How to Use Individual Intro Sessions to Start a Campaign

It's the first session of your big campaign. Your players are settling into their new characters, and most of the first session ends up being you establishing the setting and the plot while your players figure out how they fit in the world. This doesn't make it a bad session, but it also means that your players are spending more time getting started than really playing. But you can work around this difficulty with one simple action: using individualized intro sessions. By providing each player with a customized session to get them into the world and hooked into the story, you can ensure that your first session is all about the players truly getting started on the story. Read on for a full guide to creating individualized intro sessions. 

Years ago, I deployed individualized intro sessions for the Eastweald campaign, and I addressed some of the benefits of these sessions, but now I would like to expand that and provide instruction as well. But let's start with an expanded look at the benefits of individual intro sessions. I'm going to focus on five ideas, specifically how these sessions allow: the player to roleplay their backstory, the player to test their abilities, the player to express themselves without pressure from the group, both players and GM to introduce story events, and the GM to work directly with players (a rarity in TRPGs). 

So let's start with one of the more obvious ideas: these sessions let your players roleplay their backstory. This in and of itself affords us a collection of benefits. First, there's the direst consequence of the intro session, which is that the player gets to begin the game by simply exploring the gameworld a bit. This means that they can enter the group session with more knowledge and confidence, which is vital. For players interested in roleplaying, these sessions will also grant the inherent benefit of the player enjoying their introduction to your world on their terms. The player also gets the opportunity to figure out some details of who their character is in practice before having to interact with the rest of the party. These ideas are all related to the benefits the player reaps, but there is a massive benefit to the GM as well: you get to learn more about the player's character in a controlled environment, which sets you up to present that character with more individualized attention as the game progresses. When I did intro sessions for the Eastweald campaign, I learned a lot about my players' characters and their motivations, which better prepared me for the challenge of dealing with four players characters at once. So you see that by allowing players to roleplay their backstories, we get a wealth of benefits. 

Then there's the fact that an individualized intro session lets players test their abilities. Remember that in the vast majority of campaigns, all the characters in the game will be new creations, which is to say that the players will be the least prepared to play their character effectively that they can be. I've seen first sessions where players are playing spellcasters for the first time and don't know how to cast them usefully yet, and I've seen players end up quite surprised by how their actual actions play out. You can't get rid of the test period, but you can relegate it to an individual intro session. This leads right into the idea that players also get the benefit of getting to privately test their character away from the eyes of the rest of the party. This also means that you can coach the player in a safe space, away from the potential judgment of other players. And let's not forget that the player character existed in the gameworld before the player developed them, in a sense: when a player makes a 36-year-old character, that character has 36 years of life to account for, and in that time, they would certainly have become familiar with their own abilities. An individualized intro session means that when these characters meet, they will already have a sense of what they are capable of and how to achieve results. This is more gratifying and surprising for the other players as well, who get to see this player character being capable as a first impression. Testing abilities is another feature of individualized intro sessions that provide a variety of benefits to the game. 

Next, let's consider the ways that playing away from the pressure of the group can be a helpful force. I've already touched on a few of the ways this can benefit your game: players enter the true first session more confident and capable, allowing you as GM to both help and challenge them. But it's more than that. Let's think about the mindset of a player figuring out their character for the first time. They're thinking about their character concept and the details they've created, the collection of story ideas, how to fit together with the party, and plenty of other ideas. That's a lot to consider and act on. And the pressure to do well and impress the other players is a real factor. No one wants to show up and seem like the least capable person in the party. But we can take a lot of these things off the player's shoulders. An individualized intro session means that they can think about their character and the gameworld, and that is essentially it. They can integrate themselves into the world in a way that makes sense to them, and without worrying about monopolizing the session. Then, when the first group session begins, the player has already gotten practice roleplaying their character and can worry about the group details. It may sound like a small benefit, but taken with all of these other benefits, it's hard to dismiss. 

Then we have the way that story events can be distributed in an early campaign. This is a delicate time for you as a GM; you're trying to unite the party, unveil your story, and keep the game going towards the endgame. Introducing the main quest at all can be a daunting task; how do you get these player characters, with their varying backgrounds, skills, and interests, to work together in the first place? But the individualized intro session lets you break that work up into smaller parts. Instead of getting an entire group of different people to agree to the same idea, all you have to do is rope one player character in at a time. You can use the intro session to set up the main quest so that when your first group session starts, your characters are already basically united. You can also use these sessions to develop the late game by revealing details that will become important later on. But it's not just you who can introduce story in these sessions. Your player will also add story ideas to the game, whether they mean to or not. When a player in an intro session identifies something as being a considerable part of their character's life, you have a new story idea; just take that idea, develop it a bit, and deploy it in the game. More on that below, but for now, just think about it this way: you get more story developments out of two sessions than one, so these intro sessions will always grant a boost to your game's story. 

Finally, let's address the way that these intro sessions allow the GM to work directly with the players. You know the scenario: you're GMing, and even though you don't mean to, a certain player or character ends up being relatively left out of the game for a while. Early in a campaign, this can be a real issue; if the players and their characters aren't hooked, early struggles could unmake a campaign. You can resolve that with these intro sessions--the very first encounter the player has with the game, they're the star. Their everyday life is the plot of the session (again, more below), so it's not about the story; it's about the player character. The first time the player actually plays their character in the group session, they'll be able to join the party already knowing--and more importantly, feeling--that their character is a central part of the campaign. This strategy works especially well if you suspect that some of your players will be more dominant in the game than others; with individualized intro sessions, those more dominant players will come in already partially satisfied by the direct attention they got in the intro session. And if there's something you need to customize for a specific player (granting them a special ability, personalizing a plot hook, addressing complicated backstory, etc.), an intro session lets you give that personalized attention without seeming like you're favoring a specific player. 

This is a pretty dizzying array of benefits. The relatively simple action of providing individualized intro sessions unlocks a variety of advantages, from helping players to helping yourself. And this concept need not be applied exclusively for introductions. Many GMs have encountered a time that a player character necessarily had to go about something alone. If this occasion lasts more than a few minutes, you can opt for an individualized session, which will both relieve other players of watching someone else play and allow you to really go all-out on the individualized time instead of truncating it for the other players' benefit. So it's a useful idea, but how do we implement it? 

Just as individualized intro sessions are a simple idea, implementing them in the game is very simple. My instructions will pertain to specifically introduction sessions, but the same general rules apply if there's a mid-story individual session you need to run. The basic formula exists as three acts: a day in the life for Act I, a complication for Act II, and a link to the campaign for Act III. 

Act I: Day in the Life. You want to depict the player character in an average day. This is partially to characterize them, partially to gather an idea of what the character is really like, and partially to make the complication in Act II more dramatic. Running this is very simple. Tell your character that it is dawn (or early afternoon if your Act III requires nighttime), and ask them to describe how they go about their day. Some players, especially those who are not roleplay-minded, may struggle with this. Encourage them and promise that it doesn't have to be interesting. By granting the player more control over the beginning of the session, we are both letting the player be as creative as they want and setting up an emotional response when the complication arises. Common activities in this act include getting a meal, tending to business needs, meeting with acquaintances, practicing skills, and other fairly inconsequential things. If your player wants the intro session to be more action-packed (perhaps they're pulling off a dangerous job that day), don't bar it entirely, but encourage them to pick something a little simpler; there will be time for that dangerous job later. Let's look at an example of Act I:

Let's say we're planning a campaign about taking down a lich who is slowly taking over small towns across the countryside. We have three players, one of whom is a fairly new TRPG player; we'll call her Greta. Greta has created a ranger-type character, which will be a challenge since she's never played a magic user before. So for Act I of her intro session, we want her to show us what her ranger (Maeve) actually lives like. Greta is a bit tentative at first, but ends up describing doing a bit of hunting for breakfast, tidying up her cottage, and heading into town for supplies, where she runs into a friend, a cleric of Obad-Hai; they share a reverence for nature and a distaste for city life, and so they have bonded. Essentially all of this information should come from Greta. If she's having a hard time imagining the details, ask open-ended questions about Maeve's interests. You want this part of the session to last about one-third of your total time, but you can cut it a bit short if your player is really struggling. (If they are, ask them to develop some more details for roleplaying their character.) Once you have a good idea of Maeve's day-to-day life, it's time to move onto Act II. 

Act II: Complication. Now something interesting happens. It should be directly tied to the campaign's main quest, but remember that you're not even in the first group session, so you don't want to give everything away. The complication shouldn't necessarily be a quest; we're more looking for something that adds some intrigue and which requires some poking around. You can introduce this idea however you want; interrupting one of the mundane tasks in Act I works well, as does having an event unfold in public where the player character can see it, and disrupting the player's actions can make things even more dramatic (imagine that the player character goes to visit an old friend and finds their house boarded up with a menacing note on the door--that will shake things up). The nature of the complication isn't as important as the effect: you want your player to be a bit jarred by the transition from Act I to Act II. You also want to include some information for the player character to investigate, otherwise, this step is just one moment of drama. This act should also take about one-third of your time. 

Let's say we're running our intro session for Greta, who has been having Maeve walk around town doing everyday things. She goes to a common goods shop to buy some rope, but--complication!--the store has no rope. And the shopkeeper says that no other shops in town have rope either, or many other common goods. The problem, they say, is that all the city's rope is imported from two small towns to the East, and both towns were recently sacked. The report is that some powerful villain is capturing small towns, and no one knows why. I would also have the shopkeeper disclose that there is a leader here in town who wants to fight back against the villain, give Maeve a name and location for this leader, and let the shopkeeper encounter end. But Act II isn't over; now it's time for Maeve to investigate the claims the shopkeeper made. Then we can have Maeve search for the leader (stymied initially, but succeeding with persistence) and ask them about the villain. This is how Act II closes. 

Act III: A Link to the Campaign. Now for the finale. You've got your player character interested in the hook, but now we need to reel them in. Generally speaking, the easiest way to do Act III is for the whole act to be a big conversation, followed by an event which changes the stakes. In game terms, what you're looking for is a connection between the complication in Act II and your campaign, which shouldn't be too much of a challenge given that we designed Act II to lead into Act III. The gist is this: the person with information about the campaign's quest should communicate some setup ideas. By this, I mean that the NPC in question should explain a bit about what has led to the bad situation that's happening; then they propose a plan to deal with; finally, they reveal that they are constructing a team of people to deal with the bad situation, which the player character will be a part of. The NPC should answer as many player character questions as they can without you giving away anything that needs to wait for the whole group. Think of the first half of Act III as your commercial for your campaign--really try to sell the player character on the idea. Then, in the next half, we see that the stakes are different than we imagined. Something dramatic that makes the bad situation worse should occur. This will impress upon your players that the need for help is strong and hopefully personalize the appeal of the campaign (they might fight to defend a nearby town, but they will certainly fight to defend their own town). Then, to wrap things up, have the NPC who explained the situation indicate that they will be assembling the team soon to deal with these issues. 

Let's say we're still working with Greta and Maeve. They've just heard that nearby towns have been ransacked and sought out the leader they were told about. The leader explains that the situation is looking bad: the villain has captured at least three villages, and while no one has yet to safely report back with intelligence on what's happening in those villages, the fear is that people are being killed or enslaved to further the villain's goals. To personalize this for Maeve, I would have this leader explain that certain sections of the forest have been targeted as well, sections of the forest that are frighteningly close to Maeve's camp. (Now it's personal, hopefully.) Then, after Maeve's questions have been answered and you feel you've sold the threat of this villain, it's time to have the something dramatic happen. We could have the lich attack the town if the whole party were here, but one player against the BBEG before the campaign even starts could fail to go anywhere. Instead, we have someone burst into the room with the leader and Maeve. They are short of breath and struggling to speak. "Another town to the east has fallen. Red Hawk has been captured. The lich is only two days' ride away," they finally manage. This messenger might be bruised and scraped; they may speak of the horrors they witnessed with their own eyes. Once you feel that your player has grasped that this indeed is the main plot of your adventure, it's time to wrap up. The leader will indicate to Maeve that they appreciate her volunteering, and that she will be assigned to a special group of agents to fight the lich. And so ends the individualized intro session with Maeve already hooked into the game pretty completely; now meeting the rest of the party is the biggest concern. I would call that a pretty successful single session. 

Considering all of the benefits I have outlined above, it's easy to see why an individualized intro session can be helpful. If you have a bigger party (6+ people), it may seem daunting to do that many sessions before even starting the campaign. If that's your situation, lump people together in pairs of characters who know each other already and provide fewer intro sessions with many of the same benefits. Personally, though, I recommend an individualized intro session for any campaign that takes storytelling and roleplaying seriously--it will surprise you how much these sessions can improve the beginnings of a campaign. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to spice up generic enemies, things to include in marketplaces, and an argument for why roleplaying is the pinnacle of TRPGs. Until next time, happy gaming!

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List of Villain Ideas

Not every campaign has to have a villain, but most do. And those that do need a compelling villain--their actions are what drives the story, after all. Thanks to thousands of years of human storytelling, we've seen just about every villain that might exist, in fiction at least. Coming up with an interesting hook for your villain is a key part of planning for your campaign. So I've created a list of 15 Big Bad Evil Gals/Guys (BBEGs) that can add an interesting dimension to your game. 

The list below is partially composed of BBEGs I have run in the past, but is composed mostly of new ideas specially created for this list. I'm including enough basic information to be able to extrapolate a campaign with; if you want resources on how to do that, look no further. But if like me, you prefer to do it yourself, here are some ideas to get you started. 

1. The Anarchist Royal: This member of the royal family of a burgeoning kingdom (I opted for princess) has learned about anarchy and grown to resent their family's power over their subjects. They have designed a way to destroy the kingdom from within. Their end goal is to destroy all possibility of the kingdom continuing and make efforts if possible to incite the people to rise up. I had my version of this BBEG commit to her ideals so much that she intended to die with the rest of her family to break the royal lineage. You might have this BBEG look to the party for help and not explain what their motives are, revealing their true intentions as a twist later in the campaign. The party will have to deal with investigation of conspiracies, diplomatic interactions, stealthy maneuvers, and a range of political questions about the storyline. 
2. The Artifact Collector: This studious BBEG may not even be evil in your campaign; the idea is simply that a specific person has uncovered information that that suggests a powerful artifact is hidden in some way. They have become so obsessed with the artifact that they will sacrifice anything to get it. Their end goal is to collect the artifact and be the first to use its power. In my version of this BBEG, the collection of the artifact was preceded by finding a series of related artifacts with clues that led from one to the next. Your players might race to collect the artifact before the BBEG can, or they may oppose them in some other way. The powers of the artifact may be why the BBEG is seeking it, or its powers may be a mystery and all they know is that it is highly powerful. The BBEG should be cunning and try to sabotage the player characters. The party will have to deal with discovering lore, tracking the BBEG, solving riddles, completing dungeons, and dealing with powerful magical forces. 
3. The Angry God: This god or demigod's agenda has been disrupted by the player characters. They are furious about this and want to punish the player characters for their meddling in divine plans. This BBEG's range of abilities makes them both formidable and interesting as an enemy, and discovering ways to get the upper hand on them will be a big part of dealing with this BBEG. Their end goal is to make their plan happen, and to rage against anything that gets in their way. In my version of the BBEG, I had an iteration of Gruumsh demand that the player characters help him and torture them when they didn't immediately do so; although I didn't initially intend this god character to be the overarching BBEG of the campaign, he was so persistently evil that my players loved to hate him. This BBEG should be intimidating and show off the lore about gods in your world. The party will have to deal with learning about the gods, dabbling with magic, protecting themselves from the divine, looking for allyship with other powerful beings, and using charismatic skills to deal with the BBEG. 
4. The Necromancer Commander: This powerful necromancer has developed a spell which changes the stakes of violence in-game--they have cursed the player characters, and any living humanoid they kill will be instantly raised as an undead warrior. Now the players cannot freely kill anyone or face the necromancer's wrath. They have designs to cast this spell on other powerful people in the world in order to build an army. They may even be working on an amplifying spell that would make the effect target all people. Their end goal is to conquer as much of the world as possible using their undead army. I suggest making the undead warriors that rise from killed people significantly more powerful than the person who died: the undead should have roughly 1.5x the killed person's abilities, but you could go as high as 2x if you wanted a more difficult and tense game. The party will have to deal with tense combat, strategic decisions about tactics, learning how to counter the necromancer's spells, protecting NPCs, and gathering abilities to better combat the undead. 
5. The Veteran Who Hasn't Moved On: This ex-soldier once fought in a conflict that changed them. They lost the war, but that didn't mean the war ended for this BBEG. They're bent on going out and single-handedly winning it now. Inspired by my homebrew world's Magic War, this BBEG uses their skills as a soldier to wage guerilla warfare against those they perceive as enemies. Their agenda depends on what their war was fought over; in mine, the war was about whether magic should be free, regulated, or abolished (the free advocates won), and so in my world this BBEG would be an old abolishment soldier who's striking against prominent magic users in their community. Their end goal should be an escalating series of attacks that culminate in some important public figure, as part of their agenda is making a public statement. I suggest making this BBEG a stealthy one so that part of the story can be your players discovering their identity and tracking them. To that end, the party will deal with investigation, tracking, interviewing witnesses, learning about the conflict the BBEG served in, and tense surprise combat. 
6. The Beastmaster: This BBEG can come from a variety of backgrounds: Druid, Ranger, Wizard/Sorcerer/Warlock to being with, but anyone who has learned some magic will work. This BBEG has mastered the ability to control animals. They can turn mundane animals into frightening creatures and convince even familiars to join their cause. Their end goal is to command an army and give animals dominion over humanoids. This BBEG may be aggressive and attack settlements where animals are harness for work, or they may be quietly massing an army of creatures somewhere out in the wilderness. Fighting with the Beastmaster means also fighting an array of controlled animals. The party will have to deal with natural magic, an array of transforming enemies, the ethics of killing controlled animals, and fighting to keep their animal companions by their sides. 
7. The Knowledge Eraser: This BBEG may be deranged or simply bent on an extreme idea; in any case, they seek to destroy stores of knowledge all over the land. I suggest using a magic user for this BBEG, which would allow them to cast fire spells to destroy entire libraries. They strike first at local libraries, targeting unique texts, and work their way up to the greatest stores of knowledge in the world. Their end goal is to free humanity from its undue reverence for history by destroying any trace of it. They might also focus on magical texts as an effort to reduce the potential of spellcasters. The party may be enlisted by civic authorities to investigate the destructions of texts, or they may encounter the BBEG themselves while dealing with texts. The party will deal with the various lore of your world, discussions of the value of historical records, investigating an elusive person, speaking with experts about the lost information, and learning about the different cultures in your world. 
8. The Mad Scientist: This inventor character can be whatever interpretation of a mad scientist you prefer, but here's my version. This BBEG has spent their life tinkering with gadgets and gizmos and has had a revelation: their inventions could change the world. But their attempts to promote their inventions haven't worked, and now they intend to convince the world of their genius by force. Their end goal is to punish those who underestimated them, attain renown, and implement their inventions in society. The exact nature of this BBEG's inventions is up for grabs. I opt for someone who specializes in mechanical clockwork devices, who has a collection of intimidating homunculi to use in combat. These handy devices can hold the party off while the BBEG escapes for another encounter pretty easily. You can also justify pretty much any invention you like to push the story along by using fantasy logic. The party will deal with interesting combats, a variety of strange ideas, gauging the public awareness, questions about the validity of the BBEG's inventions, and lots of appearances from the BBEG's homunculi. 
9. The Corrupt Official: This character holds a position in government and appears to be an upstanding member of the law. But secretly, they are corrupt to the core. They siphon official funds, they pull strings to get favors, they control people through their rank--and it's damaging the settlement they govern. Discovering the source of the corruption could be the core of the campaign, but you could also choose an openly corrupt official who's hard to get to for your BBEG. You can choose a smaller town if the atmosphere of fewer people being more directly impacted works better for your story, or a larger city if you want to really focus on the mystery of the corruption. Their end goal might simply be to amass wealth and power, or they may have a more concentrated agenda like obtaining a higher post or running competitors out of town or business. This is a more storytelling/roleplaying campaign, but you could add some combat by having the BBEG hire mercenaries to fight the party. The party will deal with political intrigue, investigating the government, the experiences of the common people in town, questions about what to do to fix the government, and lots of opportunity to portray a truly slimy BBEG. 
10. The Reclaimer: This character began as a very normal person, but they suffered a great loss and prayed for help. They received a blessing from their god and became instantly powerful, and their god tasked them with reclaiming a lost temple. That temple now lies at the heart of a thriving city that now uses the temple to worship a different god. Their end goal is to destroy the heathens who profaned the temple and reestablish the worship of their god. This BBEG has a very different flavor depending on which god you choose for them: an evil god means fighting against hatred and injustice; a good god means that the repurposed temple in the city has been diminished (but if the party is evil, it would function as normal); a neutral god makes the whole question of reclaiming the temple much more of a debate. As with others on this list, this BBEG may begin as an ally or questgiver, only to reveal the truth of their mission only after the party has cooperated. The party will deal with questions of morality, navigation of both dangerous and highly populated areas, learning lore of the gods in your world, fighting a variety of divine creatures, and negotiation with the gods. 
11. The Ultimate Planner: This character can come from any background, but they are remarkable for their intelligence, foresight, and practicality. Whatever happens, they have already foreseen it and prepared accordingly--they are never taken off guard. In terms of actual presence in the game, the players should always be able to approach this BBEG, but will always be foiled by a last-minute action that required planning in advance. Your players storm in and cut off all the exits? This BBEG has installed a trapdoor that leads to a tunnel and their escape. You'll keep your BBEG one step ahead of the players until the finale, when they critically miscalculate and the players triumph. Their end goal can be flexible, but by way of example that honors the planning skills of the BBEG, let's say that they want to use their judgment to maximize everyone else's life, effectively dictating their actions and erasing free will, which the BBEG doesn't see as a problem because efficiency is more important. The party will deal with trying to get a step ahead, anticipating the BBEG's actions, questions about free will, lots of planning of their own, and plenty of surprises from the BBEG's plans. 
12. The Mistaken Medium: This character has made a living from their magical ability to discern things that cannot be seen. They often read fortunes and foretell their clients' challenges. They have seen a striking vision of a world that terrifies them: they believe an important public figure (perhaps the leader of a settlement) will cause the apocalypse with a future decision. They become bent on stopping this from happening, and at any cost. Their end goal is to prevent the world ending by assassinating this figure. The party might catch onto this BBEG's actions when the BBEG kills someone close to the leader in an effort to derail them; investigating the murder leads to the BBEG's trail. This BBEG might be able to predict the party's coming for them or may use their gifts to intimidate the party. They may also share their visions in order to convince the party they are helping. The party will deal with omens of the apocalypse, protecting a public figure, investigating the BBEG's trail, questions of fate, and whether the party believes the BBEG. 
13. The Urban Terrorist: This character lives in a big city and has been run down by city life. Think of the main characters from movies like Taxi Driver and Falling Down, people who have gone rotten and lash out violently. This BBEG is filled with hatred and they take it out on the signs of decay around them. Their actions may still be percolating by getting into bar fights intending to kill someone, and they may have moved onto more devious actions like poisoning the water supply or burning down buildings with people inside. Their end goal is murky even to themselves--they only know that they will feel even worse if they don't destroy something or someone. The biggest struggle in dealing with this BBEG is in finding them in the sprawling city and being able to tie them to their crimes. The party may be contacted by city officials looking for help or may chance upon the site of one one of the BBEG's attacks. The party will deal with doing dangerous work surrounded by bystanders, questions of morality, depictions of rough city life, tracking work, and grappling with meaningless violence.
14. The Specimen Collector: This depraved individual has ceased to consider themselves a part of humanity; in their minds, they are a god among humanoids. But their interest in the lower forms of life around them has driven them even madder. This BBEG is on a quest to catalog the differences between individual humanoids, and they do so by capturing people, experimenting on them, and preserving the body for a grand display of their work. Their end goal is to have incontrovertible evidence of their theories about anatomy and biology, and they crave the approval of a particular expert on genealogy. The party's time with this BBEG may begin when the first few people get abducted by the BBEG, or it may be when the expert on genealogy is contacted by the BBEG--their disgust at the BBEG's work inspires them to contact the party for help. The party will deal with disturbing scenes of experimentation, learning about the game's lore for the different races, questions of scientific ethics, anticipating the moves of a deranged person, and investigating disappearances and murders.
15. The Harbinger: This individual was raised in a highly religious household and came to fear their god. In my world, this would fit well with the Dalton Church of Pelor, a dark version of the sun god who requires sacrifices to rise each morning. This BBEG, after being raised in such a dark and disturbing worldview, has lost sight of reality. They believe that the animal sacrifices are no longer enough to satisfy the hungry sun, and they commit to sacrificing one humanoid each day. Their end goal is to preserve the earth by indefinitely sacrificing people. This makes this BBEG especially committed to their goal. Dealing with this BBEG means that the party will be investigating a string of disappearances or murders; you could also have the party see the BBEG kill someone and get away and have the party learn about the extent of the crimes as they investigate. This BBEG might have been killing people for only a day or two before someone catches on, but you might also decide he's been at it for a month before people in the busy city really notice. The party will deal with investigation of disappearances and murder, religious lore from your world, questions about belief, disturbing scenes of the sacrificial church, and the potential for involvement from the gods in your world. 

That's 15 different BBEG ideas. If an idea appeals to you, run with it. Feel free to change anything at all to better suit your world, your story, and your take on the BBEG. Remember that a compelling BBEG is one you can portray in an exciting way, so be sure to use ideas that you think you could perform well for your players. And of course if your players are interested in one of these ideas, it's hard to go wrong by giving them the villain they really want. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a one-shot based on Alice in Wonderland, naming conventions in my homebrew setting, and the value of individual introduction sessions for a campaign. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Non-Human Age Calculator

One of the interesting things about D&D's races is that each has a different lifespan. In practical terms, this means that each race would view life and death in different ways. The cultural beliefs around death should vary by race in your homebrew world to reflect this. But this variance in age creates an obstacle to understanding. How old, really, is a 200-year-old elf? Or a 200-year-old dwarf? I've developed a simple calculator that translates all the D&D 3.5 and 5e races into equivalent human years for easy reference.  

The blank calculator, showing all the basic races.

Using the calculator is easy. First, open the spreadsheet, then click File -> Make a Copy -> Make a Copy (once you have decided how to save the spreadsheet). If you're translating a non-human age to a human age, use the left side of the calculator. When you enter a number there, it runs that number through a conversion equal to the proportion assigned in the Player's Handbook 3.5. Then, under "Human Age," the converted age appears. Conversely, if you know the human age your non-human character would be and need the non-human equivalent, use the right side of the calculator. Plug in the human age on the appropriate line for the race you're converting to, and the 0 you see above will become the translated age for the race. 

The calculator filled with a sample age for all races, which shows the converted human ages. The opposite side of the calculator works the same way. 

Even though this tool allows you to describe character ages precisely in an in-game way, it's still helpful to translate from these other races' ages into human equivalents for your players. In the same way that my players get lost when I describe my changes to days of the week and months of the year, describing an elf as 371 years old can mean very little to the average player. My recommendation is to give both parts of the information, which both informs the player of the appropriate details and slowly teaches them to understand the age scale. That looks like this: "You see a halfling woman dressed in a loose blue dress; she looks to be in her early seventies, which is about 50 in human years." This approach is simple, to the point, and unobtrusive narratively; you give the details needed for understanding and continue to the stuff that matters to your story. And go forward with this tool, now easily able to describe character ages in a way that's easier for everyone to understand. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a one-shot based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, architecture by D&D race, and a list of custom classes. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Healthy Imperfection: An Argument Against Min-Maxing

You're running a game, and your players have carefully designed their characters. So carefully, in fact, that these characters are more powerful than the average levelled characters. In the parlance of TRPGs, these player characters, with their focus on maximizing character efficacy and their attempt to use only minimal character progression, are min-maxing the system. They are focusing their efforts as players on making their characters as powerful as possible. Is this an issue? Should we be concerned that the player characters are as powerful as can be? I would argue that this indeed is a problem, but perhaps not for the reason you imagine. Read on for reasons that a min-maxed character negatively impacts the game for everyone. 

Firstly, there is the cost to the player who is playing the min-maxed character. When people gather to play D&D and TRPGs like it, they are most often looking for a way to feel in control of their decisions. Min-maxing seems to resolve that by making players more connected with their character's chosen actions. But it actually creates a problem for this player. What makes choice and control so valuable in a TRPG is that there are limits to player choice; a player with a specific action in mind must be able to pass a check in order to be successful. This check creates drama and can create narrative if failed; if, on the other hand, the player character has been min-maxed, the check is almost guaranteed to be a success. There is no drama, aside from the potential of a natural 1. The player and their party mates don't get to enjoy the story of their characters being scrappy heroes; they walk in, resolve an issue, and there is no further excitement. 

One of the troubles with min-maxing is that players who do it often don't realize that they are cutting themselves short. They believe that the enjoyment of the game lies in winning, which they interpret as being the victor in the gameworld's smaller struggles. Crushing an enemy team in combat becomes more important than advancing a narrative or roleplaying a character moment. That is to say, the things that make TRPGs special (their ability to provide more than a combat simulation) disappear when players min-max. If you have a player or players who are min-maxers, I recommend both speaking with them about changing strategies (unless that's the kind of campaign you're running) and shifting the game's emphasis toward the storytelling side of things. 

So min-maxing short-changes the players who do it. But it also affects the players who don't. Allow me to provide an example from my mystery campaign: in this campaign, we have three players: a dwarven barbarian/druid named Beor, a tiefling wizard/monk named Ais, and an orcish bard named Montana. Montana in particular rolled exceptionally well when deciding ability scores, and as a result, Montana is the most statistically powerful of the group. Further, Montana's background states that he is a private investigator, which makes him very powerful while investigating a mystery. Further still, Montana's player chose to excel in investigative skills, and his array of magic spells allow him to use his magic to investigate in detail. Compared to Beor and Ais, Montana could be argued to be min-maxed to an extent. 

And sure enough, Montana is pretty much always the face of the party. He pushes the investigation further and more effectively than anyone else. If I were running a game where skill checks determined success for the players, Montana would be so over-powered that the other characters would be devalued. (As it happens, I opt to judge roleplayed actions more seriously than dice rolls, so Beor and Ais are able to contribute just as well as Montana. Success based on roleplaying will always offer a strong alternative to dice rolls.) And the thing about Beor and Ais being devalued is that it would destroy the campaign. The party is tied together in a way that makes them each equal contributors to their goals. If solely Montana were able to successfully navigate those goals, neither of Beor's or Ais' players would be having much fun. They would just be spectators in the Montana campaign. If all your player characters in a group are min-maxed, I suppose there's nothing that would hold you back aside from slight variations in powers, but I would still remind you that so far we've addressed the ways that min-maxing ruins the fun for both the player and their party members, and it goes further still. 

You as GM are affected too. Let's say that you're a GM who's interested in careful balance. No encounter exists in your game which you haven't carefully calibrated for your players. But if a character or two are min-maxed, your balance will be off. Min-maxed characters have significantly different profiles than average characters, sometimes to the tune of a character level or more. No longer are you building an encounter for a group of 5 characters of level 6; now you have to calibrate for 3 level 6 characters, 1 level 7 character, and 1 level 8 character (after inflation). But not only is your balance off, you have to content with an even more important fact: your players might not be having fun. 

As I have written before, the most important thing in a TRPG is the element of fun. I would go so far as to say that creating fun is your primary job as GM. And as we saw from the above examples of how min-maxing adversely affects the players of those characters as well as their party mates, min-maxing can impact the fun being had at the table. So if we're keeping track of all the points here: min-maxing robs players of the fun of being imperfect and not having a guarantee of success; it distracts from the goals of storytelling and roleplaying; it makes other players feel comparatively less powerful and robs them of their fun; it unbalances your game; and it violates the most important principle of gaming (it negatively impact fun). So in the end, the impulse to extend player control over the story via mechanics creates more issues than it solves. 

As I mentioned above, you can combat min-maxing if you are persistent about it from the beginning. Speak with your players before they've developed characters and share the idea that min-maxing will get in the way of the story you want to tell. Share this article if you think it would help. Take care to speak with your players not in an accusing way: no one is trying to ruin your game; they just need a touch of help getting in the right mindset. As people level up, offer advice to the players who seem to struggle with making strategic choices for their characters so that they have as powerful of characters as the more strategically-minded. And most of all, create challenges in your story and gameworld that don't reward min-maxing. Like I mentioned with my mystery campaign, if roleplaying rather than dice rolls is the heart of your story, you can eliminate the benefits of min-maxing and rely instead of player ingenuity. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: an age calculator for D&D races, architecture by D&D race, and a one-shot based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Technologies to Be Available in Your Gameworld

Your gameworld can be characterized by any number of features. The way you treat magic in the game is one of these features, and another is how you characterize the setting. The intersection of these ideas is where you define the technologies in your world. The tech you decide to include will not only add characterization to the world, but it will also define what is and is not possible in the world. And importantly, technologies also create storytelling opportunities, as players can use these technologies to get ahead in the story. Below, I've developed a list of technologies you can deploy in your game; read on for ways that you can develop your gameworld's technologies to intensify your game by restricting or expanding the tech available. 

Before I get into the list, I want to draw attention to one of the ways that technologies have affected my games. I have seen players use new technologies to develop cutting-edge businesses, and I have seen them deploy technologies for the sake of exploring new ideas. In Listen Check, for instance, a gnomish inventor had developed a device which stored as a simple paperback book, but which could grow and take the form of various pieces of furniture. The players all invested in this inventor's device--Soren in particular poured funds into the project--and not only were they able to rebuild their home out of these transforming pieces of furniture, but they became quite rich from their investments. You can see how even one invention can change the course of a story. 

More recently, I developed several inventions for the mystery campaign. I designed the list of inventions as a letter from the inventor Lyssbetonk Cogswagon, who was offering the player characters the aid of one invention to help them in their investigations. That letter includes a total of 11 technologies, including simple ones like an automatic field plower and an automated assistant (both of which stand to shake things up in most campaigns), but also more notable devices, like anti-gravity boots, a weather controller, and something called an Undoer, which allows the wearer to travel back in time five seconds, leaving the rest of the world behind. In the context of the campaign, these technologies are world-changing to a certain extent, but the real idea here is that the inventions are part of the mystery--the player characters have to determine which inventions are involved in the conspiracy and be able to counteract them. So you see that technologies can serve purposes other than simply changing what actions are available; they can also contribute to the story you're telling. 

So let's get into some specific technologies. Deploy these in your gameworld however you see fit, recognizing that technologies change what players are capable of in your world. The players' uses of technology will surprise you. My mystery campaigners ended up asking for help with a Liquid Multiplier to turn a single healing potion into hundreds of sellable doses of healing potion--that's something I didn't anticipate. So, with the recognition that technologies can disrupt your game in the same chaotic fashion as any other ability granted to the players, let's consider some technologies for your world, moving from least to most transformative (and considering eliminating taken-for-granted technologies). 

1. Purified Water: In medieval times, water was not reliably clean, and most folks just drank ale, which was easier to reliably safely produce. In your world, you can develop the technology of purified water to allow people to safely and reliably drink pure water if you so choose. But you can just as easily rule that purified water is outside the realm of possibility, and portray people as drinking ale as a safer alternative. Clean water also has a huge impact on agriculture, and you might play in a world where people preserve water for crops and drink other things to ensure a good harvest. If you include pure water in your game, consider only the most upscale establishments the holders of pure water. 
2. Agricultural Harvesters: In medieval times, harvesting crops was an arduous process, but today, complex devices make the process much easier. Your world can share this development: inventors eager to reduce labor in the field can create rolling machines which pluck any crop from the ground and store it. You might have one all-in-one device handle all crops, or a specialized machine for each crop; the device could be cheap enough to be revolutionizing agriculture, and it may be expensive enough that most farmers must save carefully to afford one. Whatever you choose, these harvesters will be game-changers which will multiply the free time of farmers who have it. 
3. The Printing Press: This is not a wild invention in the way that many TRPG inventions are wild--this technology simply determines the spread of information in your world. It's worth considering how popular the printing press is in your world so that you understand how many books there are and thereby what the average person knows about a given topic. I've decided that the printing press is relatively new in my world, but gaining considerable traction, so that printed books have only just become popular and widely available. You might also run a world with no printing press in order to keep written records rare. Printing press availability also affects libraries and newspapers, so make this choice carefully. 
4. Clocks and Watches: Clocks are one of civilization's earliest inventions, but early clocks were unwieldy and large. You might rule that only such large clocks exist in your world, but you can push the line of technology in either direction: you might rule that clocks generally do not exist at all, meaning that player characters must approximate time by the sun's position, or you might rule that clocks are so useful that the technology of timekeeping has rushed to meet demand, and there are even small watches which can reliably keep time. Determining the commonness of timekeeping can help to characterize your world and put pressure on time-related activities. 
5. Musical Instruments: Instruments in a traditional D&D world include period instruments like lutes, lyres, and harps, but these instruments don't have to be the full range of musical possibilities. In the mystery campaign, Montana plays a guitar even though the instrument wouldn't be invented until the very end of the medieval period. But musical expression in the game is more about self-expression than historical reenactment, so you can have in-game characters develop modern instruments. In my world, halflings are renowned as experimenters in the world of music, so I could easily determine that halflings invented the guitar and other instruments to satisfy my players. 
6. Plumbing: Traditional medieval worlds have only the most basic hygienic inventions; science had not yet shown us that disease thrives in unhealthy conditions, and so people did not have things like plumbing yet. But I like to think that magic increases the capabilities of engineers, and that the kind of wealth disparity that exists in my world would lead to the development of technologies that only help the rich. So why not include basic plumbing? The wealthy have the ability to fill a bathtub without carrying water, they can use more sophisticated technology than an outhouse, and they have running water to wash their hands. This opens a narrative possibility of a disease that affects mostly the poor, but the rich have immunity because of their plumbing. 
7. Photography: The ingredients required for early photography were all commonly available to people in medieval settings; the daguerreotype, the earliest publicly available photography method, required silver, iodine, and mercury. In a world with plentiful apothecaries, each of these substances would be relatively easy to find. So why not include photography in your world? These early photographs take time and resources to create, so using it would still require a person to work hard for the fruits of their labor. This would introduce changes into the way that persons of interest are tracked, as perfect reproductions would be available to the public.
8. Use of Existing Magic as Technology: This is one of my favorite ways to make my gameworld more interesting. Consider the magic that exists in the world and how those spells would supplement other aims. In my homebrew setting, powerful wizards are employed by a courier service to teleport couriers all across the continent. Thus, from this spell, there is a whole business that keeps the world informed and connected. The above example of Listen Check uses this format too: the furniture inventor was using a shrink/enlarge spell paired with engineering for his devices. If you have an idea for how a spell might affect the world, keep imagining the details until you know how it affects the world. From there, you'll soon have a unique way for magic to express your world's details. 
9. Flying Machines: As far back as Leonardo da Vinci, there are designs for flying machines. You might introduce a variety of flying machine in your world, and you have lots of options. You could go with the single-person design that da Vinci developed, an early biplane which could hold a passenger or two, or something else entirely. I include this idea because flight is at the heart of the human imagination going back as far as we can remember, and it seems only natural that people in the gameworld would strive to fly as well. With limited flight, travel changes drastically, and all manner of new complications arise--consider how dramatic a skill check to keep the device in the air would be. 
10. Social Programs: I'm writing from the United States, where social programs have long taken a backseat to "economical freedom," but that doesn't mean that your gameworld can't have them. In my homebrew setting, gnomes have a very socialistic government, so they use magic and extensive recordkeeping to provide everyone in their society with the resources they need. Technology gets used in this system: every gnome has a personal artifact, like a ring or a card-shaped metal plate, which can be scanned by a government official before providing aid in order to track social programs. Gnomes' roles as inventors also mean that these social programs take advantage of some of the highest-profile devices in the known world. 
11. Fortune Tellers and Mediums: In the real world, fortune tellers and mediums are people who we can't really be sure have any contact with the supernatural. But in D&D, with the existence of spells like "Weal or Woe," fortune telling is a pretty exact science. Because spellcasters and other mediums have access to very real magic and information that lies outside of everyday life, people in the gameworld would come to rely on them for accurate information about what lies ahead. Where fortune tellers in our world are a "special occasion" type of visit for most of us, fortune tellers in D&D might be a regular visit for all manner of people. These figures can provide your game with dramatic tension, storytelling opportunities, and memorable predictions. 
12. Communication Devices: One of the greatest factors that makes our modern world different from a medieval setting is the speed of communication. Today, we can send a text message almost instantaneously to someone on the opposite side of the world, but a D&D setting usually requires you to travel to the location of who you want to speak with. I like to imagine that people within the gameworld sense that communication could be sped up and use magic with technology to change that. Perhaps your communication device is like an early telephone, with a whole structure that must be wired to its connection, and perhaps your communication device is simply an earpiece that allows the wearer to speak with whoever has the matched earpiece. Whatever you decide, speeding up communication and removing proximity from the equation will change the pace of your adventure and intensify the relationship of whoever your characters speak to. 
13. Magic Identifier: In a world where magic runs rampant and people afflicted with spells may not know how to counter them, it makes sense that someone would develop a mechanical device which can identify magic. This device, which I imagine as a scanner similar to a tv remote control, can confirm that magic has been cast on a person and can potentially diagnose the exact spell used. In conjunction with the treatment of a professional, this device could free the person from any manner of magical effects and curses; additionally, it frees up a range of identifying spells for the professional to use to help people. The Magic Identifier is likely a one-off invention by an enterprising individual, but you could also have it somewhat mass-produced if your gameworld considers magic to be as much a liability as a benefit. 
14. Gunpowder: The ingredients of gunpowder were freely available to people in medieval times--saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur all occur pretty regularly in the world, especially from miners. I'm not suggesting that you give your D&D players full-on firearms--that would be quite a different game altogether. Rather, gunpowder can be used in small explosive charges, allowing your player characters to build bombs. Of course, just because the ingredients of gunpowder are available doesn't mean that they're easily available, and you can ration how much your players have access to in order to keep them from overwhelming all their enemies with explosives. 
15. Resurrection: There are a number of spells directly dedicated to raising fallen characters. These spells are designed so that the players don't have to lose their characters if they die, but the spells create story complications that can be difficult to deal with. Years ago, I had a party split in which one half of my players decided to kill a king and the other half decided to defend the king. One of the assassins succeeded in regicide, and the cleric on the defending party wanted to resurrect him. How could I decide between the split parties? I had to invalidate one side or another. I decided that "Resurrection" as a spell could only raise the king for one week, at which point he would permanently die--a sort of compromise. I mention this because "Resurrection" has unintended consequences when applied to NPCs. If "Resurrection" is widely available in your world, it should exist in a way that reflects the societal impact of death being escapable. If it's widely available, there should be spellcasters who specialize in casting the spell almost exclusively. If you reduce the power of the spell like I did, remember that it needs to be consistent across your gameworld. 

That's 15 ideas for ways that technology (especially paired with magic) can be a part of your gameworld. You can and should consider the ways that other elements of the game would affect society and other technology, and if you do so, you can turn any idea into a working technology in your world. Remember to have your world reflect the change made by the technology, as this is often the most important and interesting way it will show up in your game. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: an argument against min-maxing, an age calculator for D&D races, and a one-shot based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Design Player Character Notes for In-Game Books

In-game documents can be a great addition to your game; they can allow your players to uncover information in an organic way, and they can allow you to reveal information in a way that adds drama and excitement to the story. I've already addressed how to create in-game documents, how to develop narrative through documents, and how to develop a full in-game book. But you don't have to go to these lengths to provide your player characters with the information they need. You can also write notes for the player character which highlight the major points of the document, which creates a more personal sense of what the player character can do with the information. Read on for a guide to creating notes for an in-game book. 

Recently in the mystery campaign, Beor borrowed a book from noted mage Polly Bridgerman. The book in question was about natural magic and ways to apply it for healing practices. I faced a choice at this juncture: I could write enough of the book for Beor's player to get a sense of the book and its information, or I could write notes for Beor from the book. I chose notes for a handful of reasons. First, the book itself would have loads of helpful information; Beor wanted a book on natural healing, and the book is entirely about that. I would need to develop almost an entire real book to recreate the sense of its full contents, whereas notes would allow me to highlight the key information in a much more concentrated form. Secondly, Beor's interest in the book was primarly ways to benefit the healing business, which means that as long as I provide information helpful to that goal, Beor and his player get what they want. Finally, part of the impetus for borrowing a book from Bridgerman was to have a physical object to use while scrying her, so my treatment of the book is only part of the equation; since the player has ulterior motives, the actual content of the book is less the focus of the action, and we can provide information in a more limited fashion. 

When you're deciding whether to create a full document of simply notes, these are important features to consider. But they're not the only ones. You should also ask yourself whether a player wants to have specific information or big ideas (which relate to full texts and notes, respectively), whether the player character would find specific ideas helpful or not (a magic-phobic character would likely write less about magic than another character might), and whether the information you want to reveal would be best served by a shorter or longer format (big reveals of relevant information should be granted the extra space of a full-text where you can rather than hiding it in notes). But you might also just prefer the notes method of document creation, and that's okay too; work with what suits you best. 

Now it's time to dive into writing the notes. I personally like to start with the most basic information: the title of the book being annotated and the author's name. These give us a good starting place that lets us work from the central details outward. In this case, it's a book about natural healing and ways to do it. For such a clinical text, I thought a descriptive title with little ambiguity would be good: I decided on "Natural Healing and Its Applications." This title is direct and to-the-point--it clearly indicates that it is about natural healing and how to use these techniques. For the author's name, I always start with a race; I'm partial to gnomes and their ingenuity, and a gnome might as well be the studious investigator of this corner of magic and apothecary. So I gave them a gnomish name: Norrim Fastbiter. I also decide at this point what the personality of the author is like--how do they view the subject? How do they write about it? I like the idea of Fastbiter being studious and responsible as an author, but very exciteable about the subject. So Fastbiter is someone who clearly has passion for the subject, but also who gets carried away with themself at times. So in the notes, we'll have Beor acknowledge that Fastbiter has written in these ways. 

Where with full documents, you need to present the big picture with many supporting details, notes only require you to indicate the big picture and provide only minor details where very important. So when we present details about the document's topic, we strive for important ideas only--the kind of things that a player character would find worth copying down. As you write about a vital idea (one of the player character's bullet points), think about what comes next. My first few points in the notes I've copied below is that natural magic can be more reliable because it does not involve the gods, whos roles in healing magic can be troublesome. I offer a variety of expressions of this idea: four bullet points in a row point to the specific ways that divine and natural magic are different. Likewise, the mid- to end-of-list bullet points are specific recipes and spells, which I reasoned would be located together in the book, towards the end. 

But this isn't the only concern to take into consideration. We also need to consider what the personality of the player character is. After all, you're taking the player character into your hands, speaking for them, thinking for them, and handing them back to the player to deal with. It's a big responsibility to take another person's character into your hands, so take it seriously. In this case, Beor is a pretty solemn guy. He's interested in this book specifically to learn how to succeed in the healing business. He is himself a natural healer, so his interest in the book is more academic than practical in a sense; even though he's looking for solutions to the business problems, he's already a natural healer, so the information he learns would be conceptual rather than based on specific actions. This all tells me two important things about Beor's notes: they should take the subject seriously, and they should focus on information Beor wouldn't already have. This is why the bullet points are mostly selling points for natural healing (all the drawbacks of divine healing are outlined in the first four bullet points) and a collection of potions and spells that can be used in the business (the majority of the rest of the bullet points). Beor's final note (that this book has a sequel which could be useful) is something that the book it comes from would hardly seem special--it's just an advertisement for another book. But because it contains additional spells and natural magic information, it may be helpful anyway. So I included this final note to give Beor's player the ability to further his research should he so choose. 

Let's take a look at the final product: 

Natural Healing and Its Applications

By Norrim Fastbiter

• Fastbiter argues that natural magic is related to divine magic in that it pulls its source of energy from a powerful existing force, but natural magic can be more reliable because the wills of the gods are not a factor. 

• Healing performed by natural magic supplements the body’s natural ability to heal, whereas divine healing treats the body with foreign energy from the god. 

• There are reports from healers of more obscure gods such as Kord (god of strength) or even Nerull (god of death) can sometimes backfire, causing the healed party to take damage instead. Apparently, the god’s opinion of the healed party factors into the equation. Natural magic has no such associated drawback. 

• Unlike divine magic, which requires a bond between the caster and their god, natural magic can be learned by anyone with enough dedication. Fastbiter provides examples of isolated communities developing natural magic as a way to deal with everyday health issues, meaning that natural magic is generally more practically-minded than divine magic. 

• Fastbiter explains a lengthy anecdote in which he claims to have learned an anti-venom spell from a willow tree that he spoke to magically. He says that plants which have survived for generations of humanoids often have significant information if the person is willing to work for it. 

• Healing Potion Recipe #1: two sprigs rosemary, a handful of tall grass, a salamander tail, and a dash of clean spring water. This potion, when ground and mixed, creates a pale grey liquid which will mobilize the body’s healing mechanisms at extraordinary speed. Fastbiter notes that the sensation of healing can be unpleasant, but that the potion works wonderfully. 

• Healing Potion Recipe #2: one toad’s eye, three raven feathers, a cup of fresh milk (any animal), and a patch of moss. This potion is mixed and left to brew for two days. The end result is a bright green paste. When applied as a salve to the areas that need healing, the potion quickly soaks in and will relieve all diseases tested in Fastbiter’s research. It also creates a numbing sensation in the healed party’s face, and it can restrict clear communication for some patients. 

• Healing Spell: Bone Mending. While traditional healing spells will repair and set broken bones, the process is painful and the result is a more fragile bone than before the healing. With Bone Mending, the patient’s bones are repaired and strengthened to a greater state than before the break. Additionally, there is little pain, as the spell creates a sense of euphoria in the patient that lasts until most of the pain from the break has resided. 

• Fastbiter closes the book by promoting his next book, Natural Magic in History, which he describes as a chronicle of natural magic users and the development of important spells throughout time. It may be a good resource for further natural healing spells should Bridgerman also have the second book. 

That's more or less all there is to the process of creating notes for a player character. You can take the text you've created, put it in a handwriting font, place it on a sheet of parchment (either in real life or digitally), and give it to your player. You might also handwrite the notes for added authenticity. (I like the font route because then you can distinguish your player characters by handwriting, but whatever works for you is fine.) 

Now you have a representation of an in-game document, boiled down to the most important ideas and made easily available to your players. And it didn't take much work, just thinking about how you present which information to your players. So take your players' interests in documents, create some notes, and let your players get ever more lost in your world. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: technologies to be available in your gameworld, an argument against min-maxing, and an age calculator for D&D races. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Provide Realistic Agricultural Details

Some games call for a removal from reality; a TRPG can be made more exciting at times by resisting realistic measures. But other worlds depend on a realistic and consistent presentation. One detail which has always called to me is the agricultural aspect of the world--I like to have crops grow in ways that are consistent with real-life climates. I do this because it adds variety to the world; not every town subsists on the same foods, and a town can become more memorable for its adherence to a proper reality. In this guide, I will present the agricultural yields which are consistent with our real world using a campaign setting I developed to be realistic in this way. Read on for how you too can develop a realistic gameworld with your crops. 

To begin with, we need a base climate for our gameworld. In the setting I created called Ramsey (a wild west world with D&D technologies), the standard climate is desert: for the most part, this section of the world can support little vegetation. So for most communities, we need crops that can succeed in dry climates. Doing a little bit of research, I find that common crops that can grow in this kind of climate and which can also sustain a community are these: beans, various greens, broccoli, spicy peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumber. So for the average community in Ramsey, these are the staple crops. Hearty meals consist of beans and greens with occasional meals featuring peppers, root veggies, and broccoli. These communities, in large part due to the shortage of arable land, also heavily rely on livestock to supplement meals and provide steady streams of protein. This climate also serves herbs very well, so although they do not sustain people like staple crops, the cuisine of these settlements should be marked with powerful flavors. So, looking at the map of the island, about 60% of all settlements use this method of subsistence and generally manage to get by on what little crops they can manage in the dry heat. Below is an image of Hyder Bend, a large industrial city; its outskirts would be formed of bean and green fields and livestock pastures to support itself, though it's worth noting that a city as big as Hyder Bend would also trade with smaller communities to supplement its food intake. 

This detailed map of Hyder Bend does not include visual representations of agriculture, but the areas to the south and east of town would be home to dozens of fields of dry-climate crops. 

But not every city in Ramsey is as hardscrabble as these settlements when it comes to agriculture. A few locations have land which is more hospitable to farming, namely Hart Springs and Pilgrim's Glen. These small settlements lie on small islands to the west and east of the main continent, and they have wetter climates due to the waterfront effect and can support less hardy crops. The crops we can expect to do well here are more plentiful, so we can select for the crops that are likelier to sustain people at large. The ones that work best for this setting are as follows: barley, beets, cabbage, corn, oats, potatoes, and spinach. Here, we find crops that are naturally filling and which allow for the creation of other food products (barley, corn, oats, and potatoes can all be prepared in a variety of different ways). So the meals in these towns are generally more filling and varied than the rest of the region, and there is a slightly lesser dependence on livestock, although livestock is still common in these areas. These towns, because of their food variety, often export excess crops to other towns. Below are maps of Hart Springs and Pilgrim's Glen; both utilize their climates to maximize town sustenance. 

Hart Springs uses its lush landscape to grow a variety of crops otherwise unavailable in Ramsey. 

Pilgrim's Glen is a dazzling community on a small, lively island, and its crops are eaten all across Ramsey thanks to regular trade. 

There are also communities with unique ecological profiles in Ramsey which affect the agricultural customs. First, there is Red Hawk, a heavily forested settlement known to few, and there is Fink's End, a marshy settlement of quiet outsiders. These settlements also have agricultural trends which define their culinary needs. Let's begin with Red Hawk. 

This secretive map reveals that hollowed-out trees are the homes of the residents. They have created farms in the forest surrounding the hidden town. 

Inside the dense and disorienting forest lies Red Hawk. In my National Treasure campaign, Red Hawk was home to an enclave of werewolves trying to live outside the prying eyes of those who didn't understand the werewolf community. As part of their isolated way of life, they have to subsist on crops they can grow safely within the woods. This calls for consideration of an entirely new biome. The crops that grow naturally in forests are perhaps not as appetizing as other crops: the werewolves cultivate a variety of mushrooms, fruits and berries that grow in the woods, all manner of wild nuts, leeks, and a collection of medicinal herbs. This is not much to subsist on, but that works out, as the werewolves also hunt the animals within the woods for additional nutrition. 

Fink's End lies on a marshy bog; people move about on raised wooden gangways to stay out of the mire. 

Fink's End has a quite different situation. This small society can depend on greater moisture for crops than any other place on the continent. Thus, their crops are quite different, and therefore greatly prized across the continent, as this is the only place certain crops will grow. As you can see from the map of the settlement, I have labeled its major agricultural efforts with the crops that grow naturally in such a setting. These crops are barley, oats, wheat, corn, and rice. Rice in particular is hard to find on Ramsey, so this is a major export for Fink's End. The other grain staples of the community are pillars of Fink's End cooking, as very few livestock can be supported in this climate and the residents must rely on hardy vegetables for a healthy diet. 

These are all examples of settlements that have used what resources they have to make the best of their crops. But a settlement doesn't have to be limited to what they can grow naturally. Consider the settlement of Broken Shield, which has spent considerable resources mastering irrigation and other farming methods to get the most out of their troublesome climate. 

Broken Shield is a progressive city both politically and scientifically; the farms they have built around the city utilize cutting edge technology to feed the city. 

Broken Shield is a city that feels Ramsey is behind the times and caught up in unnecessary hardship, and they combat that with projects like a history museum (oriented toward the future), public housing, and scientific advances in agriculture. I wrote that Broken Shield developed a desalinizing plant which it uses to turn seawater into good water for the crops. So despite its poor location, Broken Shield manages to create enough food to feed itself. The crops that Broken Shield can grow with this method are as follows: leafy greens, broccoli, tubers, and root vegetables like potatoes, onions, and carrots. You'll notice that Broken Shield's crops are a combination of desert crops and temperate crops; the irrigation manages to split the difference and share some of each climate's possibilities. 

So you can see that even a relatively small place like Ramsey can have a variety of climates and crops. And the research process for crops is very simple: just go to google and enter "crops that can grow in [fill in your climate]," and you'll be faced with lists of crops that can match your setting. Remember that you can get creative! Invent new crops that can grow in various settings, for instance; I created a root vegetable that grows in elven lands called "jaswop," which is mostly prized for being brewed into an ale-like beverage, but you could easily create a staple crop or other food that characterizes a region, settlement, or culture. 

When you're considering details like this, remember that such information is mostly for you as GM. Your players will almost certainly have no stake in whether the settlement they're in can grow peas or apples, so only undertake the work of climate design and crop distribution if it will make you happy. Otherwise, you're only compiling details for your gameworld without any meaning. Nevertheless, many GMs insist on creating worlds in dizzying detail, and if that's you, agricultural balance can scratch the itch. Just remember to have fun. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to design a custom one-shot from a movie, how to design player character notes on books, and a list of technologies to include in your gameworld. Until next time, happy gaming!

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