Forgotten Realms Personalities - what levels are they again?

Everyone knows about Elminster, right? Lot of people have also heard of some dark skinned elf with some feline companion from some kind of novel or three, right? Mary Sue, anyone?

So everyone knows that there are multiple high level personalities in the Forgotten Realms. Many of us feel that those long lists of people in the setting books are slightly intimidating. Is there any space for the stories of my character?

I decided to sum the level of the named personalities in the grey box for Forgotten Realms, FR1 Waterdeep and FR5 The Savage Frontier (all for 1st ed. AD&D) and see what the average level is of them. It might give you a hint of what might be the best books to use, and if FR is a place for your heroes to make their mark. The results are interesting.

Grey Box - 9
Waterdeep - 6.5
Savage Frontier - 13.333

What do you say about that? Considering the box is detailing a significant part of a whole continent, it's not surprising to have a few level 26 individuals in there. But, the average lands right in the sweet spot for "name level", which kind of makes sense if these are the people who are significant enough to stand out. They have begun to make their mark in the world, which with player characters happens at "name level". Maybe FR is not so filled with demigods after all?

Lets then look at the metropolis, Waterdeep. Considering this is the most densely populated place in the realms, you would imagine this is a place you are quite likely to find those big wigs.  Interestingly, there are some character in the upper teens, but not as many as I expected. The movers and shakers are described in vague terms, and the so called "Lords of Waterdeep" are actually secret, which makes it easy to slip in a player character or two in there.

Then, finally, we have Paul Jaquays. While I have a healthy amount of respect for the man as a dungeon designer, I think I know where I don't like his world building. In the Savage Frontier we have him fleshing out the wilds around Waterdeep and he adds a few high level personalities. By adding in his marvellous The Enchanted Wood adventure material for DragonQuest (which I happen to have an extra copy of, if anyone is interested), he manages to up the epic feel quite a bit. I remember someone posted that they felt FR5 was a bit much, when a section about random events mentioned two flying castles with dragons crawling over them passing overhead, locked in a wizardly duel. I think I agree. This book adds way to much. In my FR I think I will pass on it, however much I like Jaquays' dungeons.

I don't have many more of the earliest FR books for 1st ed. Since Ed Greenwood wrote the one on the Red Wizards, and they are all over the Grey Box as the big evil force, I feel tempted to to a similar analysis of that one. I have Moonshae, but it feels a bit separated from the rest of the world.

So, while it seems like the reputation FR has of a myriad of high powered NPCs is not totally unfounded, I think it is not found in all the sources. Personally I can't stand game novels, and I have stayed away from most of the 2nd ed. source books as well, since most of those are written after the novels started to flow out of TSR. If those are ignored, and some source books are screened, I think there are space left in the Forgotten Realms for your heroes.

A campaign which uses the Grey Box as a basis, adds Waterdeep and takes that Old West feel, might be a "Greenwood-ian" realms, and one wherein your adventures might not only fit, but also make an impact on the world. That's how I would run it.

Where to start a campaign in the Forgotten Realms?

It has been fairly quiet around here a while now. I have been playing some D&D 3rd ed. but it is summertime and the regular slow down when everyone is on vacation this or that week until September.

Like I wrote before, I have been reading DragonQuest and different Forgotten Realms source books, and nurturing some hope of combining the two. Today's question is where to place the "home base" and centre of adventures? I'm going to think out loud somewhat.

Ed Greenwood detail the Dalelands in the grey boxed set, and it's clear that that area and the kingdom of Cormyr is where his players spent a lot of the early years. I have the module FRQ1 Haunted Halls of Eveningstar, which is situated in Cormyr, but suitably close to the "wilderlands" and the "borderlands" or high adventure. Sure sounds like a nice place to start off, eh?

One good thing with Eveningstar is that there are enough NPC detailed for them to be fun to interact with without being drowned in them. Also, the average level is actually around 5-ish and that makes them "within reach" so to speak. Secondly, there's a dungeon near, and a small keep with traps and some badlands with monsters. A little bit of everything, wilderness, "city" and dungeon.

The Dalelands then. There are lots of people to interact with in Shadowdale, but maybe a little too many. In the grey box there's a census report of every stead and its inhabitants! I'm vary of trying to fit a bunch of PC in there. Maybe it can be used as a blue print for another similar dale, but frankly I am a bit confused. What did TSR think you would use all that data for? The good thing is there are some small hills with nasty rumours, some holes in the ground and some intrigue. I'm not sure about the Dalelands, though. It feels like Harn in a way, and for me that is not positive. Who's pig is that again? How many silver does a farm hand need to be paid per fortnight? Anyone?

The third alternative is the city of Waterdeep. Now, that would mean no wilderness adventure, and the dungeons would in all likelihood mean Undermountain. That sound kind of intriguing. The myriad of NPCs is another thing to think about. How many movers and shakes do I want to juggle? A quick sum shows that interestingly enough, the average level of the named personalities of Waterdeep is actually just 6.5! Considering FR has a reputation of NPC demigods that is very interesting! I foresee many opportunities for players to make a difference in a not too distant future with that kind of competition. Suddenly Waterdeep looks like it just passed the Dalelands in my personal list of starting locales. There's enough going on, and you could easily find work both honest and more shady. Eveningstar is slighly smaller and manageable, though.

I'd love to hear if anyone has any experiences to share. The feel I got from the grey box of something like the Old West, with an interesting dichotomy between the wild and the civilized intrigue me, and I'm still pondering how to emphasize that, in whatever local I choose as a starting point.

A new "one page dungeon"-like project

For those of you who have missed it, the excellent podcast Happy Jacks RPG Podcast are having a contest in the style of the One Page Dungeon one. It's called 2 Sides: 1 Epic, which I personally think sounds fairly bland, but the idea is solid. You have one sheet of paper, now cover both sides with your generic adventure and tag it with genre tags, and your name and send it in.

I'm pretty sure Stu and crew would love to see some more contributors. I'm trying to come up with one myself. Check it out!

D&D Next epic fail

I still have not been able to download the next version av D&D, have not gotten any new link as a replacement for faulty links (which I found out abouf of their existence from a podcast) and still a HTTP error when I try to access the tab to contact WotC to tell them it does not work.

The guys who work with computers at WotC: epic fail, guys!

Should the documents happen to find their way to me some how, I would love to take a peek. The likelihood of WotC getting even a cent from me is now pretty slim, though...

Forgotten Dragonquest

I have gotten this idea, that I want to use DragonQuest for something. Since I have just been re-reading the grey box Forgotten Realms the first thought that struck me was to combine the two. Have anyone out there tried it?

Somebody, I have forgotten where I read it, wrote that the feel of that early FR is very much like the Old West. It's a borderland where civilization is slowly being established, and the daily experience of the encroaching wilderness. I happen to be a big fan of Westerns, so I'm totally buying that depiction of the Forgotten Realms. But, this also made me think about other settings where the "feel" have suddenly clicked for me. Forgotten Realms was never presented that way.

One day when I was browsing the setting book for Kingdoms of Kalamar, I suddenly realized that the schtick this setting had was not to be special at all! The special about it was that it was just a quasi medieval setting presented in as a clear and "realistic" way as possible. No oddities or specials like Talislanta or Tekumel. Take apeek at the books and you will find that was exactly what was described on the can. God knows why I hadn't understood that. This was kind of the inverse of the experience of FR.

I still haven't gotten that feeling for Greyhawk.

D&D sure is popular too...

I have gotten my download link for the D&D Next play test, but it is broken, and the page where you can click to email WotC is also broken...

Really solid impression your give me, guys!

T&T sure is popular

Dave Arneson's personal copy of 2nd ed T&T just sold on eBay for $347.00 and I guess that is a sign of a popular game. Yes, I did bid. No, not $300.

T&T hacks - D6 Star Wars

Some people likes their games wild and crazy, some want it more downplayed and subdued. If you like me have looked fondly on DARO (Doubles Add and Roll Over, the exploding dice mechanic of T&T) results in the stratosphere, you probably like it wild.

Maybe T&T does not need any more of that juice? Well, let's take a look at another way to inject some unpredictability in your game. Let's take a cue from the WEG edition of the Star Wars RPG.

In SW, you used a dice pool system. Traits where rated in dice and you gathered them all up and rolled and summed them. Kind of familiar territory so far. There was an additional quirk, though. In addition to the dice from your traits, you also rolled a Wild Die. Since I only have the 2nd ed. of the Star Wars game, I am not 100% sure if this mechanic was there from the start, and I know it was tweaked in later editions of the rules. So, what use is the Wild Die? Simple. It makes a situation a little more interesting.

To incorporate the Wild Die in your T&T game, just take one of the dice you use and make sure it's special. My T&T dice used to be the black ones with a troll or the T&T logo instead of a one, but I gave all those away. Nowadays I use ten white Gamescience dice. For a Wild Die, I use my blood read die with the Minotaur logo from my former FLGS. Make sure it stand out!

When you roll your dice, keep an eye on that special one, the red one in my case. If it turns up a six or a one, it's time to rumble.

1. Something just happened, and it is not to your favour. If you made your roll, you still made it, but another complication shows up. Say that you rolled a SR on DX to jump over a chasm. Maybe you got over safe, but that belt pouch of yours dropped down into the depths! Say that you rolled a SR on CHA to intimidate those hyenakin you let you pass, but now they insist on accompanying the brave adventurers and making a nuisance of themselves and making it impossible to sneak up on that dragon. I don't think I have to give any examples of what happens when you fail and roll a 1. Bad stuff. You'll have to determine before the game how harsh you want to be.

6. Some just happened, and it was to your favour! If you failed your roll, you still failed, but something happened that opened up new venues to approach the problem. Say you failed to intimidate that hyenakin chief, but he instead haughtily proclaim that such an insult to his honour has to be answered the traditional way, with a duel. At the chess board. Maybe you'll win that challenge? The icing on the cake that a success and a 6 is combined need to be elaborated. We all like cake, or pie. Maybe both.


Optional: I think the Wild Die is used to best effects on SRs on stats, but feel free to add it to combat as well.

I hope you think these hacks sounds interesting and inspire you to try them, or your own variant thereof, in your next T&T game.

Fight on!

When horror hits home - an experiment with Unknown Armies

So we have just finished a session of Unknown Armies, and it really left the players feeling confused, and a bit freaked out I think. Was that good or bad? I'm going to think out loud about some of that.

First impressions from behind the screen is of satisfaction. I finally got to run a game that reads great, it's the best written RPG bar none, and even though I had to flip through the book a lot, it worked out ok.

We played one of the scenarios in the back of the 2nd ed rules, called Bill in Three Persons. This is a scenario full of weirdness, and also some really twisted NPCs and lot of opportunities to trying to cope in a world full of hard knocks. I thought it had lot of potential, and it had the excellent qualities of working fine with characters (and players!) that know nothing of the setting and don't know each other beforehand.

Once again, my players surprised me by not interacting with the NPCs. I guess I should have learned by now that these players wont actually approach and talk to everyone they meet, like I do when I play. When I asked them after the session, one of the actually said it was a weird scenario, where they was whisked from place to place and didn't have much people to talk to. How does that jive with their efforts to avoid interacting with the NPCs in the game? Maybe they were too freaked out by them? Let me take an example, with spoilers for the scenario, so be forewarned.

The scenario is in three parts, and is about how to three times encounter the person Bill Toge, and maybe put him on a different path in life than the one the PC encounter in the starting scene. Bill is not a very nice person, or at least a person who has been roughened up by life quite a bit. In our session the first part ended with Bill shooting one PC in the chest before being shot to death by a police sniper. I guess that established him as dangerous, and so dangerous that the players stayed out of his way in the rest of the session! That kind of puts a damper on the NPC interaction opportunities when he in the main NPC in every scene.

Mood wise I think the game worked perfectly, though. After the first 10 minutes everyone was already feeling freaked out and everyone could see their world trying to burst its seams. It was very David Lynch, so to speak. I loved it, and I those who commented said they loved it as well. That brings me to another point. How does it compare to Call of Cthulhu we played the session before that?

CoC ended with everyone mad or going mad in the alien city of Carcosa after seeing some alien monsters grabbing them and flying through space. In UA on the other hand, they had seen low life crooks getting shot, child molesters being harassed and drugged cultist being taken out by police. And getting shot. I think it all felt a bit more real.

It will be very interesting to compare when I finally run a modern CoC scenario, if it hits closer to home that way. I know that the idea of alien non euclidean angles and books about arcane non human knowledge doesn't sound horrifying to many modern people, as my players. Modern horrors, and modern non-Lovecraftian ones, feel more real.

After this run, I think it's time for something of a different genre. Horror wear out, and post apocalyptic gaming beckons, or Old West, or science fiction, or something else. But, I will run more Unknown Armies in the future, now I know for sure!

How dynamite solved the problem

\The last Saturday was the final session for my Call of Cthulhu game. I say final, and I think you can guess what that means?

All in all, Tell me, have you seen the Yellow Sign? was a very good scenario. It was well structured, and had enough support for the Keeper to keep focused on what was going on in the setting. I liked the story and plot, and how it had a strong theme that came out in play. So how did it feel in play, after all was said and done?

Our intrepid investigators finally decided on a trek out in the swamp lands after finding the occult bookstore, and seeing too many signs and needing someone to tell them what the relation to the raid of 1907 was. It turned out they found the gate, the site where the coronation and the calling of Hastur would take place. They spent some time debating the best cause of action and finally decided to build bonfires and use heat and cold water to break up the standing stones at the ceremonial site. Not too bad an idea.

The next night they were woken in the night my thugs dragging them away to the main cultist, Papa Screech, and taken to Carcosa via Byakhee. The experience made them all really shaken, and the poor journalist who was formerly experienced temporary insanity turned totally bonkers. There we left them, having saved the world but having lost themselves. Very Call of Cthulhu, I'd say.

It was kind of telling that in the end what they needed most and couldn't get was dynamite. Very Call of Cthulhu I'd say.

I loved being the Keeper of CoC, and hope to do it soon again!

Now it's time for a one shot of Unknown Armies before the big summer mess arrived and everyone travels around and have no time for gaming.