Homebrew Setting Clans: Elves

This is the fifth of eight entries in a series on clans in my homebrew setting, featuring the elves of Evanoch. In the first half of this series, I covered my humans, the Daltoners and Faninites, as well as my dwarves and orcs. I noted in the orc article that my favorite groups to work with are generally not the humans or dwarves--I'm very satisfied with my homebrew versions of them, but we always have favorites, and my favorite groups in my homebrew setting are simply not humans or dwarves. I enjoy my orcs a lot, but I feel like much of my efforts to characterize my orcs is based on making them not the stereotype. The second half of this series, then, are the groups that I identify with more, the groups who have bold visions of the future with fairness and integrity and innovation in mind. Daltoners, Faninites, dwarves, and orcs, look to tradition, while elves, half-elves, gnomes, and halflings look to the future. And so I'm very excited to get started with my elves, whose culture has always been very enjoyable for me to write about. So let's get started taking a closer look at the elves of Evanoch. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Orcs

This guide to important groups of orcs is part of a larger group of articles on clans in my homebrew setting, Evanoch. In this series, I have filled in a large gap that has existed the whole nearly two decades I've been DMing in my world--who are the important people? I'd decided who was in political leadership long ago, but there are more forms of power than political power. And in really thinking about who the important people in Evanoch are, I've learned more about the cultural groups in my world--what values does a group hold that allow a certain person or people to be famous or successful? This has been monumental in changing my homebrew versions of D&D groups into multidimensional populaces instead of monolithic caricatures. With the orcs, I'll be looking to add depth and variation to a group that is much closer to my heart than the humans and dwarves I've already written about. So let's get started. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Dwarves

This guide is part of a larger series on clans in my homebrew setting, Evanoch. This series, which I'm working on nearly ten years after beginning this site, does a lot of things that are so useful that I'm shocked I'm only just now getting to this. Not only does a detailed list of important groups in a society give me a variety of names and backgrounds to go to for important NPCs, but also, I'm able to diversify how I think of my cultures. My Daltoners were always evil imperialists; my guide to their clans showed a much more complex face. And similarly, my Faninites were always humble hippies; my guide to their clans showed them as a far more complicated people. So this guide to the dwarves' clans will help me to expand how I think of and present dwarves whenever I DM. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Faninites

This guide is part of a larger series in which I delve into the clan identities of the groups in my homebrew setting. This accomplishes a couple of important things--partially, it allows me to have a number of important families and organizations in my world to refer to; it also gives me the opportunity to think more in detail about the way my cultural groups work; and third, as I saw in the entry for the Daltoners, my setting's other group of humans, it lets me add some variation to the group. Before I created my entry for the Daltoners, I treated them as a uniformly evil and colonial group of people who embrace racism and misogyny, so every time a Daltoner appeared in a campaign, they adhered to this group of unsavory traits. But as I wrote the guide to their clans, I started to recognize that the group is not homogeneous and created a few clans that departed from the evil stereotype I'd had in my head. Think about that--an entire eighth of my homebrew setting was a vague archetype that kept all encounters with them very similar, but writing about their clans allowed me to vary and differentiate them in ways that will enrich my DMing. Similarly, I'm setting out to find out the depths of my other groups of humans, the Faninites, who I've always treated as natural-loving, peaceful folks akin to Vikings, but more calm and gentle. So let's see what groups are the foremost among the Faninites. 

Of Gods and Dragons: Session Eighteen

Last time, the party had a momentous dinner party with Lethanin's parents, and notably, both of Lethanin's parents apologized for their lackluster parenting. Hriskin and Aurora discussed plans for Horton, and Brokk and Niela chatted and flirted before Brokk transformed into his dragon shape for the first time, prompting Niela to observe that he looked much different than Thomas had in his dragon form. Aurora conveyed visions of Lethanin's heroics to Lethanin's mother, who was overwhelmed by the heroics of her son. Brokk suggested that Aurora take up the blue dragon mantle, which Aurora refused on the grounds that she could not be associated with Daltoners. The following morning, Brokk, Lethanin, Aurora, Hriskin, Aurix, and Niela set a trap for Horton and sprang in when he appeared, leaving this session to begin with combat. 

This session turned out to be a bigger deal than I thought going in. In fact, this is the last full session with all three players of the campaign. So let's get into it. 

Brokk bull rushed Horton after Aurora's unsuccessful attack and bear hugged Horton from behind, heavily damaging him with a casting of Blight. Horton then broke free of Brokk and tried to speak with Aurora, who was unwilling to play games with Horton, so Horton cast Feeblemind on Aurora, dealing damage but failing to render Aurora useless. Lethanin also withdrew from his hiding place and blasted Horton with a burst from the bagpipes, replicating a Sonic Scream which sliced Horton severely. Hriskin hacked at Horton with her sword, scoring some nasty blows. Niela slipped Horton into a full nelson and held him for Aurora to finish him off. Over a few tense moments, Aurora repeatedly cast a spell that undid the binding force that held Horton together, and he eventually dissolved into component elements that blew across the clearing with a smell of lightning. Horton was dead. 

Out of game, this combat moved fast. We did exactly one round of combat that was slightly elongated by the fact that Horton was held helpless for a few seconds leading up to his death. It even got to the point that Aurora's player spoke to me after the session about it. She said that it seemed like I was unreasonably nice to the party, always granting advantages and boosts and underpowering enemies. I chuckled. I had to remind her that Horton was surrounded by five dragons and one of the most powerful spellcasters ever to live, and that Horton never really stood a chance. She did eventually agree that this has some solid logic to it, but I could see that she still had a sense that Horton had been too easy a fight. So I also pointed out that Horton was held motionless for half the half, and my wife did agree that in fact Horton hadn't been a surprising fight. 

I want to drill down on this for a second because it's been a theme in this campaign. My party started the campaign at level 12. At the beginning of this fight, Lethanin and Brokk and level 20 due to being promoted to dragonhood, and Aurora is level 16 with a class that allows for huge potential for destruction. Aurix is level 50, Niela is level 40, and Hriskin is level 30. Let's get technical with challenge rating for a second. Horton has a challenge rating of about 40. But what's the challenge rating of the party? 172. This is the same problem that came up with Thomas and Regg. With a high powered party who has high powered friends, few combat presences will pose a threat. So what do we do with imbalance in power? 

We may not need to do anything at all. What exactly is the source of power the party has? It's not their level. If the fight was Lethanin, Brokk, and Aurora against Horton, they differential in challenge ratings would be so much closer that a close fight was possible. But Aurix, Niela, and Hriskin were there too. That massively shifts the scales. So what's their real power? Working together. Most of this campaign was the party getting the dragons assembled before they really did anything. And everything after that fell into place easily. Fixing the fabric of reality, wiping out evil dragons--not a huge sutrggle after dealing with the metallics they needed to work together with. But the hard work is done--the party can call on these massively powerful allies for things that would be otherwise impossible. I plan to make that theme explicit in the epilogue sessions that will follow this. 

Brokk turned to Aurora, asking what came next. Aurora began to plan for attacks on Pelor's Mercy. Aurora suggested arming the prisoners of the camps in the city and having them revolt, but Niela countered that arming the prisoners was a quick way to get them killed. This shut down the conversation pretty thoroughly for a while, no one sure how to proceed. Everyone started the discussion over from scratch, working step by step on a new plan. They decided they would sweep through the town and deal damage to the city, fight the guards across town, and freeing the prisoners. Aurora suggested waiting until after sundown to attack so that the prisoners could safely evacuate their camps; Hriskin said the time was now, and waiting could complicate things. Niela added to this that Horton could be missed at his law offices, and after some debate, she forged a note claiming Horton was off fishing as he liked to do and sent it to his workplace. 

Meanwhile, Aurora messaged a dissident in one of the camps, Peggy, a halfling who had helped Aurora with basic apothecary work, telling her to get all prisoners out of the camps and into the woods beyond immediately. Peggy asked for ten minutes and set to work. After some final discussion and a quick map traced by Aurora in the dirt, Aurix announced it was time, and each member of the group partnered off and teleported to specific locations spread across Pelor's Mercy. 

Aurora's player requested a showdown at Pelor's Mercy before her first intro session, so I'd been imagining what the battle might look like. I could see the player characters charging across the fields of Pelor's Mercy and cutting down the horrible guards. I could visualize the licking flames foretold in Aurora's backstory, the frightened prisoners, the furious nobles. I didn't sit down to plan a real battle in full since it seemed far away and I wasn't sure how my players would go about it, but this session moved fast. The group was in Pelor's Mercy about a third of the way through our session time, and there hadn't been a lot of discussion confirming that Pelor's Mercy (what we'd established would be a final moment in the campaign) would immediately follow Horton. As DMs are, I was taken by surprise. But the levelling issue I mentioned above with combat? It came into greater effect here. 

Lethanin and Hriskin appeared at the southwest edge of town, and guards were immediately called on Lethanin, who was a non-Daltoner. Lethanin then transformed into his sound dragon form, taking off and spewing fire and ice down on the town below; Hriskin sent to fighting guards who approached. Meanwhiule, Brokk and Niela transformed into dragons and flew across town, burning the three bridges in the city and then joining Lethanin in destroying the city. Aurix set to helping destroy town, and Aurora took a place near the center of Pelor's Mercy and cast a spell calling for fire to rain down on the town. As she cast the spell, a brilliant and intense column of light shone down on Aurora, a blessing from Pelor who rejoiced to see a blow down to the mockery of them. The light allowed Aurora to increase the number of glyphs used in a spell, and she added one to focus the fire on the city. From the sky, flames, lava, and the occasional burning piece of debris fell. Pelor's Mercy was ignited and burning to the ground. 

This happened in about ten or fifteen minutes. Not a single die was rolled. If five dragons and a powerful, angry spellcaster descend on your town, you have few options. The guards from the camps couldn't help in the town because Brokk destroyed the bridges. The guards in town and the camps could do little to fight five swarming dragons hellbent on destroying everything. A dragon flying quickly over guards who are shocked to learn that dragons really exist is hardly vulnerable to a few guards on the ground. And what the group did made people from the prisoners to the prisoners' families to political groups to religious groups to literal gods very happy, and that final one meant Aurora could destroy Pelor's Mercy in one fell blow. Was it tense and exciting and satisfying in the way that good combat it? No, absolutely not. But Pelor's Mercy had been on the group's radar for a long time, and absolutely dominating it was a different kind of satisfying. 

Aurora wandered the short distance to what she now remembered was her childhood home. A few servants stumbled from the burning building, and then Aurora's parents followed. Her father did not recognize her at all, and her mother only figured it was her daughter after a long moment. A tense conversation followed in which Aurora's mother tore into Aurora for not following the strictures of the Dalton Church of Pelor and judging her for her gender. Her father simply grew agitated and confused, pushing Aurora to get away. But Aurora broke his arm and sent him sprawling. She yelled at her mother for judging her and watched as her parents left. The massive crest of Pelor atop the house burned and fell, and slowly, Aurora's wooden sword turned to ash and drifted away in the air, mingled with the ashes of Pelor's Mercy.

But it wasn't over for Aurora, for whom time stopped. ABC, the fae who'd given her her powers years before, appeared again to thank Aurora for doing as she had been asked. Aurora seemed distant and dissatisfied, which ABC inquired about. Aurora was coy and didn't commit to much but did suggest she was interested in the fae dragonhood. ABC happily offered it, and Aurora agreed and followed ABC to the fae realm, which was a mass of intersecting planes and stark colors that was confusing to see. Aurora followed ABC with tunnel vision until they arrived at a jagged crystalline stone with a draconic inscription that, when read, transformed Aurora into the fae dragon. ABC brought Aurora back to the mundane realm, where Aurora created a statue in the center of Pelor's Mercy of the Dalton Church of Pelor's deity kneeling to Aurora. 

This is where the panic set in. Pelor's Mercy was pretty much dealt with. I had nothing to add. Once the cleanup after the battle was done, I had no material to offer my players (without unnecessarily stringing the story along). So I just kept asking what else they did. Here's what they did: 

Lethanin made it a personal mission to see that town was destroyed, breathing flames and fury down on any standing building. Brokk saw to dealing with the last of the guards in the town and in the camps. Niela suggested to Brokk that they tend to the prisoners, and she and Brokk flew from camp to camp, sending the prisoners safely north. As the city lay burning to the ground, Lethanin perched atop an archway and played the violin as the embers smoldered. Once the dragons had reconvened, they headed north and met up with the traveled prisoners. The prisoners emphatically thanked the group and spoke with hope of a new life in Vestry and beyond, and for an hour, the long stream of thousands of freed prisoners marched past with thanks and smiles. Aurora, tired, tried to summon her wooden sword to lean on and couldn't, much to her delight. Brokk heard a familiar dwarven voice in his head--Moradin's--who thanked him for doing a good job. She said she'd originally wanted the rift left open, but she ended up agreeing with Brokk in the end. Brokk said he hoped to speak to her again soon, then said his goodbyes and said he planned to spend some time with Niela; Lethanin stated his interest in pursing other mysteries of the universe such as the globe possessed by Calies Tasselman during his intro session; Aurora simply wanted to spend some time with her mother, Heather, at the old apothecary shop. Content that their joint purpose was served and that Evanoch was a better place, they departed to enjoy their own pursuits. 

And so technically the bulk of this campaign is over. But it's actually not really over in any way that matters. Each of my players will now complete two more sessions with me one-on-one. Each of these sessions will cover two time periods for a total of four big moments. Those moments will take place immediately following the campaign, one year later, ten years after the campaign, and one hundred years after the campaign. This accomplishes two big goals:

1. Dragonhood is basically immortality, and I want a sense of how that impacts the players. How do they deal with staying the same as others age? As they lose people? As they really begin to see that the power of dragonhood comes with a sacrifice? As a one hundred years later moment really lets us see who the player characters become after the polish of dragonhood has worn off? 

2. I have vowed to leave D&D alone as a DM for a long time after this campaign. It's been the culmination of almost 20 years of DMing, it's made me immensely proud, and it's changed my world forever. I need some time to detox, and so does Evanoch. I'm breaking tradition--whereas every campaign I've run has happened immediately following the last (lots of massive world-changing things in a week and a half), my next campaign (whenever that happens) will take place one hundred years after this campaign. And so having an idea what my dragons are up to then will be especially important. 

I also want to spend some time just giving this trio real endings. I want their players to feel like their characters ended up where they should, and that means giving them more time to breathe. I want to see how Brokk and Niela's life together looks and see how the bullet points Brokk's player already gave me for the epilogues get played out. I want to see Lethanin interact with his family again after the dinner party and see what his music career is like now and what he does with all the strange information he collects. I want to see Aurora enjoy time with her mom and experiment with spells and hang out with the fae and her Edmund Fitzgerald friends. I don't want to just feel content imagining all that either. I want the players to share those moments with me so they know that their character really did get to be happy. 

The truth of it is, Of Gods and Dragons is my favorite thing I've ever run. Maybe it's because I'm playing with my two best friends and my wife. Maybe it's because this campaign puts together ideas from almost two decades of gaming. Maybe I'm more talented than last time I DMed. I don't know. But my players gave me the time of my life with these silly little gods and dragons, and I want to feel confident that they had a great time too, one they'll remember. I'm sure the epilogue sessions will be as radically different as the intro sessions, and I look forward to that. And that's because they'll be totally that character. These characters attained dragonhood--they should get to end on their own terms. 

So while Pelor's Mercy's destruction marks the end of the campaign, there is still more. Together, Brokk, Lethanin, and Aurora will write the history of my world for the next century and beyond, and so the three epilogue sessions that follow will give you a conclusion for these characters and a foundation for what eventually comes next. Stick around to see what endings our trio chooses for themselves, and so--until next time, happy gaming!

Brokk's Epilogue

Aurora's Epilogue

Lethanin's Epilogue

The Finale Session

Of Gods and Dragons: Session Seventeen

Last time we played, or rather last time I wrote, we covered two sessions. One was a brief session in which the party slayed Thomas, the red dragon and split up to deal with his troops. The next was a longer session where they defeated the armed men in Vestry, Torga, and Drumchapel, all in their own distinctive ways. Wing and Lethanin menaced the troops out of Vestry, Hriskin and Aurora defeated the troops in Talon Gorge, and Brokk and Niela terrified the troops and killed their leaders. Brokk assumed the red dragon mantle, pledging himself to helping other dragons. The group of dragons and Aurora then turned their attention to Horton, the blue dragon, deciding that most of the group would go to fight him while Jarvia and Wing covered their tracks. Brokk, Lethanin, Aurora, Hriskin, Aurix, and Niela all set out for Vestry, intending to depart for Horton the following day. The group took up with Lethanin's parents in Vestry. 

This time, I had no idea what to expect aside from knowing that there would be a dinner party of sorts. That did in fact happen, but there were lots of surprises along the way. Let's get into it. 

In the time before dinner was being cooked, the party had sprawled across Lethanin's parents' house and the city beyond, but everyone reconvened as Aurora finished her elaborate meal (chateaubriand, brussel sprouts, fresh bread, and more) and served dinner. The deliciousness of the meal and Aurora's graciousness as hostess frustrated Lethanin's mother, Dodira, who felt upstaged as a hostess in her home. She left dinner before everyone else finished, upset. 

When dinner did eventually die down, Lethanin's father, Larson, retired to his laboratory in the basement to tinker; Brokk followed behind a moment afterwards to speak with him. But Brokk could not easily fit through the especially tight doorway in the gnomish home, and he tried to transform himself into a smaller version of himself. Instead, he became a small dragon, which made Brokk panic, and he left the room. Meanwhile, Aurora tried to cheer up Dodira by feeding her a progression of broths, which worked more than Dodira wanted to admit. Lethanin watched in amusement as his family dealt with his new friends. Brokk returned to Larson, squeezing into the lab. They spoke about their work, Brokk describing the enjoyment of teamwork and hard labor, Larson talking about the satisfaction of learning and applying knowledge. When Brokk inquired, it became clear that Larson was working on converting some fertilizer technology into a process that would create explosives; Brokk forcefully guided Larson away from doing so on the grounds that people would get hurt. 

The group decided to unwind further. Aurora and Hriskin headed to the market to get after-dinner drinks. On the way, Hriskin asked Aurora how she felt about Horton. Aurora replied that Horton was a fundamentally dangerous individual who needed to be dealt with in a serious way. Hriskin acknowledged that she had negative feelings about Horton given his curse, but she was slow to commit to killing him. Aurora on the other hand was sure--Horton was a threat, and the greater good would be served by his death. 

Meanwhile, Lethanin spoke to his parents. First, he went to his father, who tiredly agreed to have a heart to heart. Larson explained that he doesn't have strong convictions, but Dodira does, and Dodira wanted a firm hand raising Lethanin with little outward affection. Larson relented to satisfy Dodira despite misgivings. Larson described a moment where he realized that Lethanin understood something about music in a way that Larson could never understand, and he respected Lethanin for it. Larson emphatically stated he was proud of Lethanin and regretted the long, cold silence between them, and he apologized for his shortcomings. Amazed, Lethanin went to speak to his mother. She was initially furious at Lethanin for creating a situation where she was upstaged in her own home, but eventually, she relented and apologized for losing her temper. But unlike Larson, Dodira did not go further, remaining bristly about the evening and Lethanin and his friends. 

And Brokk and Niela sat quietly, discussing things big and small about their situation and being dragons. Soon, they were flirting, and Niela placed a hand on Brokk's and outright hit on him. The topic of their conversation fell to them and sprawled into all manner of excited chatting about the future. Brokk invited Niela along on an adventure he meant to have when all this was over; she agreed in a joking manner, then apologized for hesitating to be vulnerable. They went to the forest nearby, and Brokk transformed into a dragon with Niela. She inspected him and explained that he looked totally different from Thomas, an orcish-looking blood-colored terrifying creature unlike any she'd seen. Brokk said he was grateful that Niela was the person he shared that moment with. They returned to the house in high spirits to join the others. 

Aurora and Hriskin returned with the drinks and dispensed them to the group, and Aurora slunk off with one glass to take to Dodira. Dodira answered her door irritated for being bothered but took the drink. Aurora magically gave Dodira all the memories she had of Lethanin's heroics and role in the stability of reality, which brough Dodira to her knees. Dodira knocked back her drink and went to Lethanin, apologizing for doubting him. She called him a hero, then said she needed time to think, and they would talk soon, heading back upstairs to bed. 

Content that they had privacy to speak, Brokk made a case that Aurora should pursue the blue dragonhood following Horton's death, reasoning that protecting the mantle would be imporant and that Aurora could reclaim the formerly Daltoner title and do something good with it. Aurora was resolute in opposing this. She said that if she became the blue dragon, she would feel obligated to answer for all Daltoners, putting her on a bloodbath tour through the worst parts of Daltoner society. Instead, she said, she would pursue the fae dragonhood since it would suit her better given her power from the fae. Aurix suggested that if blocking a dragon title was the goal, it was possible to seal away the stones, but the party was adamant that this was the highest order of hypocrisy, taking power and closing it off to everyone else. Content that the matter was settled, the group set to discussing a plan for Horton. 

It was decided that Aurora would be used as bait--the girl who had been so important to ranking Daltoners as to merit multiple trackers and a dragon would certainly be of some interest to Horton, they reasoned. Niela volunteered to tip Horton off to Aurora's location so that they could stage an ambush, which was added to the plan. Aurix recommended they adjourn for the night and reconvene in the morning, ready to depart for Horton. 

In the morning, Aurora teleported the group to a familiar location--the clearing where she had met ABC in her intro session, the statue of ABC still standing. It appeared to be in exacting detail and hadn't weathered at all. Aurora stood in the middle of the clearing, and the others all went to hide at its perimeter. Niela messaged Horton, and within a few moments, as Aurora studied the statue, Horton called out to see if Aurora was lost. Aurora turned, drew her wooden sword, and ran at Horton. Horton stepped out of the way of the attack, and initiative will be rolled next session. 

Now, ordinarily, I interrupt the narration of the session to point out various moments and strategies, but I decided that the flow and pacing of this session was so good that I just wanted to leave it intact and let you see how well this went. So let's now go back and review. 

The lead up to dinner was all fun. Brokk menacingly convincing Larson not to make bombs cracked up Lethanin's player, who loved to see his dad being naive and needing sheperding. There were a few small interactions that I didn't include in this summary that characterize the tone of this section: it was silly. Lethanin was living up weirding out his parents with his crazy friends, Aurora was in full-fledged party host mode, Brokk was as always trying to do well, and the other dragons were all doing their best to not be too wild. I think a good silly moment is a great way to start a session, and it really got the group in a great mode for this session. 

Then the party split up after dinner. I have a go-to strategy for this. I keep my parties small, generally, and this trick works best when you have three or less players. We went to Aurora, who was with Hriskin. The trick is to put a similar anchoring moment in all of our players' moments. So Hriskin asks a deep question, our anchor, about Horton. And Aurora has a big character moment talking about who Horton is and what she wants, and it was basically me throwing Aurora's player a softball. "How do you feel about this polarizing figure?" It got Aurora going, which got the group's momentum going. 

Then we switch to Lethanin. We need deep conversation, but he goes to his dad, so this is pretty easy. I had been planning to have Larson be so distant that this kind of conversation never would have happened, but in the moment, I liked how this came together. Lethanin asks the deep question, our anchor: is Larson proud of him? And it unfolds in this beautiful conversation. Larson gives what is probably the only thing explanation he could have where he's not inarguably an awful parent, and he says many kind things. It's a reconciliation. It's the most Lethanin could hope for, and now the momentum is really going as he heads to Dodira, who cannot possibly concede everything but does apologize. 

It's with the high momentum and high emotion of these scenes that we barrel into our third moment, Brokk and Niela in the garden outside the house. I've been building toward Niela flirting with Brokk for a while, and I figured that the deep question here is one that can be danced around: does Brokk have interest in Niela? So Niela calls Brokk charming, which isn't conclusively flirting, so Brokk goes a step further and says he likes being around her, and this still isn't conclusive, so they keep pushing until they've both called each other attractive and Niela is affectionately touching Brokk. The dragon form reveal moment (Niela's idea) ended up being really tender and specific to Brokk and Niela. And when Niela acknowledged her struggles with vulnerability, it felt like the relationship had already taken a step. 

The trick behind the trick--I claimed to randomly have picked the order of scenes, but I didn't. Aurora waxing poetic about morality and identity is a common thing, and it's not particularly emotionally charged compared to the other two situations. Lethanin is having BIG conversations with his parents, but Lethanin, Larson, and Dodira are all emotionally reserved people. Brokk is a big feeling guy, and sparking a romance with Niela (which Brokk's player had told me would be wish fulfillment) was as big a moment as we were going to get. So to build momentum, I had Aurora go first, then Lethanin, and then Brokk, building from lowest to highest energy (at least emotionally speaking). That was ideal for what happened next, which we needed high energy for: 

Aurora dispensed drinks, taking one to Dodira. She bestows visions of Lethanin's heroics on Dodira. Dodira is shaken. It's been well-established that Dodira is cold and judgmental to her son, that she has no faith in him, and that she will always blame him for being different from her. All of a sudden, she can't stand behind those things anymore. It was a much bigger moment than summary can do justice--Dodira just sputtering, Lethanin smiling defiantly, Lethanin's friends grinning from beside him. It was, in a way, the biggest victory that Lethanin could have had with his mother. The momentum of the split scenes came to a head with this scene, and the group fell on familiar methods. 

They set to planning. In the summary above, there are three sentences of plan (Aurora is bait, Niela messages Horton, get to bed). In-game, this was a lengthy conversation. They debated how to fight Horton, where to fight Horton, and why to fight Horton. The idea of luring Horton to Pelor's Mercy to kill two birds with one stone was floated, but resistance to being spread too thin kept that idea from gaining traction. In the end, Aurix's admonition to call it a night was as much from wanting to be prepared the next day as it was from ending a circular conversation. 

The final scene was really just set dressing for the battle. I had hoped that Aurora would speak to Horton, and Horton isn't done trying to speak yet, but we'll see. If you're a regular reader, you know that I prefer most outcomes to combat, so it's probably not a surprise that I'm angling to have Horton talk his way out of things. But I also don't forget the key to DMing: creating fun. So I'll have Horton try to talk a bit because he's a lawyer and that's what he'd do, but if the players think it would be fun to kill him, I will honestly run the combat. 

For a lot of people, I think that people would say I have this all wrong. They would say that the build up to combat was the only interesting thing that happened, and everything else was just talking. But for me, smacking a guy with a stick after luring him into the woods is just not that interesting. But Aurora defined herself by what she will and will not do. Lethanin connected with his parents in a way that he never has before. Brokk is finding a mentor and partner in Niela as he adjusts to being a dragon himself. There were silly shenanigans and serious roleplaying moments. Everyone got a moment in the spotlight. We got a break between slaying Thomas and Horton that the players and player characters badly needed. I think this session may stand out as one of the best of the campaign and possibly one of the best of my DMing career. I'm truly proud of it, and I know it wouldn't have been possible without my players. 

Next time will be an interesting mix. Where Thomas was a staggering blend of fighter, barbarian, and cleric classes--truly meant for up close combat--and he was juggled to death by the party, Horton is not a fighter. He's a mixture of rogue and bard, and in combat, he stands considerably less of a chance than Thomas did. If he can say the right things, it may be more complicated, and it might not matter--he could be toast no matter what. But that still leaves plenty of session for the party to focus their attention elsewhere--perhaps to Pelor's Mercy, perhaps to regrouping, perhaps to any manner of new or old goals. I don't know what will happen, but I trust that it will be a good time when we get to play next time. 

That's all for now. Until next time!

Of Gods and Dragons: Session Fifteen and Sixteen

Last time, the dragons spoke at length about how to proceed, eventually agreeing to kill Thomas, the red dragon. It was also agreed that Brokk would take his place as red dragon. The assembled people's clashing agendas made the conversation tense, and little else was agreed upon. In the morning, everyone but Rupert sprung a trap on Thomas, and Thomas unveiled that he had troops headed to Drumchapel, Vestry, and the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

This time, we're covering two sessions at once because one session was pretty much entirely combat and also I didn't feel well and cut it short after the Thomas battle. But here's the breakdown: 

In session fifteen, the dragons and the party launched a horrifying attack on Thomas. They stunned him again and again, preventing him from taking actions, and whittled away his 600 hit points until he was nothing. Once Thomas was finally slain, Brokk beheaded him, and Lethanin used dragon breath to incinerate the body. Immediately, the group split to deal with Thomas's troops: Aurora and Hriskin went to Torga, Lethanin and Wing went to Vestry, and Brokk and Niela went to Drumchapel while Aurix and Jarvia tended to the final concerns with Thomas. 

That brought us up to session sixteen, where the combat wasn't exactly over. We started with Aurora and Hriskin, who appeared in the backyard at Heather's shop and home in Torga. They hurried to the Edmund Fitzgerald and found Captain Zamira aboard, but the rest of the crew save for one hand was scattered at bars across town. Aurora suggested gathering the crew and setting sail, but Zamira was more attached to staying with her ship. Growing frantic, Aurora explained that the fabric of reality had been repaired and the god of gods was inept, making Zamira confused and alarmed, and Aurora tried to reason that gathering the crew and hiding would be best. Zamira agreed, and Aurora wrenched the ship's bell and carried it along, clanging it with her wooden sword. Then, in the distance, more than twenty armed soldiers wearing the crest of the Dalton Church of Pelor appeared headed right for Aurora, Hriskin, Zamira, and the hand. 

Meanwhile, Lethanin and Wing appeared just outside Vestry at Wing's estate. Lethanin grew anxious and talked about checking his parents' home, and Wing responded by showing him a telescope that viewed locations around Vestry. After some searching, Lethanin was able to spot similar armed soldiers approaching the south gate of the city--the nearest entrance to New Dalton. Wing teleported them there, interposing themselves between the soldiers and the city. 

At the same time, Brokk and Niela appeared in Drumchapel at Brokk's home. At Brokk's request, Niela used her dragon form to surveil the nearby area and spot any approaching soldiers. She spotted some and accompanied Brokk to the road, where he stood a ways off from the city and waited for the oncoming soldiers. The leader of the soldiers threatened Brokk and Niela, and Brokk used Form of Dread to terrify the soldiers, scaring eight of them into running off. Brokk intimidated them further, scaring away all but only three--the leader, a cleric, and a dual-wielding swordsman. Niela cracked her knuckles and asked if Brokk wanted any of the soldiers left alive. 

At this point, we launched into a massive triple combat. There were two main ways to approach this: resolve each combat one at a time, or do one turn in each combat before switching to the next. To keep momentum up and prevent players from having to sit for too long, I chose alternating between combats. As you'll see, the players went for an interesting approach to these combats that I didn't anticipate and that really changed how things might have gone. Let's get into it. 

In Torga: Hriskin asked Aurora if it was okay to transform into a dragon, and Aurora was indifferent. Hriskin transformed into a dragon and took a defensive stance against the soldiers, the latter of which she was joined in by Zamira and the hand. Aurora intimidated the soldiers, scaring off all but six, then cast a spell that shifted gravity radically and distorted the bodies of five of the soldiers; Aurora then magically pulled the distorted bodies back towards her and smashed them with her wooden sword like a baseball player. 

In Vestry: Lethanin cast a spell to intimidate the soldiers, but in still learning to cast spells as a dragon, only succeeded in making the soldiers advance with shields raised. Wing cast Power Word Kill on a soldier, instantly slaying him, and threatened the remaining soldiers, all but five of whom fled. 

In Drumchapel: The soldier with two blades offered Brokk a fair fight, but the cleric cast a spell to help the soldier. Enraged by this, Brokk blitzed at the cleric and tore him halfway apart by the legs, at which point he used a power to suck the life from the dying cleric, turning his body desiccated and foul. Niela came up behind the dual-wielding soldier and bopped him on the head, knocking him out. Brokk ordered Niela to kill the leader, which she did with a slit throat by kukri. Brokk managed to calm down and ordered the soldier to be taken to the Drumchapel magistrate to be dealt with, and Niela hefted the armored man onto her shoulder and carried him into town. The soldiers who'd stood by to watch fled. 

Back in Torga: Hriskin used electric dragon breath to taze the last soldier, and Aurora ordered Zamira to gather the crew and get out of town. Aurora roused the last soldier to speak to him, and after some agressive answers, he stabbed Aurora. She healed herself and left the soldier to the city law enforcement. 

Back in Vestry: Lethanin reared back and then snapped the leader of the soldiers' head off, spitting the helmet back out theatrically a moment later. This frightened the remaining soldiers off into the woods, leaving Wing and Lethanin with a clear street. 

After a few minor actions, the groups reconvened at the mountaintop with Jarvia and Aurix. After everyone accounted for their end of things, Jarvia grew tense. She argued that openly being dragons in public is a delicate thing to be handled carefully; the group had not gone about it carefully. The more other dragons weighed in, the more intense the debate became until it was outright fiery. In the end, Brokk chided Lethanin and Aurora for their parts in dragon display, saying they were not taking the safety of their actions into consideration. Brokk also recommended blaming the attacks from Thomas on the Dalton Church of Pelor. Inspired, Jarvia developed an elaborate cover story with common people standing up to soldiers, stressing that a whole conspiracy about the Daltoners would emerge. 

Aurix said that the time had come to make Brokk a dragon. Brokk ritually dropped all his weaponry, and Aurix teleported them to Thomas's basement. Aurix performed the rites, and Brokk felt the painful sensation of becoming a dragon. Once he had recovered, Aurix returned them to the mountaintop, where Brokk pledged himself to helping the other dragons. This was met with warmth, and several dragons remarked that they were pleased to have Brokk over Thomas. 

Wing voiced a thought many of the dragons had had and not spoken: did the party intend to kill the blue and green dragons too? Niela and Aurora were the most vocal in terms of killing Horton, the blue dragon, and there was generally little opposition--only Jarvia, really, saying executing a whole swath of powerful people would have untold consequences. But with the green dragon, no one seemed willing to champion the cause, and Jarvia's argument about being executioners was taken up by others now. In the end, Niela said that killing Horton and revisiting the issue would be most practical, and this was agreed upon. Wing joined Jarvia to spread misinformation about the appearance of dragons, and everyone else agreed to set out for Horton. 

The divide between the dragons has been one of my favorite things in this campaign. I knew that they'd be hard to unite, which was the point of the whole first leg of the campaign, but once brought together, they just aren't easy to wrangle either. I spoke with Aurora's player after this session about Jarvia taking a hard line against Aurora twice this session--Jarvia who was a surrogate mom, who blessed Aurora with a transformation, who understands Aurora--that Jarvia disagrees with Aurora completely. The dragon they most agree with is Niela. All of this is a big surprise, and I love it. I want to see what happens as the players continue to have to deal with the other dragons and what complications that presents. 

On the way, Aurora spoke of the sins of her past before she had memories. She said she did not want to bring more suffering on Brokk and Lethanin. She spoke of the weight on her and the need to destroy Pelor's Mercy. Lethanin and Brokk were both supportive and comforted Aurora, promising that when the time came, they would help her. Meanwhile, Niela used a detailed map to pinpoint where Pelor's Mercy was (east of Vestry at the fork in a river), so the group agreed to spend the night in Vestry with Lethanin's parents. They made their way there and asked Lethanin's mom to let them stay; after some discomfort about being a good or bad host, she agreed. Aurora got to work cooking, Lethanin played music, and Brokk walked with Aurix and Niela, asking questions about being a dragon--Niela had insightful and genuine answers, while Aurix was inwardly focused and nervous. 

And we ended there. It was the end of our time, for one, and for two, the moments that we were driving towards were all big moments that we needed full space for. Lethanin's family stuff is a big deal and needs some nurturing, and whatever happens with Horton may take all of next session or more. It was a good place to end. 

I was told after the session by multiple players that this was a particularly fun session. That initially baffled me. I was running around like crazy trying to keep up, and it was fun? My players say it was fun to play if not to DM, and I have some theories why. Foremost: this was a varied session. Some light combat, some roleplaying, and shenanigans--we hit the trifecta, all the styles mingled and balanced. I think I want to shoot for more light combat moving forward in light of this. And second: they got to experience being heroes and then have NPCs question how heroic they really were being. That's a fun experience as a player, getting unsure of your own decision-making, and starting to wonder if being immensely powerful has changed you. (I think it has.) So I'll happily take this session as a success. 

Taken together, sessions fifteen and sixteen are pretty monumental. They killed Thomas, their greatest threat and only real foe. They stopped the threat he posed to those they cared about. They've convinced a large group of the most powerful beings in existence to target the only remaining threat to their agenda. Once Horton and Pelor's Mercy are deal with, questions about what their imagined legacies are begin to become the focus of the remaining campaign. 

Next time, we'll see what antics and drama come out of Lethanin's family and how the group approaches Horton. As always, I have no idea what's going to happen. Looking forward to it. 

That's all for now. Until next time!

Of Gods and Dragons: Session Fourteen

Last time, the group gathered at the top of the Kallett Mountains to search for the title of the sound dragon. They investigated an inscribed stone but came up with little results. Then a detective named Regg appeared and questioned the group about their presence in the area, which eventually resulted in Regg threatening Aurora and stating that she'd been hired by Pelor's Mercy to bring Aurora back, accusing her of murdering the two men sent to find her. Combat raged, and the group killed Regg, her twin trained mountain lions, and a tamed bulette. While Brokk built a funeral pyre for Regg, Lethanin figured out the inscription and became the sound dragon, breathing fire onto the pyre. 

This time, the group addressed priorities and decided that reconvening with the dragons was their next best move. Aurora contacted Aurix and requested he bring the dragons back together, and everyone met in Aurix's halls to discuss the matters at hand. One by one, the dragons appeared, each one trading updates since they'd last seen the group. Lethanin explained that he'd become the sound dragon and what the elemental dragons were. Aurora told of the battle with Regg and the bounty that had been placed on her head. Brokk explained the meeting with Boccob and the strange nature of the universe. Wing asked what to make of the recovered dragon titles, and there was no consensus. Niela voiced discomfort with how willing to make big decisions for all of reality the trio seemed, which Brokk was amenable to. Each dragon shared their new understanding: Aurix was excited at the prospect of more dragons and content at Regg's death; Wing marveled at the nature of the universe and Boccob; Hriskin shared that she was intensely interested in fighting the other chromatic dragons; Rupert counseled for support for new dragons should that approach be taken; Jarvia said that it was good Regg and the Daltoners had been foiled from taking Aurora; Niela was grateful for agency again but feared what might happen without cautious planning for what came next. 

Out of game, this was a really difficult scene to play as the DM. At first, one by one, I needed to have in-character, plot-relevant input from each dragon before hearing the news, and then I needed to give a voice to all six dragons during a complicated philosophical discussion. That means that in real time, I needed to process the thoughts, feelings, and morals of six major NPCs at once. Many DMs will encounter this issue--it's complicated and challenging no matter your level. That said, I am really happy with how it played out. Each dragon felt in-character and substantial (a common solution to this problem is for the NPCs to be brief in their speech). And I think that the reason for that ultimate comes down to pre-campaign brainstorming. Between literal years of thinking about these dragons, concerted effort to establish their personalities, and getting to play each one in weighty scenes, I had a lot of preparation for this situation. With each dragon having plenty to say, I was jumping between characters quickly and often, and as frantic as it was, my players tell me that the scene went very well. 

Brokk then raised a new point of conversation: killing Thomas. He mentioned that he had interest in the red dragon mantle, and he apologized preemptively to the dragons who had issues with Thomas--the dragons noted they would rather have Brokk than Thomas. Aurora agreed that Thomas needed to be dealt with; she also said she wanted to form a pact among the dragons to never tell anyone of the unclaimed dragon mantles, adding that she wanted to become a dragon but otherwise prevent new dragons from emerging. This complicated pact caused some confusion amongst the group. A simpler vote was raised: who supported killing Thomas? The vote was unanimous. Aurora offered another convoluted proposal, suggesting forming a dragon-run organization to maintain good forces in the world and foster new and growing dragons. There were many objections to her proposal. Some objected to the broadness of the proposal, and some (notably Niela and Jarvia) were very resistant to the idea of working together with the other dragons. Jarvia even went so far as to point out that working to maintain good with a group of solitary people would approach the impediments to free will that they'd fought to correct. Aurora countered by suggesting a looser council to simply hear out issues that face the world, and while most dragons were mildly supportive or neutral, Niela and Jarvia were outright dismissive of the plan, arguing that secrecy and solitude was vital to them. Aurora explained that she only wanted avenues for communication, and the conversation more or less ended there. 

This scene was oddly one of the more pivotal moments in the campaign. Aurora was, in this moment, a lot for forceful and focused than she normally was, and her collection of proposals paired with the suggestion she become a dragon but no one else could left the others (especially Brokk) uncomfortable or even suspicious of Aurora. After the game was over, Brokk and Aurora's players both approached me to talk about this fairly transparent grab for power. Aurora's player was giddy that she'd finally gotten to reveal one of her chosen flaws: power hungry. And I must admit, this was the perfect time for that detail to come out. Brokk's player was split between an in-game wariness and an out-of-game respect for Aurora's player's handling of the situation. (Lethanin's player generally doesn't communicate much about the game outside of the game, but I'm confident they would have a similar response.) I know that the gravity and nuance of this doesn't exactly sound very dramatic or monumental--part of that is the loss of subtle things after the moment--but I assure you, given the context, it was quite massive. Aurora, the character who everyone calls "kid," who's been spoken about as the heart of the group, who has always seemed a soft and gentle character, called for the organized killing of a dragon, her ascension to dragonhood, and a blanket ban on future dragons--that's the character moment that had us all so abuzz. It really changed the tenor of the rest of the session. 

At this point, the dragons split up to discuss things in smaller groups. Brokk asked Niela a few questions about life as a chromatic dragon--she said that with agency, a chromatic dragon and a metallic dragon are only really different in terms of who gave them the mantle. Lethanin asked Rupert a series of questions about life as a new dragon, and Rupert explained a few things like how to transform into dragon form and other basics. Aurora, interested in entering the Fae realm to find the Fae dragon mantle, asked Jarvia about transportation to other planes; she shared that it was possible and would help if she could. The matter of Thomas again became the focal point, and the group began to plan. Niela said that Thomas suspected the metallic dragons were moving against him, and the element of surprise may be difficult to obtain. Lethanin asked whether they needed to worry about Horton, the blue dragon, from coming to Thomas's aid--Hriskin chuckled and argued that two dragons versus six dragons and three cosmic heroes was no match at all. Aurora suggested revoking Thomas's dragonhood to make the fight less risky, but Aurix said such a thing was fundamentally nearly impossible, and when Aurora suggested transferring it to Brokk, Aurix said that bestowing dragonhood with a living dragon is like trying to light a candle that's already lit--it couldn't be done. 

The group's plans began to become more abstract and elaborate. Aurora, undeterred by Aurix's concerns about Thomas's dragonhood, used a spell to divine the location of the red dragon mantle stone, and she saw a metamorphic obelisk with draconic inscriptions hidden amongst a large and elaborate altar to Moradin, and she could tell from the surroundings that the altar was in Thomas's house. Niela offered to track Thomas the following day, and Brokk countered that Niela could (if willing) serve as bait to lure Thomas into an ambush. But Brokk immediately overrode himself, saying that if Niela told Thomas about Regg's death, he would almost certainly emerge to investigate. This last plan got support from the dragons at large, including Niela, and everyone agreed to rest and prepare before reconvening in the morning. Lethanin privately pondered the situation and played music idly, trying not to think too hard about things. A message from Lethanin's mother arrived in his head, asking about Lethanin's recent step into the realm of the religion (a story Lethanin had given her to placate her, joking about their interactions with the gods before meeting with Boccob. Lethanin's response was brief and cryptic, continuing to evade direct communication with her. Before resting to regain her magical energy, Aurora used the last of her power to create a contigency spell on a simple rock: when the stone would come within ten feet of Thomas, it would block his ability to magically travel, keeping him from escaping the ambush. Brokk spoke casually with the dragons, performed a battle meditation and pondered what good really is (the distinction between good and right was crucial in this), and headed to bed--he was stopped by Jarvia, who asked Brokk to keep an eye on Aurora, as Aurora's hunger for power had struck Jarvia was unsettling. Brokk agreed and sharpened his battleaxe until dawn. 

In the morning, the dragons reconvened. Niela set off to bring Thomas into the trap, and the collection of heroes and dragons teleported via a portal created by Aurix to the top of the mountains where they had slain Regg. Niela and Thomas were already there, standing over the funeral pyre. Aurora threw the rock at Thomas, binding him to mundane travel. Thomas smiled. He said that he had armed soldiers positioned outside Drumchapel, Torga, the Edmund Fitzgerald, and Vestry to dissuade them--he even added that he knew Lethanin would not care about his parents and threatened to destroy the Song itself. A tense moment passed, and Aurora suddenly cast a deadly spell that hit Thomas considerably hard, though it seemed he was powerful enough to not be entirely threatened by the blow. Before anyone else could act, Thomas cast a spell that sent multiple messages at once, ordering the waiting soldiers to "Get them." 

We stopped here. This battle--ten powerful combatants with lots of health--may take a whole session or more to play out, and we had about half an hour of game time before we had to wrap up. The various dragon conversations did take over two hours, and we just didn't have enough time to address the Thomas battle. This is good in that it gives me time to prepare for Thomas and the other dragons' combat abilities. Thomas alone has 20 levels of Fighter, 20 levels of Cleric, and 10 levels of Barbarian, and I've never played a Fighter or Barbarian. I've also never played a cleric past level 8 or so, so that will also be new. And that doesn't even mention the other maxed out classes of the other six dragons. I'm gonna need to do some studying to be able to handle the seven dragons in the mix. 

Another notable thing here is that Thomas obviously doesn't pose much of a threat. Like Hriskin said, a lone dragon or two versus nine legendary enemies is not terribly scary from the nine's perspective. The group did not come all this way to bargain with Thomas, so they are committed to combat. But the interesting thing (that I absolutely didn't see coming) was that the table talk about what to do centered on assigning some dragons to fight Thomas and others to travel to the threatened locations and fight the mercenaries. So come next session, assigning which characters to go where will be a challenging thing to delegate and communicate in the context of the combat. The players have planned well, and unless they decide to let Thomas go, he's pretty well done for. The real stakes are what happens in terms of battle organization and the threatened towns. (By the by, I've had Thomas's mercenary plan set up since session one, and springing it was incredibly fun as the DM. My players' faces fell hard when Thomas announced the mercenaries, and that's a big deal when they have Thomas in such a corner.)

Next time, we will see the combat and traveling unfold, and the consequences will shape the world of Evanoch as much as repairing the rift did. It will be monumental and decisive whatever happens. This is, in a sense, the climax of the campaign. I had figured speaking to Boccob would be the climax, but the way things have shaped up, it's probably going to be this upcoming session. I'm excited, and I know my players are too. It's impossible to know what will happen next time, but it's going to be big no matter what. 

That's all for now. Until next time!

Of Gods and Dragons: Session Thirteen

Last session, the group achieved one of their main goals: they met with Boccob (who turned out to be the son of the original Boccob), a figure who explained that without the original Boccob, the world was directionless, and that he could not repair the rift himself. Learning that the original Boccob controlled the universe via music, Lethanin stepped in to play the Song and repair the barrier. Aurora helped to clarify the Song and then recorded a version of it on a crystal so that any future adventurers wouldn't struggle as much with the process. The rift repaired, they returned to Aurix's headquarters, where ABC revealed to Aurora that she was the child of rich Daltoners, asking Aurora to destroy Pelor's Mercy, a brutal work camp--Lethanin and Brokk agreed to help. The group questioned whether dragons should exist at all. Aurix and Niela agreed to spy on Thomas (Aurix from afar and Niela up close). As the session closed out, the group teleported away to the peaks of the Kallett Mountains to seek the sound dragon title which they learned about from Boccob. 

This time, the group began to explore a small plateau atop the highest peak of the Kallett Mountains, trying to find whatever they had learned was here. Aurora cast a spell that guided the group to an outcropping of stones pillars--one granite, one slate, one obsidian, one shale, and several others. On the obsidian pillar was an inscription in draconic; after a failed spell, Aurora managed to translate the inscription:

The being of supreme sound is eternal

As eternal as all beings of the supreme

The being transcends life and death

A mantle for this world and beyond

The being is the mantle

The mantle is a name

Speak the mantle, speak the name, and eternal is present

O dragon of sound, your mortal name, be one and the same.

Suspecting that they needed to know the sound dragon's titular name, Aurora messaged Aurix to ask the term "sound" in draconic, and Aurix replied that it was Xythanir. Lethanin spoke this name, and the runes that read "O dragon of sound" glowed with an eerie light. Lethanin then spoke his own name, and the runes that read "your mortal name" glowed with the same light. Brokk, Lethanin, and Aurora all sensed deep within themselves that magical energy seemed to want to leave them. Aurora asked Lethanin if he really wanted to become a dragon, and Lethanin said that he didn't really know what he wanted. This caused Brokk to slow all the way down, saying that they weren't making huge effort to protect free will only to force Lethanin into something he didn't want. Before they could debate further, Lethanin heard a twig snap in the clearing beyond the rocks; Brokk looked in that direction and spotted a well-outfitted orcish woman with twin mountain lions at her side.

Brokk made conversation with the woman. At first, she identified herself as Regg, a detective who patrols the Kallett Mountains, and she asked what interest the group had in the inscription on the stones. Brokk feigned ignorance, claiming that they were actually just out for a hike. Regg continued on in a friendly manner, making small talk and insisting that the inscription was just a poem, admitting she could read draconic. Eventually, Regg stopped playing nice and accused Aurora of murder aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald, Aurora's old ship. Regg said she planned to bring Aurora back to Pelor's Mercy, where she had been hired to find Aurora. Aurora immediately cast a spell that disintegrated both of the mountain lions, which enraged Regg; she transformed into a massive white dragon, and combat began.

Out of game, I didn't really plan for Regg to show up this session. The group was struggling with the inscription, and I thought a little interruption would be a good way to help them reset when they returned to the inscription, so I thought someone showing up would be a fun moment. The question of who showed up was determined by the context; who was powerful enough to climb the mountain quickly? A dragon. Whose territory was it? Regg's. Why would she be there? She's a detective who serves the Pelor's Mercy area, so she's seeking Aurora. This was an entirely improvised choice with big consequences, and I made it quickly but not lightly. Any DM has to accept that throwing an NPC into a scene with the player characters might end with the death of that NPC, so I proceeded with that in mind.

Regg began combat by breathing a cone of both fire and ice which the group was able to minimize the damage of. Lethanin played a song that allowed him to teleport to a space behind Regg and with cover. Brokk cast the spell Fly and shot up and towards Regg, attacking her fiercely with a battleaxe. Aurora cast a spell that forced Regg back into her orcish form and drained her of some of her health, and Brokk slashed at her as she fell from the sky. Regg struggled to her feet and whistled, taking a defensive stance. Lethanin played a song that deafened and disoriented Regg. Brokk allowed himself to fall from the air, using the momentum to strike Regg four brutal times with his battleaxe. Aurora drained more of Regg's health and projected an illusion of metallic dragons (she intended Hriskin, but her spell depicted Jarvia). The earth shook, and Regg mockingly told Brokk to watch his step, taking a step back for another defensive stance. Lethanin played the bagpipes, landing on a frequency that shattered both of Regg's femurs, forcing her to the ground again. Brokk took advantage of the situation and slashed at Regg four more times. Aurora continued the illusion and the draining of health, and Regg muttered that she now saw both Hriskin and Jarvia, unnerving her. From the rumbling ground, a bulette which seemed to have been trained by Regg sprung from the ground, scooping up Regg and attacking Brokk, though Brokk managed to avoid damage with a counterstrike. Lethanin played another song which vibrated at a frequency that shattered half the bulette's armor, and both Brokk and Regg took damage from the explosive debris. Brokk made himself appear ghastly to Regg, unnerving her and slashing the bulette for heavy damage. Aurora cast a spell that halted just above Regg, who asked to work things out, and Aurora forced the spell further, finishing Regg off. In vengeful fury, the bulette charged Aurora, but Brokk was able to kill the bulette with a burst of Eldritch Blast before the creature reached Aurora. 

Out of game, I want to acknowledge that I didn't really anticipate how handily the party would kill Regg and her creatures. You may note in the combat description above that Regg chooses to take no aggressive action at a few points. I reasoned that she would be overly confident and not necessarily take the party as a threat until it was too late. I also didn't want a party wipe on my hands, and so I erred on the side of Regg being a little slow to go for the throat. I want to point out that this was also just from lack of knowing what to anticipate, and for several reasons. 

1. I've never run combat with three 16th-level characters and a 35th-level character. That's a very high-powered combat, and it takes practice to know how to pace a boss fight at every level to do it right. Now I have that experience, so I know to push harder. 

2. One 16th-level character is a big threat in combat, and three are far more considerable. I hadn't seen this group fight since they levelled up (which was only at the beginning of this session), so I didn't realize how much of a threat they all posed together. And last session, they were only level 13 (I thought 3 levels for rewriting the universe was fair), so I didn't have a good projection of what they'd be like now. But I know now, and I can calibrate. 

3. I've never battle-tested a dragon in my world before. I didn't have enough of an understanding of what Regg was capable of to make the most use of her. How does a massively powerful Ranger-Druid fight? Well, I've never gotten to play a Ranger or a Druid before, let alone high-level ones, so I needed to refer to Regg's abilities more. But I know that now, and now I can study the other dragons' abilities more closely before they encounter another. 

So was this a mistake? I'd say no. All throughout this campaign, the party has been underestimated. The dragons and gods have regarded them as important due to the prophecy, but not necessarily powerful enough to think about much. But 3 level-16s together have the combined threat as a level 48 character, and 48 vs. 35 is a pretty big mismatch. The players always had the advantage. So let's address it narratively. Regg is the first dragon to face off against the party, and like others, she underestimated the group. Their greater power (especially after the collective nine levels they gained at the session's start) overwhelmed Regg, and what are the outcomes? The white dragon is dead. That means the chromatic dragons are weaker. It also won't go unnoticed. Regg was close friends with the green dragon, who's going to notice that their best friend is missing (or even magically know that she's dead). So the party killed the white dragon, the dragons will soon know about this, and now the millennia-long cold war is over. I would argue that that's a really compelling outcome, and I'm happy with it. 

In the final stretch of our session, Brokk began to wordlessly chop down trees from the little thickets on the plateau. Aurora stood over Regg, saying that she'd only return to Pelor's Mercy on her own terms. Lethanin suddenly caught a refrain of the Song coming from the obsidian stone. He experimented with words and phrases, playing the Song on his violin, and when he said, "Xythanir, Lethanin, be one and the same," a multi-colored force shot from the stone into Lethanin. He could innately sense that he had gained the powers of the sound dragon. Brokk finished chopping down trees and built a small funeral pyre for Regg with a purpose and deliberation that came from many funerals, shedding a few tears for the loss of life. Aurora refused to say anything over Regg, and Lethanin breathed a mixture of sonic energy and fire onto the pyre, giving Regg her final rites. Brokk comforted Aurora, letting her know that she did the right thing. 

And that's where we ended. I had come into this session assuming we'd have several large moments come up and accomplish some important goals that stretched toward the long term. I was wrong. We were on the plateau the whole time, and everything was either focused on the sound dragon title or Regg. I think that my expectation for a lot of big moments may come true next session, but I was certainly wrong for this session. Of course, knowing that they can slay a dragon with little issue may change how the group plans their next steps. They seem disinterested in using power over anyone, but with Lethanin a dragon now, that could be different. It's impossible to know until next time. 

That's all for now. Until next time!

My D&D-Inspired Fantasy Novels Are Available Now

Readers! Over the last several years, I’ve written a series of novels. At various times, parts of those novels have appeared here on this site. That’s because these books in some sense belong here–they are writing about D&D in that the main character of these books is my most recent D&D character, Asp. I’ve posted elsewhere on this site about the process of discovering and writing about this character, and after writing over 600k words in the series, I’m finally ready to try self-publishing. So if you’re intrigued by how Asp came to be, check out that little guide to her creation and the writing process. If you want to check out the novels and read the series, you can check out this page for the whole series. 

Beyond that, I think that what really remains to be said is in the pages of Asp’s novels. She’s a crafty, clever, kind at times, smooth overthinker who loves getting in over her head, or at least, constantly does. I hope you enjoy spending some time with her as I have.

 

 

 

One More Chance Saga (the entire series): https://tinyurl.com/onemorechancesaga

Book 1. Nobody Knows Me: https://tinyurl.com/nobodyknowsmebook

Book 2. Two Different Things Can Just Be Different: https://tinyurl.com/twodifferentthingsbook

Book 3. You Changed Too: https://tinyurl.com/youchangedtoobook

Book 4: I Wanna Do It Right: https://tinyurl.com/iwannadoitrightbook

 

Why Alignment is Flawed and Several Ways to Fix It

I remember when I first sat down to try D&D for the first time, there was so much to take in. It all seemed interesting, and I struggled to keep it all in my head at the same time. The classes called to me, the feats beckoned to me, the table of weapons sang its siren song--but one thing struck a different tone for me. Classes and feats and tables are about combat and other abilities. But the two things that broke through the overwhelmingness of it all: the section on gods (I still remember all these years later that the pages for the gods in 3.5 could be found on pages 106-108 in the Players Handbook, so often did I reference it) and the section on alignment. The gods thing made immediate sense to me. Here was the first real taste in in-game fiction I saw, and it showed me this glimmer of hope that I wouldn't just be hack-and-slashing monsters, but also in a rich fantasy world. But the alignment fascination vexed me. What was so interesting about a 3x3 grid? 

But it did stick with me. As I got more experienced with the game, I started seeing my characters and others' player characters and NPCs alike as a question of alignment. "Why did that NPC do that?" "What's going on with my party mate?" "What would my character do in this delicate situation?" These questions could be addressed with alignment. "That NPC is Lawful Good and wouldn't tolerate that behavior." "Their character is Chaotic Evil and can be unpredictable." "My character is pretty Neutral, so I guess this action is in character." It seemed to have answers, and more importantly, interesting answers, and more important than any of that--alignment added philosophy to the game. I had been cheered on by seeing the gods section because it meant fiction. But philosophy would mean engaging on a whole deeper level. And so I became, admittedly, a little obsessed. With friends, I would attribute alignments to literary characters and tv show characters and even occasionally bizarre people. I would make challenges as a DM that would stress my players' characters' alignments. I reveled in discovering the expanded 5x5 alignment chart because it was even more complex and interesting. Right?

To a degree in certain situations, yes, it absolutely does. I remember reading the graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in grad school, and my friends and I assigned alignments to each main character; it required us to really think about the complex and sticky moralities of deliberately obtuse characters which we'd needed to learn inside and out. It was a good little exercise. And for beginner D&D players and especially younger D&D players, alignment is complex enough to yield some fun observations and help players roleplay. But for experienced adult players, alignment usually starts to get a little off the more you look at it. Allow me to use an example via one of my characters to show how alignment sometimes falls more flat than it does add interest and nuance. (And yes, I did write about how to understand D&D alignment in the past; I've reconsidered alignment's role in the game after some reading and conversations about the topic.)

My most recent player experience was with a character who turned out to be my favorite I've ever played: Asp, a clever con artist with a complicated past and little tying her down to any one place.  By the time the campaign ended, that character had changed paths and became a healing-focused cleric just dying to help people. So I reasoned that she began with one alignment and changed alignments as we went. To start, I reasoned that she was Neutral, otherwise called True Neutral. My idea was that when it came to Good and Evil, she neither particularly enjoyed helping people nor did she go out of her way to hurt people--this is the alignment definition of Good and Evil. And with Law and Chaos, she was a fairly organized planner, but she also thrilled and succeeded by improvising when necessary; she was neither particularly Lawful or Chaotic. But I arrived at True Neutral by elimination. Was she really a neutral observer? Not really--she took action in others' affairs constantly. Did she take no stance on things? Not usually since her cons required firm positioning on matters. Did she advocate or fight for some middle path? Absolutely not--she was unconcerned with any agenda aside from a comfortable survival. So was she True Neutral? Not in any meaningful way. 

And when Asp changed paths? She became a committed and daring healer who constantly helped others with problems besides sickness or injury. So she was Good, and that was pretty inarguable. Every action she took was intended to help people or to maintain good things for people. That's out-and-out focus on helping people, the alignment definition of Good. But the Law and Chaos axis was even more complicated now. Lawful indicates that a character lives by rules and order. My character lived by the code that helping others was always the best thing to do. That is a pretty Lawful behavior. She also had come to exist within the world of legal action rather than evading legal detection, and the comfort she found in living freely and without fear put her towards Lawful. Chaos, on the other hand, means that a character makes decisions not by a code, but what would be individually best in that particular situation. And as it turned out, she did always choose to help people, but that was the only rule she lived by. She still lied to and manipulated people she perceived to be evil. She made her choices about each individual situation based on the context, not a rule. She was still the improvising, unpredictable woman she'd always been. Those traits are all pretty Chaotic. So does that make her Neutral Good? But doesn't that obscure the fact that she lives by this heavy and important code and also thrives on disorder while really thinking through every situation? To me, she's not Lawful enough to be only Lawful, Chaotic enough to only Chaotic, or Neutral in any way that matters. 

[You might be saying, "But what about that 5x5 alignment chart? Maybe she'd Social Good or something." To which I say, if the characterization of this character shows her being very Lawful and very Chaotic but not Neutral, the 5x5 chart doesn't fix that. It's an averaging of moral positions, and that's not how we understand people.]

So if alignment is flawed, so what? Why should that matter? It's just a silly nine-option grid; we can't really believe that it describes human philosophy well. I've met plenty of people who really do see alignment as solid and unshakeable, and I say that as someone who myself fixated on alignment for a long time. And it's honestly a loss. Asp is a character I got to play after immersing myself in roleplaying tabletop games for more than half my life. I've gained a confidence that I can know my characters well enough to ignore the alignment chart instead of asking "What would a Chaotic Good character do here?" But if I'd still been a beginning player? Asp would have been a struggle to play. I'd have been trying to apply an alignment label to her that didn't fit, and that would lead me to make choices that weren't really her. And given how radically important Asp has become in my life, the thought of her being any less than she is would break my heart. I really do believe that players making roleplaying choices based on alignment are shortchanging themselves in this way. The alignment chart just isn't complex enough to give real philsophies to characters. 

So what do we do? I'll be the first to acknowledge that alignment isn't useless. When a character is just a rough outline, still a sketch in your head, and you don't entirely know what motivates them or where they draw certain lines, alignment can be like the bumpers they put up at bowling alleys. Feel your character designing and brainstorming going into the gutter? What does alignment say about it? It's especially helpful for first-time roleplayers, but anybody can benefit from thinking about their character with a little conceptual help. So I'm not saying to throw out alignment because it doesn't need to be there--not at all. Most players really benefit from some guidelines about how the imaginary scenarios in the game relate to the real world, and something like alignment can achieve that. So here are four possible ways to get around alignment's narrowness and put some philosophical frameworks in the game. [Note: These are arranged from simplest to most difficult to manage, but all should be within reach of a veteran TTRPG player, and several should be accessible to a beginner.]

1. Look to the Class/Species/Beliefs You've Already Decided On 

I recommend this as the most basic option because it tends to require the least high-power thinking possible, and I also note that this option is fairly meta--it requires you to use what you know about D&D clichés and then either embrace or subvert them. What I mean is this: you've already chosen some element of your character--maybe a class or a species or whatever appealed to you--so ask yourself what that detail might say about your character. If your character is a Barbarian, for instance, you imagine what a Barbarian would be like in the gameworld. A common cliché about Barbarians is that they're hulking, stupid, aggressive, and uncultured. So perhaps your Barbarian will be like that. They are violent, and they really don't know much about polite society. What does that tell us? It tells us that your Barbarian might be loud and brutish, perhaps intimidating on purpose, may have little idea of table manners. And those things tell us what matters to the Barbarian--they think physical strength is a virtue, they think power over others gives them the right to treat others however they like, they find polite society pointlessly convoluted and prefer to spend time in nature--things like this. You could end up with a stereotypical character, but they'll still be fun to play, and you'll have arrived at their philosophy without trying to shove them in a box they don't fit in. 

There are other ways to approach the cliché, though. You could go the opposite route with your Barbarian and break all the stereotypes. Now your Barbarian is well-read and plays the violin. Although they're talented in combat, they hate fighting and don't want to start a fight. They've read the great philosophers and believe in the unity of all people brought together by one common cause. They've trained their combat prowess so that they can defend the common people and try to spread culture so others can become enlightened. Or you could take a middle road, and your Barbarian becomes a meeting of opposites. Now they love to intimidate and threaten people, using their physical strength to get what they want, but they're also incredibly well-respected in high society as a connoisseur of arts and writing. Their values are different now--they're really all about themselves, using their prowess on the battlefield and in intellectual arts to gain renown and power. So now the Barbarian is actually more selfish than ever (arguably), but they also buck the cliché with Barbarians. 

The process isn't entirely over at this point. We have some broad conceptual information about what matters to them. The downside of this approach is that it won't yield as complex a philosophy as some of the more complicated approaches, but this is also something that just about any player can do without practice or experience. You'll still be missing a direct statement about your character's philosophy. My best recommendation would be to then move onto the next option in the list, Five Values, using this step as brainstorming. But if you're new, developing a character quickly, or just trying something new out, this is a good place to start. 

Briefly--I know it probably sounds like I'm positioning this method as nonideal, but it really just suits a purpose well. I recently got invited to play a one-shot over text message and told to roll a character. I said to myself, "I've never played a Druid, and I want to try." And so I went with a bunch of really straightforward stuff for Druids--my character, Daylight, is good with plants and animals, has keen senses, and regards herself as a protector of nature. This is direct information from the class info paired with the common cliché. But I wanted her to be really deranged--I thought it would be a fun twist. So I took the Haunted One background and made the rest of her personality and philosophy reflect her trauma, her paranoia, and her intentional hiding from society in nature. So while Daylight does play into the common Druid thing of loving and protecting nature, she also has this deep darkness in her that I don't really imagine with Druids. She's afraid. She's unable to control her social interactions after years of hiding away from everyone. She doesn't really trust anybody. In the one-shot so far, she's come off as capable but unpredictable and just kinda off. I got to that point for a quick improvised character using this method, and it took about ten minutes. It's not a bad method if you can use it right, and as I said, new players, quick characters, and experimenting with character creation are all excellent places to work from character design to philosophy.

2. Five Values

This is a relatively simple way to guide your character building and some roleplaying in early sessions with a character. Once you have a general concept (be that name, goal, fighting style, backstory, or whatever appeals to you), ask yourself what your character feels about the following five values. 

a) Do you trust yourself to accomplish something more alone or with a team?

b) Once you have decided on a course of action, how do you react when it is blocked? 

c) Would you go out of your way to help someone for nothing in return?

d) Do you regard tradition as something important or restrictive?

e) How much would you be willing to sacrifice to achieve your goals?

These five questions don't cover every philosophical stance that might come up, but take a close look at these questions. A gauges a character's individuality, and that's something that comes up in TTRPGs constantly--knowing if your character will go out of their way to work with others, or to avoid it, will matter, and it will also impact how much your character trusts others. B shows whether the character is principled, determined, or even obsessed with their own convictions; it also captures a little but of the Law-Chaos axis's concept of how much someone sticks to one idea versus being versatile. C does admittedly handle what alignment does with Good-Evil, but without the baggage--calling a character Evil or Good is very black-and-white and doesn't tell us much meaningfully about the character, but seeing if a character is considerate, selfless, or noble is a better position to brainstorm and roleplay from. D gets at one of the more interesting elements of Law-Chaos, tradition versus rebellion, which is a very important thing to have in a game that routinely has longstanding traditions; this iteration of it also allows players to see past the often confusing Law-Chaos association with laws of the land to this more important and interesting note about your character. And finally, E asks just how committed to their big goals your character is. We often create characters with these overarching, massive quest-sized goals like "restore the honor of my family" or similar things, but with Asp, I really went in with just the intention to make enough money to be comfortable and get some social power out of it if I could. For her, sacrificing for her goals would never serve her because her goal was comfort. I would know this about her while brainstorming if I used the Five Values, but alignment never would have revealed that to me with its focus on narrow philosophical issues. 

It's important to note that these questions should take time to answer. Not only that, your answers may change as you keep brainstorming and playing. This is a simple method of cracking your character's philosophy, but it is not necessarily a quick one. Really give yourself time, and I promise that you'll have a better sense of your character's mind and philosophy than if you tried to pigeonhole your character idea into the alignment chart. So while it's a little abstract, that's actually a strength--philosophy is abstract.

3. Hypothetical Situations 

This is an extension of Five Values in that we're going to take the idea of that type of question and make it more specific. Then, after we've considered a handful of hypotheticals, we'll be in a position to better understand our character. It's important to note that the biggest difference between Five Values and Hypothetical Situations is how you, the player, have already started to imagine them. Five Values is good for people with very little idea of who their character is, so the vagueness of those questions lets them answer in a way that immediately gives you the character's philosophy directly; your answer to those questions is the defining point of the philosophy. With Hypothetical Situations, you'll need some idea of the character's personality in at least a broad way, but you'll need to work to derive explicit values from them. I know that makes it sound like two disadvantages, but some people tend to work this way. I personally often have ideas for characters' personalities before I settle on a class or anything mechanical, so this method works well for me, and it may work well for you too. 

In terms of the hypothetical questions themselves, my foremost recommendation is to use character questionnaires. Here are three that I really like along with some notes about each, bearing in mind your enjoyment of the list is the most important thing.

• 365 Character Questions for Writers and Roleplayers by Heather Grove - This is the questionnaire I recommend the most for this exercise. It's true that it has a great amount of questions, but I must say that the kinds of insights you'll have with it are exactly what this method is about. The questions are organized as a calendar, one question per day, and the whole year of questions does a great job of both shedding light on the humble details (Does your character typically remember her dreams?) and the very sweeping details (What are your character's beliefs about death and the afterlife?). Notably though, many are hypotheticals that are excellent for both philosophy and more general personality (Your character wakes up to find a poisonous spider on his pillow next to his head. What does he do?).
  
• The Mother of All Character Questionnaires by Roleplaying Tips -  This massive list is not entirely focused on hypothetical situations, but many of the questions outright ask about your character's beliefs, morality, and preferences in life. That is not to say that there are no hypotheticals; most of the second half of this long list are questions which directly ask for opinions, positions, and tastes on various topics, which does the same as a hypothetical. It's worth noting that this questionnaire includes very big questions (Did you ever become disillusioned with a former hero?) and very small questions (Do you cook your own dinner?), and you'll note that both of these questions give some pretty interesting details on your character, how they live their life, and what matters to them.
  
• 100 Warm Up Questions by DND Speak - The questions here are less hypothetical situations and more detailed questions about your character, but they achieve the same goal. Many of these, though, are questions about your character's past and tastes, and these are essentially hypothetical situations posed in your character's past (What would you character have done in terms of their greatest mistake?) or hypotheticals that are very specific about feelings on things (What makes your character feel safe?) which could be answered in a variety of ways, all of which show some of your character's philosophy.

So once you've answered these questions, you'll already have a pretty good idea of your character's values. But those other details, too--the small notes about what their everyday life is like, the childhood memories, and the reactions in hypotheticals--they'll have formed the foundation for a real personality and philosophy.  And from there, you'll be able to start making explicit statements about philosophy: since my character would do this in this situation and that in that situation, I can tell that they believe this and that. It's a more labor-intensive process, but it's intuitive for some of us, and the results are certainly more comprehensive than the alignment chart.

4. Magic: the Gathering Colors 

This is actually the main idea that got me started on this article. I was reading on tumblr about Magic: the Gathering's take on alignment in a long thread with many contributors, and you can and should check out the source for a more comprehensive amount of detail than I can or am going to give. This is an idea that's new to me, but its obvious strengths make it something I really want to use and spread around. First, though, the basics. What's going on with M:tG alignment, and how is it different from D&D alignment? 

Well, the chart layout is quite different. D&D alignment uses three rows of three, meaning there's an up-down axis and a left-right axis. With the M:tG layout, though, there are five axes instead since it's set up like a big star. Here's what it looks like drawn out (credit to the original thread), where the five colors all have axis relationships with two of the other colors:

There's a lot to take in about this alignment chart. One thing that will be immediately obvious is that it's far more complicated. That's a big strength! Morality and values are complicated things, so having a system that honors that is important. You might need a moment longer to recognize that there is no good vs. evil axis at all. In fact, the only vestige of the D&D alignment chart that remains in this one is the order vs. chaos axis between White and Red. In other words, even just at a base level, we've eliminated the overly simplistic measure of "good and evil," maintained the order vs. chaos axis for a number of reasons (including that these ideas are core to these colors in the game), and introduced four more axes to measure your character on. That is, to me, a huge improvement already. 

Now, the thread goes into considerable details on how one might apply all this, especially via examples of how each color treats certain hypotheticals (see, they're very useful!). What I'd like to focus on instead is really breaking down this alignment chart and getting into how to really think of it for characterization use. We've got a pretty good understanding of order vs chaos--especially if you read my earlier primer on D&D alignment, which focuses on law vs. chaos--so let's just follow that around the circle and really get into it. 

If we follow White down towards Black, we see the group vs. individual axis. This is an important idea in terms of who a character is and how they act--so important, in fact, that my first question in the Five Values section is about that topic. How should we understand this beyond basic introvert/extrovert stereotypes? This is larger than a personal preference. In the world of M:tG, White is the color of empire and spreading the order of the other axis to expand groups. This is a cultural fact, so many White-aligned characters will have been raised with group-held power, and they are less likely to even think of working alone. Conversely, Black is the color of individual people and creatures, who for various reasons avoid trusting others (if others are also individualistic, they may not be trustworthy in a group; the other Black axis is exploitation, and avoiding exploitation means avoiding people; you can pursue your own goals more easily by yourself than when forced to cooperate with unlike-minded people). So this is again a culture fact. Truly, all these axes are culturally ingrained. So a through-and-through White character will be more comfortable in ordered and grouped situations because that's what their society values, and Black-aligned characters will likely feel more comfortable working alone if only because that's what they're used to. Note: groups can do morally "bad" things like spread fascism, and individuals can do morally "good" things when they align with the characters' desires. There really is no measurement of good or evil, nor are any axes better in one direction than the other. 

Let's keep going. Black leads up to Green on the exploitation vs. preservation axis. Just to get right to it: yes, "exploitation" is not meant as a necessarily bad thing; more on that in a second. So Black values exploitation, meaning being willing to take something from a place or being rather than leave it as it is. Green wants to preserve things as they are, for better or worse--maybe it's the balance of nature or an isolationist tendency, but Green is strongly opposed to taking from someone or something. Characters aligned with Black live in a society that tends to take the most direct route possible, even if that mean putting others at a disadvantage; Green (which can grow anything it needs by itself) wants to preserve things as they are so that growth remains constant. (Don't judge the Black-aligned characters too hard--they live in harsh and dangerous swamps with no plenty to rely on.) And to again address "good vs. evil": leaving a sick and dying person or patch of land to die could be seen as heartless, but that's Green's preference, and interfering in a volatile situation that others find too unstable could mean a Black-aligned hero could be the only one helping someone (even if only for their own gain). 

Green then leads over to Blue along the nature vs. nurture axis. Green's nature perspective argues that we are the way we are because it's in our nature to be that way, and what nature creates is in its best form. Blue instead believes that we are what we make ourselves into, and we are responsible for perfecting what nature created. [I'd like to note that in our real world today, we don't often explicitly discuss this issue, so it may seem like a small matter to make an axis of. However, nature vs. nurture is at the heart of a lot of big issues: why people's genders and sexualities are what they are, how people succeed in their careers or not, and many scientific questions too numerous to address all deal directly with this matter.] So while Green might look at its most marvelous figures and places as wonderful innately, Blue would say that its most important figures became that way through effort. Really think about how different societies would be if they chose the opposite ends of this spectrum as one of their most defining features. Green says you do what you're suited to do, and Blue says you earn your way into what you do; Green says honor what nature made, and Blue says change the world to fit your dreams; Green does not allow others to harm what exists now, and Blue cannot allow things to stay the same. It's easy to see how neither of these is more "moral" than the other--they just disagree on how the world works and how like should be lived. 

As we follow the last axis to Red, we see reason vs. emotion. To me, this is a fairly loaded axis, by which I mean that people tend to see one of these as fundamentally better than the other, and usually, they prefer reason because it seems like the "right" answer. So I want to make a brief aside about why emotion is important too. We chase happiness. We avoid sadness. Bad feelings make us self-destructive, and good feelings validate the work we did to find them. Emotions rule our lives as much as reason can and should, so don't count Red out on this quite yet. Anyway, back to Blue and Red. In M:tG, Blue is focused on knowledge in many ways, even when it's forbidden knowledge; Red chases emotions, whether that means finding a positive feeling or being driven by irrationality. On that note, one can be emotional and knowledge-focused at the same time; they're less opposites in the way order and chaos are and more opposite sides of the same coin. So Blue is raising people in a culture of "know, don't feel," and Red is opting for "follow your feelings." Like nature vs. nurture, this one is clearly amoral. 

Those are the axes; what about each color? White is order and groups, the power of unity and empire. Black is described as individualistic and exploitative, truly the home for lone opportunists. Green is preservation and nature, the isolationist who wants only to keep doing the same thing. Blue values nurture and reason, making it the force of understanding and shaping the world. And Red is emotion and chaos, often volatile and always following an inner compass. This is, you'll note, far more complex than measuring with the 3x3 alignment chart. 

You might be thinking, "Yeah, that's neat, but how do you actually make a description of your character? Aren't the five colors you described less than the nine options in the D&D alignment chart?" I haven't mentioned one crucial detail: you can pick more than one color, blending the values. I'll explain this a bit more and then give an example. So we're trying to make a color-based alignment for a character. We ask ourselves how strong our character's feelings and values are along each axis. Some spectrums will be somewhere in the middle, but some are likely to have extreme answers from your character. Let's say we have a character who revels in the idea of shaping oneself who also wants to shape the world with those who agree with them. That would make this character a candidate for a White-Blue perspective, valuing the order of imposing one's will on an imperfect world through sheer determination and know-how. This might also help to reveal that this character will have strong disagreements with Green- or especially Red-aligned people. And if you're only just building this character (like this guide is intended for), you now have plenty of deeper values to delve into when it comes to Blue and White lore from the M:tG world if you so choose. Even if you don't, a White-Blue perspective would put your character down for positions on four out of the five axes. You could even choose up to three colors if that fits your character, giving them a position on all five of the axes. That is inarguably more complex, interesting, and useful than a "Lawful Neutral" alignment, which could be argued to be the closest D&D's alignment system can get. 

The promised example with another appearance from my character Asp. She began as a con artist and became a healer, and in D&D's alignment system, she was Neutral and then Chaotic Good. (Neither feels right still.) So let's give her a color alignment instead. In terms of groups versus individuality, she's pretty strongly aligned with individuality. In all of my time writing about her and playing with her, she's always most comfortable working alone, whether because she couldn't trust others before or because she doesn't want others taking dangerous risks afterward. In terms of exploitation vs. preservation, she did have a strong position towards exploitation before when conning people, and as a healer, she is constantly intervening with the natural order to preserve life--she leans strongly toward exploitation. With nature vs. nurture, it's absolutely clear to me that she's about nurture 100% of the way. She taught herself to con, and she changed who she was later on--that's absolutely a nurture preference. With reason and emotion, she again has a strong leaning--she's a feeler. As a con, she had to live on tiny social cues and best guess rather than reasoning things out, and as a healer, she needs to connect to her interior emotional space to connect to her goddess, so strong leaning to emotion. And finally, order vs. chaos. As a con, she had rules to protect herself but thrived on improvisation and experimentation; as a healer, lives by a code by worships a chaotic goddess and still is that quick thinker she was before. But in either case, she'd want others to be able to live however they please--so a bit of a learning toward chaos. Let's review and give Asp an alignment: 

Individuality, exploitation, nurture, emotion, and chaos. If we glance at the alignment chart, it turns out that Asp is a very Black-Red character with a touch of Blue. Now I want to really drill this point home: Asp ends up a passionate, selfless, and pretty legendary healer. She's a heroine to basically everyone who knows her, and one of the novels I wrote about her includes a journey around the world fixing the wrongs she made as a con artist. That is an unambiguously heroic and moral person . . . who also happens to be Black-Red, which an incomplete understanding of would make her sound like a villain. But it measures her values on a more complex scale! She's ambitious and cunning and emotional and wild--that's reflected by Black-Red. None of that is covered by "Chaotic Good." And in case you missed it in that last paragraph, Asp's color alignment didn't change at all between her being a con artist and a healer. This system actually got her personality across with these axes of values, and I find that incredibly impressive. So again, for more detail on the M:tG lore and hypotheticals, check out the thread that inspired me, but for now, I'm sold on this method, and I hope you give it a try.

Honorable Mention: Write About Your Character

This option is kind of so out there for a lot of people that I didn't include this as a main method for characterization, but it's worth mentioning after how beneficial it's been for me. It's more or less an extrapolation of the hypothetical question scenario, except you are making the hypotheticals, and you're taking the time to go into narrative detail rather than give a direct answer. Obviously, this is a big investment of time and effort. But let me refer back to Asp one more time; I wrote a few short stories about her which turned into a novel which turned into four novels, and I can promise I know her mind and values inside and out in a way that "Chaotic Good" would never approach. For more details on this, you can check out how using writing helped develop this character.