military Assault Command Operations, M.A.C.O) the Andorians (the Imperial Army) and Tellarites (the Coalition of Planets Guard). The Vulcans, of course, had left behind the philosophies of violence which had necessitated standing armies centuries ago.

    The Federation Defense Corps has waxed and waned over the history of the Federation. During the Federation/ Klingon Wars, the FDC was expanded into a fully functional planetside army. When encounters with the Gorn threatened to spark into a new war, it was the FDC that was assigned to colonies under threat. By the time of the Dominion War, the FDC had become a fully supported military force, though still only a fraction of the size of Starfleet.

    Characters that serve in the FDC use the Army career in character generation.

    Federation Defense Corps ranks

    • Enlisted Ranks
      • 0 – Private; Gun Combat (energy)/ 1
      • 1 – Lance Corporal; Recon/ 1
      • 2 – Corporal
      • 3 – Sergeant; Leadership/ 1
      • 4 – Sergeant, First Class
      • 5 – Master Sergeant
      • 6 – Sergeant Major
    • Officer Ranks
      • 1 – Lieutenant, Leadership/ 1
      • 2 – Captain
      • 3 – Major, Tactics (military)/ 1
      • 4 – Lt. Colonel
      • 5 – Colonel
      • 6 – General PRE 10 or +1 PRE whichever is higher

    UFP Diplomatic Corps

    The UFP Diplomatic Corps is a separate institution from Starfleet. There are two divisions, the Diplomatic Corps which has Federation Diplomats, Negotiators and Ambassadors. The Diplomatic Corps use the Noble/ Diplomat or Administrator careers. The UFP Diplomatic Corps also has Federation Intelligence tasked with espionage, characters who serve in Federation Intelligence use the Agent/ Intelligence or Rogue/ Thief careers.

    What about Section 31? Of course, there is no Section 31.
    I would not recommend allowing Section 31 characters in a Star Trek Campaign. The power of Section 31 as an element in the Star Trek Universe is it’s mystery. Allowing player-characters to work for this shadow-organization strips that mystery away from Section 31 and turns it to yet one more faction in the Star Trek Universe.

    Star Trek Is an Active Duty Campaign

    When a character is generated for a Star Trek Traveller Campaign, they do not go through a final mustering out. When their Character Generation ends, they are still serving in Starfleet. Players can choose to change careers at the start of the campaign. Qualification rolls remain the same except if the Qualification check fails, the character remains in the career they served in the previous term.

    Characters who fail a Survival roll during their term suffer a Mishap and must Qualify for a new Career to start the campaign. If they fail that qualification roll, the character is not viable for the campaign and the player will need to start over. In any case, failing a Survival roll will end character generation.

    As characters progress through their careers, they also collect a service jacket of postings. Every term, along with their Event, the player needs to make a posting roll to see where they served in StarFleet for that term.

    • 2 – Posted to a terrible assignment. Gain Enemy
    • 3 – Posted to a terrible assignment. Gain 1 Ally
    • 4 – Posted to an insignificant assignment. Gain 1 Contact
    • 5 – Posted to a minor assignment. Gain 1 Rival
    • 6 – Posted to a minor assignment. Gain 1 Contact
    • 7 – Posting remains unchanged. Gain 1 Contact
    • 8 – Posted to a better assignment. Gain 1 Contact
    • 9 – Posted to an important assignment. Gain 1 Rival
    • 10 – Posted to an important assignment. Gain 1 Ally
    • 11 – Posted to a prestigious assignment. Gain 1 Rival
    • 12 – Posted to a prestigious assignment. Gain 1 Contact

    Terrible assignments are usually reserved for punishments of some sort. Old ships and forgotten starbases. Sometimes you make a friend because of shared misfortune, other times you make an Enemy because someone just doesn’t like you.

    Insignificant assignments are dull. Routine postings to routes or bases deep in Federation Space, but far from any center of activity.

    Minor assignments are a step down in importance. Either you are assigned to a less important duty at your current post, or you are given a more imporant duty at a less important posting. In either case, the opportunities to make contacts are plentiful, but if you’re not careful you can develop a Rivalry.

    Better assignments are a step up in importance, assigned to more responsibilities and reporting to department heads or the Bridge crew. This is an excellent opportunity to make contacts.

    Important assignments are premium postings. Assigned to an important route or base in the center of the action in the sector. Shmoozing and rubbing elbows with the command ranking officers or up-and-coming members of Starfleet. The possibilities to make new Allies or develop Rivalries abound in this environment of high ambitions.

    Prestigious assignments are postings to the highest visibility missions or vessels. This is where you serve a tour of duty onboard a famous vessel or base or with a hero of Starfleet. You can make an important contact here, but it’s more likely your competition to perform under the spotlight will create a Rivalry.

    At the end of Character Generation, all player character will begin the campaign serving on the same ship or starbase. Depending on the nature of the campaign, this assignment could be a step up or step down from their last term’s posting.

    Next week we will continue this series, exploring the various species and ethnicities in the Star Trek universe.

  • The Triangle

    The Triangle

    Adapting the Classic FASA Trek Campaign Setting

    There is a sector of space in the old FASA Star Trek tabletop RPG game that rests where the United Federation of Planets, Klingon Empire and Romulan Star Empire meet. It is a collection of hundreds of inhabited systems independent of control from any of the three major powers in the Quadrant. It was published in 1985, right in the middle of the Original Series movie run, just after Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and before Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home. Two years before Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987.

    It Looks Small on the Map

    A colorized map of the Triangle, originally published by FASA in 1985, though I don’t know who to credit with the colorized graphics of this image1

    When compared to the full map of the Alpha/ Beta quadrants of the Star Trek Universe, the Triangle Secor is small. Only a handful of parsecs on each side. However, as discussed in the article O God, Thy Sea is so Great, even at this scale, the sector is vast, 243.25 ly3 (a very rough estimate for illustrative purposes based on the map scale.) It’s got 75 star systems that are listed, with the potential for hundreds more. Warp Drives at least capable of Warp Factor 5 (125 C in TOS Warp Scaling) or Warp 3.58 (in TNG Scaling) would be necessary to voyage between most systems in less than a year.

    Warp Factor in Star Trek was expressed in different scales depending on the era of the show or movie. In The Original Series, the Warp Factor was the cube root of it speed measured against the Speed of Light (C). In The Next Generation onwards, the function was speed = Warp Factor ^ 10/3 x C with Warp Factor 10 being a limit at infinity. It’s all made up numbers anyway, but having a solvable function allows for measurable consistency.2

    This would be relatively slow for the era that the Triangle Campaign was originally designed for, being the TOS movie era. However, in context, the TOS movies (and TOS television episodes) were about the Constitution Class cruiser Enterprise and her 5 year mission into deep space. Civilian Freighters, and Patrol Cruisers don’t need engines capable of speeds at 512 C for an area like the Triangle.

    A Near Frontier

    The Triangle remains unclaimed by any of the three powers which border it. Though the Federation, Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire keep watchful presences in the sector, mainly watching one another, none of them have any authority nor jurisdiction out here. This has allowed the Triangle to develop into a sector of free worlds, pocket empires, pirate havens and homestead colonies.

    This environment is similar to the interstellar frontiers past the claimed systems of the major powers in the quadrant. Except, in the Triangle, the Federation, Klingon Empire and Romulan Star Empire have spread to encompass this sector, creating a pocket between them. Unlike the borders and neutral zones between any two of these empires, this area is tri-lateral, which has made establishing a negotiated border impossible. It would take all three powers to agree to the details of any such treaty which, especially in the era that the supplement was set, could not be possible.

    Instead, the worlds of the Triangle are in a perpetual state of Cold War between the surrounding empires. Each exerting influence against the others, brokering deals, using the sector as a place to infiltrate rivals while maintaining deniability. The settlements within the Triangle swing from being willing pawns in this conflict to brokers making a profit off of the espionage. Especially the multi-system alliances and pocket empires are very good at extracting technological and political resources from one major power or the others to expand their own influence among their neighbors.

    Unconstrained Capitalism, Cartel Piracy, Syndicated Privateers

    Of course the Triangle is a fertile environment for less “formal” powers in Alpha and Beta Quadrants to conduct themselves in the open without entanglements from the overwhelming influence of the major powers in the quadrants. The Ferengi Alliance and Orion Syndicates are less restrained in the sector, free to operate unconstrained and with the power of their polities to back them up. After all, any one Syndicate or the Ferengi Alliance is vastly more powerful in all respects than any pocket empire, or alliance within the Triangle.

    But the presence of the Syndicates and the Ferengi has a stabilizing influence. Freelance piracy or raiding has to operate quietly, or risk attracting attention from the Syndicates. The safer option for these small, independent operations is to operate under the sanction of one of the Syndicates or another.

    There is no Section 31

    The three major powers operating in the Triangle, while not projecting a Naval or Fleet presence into the sector, instead the intelligence agencies operate with very little oversight. Starfleet Intelligence, Imperial Klingon Intelligence, and the Romulan Tal Shiar all play a dangerous game of cloak-and-dagger, peddling influence among the local systems and simultaneously weakening their rival powers. Missions in the Triangle revolve around all the classic spy operations, theft, intelligence gathering, assassination, and turning agents.

    When this supplement was published in 1985, Section 31 had not been added to the Star Trek Universe, so it isn’t called out in the Triangle, or the Triangle Campaign. Truthfully, the Ferengi Alliance isn’t called out either, since they won’t make an appearance in Star Trek for another two years in The Next Generation. Just because the source material from the time is too early to have current elements of Star Trek, that is no reason why we can’t fill them in to our TTRPG campaigns.

    Section 31, is at it’s best when it “doesn’t exist” in the setting. When it was first introduced in Deep Space Nine, the organization was a secret institution within the Federation and Star Fleet Intelligence community. The Federation has the Diplomatic Corps, Starfleet has it’s Intelligence Branch, both of these organizations are acknowledged publicly and operate with oversight from their respective service branches. Ultimately, the Diplomatic Corps and Starfleet Intelligence have to answer to the Federation Government. Section 31, because it’s deniable, has no such oversight. Which in a setting that features Cold-War style espionage makes for a great antagonist.

    Since Section 31 is really well known among the audience of Star Trek today, the subject will most likely show up. This presumption can be really well used by a GM. “It’s a Section 31 plot”, is a red herring that never stops giving gifts. It’s almost never a Section 31 plot. Don’t accuse your players of metagaming, instead concede their characters (especially if they have Federation backgrounds in the Diplomatic Corps, or Starfleet Intelligence) have heard rumors since the academy that “Section 31” as some sort of bogeyman. If the players wish to play a campaign as Section 31 agents, that works as well, but working for an unaccountable secret agency isn’t morally grey, it’s morally void. As the old saying goes “be careful what you wish for”.

    The Ship is an NPC

    This is an element core to Star Trek. Even a city-sized capital ship like the Galaxy Class has a personality and identity that makes it more than just a collection of engines, hull and circuits. Even in The Original Series era, the ship’s computer has voice interface and a personality. Heck, it had to be voice-acted by Majel Barret Roddenberry for years.

    In the Triangle, the ship the characters crew is much smaller. To borrow an element from the classic West End Games’ Star Wars Role Playing Game, the ship can best be described as the Stock Light Freighter. The crew of the ship should be small enough that the characters can run it on their own, but can support a small number of specialists and support crew (which is a great source of replacement characters in the field). Unlike the standard Star Trek campaign, the Triangle doesn’t feature big Cruisers, even the multi-thousand ton heavy freighters are not appropriate for the player ship, though the big freighters can be the subject of an adventure.

    Technology is a Tell

    Phasers (both hand phasers and shipboard) are distinctive Federation weapons. There is a distinct difference between a Romulan and Klingon Cloaking Device (the Romulans have a much more refined Cloak), Bat’leth are Klingon martial weapons with a long cultural history of martial arts surrounding it. This all means that the equipment and the technology a crew of characters use can reveal who they’re working for if they aren’t careful.

    Disruptors are common enough weapons that their origin really reveals nothing about the person using it. It’s kind of like the “AK-47” of the Star Trek Universe. This applies to the hand Disruptor, and the shipboard weapon system. Tricorders, Communicators, Universal Translaters, Transporters are all common in the Star Trek setting and don’t raise much suspicion. After all, the Ferengi trade in everything!

    Hand Phasers, especially the Type I phaser (the little palm-sized device) is almost designed for espionage. Unlike Disruptors, the Phaser can be set to stun, wound, disintegrate, heat matter, and doesn’t look like a weapon. This was originally a feature used by Starfleet to arm their crews without presenting as carrying weapons. The “stun” setting allows to subdue adversaries without killing them. For Pirates and Espionage Agents, this is a valuable little device, concealable, innocuous and capable of stunning a target for later interrogation (or ransom), or disintegrating them and leaving no evidence (or witnesses) behind.

    The Prime Directive Doesn’t Apply

    The Triangle Sector has been settled for a century or more. The worlds have been visited by the Syndicate, Ferengi Merchants, the Klingon Empire and Romulan Star Empire, none of whom restrain themselves with a “Prime Directive”. Even undiscovered worlds (with a few exceptions) have had encounters with warp capable civilizations. Federation, or Starfleet sponsored crews are not expected to adhere to the Prime Directive like their counterparts out in the exploration branch of their service. Intelligence Operatives are expected to prioritize the mission over considerations like the Prime Directive. (And, of course “Section 31” doesn’t play by the rules anyway.)

    The various interstellar alliances and pocket empires in the sector also have no Prime Directive restraining their development. In fact the interstellar rivalries, supported by the major powers are constantly seeking any advantages they can get. This could lead to adventures where the characters are hired to smuggle technology to local governments.

    Latinum Pays the Bills

    Federation characters have to learn how to conduct trade with money in the Triangle. Since they come from a post-scarcity civilization and “have no use for money”, In the Triangle, however, only worlds that are directly supported by the Federation (like the Baker’s Dozen worlds) use the proxy currency of Federation Credits. Everybody else uses either local currency, or thanks to the Ferengi Alliance, gold pressed latinum.

    Federation characters who go through the Federation Diplomatic Core or Starfleet Intelligence should have as part of their skill list a skill that allows them to use money. In Traveller, which is the system the author is most familiar with, this is represented by the “Broker” or “Trader” skills. Star Trek Adventures and other game systems will have similar skills to cover this function. Understanding how to conduct commerce with cash-money isn’t difficult, the skill rolls that will come from these challenges will represent the character’s understanding of value. Buying a replacement coil-inducer for the plasma conduit (mmm.. that’s some good engineering babble there) from your friendly local Ferengi will require a skill check, and failure would result .at the minimum. in overpaying. Other consequences could apply, the merchant could sell the character a less-than-quality item by talking them out of the part they picked out in the first place.

    Without having a culture of money, it’s just hard to judge the value of a strip of latinum. After all, in the Federation all most people need to do is walk over to the replicator and say “Earl grey, decaf” and they get a nice cuppa. Walking into space-Starbucks and ordering a venti raktagino-mokka will require an exchange of money for goods. Considering raktagino is a Klingon drink, the person selling it to might react violently when the character tries to explain that they don’t have the latinum on them right now.

    The skill check can also take the place of keeping a ledger of how much money the character has. If the skill roll succeeds, the character has the money on hand and can buy the thing. If the skill roll fails, they can’t affoard it.

    The purpose here is to make the setting feel more Star Trek. If using money is casual, then it doesn’t feel like the characters come from a society that doesn’t use money. It also allows for those characters who do know how to sling some latinum (like Beckett Mariner from Lower Decks) to have moments of shining in the spotlight. Other factions could face similar challenges. Klingons from the Empire might find trading in latinum to be a slight on their honor. Romulans might only trade in Imperial currency because holding money that isn’t authorized by the Empire could be seen as treasonous.

    Now, slip out of that maroon uniform and into some civilian clothes, belt on a holster and your disruptor and take your Free Trader into the Triangle.

  • The Guild Empire

    The Guild Empire

    ..and Eldritch Suns

    Years ago just after the third Pirates of the Carribean movie, I was inspired to design a Spelljammer setting. I called it “Eldritch Suns” and it used a lot of the worldbuilding from Disney’s Treasure Planet. Solar sails, magic cannon, wheellock pistols and cutlasses. Like Treasure Planet, the setting would take 75% age of Sail, Age of exploration and 25% Space Fantasy. The Eldritch Suns have never been far from my mind.

    The Astral Sea and the Frontier

    The Astral Sea is the void between systems. It is the places on the maps of the cosmos where “Here be DRAGONS” is inscribed as a warning. The Astral Sea needs to be crossed in order for ships to cross from one system to the next.

    Systems in the Astral Sea are termed wells, bubbles of matter which function like the star systems we are familiar with. They have a central point where all bodies revolve. Since this is a space-fantasy setting, those central points aren’t stars as we understand them, they are geysers of Æther that flood out, and return in a chaotic network of currents. These wells are distinct from one another, each varying in how time passes and drift among one another like corks floating in a barrel of water.

    When two or more wells begin to experience regular travel between them, for trade, or immigration, they will establish a route through the Astral Sea, these are termed “Mains” and they will slowly synchronize how the wells relate to one another. Calendars will slowly begin to synchronize, their relative positions within the Astral Sea will start stabilizing, even the languages of their peoples will become more familiar in respects to one another. In general, the more mains, connecting wells for longer periods of time will accelerate the process of synchronization. An example of a mature result of this process are the seven core wells of the Guild Empire.

    The Antagonist; The Guild Empire

    The Guild Empire was loosely based on the East India Company from Pirates 3. A mercantile empire that dominated the setting with the resources to launch fleets and armies. It was focused on seven core wells;

    1. Roidahç; (ROH-ih-dosh)
    2. Elgen Trencz; (EL-gen TRENZ)
    3. Jharigo; (JER-ih-go)
    4. Kazzaq: (kaz-AK)
    5. Fauchaq: (fow-SHAK)
    6. Ausaq: (aw-SAK)
    7. Rhiannon: (REE-ann-on)

    These wells have a dense and very old network of mains with each other, and as a result, are fully synchronized. They share a single Imperial Calendar which passes at the same rate among the worlds of all seven wells. They have a single Imperial Language (uncreatively named “Imperial”) which is common to all seven wells (though local dialects still proliferate, making for distinctions between provinces and cultures.)

    The Guild Empire has grown more powerful than any realm in this region of the Astral Sea. It is aggressive, expansive, and greedy. Its fleets and armies are comprised of people from all seven core wells as well as the Empire’s colonies. Most enlisted people serving as crew or troops are poor volunteers, recruited on the promise of pay and adventure. Others are virtual slaves, victims of impressment. The Officers are from aristocratic families who have purchased their commissions from the Imperial Guild Directorate. Throughout the setting there are Guild Governors, Directors, Assayers, Brokers and an extensive bureaucracy that exists primrily to extract wealth from the colonies and trading mains of the frontier to return to the Core.

    Anatomy of a Well

    The heart of a well is the Ætheric Geyser. These are holes in the Astral Sea which connect to the Elemental Plane of Æther (often referred to as the “Etherial Plane”. The flood of Æther flows out from the geyser until the draw of the Elemental Plane of Æther becomes great enough to pull the flood back to the geyser. In systems with no other bodies, this stabalizes into currents flowing in and out.

    When material bodies move through these currents they disturb these stable currents, diverting them into endless bends and eddies and stagnant pools, making navigation a specialist job. The currents of Æther can be harnessed with sails and rigging, which allow for vessels to move through the Æther.

    Every body in the well blocks the radiant energy shining from the geyser over a limited region behind the hemisphere facing out. These become shadows of the Negative Material Plane, umbral bays where the energies of death replace the spirit power of life.

    The Stuff of Worlds

    The term “world” refers to planets, moons, asteroids and other material bodies orbiting one another within a well. To varying degrees, each such body is composed of a combination of Air, Earth, Fire and Water, though not all elements need to be present for a world-body to exist. The closer these elements are to balance, the more recognizable the denizens of the world are to the common mortal peoples of the Astral Sea; Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs, etc…

    In general, these bodies all orbit the geyser at the heart of the Well, though exceptions, while uncommon can be found. Different ratios of these four elements will exhibit different characteristics that most Astral-faring sages have recorded in catalogues.

    The influence of the Guild Empire likewise affects the variance of worlds within it’s dominion. The most extreme combinations of elements are increasingly rare, and the amount of balanced bodies are growing more and more common. Even the orbits of the worlds within the core wells have grown more ordered and regulated.

    Out on the Frontier is where the weird extremes can still be found. Worlds permanently in the umbral bay of enormous planets of Air and Water. Systems with two (or more) geysers feeding Æther into the well. Wandering orbits. Rogue worlds drifting through the Astral Sea. This is where the setting focuses it’s attention, far from the rigid structure of the core of the Guild Empire.

    Suns Beyond Counting

    The Astral Sea stretches on forever. The Frontier is the region closest to the Imperial colonies. Out there, there are few realms that can launch a fleet of ships into the Æther and the Astral Sea and no multi-well empires. Free Traders, Pirates, Adventurers and Explorers travel between wells out here and create faint mains to connect them.

    On the Frontier, legendary hordes of treasure can be found, fantastic beings and fabulous locations can be discovered. Campaigns among the Eldritch Suns should focus on near-constant voyages, following the mains, or forging new ones from well to well in search of fame and fortune. No one world should be heavily detailed. Only the adventure locale, and maybe the port needs any attention. Adventurers arrive at port, follow their nose into an adventure and return. Maybe uncovering rumors to their next destination. They fill their hold with supplies and hire some crew and venture forth again.

    This brings up the subject of a crew. The vessels that cross between wells, even the smaller ones, require dozens, if not hundreds of people to crew. Most tabletop roleplaying campaigns have only six adventurers or less, which leaves a lot of NPCs. The crew of a vessel can be used as replacements for fallen adventurers, sources of new adventurers for new players joining the campaign. Henchmen, hirelings and prize crew are also excellent uses of extra crew members.

    Finally the crew are a source of adventure in and of themselves. After all, a mutiny is always possible on the high Astral Sea.

  • O God, Thy Sea is so Great, and My Boat so Small

    O God, Thy Sea is so Great, and My Boat so Small

    Space is BIG

    One common quirk of science-fiction roleplaying, whether it be Traveller, Star Trek, or Battletech is that the Universe starts to seem rather small. The characters jump from world to world having adventures but they only stay as long as the adventure lasts. Once the adventure is done, they’re back on their ship and off to another world, light-years distant. The routine of interstellar travel shrinks an impossibly vast universe into a travelogue. Alien worlds, might be strange, but they’re not memorable, the planet of purple-people-eaters fades into the background along with the forest moon of cannibal teddy bears, and the world of cheese.

    Timekeeping

    One way to keep space feeling big is to keep track of time as it passes. The Universe is not a static place, everything is always in motion. Seasons change, years pass, even the stars themselves grow old and die. It helps to reinforce that your characters are on a voyage if the Universe continues to unfold even as the players hop from system to system. In Traveller, each jump between systems takes a week. Normally this is expressed in downtime, but the important thing for timekeeping is, that as the characters jump from world to world weeks pass as they are isolated in jumpspace.

    The Battletech Universe is different, jumps of 30 light years happen in an instant, but the drives require a week to recharge, and it takes days of sublight travel to reach the jump point where the drives can be engaged. Again, this is often considered downtime, but the time still passes.

    Even Star Trek, where warp travel doesn’t isolate the ship or it’s crew, the distance between systems is *vast*. It takes days or weeks for a vessel, even traveling hundreds of times the speed of light to transition from one system to the next. As Game Master, take advantage of this, let events develop without the characters needing to be involved. Keep the Universe a dynamic, ever changing place.

    Distance and Scale

    It’s time for a little Astronomy. Get out your notebooks and calculators. As I am writing this essay, I have just flown across the North American Continent from Washington DC to Sacramento. That trip of 3,000 miles (4800 km) took all day (actually it also took all night, because of an unexpected layover in Phoenix, but that’s a whole different story). One Astronomical Unit (AU) is 150 million km. One Parallax Second (ParSec) is 3.26 light years. To put all of this in scale, for Dezzy to travel to work takes about an hour (I live 30 miles from the office) by car. For Dezzy to cross the country (the US) takes a day (six-ish hours) by jet. If Dezzy was to fly to Mars, it’s a journey of eight months. Flying out to Jupiter’s moon Europa takes around 6 years. If Dezzy wanted to send a message home at light speed, it would be more-or-less immediate from most places on Earth, 1.25 seconds to the moon, 15 minutes to Mars and 35 minutes to Europa.

    Why am I throwing all these numbers at you? Well, it’s to illustrate a point. Like Douglas Adams famously said many years ago, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” Traveling between worlds or star systems shouldn’t feel like driving to the next town over or even flying across country. In-system travel should take at least days, if not weeks unless the vessel is moving at 75% of C (light speed) or more. The point of emphasizing distance is to impart the vastness of space to the players.

    Because of the enormous distances involved, the setting needs to feel different based on scale. This can be accomplished not only with travel times, but with communication lag.

    The Mail Must Go Through

    On a planetary/ moon scale, real time communications is fairly straightforward. We experience it today in our decidedly non-science-fiction real world voice and video calls can be made in real time anywhere on the planet where a signal can be reached. The slight delay to lunar orbit can make conversation slow, and possibly awkward, but not impractical. Physical mail can be sent nearly anywhere in a mater of weeks, or even days or hours if extra resources are employed.

    On an interplanetary scale, real-time communications are not really possible. Even between nearby planets (assuming both worlds are in their close orbits), electromagnetic communications still take between fifteen minutes to an hour to reach their destination. Conversations start to resemble e-mail or messaging, even with voice or video

    Communication with the outer worlds takes hours or days. Relays are needed to even send an electromagnetic signal out that far that can deliver something as dense as voice or video communications. Settings at this scale begin to resemble the telegraph and rail eras of the 19th century. News travels over continental distances, but need to move between telegraph or railroad stations. If the recipient of the message is five days away from the closest station, then all news that recipient receives is at least five days old. Even if the setting is heavily populated, it is still possible and even preferable to present a tangible sense of isolation

    On an interstellar scale, unless Faster Than Light travel and communication is employed, news travel at generational speeds. Its simply not possible to maintain a cohesive society at this scale. Without FTL travel, an interstellar setting is a planetary or interplanetary setting. To use an example from fiction, in the novel Three Body Problem (spoilers), the invading fleet from Alpha Centauri (rougly 4.3 light years) takes 300 years to journey to the Sol system. That’s using technology so far advanced beyond what humans have developed that it may as well be magic.

    FTL Travel Changes Everything

    Interstellar settings with Faster-Than-Light travel flips communications on it’s head. Even in settings where direct communications through subspace, or hyperspace relays are possible, it is often quicker to send a ship from place to place delivering messages. This can be physical media, where a mail ship drops off packages and mail to the starport, but it can also be electronic or digital media where the mail ship simply flies in-system and transmits their messages to their destinations.

    This brings an Interstellar setting to resemble the world-spanning empires of the 16th to 19th centuries. Worlds take weeks or months to interact, large interstellar empires and megacorporations lay most of their authority on colonial governors or directors of local headquarters.

    There is a brilliant map in Megatraveller that displays how news of Emperor Strephon’s assassination spread throughout the Third Imperium. The common communication routes were the Express Boats that could jump 4 parsecs in a week, which was the limiting factor for the spread of the event. There was a second communication route used by the Imperial government and the Navy that used Couriers that could jump 6 parsecs in a week. Using this map, the GM could see who knew about the assassination, when, and how they would react.

    The map also illustrates how much distance the news had to travel. In the setting, Emperor Strephon was assassinated on the 132nd day of the Imperial Year 1116. That news took 200 days to reach Terra, on the rimward fringe of the Imperium. That was from Emergency jumps running a Pony Express route (delivering the mail through a relay of riders and fresh horses) at a pace of around 850 C. That shows that the Third Imperium is really, really vast.

    Keep Real-Time Communication Exclusive

    The Star Trek and Star Wars settings have tropes where conversations over enormous distances occur. Which works against the scope of the setting. The Enterprise is often shown as the “only ship in the Sector” that can respond to the inciting incident of the episode. The orders are delivered from StarFleet headquarters in a direct Subspace communication. Even though the Enterprise was thousands of light years distant Captain Kirk could have a video chat with the Admiralty, and receive updates while delivering progress reports. Lord Vader has video chats with Emperor Palpatine from the Phone Booth on board his Super Star Destroyer while the Emperor is at the heart of the Empire on Coruscant. This shrinks the universe to planetary scale. It’s no more inconvenient to phone HQ for info than it is to open a Zoom Call to Hong Kong from London.

    Both settings retain their sense of scale by showing that these real-time communications as requiring equipment that demands resources that are unavailable to the average citizen. Vader is the Dark Lord of the Sith, he has the biggest and bestest, literally a “Super” Star Destroyer. The Enterprise is the Flagship of the Federation. Subspace and Hyperspace Communications are not available or even a component of adventure sized ships like the characters would be crew of. A small colony carving out a settlement may not have the resources to build such a communications array.

    The Star Trek movie Into Darkness and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith really undermines the scope of their settings (spoilers for both movies). In Into Darkness there’s a scene where “John Harrison” escapes capture on Earth by teleporting to the heart of the Klingon Empire. Using technology explained as “Transwarp Beaming” but it was effectively instant teleportation over hundreds of light years. The Enterprise follows at Warp and arrives close enough to threaten Harrison with a long-range bombardment in an indeterminate, but very short interval. This is a planetary scale event. The distances are just numbers because there is no appreciable time investment.

    In your campaigns, if your adventures travel interstellar distance this casually, then alien worlds become little more than exotic cities that can be reached by tourists on vacation. The sense of wonder is erased.

    Time is Relative

    In settings where Near-Lightspeed and Faster than Light travel is a factor, characters can age faster or slower than the rest of the setting when traveling. This is another way to emphasize the distances involved.

    When traveling at Near-Lightspeed, the subject of relativistic speeds age slower. Characters who regularly travel at these velocities start to subjectively move forward in time. They leave one world, travel for a week at relativistic speeds, and when they arrive at their destination, they have only aged a week, but the setting has gone through months of time. The GM needs to juggle three periods of time. The time from the origin passes quickly as the characters are in transit, the time on board ship seems to pass normally, and the time at the destination would be the distance travelled divided by the velocity of the vessel. This allows characters to experience vast spans of time over the course of their career while their physical life spans are unchanged.

    At Faster than Light Travel, the relativistic equation starts to flip on it’s head. Especially in settings where Jump Drives crosses the distance instantly, but the vessel has to spend a period of time (usually a week) in hyperspace, or jump space. The characters age, but the setting doesn’t. This starts to age the characters faster than the universe around them.

    In Warp-Drive settings, the ships spend travel time in a bubble of real space while the universe outside slows to a standstill. When the ship emerges, the crew, like a Jump Drive crew have aged the time they were at warp, but the universe has only aged a much smaller interval. It takes the Enterprise much, much less time to move through the galaxy at warp than light does.

    This allows adventurers the possibility of outrunning the consequences of their actions (for a time). So long as the adventurers can travel faster than the news of what they did, they can arrive in a new system before anyone can know what they’ve done. Of course, the trap here is that the adventurers need to keep moving. At least until the consequence exhausts it’s urgency.

    Setting Scale and Campaign Scope

    It’s important to apply the scale of your setting to complement the scope of the campaign you wish to run. It is tempting, especially with a game like Traveller with it’s procedurally generated system for creating worlds to create sectors’ worth of star systems, worlds, and moons. It can be fun, dreaming up pocket empires, cities, starports and NPCs to populate them. However, unless you plan to run a series of campaigns over the course of years, developing anything beyond a subsector beforehand is mostly futile. The same goes for system detail. Unless an extended adventure takes place in a single system, most groups of adventurers will never explore any given place beyond the world where the adventure takes place, and even then, the adventurers often only encounter those locations described in the adventure itself.

    Point being, unless the adventurers choose to visit a location, they won’t. You as the GM can encourage the adventurers to visit a location, but the ultimate decision is with the players. It’s the GM’s job to seed reasons for the players to want to visit the interesting locations that are designed. That being said, as GM you can present a campaign that happens in a single star system, with a plot similar to the Expanse. That type of campaign will resemble an Interplanetary Setting, with it’s distances and travel/ communication times. Everything outside of the campaign system doesn’t need any real detail. News can arrive as the GM chooses, but it is not anything that needs to be designed beforehand. Don’t make more work for yourself than you must.

    There is a balance for a campaign that revolves around travel. For example, in a Battletech campaign where the characters make up a mercenary company, contracting their military service with planetary governments and empires for c-bills, interstellar travel is common. The Company fulfills a Contract on a world, gets paid, and then they’re off to the next contract on the next world. System Detail only needs to be relevant to the current contract, and possibly outlines of the next contracts on offer. This is more of an example of a Interstellar scope on an Interstellar scale. While the campaign may never visit more than a dozen worlds or so, you as the GM can make the setting seem big. That’s part of the appeal. The mercenaries aren’t stuck on just one world or in one system. The conflicts cover hundreds of systems and thousands of light years of distance. Part of the appeal of a campaign like this is adventuring in space.

    Deep Space Exploration, like Star Trek is the ultimate expression of Campaign Scope and Setting Scale. Leaving the familiar stars behind to explore… (dare I say?) strange, new worlds. Here, the GM can use time dilation to illustrate how vast the universe is. Traveling from world to world, and revisiting some can show how much time passes on the worlds left behind. Friends who stayed on the outpost the adventurers visited at the beginning of the campaign, can have aged significantly by the time they return and the adventurers have only aged a couple of years. Campaigns out here are stories of isolation and self-sufficiency. Like the crew of a ship far beyond the boundaries of Empire, help is months or years away if it can be reached at all. News from home can be years old. I’d even go so far as to make FTL communication like subspace or hyperspace have significant delays. The goal for campaigns of this sort is, like the crew from Star Trek: Voyager, is to turn the characters’ starship into it’s own little world sailing through the stars.

    West Marches, Distant Stars

    A gaming group can adopt a setting to run a multiple-campaign game using science fiction. In this framework, GMs develop different areas in the setting, and multiple groups of players can experience adventures travelling between GMs and their areas. Coordination is key, understanding where each group of players are in time and space will inform what is occurring in the universe as it unfolds. Groups that encounter one another can exchange news and even crew. As a campaign like this matures, it becomes epic. Like a science-fiction franchise, the more campaigns that play becomes identifiable as unique expressions of the setting while remaining a part of the greater setting.

    Conclusion

    I’ve presented, a lot in this essay. Turns out, since space is big, discussing role-playing in a space setting starts to get big as well. All of this doesn’t need to be applied to any given rpg as a whole. Like all science fiction gaming, the freedom to pick and choose what works for you is a part of the fun.

    Happy Star Trek Day

  • Hand Grenades and Fireballs

    Hand Grenades and Fireballs

    When your friends are close enough to get singed

    From it’s wargaming roots, D&D has allowed Area of Effect attacks to split fighters in melee with one another. The phrase “I cast the fireball to hit the monster but not my friends” has been around since the beginning. Precisely measuring out squares or inches on a battle-mat to include the monsters and not the characters is a refined skill for grid-tacticians everywhere.

    I’ve always hated it. It slows combat to a crawl as players agonize over where the center of their Fireball, or their Cone of Cold, or Entangle Spell should be to get the most enemies and no party members.

    For me, this also breaks immersion. The splitting of combattants in melee assumes that two fighters stand still until they move to a new position. Bashing away at one another like a pair of Rock-em Sock-em Robots, anchored to the spot. This is not how fighting happens. Look at MMA fights, or boxing matches, wrestling (both intramural and pro), or even a football play or rugby scrum. Ain’t no one standing still long enough to precisely drop a 20 foot radius ball of fire so one guy gets burned ant the other doesn’t. All fighters in a melee are in constant motion, often grappling or piled up on the ground.

    I use the following House Rule in my games with regards to what happens when a spellcaster tries to put the edge of an AoE spell between two fighters in melee with one another.

    Area of Effect Attacks into Melee

    • Anyone who is in melee combat is affected by any AoE that would affect any combatant in that combat in that round. i.e – a spellcaster is not able to position an AoE effect in such a way that one combatant in a melee is affected while others are not. It’s either everyone in the combat or no one in the combat.
    • There is a “fringe zone” around the edge of an AoE that extends outside the limit of the AoE. Anyone within the fringe (a 5 foot (1.5 meter) border) who is also in melee combat with someone in the AoE is still affected, but in the instance of where a Saving Throw is necessary, the targets in this fringe zone have Advantage to that Saving Throw.

    Example: We have three potential targets of a fireball.
    Target 1 is the intended target of the spell and is within the AOE. Target 1 is affected as normal and makes a Saving Throw as per the rules.
    Target 2 is in the fringe zone and is in melee with Target 1. Target 2 is affected, but has Advantage to their Saving Throw.
    Target 3 is in the fringe zone and is not in melee with either Target 1 or Target 2. They are not affected by the spell.

    • If all combatants are in the fringe zone of an AoE, but none are in the AoE itself, no one in the combat is affected by the spell.
    • If a target is in the fringe zone but is attacking with a weapon that has the reach quality (like a Halberd), then the target is not affected by the AoE.

    Example #2: Same three potential targets of the fireballThe circumstances are the same, except Target 3 is outside the fringe zone, but is in melee combat with Target 2. In this case, Target 3is considered in the fringe zone.

    Example #3: as the previous example but with the inclusion of Target 4who is outside the fringe zone. If Target 4is in melee combat with Target 3, Target 4is considered outsidethe fringe zone. If an AoE spell has no Saving Throw (like SLEEP) then anyone affected by the spell is affected normally, whether or not they are in the finge zone. If an AoE has a Magic Attack Roll, and not a Saving Throw anyone affected by the fringe zone has a +5 Bonus to their Armor Class.

  • Failing Forward

    Failing Forward

    Making Failure less Frustrating

    There are nights when the dice just hate everyone at the table. Except the DM. Players can’t roll above a 6 and their characters can’t accomplish even the simplest task. Nothing happens and the characters are stuck. The only door blocking their path can’t be opened, the speed-bump combat becomes a slog of swing-and-a-miss, the stream, easily crossed, ends up washing the whole party away. The first time these things happen, it’s kinda funny, “Remember that goblin that no one could hit and we had to just run away?”. But over the course of a game session it looses it’s charm, “Failed AGAIN? I have a plus 12 to the roll and I can’t roll higher than 3! @&#! this dungeon!

    Failing forward helps with this. The basic principle is this. Your character succeeds in their roll, but if they fail to score higher than the Target Number, the character suffers a consequence. The classic example of this is “you force the door open, but make such a racket that anyone within a hundred feet hears your entry.” Or, “You knife the guard, but, as he falls, he slaps the panic button at their station” characters can progress, but there’s an added challenge.

    Let the Player Choose

    Often when a character fails forward, it helps engagement to ask the player what the consequence should be. This helps give the player a hand in the fate of their character, and gives the Game Master a clue as to what the player is expecting from the adventure. The player should express their character’s consequence as briefly as they can. The consequence should be proportional to the degree of failure, and the consequence should never be more effective than success.

    The Game Master could alternatively let the player group choose. This helps to avoid putting a player, who might not be comfortable improvising like this, on the spot. The final decision on consequence needs to have the consent of the character’s player, and approved by the Game Master. This encourages everyone at the table to remain engaged with the game as it’s being played.

    Keep it Proportional

    As mentioned, failing forward should never be a better result than success. Failing forward progresses the adventure at a cost. If the failure is slight, or the task relatively minor, failing forward should apply slight consequences. If the failure is great, or the task critical, failing forward should extract a much greater price.

    The goal here is to allow a path forward with a cost. Some of the build up of narrative drama grows from dwindling resources. Dropping your character’s rations down a crevasse or breaking your lantern can be just as tense as loosing 2d10 hit points.

    A Brief Word About Combat

    I’m not a big fan of brushing off damage as a fail forward. Just having a minimum rolled damage, or half-damage result tends to throw off the balance of monster stats in Dungeons and Dragons. Furthermore, it is not any less frustrating and it doesn’t change anything except to continue to whittle down the adversaries’ hit points. Again I’d fail forward, allowing say a hit on the target, but the character hurts themselves for minimum damage, or they loose some ammunition. Or they don’t do damage but gain a cumulative +1 bonus to hit each time they miss until they do hit. Maybe they do damage, but the GM gets to move their character 5 feet (roughly 1.5 meters) maybe placing the character in a less advantageous position.

    My point here is that combat, whether you employ failing forward or not, should be dynamic, even if you’re not playing on a battlemap. Very little is less exciting than endlessly whittling away hit points from one another’s pile. But, that is a whole ‘nother essay.

    Things That Should Not Fail Forward

    Failing forward is not appropriate for all situations. Saving Throws, Death Saves, All-or-Nohing tasks are but a few. With these situations, one either succeeds, or fails and suffers the consequences. Also, NPCs and adversaries should never fail forward. The GM shouldn’t ever be frustrated by the Players’ Characters’ success in the adventure. TTRPGs aren’t adversarially competitive games (even Call of Cthulhu!). Or at least they aren’t any more.

    Remember, the Game Master’s job is to provide challenges to the players who resolve them through their characters. TTRPGs have evolved a long way from it’s wargaming roots. Even if you’re not “telling a story” with your adventure, you are engaging in drama. The purpose, is to have fun, not slog away under a series of cold dice rolls.

  • The Silver Princess

    The Silver Princess

    Adapting early D&D Adventures

    One of my favorite old adventures for D&D is Palace of the Silver Princess by Jean Wells (and re-written by Tom Moldvay). I want to focus on Jean’s adventure, because it is really good and introduces a role-playing element that was missing for those first half-dozen years of D&D, a story.

    The controversy surrounding this adventure deserves mention, and it has been the subject of a huge volume of articles and analysis over these past four and a half decades. I won’t rehash it here. It involves that mix of Satanic Panic, Sexual Panic, and Mysogyny that was sweeping the MidWest in 1980 and would consume the country for the next decade. It got Jean’s original published adventure pulled from shelves, then rewritten by tom with some controversial illustrations removed to appease the angry moralists (who wouldn’t ever play D&D because they got far more satisfaction from displaying Moral Fiber).

    A cropped image of Illusion of the Decapus by Laura Roslof.

    Art by Erol Otus. Soup’s on fam!

    I can feel my “moral fiber” fraying at the ends… Again, if you want to explore this early controversy in D&D, there are a lot of very detailed and attributed articles out there.

    The thing I like about Palace of the Silver Princess, and why I choose it to adapt it to 5th edition and run it for the new generation of gamers is what Jean Wells brought to D&D through it. Palace of the Silver Princess is a Fairy-Tale Romance. With a hidden valley, a lost princess and a bold knight all under a wicked curse that a group of heroes can break.

    I also believe that this is what a woman’s perspective (in 1980, when beardy wargaming dudes were arguing over whether or not a Bec-de-Corbin was more effective against Field Plate than the Bohemian Ear Spoon) brought to role-playing games. The effort was both well appreciated by this blogger, and well punished by executives.

    Getting to the Point

    When I adapt these adventures to play in 5th edition D&D (but, these principles can be adapted to the game system you prefer) I start with the source material. Most of these old adventures can be found as pdfs for cheap all over the internet. What you’ll need most is a notebook or text file to jot down notes.

    First, read through the adventure. For most of these early adventures it’s not much. 32 to 64 pages, anything longer would normally be called a “supermodule” even then, Temple of Elemental Evil is only 128 pages long. Read through the whole thing, take notes.

    Next, compare the encounters to the resources in the rule set you want to convert to. Most adversaries have stat blocks in the rules you are using. Orcs, for example can be found in every edition of D&D (even the 2024 monster manual see my article about it). For most adventures, the balance of the encounters doesn’t change all that much in the context of the rules. If anything, many encounters get easier. Going back to Orcs for a moment, in first edition AD&D and BECMI, orcs are a hard fight for a first level party, one-to-one. They often have more hit points than most first level classes, and equal hit points to a fighter. They fight like a fighter, and have equivalent armor and weapons. By the time 3rd edition and later, the balance swings towards the player-characters. Same holds true for most other creatures in these early versions.

    Adjust the encounters. after reading through the adventure and noting all the encounters as written, take a look in the context of the adventure’s plot. If it looks too hard, adjust some details to make it easier. If it looks too easy, beef it up a little. Don’t just consider the raw stat blocks, look at the context of the encounter. Is it an ambush? Is the adversary asleep, or distracted, or can they be easily fooled. All encounters are not toe-to-toe combats. Consider the encounter’s challenge in light of what it is supposed to do for the adventure. This is also your opportunity as Game Master to tailor the adventure that is published for a wide audience to your group of player characters.

    Don’t be afraid to change things. Does one of the characters have a flaw that drives them to hate a monster type, but that monster doesn’t appear in the adventure? Add them in. It’s really easy to take an Orc encounter and make it a Hobgoblin encounter. Do your players not like fighting Zombies? Replace them with a construct of a similar CR. Does your setting not have flashy magic? Change that spell from fireball to a pot of flaming oil that drops in the same spot. Tailoring an otherwise generic adventure to your specific party of player-characters will make the adventure a lot more impactful and memorable.

    Finally, take all these notes and make them easy for you to reference during game play. You don’t have to rewrite the whole thing. Just look at the notebook you wrote all these thoughts down on and put it on a format that will help you run the adventure at the table. Don’t rely on having the books at the table, then at the start of the encounter, flip back and forth. That will kill all the momentum that the adventure is building and frustrate both you and your players. My point here is to make it easy on yourself in the way that’s easiest for you to understand. If you are brand new and haven’t developed this skill, don’t worry. Use the format that is printed in the adventure as a guide. As you run more adventures in D&D, you’ll discover what works best for you.

    Old Adventures are a Great Resource

    There is now a fifty-year library of content for Dungeons and Dragons now. Not just Dungeons and Dragons published by Wizards of the Coast and TSR before that. There are adventures and content published by dozens (if not hundreds) of third-party companies going back to the beginning. There is an inexhaustible supply of adventures that we can choose from.

    Lots of these early adventures were touchstones for the D&D community. Adventures like Keep on the Borderlands, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, Village of Hommlet, Slave Pits of the Undercity, Vault of the Drow and so many others were run and played at countless table, and it formed a common reference for players. It didn’t even matter that your table didn’t play in the supported campaign world, you could plug the adventure into your home setting and play it nearly out of the box. When you use these adventures at your table, for your players, who may have not even heard of it, you connect yourself to this legacy.

    One More Thing

    Converting these old adventures also teach you skills that can be used in your Game Master career. By reading and analyzing adventures, you are teaching yourself how they are designed. You can learn what elements of adventure design appeal to you and use these skills in creating your own adventures.

    This is a technique taught to art students for centuries. Go to where the masters’ works are on display, bring your supplies and reproduce it. The student’s effort probably won’t look like the masterwork, but it will teach the student to apply the same techniques and learn skills that their instructor couldn’t teach.

    Converting the early adventures for fantasy roleplaying into a modern system will improve your GM skills. They might even inspire you to design your own unique adventures.

  • Alignment and Personality

    Alignment and Personality

    More Dezzy’s House Rules for D&D

    Alignment is an artifact of the earliest days of D&D. According to legend, Gary Gygax adopted the mechanic after the players in those early campaigns kept lying, cheating, and murdering one another (and the nearby town) to get treasure and magic items. Alignment was also inspired by Moorcock’s Eternal Champion stories where cosmic forces of Law and Chaos struggled to shape the multiverse. Characters, like the Eternal Champions were agents of those forces. Alignment also served as shorthand, identifying friends and foes, “good-guys” and “bad-guys”. It worked fine for those early development from wargaming, but as players explored the game, it became a crutch, or worse, a straitjacket.

    Alignment As Short-hand

    How I run alignment currently is as a short-hand to help with character consistency. In a time when weeks or months can pass between game sessions, how we remember our characters drifts. A trait that was central to the character can become neglected, especially of the current multi-session adventure provides little opportunity to express that trait. Sometimes the motivation behind a characters actions looses it’s focus. Having a simple, evocative term to help ground the character has value.

    As first edition AD&D defines Alignment, there are two axes that creates the term. One axis is a Law – Neutrality – Chaos (which is also the original Alignment spectrum), the other axis is Good- Neutrality – Evil. The combination of them tells us something about the character. Lawful characters are inclined to order and structure, Evil characters are self-serving and callous, Neutral characters have no strong associations with the poles of that axis.

    There is a well known problem with the Good-Evil axis in this system. “Good” and “Evil” in the real world are generally considered subjective based on the consensus of the culture that one is acting within. (an admittedly crude definition, I’m no Philosophy major). In the context of Dungeons and Dragons, Good and Evil are objective and aligned with cosmic forces that reflect in the outer planes. In practical terms, what constitutes Good or Evil is in the hands of the Game Master and the Players in the campaign.

    In these early editions, Alignment is restrictive towards what classes players may choose for their characters. Paladins, most famously, must be Lawful Good. Thieves cannot have Good as a component of their alignment, Druids must be “true” Neutral (meaning neutral on both axes). This often led to endless debates over what all that meant. Can a Thief really be Lawful Neutral? Their class abilities, especially Picking Pockets, Sneaking Around and that Back Stab attack are hardly reflective of a Lawful mindset. Are characters following a Chaotic Good Deity simply prevented from being Paladins? What about rebels fighting a tyrannical kingdom? Can they be Lawful and still fight the established order? Can they be Good and still support slavery because it’s legal? It was a murky pool to wade into.

    5th ed Personal Characteristics

    5th edition added more tools for character definition, Personal Characteristics. Four categories; Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws were one sentence or one phrase descriptors of a character’s persona. They were more detailed than just a simple two axis alignment and since the persona categories used sentences and phrases, players could define their characters much more precisely. They’re no longer simply “Chaotic Neutral”, 5th ed characters are Chaotic Neutral and Have Never Lost Their Child-like Sense of Wonder, Never Sticks to A Single Set of Rules, Does What They Can to Protect the Natural World, and Is Always Changing Their Mind.

    The “Ideals” category often has alignment recommendations. Helping the player to choose an Ideal that compliments their Alignment choice.

    Finally, ever since 3rd edition, alignment restrictions on classes have been removed, which has removed Alignment from being a requirement to make a character. In modern D&D Alignment has become nothing more than a soft statistic that shapes but not defines a character.

    Personal Characteristics as Alignment Replacement

    This is the mechanic I’ll be using in my D&D games going forward. The classic alignment axis system still exists, but only as an organizing framework for the outer planes and as shorthand for minions, NPCs and Monsters, not player characters.

    For player characters there are three Personal Characteristics that serve the purpose that Alignment did.

    Bonds: the connection the character has with others, family, companions, their home village, etc..

    Ideals: the character’s motivations, why they continue pursuing adventure even after they experience setbacks and obstacles.

    Flaws: those aspects of a character’s personality that hinder their own efforts.

    At character creation, each personal characteristic is assigned a short statement that describes them. Each characteristic will reflect an alignment component; Good, Evil, Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral. Bonds and Ideals cannot be in opposing alignments, one cannot be good, while the other is evil, or one cannot be lawful wile the other is chaotic. Neutral alignment is not considered in opposition with any other alignment. These two personal characteristics can have the statements that invoke the same alignment.

    Flaws must invoke an alignment in opposition to at least one of the two other personal characteristics. In the case of Neutral Bonds or Ideals, the Flaw has to be non-neutral.

    If the players play their personal characteristics appropriately and in a way that disadvantages the character by the choice, the Game Master may award them Heroic Inspiration, if the character already has Heroic Inspiration they may give it to another character who does not, and if everyone in the party has Heroic Inspiration, the player can increase their character’s Doom Die by 1 die type (maximum of d8)

    Seasons change, and so did I

    (with apologies to the Guess Who for the line)

    Players may choose to change their character’s personal characteristics when the character gains a new Experience Level. They may add an additional Bond, Ideal, and Flaw when they advance to Tier 2, and again at Tiers 3 and 4. These changes and additions are optional to the player and can only be chosen upon gaining a new experience level.

    Conclusion

    This house rule for Alignment isn’t a straitjacket, and should not be enforced as such. These traits are intended to be tools for character development. Relating them to alignments helps to define a character’s morality and ethics. While the subjective terms “Good” and “Evil” are employed as components of this mechanic, I argue here that those terms, and we’ll thrown in Law, Chaos and Neutrality in there too, are intended for each group of gamers to determine for themselves and agree to amongst one another. These terms of moral and ethical philosophy can and will change for each of us over the course of our lives. Gods only know what I thought was “Good” and “Evil” when I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons four and a half decades ago are not the same as they are at the time I’m writing this, and will likely evolve some more before I’m finished playing D&D.

    (If I get my wish, that will be another four and a half decades from now, I’m not eager to reach the end of this journey any time soon)

    Point being, Dungeons and Dragons (and all tabletop roleplaying games) belong to everybody playing them and we’re allowed to define alignment and personality traits to suit our table just as much as we can decide whether or not Orcs have pig snouts or not. There is no wrong answer, there never was.

    (Featured Art by Becky Peltier http://www.artofbeckypeltier.com)

  • I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell

    I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell

    I know, right now, you can’t tell

    …with apologies to Matchbox 20 for using their lyrics in my title.

    I was introduced to Call of Cthulhu right after Dungeons and Dragons. My friends and I had all sorts of those thin little boxed editions from Chaosium back in the 80s. The Sanity mechanic they pioneered was, if you’ll forgive me, mind-bending. Our characters weren’t just at risk of death that would remove them from play, they could lose their minds! The horrors of the Mythos could break them beyond the players’ ability to play them.

    Over four, nearly five, decades that mechanic has evolved and has been adapted to the point where, “making a SAN check” or “lost some Sanity Points” is a part of our gaming language, beyond horror roleplaying or even tabletop gaming. We can even say it’s part of the fabric of gaming.

    But things change…

    Those terms; santiy, insanity, crazy, they’re all antiquated at best, and prejudiced at worst. They perpetuate a stigma towards real-world neurodivergent or traumatized people. I kinda get it, this is a game, make believe, there aren’t any Shoggoths, or Vampires, or Secret Math that breaks people’s mental and emotional stability.

    There is real world trauma, though. People are subjected to all to real horrors, and just like the body can be injured, so can the mind. People can be born with physical impairments and people are also born with neuro-divergent conditions. These people play tabletop roleplaying games too. They want to portray aspects of themselves in their own stories too.

    My change to terminology

    I am renaming a lot of the terms in this mechanic going forward in my games. A characters replacement for their sanity pool I’m calling Stability. Damage and checks are re-termed as Stress. Effects of accumulated stress are re-termed as Trauma. Enforced behavior from Trauma I’m calling Compulsions.

    The mechanic is the same as that found in all the editions of Call of Cthulhu, or Basic Roleplaying. It’s just the terminology that changes. Instead of making Sanity checks, the player makes Stability checks, they suffer Stress instead of Sanity Damage, and they develop Traumas instead of Insanity.

    Delta Green

    The Call of Cthulhu based game Delta Green by Arc Dream Publishing adds a new twist to this mechanic that I love. Agents in Delta Green all start with 5 bonds with NPCs, representing family, friends, lovers, contacts and peers. They can develop more through roleplaying during game play, and each bond has a score between 1 and their Charisma score. The higher the score, the stronger the bond is.

    Bonds can be spent in place of reducing Stress. For every point of a Bond used in this manner the amount of Stress taken is reduced by the same amount. When a Bond’s score reaches zero, it’s broken, and the NPC is estranged from the Agent. I love how this simulates the toll that a horror campaign takes on the characters, stealing the people in their lives and isolating them. Agents in Delta Green, as they learn more and more secrets become less and less relatable until they are all alone in a dingy, empty room surrounded by corkboard and string.

    I’ll be adding and adapting this mechanic to my future horror campaigns.

    Conclusion

    Tabletop gaming continues to evolve. There was a time, especially in the horror genre where consent was really not offered, and when it was asked for, the player was told (rather condescendingly) that “it’s just make believe, stop being so sensitive”. Shock horror techniques involving blood, gore, violations and over-the-top violence was common, and reflected the media era that tabletop evolved with. It didn’t matter if things like sexual assault or extreme violence harmed some players, it was expected that if you sat down at a table for a game of horror you as the player were agreeing to be exposed to these things.

    We’ve come a rather long way in forty years. Consent is a large part of this progress. The recognition of a social contract at the gaming table is transforming our hobby to one of shared experience. I think this adjustment in terminology is a small step in pushing the appeal of gaming forward. If referring to a character’s mental state as being Stable and Stressed helps a player feel less judged for their own struggles, especially if they keep those struggles to themselves, this is a good thing. If everyone at the table is empowered to express what boundaries they have without fear of judgement prevents hurtful mistakes that invokes a trauma that affects the player, then we can tell better stories with one another.

    Older gamers, elder nerds are no longer gatekeepers to the clubhouse, checking everyone’s tolerance and understanding of details. We have a responsibility to new and old players alike to use the experience we have earned at the table to make these games a fun escape for everyone who wants to join in.

  • Slavery in Swords & Sorcery

    Slavery in Swords & Sorcery

    Veiling our crimes behind a smiling historical mask

    I’m designing an Underdark adventure. It’s deep below the surface of the world, closer to the wicked empires of Dark Elves, Grey Dwarves, Mind Flayers and Kuo-Toa. In the setting for this adventure, there is a settlement. A small semi-permanent collection of structures and tents that’s grown up at a crossroads next to an underground lake.

    And it has a slave market.

    The institution in the Underdark

    Within the adventure location there are bands of escaped slaves and posses of slave hunters playing cat-and-mouse in the lightless tunnels. There’s a party of death-worshiping drow more than willing to sacrifice anyone they capture to the Demon Prince of Undeath. Bad people making bad choices and doing bad things. It’s one of the dangers of the adventure that the characters need to overcome.

    Slavery and the trafficking of people remain an evil. Simulating this evil in game doesn’t make it better. Worse, making the institution of slavery a part of a role-playing game can trivialize the impact of it.

    It’s true that whole ethnicities of people were owned throughout history. The struggle for them to win their freedom is both centuries long and ongoing even today. Just because there’s no antebellum aristocrat in a smart white suit sipping bourbon on the front porch of his plantation, doesn’t mean that slavery remains very real, and remains an ethnically motivated practice.

    As a middle-aged, masc presenting white person, it is cruel to pretend that slavery, even in game, is normalized. Especially if I have players at my table whose families may well have been enslaved in the not-to distant past. It is likewise cruel to place a player in the position of being a slave owner, appeaser of slavery as an institution or have their character be a slave without the player’s active consent.

    Gaming and Consent

    Since I mentioned consent, I should expound. Tabletop Role Playing is a communal experience. At least two people interacting to tell an improvised story about the Game Master’s adventure and the Player’s Original Character. Because of that, the players and Game Master need mutual, and active consent when playing.

    This extends to most interactions in game. But where it runs into the question of humanity, that interaction is critical. If any party at the table doesn’t want to be confronted with dark or transgressive subject matter, those wishes need to be respected. This includes enslavement and institutional slavery.

    Real World Institutions vs In-World Lore

    For as long as I’ve been gaming, there has always been this loud, obnoxious, background noise advocating for more “Historical Realism” in Tabletop role-playing. Everything from disparaging Hit Points, to weapon space, and for the modern and future settings, the minutae of guns. I’ve seen hundreds of systems and house-rules. Most of them bogging down the game as the table comes to a screeching halt as we figure out what body-part just got hit by which attack.

    The other historical rabbit-hole is environmental realism. Great Lords ruled over peasants, the aristocracy were allowed to do whatever they wanted because they were the rulers. Gods, after Braveheart roared through the community like so many screaming extras, the term Prima Noctis started cropping up everywhere. Of course, enslavement of every historical stripe has long been a yardstick by which “immersion” was measured. Lawful and Good alignments were construed to support the institution. It was deemed, “ok” and “natural” and because it was imaginary roleplay, wasn’t really real. Like I mentioned up in the consent section, if that’s what the table agrees to, then enjoy your game. I’m not trying to police your table.

    But, when you hear my game in the FLGS, or play at my table at convention, don’t expect to go to the market and buy yourself a slave. I don’t have fun being a GM who plays the slaver, or the enslaved. I don’t care for “historical realism”. At best it’s whitewashed History, at worst it’s a power fantasy about owning people.

    What about those Slavers hanging out in the Underdark?

    I started this essay with the adventure and setting I’m designing. By having slavery as an institution in the background, I’m hoping to allow the tables who utilize my adventure some freedom to adjust it’s impact to suit their taste. There’s a group of escaped slaves and there’s a band of hunters chasing them, it’s up to the players and their characters to react to that set of encounters. It’s up to the Game Master to determine it’s importance. Slavers have made great antagonists in fiction for a very long time. One of the first series of adventures published for AD&D was the A-Series of modules, collectively known as “Against the Slave Lords”. One of the classic cues that there is something “bad” about a given realm is the presence or absence of legal slavery. I’m not saying “don’t use slavery at all in D&D”, I’m asking to put some thought into whether or not it contributes to the story that’s being made at your table.

    And, for the Seven Heavens, don’t justify it behind the excuse of “slavery was common in 3rd Century Rome (or 16th century France, or choose your historical era here)”. Tabletop roleplaying isn’t about historical accuracy, it’s about having fun with your friends, and making new ones.