Troll in the Dungeon!

In case you aren't familiar with Harry Potter, there is a part in the first book (and movie) where a teacher runs into the crowded great hall and shouts that there is a troll in the dungeon. The school erupts in panic and hijinks ensue for the heroes.

This is far from the most interesting or creative way to introduce a problem to your characters, but if you use it sparingly, it is effective. What better way to galvanize your PCs into action than by having an NPC burst in on them and scream that danger is nearby. Bonus points if that NPC immediately faints so that he or she cannot provide any other useful information.

This is a very silly exercise, but here are some more urban fantasy threats that could appear in unlikely locations.

Troll in the Dungeon

1. Zombies in the kitchen!
2. Imps in the chimney!
3. Nixies in the vents!
4. Goblins in the bathroom!
5. Minotaur in the hallway!
6. Efreeti in the back seat!
7. Dragon in the atrium!
8. Vampires in the elevator!
9. Witches on the veranda!
10. Gorgon in aisle 5!
11. Dark elves in the storage shed!
12. Sirens on the sound stage!

Beginnings

There are many ways to begin your RPG campaign. Many of these methods draw from other forms of fiction: older and more established forms. There are many tropes that come from movies and books. Sometimes, those work well for RPGs, but not always.

RPGs are their own medium, and borrowing tropes and ideas from other media doesn't always work. The interactive, collaborative nature of RPGs clashes with many of these traditional tropes. You cannot dictate your players' actions (or their characters' actions) once the game has begun, not without their approval and buy-in, anyway. So, any narration or opening action has to take place before the game actually begins. The idea here is that if you want the game to begin with a prison riot, don't start it three days before the riot and expect the players to sit on their hands; start the game as the riot begins.

More than just setting the game up before it begins, you cannot narrate the PCs actions beyond one or two simple ideas. Saying "you arrive in Sunshine City and decide to join the Adventurer's Guild; your guildmaster orders you to join the first mission that comes up" sets out several actions that you decided for someone else's character. That might not be what they feel their character would have done after entering Sunshine City, or even after joining the Adventurer's Guild.

Instead, use ideas like "You're on your first mission for the Adventurer's Guild of Sunshine City." The end result is the same, but now the players have more agency to decide what led to this opening. It lets them explain how they came to be there, rather than you telling them. Not only that, but you can jump immediately into the action (or at least into the player-driven narrative) with less GM exposition up front.

Here are some ideas that take the above concept to an extreme. They will help you, your players, and their characters jump straight into the action of a new adventure.

Beginnings (in media res)

1. At the entrance to the Tomb of Princess Titania, the spirit guardian bids you enter and wishes you good fortune. The map should be reliable, at least the half of it that you have.
2. As the port disappears over the horizon behind you, you find yourself wondering whether the legends of spectral pirates and ravenous sea serpents are true.
3. The masked woman leads you through the destroyed prison wall, back out into the city, which is burning in many places. She says, "The creatures came at sundown, as was foretold."
4. The escape pod hits the ground with a jarring impact amidst the bluish vegetation, and the last emergency distress signal from the orbiting cruiser cuts off with a burst of static.
5. The words of the Queen of the Vernal Court still echo in your mind, "The medusae hunt you; your only refuge is in the Dreamworld."
6. The subway screeches to a halt. "End of the line," tumbles from the crackling speakers. This is by far the worst part of town, but the email definitely said 1:00 am. It also said some other things, things that you'd pay dearly to keep secret.

Gen Con 2015

That special time of year is upon us. That time when our hearts turn to Indianapolis, and many of us come in droves to share our passion in person. But not everyone can go to Gen Con; I am lucky enough to live within an hour of Indy, and even I can't always make it.

If you are going, I can only hope that you'll get a chance to play some great games; and if you aren't going, play some great games anyway! In that vein, I'm sharing some one-shot ideas along with a set of dead-simple mechanics. Go wild and have fun!

The Mechanics

Characters have just three attributes with scores of 1-10: grit, knack, and luck. Every action comes under the purview of one of these three attributes. The players begin with 20 points and distribute them among the attributes however they wish, with a minimum of 1 point in each attribute.

When a player takes a difficult action, they roll a d12, and if the result is lower than the most applicable score, they succeed. If the result is equal to or higher than the score, they fail. But they can change a failure into a success by subtracting one point from that score temporarily. Points lost this way are restored either between each scene or once per session, depending on the intensity of the adventure. Note: Success and failure have no mechanical effects, only narrative effects.

In a direct conflict, both participants roll a d12 and subtract their score from the result. The lowest result wins. If the participants tie, the conflict immediately ends in a draw; they must find another way to resolve the situation.

The Ideas

Fanciful Façade: The beasts of the Zhisu Forest love tea and games. They often challenge one another to elaborate contests with strange enchanted artifacts for prizes. Beneath the whimsy, however, all of the animals live in terror of the cruel Emperor of All Spirits.

Academy of High Arts: Adolescent, hormone-filled royals from around the world are gathered at the Academy of High Arts to be trained in combat, etiquette, & magic. What could go possibly wrong?

Enemy of My Enemy: The alien overlords rule Earth, and the average earthling lives as a slave. But in the shadows, mutant werewolves, hacker vampires, and drug-addled warlocks follow their own rules, fighting back against the extraterrestrial oppressors.

Divine Intelligence Agency: Mortals wield magic relics stolen from the divine realms. They use the relics to perform covert ops among the gods in order to thwart armageddon.

The Drakkenlords of Ruàn: Ruthless barbarian sorcerers are the last survivors of Ruàn, a ruined kingdom. They seek bloody vengeance against the monstrous warlords that destroyed Ruàn—the 12 Drakkenlords.

Crouching Cipher, Hidden Data: Disciplined Denshi warriors practice the art of Algorithmics against a coalition of black hats known as The Night. The Night secretly runs the world from behind their screens, but in the online Ethereality, the Denshi fight back.

More Genre Mash-Ups

As I have said before, I love crossovers and mash-ups. Whether you're talking about two IPs being merged together or simply a story that calls on multiple genres. There are all kinds of great reasons to use genre mash-ups: to compare the societies of two distinct time periods (like noir and American West), to take current political ideologies to their extremes (dystopia and political thriller), or just because you want to see a cyborg hacker wielding a laser sword fighting a giant robotic monster (transhumanist, cyberpunk, space opera, and kaiju).

Some genre mash-ups are so common that they are already existing genres themselves (like epic fantasy or science fantasy or post-apocalyptic survival horror). But that doesn't mean that there isn't room to explore within those genres. If you can extricate the separate aspects of the base genres, you can recombine them in new and/or exciting ways.

With that, I present to you another collection of genre mash-ups.

Genre Mash-Ups

Vikings in Hell: Maniacal Vikings set sail for the afterlife to rescue the chief’s daughter from the Devil himself. (epic / fantasy)

Regime of Steam: Queen’s Elite were spies, until National Tinker’s Party came to power; now they’re steampunk dystopia fugitives. (political thriller / steampunk)

Web of Dreams: Outcast demigods eat lotus blossoms to enter the Dreamworld and undermine the Pantheon and its corrupt gods. (mythic / cyberpunk)

Bodies and Minds: Doppelgänger invasion is preceded by radiation burst that triggers psychic abilities in 0.01% of the population. (sci-fi / paranormal)

Achilles’ Eleven: Reborn mythic heroes must steal ancient relics from a globe-spanning criminal organization. (heist / mythic)

War of the Worlds – 65M BC: The asteroid was an attack! A ragtag team of sentient dinosaur survivors fights Venusian invaders. (alien / prehistoric)

Horror Among Thieves: The Thieves’ Guild steals relics from around the world to fight a secret war against the Old Ones. (heist / fantasy / survival horror)

Spaceships, Spies, and Spells: Near-future spies wield tech and magic against the alien invasion going on in the shadows.  (spy-fi / fantasy / sci-fi)

Modern Monsters

I'm a fan of the urban fantasy and modern horror genres. That would include (in my book) shows like Supernatural and books like Inner City: Gargoyles. If you're a fan of that kind of work in those genres, today's table is for you. And even if you're not a fan, you can always drop a monster into your modern espionage game for a Halloween session* or tweak it a bit and add it to your fantasy setting.

Spring-Heeled Jack: A leaping legend from suburban London, the spring-heeled jack is so named for his incredible jumping ability. This figure is often described as wearing a dark coat or cloak, or even as having black wings. Some legends give him sharp claws, glowing red eyes, and even the ability to breath fire. Other legends mark him as much more human, saying that (other than his hideous wings) he looked very gentlemanly or that he could speak proper English. In the early twentieth century, spring-heeled jack made the leap from the England to New England as rumors spread of sightings along the north Atlantic coast.

This creature could make an appearance in an urban fantasy campaign as an antagonist who leaps into the second or third stories of homes and terrifies inhabitants before leaping out again. Perhaps it feeds on fear or even simple mischief, since there are few accounts of spring-heeled jack doing anything truly monstrous.

Servant of Sobek: Sobek was a god of fertility, kings, and charms in ancient Egypt, but he still influences the modern world through his servants. Sobek often took the form of a man with a crocodile head, and his servants take the full form of crocodiles. Every year there are sightings of alligators in the sewers of large cities; to the untrained eye, an alligator and a crocodile can look similar, and, indeed alligators are native to North America, where most of the sightings take place. Really, though, these are the servants of Sobek, using the sewers to move from place to place with ease as they go about the tasks set for them by their god.

The servants of Sobek work best in an urban fantasy campaign that features other mythological deities, especially other ancient Egyptian gods. The servants of Sobek follow the mysterious orders of their god, but they occasionally attack a lone human wandering in the utilities system. Rarely, these creatures may even enter a home through the sewage system, if their master so commands it.

Vulpine Spirit: These ghostly foxes are native to North America and are quite different from the kitsune spirits of China and Japan. A common figure among sleepwalkers, lucid dreamers, and those with seemingly prophetic dreams is the appearance of a shadowy foxlike spirit. The vulpine spirits are not violent themselves, but they are frequently a portent of impending danger. Sightings of vulpine spirits are virtually impossible to confirm because those who claim to have seen it are usually dead within a week.

The vulpine spirits fit into urban fantasy campaigns with other ghostly spirits, but they could also make an interesting detour from physical monster hunting. If the vulpine spirits themselves are not dangerous, why do they portend death? Perhaps they are themselves fleeing a more powerful and dangerous devouring spirit, and they appear to dreamers either to plead for help or to offer sacrifices as a distraction to the devouring spirit that chases them.


*Yes, I know I'm writing this in May, but it'll be Halloween once a year, every year, for as long as this site exists.

Genre Mash-Ups

I love a good crossover or mash-up, and I'm not the only one.

I think that part of the appeal (especially in RPGs) is to create something new, but retain the ability to make easy reference for new players. If you create an entirely original setting idea, then you have to explain a ton of details to everyone just to establish the basic concept. But if you start with a mash-up setting, then you can explain the basic concept with a few words. For example, Shadowrun can describe itself as "Lord of the Rings meets Neuromancer," and people who know those references will have an immediate idea of what kind of world it might be.

I occasionally pull specific examples for mash-ups (see my cyberpunk-Star Wars idea), but generally I prefer to use basic genres, like paranormal and noir. Once I've picked a couple of genres, I isolate a few key elements and see if there's any overlap or stark contrast, and if there is, then I can create a basic framework. After that, it's just a matter of zooming in to the level of detail I want.

Here are a few of my favorite genre mash-ups ideas.

Genre Mash-Ups

Renaissance Resistance: Roman gods return in 1502 to rule Italy through death & fear. Leonardo da Vinci leads the rebels. (clockpunk / dystopia)

Steel and Flesh: Merciless scientific guilds rule from ivory towers. Cyborg rebels follow a bushido and defend the people. (transhumanist / samurai)

Hack the Devil: PCs are hackers with arm-mounted Enochian keyboards that they use to hack reality and counter the forces of Satan throughout the solar system. (paranormal / sci-fi / cyberpunk)

Solar Civil War: Cadets are the only hope for the Union Alliance when the Liberty Confederation ambushes the Solar Fleet. (historical / space opera)

W.E.I.R.D.: In ’47, the Bureau acquired alien tech. Now, 10 years later, they’ll have to use it to stop monsters from Faerie. (paranormal / atomic age)

Trojan War Heroes: Legendary Greek heroes go to Troy by themselves to defeat the Trojan army with their unique fighting styles. (wuxia / mythic)

A Fistul of Neurons: Old West lawbringers arrive in the cyberpunk future and attempt to bring their own style of justice to the dystopia. (western / cyberpunk)

Press Start: PCs are classic video game characters who must recover the pieces of the Genesis Code before an alliance of villains can reboot the universe. (adventure / humor)

Diamond Mind (Download)

Good news, everyone!*

I have transformed my Diamond Mind campaign spark into a five-page campaign overlay. It is free to download in PDF format here and on my brand-new Downloads page.

If you have any feedback (including questions and constructive criticism) please contact me via Twitter or email (ThatOneGM@gmail.com).

* I hope you read that in Professor Farsnsworth's voice.

Campaign Sparks: Diamond Mind (Adventure Hooks)

To wrap up my Diamond Mind campaign spark breakdown, I'm going to present a list of adventure hooks. Ideally, any one of these hooks could lead directly into the main story about Joseph Chamberlain, Archibald Spire, and Facet. Each hook also has a question or two to spark the GM's imagination and drive the hook into a larger adventure of its own.

Adventure Hooks

The Faceless Man
A street urchin runs out in front of the PCs' cab. She claims to have been nearly kidnapped by a man with no face.
 - Who does he work for? Why kidnap a penniless urchin?

Red-Letter Day
Mouleraine Windham-Smythe is looking for someone to investigate Chauncey Whig. Mouleraine believes that the threatening letters being left in his office are the doing of Chauncey.
- Why is Mouleraine being threatened?

Nails and the Hammer
Nails is sending messages throughout the Underground looking for runners, muscle, and gearheads. Nails has a new plan, but no one else in the gang knows all of it.
- Who else might show up to work for Nails? Spies for other NPCs?

Locke and Keye
Dory Locke is planning a serious heist against a wealthy politician. Dory is looking for a team to help overcome the politician's serious security in exchange for a split of the take.
- Why doesn't Dory choose a less secure heist? What has she got against this politician?

Industrious Espionage
Chrissy Plain is discreetly look for outside talent to help with an undercover investigation of the Northern Coal Company.
- Why can't Chrissy do the undercover work herself? And why is the investigation so covert in the first place?

Writing on the Wall
Dustine needs an extra set of eyes and ears to try to catch the person who keeps leaving ominous messages on her wall during the evening rush.
- What do the messages mean? Why are they always left at the same time?

Campaign Sparks: Diamond Mind (NPCs)

Now that we have setting and locations out of the way, it's time to populate those places a bit with some NPCs.

NPCs

• Archibald Spire is an ingenious inventor with a one-track mind and no idea how to run a business.
• Chauncey Whig is a pompous man-at-arms at Parliament. He is aggressive, and he's a stooge of Joseph Chamberlain.
• Christianna "Chrissy" Plain is a tough, tall redhead with sharp mind for security. She is the head of the Queen's Most Distinguished Personal Attendants (her personal agents). Chrissy is level-headed and is a crack shot with any firearm.
• Dory Locke is a telekinetic thief with a clockwork arm designed by Spire. She is a professional thief, but she lives modestly on a few big thefts per year. Dory is generally kind, if a bit forgetful.
• Dustine Mélange is the amiable owner and barkeep of Clatter. She always seems to be surrounded by a calming aura.
• Facet is an enigmatic telepath with designs to rule over all of London.
• Joseph Chamberlain is a charismatic politician with serious influence over Parliament, but not over the Queen. He is strongly against extranaturals and wants them expunged from England.
• Martin is a poor vagrant in a shabby grey cloak. He has a knack for disappearing, and people have a hard time remembering him after he leaves. He sells information in the Underground.
• Mouleraine Windham-Smythe is a keen-eyed politician in the House of Commons. His dark skin makes him stand out, but not as much as his critical voice.
• Nails is a gritty gang leader and an excellent sword fighter. Nails is ex-military and runs the gang with precision.
• Queen Victoria is the clever and intimidating monarch of England.
• Whisper is an empathic assassin who feels the pain and fear of targets.

Campaign Sparks: Diamond Mind (Locations)

Even though our setting isn't large compared to most RPG campaigns, we still need to establish specific locations within it. Our villains need somewhere to hide, our PCs need somewhere to rest, and our encounters need someplace to happen. We don't need much detail for most of these yet; the GM can fill them out with specifics as necessary.

Locations

Abandoned Tunnels
The various tunnels between abandoned stations in the London Underground are the homes of gangs, vagrants, and rats.

Bosom of the Sea
This large, raucous pub is out among the wharfs and serves mostly sailors and laborers. Its customers are loud, unruly, and often violent, but criminals are known to meet here to make secretive deals.

Clatter
This cramped pub is located in the artisan's district, and so its clients run the range of working poor to lesser politicians. Clatter is so popular thanks in part to its inviting atmosphere and friendly barkeep.

Clock Tower (Big Ben)
The famous clock tower of the Palace of Westminster. Deep in its clockwork innards, the mysterious extranatural assassin known as Whisper keeps his lair.

The Diamond Star
This high-class restaurant is actually in a zeppelin that circles above the Hightower district. Aristocrats, politicians, and wealthy businesspeople meet here to discuss matters of great importance. Unknown to all, the powerful telepath Facet hides in the Zeppelin, slowly manipulating the minds of the most powerful women and men in London.

Northern Coal Tower
This is one of the tallest buildings in the Hightower district. It is owned by the Northern Coal Company, but many of its floors are leased out to other purposes. In fact, its uppermost floor is Joseph Chamberlain's personal penthouse.

Northern Coal Warehouse
In the heart of Whitechapel, this large building stores most of the coal burned by the many power plants in the district. It is an old building, converted to a warehouse only in the last few years, and has an entire subbasement that its workers know nothing about. That subbasement is Joseph Chamberlain's secret headquarters, where he is keeping Archibald Spire and building his Queen Victoria automaton.

Spire's Studio
This small shop is almost hidden at the edge of the Whitechapel district. This is where Archibald Spire is known to create and sell his magnificent clockwork creations. Spire is often busy working, however, so his shop is open only rarely.

West Whitechapel Plant
This is the largest of the power plants in Whitechapel. Before the construction of the Northern Coal Warehouse, it had a connection through the London Underground in order to receive coal quickly. This small tunnel, although it is blocked, is the closest connection to the Whitechapel Station.

Whitechapel Station
This Underground station was closed more than a year ago. In that time, a major gang has taken control of the station and now uses it as a headquarters.

Campaign Sparks: Diamond Mind (Setting)

Now that we've established our mood and genre (and influences), it's time to flesh out the setting.

London: City of Clockwork Science

In the year 1897, London is a glittering pinnacle of Western civilization. Horseless carriages, powered by charged gears and coils, rattle down the cobblestone streets; zeppelins, loaded with wealthy passengers, float back and forth between London and the Continent; men and women ride elevators to the top of tall towers and place projected-image tele-calls to the other end of England.

The average Londoner probably works in a power plant; she'll be shoveling Scottish coal*, cranking levers, winding coils, oiling gears, replacing cogs, or monitoring output. Other Londoners work in towering offices, routing tele-calls or calculating the cost of a Watt of power or a pound of Scottish coal compared to various global currencies.

Crime and poverty are still a problem in London, though not to the extent that they once were. Unfortunately, those people living in poverty or driven to crime are even more marginalized and ostracized than ever. They've created an underground culture (literally underground), and they're becoming more bitter by the day.

Whitehall
The governing district of London looks much the same as it always has. Government buildings are slow to change. This district is quite busy, however. London is the center of technology and culture in Europe; so the leaders in London have serious influence over not just England and the Continent, but the whole world.

Hightower
The new money and jobs of London have flowed into the so-called Hightower district like water flowing downhill. Except, in this case, it appears to be flowing uphill. The Hightower district is named after the enormous towers of iron and stone that loom over the city.

Whitechapel
This is a poor district, mostly of working-class folks. There are a number of power plants in the district, and dozens of low-rent apartments. Crime is higher here than any other district, but it is still safer than the Underground.

The London Underground
On the street, travel is noisy, but clean and quick. The low cost of winders (nickname for horseless carriages) means that nearly everyone can afford to drive or take a cab across town. The result of this is that the London Underground still operates, but it has fallen out of favor and is rarely used by most people. The lower elements of society (criminals and the poor) have mostly been driven underground: literally. The London Underground is so empty that many closed-down stations have become the home of gangs and beggar communities.

*An enormous vein of coal that burns virtually smog-free was discovered years ago in Scotland and still puts out enough coal for all of England, and then some.

Campaign Sparks: Diamond Mind (Genre and Mood)

Hopefully, you saw yesterday's Diamond Mind campaign spark. If not, quickly check it out and come back.

Good, now that you're familiar with it, I'll restate my goal: I intend to break this campaign spark down over a series of posts, and rebuild it into a fully fledged outline, ready to be statted out into your RPG system of choice.

Today, I am going to briefly discuss the genre and mood of this campaign spark. I do this first in order to make sure that everything that follows fits together and feels like it's part of the same campaign.

Genre

As I said in the original post, this campaign spark mixes steampunk and paranormal.

I'm going to define a steampunk setting, at least for these purposes, as one with Victorian values and advanced technology that uses simpler mechanisms. In Diamond Mind, the London of 1897 is know as the "city of clockwork science." It has horseless carriages, zeppelins, gyrocopters, elevators, iron warships, tanks, and projected-image telephones. I think steampunk usually also has an undercurrent of filth and exploitation, but in Diamond Mind's case, that niche is filled by the paranormal aspect.

I'm going to define a paranormal setting (again, for these purposes) as one in which magic and monsters exist alongside the mundane, but normal people are unaware of these fantastical elements. Already, in Diamond Mind I have broken this definition, but that's because the setting is on the brink of a change. Up to this point, the "extranaturals" have been nothing more then urban legends to the vast majority of Londoners, but now they are swiftly becoming a reality.

Mood

I think it's safe to say that the mood of Diamond Mind is a dark one. Not grim, like a post-apocalypse setting, but dark. After all, there exists a whole class of people who possess powers that terrify the rest of humanity, and the extranaturals, in turn, fear for their life if their powers are revealed.

But, it does still take place in a city that calls itself the pinnacle of Western civilization in the midst of an age of innovation. So, you know, it isn't all that dark.

Influences

The influences here seem really obvious to me, and I'll call them out briefly and discuss them.

X-Men: I've never read the comics, so what I'm referring to here is the first and second X-Men movies released by Fox. Particularly, the extranaturals feel like X-Men's mutants; especially if a law gets passed early in the campaign that affects the legal status of extranaturals. To that end, it's a story about a society that is learning to fear the other and/or about a society that must learn to overcome that fear and accept the other.

The Great Mouse Detective: This movie is definitely steampunk, and the main plot of Diamond Mind is stolen from, an homage to, eerily similar to that of The Great Mouse Detective. That said, Joseph Chamberlain has a very different villainous style than Rattigan, and Whisper the empathic assassin is definitely a much more serious threat than Fidget the bat.

Campaign Sparks: Diamond Mind (Spark)

I know I just shared an interesting campaign spark yesterday, but it got me thinking about other ideas. In particular, I wondered what the actual process would be for transforming a campaign spark into a full campaign outline, including NPCs, locations, adventure hooks, rewards, etc.

So, I'm going to start with a brand-new campaign spark today, and then I'll start taking it apart and filling in all of the empty spaces. By the end, my goal is to have a full campaign outline that someone could (theoretically) lay over the top of their favorite RPG system and use.

But, as I said, I'm going to start with just the simple spark itself. This one is a mix of steampunk and paranormal, and stars Queen Victoria, a psychic thief, and several sinister plots.

The Diamond Mind

In the summer of 1897, London, the city of clockwork science, prepares for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.  Amidst the excitement are worried rumors: extranaturals—people with psychic powers like empathy and telekinesis—are becoming more common and more dangerous.

Joseph Chamberlain, well-known politician, has kidnapped Archibald Spire (the renowned clockwork inventor) and schemes to replace Queen Victoria with an automaton.  Chamberlain employs the empathic assassin Whisper as his right-hand man.  Whisper knows nothing of Chamberlain’s full plot: to use the clockwork Queen's authority to wipe out all extranaturals.

Dory Locke, a telekinetic thief with a clockwork arm, turns to the players to help her rescue Archibald, her friend, and uncover the plot.  The scheme goes deeper than even Chamberlain realizes; he is being controlled by a powerful telepath, Facet, who plans to take unopposed control of London once the other extranaturals have been wiped out.

The Breakdown Posts

Genre and Mood (and Influences)
Setting
Locations
NPCs
Adventure Hooks