Category: Original Content

I recently read Healing Potions Are Dumb (and how I fix them), and enjoyed both its analysis and proposed solution. Then an old thought came back to me.

I never played the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but one concept from it always impressed me: Healing Surges. Specifically, that a Healing Surge restores one-quarter of a character’s maximum Hit Points. No more risk of bad dice rolls on healing spells.

That fixed proportion can easily be ported to apply to Potions of Healing in D&D 5e—in any edition, really, but especially in 5e where combat damage frequently outpaces healing abilities. This is a middle ground between the current rule and Nerdwerd’s maximalist option.

Backlinks

• Healing Potions – Ruprechts RPG Blog

Tapestries serve both a functional and aesthetic purpose in castles. Tabletop roleplaying games leave out visual decoration all too often.

Tapestries also imply a wool industry: sheep herding and shearing, weaving, dyeing, et. al.

With my fiction writing, I coined a saying: “When a Muse comes upon you, you don’t ask which one.”

Once again, it is Melpomene (tragedy).

Clear a Path

I have never been a fan of the chromatic and metallic dragons of Dungeons & Dragons, even when ignoring the Alignment aspect. Great variety but otherwise lacking both depth and need, in my opinion. Red dragons are the closest to traditional European mythology: flying fire breathers. That seems sufficient—with one exception.

Regarding Alignment, something recently reminded me that in Basic D&D, with its single Law-Neutral-Chaos axis, white dragons are Neutral. This makes them usable as mounts by non-evil people. A new idea then occurred to me: white dragons, being cold-based, would be the ideal counter to red dragons. Anti-dragons.

Perhaps not even true dragons, but a species created and/or bred by mortals or gods to protect against the true ones.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragon’s Unearthed Arcana has an interesting magical item that I have never seen used: the Anything Sword.

As with several other things in Unearthed Arcana, this power comes with restrictions that make it almost not worth having. Ahem. 😀

This item has great potential for roleplay. So I am going to update it for use with D&D 5e. The biggest change I am making is removing the impermanence.

Anything Sword

Weapon (any sword), Legendary

This sword has a base type (e.g. short sword, longsword, et. al.) and a base +1 magical bonus. While drawn and held, you can use an action to have it transform into another magic sword. This is limited by the rarity of the new form:

• A Uncommon sword, any number of times per day
• A Rare sword, once per day (resetting at dawn)
• A Very Rare or Legendary sword, once per day (resetting at dawn)

It may stay in its new form indefinitely. If still in a Rare, Very Rare, or Legendary form at dawn, it remains in that form but it also expends the appropriate usage for the new day. Note that the sword type counts as part of its form. For example, it cannot change from a Vorpal longsword to a Vorpal greatsword as the latter would be a second Legendary form.

This can be taken further.

Anything Item

Wondrous Item, Legendary

This item has the base form of any Uncommon magical item. While held, you can use an action to have it transform into another magical item. This is limited by the rarity of the new form:

• A Uncommon item, any number of times per day
• A Rare item, once per day (resetting at dawn)
• A Very Rare or Legendary item, once per day (resetting at dawn)

It may stay in its new form indefinitely. If still in a Rare, Very Rare, or Legendary form at dawn, it remains in that form but it also expends the appropriate usage for the new day. Note that the item type/size counts as part of its form just like the Anything Sword.

So it can be all magical items but only one at a time, and only two big ones a day. Very powerful but I do not believe abusively so. Properly legendary.

FYI, the Elemental Blade of Fire is an Anything Item. Its base form is a Ring of Warmth. 😀

Well, spell names. I have never been able to create original spells for Dungeons & Dragons. I would read the Pages From The Mages series in Dragon Magazine issues in the 80’s, and just be intimidated by the concept.

In forty years, I have compiled but a short list of original spells:

• Fire Lance of the Ifrits (inspired by Doctor Strange comic)
• Occular Arc of Flame (inspired by Doctor Strange comic)
• Breath of the Dragon (predates Avatar: The Last Airbender)
• Andesoln’s Unerring Aim
• Eldrughei’s Shroud
• Wrath of the Largorahr
• Arhis’s Shield
• Great Mother’s Succor

(continued from “The A’Taran-Orc War, Part 2“)

The Orcs who came down from the mountains had to focus on staving off starvation. The A’Tarans had not destroyed all the crops and livestock. Every surviving Orc went into the fields. A new governmental structure was birthed in the need to organize labor and food distribution. It was communal and local. It would grow into a diverse set of deliberative systems with a weak central government.

Warriorship was not abandoned, but it would never again be the foundation of rule and law.

(continued from “The A’Taran-Orc War, Part 1“)

The Orc Nation had no fixed defenses—had never needed them. Their remaining military forces were overwhelmed on the verdant plains of their heartland as the A’Taran horde swept east from the gate. The Orc capital city had no walls. The A’Tarans sacked it with great slaughter. The new Orc King died there, but more than that. The entire ruling class was wiped out. The remaining Orc people, shattered and leaderless, fled for their lives into the mountains beyond the capital.

Perhaps shocked by their own savagery, the A’Tarans did not pursue the Orcs further. They abandoned the Orc capital and returned to the gate.

The gate still existed, though. To protect the Empire, they would have to fortify the Rhydin side. And so they did, keeping a portion of the former Orc Nation. The horror of the war also reshaped the A’Taran psyche, but that is not my tale to tell.

For the Orcs, those thirty years brought even greater change….

(continues in “A New Orc Culture Rises From the Ashes of the Old“)

(continued from “On the A’Taran Race“)

Fate had brought the A’Taran to the planet Rhydin III via the dimensional gate. Cruelly, to an area recently conquered by an expanding nation of Orcs. The Orc Nation was for only Orcs; they killed or drove all other races out of their lost lands.

First contact between the Orcs and the A’Taran could only end in violence—and war. More prepared and eager for new conquests, the Orcs slew all the A’Taran in Rhydin and pushed through the gate into the Empire. The A’Taran could only retreat, trading land and blood for time. But time was all they needed.

While currently a peaceful people, the A’Taran had always had a warrior caste. Furthermore, the average A’Taran was taller and stronger than the average Orc. Faced with an invading enemy slaughtering without mercy, the entire A’Taran people rose to fight. The tide turned at the walled capital of the Empire. The Orc army was not repulsed; it was destroyed. The Orc King died there, as well.

The war now reversed completely. An A’Taran horde seeking revenge retook all lost territory and flooded back through the gate….

(continues in “The A’Taran-Orc War, Part 2“)

My primary roleplay collaborator, Brian, has a homebrewed race of anthropomorphic wolves called A’Taran. The race is divided between a star-spanning Hegemony and an unknown (to the Hegemony) splinter polity called The Empire. The Empire’s technology has devolved to a “Medieval” (fantasy) level. They had no knowledge of magic.

The Empire existed upon a single planet until about 35 years ago. That was when they came across an “alien” artifact: a dimensional gate. The first A’Tarans to venture through found themselves in a thick forest with an identical gate behind them. The gate proved both stable and two-way. The A’Tarans began logging the abundant trees, and established work camps.

The Empire had not seen war in living memory. The work camps had only a few proper guards, and their concern was only the possibility of troublesome wildlife. They were not prepared for what was about to befall them….

(continues in “The A’Taran-Orc War“)

The finale of the (someday-I-will-finish) Elmö’s Obligation story will lead to Xenograg recruiting a young orc martial artist as a henchman. He will then recruit others of his species into service with Xenograg, forming a small combat unit (~25). I had envisioned them as heavy cavalry, on horses, but willing to also fight on foot. Their primary duty was to be a bodyguard for Xenograg.

Then the Elmö’s Obligation story gained an unexpected detail while being written: the young bravo (to be named Ingraf) who Xenograg duels was originally to be human but is now hobgoblin. He, too, has a small following of his own people. While not a henchman, this hobgoblin will become a loyal retainer. He will likewise end up leading another small combat unit comprised of his people.

The usual depictions of these species is of hobgoblins being more disciplined than orcs; more soldier than warrior. So should Xenograg’s new heavy cavalry unit instead be the hobgoblins? Do I change the orcs to heavy infantry? Do I leave them both as cavalry, with the orcs being reduced to medium?

I forgot one detail: these orcs are unusual within their own people, specifically that they are martial artists, and are more disciplined from it.

Whether rare or common occurrences, a campaign world will and should have places that are former battlefields. Things to be encountered there:

• mass graves or the remains of large funeral pyre(s)
• Tumuli for fallen leaders or champions.
• stray bones from overlooked corpses
• arrowheads and other military debris
• shrines and/or offerings for honoring the dead

In the prior blogpost, I looked at increasing reload time to slow down rate-of-fire. Now to look at reducing the number of shots per load. Returning to the flintlock as starting point, the lowest number of shots before needing to reload is one. What if we retain the modern, fast reload time?

This is actually very applicable to ray-guns. Energy weapons require power cells which are more analogous to magazines than individual cartridges. Modern ergonomics has the bullet magazine in the pistol grip. A convenient button press plus gravity removes the empty magazine, and your off-hand has the new one ready to insert. My change here is to have a magazine-shaped power cell which is empty after a single shot. Reloading only take a couple of seconds, but has to be done frequently. No dual-wielding here, either.

The third “dial” suddenly becomes the limiting factor: sustained fire depends upon the number of power cells readily available—that you can carry. The return of bandoliers!

Still a problematic rate of fire, but the total amount of shots someone has available is lower than speed-loaded revolvers. Also unlike revolvers, this design cannot fire in a rapid burst at need.

This latter design fits Xenograg’s sonic disrupter weapons. It also answers why the Drachen Walde revolver is still his everyday sidearm: much lower ammunition encumbrance.

While the flintlock and revolver pistols mentioned in the prior blogpost have been fully articulated for roleplay by me, the disrupters never have been. Specifically, the number of shots possible before needing to reload the weapon. This is important for the following reason:

The massive impact that guns bring to roleplaying games (and real life, but nevermind that now) comes from the high rates of fire possible in modern firearms.

Thanks to modern bullets, magazines, and speed-loaders, even a semi-automatic or revolver gun generates a sustained rate of fire far in excess of any other missile weapon. This results in high lethality in gun combat. Unless your game milieu is explicitly about that, it is disruptive to roleplaying. To reduce that lethality, rates of fire need to be drastically reduced.

Sustained rate of fire (SROF) comes from the combination of three factors:

1. Number of shots before needing to reload
2. Time required to reload
3. Number of reloads readily available

Adjusting any one of these “dials” will change SROF. For simplicity, I will confine the remaining discussion to pistols. For my first adjustment, I will draw upon the historical evolution of gun development for inspiration. The focus is on reload time.

For 200 years, the best gun technology was the flintlock. At best, it could maybe fire four times a minute. This was due to it being laborious to load and that for only a single shot. I cannot imagine a high-tech weapon being that difficult/slow to reload, though.

The invention of the revolving cylinder in 1836, C.E., predates the invention of the pre-assembled bullet cartridge. A revolver gave its owner 5 (later 6) shots before needing to reload, but the reload process was nearly identical and just as laborious as with the flintlock—now multiplied by that same 5 or 6 count of bullets. The new combatant type called pistoleers carried two or more revolvers because reloading an empty one would take several minutes; better to holster the empty gun and draw another loaded one. Pistoleers frequently held a revolver in each hand. Revolvers with replacable cylinders were developed to speed up reload time (some), but at the cost of dual-wielding.

Even at this point in history, such a rate of fire is going to be problematic to roleplaying. Less sustainable, at least; knowing you have a fixed amount of loaded ammunition does make one more deliberate in their use. That is only a soft constraint.

The next blogpost will look at focusing upon the first dial.

As prologue for a future post, a summary of existing lore:

Xenograg comes from an Iron Age civilization, but has been in Rhydin for over thirty years. He has had plenty of time to become accustomed to higher technologies—including guns. His marriage to Amaltea first introduced them to him as her homeland of Barsi has a tech level equivalent to our Napoleonic Era. Xenograg’s first gun was a flintlock pistol.

Later exposure to Stars End Spaceport and its “spacer” denizens eventually led to an upgrade. Lady Azjah’s family business, Drachen Walde Industries, includes an armaments division. She repaid a service rendered by Xenograg with the gift of a “modern-yet-retro” pistol: a six-shot 12mm revolver (slug-thrower). It has been Xenograg’s sidearm for over twenty years.

Seeing that the quest to avenge Llewys Greymantle’s death would constitute a small war, Xenograg ordered a cache of guns from Drachen Walde Industries: six crates, each containing a sonic disrupter carbine and pistol. Alas, they did not arrive in time for those battles. Only one pair has ever been taken from their crate, and solely for handling practice. Xenograg has never carried either.

The next blogpost will look at the problem of adding guns to a roleplay milieu.

Granaries are buildings of specialized design and necessity. Even villages will have one.

Tangentially, where are all the breweries?

Once upon a time a friend’s psyker Player Character, Toby, decided to take as a student another Player Character, Reiko. Toby did this despite her known erratic personality. Reiko had already manifested some uncontrolled psychic ability. Toby recognized that if he did not teach her, someone else would.

He did not dismiss his concerns about her character’s character. Instead, he emphasized them in a no-nonsense lecture. He made it plain to her that his motivation was as much for the safety of the community as it was for her own. Should Reiko ever intentionally misuse what he teaches her, Toby said to her face, “I will end you.”

This scene predates Star Wars: The Last Jedi with Luke’s aborted killing of his student, Ben Solo. These are the only two instances of I know where a teacher/master is prepared to kill a student going-but-not-yet-gone rogue. The literary trope is a younger student sent against a rogue ex-student of the same master(s), e.g., Enter the Dragon.

In a milieu where great magical and/or psychic powers exist, this vigilance and grim contingency needs to be standard procedure for every teacher of them.

I had the privilege of roleplaying Xenograg with a gamemaster who is an artist. This piece depicts a scene that was “offstage” during live play; it was inserted later in written form and illustrated.

Earlier in the campaign, Xenograg’s legs had been the focus of a torture session: not crippling, just painful. He and I agreed to keep the scars and some minor disability. It was his idea to have Xenograg wrap his knees over his trousers for support. It makes for a great visual detail. Not the only one, though.

Xenograg wears his sword on his right hip as his right hand was maimed at the time: he was missing his first two fingers. He had to (re)learn to swordfight left-handed.

Lastly, the long sash is of the same exotic material as his cloak, woven by the aastego. It is wound around his waist several times.

For over a year, my attention on the Xenoverse/Rhydinspace has been on Xenograg rebuilding his depleted retinue. Not just rebuilding but expanding it to a size not seen since the Monastery of Arra.

Things are different now, though. Not so much with Xenograg as with me. The monastery-as-warband predates my getting married, buying a house, building a retirement nest egg, and being the primary breadwinner for a (very small) family through easy and rough economic times. My perspective has changed, and I regularly notice how different I see the matter of Xenograg’s responsibilities to his ever-growing extended family. Not just the St. Germain’s but a new generation of retainers.

I used to see these non-player characters (NPCs) solely through the lens of the Dungeons & Dragons rules. Primarily, via their weekly/monthly costs. I did not see the value for quite a long time. Then my game master gave Xenograg three henchmen, at once, to help him survive in what is now called a “duet” campaign. I quickly learned their value both mechanically (e.g., combat) and as a spur for actual roleplaying.

One thing that game master did not include, though, was logistics. Like many roleplayers, he was not interested in the realistic challenge of how Xenograg would manage with three more mouths to feed. His simple solution was ensuring Xenograg always had sufficient wealth to render the issue moot.

I kept that same conceit all the way through the Monastery of Arra. I paid lip service to the realistic necessities by including affectations in my roleplay: Xenograg commenting about being low on funds, regularly monitoring the monastery’s cash flow, fretting the cost of keep construction, needing to take a loan, et. al. But he always had enough.

Good times. Simple times. It is not that I want this gritty realism in my roleplay, now. I just feel that it needs to be there. And that it will have upsides, too, creatively.

I have previously described the Rhydinspace plane/dimension as only a single solar system. I am embracing this preexisting lore as an inspiring limitation. This is more than enough real estate for an outer space roleplay campaign.

A single planet can be challenging to a gamemaster as a fantasy setting. Eight planets with numerous satellites and a single star is a truly intimidating canvas size to me. And that is before adding magic and travellers/immigrants from other places. I am not even thinking of space stations here. (Asteroids? Yes, please!)

Galactic Scale is wide but usually shallow and homogeneous. My aim with Rhydinspace is depth and variety.