Session Two Notes and NPC Development

The second session of the game accomplished quite a bit, I'm happy to say. Over the course of the night, the adventurers delved into gathering information pertinent to their personal goals, joined up again, and started to get to know some of the NPCs around them. Obviously, rejoining a split party is a huge benefit for most campaigns. But the other two developments - both indications that they're beginning to immerse themselves into the game world - and I'm even more excited about that. The best lesson on running a game I can offer is to figure out what gets your players engaged and then giving them more of it. Offer small diversions, and when they become interested in the stories that flow out of the diversion (or when they enjoy the style of the story), build more from those. Successful, fun campaigns often evolve out of players obsessing over a side plot as long as the DM is willing to make more out of the side plot.

We're jumping into the deep stuff right away in this post, apparently. Following a summary of the session, I'm going to talk about my method for developing NPCs and how to place them into a campaign without planning ahead. As a side note, the player who controls Gerald wasn't able to join us until midway through the session, so Gerald's having run off on his own was an easy way to deal with his player's absence.

At the end of the previous session, Gerald had run away to be by himself; Ell had gone with Fiskar and Ren the mysterious elf to get dessert and wine; Carric and Dez had returned to Gilly at the Temple of Pelor's Grace. We began with Carric and Dez. Gilly was surprised that another person was interested in the plague, and the group discussed what little information they had. Gilly asked them to obtain a book from the royal library about diseases. Carric cast Detect Poison/Disease on a plague victim and discovered that it registers as positive on a spell detecting disease as well as for magic. Carric and Dez then headed for a prestigious school called the Worley Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Meanwhile, Ell, Fiskar, and Ren arrived at The Purple Stocking and enjoyed fine wines and desserts. The three assassins/bounty hunters/whatever term you choose discussed their shared profession in veiled terms. Ren described Clan Born at Night, a collective he created. The group of bounty hunters he works and lives with are his family, he told them. He then asked to speak with Fiskar alone. Ell went outside and watched their conversation from a covert position, but wasn't able to discern what was said. Fiskar left the bar, and Ell joined up with him. Fiskar tried to describe Ren and then divulged information about the fall of Talon Gorge, a huge city to the north. Fiskar produced an ornate chess piece (the bishop) and gave it to Ell, explaining that he had pilfered it from the palace as parts of the city crumbled. They returned to their motel and went to their respective rooms to sleep.

Back at the academy, Dez and Carric began investigating. Carric interviewed the professor of magic during class, asking if he knew anything about the plague or whether there were any children in the academy he worried about. The professor said that a student of his had gone missing a few months before. Dez talked to a student in time out, Cedric. They discussed his favorite books, his love of fiddling with magic and with glyphs*, and his sister, who had gone missing a few months before. (This probably makes it look like I was railroading them into a storyline. I hope the players didn't take it that way. It just made sense to me that two people in the same small community would both mention something about a big, scary loss.) Together, Dez and Carric spoke with Headmistress Rootblancher - but not without being tricked by Cedric into thinking the Headmistress was a man, causing an awkward laugh from most involved. The Headmistress offered some information on the missing girl, Edwinna. Classes ended for the night, and Dez and Carric left the academy with Cedric to walk him home and gather more information.

*Glyphs are a system of casting magic that I created for my podcasted campaign. The basic idea is that the 200 or so symbols I developed each correspond to a small set of concepts, like "Air/Sky/Wind," "Strong/Powerful/Potent," or "Deception/Lying/Misinformation." Casting a spell involves combining these glyphs to create a customized spell. The difficulty is that the magical energy is less tamed than with traditional casting, so a spell can be "misunderstood," so to speak; the glyphs may not combine in the way the caster thinks, and the results can be disastrous. All this is to say that a seven-year-old boy is not exactly the best candidate for fiddling with this chaotic, unpredictable magic.

A brief illustration of glyph-based casting. 

In Ell's motel room, there was a knock on the door. It was Tenk, who made an offer of employment. He also mentioned that Carric and Dez had visited the academy, though he didn't say how or why he knew. Once Tenk left, Ell went across the hall and knocked on Fiskar's door. Ell asked what Fiskar knew about Tenk, especially whether Fiskar thought it would be a good idea to accept the offer. Fiskar went back to bed, and Ell decided to check on Carric and Dez since Tenk had seemed to think it would benefit her to know about it.

Gerald's player arrived, and he took Gerald right back to The Bleeding Crown for more drinks. He struck up a conversation with the bartender, an orc named Brom. Brom offered advice on making friends, and Gerald tried making friends with the gnome sitting next to him, Spindle. The attempt did not go well, as Gerald scared and frequently insulted Spindle. After talking more about friends, Gerald decided to go try to find Carric, Dez, or Ell.

At a street corner in the northwest corner of the city, Carric, Dez, Cedric, Ell, and Gerald converged. (I will totally admit that this was some lazy railroading. The party was cool with it, though, and they went forward without questioning it.) Updates were exchanged on what had happened since they'd last met, and before too long, Cedric began talking about seeing the dead. Ghosts floated out of the darkness from all around them. They fought the ghosts and kept Cedric protected, destroying the majority of the ghosts and capturing two of them with a magical barrier. They questioned the ghosts a bit before leaving to take Cedric home.

As I said before, I'm happy with this session. I have begun to lay out multiple options for the players to consider, and I've been able to start adding more information and more depth to the areas that they'll already shown interest in. This has all been done on the fly. It becomes easier to be flexible when you haven't planned in advance, so the improvisation has really made it easy to focus on player interest. But how do you add NPCs to a game without coming up with a reason for them to be there? I want to share my process for developing NPCs (or rather, that process in part - I want to dedicate a full post, coming soon, to the information I focus on when developing a character) and getting them into an improvised campaign.

My NPC creation process usually starts with me reading something or hearing a song that seems to crystallize a thought or feeling perfectly. I choose the song as a character theme and then start building a character who is the best approximation of what someone would be like if ruled by the thought or feeling. Details get added (again, more details on this process in a future post), and the character takes shape. Adding them to the campaign requires a little patience.

I'll use as an example here an NPC who has not yet been introduced to the players. The NPC's name is Erys Wynne, and Erys is a talented, self-sufficient treasure hunter. She's cautious - she has a half dozen aliases to keep people from targeting her, for instance. She's smart - her companion is a robotic homunculus she built herself, and she's a fairly expert wizard. She's daring - she's raided some of the most dangerous tombs and best hundreds of foes (even though she never kills those who she fights). Erys is a fun character I salvaged from a campaign that never quite made it past the third session or so. As much as I want her in the mix right now, there's no reason that she would want to contact anyone in the party, nor would she be involved with any of the events that the group has gotten up to. So there are now options available for introducing Erys: one, the group's adventures lead them into something involving treasure hunting, or two, another NPC wants to introduce the group to her. I figure that option one is great if it comes up, but I doubt it will. Even if it did happen, I'd be spoiling the group's attempt to actually raid a tomb and get rewarded for it by including an expert who would either help or thwart them. Option two is the better hope.

A character design fairly similar to Erys. 

When you want to introduce an NPC, I stand by the "I know a person" method. When a player discusses what goals they have with an NPC, figure out if its possible that this NPC they're speaking to knows the NPC you want to bring into the campaign. If the answer is no, that's fine. You want it to make sense that the NPCs know each other. There will be other chances later. But your NPC might come up in conversation as the skilled person who may be useful or as the person who was in the right place at the right time and knows something important. This is exciting to the players - they have a potential lead on an issue they're paying attention to. The NPC you're introducing will have their full attention. Give the new character a bit of an intro (theatrical intros can be a lot of fun), and make sure there are allusions to how this NPC is special, but don't throw in much backstory. People don't meet each other and start swapping life stories in detail right away, and your NPC probably shouldn't either. By offering some tantalizing and incomplete information, you'll pique your players' interests and leave them curious about the NPC.

Remember that you have some leeway when it comes to adding your NPCs. For Erys, I like the idea of a bounty hunter knowing her because of occasional professional overlap, but Erys could just as easily be referred if the players need an obscure academic or magical text to be identified, if they need a guide into dangerous ruins, or if they need to know about secret passages somewhere. Erys is also a musician (a drummer and vocalist), so they could also encounter her at a tavern where she would be performing. When you enter a situation where the NPC could be, it's easy to drop them in and see if they take. If the players don't quite take to the NPC, let them leave that character alone for now and see if a future appearance has better luck. If the players never seem interested in an NPC, don't be afraid to discard them. There may be a better place for them in a future campaign, and forcing them on players doesn't make for a great experience for the players.

That's all for this time. Look out for more about NPC development and document creation in future posts, as well as updates on the third session when that finally happens (five young adult schedules are quite a scheduling obstacle to contend with). Until then, happy gaming!

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City Maps (and Feirmor!)

I shared the campaign map a while ago, along with step-by-step instructions on how to make one like it. City maps are a great deal different from large area maps like that one, however, and I'd like to share a city map and explain the importance of detail in their creation. As a case study, here is the city map of Feirmor, the first city in which the players met and are performing actual gameplay:

Feirmor, the city of Dez's birth and the campaign's true beginning.

When you develop a city for a role-playing game, it's important to build it with close attention paid to how the people in that city live. Other considerations are important, too: the city's history, rulers, and economics. Each of these factors was part of Feirmor's map, and I will explain how to create a map which reflects these ideas.

The first step with this map was creating the outline. Feirmor is a walled city, so I created the wall which protects the city. It is a simple circle with towers placed at fairly regular intervals. In Photoshop, this was as simple as placing circular towers and connecting them with a curved line. The only structures which I knew I had to include at this point were the palace and the large public square at the city's entrance. Then I set to work drawing in buildings.

The process of drawing buildings on the map is straightforward if time-consuming. I draw in boxes of various shapes (mostly squares and rectangles, but including other shapes which I use as indications of special buildings or as a particular race's style of architecture). The focus in drawing these buildings has to consider two factors. First, the size must be appropriate. I don't use a particular scale, but I try to develop a few of the smallest possible buildings for a rough scale example. When drawing larger buildings, I try to make them no larger than the owner of the building would need or be able to afford, treating the smallest buildings as a comparison of what is truly needed to survive. The second part of drawing buildings, and my favorite part of the building addition process, is placing the buildings in a shape that makes sense for roads. I place the buildings in curves and straight lines to create major streets, then fill in the blocks between major roads with smaller, tighter paths leading to buildings nestled off the beaten paths. The result is a system of roads which allows for transportation to any given building and which illustrates which buildings are likelier to have lots of traffic.

I added two large parks to Feirmor. One, the large park to the west, is called Riston Park. It is a mostly open field with a few trees. It is a marker of a higher class area of Feirmor, and the buildings nearby are the homes and businesses of upper class citizens. The other park is Malator Square, a park filled with statues, fountains, and quiet alcoves. It is near the palace and is named for the current monarchs of Feirmor; this indicates that it is a newer addition to the city. As such, it is still in the prime of its life, and it attracts the wealthier of Feirmor's citizens.

Malator Square is filled with serene places like this one. 

With all of Feirmor's land covered in buildings and parks, I began to create a district map of the city. Each of these districts is indicated by a different color scheme on the map. The Mulrennan District, for instance, is denoted by the color yellow. It is largely a commercial district, noted for its lively tavern and inn scene. At the center of the district is a circle of buildings dubbed "Six Bars." These are the most popular of Feirmor's taverns, and the Six Bars name is a reference to the location known as "Six Roads" in the Eastweald region (which you can see in the western area of the campaign map). I tried with each of the districts to choose dividing lines which offered clear borders between each cluster of buildings. Once the districts were divided, I set to work characterizing each one.

To accomplish this defining of each district, I selected one building from each district as noteworthy institutions. For each district, I tried to create a building which would suggest what sort of citizens and businesses make it up. Six Bars was the representation of the Mulrennan District. The Ostergard District in the northeast is home to the Trogan Center for Economics, an organization which caters to trade and development in and out of the city. The district's proximity to the palace and the presence of the financial headquarters of the city illustrate that it is among the most affluent in the city. Meanwhile, the Kearney Distict in the southeast is home to the Fulmora Orphanage, named for and founded by the late King Malator's wife. Along with the temples located in the Kearney District (shrines to Heironeous and St. Cuthbert, deities committed to zeal and caring for one's fellow humanoids), the Fulmora Orphanage suggests that the district is characterized as a tightly-knit community that does its best to help its neighbors. Paired with its relative lack of wealth (noted by its distance from the palace), this indicates a district which persistently helps those in need, of which there are plenty.

Temples were added along with the noteworthy buildings. I added one temple to each district (a few with more, and a few with less). These temples were placed considering what the people of Feirmor care most about and based on where each temple would find its largest audience. Temples of Chauntea and Malar, the deities of farming and the hunt, are in the district nearest the gates. This represents the interests of the farmers and hunter populations, who mostly live at the edge of or outside of the city. To facilitate the worship of these people, the temples are at the closest possible location for them. Other temples include those to Boldrei (deity of community and home), Olladra (deity of good luck and fortune), the Dalton Church of Pelor (an offshoot of the standard Church of Pelor, founded by the leaders of Dalton, a kingdom of imperialist humans from an island to the east), and the Shrine of the Many (with spaces for the non-human racial deities to worship their respective gods). These serve to illustrate that Feirmor is home to people who care deeply about their heritage and the well-being of their city. The temples each have a small icon of the deity worshipped inside its walls.

The imposing Temple of the Hunt, shrine for worshippers of Malar.

Finally, I added docks at the river's edge and a host of farms around the outside edge of the city walls. These show how the city survives, both as a shipping and trading center and as a self-sufficient state. The last step in creating the map was to make a legend in the corner. I used the city's name and population, along with color-coded boxes which show the meanings of each color on the map. For government buildings and temples, the color code was simple. Illustrating the other buildings (the vast majority of the city) was a bit of a challenge. Throughout the districts, I used a brighter, bolder color for all businesses and a lighter shade of the same color for residences. This was difficult to illustrate without words in the key, but I tried to show the lighter and darker variants of the same colors in the key as an indication of that scheme. I'm still not terribly happy with that detail, but I am largely content with the map as a whole.

I mentioned above that it's valuable to consider the way that people live when making the map. To that end, the explanation I've provided above about the locations of roads and buildings, the notable institutions, and the placement of temples answers some of that question. But the other factors I mentioned - the city's history, rulers, and economics - are valuable too.

The city's history and rulers are represented here in several ways. One of the simplest is in the naming of districts and important institutions. Each district is named for a previous ruler, so that citizens live in the domains of their city's past in much the same way that we name schools and streets for those who have marked history. To fill out more in this vein, I created a timeline of rulers for Feirmor, which has become its chronicle of leadership over time. From this roster of kings, I developed a sense of the city's legacy in the Eastweald: Feirmor aggressively expanded, inviting smaller townships nearby to relocate to Feirmor, adding to its wealth and citizenry. Former king Aldo Riston, for whom the large park is named, is commemorated for his pioneering of this policy with the broad expanse of park in the city. At the park is a plaque with his words justifying what many Eastweald residents see as a predatory practice: "There's a baby born in my kingdom every day. These are my people, and I need them to have a tomorrow they can count on. You say I'm ruthless because I compete with other settlements. I say I'm unwilling to let my people go hungry." This sort of detail, which I developed as a thread from the idea that Feirmor expanded in this way, characterizes the city and its aims in the context of the Eastweald.

Economics also come into play with the map. The docks and farms surrounding the city were a late addition; I realized that Feirmor would certainly capitalize on its location at the river's bank and that it would require a good deal of agricultural development to be self-sufficient. The inclusion of the Trogan Center for Economics indicates that the city pays active attention to its financial development, a trait that not all settlements have. Finally, considering all of these advantages and the city's attitude, there is still the matter that it isn't so populous or large as Woodhearth, the Eastweald's largest city. This seems to me to ask the question why Feirmor isn't a bigger competitor to Woodhearth or even bigger cities. The answer, I decided, lies in the walls surrounding Feirmor. It could grow bigger and more prosperous, but the city's growth is restricted by the walls. To underscore this idea, I had an NPC talk to some of the characters about Feirmor's current state; he proudly explained that Feirmor had reached its peak potential in terms of physical growth, confidently saying that it would rival Woodhearth if it were willing to sacrifice the safety afforded by the walls. This idea adds a sense that Feirmor is at an important part of its history. Affected by a plague and filled to capacity, Feirmor is at a crossroads. The characters, of course, will largely determine where Feirmor goes from here.

A crossroads in the Eastweald like any other. Right?

As you can see from the process I've explained here, there is a two-way relationship between creating the map and developing details about the city. Most of the time, you add something to the map because it is a reflection of the settlement's character. Sometimes, though, adding something to the map raises a question that you must answer, and this answer becomes part of the settlement's character. Obviously, I strive for improvisation in this campaign, but I think that making things up on the fly often yields the most entertaining and best results. Don't try to determine too much in advance when you create a city - the process of diagramming its skeleton, guts, and skin will give you every opportunity you need to create something rich in detail and consistent with your vision, whatever it might be.

Thanks for reading, and best of luck in your games. Look out for session two recap notes and more information about creating documents in coming posts. Happy gaming!

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Session One and Document Introduction

It has been quite a while since I've written here or been able to run a session, so I'm going to try to catch up a little bit until the group can find a good time to reassemble. Our first session was a bit turbulent, as is to be expected when trying to get four independent (and strong-willed, for that matter) characters in the same place at the same time and agreeing on enough things to work together.

When the individual intro sessions left off, all four of our adventurers had arrived in the city of Feirmor, all chasing different goals. Dez, a native of the city, was chasing down leads on the plague found throughout Feirmor. Ell had come from Woodhearth and was set to meet a contact to perform an assassination contract. Gerald had been brought from the small town of Splitaxe by his employer and ward, Tenk, on unnamed business. Carric had made the trip from Blackleaf Falls to investigate the plague, as a citizen of Blackleaf Falls had shown signs of infection. At the same time, a traveling circus had come to town and was drawing Feirmor's citizenry to enjoy its spectacles.

The session began with Gerald, who accompanied Tenk to a tavern called the Bleeding Crown, a simple bar near the center of town. While Tenk spoke with an associate privately, Gerald knocked back ale after ale. A young girl approached Gerald and politely asked about his appearance, wondering why he was so large and why his skin looked so strange. Gerald grew uncomfortable with the attention of many of the tavern's customers, loudly demanding that they confront him directly if they had something to say. The bar remained quiet in response. Tenk rejoined Gerald and explained that Gerald would need to "rough up" a man named Maxwell while the circus acts performed.

Meanwhile, Dez visited the temple of Pelor where her gnomish cleric contact on the plague, Gilly, worked. She checked on the young patient on whom she had cast "Protection against Evil," a boy named William. He seemed to be doing better, and regained consciousness for long enough to answer a few of Dez's questions. Gilly informed Dez that a clerk of the royal court, a woman named Violet, had fallen ill, apparently of the plague, and recommended investigating. Dez left the temple and returned to the house where she had met the Silver Flame. After some goading, the Silver Flame appeared. Dez argued with the Silver Flame a bit more about divine powers and what she could expect from her deity. Afterward, she headed to the royal library to research curses and other malignant spells to try to better address the plague. She gathered a wide selection of books about curses.

Carric went with his traveling companion Vincent (the falconer) to an inn called the Royal Gates. After checking in, they made a beeline to the palace, where they intended to search the royal library for information about the plague and about Feirmor. They were stopped at the gates by a palace guard who was unwilling to allow a drow inside the palace. Carric argued with the guard, but found no way inside the palace grounds. Vincent offered to search the library himself while Carric relaxed elsewhere (away from racist guards), so Carric made his way to a tavern: the Bleeding Crown. At the bar, Tenk introduced himself and Gerald to Carric; Tenk deduced from Carric's appearance that he was a noteworthy paladin of the Order of the Path of Light. After a brief exchange, Tenk left the tavern, asking Gerald to remain and enjoy a few more drinks. Gerald and Carric ordered meals and made awkward conversation.

At the entrance to the city, Ell made her way with traveling companion Fiskar to a seedy motel called the Golden Coin. After checking in, Fiskar recommended a tavern for drinks and food: the Bleeding Crown. [Obviously at this point, every character was being somewhat railroaded to meeting at this tavern. As I've made it clear repeatedly that restricting character and player choice is the opposite of my gaming philosophy, I'll explain why I took this route. It is incredibly difficult to guarantee that all of the characters end up in the same place at the same time. It is even harder to give them all a reason to work together. This is even more challenging when I've committed to improvising everything - I am unable to craft some sort of big bad evil guy who will threaten each member of the party and get them to unite. As a result, the workaround was to acknowledge to the player group that we would need to work as a team for a very short time to get everyone to that uniting moment. My players were willing to accept this one intrusion to open choice, and we ended up laughing harder each time the tavern's name came up. This is all to say that this will be the only exception to the rules and philosophy I keep as a Dungeon Master.] When Ell and Fiskar arrived at the Bleeding Crown, they took a seat at the bar. Carric recognized Fiskar from his intro session, and the two struck up a conversation about why they were in Feirmor. Once Ell, Carric, Gerald, and Fiskar had their food and drinks, they intermittently spoke and drank.

Back at the royal library, Dez pored through the available books on curses. She was approached by Vincent, who had several questions about the city and about what Dez was researching. Dez remained fairly tight-lipped, but did share her interest in the plague and a map of Feirmor with Vincent, who created a magical copy of it using a spell. Vincent asked Dez to accompany him to meet a friend who was also looking into the plague. The two traveled the short distance to the Bleeding Crown [cue laughter].

With the party united at the bar, everyone made quick introductions. The circus was in full swing outside, and remembering his job of "roughing up" Maxwell, Gerald ran off to the royal grounds. The rest of the party (plus Fiskar and Vincent) followed suit. As they arrived, a beast tamer began his performance with a displacer beast. The displacer beast was in no mood to be tamed, and grabbed a woman from the audience. The tamer panicked and hid, but the party stepped up to attempt to free the woman and subdue the beast. After a tense fight, the beast was rendered unconscious and the woman was saved. Gerald had entered a rage, and in this state of mind (or lack thereof, perhaps), prepared to finish the displacer beast off. Unwilling to see the creature killed if not necessary, Dez cast a spell to freeze Gerald in place. When Gerald's rage ended, Dez freed him; Gerald slunk off to the side, haunted by the experience of being imprisoned once again as he had been for most of his life. An elf (the same one who had met eyes with Ell in her intro session) stepped to the center of the stage and calmed the crowd, pointing out that everyone was safe and offering a song as the circus' final act. As the crowd began to disperse, Tenk spoke with Gerald, explaining that Maxwell was to be forgotten, and coming clean about his business: he was a contract dealer, connecting assassins and thugs to those willing to pay. Gerald refused to be a part of the violence industry and ran off, trailing colorful flowers in his path (the result of a Wild Surge effect during the combat with the displacer beast).

The party then split up for the night. Gerald returned to the Bleeding Crown, seeking more drinks. Dez and Carric went to speak with Gilly once more, working together on the plague. Ell, Fiskar, and Ren (the elf musician who had ended the night's entertainment) went to a wine and dessert bar called the Purple Stocking. Vincent went to the inn, calling it a night.

- - - - -

With the first group session concluded, it looked unlikely that the party was joined in a meaningful way. In fact, Gerald was uncomfortable with the prospect of working with Dez at all after the magical binding she had performed on him. Gerald had also taken a stance against performing violence for money, which put him in a position counter to Ell's profession, as well as Dez's. But despite the tensions, the characters had all met and accomplished a task together. Carric and Dez had significant reason to work together, at least temporarily. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

One of the important things that the first group session established was a need for several documents. As a DM, I always create a visual representation of any written or illustrated records found or used in the game. For this session, there were several documents needed. First, a map of Feirmor was required by Carric. [My next post will look at this map in detail, examining the needs of a city map.] Dez needed information from several books on curses. I decided that this research would be represented by a list of notes taken by Dez on the important sections of several books and by an entire chapter from a particularly useful book. These would be added to the list of documents for the campaign so far, which also included a letter to Carric from the diviner who had inspected the scarecrow's skull and a pamphlet which Ell found which analyzed the fall of a huge city to the north (this was largely an account of the end of a previous campaign I ran). Each of these documents offer information to the characters and players about the world around them and potentially helpful clues in accomplishing their goals.

As an example of this sort of document, I will provide here the notes which Dez took in the library:

Dez's notes on curses from a range of books at the Feirmor Royal Library.

To create this document, I first created the titles and authors of the books which would be slightly helpful to Dez's interests. These are fairly simple to create; it simply takes a little imagination to come up with what sorts of aims a writer may have when they decide to write about dark magic. From there, I started creating short lists of information to include for each book. I tried to keep the information true to what the author would include, given their focus in each book. I knew that there would be a lot of information included in these notes, so I tried to keep the notes in one of two categories: suggestions of new routes to consider, and negative statements to provide a kind of "process of elimination" in considering other possibilities. Some of the notes are also tangential information which could serve as a red herring if given too much consideration.

I have always enjoyed as a DM the opportunity to create puzzles and mysteries for my players to solve. The plague is a new challenge for me. Where before, I have created small scale mysteries and been able to carefully guard the reveals of each of them, I now cannot prepare that sort of experience in advance. Instead, I will be piecing the mystery of the plague and its source together as the players investigate it. [I admittedly have a few ideas about what might be in store, but it is both very unformed and more of a consideration of the theme the plague mystery will follow than a blueprint.] This inability to plan ahead is reflected in these notes: they are scattered, vague, and generally just confirms a few suspicions that Dez already had. Nevertheless, the many stray details that the notes include allows the players to tug at almost any thread, and I plan to improvise ways for each of these threads to be helpful in some way to figuring out just what the hell is going on. 

A few of the notes are starred, which I thought illustrated that Dez could see which of these ideas was especially relevant to the plague in Feirmor. I had Dez's player choose a font for her handwriting and created the document. The whole thing was placed over a parchment texture. Writing the information took more time than photoshopping it together did. The book circled at the bottom was another of the documents I made after this session. Here is the beginning of the relevant chapter: 

A History of Major Curses: Chapter Fourteen. 

The graphic design process here took about as much time as the writing did. It was still simple, though. I just found a template for an open book, added formatting features like page numbers and the title and author's name in the header, and then pasted in the text I had already written. Part of the fun when it comes to creating documents in a campaign is the ability to write as different characters. The author of this book, Loquim Garin, is a bit of a scholar, but is primarily interested in folk tales of dark magic. [I liken this author to Jan Brunvand, a real-life scholar of urban legends, whose work is a little drier than Garin's.] Garin as an author allowed me to present a "real-life ghost story" rife with drama and fear, but the story was close enough to Feirmor's plague that it could shed some light on what was happening with the King's Curse (as Gilly has come to call the plague). 

From this point, it's clear that the adventure is still very much just beginning. The characters still see themselves more as individuals than part of a group. The goals they pursue are still somewhat formless and vague. But it's from these simple and murky threads that we will fashion something large, detailed, and distinct. Next time, look for city map advice and the notes from the second session. Happy gaming!

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The Campaign Map and How to Make One Like It

It took about fifty hours of work, but I finally finished the region map for my current campaign. Fifty hours is a pretty steep amount of time to dedicate to something like a map, and I readily concede this. I certainly don't think that such an investment is required to create a visual representation of your game world. As I discussed in an early post here, the important thing is to characterize a place through the map, and depending on what you're trying to say, it may be worth it to spend plenty of time refining that characterization. For this map, it was worth it to me to create something that was visually striking, and I'll go into why shortly. First, though, the map:

This is a massive image file, and it's shrunk down pretty small on this page. You can see the full-size version here.

The region in question is called the Eastweald. It is the densely wooded area in the eastern central part of my main homebrew continent, Evanoch. As you can see, there are a great deal of settlements scattered throughout the Eastweald, and the majority of the land is thickly forested. Each of the settlements has a fairly unique appearance, which I intend to illustrate that each of the cities and towns was built in a different way.

A city like Whiterose in the northeast is composed of wooden expansions onto one large structure. With limited space to expand without clearing large swaths of forest, the citizens of Whiterose chose to build up rather than out. Over time, the superstructure has taken on a bizarre shape as each subsequent addition was built. The region's biggest city, Woodhearth, on the other hand, grew from ornate stone structures into the forest itself, building homes and businesses onto the side and into the branches of large trees.

Whiterose (above) and Woodhearth (below).

Other settlements are characterized to show that they depend on different industries. Splitaxe, for instance, is a city in the southern part of the map which is represented by a smithy with a forge. This is because Splitaxe is a mining and smithing powerhouse, despite its small size. Cloud's Landing, another small town in the south, is shown as a lumbermill, which reflects its dependence on forestry and processing lumber.

Splitaxe (left) and Cloud's Landing (right).

Part of why this map took so long to complete was that I have fairly limited artistic skills. (Remember that first map I showed back in this post?) At a loss for the ability to just draw the forests, the settlements, and the paths by hand, I had to find images that would achieve what I wanted and then adapt them for my purposes. From here, I'd like to explain what that process looks like, using the Eastweald map as a case study.

Note: I use Photoshop when I create maps, and I think that the variety of tools it offers are perfectly suited for the kind of work I do when creating a map. The advice I'll be giving is all based in Photoshop, and I recommend using it even if you're unfamiliar with the program. I taught myself how to use Photoshop several years ago, and I think that most computer users can do the same with a little bit of time and effort. There are always guides out there for learning, and it's a useful tool to have under your belt for lots of purposes.

Step One: The Rough Sketch

The first thing to do with a map is to get a sort of thumbnail of where things go. This doesn't need to be pretty. The goal is just to have a framework for what will be where in your image. It's especially important to have a sketch ready when you use reference pictures to create the bulk of your map; otherwise, the references will be more or less useless. Features to consider when making your sketch:

• Scale - How large an area are you mapping? How far apart should settlements be? How long does it take to get from point A to point B on foot / mounted? I think it's generally fair to assume that towns are separated by about half a day's journey on foot (so that people can make the return trip after visiting a town; remember that non-adventurers usually make the trip from their home to a neighboring settlement in order to get supplies and then go back home). You may use a different gauge, but be sure to consider distances when developing your map.
• Geographical features - Where are the bodies of water? Where the rivers and streams flow? Where are the forests / deserts / mountains / hills / canyons / valleys? How will these impact the people living around them? How will they influence where and how people build settlements? 
• Settlements - Where are they? How big are they? How do they interact with one another? Why might a settlement have popped up at a particular location? Along bodies of water and halfway or so between major settlements are the likeliest locations, but be creative with this. It's always fun as a player to encounter a town which is thoroughly bizarre or geographically improbable.
• Roads - What kinds of roads have people built between settlements, if any? Are they paved, cobbled, or simply worn down from travelers' journeys? If the road cuts through a forest, why would it be worth the time and energy for people to chop down trees for a road? If it crosses a river, stream, or canyon, why would people put the effort into building a bridge? I generally rule that if a road or bridge connects towns to major cities or trade routes, it's likely that people would work to create one. Similarly, if a few small towns are relatively isolated or have friendly relations, they probably share a route to connect them. 

For the Eastweald, I first took a zoomed-in image of the region from my continent map (the ugly one I keep posting a link to for some reason). Then, I outlined the forking river and drew in where settlements would appear, followed by the roads and bridges linking them. 

Continent sample (above) and rough sketch (below).

In this image, three of the four biggest cities occur on the river, and the fourth is roughly equidistant from the other three. This allows all four to thrive as trade cities. The smaller settlements around them are scattered across the region, none too close to one another, and many as the half-day's journey between larger cities. The settlements which are not connected by roads are bandit and barbarian camps, which have strategic interests in being near cities and roads, but not too close. Bridges only exist next to major cities and to cross the river in the southeast, where there is no nearby route to another bridge. 

It's worth noting that I've placed several of the smaller cities just off the main roads, not as stops along them like the major cities are. I did this to show that they either sprung up after the roads had been built or that they were not important enough at the time of building to have been included along the road. I also made sure to include roads that go off the region map in the direction of major cities, in this case to the north, west, and southeast. These details are minor, but I think that they reinforce that the Eastweald, while a fairly large geographical area, is still a part of a larger world. 

Step Two: Reference Pictures

Obviously, I don't want to give my players the rough sketch. It's basic and not very pretty, and it certainly doesn't characterize the area like I want this map to. This is where I find a workaround to my lack of artistic ability: I find reference pictures that have the kind of feel that I want to work towards. I'm going to present the images I found as references for my map and then show how to turn them into something I can use for my map.

[Note: I'm going to begin with the forests on my map. Not every map needs such a detailed process to create a forest, but I use the same method to create rivers and roads, which I discuss in Step Four below. Use this section on forests as a detailed guide for the process, since I just refer back to here to explain later.]

The first image I tracked down was the one for the forest. Since the Eastweald is mostly wooded, it was important to me to find an image for the forests that felt like the region. I found that inspiration in a "how to draw a map" search on Google images. This is what I started with:

The starting point for the Eastweald map.

I knew as soon as I saw this map that I wanted to use its forested areas for my map. I copied and pasted this image into Photoshop and began the long process of forming the fragments of treetops from this map into the shapes of forest in my map. I made a great deal of copies of the shapes of trees in this reference picture and placed them alongside one another in the shapes I needed my forests to take. To get the exact curves and angles of my forests, I would place the treeline where it needed to be, then selected the portions that needed to move with the lasso tool. Then I rotated the treelines so that they took on the shape I needed, taking care to make the small curves and bends in the reference have a smooth, natural-looking edge. After several hours of this process, I had an image that looked like this:

The basic sketch was the guideline for where the forested areas needed to go. 

As you can see, the basic shapes are correct, but the space in the middle of the forests is missing. The places where the pasted treelines meet are also choppy, matching in shape but not in color or texture. Still, this is the first (and very necessary) step in achieving what I was looking for.

The next step was to merge all of the forest outlines, making them into one large shape rather than many small ones. This allowed me to perform the next step, which was to smooth the color and texture of the edges and fill in the open spaces. To smooth the edges, I used the spot healing tool, which automatically blended the color and texture where necessary. The spot healing tool is a fantastic resource, but it doesn't always do exactly what you want it to; to this end, I added a green that matched the most common shades in the tree reference image (via the eyedropper and then brush tools, respectively) and used the spot healing tool again to smooth it. To fill in the empty spaces, I highlighted the empty spaces with the magic wand tool (which selects all of an area that is judged as identical or close enough to matter) and then used the content-aware fill tool (which borders on outright magic). Content-aware fill samples an area's color and texture and makes educated guesses on how to fill in open spaces. This tool works perfectly for something like filling in the forests, and I used the spot healing tool again along the edges where the treelines met the new filled-in areas. That process gave me this:

The forests are almost finished, but still have some cleaning up to do. 

Finally, to finish the forests, I did a bit more cleaning of textures and made sure the general colors of the forests were consistent. The last step in creating the forests was to carefully erase the extra color that existed outside of the treelines' outline. This was a very long, arduous process. The magic wand tool will often eliminate steps like this, as it can select everything outside of a fairly solid line. But in this case, the outline of the forests was relatively small, and the color on the other side of it was basically identical to what was inside of it, so the magic wand tool couldn't help me. In any case, I finished erasing and had my finished forest image:

Crisp, clean lines and uniform color. Lots of time, but I think it was worth it.

For a map that doesn't include so much forested area, finding a reference and going through this process probably won't be necessary. But because it's important to me that the Eastweald look like a lively area, choked by thick forests and full of greenery, I wanted to use the lovely woods from the reference picture I had found.

The more valuable use of reference images for most fantasy mapmakers comes when drawing in settlements. It's fairly easy to draw a box with a triangle on top to show that a house is somewhere, but it's not just the trees that thrive in the Eastweald; there are bountiful, rich communities scattered throughout which flourish in the bounty that natures offers here. I wanted images which show the wealth and variety of settlements in the region. And so I found a handful of pictures, again on google image search, that looked like what I was aiming for. I generally use phrases like "fantasy town" or "medieval city," and there are countless beautiful pictures that come up, but specifics always help.

[Side note: I recommend that game masters who find themselves in a creative rut do searches on google image search or specialized gaming boards for images of towns, characters, monsters, etc, and saving anything that strikes the imagination. You can find things which inspire you and add something special to your campaign, and those images can come in handy the next time you're putting together a map and just don't know what sort of settlement to put in it. I used to worry that looking for inspiration in this way meant that I was failing to be creative or that I was cheating my players by taking others' ideas, but I find that I'm more often inspired by just an image with no additional information, as I have fun filling in the blanks with what truly is all my own creation.]

So, when it came to settlements, I tracked down about 25 different possibilities, ranging from the very small (just one building) to sprawling cities (the image for Feirmor comes to mind). It's important to note that it doesn't matter what art style or level of detail the image is fashioned in. You're just looking for pictures you like. The next step of the process will take care of all the other details. Here are a few of the reference pictures I turned up for this map that I was the most excited about:

Reference pictures for settlements. From upper right, clockwise: Feirmor, Ragnir, Mason's Ford, and Blackleaf Falls.

As you can see, these images are each drawn in very different styles. Some are pencil sketches, others illustrations, and some are fully-rendered computer images. The important thing, though, is that they characterize the settlements in the way that I wanted them to. As I described above, I chose these pictures based on how they would represent the towns and cities (and bandit camps, for that matter). In the case of Feirmor, the walled castle in the upper left of the image above, I wanted an imposing, densely-populated city. For Mason's Ford, the small town in the lower left, I was looking for a small, friendly, content little place. With Blackleaf Falls in the upper left, it was important to find a building that looked sharp and kind of sullen (which is for story reasons which will become clear in time). And Ragnir, the warehouse in the lower right, was chosen because I liked the idea of a barbarian tribe taking over an industrial site and using its tools for terrorizing and torturing unfortunate nearby people.

Once you have your reference pictures, it's time for the next step, where we'll turn each reference picture into a settlement with the same art style.

Step Three: Tracing

One of the beautiful things about Photoshop is that it makes tracing an image incredibly easy. Keep your reference picture in one layer, create a new layer on top of it, and start drawing on the new layer. In no time, you've got a reproduction of your reference picture that removes all of the shading, linework, and coloration that make the source picture look so unique. Now, I know that what I just said in that last sentence basically sounds like the opposite of what you might want to do. Why be excited about taking all the personality and defining features away from the image that inspired you in the first place? I have a very easy answer:

Because this is ugly. 

As great as the source images are, they don't work together. But the solution is simple. You trace the outline, which keeps the shape and character of the town. Later, you'll color it in (if your map is multi-colored, and it certainly doesn't have to be), which will give it a chance to regain some of the unique look it lost during tracing. And tracing gives you another benefit that's easy to miss: you can simplify or remove parts of the original image that might not work terribly well for your purposes.

Tracing is simple, but I'll give a quick explanation of the process I use. In the example pictures below, I've kept an untouched copy of the original next to the traced version so that comparison is easier.

1.   Create a new layer and put it on top of the reference picture. (Remember to do this, or you'll be forced to do all the tracing again when you realize you're working on the wrong layer. I promise it will be very frustrating.)

2.   Select the brush tool and set the size to the right thickness for the line you want. I try to go about as thick as the biggest lines in the image go, but you also don't want to go so big that you can't do relatively fine detail. It's also important to remember that you should trace all of your reference pictures using the same width of brush so that it looks consistent. Begin by going over the main lines, especially outer edges and bold lines. I find it very helpful to click on a corner to place a dot, then shift-click to draw a perfectly straight line to the point I've clicked on. I would estimate that about 98% of the lines in the Eastweald map were drawn this way. Here's Blackleaf Falls with the major lines traced: 

The tracing for this example is very simplified. That's because you don't want to get too hung up on the details of reference picture. Part of why you can't use the original is that it's too unique to mesh with the other images, and the some details are just too different to work well. With a few more lines in for detail: 

3.   Adding color is the last step, if you wish to do so. For this example, I'm coloring the image with different colors than the region map uses since Blackleaf Falls has a history. (It was burned to the ground in a tragic and mysterious raid, then rebuilt by the paladins who helped save the small handful of survivors of the raid. The colored image will represent the town before the raid.) So with the paint bucket tool, the final image looks like this: 

One of the unfortunate side effects of coloring in Photoshop is that outlines become much more faint. That's why when I colored settlements for the map, I went back over the image, redrawing the outlines. It make for a much cleaner, crisper image. 

This image is much better, but still rough-looking. That's because at some point between saving examples, I started coloring over a different layer, making the color from the paint bucket a little wonky. This is exactly what I was talking about back in step 1; be careful of which layer you're working with. Since this was just an example for illustration of the process, I didn't bother cleaning it up much more, but you can see what the end result is when you pay attention and focus on the small details in the map image of Blackleaf Falls (the newer, rebuilt one): 

This image still has the original's character and unique architecture, but it has the uniform art style of the rest of the settlements on the map. Both colored versions are somewhat distinct from the original (and certainly from each other), which shows that you do really get some choices when it comes to tracing; it's not just a matter of reproduction so much as it is making something inspired by the original. 

Step Four: Filling in the Rest

For the Eastweald map, this step consisted of adding the rivers, bridges, and roads. The rivers and roads followed the same process as the creation of the forest: find a sample, make copies, shape the copies, and clean up the colors and textures. For example, see the image below. I found a sample image of a path that I liked, made a bunch of copies, and shaped/curved/bent those copies until they followed the trails of my original rough sketch. 

After I had the shape I wanted, I smoothed the textures wherever the pieces of the road met, making sure that the colors blended well. Then, to make sure the paths would appear well on the larger map, I took a very small brush and outlined the paths to differentiate between the path and the grass next to it. [It was especially important for me, since I am colorblind and the green and brown in the reference image look almost identical to me.] After smoothing and outlining, the path looked much cleaner. To fill in the area on the ground, I took a color sample with the eyedropper tool from the grass and just filled in the whole map with it. To give that some texture, I added little bursts of darker green where the grass was visible between the paths and the treeline. 

Left: Not very pretty, but you can see how it looks with everything else visible on the right. 

So for the river and paths, I used the same process as the forest; for the bridges, I use the same process as I used for the settlements. Find a reference picture, trace it, color it. Once you've done it a few times, it's just a matter of putting in the time and effort to get it to look the way you want it to. 

Step Five: Finishing Touches

The last things to take care of with the Eastweald map were pretty simple. First, I took a good look at everything I'd worked on and made sure it still looked good with everything else. I checked to see if there were any details I'd missed. Then I set about labelling the map. Each settlement and general landmark got a layer of text with its name, and I added a few labels for the rivers and one for the whole region. Adding names seems like an easy thing, and it really is, but there are a few considerations I advise taking when you do:

• What kind of map is this? If it's a map you're designing to be purchased by a player, or it's been designed by a character in the game, that's a much different map than an authoritative out-of-game map. In-game maps may include details about settlements, a signature from the mapmaker, or even advice (perhaps the mapmaker thinks you should stay away from a bandit camp, so they add a skull and crossbones next to it). An out-of-game map shouldn't reveal anything about the area that you don't want your players to know, which might include certain roads of hidden settlements (I strongly considered keeping a couple bandit camps and the ghostly site called "Clfdrlph" off this map for similar reasons). 
• Do you need to include map features like a scale or compass rose? If you do include a compass rose, is "up" not going to be "north" (because if not, you probably don't need it). If you are going to add a scale, remember that it adds a lot of consistency that you need to maintain when making other maps in the area or of the larger area that this map exists it. (As you can see in the Eastweald map, I didn't include either a scale or a compass rose because north is up and I prefer the "day's journey" standard over a discrete distance value.) Maybe the side of the map should include a note about what significant features or settlements lie outside its boundaries (I almost added notes about where the roads going off the map headed to, but decided it would be unnecessary clutter). 
• What names might a settlement go by to different people? When I created the map for Ramsey, my western D&D setting, the players began in a very small town called Hart Springs. But when they left that town, they found that other Ramsey residents don't call that town Hart Springs. Instead, they call the town "Fool's Landing," since it is the first point that many sailors encounter when sailing to the island, but it is not a major trade hub and it functions as a small commune with little place for travelers. Maybe the mapmaker uses one of these less-universal names when referring to a settlement, especially if it's a rival settlement to where the mapmaker lives. 

Finally, I'd like to add a note about the appearance of the labels. I'm more than a bit obsessed with fonts (I have somewhere over 600 installed on my computer, if that tells you anything). I think that the shape of the letters are just as important as what they spell out. I highly recommend both DaFont and 1001 Fonts for starting your own collection; both offer a wide array of easily-installed fonts in categories, and both offer those fonts for free (you may be surprised just how expensive some can be, many selling for upwards of $40 and many more for much larger prices). I have a great many that look like handwriting (which will prove their usefulness when I put up the first post about creating in-game documents) and quite a few which are medieval in appearance. 

I mention fonts because I think that they can just as easily characterize a map as building appearance and other aesthetics do. For the Eastweald map, I chose a simple, elegant font which is vaguely medieval. I think that it suggests something mythical about the region while still retaining some simplicity to make it seem earthy and natural. For the sake of illustrating why I think fonts are important, here are several different appearances for "the Eastweald." 

Six different fonts, each displaying the same words in unique ways.

When it comes to placing text in Photoshop, there are plenty of features which make changing the appearance of the text fairly easy. The only thing that I find really lacking about Photoshop's text features is the relative difficulty of adding an outline around the letters. Here's my shortcut to nice, clean text outlines:

1. Type your text. 
2. Right-click the box in the text layer (the one that has the uppercase "T") and choose "Select Pixels."
3. Create a new layer.
4. Go to "Select" in the menu bar, then choose "Modify," then "Expand." 
5. Choose the number of pixels you want the outline to be. I generally go with somewhere between 3 and 5, depending on the size of the text.
6. Choose the color you'd like for the outline, then use the paint bucket to fill the expanded text outline.
7. Place the outline color layer under the text layer.
8. Highlight both the outline layer and the text layer and choose "Link Layers."

That's the process that gave me the outlined names for all the settlements in the map. It's a little tedious when you have to do it repeatedly, but it creates a very nice effect which helps the text stand out from the rest of the map. Here's the finished product again: 

So there's everything it takes to make a map like the Eastweald map. As I said at the beginning, this map took me about 50 hours to make. But the sheer size of the map, the level of detail I insisted on maintaining, and the little nitpicky things like using only one color (but various shades of that color) for the roofs in each settlement are what led to that time investment. And especially that forest, which was probably a full half of all time spent on this project. But I'm very proud of the result, and I hope that for those of you who want to make something you're proud of, even with limited artistic skills, these tips will be helpful.

In a future post, I'll describe the process I use for making city maps, which have a much different feel, look, and purpose than regional maps do. Until then, thanks for reading, and happy gaming!

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Meet the Characters, Plus Intro Sessions

Last time, I shared the custom classes for three characters in the campaign. Since then, we have added a fourth player and held our first group session. I think that makes this the perfect time to give a description of the five sessions that have already happened, which should also provide a look at the characters and who they are.

But first, I want to (somewhat) briefly address what I mean when I talk about an intro session. Before any of the characters meet in-game, I think it's valuable to hold one-on-one sessions with each player. This accomplishes three important things. First, it gives me as the DM and the player a chance to get to know the character before they encounter the party. That means recognizing and ironing out mechanics issues that may have arisen during the custom class creation. It also gives the player a chance to try out the character build so that they have a decent grip on how to use the character before the whole group convenes. Second, a solo intro session allows the character to connect with their past. The intro session gives the character a chance to meet with their long-time friends, family, and other fixtures in their daily life. It prevents awkward moments when the player needs clarification on something basic in their own backstory when the whole player group is present, and it truly helps the players role-play more effectively. Third, it gives the player a chance to get comfortable with my style as a DM, and me a chance to gauge how they play the game. This allows us to establish a bit of a back-and-forth that makes the first group session a bit more comfortable (and easier for me to prepare for). I highly recommend solo intro sessions. While they can be a little draining and intense, the benefits are extremely worth it. Below are notes on the intro sessions, but also consider how you can use these sessions in your own games. 

So now, let's meet the characters. Let's start with the character whose intro session happened first.

Elleryn Celduinya

Elleryn, or simply "Ell," is a 29-year-old half-elf. She is the group's rogue-wizard (which I first described in this post, along with the custom classes for the next two characters). Ell is an anarchist assassin with lofty political goals and a willingness to do almost anything to achieve them. How big of a target are we talking about? Ell wants to assassinate the leader of the largest organized religion in the world. Until it comes time to execute that massive plan, though, she's making a living by taking contracts where she can get them, so long as she knows they're from reliable contacts. Ell has a troubled past which I don't intend to get into here quite yet, though I will say that her vendetta against the massive, corrupt Church of Pelor is a little personal.

When Ell's player, Alex, and I sat down for our intro session, I had nothing planned. That is the goal with this campaign, after all: no pre-conceived storylines, just improvised reactions to the players' decisions. So we began in the early morning when Ell arose, read a bit, and enjoyed a light breakfast. She stopped by a bookstore, met with an old friend, and learned about some anarchist happenings in a city to the north. You can see so far that Ell is a character who lives much as many people in real life do, taking care of basic needs and small tasks. This is something I enjoy being able to DM. It characterizes who someone is without huge story-driven events derailing their life (again, a big plus for the intro session model). Things didn't stay simple for long, of course.

Ell quickly noticed that she kept seeing the same orc everywhere she went in town. At first, she altered her plans, avoiding the more criminal parts of her day until she could be confident that she'd shaken her tail. Once the orc had fallen behind, Ell went to a favorite tavern where political dissidents meet to discuss local and global strategies for changing politics. She met a new addition to the group, a dwarf with yellow eyes and no beard. He introduced himself as Fiskar, and he walked with her to a nearby inn where Ell was expecting to meet someone to discuss a potential contract.

The contact was a quiet, frightened half-elf who offered a sizable amount for the death of a man he said was threatening him. Ell agreed to meet him in a city called Feirmor to talk details and carry out the contract. Before they could part, however, the orc who had been following her all day burst into the inn. Ell fought the orc, and Fiskar joined the battle, coming to Ell's aid. Once they had dispatched the orc, Fiskar helped deal with the body in a legal way. Ell called it a night after agreeing to travel to Feirmor with Fiskar the following day.

A brief second intro session also occurred with Ell in which she and Fiskar journeyed through the dense forests of the region en route to Feirmor. They dealt with an ambush from bandits and traveled quickly along the road. They approached and passed a traveling circus just outside of the city, arriving just before the circus arrived at the gates.

Ell illustrated during every part of her sessions that she is a careful, quiet individual. She is slow to trust strangers and asks more questions than she answers (though she doesn't ask all too many questions in the first place). Ell strikes me as a very practiced assassin, someone who observes and thinks much more than they speak or act. While Ell's sessions were much slower-paced and quieter than the other intro sessions, they did something very important: they established who she is as an individual and how she chooses to operate when all of the choices are her own. These are details which can easily get lost in group sessions, and I hope that I am able to provide Ell opportunities to strike out on her own or to take charge of the group so that we can see where her quiet preparedness benefits her and the group. And now, something completely different . . .

Gerald

Gerald is a goliath whose age is unknown. He was once a human, but was kidnapped by some magical entity as a boy and imprisoned in a cave. He subsisted in that cave entirely on mushrooms with mysterious magical properties for at least a decade, and likely more. At some point during his imprisonment, he transformed into a goliath, a massive humanoid with stony skin. Gerald is our group's barbarian-sorcerer, a class which we very carefully constructed to be as chaotic as possible.

When Gerald's player, Ian, and I met for his intro session, we chose to pick up from the last moment of Gerald's imprisonment. He found himself before his strange magical captor, whom he immediately killed before bursting out of the side of a hollowed-out tree where the daemon/faerie/other fickle thing had been. Gerald looked around and sighted a stag in the middle distance. He called out to the stag, which began to glow green and speak to him. At Gerald's request, the stag directed him to "where the people are," which happened to be a nearby bandit camp. As the bandits began to rain arrows on Gerald and send armed men from their fort, Gerald received a strange vision of other goliaths, who spoke to him. This sent Gerald into his first rage. When Gerald rages, he takes on aspects of a porcupine, growing long, sharp quills from his skin. Gerald immediately lifted a boulder, threw it at the approaching bandits, and slew or frightened away two-thirds of them.

In the following battle, things became very chaotic (as is the expectation when Gerald is involved). Part of the custom class we developed for Gerald involves a custom expanded version of the Wild Surge table (which I have linked to here). To briefly explain, any time Gerald goes into rage or uses a spell, he rolls a d20, and a 1 or a 20 mean he rolls for an effect on the Wild Surge table. That's exactly what happened more or less right away. He rolled a wild surge, became instantly drunk, killed all but one of the remaining bandits, got another wild surge, grew to twice his size, and menaced the entire fort filled with bandits, who gave him a horse blanket to cover himself with, as Gerald had been naked the entire time.

Following the fearful bandits' directions, Gerald wandered to the small town of Splitaxe. There, he met a well-dressed orc who introduced himself as Tenk. Tenk offered to pay Gerald to safely transport him to a nearby city, as well as pay for Gerald to have some clothing and a weapon made in an appropriate size for him. Gerald described his encounter with the bandit fort to the townspeople, who cheered him as a hero. After a night of drinking and re-telling his story, Gerald fell asleep in a stable.

The following morning, Gerald donned his new clothing and picked up his new weapon, a massive pole with a double ax head on one end and a sharpened point on the other. (In the first group session, this weapon would be dubbed "Cleave 'n' Poke.") Gerald and Tenk made their way to Feirmor, where Tenk had business, and Gerald tried to figured out what to make of his apparent ability to use magic, his porcupine transformation, and his general place in a world he knew very little about. They arrived in Feirmor just ahead of the circus.

Gerald's first session may have been the most important to have done individually. Gerald's backstory is very unique, and everything about his character is influenced by his past. As of the first group session, Gerald had only spent a total of two full days out of his former prison. He had discovered that he is completely unlike practically everyone in many ways. He is very much a troubled child in many senses, but he grapples with problems that would bewilder any well-adjusted adult. By holding a solo session for Gerald, we were able to guide him from his old life into the new world, as well as establish how he would begin making his way in that world. I see Gerald as someone whose innate chaos is an expression of how little control he has had over his own life; he is unwilling or unable to control much of his personality because he has never had a chance to control much of anything. That will change as the campaign moves forward, and I look forward to seeing how that happens.

Desarae Malathor

Desarae, but really just "Dez," is a 22-year-old half-elf. Dez is a rogue-cleric combination, and a follower of the Silver Flame deity. She has very close ties to the royal family of Feirmor, having been more or less adopted by the king after her parents were killed by a plague. Out of gratitude for the king's generosity, Dez began eliminating threats to Feirmor's safety and to competing powers. As an assassin, accomplished a great deal under the guidance of the city's Captain of the Royal Guard. In recent times, after the same plague that killed her parents took the life of the king and spread through the city, Dez began walking the path of the cleric, trying to serve the city as a healer and protector. Dez is almost singularly interested in discovering the source of the plague and saving Feirmor.

When Dez's player, Delaney, and I sat down for her intro session, we began at sunrise. Dez tended to a series of experiments in her laboratory, where she had been trying to infect plant life with diseases to try to recreate the symptoms of the plague. After finishing her notes, Dez ventured forth into the city. She heard the sounds of a conflict and hid in the alleyway where two men argued. As the fight escalated to violence, Dez watched as one of the men killed the other. Turning her attention back to the plague, she magically faked the appearance of symptoms and approached a group of strangers. When they ran from her in fear, she decided to venture out of the city.

Using a tunnel she had built under the city's walls, Dez headed into the nearby woods and gathered various herbs before returning to the city. On her way back to the laboratory, Dez noticed the man who had killed the man in the alleyway. She followed him to a bar and waited outside, watching and listening. A strange half-elven woman clad in dull grey seemed to try to get Dez's attention, but Dez remained to watch the man she had followed. Eventually, the woman sat down next to Dez and made conversation, inviting Dez to follow her to something important. When Dez hesitated, the woman hinted that she had a strong connection to the Silver Flame. Dez followed her to a house not far from Dez's lab.

Inside, the woman illustrated through use of her power that she was herself the Silver Flame. Over the course of a long conversation, the Silver Flame asked Dez to be her champion, granted her pyrokinesis, told her about a cleric in town who was also working to fight the plague, and gave her a charm to contact the deity at any time. They also argued a good deal over what Dez's expectations of her deity was and what the Silver Flame could actually do and say. Of particular note was the fact the the Silver Flame claimed to be only a few days old, but could or would not explain why. Just outside the door to the house, Dez summoned the Silver Flame, spawning a few more playful arguments.

As Dez left, she saw the man from the alleyway yet again, and she set his cape on fire with her newfound abilities. She met with the cleric she had learned about and discussed the plague. The cleric, a gnome named Gilly, shared his belief that the plague was magical in nature and not transmittable. As evening came, Dez cast a spell of "Protection Against Evil" on a young patient afflicted with the plague and then headed home, where she practiced her fire magic and steeped a poison from some of the herbs she had gathered.

Dez's intro session was a very surprising and valuable one. I learned that Dez was very comfortable trying things without being fixated on the results, that she was willing to allow violence to happen without intervening, and that she felt no obligation not to argue with her deity. In my past experience, these are not common traits with characters, and I am excited to be playing with Dez. She is unpredictable and stubbornly independent. (In fact, it took most of the first group session to get her to agree to meet up with the rest of the party.) While Dez shares a bit in terms of experience and philosophy with Ell, I think that there is more that divides the two assassins than unites them. Having a "devil may care" character in the mix will definitely keep me on my toes, and I think it will keep the rest of the characters on their toes as well. Especially . . .

Carric Telethyr

Carric is a 80-year-old drow. He is a ranger-paladin combination (his custom class will appear along with the details of the other three in a future post), and is a disciple of the Order of the Path of Light. He has spent the last twenty years serving that order after being saved from a raid by a faction of drowish merchants from the Underdark had attacked the town of Blackleaf Falls while he was there on a visit. In the attack, he lost his parents and brother. He was saved, however by a pair of paladins from the Order of the Path of Light named Bernard and Flint. Desiring to follow these men and emulate his childhood hero Drizzt, Carric left behind his home beneath the surface and helped rebuild the town of Blackleaf Falls as a base of operations for the Order.

When Carric's player, Ross, and I sat down to play his introduction, Ross had already established a blueprint for Blackleaf Falls and the Order's structure and leaders. We began midmorning as Carric returned from a trip where he had been sent out to restore peace in a nearby town. Carric met with the Order's elders and clerics, who told him that a recent immigrant from Feirmor had arrived in Blackleaf Falls with signs of a deadly plague. Carric searched town looking for other residents who had lived in Feirmor in the past, trying to gather information about the plague. One of the people he found, a falconer named Vincent, was alarmed to hear that a plague had befallen his old home and offered to travel with Carric to Feirmor later that week.

Carric made his way to a favorite tavern for lunch and met the tavern's guest chef, a dwarf with yellow eyes and a thick moustache (but no beard). The chef, Fiskar, served Carric a series of delicious foodstuffs, several of his own design. As they talked over his lunch, Fiskar revealed that he knew about Feirmor, its royal family, and the best routes to the city. Carric then met with fellow paladins Bernard and Flint and spoke about the plague appearing in Blackleaf Falls, a disturbing discovery Flint made of "The Sea of the Dead," and Carric's daughter, Cara's plans to become a paladin herself. Carric met with the elders once more and shared his plan to travel to Feirmor to investigate the plague, which they approved. A priest of the Order had a prophetic vision as Carric passed him in the temple, telling Carric to seek two others who are fighting the plague in Feirmor and to follow the Silver Flame.

Carric got dinner that evening with Cara, Flint, and Bernard. After dinner, Carric and Cara went to the graveyard to see the grave of Elizabeth, his passed wife and Cara's mother. After they prayed there, sparks began to jump from her grave, and an animated scarecrow attacked them. Cara used fire magic, revealing that she had begun to study magic (she had asked Carric's permission to do so that night at dinner), and the two together destroyed the scarecrow. The following day, Carric traveled with Bernard to the city of Goldshrine to seek the advice of an expert diviner, Herbert Rosebud. After returning home and tending to temple chores for a few days, a courier arrived carrying Rosebud's findings. [This report became the first document which I created for this campaign, and I will share it and the importance of creating documents like it in a future post.] The report said that the spell that animated the scarecrow had come from the Underdark. The courier also bore the skull found inside of the scarecrow, but it had been transformed to bear golden filigree along the fissures in the skull. Carric left Blackleaf Falls with Vincent the falconer, and with no trouble along the roads, arrived at Feirmor's gates just behind the circus.

Carric's intro was a vital solo session. It allowed us to see the town of Blackleaf Falls, as well as how Carric interacts with his compatriots and his daughter. It also provided me an opportunity to see his prioritization when multiple things demand his attention. And looking forward from the intro session itself, I found several opportunities to connect Carric's character to the interests and allies of the other characters, and to his own past. Carric's behavior made it clear that he believes in careful consideration, service to others and his Order, and working ever onward even when loaded up with responsibilities. This showed me that Carric will persist at goals relentlessly, making him a useful part of the engine that will keep the campaign moving.

All Together, Now . . . 

Taken apart, each of the four characters described above are extremely exciting to me. Each presents unique opportunities for storybuilding, roleplaying, and teamwork. The classic D&D party is composed of four complementary roles: tank, healer, striker, and expert. For most parties, that means a fighter, a cleric, a wizard/sorcerer, and a rogue. In this party, it means a ranger-paladin (Carric), a rogue-cleric (Dez), a barbarian-sorcerer (Gerald), and a rogue-wizard (Ell). But that party setup is considered for combat and skill balance.

I think that roleplaying benefits from complementary roles, too. I think that there are four roles that are necessary for well-balanced storytelling and interaction. You need a leader/anchor character who serves as the hub which the party circles. This character keeps the rest of the party focused and united (within reason, as I think divisions in a party are necessary and interesting as well). The counterpoint to the leader/anchor is the loose cannon. This character is needed to keep the party on its toes and draw in a bit of chaos for the rest. The third role is the planner, someone who keeps long-term goals in mind and who makes sure that the party stays prepared for the bigger concerns down the road. Finally, a party needs someone who is so intensely human that the fantasy of the story and the setting stay rooted in what can be felt by the players. For lack of a better term, I call this role the feeler. They're driven by what they feel and what they aspire to, and sometimes they're driven by anger or fear as much as by hope or love. Without a mixture of these roles, a game can become an exercise in hierarchical orders, railroaded storytelling, total randomness, or robotic following of what seems to be a storyline. (Comic relief is necessary too, but that can come from any, and hopefully every, role.)

I don't think that any of our four players fit one-hundred percent into the four roles I've described here. No party will have a character who is completely one of these roles to the exclusion of the others. Here's how I see our four heroes stacking up after the intro sessions and one group session:

• Ell - Planner with some feeler and anchor. Ell is thoughtful and cautious enough to fill the planner role fairly cleanly, but definitely has enough of a sentimental core to be a good feeler and steadfast enough to hold things together when things start to fall apart.
• Gerald - Feeler and loose cannon, almost in equal measure. Gerald is characterized by chaos in terms of class features (his custom class was dubbed "Chaos Caster," for Pete's sake), and he's made it clear that he'll keep things from getting too orderly. But at the character's center is a deeply hurt human who just doesn't understand why the world has treated him the way it does. It's his own emotional struggles that make him a loose cannon in the first place. 
• Dez - Loose cannon and about as much planner. Dez cares deeply about her kingdom, but her actions show that most decisions are made based on what's best for her, and the effects of those decisions don't trouble her much. But as evidenced by the way she confronts the plague and the choices that only have long-term value, she thinks about the future as much as the present. 
• Carric - Leader/anchor, with plenty of feeler mixed in. Carric is someone who has defined himself by his role as a paladin serving justice across the land. As such, he has become comfortable becoming the person people look to for guidance. Of course, his devotion to that role only exists because he cares about helping the helpless on a basic emotional level. He serves because he cares, and his role as a father will only add to that. 

Whether or not these estimates are accurate in any way will have to be seen out over time. As more group sessions happen, we'll begin to see who these characters really are. I've never seen a character stay completely the same from beginning to end in a campaign, so I look forward to being proven wrong about any or all of these assumptions.

There's a lot in the works behind my DM screen at the moment, and I have some catching up to do as far as recording it here. Be on the lookout soon for custom class development pointers, map updates, document examples and pointers, and group session notes. There are many adventures to be had, and I plan to keep you posted on them as they unfold. Thanks for reading!

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