Gods, Dungeons, Nemesis, Doom

I'm fond of emphasizing the role of religion in worldbuilding, so here's a mechanical take for Tidelock, with a kind of Greco/Roman bent.

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Dungeons are a weird space. It's just kind of assumed that you can just... murder everything inside of one without consequence? Like dungeons are a truly lawless place, free of the moral trappings of society and religion. What happens in the dungeon stays in the dungeon. There are some exceptions, sure, but by and large murder and plunder in the dungeon is the norm. I mean, that's what one does in dungeons, right?

This assumption can be applied to most 'wilderness' places in your traditional RPG campaign. You go places and kill stuff and take loot, right? And nobody bats an eye at the adventurer for doing so.

...But what if that wasn't the case? What might that look like? What if the religious consequences for murder were quite real and explicit, for everyone? (Not just for goody-two-shoes paladins and clerics.)

Like, what if you killed a goblin, and then the goblin god was got pissed at you for (in its eyes) murdering one of its followers? And then the goblin god would bide its time until the right moment to, like, have a rat bite at your ankles while you're fighting, causing you to take a spear to the face?

The "Dungeon" is Desecrated

Desecrated in a religious sense: it is a space within which the relevant gods no longer cast their gaze. It is not a sacred, or even a normal space - if it were, there would be religious consequences for plunder and killing. In the true "dungeon" there are not.

Some dungeons are desecrated. Some have been that way for a very long time (such as old ruins). Some are not (yet). In order to do your killing and plunder without running the risk of gaining Nemesis or Doom (see below), you're going to need to consult with a good faith cleric, priest, druid, or other religious sage, in order to determine whether this particular space has the protection of a god.

So, say you're an adventurer!

How does one determine whether a space is protected by a god or not?

• Lore
• Rumor
• History (desecrations and consecrations are important events. People will remember them, and tell their kids and grandkids about them.)
• Consult or contract a sage, priest, druid, monk, scholar, etc. to find out.
• Be a cleric, druid, occultist, etc. and do the augury yourself to determine if there's something here.
• If there's religious stuff around (altars, priests, religious art), it's a sure thing that at some point it is, or was.

Does the place you want to loot and possibly kill within have the protection of a god?

• No: Well, have at it, then!
• Yes: Better get protected by a god then, or have it arranged to strip the protection from the place. Consult a priest.

You don't want this to happen to you!

"Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime" - Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

With this is mind, the adventuring party can make some informed decisions about the places they want to delve and the things they might want to hurt.

Ruins will typically be desecrated dungeons, and have likely been so for a long time. Chances are that one can avoid divine retribution in these godless spaces. People like to avoid these for exactly this reason. It might be full of monsters without sentience: undead and the like. Conspiracies and outlaw cults might drag people to these places so that they can do their horrible rituals without the notice of gods and men. Ruins are innately risky places.

Caves, Groves, and other Natural Spaces may or may not be deconsecrated. Are there religious markings anywhere about it? Does it have a sacred animal inside? Is a Druid present? You can consult a Druid if one is unsure whether that space is okay to take from or not, or take a (probably) safe risk if you don't see any markings.

Forts, Temples, Shrines, Hamlets, or other places that have People are likely not only to not  be deconsecrated, but are probably specifically consecrated: under the watchful eye of one or more gods. Not recommended to attack or loot unless you're either preemptively absolved (morally, legally, religiously), have significant divine protection, or you're prepared to accept some divine retribution (see below).

Outlaws carry their desecration wherever they go. There's very rarely religious consequence for killing one or taking their stuff. It's still possible, though, for outlaws to gain religious protection from some other source than from the society which outlawed them. A pious outlaw is rare indeed, but one can become a serious problem for the authorities. It's not uncommon for outlaws to kidnap priests, monks, and druids to use as hostages in case somebody comes after them - a priest who dies in a skirmish will likely taint everyone involved.

Nemesis and Doom

When characters kill things that are still under a god's protection, steal or deface holy items, exhibit extreme hubris, or otherwise act in a way that invites divine retribution, they gain either Nemesis or Doom, proportional to how severe the transgression.

Nemesis is a die (in whatever system you use, likely a d20), that the GM keeps in reserve to use against you at a very inopportune time: an important Save, a crucial attack roll, a dangerous kill check, etc. This roll can be whatever the GM dictates (although it probably shouldn't generate critical hits). Nemesis inflicted for any particular act range from 1 to 5, depending on severity.

Nemesis dice never expire. They can be held onto and hoarded until a truly critical moment. The GM has discretion for what fate this entails. Nemesis can be removed by making amends with the offended god, by the various ways one might do so (material sacrifices, blood prices, donating to charity, self-flagellation, etc.). Or, Nemesis can be removed by getting another god to get the offended one off your back. The champions of gods in this way are like the international diplomats of the religious world. They have a certain amount of immunity before they're expelled.

The player-character find out how much Nemesis they have when they next sleep or long rest. It's not immediately apparent how much Nemesis a certain act has produced. Until this point, the GM cannot use Nemesis on that respective character.

Examples of acts that might produce Nemesis: 

• Killing someone. (Everyone's got a god. Maybe even if they attacked first. Do all the gods recognize a mortal's argument of self-defense? Probably not.)
• Touching a dead body. Maybe even looking at one. Maybe even mentioning a dead person's name.
• Cursing a god. Cursing The gods. Cursing God.
• Taking treasure from a place that has not been de-sanctified by a cleric.
• Beating up a priest, monk, druid, pilgrim, or other holy person.
• Killing a sacred stag, favored animal, or "monster" considered holy to a god (without the proper ritual beforehand).
• Supporting, being around, or being associated with somebody with active Nemesis. The closer you are, the more it radiates.
• Expressing hubris.

Doom is reserved for truly offensive acts in the eyes of the gods. Doom can never be removed by any means. Characters with Doom suffer the worst possible outcome on an injury table or death saving throw when next it is rolled (or at least something more severe than a potentially normal outcome). This can't be gamed (say, by trying to preempt it in a safe scenario). GM has discretion to withhold the Doom if the situation seems too safe.

Similar to Nemesis, Doom cannot be utilized or confirmed until an Omen has been revealed. It's up to the GM as to exactly when this happens. These should be specific to the offended god (e.g. a snake eating itself, a shattering mirror, an eclipse).

Examples of acts that might produce Doom:

• Defiling the altar of a death god.
• Hearing the banshee call your name.
• Slaughtering and looting a temple.
• Killing an (innocent) priest, monk, druid, or other holy person.
• Slaughtering the sacred chickens.

What's the Point?

What's the point of these mechanics? Well, maybe two things. One is that hopefully it might lead towards the campaign that emphasizes careful consideration of killing, particularly its religious consequences. Murder suddenly becomes a much more expensive proposition if the gods are paying attention to your violence. If you want to kill without consequence, you're going to need to get permission (or protection) from some gods.

So, what do you do instead of murder and plunder? Well, you can maybe murder and plunder only a little bit and maybe get a manageable amount of Nemesis. You can beat up or capture your enemies (but be careful with the priests!), or force them to run away. You can make sure that when you do kill and plunder, you've got some religious backing to do so.

Second, it really gets religion involved in the adventuring cycle. Want to do dungeon delving? Better consult a priest first. Get some blessings before you head out of town. Visit shrines along the way. Why are there unplundered shrines and treasures all over the place? Because most people know better than to mess with them. Going to fight some gnolls/orcs/trolls/etc.? Well, you'd better get some protection against their gods, or you've got some serious nemesis in store for you.

Fantasy Armies

Recently in my Tidelock campaign I've run into the difficulty of the players making enemies with an Army. Why is this difficult? Because 5th Edition D&D isn't built for large scale conflict. It's built for skirmishes. Small numbers against small numbers. Warfare falls to the Dungeon Master to theorize.

Suggested solutions typically entail either breaking it down piecemeal until it becomes skirmish-scale again, treating it exactly like skirmish combat just with bigger numbers, or just ignoring it entirely and skipping ahead in the narrative.

None of these solutions feel great to me. Like the concept of Initiative, it's about picking the least worst option.

Here is my take:

If the Adventuring Party fights an Army in straight forward combat, then they lose. 

Armies always win.

The largest command subdivision that The Party can engage with in skirmish combat is The Troop. About 35ish enemies.

If the Players, alone with only their party, engage with the main force of an enemy Army then the Players lose. They are captured, killed, or routed. The resources that the main body of an Army can bring will heel even high-level characters in mere seconds. Dozens of arrows, multiple castings of Hold Person, swarms of claws and bites, Counterspells, Teleportations. The Players could cut down a hundred soldiers in six seconds and it would merely be a dent in the body count of the Army. Retaliation against small-scale assaults is disproportionate and decisive.

You tell the Players right from the get-go that if they engage that Army alone then they will lose. You tell them that before them lie foes beyond accurate count, and that they have no hope of victory alone. You do not have enough d20s to properly simulate how many attacks will come at them per turn. (No doubt for some of you this is a bluff - you have more dice than stars in the sky - but I digress.)

If they decide to attack regardless (and admittedly there might be valid reasons for this), then one of the following happens:

YOU FOUGHT AGAINST OVERWHELMING ODDS (d6):
Roll for each member of the party.

1-3: Routed. HP is +1 above minimum consciousness threshold. All Spell Slots are expended. All combat abilities with Charges are used up.

4-5: Captured. PC is now a bargaining chip for the enemy army.

6: Killed. Butchered. Corpse dealt with however this army deals with corpses.

If the Players integrate themselves with one Army to fight another, then they share the fate of their Army. Noteworthy contributions to the fight are noted. If Victory is achieved, PCs are left with 1d20 HP left and all abilities with charges expended.

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Interacting with Armies

How do Players interact with Armies then?

The answer is: not directly. Players do not directly defeat Armies. Armies get defeated either by themselves, Politics, Rival Armies, or Acts of God (such as a Wish). Many of these things are within the capabilities of an Adventuring Party, especially a high level one, and are far more interesting than trying to mow through thousands of enemy combatants in small-scale skirmish combat.

EXAMPLES OF PLAYERS INTERACTING WITH ARMIES

Cause an Army to Defeat Itself...

• Convince one or more factions within the army to abandon the cause.
• Convince the soldiers to mutiny.
• Delay the Army until the end of War Season.
• Mass desertions

Do Politics...

• Negotiate a peace or demobilization.
• Bribe mercenary leaders to abandon the cause.
• Random and/or kidnap someone important.
• Excommunicate Army's leaders or supports from The Church.

Rival Armies...

• Raise an Army to fight the enemy Army.
• Provide intelligence to friendly Army commanders.
• Convince a dragon to hound the Army.

Acts of Gods...

• Flood a Dam, Cause a Typhoon at a crucial moment, Summon a Tornado.
• Poison the Water Holes, Raid the Army's Food Supply, Burn the Fields
• Cause an Avalanche or Rockslide
• Start an enormous Forest Fire.
• Cause the Army to stumble upon an extinction-level Curse.

Skirmish Level Fighting Units

The Soldiers
Enemies: 1d4-1 (2)

HD: 1

A lone soldier or two. Solitary soldiers have their Morale halved, and are not unlikely to be a Deserter.

The Team
Enemies: 2d4 (5)
Contains: A 2HD Veteran

The smallest unit of an Army above the individual: a handful of soldiers with a Veteran as senior.

A Veteran is a tough guy who's experienced combat. A Sergeant/Corporal equivalent. Expect them to act with resolve and decisiveness when shit goes down.

The Squad
Enemies: 3d6 (10)
Contains: A 3HD Enforcer, Two Veterans

Two or three Teams. Big enough to be a serious threat to an Adventuring Party. Led by an Enforcer.

An Enforcer is a real tough dude who knows his shit. A non-commissioned officer equivalent. They're often a spellcaster or paladin and will command others in the Squad to act intelligently.

The Troop
Enemies: 10d6 (35)
Contains: A 4HD Officer, 1d3+1 Enforcers, 2d4 Veterans, and Something Big.

The largest unit that the Player-Characters can fight in Skirmish combat without automatically losing. Approximately the largest number of soldiers than a single person can directly oversee at any one time.

An Officer oversees the Troop, and will have direct access to the Army at large through the Army's communication networks: Sending spells, animal messengers, runners, crawling hands that use coded sign language... If the Platoon is engaged then the Officer will consider calling for support or reinforcements. Depending on whether the message gets through and how isolated the Platoon is, this puts a timer on the encounter (anywhere from Rounds to Minutes to Hours to Days). After the timer counts down the Army's arrival is announced and if the Players stay they will lose (see above).

In addition, a Troop has access to Something Big: a military support resource that can really put the hurt on some meddling Adventurers. What this is varies quite a bit between Armies.

Examples of Something Big: a mortar crew, a golem, a trained basilisk, a Counterspell battery, a summoned demon, a tank, an attack helicopter, a legendary Hero.

Troops can be clustered together or far apart. Rarely will they be out of shouting distance from the Officer, though. A Troop can comfortably occupy a dungeon across multiple rooms of a single Level. Any particular Squad or Team can summon the others, each arriving separately within 3d4 combat Rounds.

Everlasting Summer Foreword / GM Introduction

The Everlasting Summer is a very near future horror campaign for use with whatever game system you desire, though it comes with the Underneath companion system by default. If running it with another system, think about how to integrate or utilize the Insight mechanic, as either a replacement or supplement for Sanity.

FOREWORD

My recommendations to you as a horror Game Master starts with this: be flexible. Terror is not best achieved with a calculative pedantic adherence to orthodoxy, nor is horror best achieved in the metaphorical bog of procedure. Hone your instincts during play and try to anticipate when it is a good time to show, when to hide, and when to hint.

Second, let the Players connect the dots. Even if those connections aren't what you intended or expected. Don't correct them with the omniscient voice of the Game Master, but rather soothe them with the unreliable voice of the narrator. "But if that's true..." you may say. "...then what does that mean?" It may not 'mean' anything. That can be scary, too.

Lastly, be ruthless. If the dice have deemed it so, if the players transgress, if they ignore the warning signs, if they misplace their trust then let the punishment come. It's okay - we all know we're playing a horror game. (Or at least we should all know. Tell your players this is a horror campaign, don't leave them guessing the genre.) Losing can be as fun as winning. In this genre it's often more fun.

INTRODUCTION

The primary conceit of the Everlasting Summer campaign is this idea: that there exist terrible cosmic horror elder gods, but that one does not need to look to distant stars or realms beyond space and time to find them. You and I encounter them every day. We take them for granted, being so close and so central to humanity that to be rid of them would strip us down to primordial soup.

They are the Strife that leads us to violence. The Doom of mankind's ecological extinction. The State of our society. The Light that comforts us. The rabbit Hole we blindly crawl down.

Humanity gives birth to things it does not and cannot fully comprehend. They can only be peripherally glimpsed through the lens of philosophy, experienced in fits of raw emotion, or smelled in drug-fueled dreams. They live in the shadows of paleolithic walls, in ancient libraries, in the cruel edges of bayonets, and in social media. They exist in our minds, piece by piece, each to each.

Insight, the insanity mechanic of this campaign, is an abstract measurement of how much a person innately and unconsciously realizes this. As they experience the supernatural their Insight will climb. As they attempt to rationalize or forget what they've witnessed, Insight will fall. As their Insight climbs they begin to experience things differently. They see things as they 'truly' are. They begin to see the Platonic forms, the magic, the monsters. Things that don't like being seen.

The Player-Characters will not be heroes. They will be ordinary people with ordinary skills, driven to interrogate the truth in a desperate attrition-retreat from comfort. They will encounter things they likely won't understand. The closer to understanding they get, the closer the danger.

How to End Your Campaign

I've been in a few TTRPG campaigns at this point, and there's always some special feeling associated with ending a campaign that you really enjoy. It's a kind of bittersweet like finishing a beloved book series or an RPG series. Now, I'm not talking about campaigns that stop. Plenty of campaigns stop and most that stop probably aren't missed. But campaigns that end require a certain special something. They need closure.

Now, this isn't a talk about how to narratively climax your campaign, or even the denouement but what comes after that. When all is said and done and the roleplaying dissolves away forever, and it is simply the players talking.

Debrief

Have a debrief with everyone. Talk about the campaign - the ending, the bits in the middle you didn't explore, the paths not taken and the roads unfollowed. You probably didn't explore every aspect that you could've, but you can still talk about it (provided you don't plan on running the same content again for the same people). Go crazy with spoilers. Show them what's behind the curtain.

Spend some time discussing the system(s) you used. Did it facilitate the game well, or was it an overall hindrance? What parts worked and didn't?

Talk About Future Campaigns

The best mitigation of feelings of emptiness at the end of the campaign is to talk about stuff you want to do in the future. Have a break (for your sanity), but talk about the things you want to do next. Take advantage of the fact that you slew the scheduling demon and managed to make the schedules of several full-grown adults collide and discuss plans for the future. Hype everyone up for the next thing.

Switch systems, switch GMs, switch genres.

Don't Forget to Friend Everyone

If you like this group of people, make sure to share your contact info with them for future shenanigans, be it Discord, Skype, email, blog, or whatnot. Hell, if you're super comfortable then invite them to your wedding or something. I'm not a social guru, which, if anything, makes reminders to friend people all the more important.

Everything Can Listen, But Nothing Wants to Talk

This is (an increasingly not so short) reflection on how being able to talk to everything has changed my 5e home game: Tidelock. The Tidelock Languages post details alterations I made to the language system traditional to most fantasy games.

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I introduced the change relatively late into the campaign - just about a year ago in a game that started in late 2015. It was retconned in to ignore what no doubt would've been a radical change in philosophy and understanding in-world: something I've always wanted the player-characters to instigate themselves, rather than being inconsequentially dragged along for the ride.

The change was to the nature of language, principally Common, and was thus: Everything can speak and understand Common. That's Everything with a capital "E", in the sense that everything a person could interact with (vegetable, animal, and mineral) can talk. Anything can have a discussion.

It may seem radical at first, but really this isn't a huge long shot for fantasy games. In many campaigns talking animals, intelligent swords, and speaking elementals aren't farfetched, they're just assumed to be a part of the universe.

But, you may ask, how is this not a chaotic mess? If Everything loved to talk one would imagine it hard to do anything: there's a bug on a frog on a log on a river in a valley, and they're all simultaneously screaming. You can't see the forest for the trees, because the intermittent air is annoying you with puns.

The solution: Everything can listen, but nothing wants to talk. Everything can understand you, but operating on human levels of discussion is hard for most things. Animals are distrustful. For most "inanimate objects" talking is painful. Air is notoriously multitudinous and fickle. Cells are talkative but very quiet.

I got inspiration for this from Caves of Qud, which allows you to attempt to talk and trade with most things, plants and pond fish included. They make poor traders and conversationalists. Still, being able to say: "Live and drink, aquafriend." is a pretty significant bit of worldbuilding.

Effect on the Game

Introducing this change has caused a significant shift in how the players interact with the world, especially during adventures and dungeon delving. Above all, it means that every single encounter is a potential negotiation. As such, I've noticed a sharp increase in attempts to negotiate. 

Side note: (One side effect of this is that I now have to think through the personalities of more things than I usually would).

Being the party face has suddenly become a vastly more important job, and the number of combats in any session has consequentially dropped. Personally, I find this most agreeable with 5e D&D, as combats using this system can sometimes run up to half the time of a 3-hour session, due in no small part to the bloat of the system.

Negotiations are like a puzzle, both for the players and for me. We both need to consider:

• Is discussion something this thing wants?
• If not, why not?
• If yes, then what's its personality?
• If yes, then what does it want?

The short list of things I've had to improvise include: rose bushes, a frog with a tongue siren parasite (separately), air, swords, a pile of garbage, birds, fish, and a field of corn.

This might seem a little daunting, but it isn't too hard to come up with some general rules for personalities. As humans, we already tend to anthropomorphize lots of stuff. Hence, there's already a rich cultural fabric to assist a DM. For example: we tend to think of foxes and mischievous and energetic. That one's easy. What about the pile of garbage? Or the field of corn? Or a pile of sand? Or a severed hand?

I've found some general rules can help:

• Inanimate objects are usually pretty okay doing what they're doing. Sand is just fine being sand. They're not insecure about being what they are (most of the time).

• The closer any particular thing is to human society, the more likely it wants to talk to humans. A basket made of woven reeds, for instance, would be more likely to talk to a human than those component reeds in the wild. A dog is more talkative than a sea urchin.

• Plants and minerals are way more chill with death and ego annihilation than animals.

• Personify descriptive adjectives: a block of ice might be pretty chill; a sharp stone might be clever and stubborn; a pile of garbage is a piece of crap, or perhaps its simply misunderstood.

• Identifying units are treated as individuals. Despite a boulder or a human being made of many little pieces and atoms, we're going to treat it as one thing. Exceptions can be made, but they require special tools (languages) to microscope in on stuff. This scales up and down. Cells talk on the cellular level. Atoms on the atomic. Stars talk on the planetary level.

• The more something stands out, the more unique its personality. The inverse is also true. So, like, a corn plant in a field of corn is pretty conformist, but a corn plant solitary in the wilderness might be a bit of a renegade loner. This applies doubly to magic items.

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Implications

As a fun bit of worldbuilding, what are some of the unexplored implications?

For starters, it provides the basis of an invocational magic system. Much in a style of Earthsea, it's all about knowing the True Name of things. Conjuring a Fireball? Know fire's name. Speaking with Animals? Know the names of Animals. Craft an illusion? Know the names of empty space. Magic and power become an exercise in Linguistics.

Perhaps more importantly, though, it provides the groundwork for interesting philosophy regarding personhood. One can imagine that the communication barrier is a large hinderance for who or what is considered within our sphere of social consideration. With that barrier dissolved, how does this change things? Are animals considered people now? Are man-made objects like swords and textiles? Do you need to apologize to the ground on which your constantly tread? Does one consider Everything to be within its sphere of social consideration, and go about considering Everything this way and that? How would this affect society and law?

Everything Can Listen, I've found, is also a bit pessimistic. On some level its inherently alienating: you're effectively surrounded by people and (almost) nobody wants to talk. It's like being alone at a party, but the party is the world and you can't stop drinking to drown out your existential loneliness, but even the booze you keep staring at doesn't want to talk.

(World of) Horror Campaign Structure

Lately I've been interested in the game World of Horror by Ysbryd Games. It's an early acesss single-player horror adventure game based around Lovecraftian themes with a heavy influence from Junji Ito: it's the 80's, you arrive in a small fishing town in Japan, someone is trying to awaken an Old God, and there are an usually high number of people without faces. 

I've been interested in it not so much for the game itself (although it is interesting and fun, if a bit flawed), but for the way that it structures a horror campaign. It seems to take the format one would traditionally see in a board game like Arkham Horror or the like: with adventures essentially being a series of random skill checks that occasionally branch to multiple endings through a series of menus.

And while the game's two main mechanics - selecting options in menus and combat - aren't very translatable to tabletop (well... you could, but they'd be boring), there are some auxiliary features that would be cool to see in a horror adventure.

Like this. This menu in-game is DOPE.
Taken from the game's main website.

So, if I had to steal some ideas from this game to implement in a tabletop horror adventure, this is what I'd take.

#1: CHOOSE THE FORM OF THE DESTRUCTOR

In World of Horror, you (the player) get to choose at the beginning which Old God is awakening. Each one gives different random encounters and a unique penalty to your actions in-game. You know what's coming, but you don't know how. The how is the mystery. You are essentially given The Answer, and now you must find The Question.

It makes the stakes of the mystery clear right at the beginning: solve the mystery or the bad thing happens.

In a tabletop context, it would allow players to start drawing connections immediately between various events. It makes them constantly ask the question: how is this thing related to the bigger thing? Is this strangeness attributable to the Old God or not?

#2: FIVE INTERCONNECTED MINI-MYSTERIES

World of Horror doesn't do this great itself, as in-game each mystery is functionally completely independent (edit: 99% of the time) and you can only work at one at a time. In tabletop, we have no such restrictions: mysteries can be endlessly interconnected, multiple cases can be worked on simultaneously, and you can find clues for other mysteries within unrelated objectives.

But I dig the format: five mini-mysteries. Each one maybe a session or two in length. Each culminating in some kind of clue, providing up to five clues that point towards the ultimate challenge.

I like the idea of forming a conspiracy corkboard. Each of the five mysteries starts as a rumor: either given to the players at character creation or introduced in the very first segment. Rumors must be investigated, which eventually point to people or places, which prompt further investigation.

#3: PROGRESSION OF EVIL

In short: for every good action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There is a time limit on these mysteries. Every so often something gets worse: riots downtown, a portal opens in the woods, a horrible fog sweeps over the town, federal police block off the roads, etc. This can either be directly related to a completed mystery or totally random.

You see this a lot in cooperative board games like Arkham Horror, Dead of Winter, and Shadows Over Camelot.

For the Everlasting Summer, I have a table for this function. Whenever a mystery is resolved, some new doom menaces the town, rolled from a list made by the uncompleted mysteries.

#4: MAKE A COMMON  HORROR TOOLSET

Generate a list of common events and encounters you can use for nearly any exploration/mystery horror game you've got. Make them creepy. Get used to running them. Get the descriptive language down to a tee. Reuse them for multiple games or reruns of the adventure.

The idea is that the awakening of the Old God is like putting a fire under a decaying log: all the cultists and the monsters and the mad scientists and crazy prophets are going to come scurrying out from under the woodwork because they all innately know that the end is nigh. Society is breaking down, and in the nihilistic power vacuum all the misanthropic things are taking over.

#5 MODULARITY

The advantage of having a modular design to your adventure is that you can DIY and crowdsource all over it. Don't like a mini-mystery? Swap it out. Add endless encounters to the ever-growing horror democracy-style table. Automate it.

P.S. Note:

Because the game takes so much influence from Junji Ito, a good deal of the horror present is visually-based. It's about looking at really messed-up art straight out of someone's nightmares. This aspect is quite difficult to translate into tabletop, not least because describing horrific things balances on the knife's edge between silly and ineffective, but because simply describing some of these monsters can be difficult in and of itself.

Reflections on a 5 Year Campaign

This past week marked the 5-year mark for my Tidelock D&D 5e campaign. I didn't realize this until a player shared a memory on Facebook about making her character five years ago. It's still going strong (stronger, perhaps, when the pandemic suddenly made scheduling much easier), so I figured I'd reflect on what worked and what didn't.

Source

Just some fun facts first:

• Campaign started in September 2015. Began with myself and three Players.
• Scheduling App Used: when2meet (at least until the pandemic, when we adopted a regular weekly schedule.)
• Average Sessions per Month: 2-3 (~130 total sessions done to date)
• Total # of Unique Player Participants: 18
• Present # of Players: 4
• Campaign "Archs" Completed: 14-16
• Major House Rules Changes: 3+
• For about a year I was running two groups simultaneously within the same campaign world. Later, when Players dropped out, those two groups were combined.
• Player-Character Stat Generation Method: Point Buy
• Maximum Player-Character Level: 13
• Player-Character Deaths: 3-4 (This is despite the Players having no access to resurrection... Yet.)
• Forbidden Magics Discovered: 1 out of 4.
• After the first year all opponents and monsters used custom statistics. (see below)
• The most powerful campaign-changing magic item to have existed yet within the game was destroyed by a Player-Character willingly and without coercion for 'Reasons of Philosophy'. I did not remotely see this coming and I loved it.
• The name of this blog: Goodberry Monthly, was determined by my early players of this campaign by vote.

And now, some lessons learned from a long term campaign.

To Slay the Scheduling Demon

Ahh... The bane of all campaigns. The great foe: the Scheduling Demon. How to get all your busy adults with their adult lives and responsibilities able to get together on the same day is a problem with virtually no easy solutions. It's just a fact of Tabletop. There's nothing that can avoid this: expect casualties due to the Demon.

Though, shifting from a scheduling poll to a regular weekly game (and also in-person to Discord-only) did help a lot with participation. It lowered the threshold of effort required to play significantly. This was helped, though, by things largely being within the Theatre of Mind, instead of grid and setpiece-based exploration/combat.

Make Tools, Not Plots

Though, sometimes you do need to plot. It's unavoidable, even in a sandbox like Tidelock. Just try not to make a habit of it - it's exhausting and the Players will frequently surprise you.

Regardless, I cannot stress this enough: MAKE CAMPAIGN TOOLS. City and NPC generators, random tables, treasure troves. Embrace the DIY! Some of these tools I've made for the Campaign have continually paid dividends even years after creation. It's saved me hours upon hours of preparation time and largely rescued me from DM Burnout. Make Tools. Make Tools. Make Tools!

Don't Take Drop-Outs Personally

As you can see by the above statistic: 14/18 (77.7%!) people who participated in this campaign dropped out due to various reasons. For some scheduling became impossible. Others moved, or became disinterested. I imagine more than half of them expected the campaign to be more like Critical Role or your more traditional fantasy (instead of Planescape-style gonzo craziness that it ended up being). It took like 3 years for a stable group to form. Attrition is inevitable.

Save Unused Material. Be a Hoarder.

Use it later on, or for other campaigns or one-shots. Don't throw it out. Throw it up on the Cloud, index it, and remember it exists.

Make Use of Published Stuff. Curate!

Seriously. Swallow your pride and use published material.

That said, you must be a Curator. You must curate. You don't need to use every bit of published material you have. Decide what's appropriate or possible for the campaign, then adjust to make it work. Have a few dungeons or adventures you really like on the shelf that you can insert to supplement your homebrew material.

System Changes are Unavoidable. Embrace the DIY.

Unless you want to have the very specific campaign that a system describes. You probably don't. You probably want to have your own campaign. You're going to need to make some rules changes or additions. That's fine. Just be clear to your players about when this is happening and what's changing. I keep a document of all of the houserulings up on the cloud available to all players.

New PCs Need to be Integrated Into Existing Institutions

I've learned this the hard way. Players putting work into their detailed backstory, generating NPCs and institutions, for me to continually ignore it. See, I still go by the old online roleplayer axiom of over-respecting the creations of players: if a player made it, I can't mess with it without their permission. This works great for the PCs themselves, but when a player expects me to roleplay an NPC that they made, and we then both realize that it's impossible for me to match how they imagined that NPC in their head, the material falls flat. It's not inspired.

I'm guessing this is more just a problem with me than anything else, but I expect I'm not the first nor the last person on earth to have run into this. Don't have players contribute campaign material that you aren't 100% excited about.

Sometimes You Do Need to Say 'No'

It's rare, though. I think I've said outright 'No' to a Player's idea maybe once or twice during the whole campaign. It was a bit agonizing, too, because I really liked their idea. I realized, though, that implementing it would undermine one of the core principles of the campaign. That integrity matters, especially in the long run.

Also, see the previous point. If you're roleplaying something, you need to be comfortable with it.

I Wish I Had an Easy Way of Getting Player Feedback

But there's like... this psychological wall that keeps players from really speaking their mind. Whether it's this fear that they're rocking the boat or they don't want to put in the effort of useful feedback. Players often have trouble knowing what they want, let alone expressing it. On top of that, DMs tend to be a little intimidating, especially when asking about feedback. I haven't figured out how to get around this.

Players will always tell you that you were great and they had fun, even if they didn't. I know, I do this as a player too. Even when playing in games I absolutely hated, I would still say 'yeah, that was good, thanks!', more to end the conversation as quickly as possible than anything else. I don't want to crush a DM's spirit, particularly a new one. Nobody wants to be the "well, actually that sucked" person. Peer pressure afflicts all.

I have, though, discovered a reliable, if difficult method: just good ol' fashion reading the room. You need to know your players. You need to know people. When the players are engaging and putting in effort of their own free will, you know you're on to something. If they're offering compliments to your DMing without prompt (especially in the middle of a session, not at the end (everyone compliments you at the end of a session anyways out of politeness)), you're doing something right. If you see or hear them excited, or sharing campaign anecdotes outside of sessions, or uncontrollably laughing, or rolling like their life savings depend on it, you're probably on the right track.

The Drow Have Discovered Agriculture!

I might do more posts like this in the future, following a similar format of taking standard fantasy cultures and squeezing them through the 'how does this change after this particular apocalypse happens' lens.

~~~~~

The Drow have discovered solar agriculture, anyway. Lunar Horticulture has been a practice since time immemorial.

When I started running my Tidelock campaign some uhhh.... 5 years ago?? (Jeeze, that's long), I was initially going to scrap all preconceptions and cultural baggage that's been associated with the drow and make them into weird dream people or something.

But then a player wanted to play a drow, and she seemed really excited about like, playing against the edginess grain and being friends with spiders and stuff so I was like ehhh... okay!

But being the contrarian that I am, and wanting to fit the drow into the larger themes of post-post-apocalyptic societal change, I couldn't simply regurgitate the old tropes (at least not without some spin).

So the Drow in this campaign have agriculture now, and that's a really really big deal.

~~~~~

A Very Very Brief History of the Pre-Apocalyptic Drow

They were what you would typically associate with drow: underground, spiders, slavery, Lolth, depravity, torture, Houses, matriarchy, mushrooms, weird drugs, all that jazz and rock & roll.

This is what they are far before the Campaign begins.

I've been coding them as Classical Romans, co-opting stories from the Iliad, the Odyssey, Romulus and Remus, and the Aeneid as their origin myths. (Romula and Rema suckle the Wolf-spider's poison milk and gain immunity - that sort of deal.) They have a tyrannical monarchy (but not for long).

This but more spider.

Everything is defined in the context of the fact that there isn't enough food underground - even the Matricians couldn't eat lavishly (to do so would mean feeding fewer troops/guards, a recipe for internal assassination). Young life is cheap, old life is very expensive. A leader's ability to procure food (protein especially) is what defines them as successful.

The Traditionalist factions of the present world herald back to this time. They point to the legendary figures as founding foremothers of impeccable strength chiseled from adversity. They believe that the present changes in drow society will make them complacent and weak, and that strict discipline to traditionalist protocols is necessary to maintain empire.

Then Comes the Tidelock

The world literally stops spinning. Nearly everything on the surface gets wiped out. The last remaining holdouts are shelter-dwellers, wizards, and peoples at the old poles. The Underdark remains largely untouched, insulated from the Apocalypse-winds and the Unsetting Sun (or lack thereof).

It takes a while before the drow notice this. Slaves and trade from the surface stops. This is compensated by more underground operations against other Underdark factions. Slowly, unbeknownst to anybody, underground warfare becomes unsustainable without the resource sink of the surface. This never becomes known except to maybe a handful of ignored and ostracized academics.

But slowly, rumors start to spread in the cities of a place on the surface kept in perpetual twilight - where the Sun shines enough to sting but not blind. It is a cold place. Humans dwell among the crags.

Expeditions are sent by industrious Houses desperate to rise above their station in an infamously ossified political system. They are discouraged by the Monarchy, who are violently resistant to change and aware of how new territory will change the power dynamic. The new Republican factions establish colonies, founding the future capitol Twilight City. Their access to new resources and power inevitably lead to internal conflict and Civil War.

The Republican factions win a Pyrrhic victory at a terrible cost. They unleash something upon the old city (it has varied over time exactly what this thing was/is) - a Death Tyrant, the Mondmilch, a Memetic Plague, a Cordiceps Betrayal Strain, something civilization-ending. It kills everyone, including the monarchy. The city cannot sustain life anymore and is abandoned.

Those that stood with the monarchy are exterminated. All remaining refugees resettle in Twilight City.

Then Comes Agriculture

With total victory achieved, a new form of government is formed. The New Moon Republic comes into being. Every House gets to field one Senator. A Chancellor is elected from among the Senators. (This eventually changes as population begins to boom among Republican Houses, prompting governmental reforms allowing "New Houses" to form and gain Senate seats.) The sky is the limit - literally, figuratively. On the surface, there is nothing to keep a House from expanding as much as they want.

Cold weather crops are "discovered" by Drow researchers (having been grown by local humans).

This changes everything.

Pictured: Everything changing.

The drow can just grow as much food as they want (with help extorted from the local humans, anyway...). There's no limit of space or fertilizer or farming labor (necromancy is found to be particularly potent in the shade of the Eternally-Eclipsed Moon). Suddenly the wealthy can eat whenever they want. Suddenly even the poor Houses can feed all their members. You don't have to sacrifice every other baby to Lolth because if you don't they'll just starve to death anyways.

They don't need Lolth anymore. There are other gods, ones more relevant to the troubles of the surface world - Hydur (Wind/Vengeance), Tiamat (Ocean/Disaster), Iune (War/Migration), Manmanuk (Chaos/Dreams), Dolena (Unchange/Undeath). Lolth threw her hat in with the monarchy anyways, so her worship becomes illegal. The clerics are told by the governmental powers that be to worship the new gods or go the way of the monarchy - nearly all comply. Those that don't practice in secret. Those that do are pragmatic about it - after all, Lolth detested weakness, and she was ultimately the loser after all was said and exterminated. It's perfectly consistent with Lolthian ideals to abandon her worship for the winners. Even the Traditionalist factions take up the new gods. A Sword of Damocles is established for the campaign.

The population explodes. Now it's not about maintaining that perfect population balance, but about making as many children as you possibly can. The Traditionalists are slow to pick this up, so the Republican factions will always been 50-100 years ahead of their rivals in terms of numbers of soldiers, workers, and Senate representation.

Things That Are New:

Feasts and Obesity. Vomitoriums are added to estates. Beauty standards change from petite chiseled lean muscle to double chins and THICC. Male concubines now look like Pillar Men or Dad Bod. The first drow ever suffers from diabetes and then subsequently dies from diabetes because drow medical practitioners have no idea what that is.

Pictured: Pillar Men, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

I want you all to appreciate what a nsfw land mine
it was to google "overweight drow".
Artist: EPgalo

Land Ownership and Marriage. Ownership in drow culture has traditionally followed this axiom: if you built it then it's yours. This applied equally to buildings, food, and children alike (men, of course, had no input in building children). Land ownership in the way we understand (as in a person owns the land itself, apart from anything built on it) wasn't a thing. But now the land itself is super important - you need it to plant more kale, cabbage, and wheat. You need people to not disturb it because otherwise the food doesn't get made. Hence, land ownership gets introduced to drow society.

And guess who gets the land? Those that could claim it, namely the Houses with resources at their disposal. The lands of the Feyfjord to the north are claimed by the Republican factions. The south lands (the Suthlands) are claimed by the Traditionalists (who hate this idea but they can't not go along with it). The Feyfjord gets turned into zombie farms. The Suthlands become targets for ever-emboldening slave raids.

Marriage comes hand-in-hand with land ownership. With land becoming important so does lineage - you want this land to go to your children, not someone else's. Marriage, at this point, has not become ritualized. It is merely a contract, like any other (I help you make this baby and that baby gets this land). The Republican factions embrace marriage as innovative, the Traditionalists don't.

Gymnasiums and Sports. Oh boy oh boy, now there's really energy to spare. The first public gyms are created by the Traditionalists factions (as traditionally, there was maybe one gym in the city, and everyone wanted more). Calories can finally be spent en-masse on getting SWOLE. Gender segregated is present (gyms for men are smaller and fewer, only recently constructed). Sports other than watching sick slaves get eaten by monsters can now reasonably occur. Favorite among them: tunnel wrestling, acrobatics, peryton racing, mountain climbing, and trick archery. Bloodsports to the death are far less common because now you can actually use those people. The Traditionalists maintain gladiatorial games, but it tends to be far more showy and dramatic nowadays than in the past.

Gyms take up space. Underground they require more justification.

No Rest For the Dead and Cannibalism Goes Out of Fashion. Necromancy progresses to the point where the spirit may be detained indefinitely within this world. Servant castes of a House are expected to serve, die, and serve again... forever. Bodies are a resource for making food, as now there's no resource ceiling cap on labor. So sadly, for those who enjoyed the symbolic, aesthetic, or religious aspects of cannibalism, it is no longer of prudent economic use. The Traditionalists will still sometimes do this, with children consuming the parents - especially with someone important such as a matriarch (to doubly spare them the undead afterlife and 'have them join their lineage in body'), but even they have recognized the importance of undead labor.

Fashion and Furs. It's cold on the surface. Much colder than in the cities built neat heat vents, cradled by the passive radiation of the earth's core. There's also much more space - to fight, to walk, to simply be. Drow used to wearing nothing but light silks must adopt that which they always associated with the barbarians and crude troglodytes of the surface: pants. Oh, those barbarous pants! Drow stop complaining about pants after the first couple of times a cold wind sweeps up their undersides - now silks are indoor/traditional clothes. They're for Senate meetings and heated baths. Furs take over as the garb to wear - some senators even wear them in the senate now! Fur trapping becomes a very lucrative industry, with pelts hunted all across the world to make warm vestments in Twilight City. Increasing waist sizes have even compounded this demand further.

New Fashion = Furs + Silks

Heavy armor becomes desirable as the need to design for spelunking becomes less of a priority. The drow didn't spend millennia on making comfortable and utilitarian armor to suddenly abandon it now, though. As such, drow armor is easily the most comfortable to wear, anywhere. It's good to hiding things and carrying tools. You can sleep in it without penalty.

Heavy Armor is now a viable means of protection
when you're not spelunking.

Cuisine and Chefs. The drow don't need to consume every bit of slop that becomes available - they can now be choosy. Chef becomes a viable profession, and they explode in popularity. The first Drow Cookbook is published, largely to train other chefs. It contains classic royal recipes such as mushroom steaks and eyeball a la mode (dwarf eyes are traditional), as well as new dishes such as cabbage soup and *gasp* bread! Bread is a big deal - it's cheap, it's compact, it lasts - more for the lower classes than anyone else. The Traditionalists think eating grain makes one weak, though, and that those empty calories are suitable only for slaves.

Just wait until they discover dairy... Hoo boy that'll be exciting!

Goodberry Monthly Turns 2!

Happy anniversary, Goodberry Monthly! As of Monday, January 20th, you are officially two years old! I offer a reflection on those two years.

"Goodberry Monthly" was a weird choice name. This blog neither publishes on a monthly basis nor does it have much to do with Goodberries. Originally, this was the name of the campaign newsletter for my home campaign, in which I'd do in-character session summaries and articles on important aspects of the campaign world, written by a chronomancer from the future. When I was originally envisioning the blog, I made a list of potential names, then let my friends vote on it.

Some notable alternatives:

• Sick Sun Red Moon
• The Ribomancer
• Staged Anarchy
• City of True Time
• Dragon Tea Party 
• Parachromatic Photophant
• Gelatinous Tesseract

Were I remaking my blog again today, I'd definitely go with that last one. Or maybe Dragon Tea Party. Or City of True Time.

Anyway, thank you everyone for reading my blog! Have a quick list of goblin birthday parties:

1d12 Goblin Birthday Parties

1. They're playing pin the tail on the donkey. Actual tail. Actual donkey. Fatalities expected.
2. Layered mud pie with mud frosting and mud sauce. Mud on the side. Dynamite candle. Make your wish!
3. There were approximately 800 times more of you born this day than the biggest smartest goblin could count, so everyone is to give a tooth to the goblin on your left as a birthday gift.
4. Birthday stabs all around, hooray!
5. They're gonna bring out the old pigskin for a toss. It's not a ball, mind you, just a big floppy filthy skin.
6. Put away the stone of shame! Bring out the stone of celebration!
7. There shall be one designated minute of screams.
8. Today, we eat quality garbage!
9. Raid a farm. Steal a pig. Crown it Prince of Goblins. Profit.
10. Time to dig your birthday hole, here's a shovel.
11. There shall be a period of fasting, followed by a period of weeping, followed by a period of violence, followed by a period of dancing, followed by a period of weeping again, followed by a nap.
12. Let's inform the wizard of our celebration! He definitely won't set us on fire this time!

The Monkey's Paw

There's a fun little challenge going around Reddit linked to The Adventure Zone called The Ring of the Grammarian. Basically, it's a ring that allows you to craft homebrew spells on-the-spot by mutating a single letter in the spell's title. I had some fun with this about two years ago for the Infinity Hotel setting (almost a year to the date since The Adventure Zone had it in their podcast).

For Example

I've mulled on this before, but this challenge/object/mechanic presents an interesting problem for both the player and the GM to solve: generate a new spell from scratch - probably on the spot, probably without preparation - and not have it be an entirely ineffective downer by default. You're using up a spell slot for the Ring to work, after all. It shouldn't be entirely useless. You're casting a spell - potentially a very precious spell.

And there isn't really any guidance for how to determine exactly how effective this new spell will be. You pretty much just need to wing it. You can kinda eyeball it with the Spell Level and such, perhaps re-skin the mechanic with a new type of damage or modify the base spell's parameters. Somewhere along the way, though, you'll need to determine how this affects the chances. You'll need to move the odds somewhere along the this-automatically-fails to this-automatically-succeeds continuum (with all sorts of advantages, disadvantages, bonuses, and penalties to dice rolls betwixt). To assist in this measure, I'll illustrate what I call The Monkey's Paw Principle. (Named, of course, for the story we are all somewhat familiar with.)

The Monkey's Paw Principle is this:

Independent of other variables and controlled for resource expenditure, the more absurdly specific a resource is, the less risk it should entail.

It kinda seems like a no-brainer though, right? Specific solution > Non-specific solution. But you would not believe how many times I've played in games where this has been ignored, primarily as an lazy excuse to reign in the unpredictability of homebrew content.

((Side Note: It's applicable to more than spells. It should, for instance, apply to any sort of tool (a grappling hook, for instance), but I'll focus on spells for the moment because their importance as a limited resource is obvious.))

~~~~~

I'd like to illustrate this with a couple of D&D spell staples: Jump, Burning Hands, Magic Missile, and Wish. Then a couple of Grammarian / paronym examples.

Jump is a fairly absurdly specific spell. You cast it, you can jump higher. That's all it really does. Totally useless in scenarios that don't involve jumping. It is the juicer of spells: it can juice plenty of things, but unless you're throwing it at something it's just gonna make juice.

Going by the Monkey's Paw Principle, if a player actually spends the precious resources on the Jump spell - a resource which could be spent on the far more versatile Burning Hands - and their problem involves jumping, then they damn sure should have a heck of an advantage on that task. You probably shouldn't even roll, lest other factors are significantly getting in the way (hazards, traps, goalkeeping baddies, etc.).

Burning Hands, by contrast, is a very versatile spell. Fire shoots out of your hands. There is a wide arrangement of scenarios that fire can solve: burning dudes, starting brush fires, creating steam smokescreens, heating giant tea kettles, impressing your fire elemental boyfriend, the list goes on and on.

Source

But because of its wide use of applications and its obvious and plentiful uses, using Burning Hands should generally entail more risk during its course of burning things than Jump entails in its jumping. Baddies make Saves, fires sometimes don't catch, and your fire elemental boyfriend isn't always easily impressed. Jump, however, should almost always solve your jumping problems.

To an extreme, Magic Missile is a hyper-specific spell with near-total inviolability. The only way it's avoided is with specific counters. It is the banana holder of spells: it can hold bananas, and that's it, but it does it perfectly virtually all the time. You deal damage to a living creature. It's guaranteed. Roll your low-uncertainty damage. So hyper specific that there's no uncertainty with how it works at all.

(Wish, paradoxically, is an incredibly unspecific, versatile spell that includes the Monkey's Paw Principle embedded within it automatically. The more absurdly specific your Wish, the less risky it should be.)

~~~~~

Let's try and apply these to new spells generated by the Grammarian Ring or a Paromancer:

Magic Mouth -> Magic Moth
Disguise Self -> Disguise Shelf

Your player decides to cast the spell Magic Moth. Okay... What the hell does a Magic Moth do? Well... It's a moth and it's magic. It could do virtually anything, provided it has some quintessential mothiness or moth flavor thrown in.

Close enough.

Maybe it's like a Butterfree and it spreads sleep spores around willy-nilly. Not unreasonable - just like the Sleep spell, but maybe increase the HD to match its 2nd Level Spell Slot use. Maybe the Magic Moth flocks to tricksters, liars, or traitors, because that's what magic moths do in your setting. Maybe it feeds on eyeball juices and radiates Color Spray all the time.

You've got tons and tons of potential options for what a Magic Moth does, so how do you determine its effectiveness? Well, I propose that this would depend on how absurdly useful the Moth and Magic parts of this spell are within the present situation. Trying to distract a Giant Magic Bat with giant magic food? Magic Moth is 100% effective. No rolls needed. Trying to distract some street thugs? Well, unless they're specifically afraid of moths or worship the Moth God, maybe you roll for its effectiveness, standard check. Trying to force open a door? Well... What parts of Magic and Moth are relevant or specific to door-opening? Magic? Sure. Moth? Not much. Completely ineffective.

Your player decides to cast Disguise Shelf. Why on earth did they decide to do that? Was it to magically disguise a shelf?

No? Well what good could that possibly be? The spell's title is pretty self-evident that it's about disguising shelves.

Yes? Well then that Disguise Shelf spell better be the most damned effective spell at disguising shelves you've ever seen. Whatever counteracts that Disguise Shelf should be at least as absurd as the likelihood of Disguise Shelf being used effectively. Otherwise what was the point of that creativity?

Nobody will ever discover where you keep your porn...

Hopefully, this gives some insight as to how effective absurd homebrew content should be. It won't help you come up with mechanics, but it should give you an idea for how strong these new mechanics should be.

MIR and Technological Revolution

Magical Industrial Revolution's PDF just hit Kickstarter backers, and as a fan of wizards, philosophy, society, and their combinatorial shenanigans, I couldn't help but partake. Glancing over the file, I find plenty of useful tidbits (which I can easily season with gonzo to my personal tastes), but none more so than the Innovations section about 20 pages in.

Here, I think Skerples hits the nail on the head for one of the most exciting core narratives for an RPG campaign can be: Revolution. Change.

Change, not so much in the way History has traditionally viewed it: with the rise and fall of Big People, with grand wars and grand empires, with technology emerging from the minds of great men like Athena from Zeus's skull and then suddenly just, like... being everywhere... But with how it alters and affects every day people, how they view and interact with the world. How it gradually and subtly worms its ways into our collective perceptions of Life.

How, for instance, the railroad revolutionized our notions of space and time, or how A.I. revolutionizes are notions of personhood.

True to its namesake, Magical Industrial Revolution attempts to capture how technology drastically alters society, bringing it to the foreground of the stage (rather than say, the backdrop, or completely ignoring it). It offers incremental escalations and adventures related to various world-changing magics, such as Polymorph, Teleportation, Flight, Scrying, and Extra-dimensional Space.

As presented in the book, each of these technologies goes through a complete evolutionary cycle. It begins obscure and unrecognized for its true potential, then the Powers That Be dig in their claws and it multiplies by the capacities of modernity and capitalism, and then eventually it forms the collapse of society. Scrying, for instance, starts as some guy being very naughty and unethical, then the state police get ahold of it to monitor crime, and then they make the Panopticon, and then everything is predictably horrible.

And most importantly, the book suggests that the players insert themselves into this process. It provides NPCs and quests and new things to play with at every stage in each technology's evolution. And I love it. A society changing on the ground is the perfect environment for the traditional shenanigans of an RPG campaign. It has been said before: a stagnant setting cannot be exploited. Nobody goes questing where everything is fine and dandy forever.

M.I.R. doesn't take its magic nor its society for granted, and neither should your campaign!

Convention Signup Checklist

Based on my last few experiences at gaming conventions, I've made a checklist for myself: a variety of games I should try at a convention. At Gen Con, I made the mistake of only signing up for dungeon crawls, and despite them being pretty great, I definitely could have used some variety. So, with U-Con quickly approaching:

Before The Convention Starts, Sign Up For...

1. A Character Funnel

I have never played a character funnel that I didn't enjoy. I consider these the high point of one-shot play: silly, crazy, wonderful, unique, and condense. These will virtually always be DCC games.

2. A Dungeon Crawl

I made the mistake at Gen Con of playing several dungeon crawls back-to-back, but they were still all enjoyable, and I think one or maybe two of these in a weekend is the sweet spot.

3. A Spooky Game

Most of the time these will be Call of Cthulhu. It's a good idea to have one of these, for variety.

4. Game Run by Honored Guest, Creator, or Person You'd Like to Meet

These are pretty safe bets for some quality content, not least of which because they're games that have been run multiple times for many different audiences.

5. Game in a System You'd Like to Try But Haven't Played

Pretty self-explanatory. No better place to try out a new system than a convention!

6. Someone's Weird Homebrew

These are hard to find, due to usually being devoid of find-able tags, but they tend to be gems in the rough. If someone managed to convince an event coordinator at a convention to showcase their weird homebrew, then they've probably put a lot of effort into it.

~~~~~

And that's it! Six games is plenty for a weekend.

The Metaphysical Mathematical Cosmos

I'm sure y'all are familiar with this, The Great Wheel:

Source

In it, the cosmos is divided and sorted into various polarized Planes, each describing some integral Idea (or more often, a Classical depiction of the afterlife shoehorned into an alignment) represented in physical form. 

You go to the Plane of Fire and it's like 'Ah! There's fire everywhere!' And things behave like fire would. You go to the Nine Hells, and shit is just Evil all over. Go to the Positive Energy Plane, and everything is LIFE, vaguely.

Point is, they're physical places. You can go to Heaven and come back. You can book a vacation in Avernus with your local interplanar travel agency. They have places one can return to: the City of Brass, the dark mirror world of the Shadow Realm, the Fifth Layer of Hell, etc.

All of this I've described I'd like to put into contrast with what I'm about to describe: the...

Metaphysical Mathematical Cosmos!

It's, like... math and shit...

In the Metaphysical Cosmos, the Planes are not places one can go. They are places that you always are: either upon one side of the Plane, the other, or straddling somewhere upon the median. The Planes are, essentially, mathematical Planes.

Like, this kind of Plane.
Source

Each Plane represents some ethereal Form. We're talking, like, the Theory of Forms here, Plato and shit. Each Plane is a "timeless, absolute, unchangeable idea" (quote source). Most importantly, each Plane is a dimorphic Idea - it must contain a state which is below the Plane, and one which is above. This differs from Plato, in which ideas are monomorphic.

Though they stretch infinitely, they do not occupy space. You can't go to these Planes and fly around and have Plane adventures on them, at least in the traditional sense (more on that later). Everything in existence, from gods to the last grain of sand, exists relative to all Planes simultaneously. There is a relationship between each Plane and every thing, and every thing exists in either four states for every Plane:

1. It exists on one side of the Plane

2. It exists on the other side of the Plane

3. It straddles the Plane

4. It is coplanar

In this universe, the overwhelming majority of things exist on either one or the other side of all Planes. Only the Divine or the Strange can straddle or be coplanar.

Depending on the Plane, this will mean different things for that particular object. For instance, let us compare two persons: a pauper and a King, as objects upon the Plane of Power, which describes whether or not something has true agency (in this hypothetical example). A pauper does not have much power, but a King does. They both, however, have some kind of power, and so the pauper lies quite close to the Plane, but the King lies far above it. Something without power, say, a rock, might lie below the Plane. If the pauper were to somehow lose all agency, say if he were Charmed, he could very well traverse the Plane, to join the rock. An unpleasant experience.

Ultimately, this is simply a way of explaining how magic and divinity works in a particular universe. It's all Vector Math.

Pictured: Augury, perhaps?
Source

Example Planes:

Plane of...	On One Side,  That Which...	On The Other,  That Which...	Example Plane-Traversing Spell
1. Power	Wields Power	Has none.	Charm
2. Fear	Feels Fear.	Is not afraid.	Fear
3. Doom	Holds Doom.	Has no Doom.	Bane, Geas
4. Destiny	Holds Destiny.	Has no Destiny.	Bless, Atonement
5. Passion	Has Passion	Is indifferent	Calm Emotions
6. Pain	Is in pain	Is not experiencing pain	Symbol of Pain
7. Sapience	Contains Sapience	Is Not Sapient	Awaken
8. Love	Is in Love	Holds No Love	Love Potion
9. Death	Is Alive	Is Dead	Power Word: Kill, Resurrection
10. Good and Evil	Is Good	Is Evil	Protection from Evil*

* This spell would rather block one from traversing.

These Planes being mathematical, there exist many combinations and relations: Planes may be parallel and never intersect with one another. Some Planes intersect with many, and their relationships may be described. Take a series of Planes: Power, Wealth, Faith.

Source

A pious King, a Hermit Aesketic, and a Squirrel with a huge winter store would likely find themselves in 3 of the 8 different spaces within this conjunction of these three Planes. The pious King would have Power, Wealth, and Faith. The Hermit would have Faith, and maybe Wealth, but not Power. The Squirrel would have Wealth, but not Power and Faith.

~~~~~

So... Why bother with this? Why would it matter? You can't go there, right? So isn't this all a bunch of Ivory Tower nonsense? How it is game-able?

Astral Projection, my friend!

The kind of Astral Projecting, anyway, based on Forms. Cavegirl's Version.

The kind that exists to translate the metaphysical states to a physical understanding, where one can pluck at the ideal like how one plucks a violin.

Now, To Make Things More Complicated...

Let's add a layer of complexity to it all, by assuming that all object-vectors within existence are subject to Newtonian Physics. Everything bounces and collides with everything near it, all while simultaneously drawn towards each respective Plane by this gravity-like force, for any particular thing resulting in this kind of Brownian Motion - the chaos of existence.

But why, you ask?

Well, so the astral-surfing Monk can roundhouse kick the Lich into another metaphysical realm. KUH-POW!

...

Admittedly, this is a dumb idea. But its so up-its-own-ass I love it.

Here's how it works: Unless one is reasonably orthogonal to the respective Plane the monk wants to roundhouse kick the Lich across, the Lich is going to go sailing in pretty much any way imaginable.

So, for instance, the Monk wants to Astral Kick the Lich across the Plane of Power, rendering him powerless. The Lich, normally, has far more power than the Monk, and exists further above the Plane than the Monk does. If the monk wants to smash orthogonal to the Plane of Power, like a Newtonian pinball into the Lich, it'll only send the Lich higher above the Plane, making them even more powerful.

Forgive my terrible illustrations, please.

This is the initial attempted Astral Kick.

And this is what we call: A Bad Thing.

In order for the Monk to Astral Kick the Lich below any Plane, the Monk must be above the Lich in this Plane, not below. Which means, to kick the Lich below the Plane of Power, the Monk must have more power than the Lich. Not an easy feat, by any means. Doable, though.

However, there may be some Planes in which it's easier to get on top of the Lich, say, Fear, Empathy, Love.

There may be allies that the Monk would like to Astral Kick, like some kind of metaphysical yeet, in the effort of support. Make an ally more empathetic, more wise. To do this, the monk would need to be inferior to their peer in regard to the Plane in which they'd want their ally boosted.

So, to summarize: three functions for Astral Kick. 

With regards to a particular object and to a particular Plane:

[] = Plane    M = Monk   O = Object   <-> = Velocity

1) If the Monk is closer to the Plane than the object, the Monk may kick the object further from the Plane.

[] M -> O              to             []     M      O ->

2) If the Monk is further from the Plane, the Monk can kick the object closer to the Plane, or even across the Plane.

[]   O    <-   M                                      to               <- O  []   M   OR    []  <-  O    M

3) If the Monk is on opposite sides of the Plane as the object, then the Monk can cross the Plane, while causing the object to travel further from the plane.

O   []   <-  M                to                          <- O  M  []

Complications/Failures of Astral Kick:

1. Aforementioned: make Object more of something than you wanted it to be.

2. Random Vector: send Object across different Plane than intended.

3. Accident: Hurtle oneself across unwanted Plane.

4. Collateral Damage: Exert astral force on other than intended Object, causing a bowling-pin effect of scattering multiple objects across multiple potential Planes. (In that case, related objects across space and time could very well cross unintended Planes.)

~~~~~

Okay... Enough of this insanity. I'm done. Whew.

Fun Post-Scripts

P.S. (Of note: it's probably safest to ensure that these Planes are Non-Euclidian, or else they must all intersect or be parallel with each other, and that can be difficult to manage.)

P.P.S. (Also of note: This representation of reality allows a theory of magic and everything based on Vector Math. All things exist potentially not as objects, but as vectors. Magic is a way of transforming these vectors hard.)