Most powerful NPCs - the really old!

Because we have so much respect for anything that lives to be centuries old, we don’t let our dwarves or elves live “forever”.  As you read this, you’re going to see why we have this opinion and feel that a standard soldier who is centuries old should be the most powerful NPC your PCs have ever faced.

What does age bring?  Well, wisdom, but in a more game related word:  experience.  And we all know what experience brings - more power!  Diverting just for a moment, this is why we don’t take the Tolkien way of letting elves live 1,000 years.  (Let’s be clear, that old game didn’t follow Tolkien, they sort of bastardized him.)  If a longbowman were to practice three hours a week for his whole life, and his whole life was 900+ years, how incredibly fantastic an archer would he be?  And yet that other game would tell you that a 300 year old “adult” was only a single hit die.  That’s stupid!

So what are we saying here?  Let’s look at vampires and liches.  Assume they live to be 200-300 years old.  What will they have learned?  Well, a human typically learns most of what they know in about 25 years, but then they hone that knowledge over the next 25-50 years before they collapse in a chair from all that work.  How much different would their skill level be if they didn’t feel the fatigue of old age?  How different if they could keep going at roughly that “young adult” level for four to ten times longer than a human?  Maybe they aren’t four to ten times better (because we use a geometric progression like so many others), but they would be significantly better!

In LEGEND QUEST, we typically say that you earn about 10 character points a year by just living life.  Survival has a way of teaching you things!  For this reason, we also suggest that an adventurer would likely be about 25 years old when they start adventuring, unless something special has happened in their lives that would have taught them more in a shorter span of time.

This is exactly what we’re talking about.  Simply by living for 200 years, an intelligent undead should be phenomenally powerful.  But as a GM, you have to decide what they’ve been doing for those years.  They might be the most knowledgeable gardener on the planet, but that won’t make them much of a threat to a party of adventurers.  Well, it won’t unless they are gardening man eating plants.

But that’s the point!  An ageless vampire is going to #1 - think in a much longer term than a short lived human and #2 - defending against those types of things that can end your immortality become incredibly important.  Think about Bruce Lee (or whatever martial artist you respect).  Think about what he was able to accomplish in his short life.  Think about what a similar person would be able to accomplish over centuries of training.

This alone is the real reason we will be presenting “lesser vampires” for LEGEND QUEST.  Yes, there are times when as a GM you just need some mindless blood-suckers who will fight adventurers.  But if you are going to introduce a vampire or lich over the age of 100, they deserve a lot more time and respect from you.  What have they been doing over the many decades, and how does that factor into what a dangerous opponent they are now?

Especially because of that previously mentioned geometric progression, we think that most immortals would pursue at least two different disciplines.  Maybe you don’t want a vampire fighter mage - that’s fine.  Try a sorcerer alchemist.  Not only can he cast incredibly powerful spells, but unlike his more mortal foes, he can then use alchemy to vastly enhance the number of spells he can cast or the way that he protects himself while doing it.  After all, he has had decades more experience to tell him where the vulnerabilities are and then use some other discipline (alchemy, enchantment, conjuring, whatever!) to make himself better.

And you don’t necessarily need to follow the rules.  After all, the rules were written for mortals - this is something beyond that.  Maybe he has developed his own spells, recipes or formulas?  Maybe he’s found a way to tap into the magic of the core of the planet and not just use the magic contained within his limited body.  If the players really think they can simply show up and defeat a centuries old undead lord, you must teach them the error of their ways!

What’s up with Small Bites?

Just bringing everyone up to date on where things stand with our Small Bites project:

For anyone not familiar with our Small Bites project, we’ve consistently gotten a 40+ page book out every month for 16 months now.  We think we’ve shown that this isn’t some fly by night concept, but a reliably good product.  If you would like to join us, receive the full GM’s editions before anyone else, and have a real say in what will be coming after Pilgrimages, please click here to get to our Patreon page.  We can use all the advice we can get!

But back to what this post is really about:

Our double sized edition Paladin vs. Paladin aka All About Holy Wars was released last month (end of May), but only to Patreon patrons.  There was no free (World Walker) edition posted on our distribution sites.  The only way to get it now is to join us and use your free Board Bucks to get it as a back issue.

This weekend, we will be releasing our latest edition The Vampire Tyrants of the Darklands aka All AboutCreatures of the Night to our patrons.  The free version will be posted to the distributors sometime in July.  But remember, the free/WW edition is usually less than half the size of the full/GM edition.

Next month (end of July) will be Niti’s Parade and Other Entertainments aka All About Carnivals and Faires.  If you’re not using trade fairs, carnivals and circuses in your game world, then you have a pretty dull game world!  This edition is going to be a little different in format.  Because of all the circuses, carnivals and acts we need to put into it, it is going to look more like one of our 100 ________ products where there is a massive list of stuff with about a paragraph of detail.  Well, honestly, it will look more like a 100-book stuffed inside a Small Bites edition.  So happy we’re not printing these books anymore, because this one would be a costly inventory item!

End of August will bring The Palace of the Prince Governor of Brinston aka All About Courtiers and Wealth.  We were really surprised with the feedback we got from everyone during the last polling.  Because you asked for them, Carnivals and Courtiers both got moved up in our scheduling.  That’s why you’re going to see them so soon.  We want to continue pointing this out, because you need to know that we are listening and your voice has power!

Then September will bring Following the Path of Saint Khasmir Chovwaska aka All About Pilgrimages and Cartography.  OK, why?  Because too few GMs make use of strip maps in their games.  Players should not be working off full color gorgeous maps painstakingly drawn by master cartographers.  That’s just not realistic.  Strip maps that tell you exactly how to get from one place to another are what makes sense.

So this one is going to be another completely different format edition.  We’re actually going to lay it out in chronological order.  This is part experiment and part because it just makes sense this way.  The book begins in Sesska Circle at the start of the pilgrimage and ends five days later at the cathedral in Parnania.  We like to describe this as part Canterbury Tales and part Route 66.  We believe it is going to give GMs and players a legitimate look at some of the more rural lands in the Central Plains, including notes and ideas about everything from staying at inns to road etiquette to relics to how religions actually work in a fantasy / pantheon world.  Plus, it will be a whole lot of fun.  OK, for all you doubters out there, let’s just say that there is a MASSIVE list of adventure ideas that comes along with it.

OK!  That’s feels a bit overwhelming to us, so we’ll stop there.  We really wanted everyone to be, well warned, about the formatting changes we were going to be trying out.

If you haven’t checked out Small Bites yet, why not?  The World Walker editions are free (click here).  They’ll give you an idea of what’s happening without giving away any secrets that the GMs will need if they want to run the campaign starter kits or any other adventures using the books.

How do the eternal “live”

Being an immortal creature has its drawbacks.  Sometimes, you get a sense of this from some of the more romantic fiction about vampires:  Everyone they know is dead or will die and they just keep going on.  While this has no impact on their ability to take or do damage in combat, it should be an important part of a FRPG.

There are many ways in which this can impact the characters themselves.  They are going to have to find a way to be in the world (hopefully without going crazy).  Here are just a few ideas:

As an immortal being, they could decide to remove themselves from every aspect of the tediously short lives of mortals.  Refusing to be constantly hurt or annoyed by people dying, they separate from mortals and live alone.  In these circumstances, they will rely on other immortal / undying creatures such as undead, golems, or possibly even divine creatures (probably the worst types of divines).  Their lairs will be distant from mortal cultures, and it will likely require some manner of extreme athleticism just to get to their homes.  They will be the kind who gets incredibly upset that someone has invaded their home, and there will not be a gracious host willing to have a long conversation here.  Yes, think of the grumpy old man as a vampire.

Another alternative is the exact opposite.  Here they want to be involved in every aspect of mortals’ short tedious lives in order to feel more connected to the process of life, something they themselves can no longer feel.  This can often be the case with the Noble Vampires, who keep “cattle slaves”.  Cattle slaves are different from chattel slaves, because they are not simply slaves, but are instead kept as both servants and food source.

For an immortal surrounded by mortal servants, they can become engrossed in the lives of these servants.  While the attraction is far more often one of an owner and his pets, he still wants to know what’s going on.  As soon as the sun sets, the vampire could be quizzing his servants about what he missed during the daylight hours.  This whacky obsession with the living is all about the things that the immortal can no longer feel or experience.  There are repercussions!  The death of a precious pet could either throw the immortal into depression or rage.

In a somewhat similar way, in order to maintain sanity over centuries, an immortal can find a hobby.  OK, that was an intentionally silly way to describe it, but they will find their “life’s work” and throw themselves into it.  This obsession will allow them to get moving when they awaken and get to doing something, rather than lay around the coffin all day.

This is the way that most of the remaining titans on Fletnern deal with their incredibly long lives (and they usually only live a couple of centuries).  They find some pursuit that interests them and they throw themselves into it with everything they have.  For some it could be alchemy and “perfecting” some manner of potion.  For others it could be animal husbandry and the breeding of some manner of animal or monster.  When discussing the undead, it could very well be a focus on necromancy and some aspect of it that they are trying to develop or perfect.  The fun part for GMs is that this goal does not have to be attainable.  What might keep a vampire busy for 400 years could be the pursuit of a vegan blood source.

There is another alternative.  Our suggestion here is that the human brain (and most vampires start out as humans) cannot handle centuries of living.  Exactly how you want to handle that is your own decision, but it does seem likely that becoming a vampire and being conscious for centuries could cause a person to go insane.  But here is the fun part:  insane, how?  They could become a megalomaniac, becoming the most feared enemy of mortals.  They could become obsessive compulsive, and every item in their massive fortress must remain exactly “right” or they lose their stuff.  They could become Jekyll and Hyde - perfectly sophisticated but only after they have had their meal.  Up until then, they are raving violence incarnate.  Insanity can have a lot of different faces - many of them interesting to add into a FRPG.  (Apologies to anyone actually suffering from mental disorders, we are taking a very superficial view of this for the sake of throwing out ideas.)

Our whole point with this is that not every vampire should be Count Dracula.  Not only that, but any “immortal” creature really needs to be looked at from a spectrum of not being mortal - not being confined to a mere century or less of life.  Sure, their first 100-150 years are probably lived similarly to anyone else, but at some point, they are going to feel the sting of immortality.  What they do then is how you as the game master develop a really memorable NPC enemy.

This blog entry was written in conjunction with our Small Bites supplement, The Vampire Tyrants of the Darklands aka All About Creatures of the Night.  Click the link for the FREE World Walkers edition.

Punishing the party for not role-playing

First off, this isn’t just about making the players come up with back stories or using different voices!  These games we’re playing are role-playing games.  At points in the characters’ lives, the players need to think, “What would my character really do in this circumstance?” and then act on that!

What are we saying?  Well, mainly that murder hoboing is not the only way to play a FRPG, and probably isn’t the best way to do it.  But as GM, what can you do?  What happens when you have an elaborately planned history to tell the party, but they just jump on their horses and ride out as soon as one of them gets a map?  Here is an example of what you do:

The party is sent to rescue a princess who was captured by a cult, who plans to sacrifice her to the god of blood during the Blood Moon.  The party gets to the castle and in typical FRPG party strategy, they kill everybody!  When asked what the loot is, you as the GM tell them there are books and minor jewelry, and you tell them what these things will fetch when they are sold in town.  They gather up the princess and head home.

But a role-playing party should ask what the books are about.  They should ask what kind of jewelry, possibly asking if it is magical.  Because you see the books are about how mortals can become vampires, without getting bitten.  The jewelry is mainly unholy symbols to that same god of blood, but also to some specifically vampiric “demons”.  The slightest bit of curiosity on the party’s part would let them know the cult was trying to become vampires, and you remember that the princess was a “sacrifice”, right?  Well, guess what?  Reading one of those books would clue the party in that the princess has been turned.  What they are assuming is some manner of weakness or fatigue is actually her body becoming familiar with her vampiric powers.  Yeah - they’re all going to get bitten on the ride home

To a lot of us, this is a blatant plot device that the players should pick up on in no time, but for a lot of groups, they have already written the number of coins they got for selling the books on their character sheets and have forgotten that there were books.

Use a touch of introspection here too.  If your bad guys never have motives or agendas, then you may have trained your players to not bother paying any attention.  Some of their murder hobo antics might have been encouraged by you, in which case, you need to take it a bit easier on them.  Here’s another way to force them to pay a bit more attention without risking their lives:

The party goes out after a band of bandits that stole magical items from an enchanter.  They slash their way through the thieves and their traps.  They gather up the magic items and everything else they find in the lair and head back home.  There, they find someone to buy the maps, the books, and the rubies they found.  Two weeks later, news hits the streets that the guy they sold the rubies too has just discovered the long lost crown jewels of the kingdom, missing these past 200 years.  Sure, they got a decent price for the gemstones, but this guy has been knighted and will now be the king’s personal jeweler.

Had they read the maps, and looked at the books, they would have seen that the bandits were searching for the jewels, which had been stolen by one of their ancestors 200 years ago.  In fact, they needed the magic items to kill whatever was guarding them.  The map was a treasure map, and they had followed it.  Rubies are valuable, but long lost crown jewels are priceless.

In all honesty, I did do this to my players and they blew a gasket.  I was accused of tricking them and not giving them enough information about what was in the books, etc.  This is honestly why I suggest looking inward first and soft pedaling the initial “punishments”.  You’re the GM.  You know your players, and only you know how you want your game to run.  Do what’s best for your game, but when you give them a little mystery to solve, you will notice their brains coming alive!

Fletnern Wiki hits 500!!

Board Enterprises would like to congratulate John Josten and all of the Patreon patrons for pushing the Fletnern wiki to the 500 entries mark!  Just one more piece of proof that the How to Build Your Fantasy World in Small Bites project (or Small Bites for short) is working.

If you haven't been keeping up to date on the wiki - click here - to see what's been going on.  Or you can click here to try our little Choose Your Own Adventure, which we don't think is getting a ton of attention.

If you want to join in and have our voice heard on what the priorities are (Palaces?  Carnivals?  Taverns and Night Clubs?  or your suggestion), then come join us on Patreon!

How Do You Kill a Werewolf?

We all know that werewolves and other were-s are susceptible to silver.  Your game rules may state that they cannot be harmed by any means other than silver weapons, or perhaps magical weapons.  I always hated this.

In that much earlier game, certain creatures could not be affected by weapons that were not magical or, in case of werewolves, not silver.  So - a catapult stone could hit them full in the face and nothing?  OK, later on they added a rule that monsters of a certain power level (number of dice) were effectively magic weapons.  I hated this more.  If a creature is supposed to be immune to “mundane” magic - what’s more mundane than a troll’s fist?

I ran several variants, none of which I really liked.  One was that if your bonus to damage was equal to what the magic weapon was supposed to have been, then you too could hit the creature.  After all, isn’t that effectively what the high level monster rule was supposed to be saying?  So what did I finally decide?

In Legend Quest - werewolves are really tough to kill.  Maxed out they are roughly 150% of humans, but in reality they take about twice the damage that a human warrior can.  To me, double is pretty tough.  But if you hit them with silver weapons, then they take more damage.  So a werewolf can withstand double what a soldier can, unless its silver, which brings him down to a level pretty much on-par with that human soldier.  I like the way that works.

But I have been messing around with an optional rule.  It is clearly stated in the rule book that chopping a werewolf or vampire to little bits is effectively beheading them and beheading pretty much kills anything in the game.  But LQ is often referred to as being “gritty”, because we have bleeding rules and other things that make it tougher to be insanely heroic in goofy situations.  As a means of granting the werewolves a touch more power, I do not apply the bleeding rules to werewolves, unless a silver (or otherwise non-mundane) weapon was used.  So you could chop a werewolf to bits with a steel sword, but you would have to work at it.  If you push a werewolf to unconsciousness (Life’s Blood = 0), but then walk away assuming it will bleed to death like every other living creature, it won’t.  It may take a bit of time, but it will eventually pull itself together (figuratively, not literally) and get out of there.  Even if you do a coup de grace and spear it through the chest with a mundane weapon - it will survive.  It won’t be happy about it, but it should survive.

I think our modern concept of bullets makes it easier to see a werewolf surviving “deadly damage”.  The idea of a bullet passing through a werewolf and not killing it could make sense.  But when facing battle axes and tridents, it just doesn’t make as much sense.

One thing I do think you have to consider even if you stand by the no damage if not magical rule is knock back.  Does your game have knock back rules?  They’re optional in LQ (a soon to be released optional rule).  So imagine that that catapult stone hits the werewolf in the face.  It may not crush its skull, but it will knock it back with the appropriate amount of force.  The wolfman may be able to stand up, dust himself off and keep going, but he’s going to know he was hit.

Having special and specific ways to kill certain creatures can be great fun, but there is a point at which it gets overwhelming for GMs and players.  If every different magical creature is allergic to a different substance, how many weapons do the adventurers need to carry?  I like this “short-cut” of using silver to kill a werewolf because it can still be done the other way, but silver makes it easier.  That feels like the right balance.

The Bright Side of the Undead

OK, so maybe this post has a dumb title, but are there any reasons that a “good” person would want to create undead or is necromancy really as evil as everyone says it is?  Well, it depends on your culture.  Not to go down the moral relativism rabbit hole, but what people believe about their bodies is dependent upon their religions.

There is a tradition in some Asian cultures where zombie creation is simply to get the corpse back home for burial.  If someone were to have traveled to a distant city in order to get a job and then died, they probably could not afford to get their corpse shipped back home.  So in order to have the corpse buried with the family (and prevent the spirit from rising due to the unfamiliar ground), there are religious folks who will animate the corpse and then lead them to their home / homeland.

I’m sorry but for some reason I just cannot read that and then get the thought of a “goose herder” out of my head.  Apparently, geese were herded to market in historic times, and I keep getting these two images laid atop each other - the cute little girl with her switch and her basket frolicking down the road leading a half dozen zombies.  Yes - I am messed up!

On Sambrek Island, they use zombies as farm workers.  The corpses are typically sundried (as opposed to embalmed in some other cultures) just in case some part of them falls off.  They don’t want dangerous chemicals getting mixed in with the crops, but apparently body parts are just fertilizer.  Only criminals (typically pirates) are supposed to be turned into zombies after they have been executed, but recently, the number of executed prisoners has not kept up with the demand, so they have been importing executed criminals from Brinston.  The zombi-fication is seen as part of their punishment.  When this news breaks in Brinston, there will be a major scandal, but that hasn’t happened, yet.

Our last possible “good” undead for today is that there are many religions that strongly believe the body is the least important part of the person.  It is their immortal soul that matters, and upon death, the soul escapes the body and travels on to the person’s just reward.  Depending on the strength of this belief, turning someone’s corpse into a zombie may not hold any horror to these people.

But honestly, most people are creeped out by skeletons, zombies, and other undead creatures and therefore will consider any crafting of the undead to be a desecration of their bodies.  So, yeah, in pretty much every culture, necromancy is going to be seen as evil (fear inspiring).  Might be fun, but probably still evil!