• Bathtub Review: Barkeep on the Borderlands

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    Barkeep on the Borderlands is a fully illustrated 59 page module by W.F. Smith known as Prismatic Wasteland, with a broad range of guest writers. I backed Barkeep on Kickstarter and am reading a digital version, and I’m both in one of the communities thanked in the book, but also friends with a few of the writers. It’s system neutral, but unashamedly styles itself as a “pubcrawl”, a style of play with its own rules distinct from hexcrawls, dungeon crawls and point crawls. It is set in the distant, cosmopolitan future of classic module B2: Keep on the Borderlands. The antidote to the monarch’s poison has been lost amongst the Raves of Chaos festival, and a great reward awaits those who find it. Meanwhile six factions vie for power in the Keep as the prime ministerial election is decided.

    W.F. Smith’s writing style is lighthearted and holds together a module that could easily veer into ridiculousness in the derogative, but doesn’t. Most of the writing is in bite-sized tabulated format, is evocative enough to springboard off the other writing in the module, and also relies on the GM to fill in gaps which is exactly the way I like it. The humour sneaks up on you in each entry, as well, but it should be clear that I expect Barkeep played as intended (as a pubcrawl) to result in a ridiculous and gonzo campaign, as most elfgames trend towards comedy even in the absence of a comedy setting. I appreciate especially how the tables are used to tell stories for the GM, often being an art form: “(1-2) a weary tailor seeks a cleric to cure a disease, (3-4) a werewolf ambush, (5-6) a tailor mending their torn attire.” This kind of writing is elegant and occurs throughout the product. It feels like W.F. Smith edited all the other authors for consistency, because it’s a shockingly consistent module for one with so many writers.

    Structurally, we have 20 pages of set up and rules, and the remainder is pubs. The first section feels a little too much as you read it looking forward to the money of the module, but honestly if I look at the individual sections I can’t fault them too much individually. The adventure is a complex one: It involves time passing and things changing, election politics, and theft investigations, and so these sections are necessary to keep the ball rolling as anything other than a book of pubs. Unfortunately, if you want to run this as a GM, the 20 pages of set up is necessary work, in the same way that the first section of Witchburner was a bit much for me, but worth it for the outcome.

    An example layout, of the spread available on Drive Thru RPG preview.

    The layout is flashy and straightforward, with clear headings and use of colour for clear delineations. I wouldn’t recommend reading this on your phone, like I tried to do. It’s designed to thoroughly take advantage of the print format. Different pubs have unique colour signatures and title fonts, and fit to a spread. I’m usually an objector to having such highly variable headings, but they work here due to a very consistent format with exemplifying art, summarising paragraph and top left placement. Art is almost always palette-matched to the colour scheme of the associated pub, and uniformly matches the aesthetics of the piece. Every pub has its own stylised mini-map as well. I should probably back track a little and say that while the majority of the text is exceptionally laid out, the introductory sections don’t benefit from the consistency of the pub structure and are a little messier and more ad hoc.

    Writing more about Barkeep is challenging, because it’s a complex and intentionally varied experience, so I might pick out a few favourite moments of mine in it, by way of illustration. I love the way the politics are not subtle, but not communicated to the players through exposition: “Lizardfolk nuns hand out red pins. “Remember the Iron Fens Uprising. Mourn, yet organize!” Dwarf revelers try to get them arrested by Chaos paladins.” I enjoy how the signature drinks of each pub are simply excuses for the writers to be a little flashy and make puns: “Newest Corpse Revival. Won’t actually animate you with grotesque unlife but feels like it could. Gin, bits of orange.” I love how each situation (of which there are at least eleven for each pub) feels like a potential set up for an entire night of gamming: “A thrown spear narrowly misses the Barkeep. The bar is closed until somebody faces their wrath”, as do the sidetracks that are intended to be tangents: “A couple’s date is interrupted when one transforms into a wolf. Their date cries for help but won’t allow the wolf to be hurt.” Most of all I enjoy the subtlety of the connections: “The owner wanted to sell this rooftop karaoke bar and retire to a tropical island but discovered an endangered bird roosting in the rafters. Now any sale is prohibited by royal decree.” and then, in a table: “The phoenix in the rafters mistakes an ashtray for its murdered hatchling. The bartender commands everyone to sing a lullaby to soothe the phoenix’s fiery anger.” These are common, and excellent examples of how to world build without lore and endless exposition. To be clear about these examples, normally I take thorough notes as I read the module to find good exemplars of the writing. For Barkeep, I just flicked to a random page and had to choose from multiple excellent set ups on that page, all of which were worth quoting. This book is dense with gameable concepts and explosive situations in a setting that gives strong reasons for the Jolly Crew to participate in both debauchery and investigation, as well as strong reasons for the situations to be explosive.

    Barkeep is a unique experiment in a specific type of module, and I think it succeeds for the most part. It’s intended as a social adventure, which is exactly my jam (if I wanted a combat-packed session, I’d play something with tactical combat rules), but it doesn’t try to be an exploration-based game in the slightest. I imagine playing this roughly in real time, with the Jolly Crew (as the party of PCs is called) cramming as much debauchery and investigation into each night of partying as they can. The effort in running and setting up I think would reward the right group of players, but it’s an irreverent pitch that wouldn’t be for everyone. If I recall correctly, my recommendation for Witchburner is that it’s close to perfect a social intrigue game, but the dark and hopeless premise may not be fit for your group. If that darkness and hopelessness was what prevented you running Witchburner, Barkeep on the Borderlands is your light-hearted and irreverent solution. I personally prefer the darkness and twistiness of Witchburner, but Barkeep is probably a better social module, and it’s definitely going to be funnier.

    17th July, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • The Supply Chip

    I was saying to Marcia and Emmy that I’m feeling a little tired regarding the complexity of Knave 2e’s abundance of hazard dice, and mentioned that I am preferring a token system right now. I use poker chips.

    Buy Supply Chips in town, at the cost of 1 gp per Supply Chip. They take as much space as a ration or 6 torches, and replace those things and assorted paraphernalia. Parties may pool Supply Chips but carry them individually.

    To travel forward a hex or a dungeon area, expend a supply. To find a secret location or door where you are, expend an additional supply.

    Supply exists in the world, so you find it and leave caches of it, but its use is abstracted in a way that incorporates time. Whenever you spend a supply, there is a 1-in-6 chance of a random encounter.

    Importantly, Supply is not directly related to finding loot. Importantly, you can spend additional supply to find a secret win can lead to or contain treasure, but not to uncover the treasure directly. The players are not inventing treasure, they are discovering hidden places.

    Gravek and her party are travelling through the Gruelsome Forrest. It is dense, and it takes two supply to advance through a hex unless they have a guide or are familiar with it. They climb a tree, and see signs of a valley or sinkhole to the west. Do they expend additional supply to investigate? They do, and discover a hidden location: The Funguzoid Sinkhole of Fr-ang Fr-zul.

    Soulumo and their party are on the second depth of the Fane of the Brain-Snake. They are in an otherwise unremarkable blood-shrine, but are suspicious of the carvings in the walls. Do they expand an additional supply to investigate? They do, and they discover that inside a gargoyles mouth is a map leading to “The Golden Scroll of Saint Barabbas the Lion-Maned”.

    In either of these cases, the party should find what a secret when they search. I keep a list of secrets and maps ready for most regions I play in, unconnected to places or people. I keep unique loot tables for regions as well. There might already be a secret location or a secret door, or a secret treasure in the location, in which case they find that. But the most important thing is that they find interesting actionable information first, and stuff second. If you’re having trouble with what they find in a room or location without anything hidden, I might suggest adding a world anchor to something from this table:

    1. Note (courier, a memo, to self)
    2. Book (secret history, heretical scripture, personal journal)
    3. Map (hastily scrawled, architectural, surrealist)
    4. Key with a unique shape (unlabelled, labelled mysteriously, tracked)
    5. Small treasure of mysterious origins, requiring a specific antiquist to identify, who wants more and larger
    6. A portal, leading to…? (a viewpoint only of, one-way to danger and reward, two-way and impossible to close)

    Anyway, that’s how I’m gamifying travel at the moment, being annoyed with rations and torches and timekeeping and terrain and all that malarchy. It’s clearly inspired by Hunt Tokens, but they’re not really enough for me.

    There is a lot of room for improvement, I’m sure. Riff on this, I know Emmy and Marcia will have revolutionised my approach by the time this goes up.

    12th July, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Bathtub Review: Oz

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    Oz is a 200 page city-and-more supplement for fifth edition written and illustrated (and with cartography) by Andrew Kolb. It’s a spiritual successor to the similarly produced Neverland, this time featuring the world of L Frank Baum’s Oz series rather than that of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan. I have the print book, so screen shots are taken from previews on Amazon, Drive Thru or Kolb’s personal website.

    On first impressions this is an intimidating text. Three column layout, tiny point size this is a very dense text from the get go. This is a monster of a book, an A4 paged, metallic embossed hardcover with a cloth book mark, full colour interiors, and affordable with the margins only available to publishers like Simon & Schuster. It’s not a premium product: There are plenty of these on the shelves, and it feels like a gaming product with style, belonging next to your copy of Tomb of Annihilation if you’re a quirky fifth edition player. It’s undoubtedly a more polished product than most elf-game products on the shelves, especially for something so idiosyncratic by a single author, and a sight better than anything else aiming for the fifth edition market.

    The structure is similar to Neverland, although simpler: Rules and introductions, then bestiary and NPCs, then locations and finally a chapter of resources. I’m not sure what the right approach to orienting someone to such a huge non-linear text, but while it’s overwhelming, the first “what’s going on” spread does a decent job. When I say overwhelming, I mean “21 major characters and 12 major factions in 2 pages”, if you want to benchmark what I consider a bit much, and how could it not be a bit much in so little space? A nice addition is explicitly calling out themes so that the thematic resonance isn’t missed at the table; I know I have mixed opinions on whether the author should be discussing the themes of their work so explicitly, but honestly this particular work doesn’t communicate those themes particularly well through the text, and as someone whose experience of Oz is limited to the Scottie Young comic series, it’s appreciated.

    Oz opens with what I’m beginning to suspect is the universal sin of module writers in the 20’s: Choose which four of the twenty one characters I just summarised to you will be the main four. I reiterate this a lot, but there is a place for non-specificity and this is an unreasonable ask when you don’t know the structure or politics of the piece. Just tell me about who’s in charge in your creation please! This whole spread is an exercise in offloading scene-setting to the reader in the name of replayability, which I feel completely misses the essence of what replayability means in elfgames like fifth edition.

    We transition to rules, where a lot of energy is oddly put into defining terms, particularly point crawl and ‘local crawl’ (a generic dungeon crawl term). It’s odd because they are self explanatory to those of us who understand the terms, it doesn’t help anyone who doesn’t. They are also repetitive: there are different types of points to travel between — a subway map with multiple intersecting but separate lines — but the rules for each individual line are usually identical and always similar, and so spending multiple paragraphs on it seems redundant (derogatory) to me. There is also an advanced rules section which is largely pointless and dry, although the mapmaking section is pretty cool, featuring a method I saw first in this JP Coovert video method for streets, and a building designer that is excellent. The method needs support — tables — but those tables are in the back of the book, and no reference is given to them here — I had to look for them, a failure in my opinion. Referencing in general is present but not always when you want it to be. Overall, a bit like the rules in Neverland, these are overwritten for what they achieve, but there is gold in them there hills.

    The creatures in this bestiary are very Oz-flavourful in a much more interesting way than Neverland’s were Peter Pan flavoured, and interact with the editions mechanics in imaginative ways. A serpent who spells out words to be resistant to, clockworks that become more strong the more you fight them, paper people with spells written under their clothes. Fun, unique stuff. My concern that major NPCs are scattered throughout this section, a choice inherited from Neverland that I don’t enjoy. Interesting, the trait/flaw/bond structure inherited from fifth edition character creation has had added to it a unique descriptor (for example “Wicked & Wonderful Leader: Animal, commanding, powerful, unpredictable”) which honestly in cases where it’s present is all I’d actually need to run the character (in combination with the chapter 1 information). This is the good stuff, and I’d love for Kolb to trust me more with this kind of writing rather than (we’ll get to it) the stuff he wants me to make up myself. I’m overall honestly a big fan of this bestiary, but it is worth acknowledging there are entries for as bland things as “animal, small” here too, so it’s not all roses.

    Bestiary spread. About as good as it gets for fifth edition. Disappointing though that Kolb didn’t provide a version of the spread that was entirely animals.

    In the location section, the quick area reference is essential because of the complexity of the city (it wasn’t in Neverland, as the hexcrawl was relatively straightforward). But again after Neverland there are two maps! I just don’t understand this choice; they appear to be identical, one more abstracted than the other. The abstract one is much easier to read but doesn’t have information on terrain type. Front and endpapers also contain two different versions of the non-abstracted map than are in the book; one, the messier version, with better keying. But the cleaner map would tolerate the busier key better because it’s cleaner. That’s four separate versions of the same map with similar information in the one book. This design decision strikes me as absolutely bizarre. One could argue everyone will have a different favourite version but it’s a map, and this reeks of lack of faith in your design.

    One of the many versions of the map; the one I referred to as messy and useful.

    In the gazetteer, it is not at all intuitive what order locations are in in. At first I thought there was a train line followed by its stops, before I realised that it was by letter which wasn’t alphabetical but rather by first initial or the region name. For such a wordy book, this is something I probably shouldn’t have had to figure out. Unlikely Neverland, a variety of layouts are used to facilitate the different information for the different types of points here, which is a smart choice. Within each layout, the overall forms are pleasing, but the inconsistent placement of the same sections across different spreads makes information finding more difficult than it needs to be (for example the “first impressions” section moving about, a section I’d consider important to keep consistent). On train line entries, nice maps modelled after the London underground provide excellent usability. Unique NPC names for most locations make NPC generation a breeze, but again names are on one page, and the tables are on the other. The “stops” map appears on almost every page in the same location, but it’s probably the most recognisable section due to its unique colour use, and really doesn’t need the consistency; neither does “mood” which gets the same placement every spread and also has the same content. There enough of these perplexing decisions that I suspect some of the layout decisions are purely logistical (“how can i fit this on a page?”), or perhaps legacy (“I’m familiar with their placement in Neverland”) but disregarding those practicalities, they could be more intuitive.

    A train line spread; note the nicely subtle detail of intersecting train lines in the right hand diagram, and the simpler but clearer communication in the left hand diagram of connected locations. This is good communication!

    The contents and description of these is dry but flavourful, and delivered gradually in a pleasing way. Each location gets a single sentence summary, it’s location in the city, a longer description and a few secrets, delivered in increasing length. There are always a first impressions, usually some unique names, always train connections. Remaining spreads are used for navigation, events, specific characters, and more specific secrets. This is honestly a smoother and better iteration on Neverland’s system, but still generating on a visit to an area will take at most 4 rolls and potentially a few searches for pages (no bestiary page references in sight). This is an excellent version of this approach, but my favourite parts are universally the sections with specific characters and events in them, which are dry but well written: “Para Bruin. Captured by a group of bandits long ago and trained to box. Now free and happy to work for honey. Serious and suspicious of others” or “Fresh Dusting Bakery & Cafe. Tunnel leads to a safe space for those with dangerous or uncontrollable magic.”

    Another significant improvement over Neverland is that locations that need maps, unique details and keying, appear in this section as well. This messes with the layout consistency in a third way, but makes it much easier to use them because they’re sitting right there next to their stop or district. I know this is the opposite opinion to what I feel about NPCs in the bestiary, but for good reason: NPCs need to be understood to run whole swathes of the book, so deserve to be separated from animals and grunts; locations on the other hand are usually best gathered geographically.

    The final section is for resources, and it’s a pleasant hodgepodge. We have nicely non-mechanical “relics”, and floor maps for common recurring locations like banks and parades. We have random tables for adventures that for me are displeasingly nonspecific (“discover the identity of a prominent researcher”) when they could have tied directly into the locations and bestiary. An A-Z of random tables, some good, most disappointingly generic. An example is a d12 ceremonies, which, rather than give us twelve interesting Ozian ceremonies as it assures us “Oz is all about ceremony”, it gives us general categories of ceremonies. Contrast this with the small talk table which is much more hooky despite being generic (“They keep quiet, but have a relative in power”) and the actually strong plot hooks and rumours tables (“An envelope containing a dose of the Powder of Life meant for Ozma is delivered to a PC.”; “Patchwork girl has been accused of stealing on four separate occasions”). I’m of two minds here: A lot of this stuff will be more useful to more people because it’s generic, but I genuinely believe that it robs Oz itself of its greatest strength, which is the weirdness of the land it draws from.

    The resources section ends with a much appreciated m “external and complementary resources” section, a much briefer “sketches and design notes” section which I found more obnoxious in Neverland, and a few pre-made characters that are absolute bangers; an angry turtle and a clockwork boxer. None of this “stock characters with a relevant hook” malarchy, these are pure gold, pulling absurdity into fifth edition by way of James West’s Black Pudding.

    Overall, this is a book that tries to be usable at the table and largely succeeds. Kolb’s writing style is dry at best, and when he isn’t leaning into the specificity of his setting, it falls very flat, but in the places where he does lean into the specificity of the setting, it soars. The layout and organisation of this book are leagues ahead of Neverland and most of the competition, although it is not without its mistakes (or perhaps compromises), and while I remain surprised Neverland hasn’t had a more significant impact on module design, I’d be very surprised if this more polished version doesn’t have an impact in a few years time.

    I brought Neverland to the table a few years ago, and I think that Oz is more flavourful, better organised, and easier to use than Neverland was. Not something I’d often say of a city supplement compared to a hexcrawl. I think I’d grow weary of Kolb’s constant need to let me know that I’m making the world my own, though. I want to hear his take on Oz more, and less vague prompts for my own take. When he’s showing me his version, Oz shines.

    I’d be remiss not to compare this to other city supplements, like Fever Dreaming Marlinko and Magical Industrial Revolution. For me, these two products in particular are flavourful in their bones, and do not fall prey to the assumption that I need help to make it my own. On the other hand, each of the three have their own unique flavours, and neither replicate each other in that regard, nor are they particularly compatible with each other if you want to develop a fantasy city of your own. If you’re looking for a city to run, my recommendation would probably lie with Fever Dreaming Marlinko; but if you’re looking to make your own city, or you adore the atmosphere of a darker, more political Oz, this book has a lot to offer. I really like this approach of taking public domain properties and turning them into settings, there’s something fun about it, but I’d like to see other voices try their hand at these large-scale beloved-public-domain-to-sandbox conversions.

    11th July, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • I Read Shadowdark

    I Read Games reviews are me reading games when I have nothing better to do, like read a module or write or play a game. I don’t seriously believe that I can judge a game without playing it, usually a lot, so I don’t take these very seriously. But I can talk about its choices and whether or not it gets me excited about bringing it to the table.

    I was going to read an old favourite AD&D module of mine instead, but evidently my copy is missing and there aren’t any available for free on the internet today, so Shadowdark it is. I’m not going to call it a review, because I don’t want to play Shadowdark. It’s more of me answering the question of whether Shadowdark is something that will ever come off my shelf and hit the table.

    Oh, right, for those who don’t know, Shadowdark is a 5e-like retroclone that appears aimed at grabbing some of the 5e crowd and teaching them dungeoncrawling. It’s basically Five Torches Deep but with better branding.

    Terrible terrible blackletter choice for the front cover. It’s barely legible. I hope this changes on release, but they use a cleaner version on the inside for headings, so I suspect they won’t. Great not-beholder on the cover, though, if the internal art is 50% as good as the cover art, it’ll be pretty. I’ll skip the endpapers with only the comment that I had misgivings even in the weapons list, which duplicates information and skips essential tools because it’d make their rules too hard. It’ll take 30 seconds flat for someone to ask for a glaive because it sounds cool, and probably best you have an answer for how they work rather than design your rules to avoid polearms altogether.

    I’m not sure what size the pages are, but my children have fully illustrated picture books with more words per page. It’s clearly written for beginners, but honestly who’s coming to the Shadowdark rulebook without experience of either other diy elfgames or fifth edition already? Are you not aware of the difference between who buys the books between those two cultures?

    The characters stuff is elegant in the way some diy elfgames are. There are some very nice rules flourishes, you can be a goblin, you level up randomly, there are lawful and chaotic gods. A nice touch is that every class level has a title like in the old days. Except, no 5e player is going to enjoy this, GM’s have got to stop writing games. Not only that, this game is written in such a way that all of the potential extra classes have their names taken already by the titles, which are by alignment! You can’t have a paladin, an invoker, a scourge, a barbarian or a battlerager, because they’re already in the rules! GM’s writing games that miss the point about 5e are grinding my goat lately. Retroclone with 1000 classes: Challenge.

    I’m reading this with an imaginary 5e players handbook in one hand, and books like Whitehack, Errant and OSE in the other. And it makes me realise that the 5e Player’s Handbook is a damned fine rulebook full of rules I don’t care for, as is the OSE rulebook. Where Whitehack and Errant are perfectly adequate rulebooks full of rules I really like. Shadowdark is neither of those things. It lacks personality, it feels written for fourth graders, the (I’m assured) lovely author needs to talk to Jay about writing games with a narrative voice, because it’s as bland as invisible cheese slices for a game whose art and title scream grim and scary.

    That’s not to discount what we have here, which is a relatively rules lite 5e clone that pulls from the best of the blogosphere, with touchings of Dungeon Crawl Classics. It tries to brin gits own innovations, but second guesses itself: The game passes in real time it says, but every moment in the game doesn’t need to be accounted for. It’s a dungeon crawler it says, but provides no structure for such an activity, as if it has missed all the obsession around procedure in the past few years. It seems to want to say: Play a retroclone! They’re exactly what you’re playing right now, but with less interesting characters but also fewer rules!

    Cool! Wierd! It has a in-world gambling minigame! Ok. Strange thing to end the player-character centric part of your book on, but you do you I guess. I guess I’ll put a collectible card game in my next monster-hunting campaign to keep the players occupied? The GM-centric remainder is all the stuff that needs to be in here because it isn’t an existing book. Magic items, bestiary, all of that, plus the little dungeon-masters guide for the beginner to retroclones GM. It’s serviceable and dull, much like most of the rest of the book.

    My impression of Shadowdark is that it’s a serviceable, clearly written, clearly laid out retroclone with a lot of rules in common with D&D 5e. But, it has no personality, it doesn’t bring shadow nor dark into the text, and it doesn’t leverage the huge advantages that springboarding off 5e brings. This game needs to be oozing horror; it needs banging layout that chills your spine; it needs to bring more personality than 5e brings to the Players Handbook and it doesn’t succeed in doing that. Most of the buzz I saw leading into the Kickstarter was that this was a 5e killer, coming in the wake of the OGL disaster to sweep up the disenfranchised.

    This is not the one, I’m afraid. If you’re willing to learn a new game with the vibe that a game named Shadowdark should have, learn Errant, a game that does ooze horror while remaining D&D, and doesn’t skimp on tactics either. If you want to play 5e, but with dungeon crawling, listen to blogs on tape for a while, learn about proceduralism, and just add some rules to your game (honestly just take them from Errant). Your players will thank you for it; they like playing Moon-worshipping tabaxi princesses in space, let them. If what’s actually going on here is that you’ve gotten old and you don’t have the time or energy to devote to preparing the behemoth of prep that is 5e, then admit it and get your single friend to take over the job, because everyone likes their game already.

    6th July, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • House Rules for 5e from a House with No 5e

    There’s been a lot of talk about how 5e is bad lately (it isn’t) from public GMs and designers who want their players to switch to new or their games (they won’t), because GM and design centric perspectives misdiagnose that 5e is good, actually.

    This video’s first point illustrates the misdiagnosis well. Actually, players of 5e want a list of character options the size of Pride and Prejudice. It scaffolds unique characters with mechanical support and prescribed choices in character growth. GMs don’t like it because the GM is poorly supported, and designers are usually forever GMs.

    I actually diagnosed this confusion a few years ago with my embarrassing Infinite Hack, which I don’t expect I’ll revise. The key thing is that any (fantasy) hack of 5e needs to be fully compatible with all the character and spell options to be acceptable to players of 5e.

    With this in mind, here are the hacks I would try to achieve those goals and make the combat less slow and easier to prep for. There are a bunch of procedures I’d add, but honestly you can take them straight from any fantasy procedural from the last few years. Errant, for example.

    • Hit points. Use your number of HD, add the size of your hit dice. Monster HP is same.
    • Death saves. Roll the type of hit dice for rounds until you die, when reduced to 0 HP. Monsters don’t get death saves.
    • Proficiency. It’s fine, but if your passive proficiency at something is equal to or higher than the DC, auto-succeed. Also, if you learn something cool and specific, get the specialisation bonus, and write it on your sheet next to arcana or whatever.
    • Damage. All attacks deal 1 damage. Critical hits deal their damage dice. Beware multi-attacks! Monsters are same.
    • Rests. Heal 1HD damage and conditions on a short rest, all damage on a long rest.
    • Inventory. Players don’t care. Use a pack mule and then just give each character ten slots for cool things like a video game. Yeesh, go full Breath of the Wild and allow them to trade XP for extra slots if they want.
    • Spells. Do away with slots and memorisation. Make a spell check (like a spell attack) whenever you cast a spell. If you fail, lose the spell for the day, but you can still cast the spell. Yup, it makes spell attacks messier, but it makes everything else cleaner.

    Ugh I could probably do math to figure out how equivalent this is to RAW combat mathematics, but honestly I’m feeling sick and couldn’t be stuffed. My point is, if you want 5e players to play with you recognise what they love and incorporate that into your game. And that means 15 classes, 100 subclasses, and 1000 spells.

    Thank you for reading my fevered rant.

    Updated! After chat with Marcia about monster HD!

    4th July, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Bathtub Review: A Pound of Flesh

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    A Pound of Flesh is a 52 page module for Mothership, by Donn Stroud, Sean McCoy and Luke Gearing. It is a setting primer for a space station that is effectively a city, Prospero’s Dream.

    I enjoy the space stations name, a reference to the Tempest, where Prospero’s dream (in my understanding) refers to the illusions that he weaves around himself; here the illusion is the illusion that it’s possible to survive or get ahead in this criminal, hyper-capitalistic city; I also love that it gives the impression of a place where you can achieve your dreams for those (likely the inhabitants) that do not know the reference.

    In typical Mothership fashion front papers are maps (the station in two and three dimensions); cybernetic mutations and loot tables in the end papers. I’d have preferred the random encounter table referred to on the map be part of the endpapers over the mutations table, but they’re great mutations like “Arms grow until your hands touch the floor and drag.”

    First page is law and boarding, effectively setting the scene for the people landing here with a bucketload of debt and laws made to be broken. The next three are how to run the module, including hooks, the three main plots and their events and phases (which is a lot, and limiting it to three plots is a smart idea for usability), phase alterations (ways to personalise locations), and finally infections (one of the plots is related to a disease). We then have a list of criminals looking for suckers to take jobs for them. The jobs are how you’d determine what phase of the plot you are in. When it comes to onboarding a GM to a complex scenario, this does a great job, but I don’t love how wordy it is, nor do I love the layout decisions that separate the plots from their phases; I’m not sure what the best way to provide this information would be, but it really needs to be on one spread instead of five pages.

    The we have locations. Usually in a two page spread, except for a few exceptions for various valid reasons (including cybernetics rules in the chop shop, for example). Individual entries aren’t too much, although more than I’d like. Inconsistently but often excellently written: “A jungle of gnarled veins and cables […] the Avatar of Caliban sits on a twisted, oily throne”.

    The last section is six pages of generators for managing the entire station: Deadly encounter rules, the encounters, NPCs and establishments. There is a lot of well-written stuff here, but I’m not sure I’d generate a lot of the NPCs and establishments, and it would probably be a neater, easier experience if these were tied together. These are excellent one-line NPCs and encounters: “Aug screaming “Help! It’s not me, it’s Caliban!” Can’t stop attacking.”, although the establishments are not so engaging.

    The last section of the book is a space station generator, which, while cool, just doesn’t belong here. At all. I have no more to add. They could have used the extra space, which I’ll discuss later.

    Mothership layout is famous for being busy and functional. To be honest, there’s plenty of white space in A Pound of Flesh, and it’s clear and easy to read at a page level, but it lacks consistency. In an attempt to bring across the personality of the individual locations, for example, the layout, font choices, heading positioning is inconsistent, making information locating more difficult at the table (for me) which is contrary to the intent. The same criticism goes for font choices on some of the maps, although some maps are stellar.

    Overall, I think A Pound Of Flesh lives up to its reputation as an exceptional city–type module, but I think it could have been more user friendly with some reorganisation and utilising the wasted six pages to facilitate this. The city generators should have been easy access at the back, random encounters should be back cover or backpapers. The section on running the plots and timelines needed more space to breath in terms of layout, or to be compressed and simplified (the matter might have been contrary to the goals and certainly would make Prospero’s Dream feel less alive).

    That said, I’m surprised I haven’t seen more modules in the past four years mimic or improve on A Pound of Flesh’s structure. It’s pretty exceptional, and I can’t imagine a better way of developing a plot-driven city setting than some variation on this. It’s a very solid Mothership module with some exceptional room to play. It kindles the imagination too: I can see this as a primary base for a campaign, particularly if you centre it around a particular criminal enterprise and have a rotating roster of characters that go out and do other Mothership adventures. Exciting stuff.

    2nd July, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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  • Auto-gathering: A Cosy Overland Travel Layer

    I was thinking about encumbrance in the context of this fantastic post and was thinking that, while I love this level of quantum inventory, because streamlining inventory helps most games a lot, it detracts from the fun of “Ooh! I have this cool thing!” which I want more of.

    Tears of the Kingdom

    I, like everyone else, am playing Tears of the Kingdom, and a perennial conversation is how to recreate the sense of cosy exploration there. The aspect of coziness that I focused on being easily adaptable is finding random and cool stuff en route to your destination. This, we can do.

    Whenever you pass through a hex, you pick herbs or capture a small creature along the way. Roll 1d6 for the region you are passing through. Each region has two themes for herbs and creatures in them.

    Themes

    1. Lightning
    2. Fire
    3. Frost
    4. Water
    5. Light
    6. Poison
    7. Cloud
    8. Confusion
    9. Thorned
    10. Weight
    11. Sticky
    12. Explosive

    Combine these two with these effects to make your list for each region:

    1. Resist or shield
    2. Decrease or deprive
    3. Increase or grow
    4. Inflict or project
    5. Fuse or bond
    6. No regional effect, heal

    Tweak this for any pre-existing regions you have of course, or use it to give a theme to a region you’re designing.

    I rolled 6 (Poison) and 12 (Explosive) for my region, which gives me the impression of a volcanic swamp, bubbling mud and potent gasses. I rolled 3,3,4,4,5,6 for my effects. Oh, and I randomised herb and creature, but whatever.

    Forage in Swayraks’ Swamp

    1. Brimstone Shroom. Add to fire or explosive to increase its effect twofold.
    2. Fanged blightmoth. When brewed, renders the imbiber venomous of tooth and claw.
    3. Bombardier Puffball. Explodes in fireball when struck.
    4. Grey flagweed. Poisonous when ingested.
    5. Corrosive Pufferfish. When startled, explodes in a poison gas cloud. Can be attached to arrows.
    6. Steambee Honey. Heals surface wounds as an ointment.

    I added the condition here from Tears of the Kingdom that creatures need to be brewed into potions for effect. Let’s try for a second. You can guess this time.

    Whetwood

    1. Cloudflower. Burn to create a broad smokescreen.
    2. Glue truffle. Eat to immediately spit out a cloud of adhesive gas.
    3. Slippery whitegrub. Squeeze as toothpaste for a small amount of incredibly slippery paste.
    4. Giant flatworm. Brew, and the i’m i ver grows suckers on all limbs, able to grip slippery or sheer surfaces.
    5. Salvemoss. Heals internal wounds as a tea.
    6. Graveweed. Suspends the body at the moment of death, to be healed at a later date.

    Add it to your current procedure, a cosy travel layer.

    Addition: Already there have been a number of suggestions and hacks to this. Sacha suggested adding a rarity layer on twitter, Long Goblin suggested a substance layer in the comments (see below), Marcia suggested loading it with wandering monsters to replicate the fact that you can’t forage under attack and to reduce rolls. Ktrey has written herb, tree, bird and fish generators, if you’re having naming troubles! I’ll continue to consider these perspectives and maybe update it as I go, but I’m so glad this idea is vibing with everyone so much!

    Idle Cartulary

    Playful Void is a production of Idle Cartulary. If you liked this article, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing to the Idle Digest Newsletter. If you want to support Idle Cartulary continuing to provide Bathtub Reviews, I Read Reviews, and Dungeon Regular, please consider a one-off donation or becoming a regular supporter of Idle Cartulary on Ko-fi.

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  • Procedure as Move

    Marcia just posted this, positing fuck procedures, just let the GM decide as hoc for more meaningful bespoke travel.

    This is cool, but right now I’m into player choice, so I propose:

    When the party travels, spend the day. travelling.

    The GM proposes a danger you will encounter, an opportunity you will miss, and a consequence that will occur if you travel that day.

    Expend a supply each to avoid the encounter, to catch the opportunity, or to prevent the consequence.

    This feels very cheeky to me in a diy elfgame, but like, it’s also simpler, the tension is greater, and it makes resource management not boring. You’re loading up on supply (like, quantum, so you can be creative in its use) to control your adventure. This is how it’d play out:

    “We head north, to the old barrow we camped in last time.”

    “Ok, so that slug-dragon you fled last time is out for blood near there. You risk encountering it again. The Grand Seven Swords are still out there searching for the Fane of Twice-Diamond, and they’ll find it today. Back in town, the Contest of Champions is being held and you won’t be able to compete if you head out. What do you do?”

    “Ok, I think we can take the slug-dragon if we load up on salt and explosives. Let’s spend a supply on horses so we make it to the Fane first, and let the Contest go — letting Garbinon win will go to his head and he’ll let his guard down next time we face him out in the wilds.”

    Cool, I think. I was gonna include a list of stuff to make adjudicating this easier, but honestly, use whatever is going on already in your campaign or your World Pillars is probably the best approach.

    I like this a lot haha, sorry Marcia.

    26th June 2023,

    Idle Cartulary

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  • My personal feelings about Reach of the Roach God

    Yesterday I posted my Reach of the Roach God review, and it was a review I struggled with, for a number of reasons. This then, isn’t a review, but simply an expression of my feelings about the book and writing the review.

    I was torn on whether it was ethical to criticise strongly so early in Reach’s release cycle. I refrained from formally reviewing Throne of Avarice for this reason when it was released. I want to provide honest criticism but also, I don’t want to deprive creators of potential sales in such a challenging financial climate. I reached out to Zedeck with this on mind before I published, but it was still foremost on my mind for the last 24 hours. This primed me for a stronger emotional response than I’d usually have to writing a review, because I wasn’t sure releasing it was doing the right thing.

    I was also really excited regarding a number of Reach’s innovations because of how they reflected my own work, but I didn’t want to turn a Bathtub Review into advertising for my own work. Particularly, Reach’s stat blocks are very similar to my own in Ludicrous Compendium (I know for a fact that this was not plagiarism but convergent design), and Zedeck used a page referencing system similar to what I have implemented in the upcoming Bridewell (something Zedeck built on from Lorn Song, I understand, but that I honestly didn’t remember had been in that when I intended it).

    It’s personally exciting to me to see parallels between my and Zedeck’s work because Iv regard it with a lot of admiration and respect, and A Thousand Thousand Islands on particular was the first text I read that made me feel like work like that which I’m interested in producing a) can be done and b) can be recognised as valuable.

    In a similar way, I responded quite emotionally at the disappointment that the translation from zine to tome didn’t go as smoothly as I’d have liked, because I can see those same difficulties manifesting as I playtest and attempt to information design and lay out Bridewell. I fear that perhaps this particular type of system agnostic module will not survive a transition from zine to long-form, and that’s not an outcome that is acceptable to me.

    All of this, and the parallel work I’m doing on Bridewell, as well as ongoing discourse on the apparently dismal state of criticism in elfgames (a comment that, as you might imagine, I take personally and argue against vehemently, although I maintain that if you want change, be the change), has just filled me with challenging feelings this week.

    Anyway, that was a rather pointless and incoherent rant, but there you have it, it’s my blog and I can be incoherent if I want to.

    25th June, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

  • Bathtub Review: Reach of the Roach God

    Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

    Editorial. Today, both creators of a Thousand Thousand Islands (Zedeck Siew and Munkao) made announcements regarding an end to their professional relationship. This is sad news, and it appears that anyone purchasing A Thousand Thousand Islands in the future will only be renumerating one of the creators financially for their work. In a complex situation such as this, I’d encourage you to read these statements before you consider buying Reach of the Roach God or any other parts of A Thousand Thousand Islands. – Idle Cartulary, 11th July 2023

    Reach of the Roach God is the first long-form of A Thousand Thousand Islands, previously a series of zines (Mr-Kr-Gr, Kraching, Upper Heleng, Andjang, Stray Virassa, Korvu and Hundred Red Scales, plus appendixes). Written by Zedeck Siew and illustrated by Munk Kao, with layout for the first time outsourced to hrftype. It is a setting with a strongly implied narrative, one of independent villages, encroaching cities, and a developing doom creeping up from below, driven by spite. This is a long book spanning multiple concepts and approaches, and so my usual chronological approach won’t really hack it for this bathtub review.

    Zedeck’s writing here is slyly funny and unsettling when necessary, but mostly hypnotising and tactile. It fills the page more here than in previous iterations, largely because of hrftype’s layout choices which I’ll go into later on, and it pulls you forward into the text like an undertow. Reach is bookended by short story openings, and while a pet peeve of mine is when authors sneak their uninteresting fiction into my modules, Zedeck’s writing feels like an ancient fable your grandmother memorised and recited to you, and fills you with empathy and loathing for the foes featured in each section.

    Mun Kao’s illustrations are as subtle and erudite as anything he has drawn before. The soft linework complements Zedeck’s writing in a higher density than in any previous iteration. This higher density is a mixed blessing, however, causing the groupings to be less contained and intuitive; characters are scattered from their inciting incidents and locations, reducing the usability of the text. This problem was clearly recognised, as superscript page references are incorporated to help facilitate interactivity between increasingly broad swathes of text, however it feels a little like the pressure of Maximum Illustration in a “professional RPG product” in this case is at odds with usability. To a degree, the amount of art often mutes the effect of the forthcoming art; the proximity of the map on the left page on page 88 lessening the effectiveness of the introductory viewpoint on page 89 for example.

    Many of Mun Kao’s maps are beautiful but not awfully clear and perhaps not more useful than a chart would be. This is placed in stark relief when you encounter his more abstract maps of the City of Peace, which are really useable and remain artistically en pointe.

    I can’t say the same about the layout consistently complementing the writing as well as the illustrations, although I have a complex response to the book as an artifact. There are so many touches to the final book that literally gave me goosebumps or caused me to sigh at the luxury. The embossed cover, bound book mark. the thicker yellow stock of the chapter titles, are just beautiful touches that feel like the style of the series of zines applied to a stronger budget in the best possible way. The custom font designed by hrftype is creepy, beautiful and legible, however feels overused in the book where perhaps it would have been best left to headings and titles. There are dozens of small icons, custom separators and flourishes throughout the book that speak to attention to detail and love of the product being made. Page references are very complex to apply and are utilised very well in the first third of the book. I haven’t measured the book, but it looks to be US Trade or Royal format, so it’s quite the imposing hardcover; the large choice of typography therefore isn’t entirely inappropriate, but in combination with the density of Mun Kao’s art here, it loses the sparse yet considerate sense of form that previous iterations of A Thousand Thousand Islands had. I prefer the previous approach, although I suspect that this book would double in size if it were taken.

    The book is broken up into four sections, where the fourth is not included in the book in probably my favourite invitation to play in recent memory: “QUOTE IT HERE”. The impression here is one of symmetry, three locations, each with three stories, in each of three parts. This gave me a strong sense that I understood what was coming, which sadly wasn’t true. The three parts in Reach of the Roach God are, in my opinion out of order. I attribute this a little to the nature of Kickstarter-funded projects, and a little to the fact that any author wants to front-load with their strongest writing, but I reached the end of chapter four feeling like it was content I wouldn’t use, which coloured my approach to chapter five and six. The eighth chapter however, a Kickstarter stretch goal, is key to your recognition of the entire second part’s place in the story. I read the first 100 pages and was leaping out of my seat with excitement; the second 100 pages and felt disappointed; the final third and I realised that there was a secret key to it all that I had never understood, and that I’d have to put more preparation than I’d expected from my experience with the previous iterations of A Thousand Thousand Islands.

    Ok, those are my overall impressions, and I think I’m coming across as very critical of the book at this point, so I’m going to get a bit more specific for a while and call out some aspects that are just absolute genius to balance it out.

    In Reach, Zedeck implements a five-sentence stat block that is highly reflective of what I think should be the standard for stat blocks in all system-agnostic modules. I (and most people I know) rarely run a module in its intended system, and this approach means that I don’t have to put as much work into translating stat blocks or learning systems I’m not interested in. I’ve been on this bandwagon for a while (I wrote a series of bestiaries based on this approach a number of years ago), but this is the first time the approach has appeared in a mainstream product that I’m aware of, although Luke Gearing’s Volume 2: Monsters& approaches the concept. I hope it spreads further.

    Zedeck’s writing tows a narrow line between facilitating humour (in my opinion, the natural end-point of elf-game play) and maintaining a south-east asian fairy-tale tone. An excellent example of this is a cushion which, once your feet touch it, you cannot leave for an hour, intended to encourage meditation. I immediately pictured an absurd pillow fight against the roaming roach-boulder guardians, dodging and ducking thrown meditation cushions, until the losers are stuck sitting together for an hour thinking about what they’ve done.

    Random tables litter this book. For every single occasion of travel, there is something that happens, randomly generated, but often not an encounter: “It’s claustrophobically still. Your heartbeat pounds in your ears”. This is stellar use of random tables to make every instance of travel feel meaningful without the drudgery which is complex travel rules. On the other hand, some of these tables probably could have been lists. One generator might produce a caretaker from a funereal city that “repairs burial jars with colourful, powerfully adhesive gums, has a glowing ghost arm that cannot carry weight, and was given away as a child.” and adds a few prompts to develop them further. But the two pages spent on generating this caretake may have been best simply creating six caretakers from this list, saving one and a half pages. I don’t think there is any replayability lost from minor characters being repeated in these cases.

    There are a series of spirits in part 3 that are just evocative and I want to play them all. They’re born from particular desires, and Mun Kao’s art of them is weird in a particular way that feels unique and true. They are just so cool.

    Part 6, the section focusing on Odoyoq, the Roach-God and the cult attached to it, provides an incredible amount of support for the rest of the book, while also requiring a huge amount of interpretation. Flip to a page and you’ll always find scripture to quote, which is absolute gold. But also, it incorporates a huge amount of Roach politics that were unexpected to me and in retrospect would change the way I ran the campaign, but also, provides me with a huge amount of material to sustain the campaign that comes after Odoyoq inevitably wins.

    After Creatures of Near Kingdoms, I don’t think anyone’s surprised that this includes a spectacularly illustrated, inventive and evocative bestiary in chapter 7. My misgiving with the bestiary here, is that none of these entries are referred to before the bestiary occurs; there might be stalagmite-animals in the bestiary to complement my stalagmite-people in the gazette, but that’s not something I, running this at the table, would necessarily be able to facilitate incorporating without a lot of preparation. However, the bestiary is referred back to in the following section.

    I alluded earlier to the stretch goal in chapter 8, a map-generation system using a series of action figures. This is something I was completely disinterested in from the description, but what we actually have is a way to customise your map and how all six sections link together, as well as fleshing out the connections between the places. This is where the story locations, gazetteer locations and peoples and bestiary are tied in together, dynamically. It is very, very cool, particularly as a proof of concept, but Mun Kao literally illustrates a map of the world as part of the explanation in a gorgeous two-page spread. And I can’t help but feel like I’d have preferred to have that map of the world up front, as chapter 1. Chapter 8 pulls a lot of disparate elements together in a way to make the book something I can actually run as opposed to just something I can enjoy reading, and it gets very short shrift as an implied appendix here at the end of the book.

    Perhaps I view the zines in A Thousand Thousand Islands through rose-coloured glasses, but to a degree I feel like Reach of the Roach God fails to reach the heights those zines did. Why? I think it’s worth speaking of the effect of format in expectation setting. In my library, the only roleplaying games with a book as beautiful as Reach are Thousand Year Old Vampire and Trophy Gold, both excellent but flawed books that are not in the same league. Other books? My first edition of The Gods Themselves; an illuminated Apocrypha; a folio edition of Under Milkwood; a complete Lovecraft. These are definitive editions of these texts. The implied expectation from the format chosen for Reach of the Roach God is that Reach is the definitive A Thousand Thousand Islands; I think that the typography choices, the point sizing, the titling choices, and the density of illustration (among other things support this expectation. Instead, I think what we are given is six new zines and two appendixes, in a novel format. And, why am I disappointed in six new zines in the most consistent series of modules in recent times?

    Reframed as such, Zedeck’s writing is absolutely without peer, as are Mun Kao’s illustrations. Reach of the Roach God is innovative in a number of ways that I would love to see implemented more widely. Despite my criticisms, this one of the best long-form books released in a long time – perhaps ever. The experience of reading the hardcover was the most tactile pleasure I’ve gotten from reading anything roleplaying-related in a long time (the only other that comes to mind was the Art & Arcana artbook). An absolute recommendation.

    24th June, 2023

    Idle Cartulary

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Threshold of Evil – Dungeon Regular

Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
  1. Threshold of Evil
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