Yet Another ... Rise of the Runelords PBP

Game Master ziltmilt

Also don't disregard the need to borrow money.

A lot of rulers found themselves in debt.

Thanks, man ... lots to consider there.

Yes, debt would be pretty easy to add on to the skeleton I described. If a dominion's treasury went negative, you'd assume that borrowing from merchants or bankers was happening, and then the rules would slap on a high interest rate. At some point though, you can't borrow any more, and then the dominion would be looking at collapse: deserting soldiers, tolls uncollected, household staff disappearing, etc.

As far as food shortages, famine, and winter months, a couple of thoughts right off spring to mind:

- some systems differentiate between seasonal activities, but I'd rather not deal with that. I'd like to keep the mechanics abstract and assume that food in summer is getting stored for the winter. And, campaigns might happen where there is no winter at all ... or maybe there's no summer. The mechanics are the same each month, but the GM of course would describe seasonal activities as appropriate.

- most dominion systems have a list of random Events which are tied in some way to a Confidence Level. Events to introduce would definitely include things like drought, famine, theft of resources, granaries raided, etc. As far as mechanics, what would be happening is a fall in population and/or stored resources, but you can dress those decreases in a variety of clothing.

This dominion system is pretty abstract, but I think that's the easiest way to approach this theme without getting bogged down in a lot of details. You're right about the 'knife-edge'. It needs to be tightly balanced, so that a ruler is constantly wondering where to focus his attention among competing demands.

It doesn't need to be a razor sharp knife but you are right it needs to be a balance where investments in feasts, public gardens etc is the exception rather than the rule and investments in infrastructure are a joint public (in Medieval times lords would encourage businesses and trades to move to an area by exception of certain taxes) and private - people wanting to set up businesses

Not sure what's going on, but I can't post on the gameplay tab. I can preview the post, but then it disappears :(

that's weird .. why don't you just post your gameplay here or maybe send it to me via FB?

Perception: 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (8) + 12 = 20

Sorry I missed posting yesterday. We had a Cattanach in our house over the weekend. Only Lleidr will understand that.

We had company. Lleidr, i think you're really going to dig Sentinels of the Multiverse. It's a super-hero themed, cooperative card game, and it's lots of fun.

I'm jealous, seems like a while since I had a Cattanach visit.

I'll look up the game and check it out.

I've got way too many meetings at work

I have some health issues that may take me away from the forums for a few days or more. I will keep things rolling when I get back.

Get well soon! Please help yourself to a potion...

cure light wounds
cure disease
remove poison

Feel better!

Get well soon!

Also, I have a robotics competition this weekend that has me swamped, so I won't be back until Sunday.

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. I spent all day at a small local gaming con, and had a great 7-player session of Battlestar Galactica with 2 of the expansions! I helped win the game after finding out midway though that I was a cylon; it was pretty cool cause I was also the president. Oddly, the other cylon was our admiral, Odama.

I also discovered a great, easy to learn boardgame that plays in less than an hour: Splendor. Check it out if you get the chance.

Sorry I've been absent. Got a case of Christmas crud over the weekend. Think I've got it licked finally.

Yes, yes and yes !!!

Yes, yes and yes !!!

Nerd :)

I really like this guy's blog. If you get a chance, you should check out some of his other articles.

Uncharacteristic of Nicholae I know but he has a lot of frustation built up around Aldern and things related to Aldern and the situation they had back on the estate... plus he doesn't respond well to being pressured.

Geez .. I can't believe you just insulted my NPC like that. Just kidding, a boiling-over temper makes for an interesting character flaw.

In fact, it reminds me of a funny story, also about another religious leader, but this one's real life. The priest at our prior church has a real quick temper and he's honest about it. And, he was talking about his struggles with it during one sermon, where he described getting cut off in traffic. He just about to give the other driver the one fingered salute when he remembered he was wearing his collar.

Found a great blog. This guys has lengthy, detailed posts and a lot of them. He's knowledgeable about the latest versions of D&D but also knows quite a bit about the roots & early days of the game.

Check it out if you get time: DMDavid.com

Cool!

Hey gang - I am traveling right now so posting will be very light for the next two weeks. I hope everyone has a great holiday season!

Happy holidays, Selia!

--- Inside Joke Alert ---

Merry Krishna-mass, Lleidr.

Merry Krishna-mass, Zilt.

Happy holidays, all. I'll come up from my seasonal liquor binge in a day or two:)

Since we're still waiting on the other players to weight in on what to do next, I'd like to share some thoughts on 5th ed D&D. In the latest ruleset, there's no market for magic items like there is in Pathfinder. You can't go to the nearest large city and stand a 75% chance of buying whatever magic item you may want. It's a decision I personally like quite a bit - it helps preserve the wonder and special-ness, not to mention the rarity, of magical items.

So, on what can characters spend their gold, in this new edition? I can see 4 outlets for PC wealth, and I"m borrowing some of this from the DMDavid blog:

- Magic Items: even though there's no magic shops, there could be a network of agents, caravans, merchants, etc., that can provide costly material components for making your own items as well as finding rare items that are rumored to be available in remote locations. Plus, more common magic items, like Potions of Healing, can be bought from what I gather in the rules.

- Adventuring: various expenses for travel can be incurred, such as buying steeds, hiring retainers, as well as research before embarking. Consulting with sages and scholars for info on remote areas and sites of interest, as well as purchasing rare maps and books, could all help soak up quite a bit of PC gold.

- Better Gear: maybe the new edition could have masterwork items, non-magical things that offer bonuses to hit and damage from their superior craftsmanship. As a guess, I'd estimate them to cost 100X their normal counterparts for a +1 bonus. In addition to better armor, weapons, and barding, you could even introduce better backpacks, which have a bit more capacity and weigh less than a typical pack. There's some realism to be gained here. I'm reminded of mentions in Bernard Cornwell's Uhtred novels about higher quality weapons, as well as post-gunpowder armor-smiths in the Renaissance who did demonstrations of how well their plating would turn a bullet.

- Political/social: The game already features a monthly standard living expense. The DM can reward the higher expenses with greater access to society's hoity-toity. In addition, if the PC has a wardrobe of expensive clothes and wears an ornate amount of lavish jewelry, this access will grow. Then, my favorite part, with later stages of the game, you build strongholds and armies, and those are never cheap.

So, gold can do lots of things even without magic shops. It just boils down to giving players interesting choices. What do you think?

And, before I forget, Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas.

I am a big fan of 5th Ed but I believe in keeping the coin down.

I see adventurers as mercenaries or military contractors.

Remember 100gp can set an adventurer up with a good standard of living for 3 months. Thats a good standard of pay over for a week or so of work adventuring. I imagine that an adventurer would aim to have a turn over (call it danger pay benefits) of around 600-2000 a year with much of the year off to pursue their own pursuits.

That gives them a higher standard of living plus some additional money to blow on equipment and fun. Lean gold keeps the adventures hungry. They need to adventure to make ends meet to maintain their wardrobe, whoring, gambling, magical researches etc.

A note on masterwork. Never give masterwork weapons a +1 to hit. It messes with bounded accuracy.

One thing that IS lacking in 5th ed is bonuses to damage. A masterwork weapon should give a +1 to damage. Another system I've seen but I think its clunky is to re-roll '1's on damage, taking the 2nd roll. I dislike that extra die roll.

A masterwork wand or magical focus is also possible, giving +1 round duration or +1 damage etc or even + casting stat in damage on a single school of magic. +1 DC/to hit would be the equivalent of a +1 sword but makes an interesting magic item to give the player. Imagine a ring that does that for all fire spells and gives resistance to fire. That copies Gandalfs ring to some extent.

Masterwork armour can allow +1 dex to AC. For heavy armours thats a good thing. It will cost you some serious coin for MW chain, let alone custom made full plate. You may want to experiment with DR1 as well but thats up to you. Medium armour proficiency is valuable and something rogues might want to look at and archer rangers can benefit from with the +1 dex for MW armours.

If you start giving away 1000's of gold per adventure thats ok but that more or less gives them little to spend it on besides expensive items that are a one off cost. Magic item shopping can be a plot point all of its own - mere gold (though thats part of the deal) is not enough. The owners may well want a few favours as well. Creation is cool too, again costing gold for rare reagents.

Once that is done all gold is useful for is building a castle, thieves guild, wizards tower etc, and maintaining a small territory. That gives the game a very much BECMI/1st Edition feel too. Providing its own possibilities.

A note on Magic item limits: With RAW the maximum number a character can use is 3. I like to House rule that the maximum is equal to your proficiency bonus.

Anyone here good at resizing images of maps so they're conform to the grid in Maptool? I've got an Excel file that's supposed to help with this, but I'm getting nowhere.

There's so many great adventures from old Dungeon magazines, I'd love to get more of them in Maptool for online play.

I find it easier to change the map tools grid to match the image.

I have the worst luck with getting map images whose grids match up with the different sizes in Maptool. I nearly am always off; it's as if the adjustment settings in Maptool aren't granular enough.

So, there is a way to adjust an image's size to get it to conform to Maptool's grid. But I"m not very good at it.

Happy New Year, y'all! I'll be LARPing Lleidr's night at the bar to celebreate, and hope everyone has as good a time :)

Have a good one everybody :-)

Sorry if it may feel like you didn't get anywhere by talking with the guard and scoping out a neighborhood bar, but in fact, you got 2 things accomplished; one of which i'll reveal relatively soon.

I just figured it was the way cops are, get all the information they can but not share anything!

No ... he's being honest. They're behind the curve, big time, cause they're too busy quelling riots and keeping the peace.

Wow! We just passed 4000 posts.

It's nice to see a game have longevity!!

Its a great campaign. Incidentally can some one bot me for a while - am going through some s~%! in my life.

Sure - we will hold down the fort, so to speak. Hope everything works out soon!

No worries, man. Hope things get worked out for you soon!

It looks like Amazon Cloud is displaying the linked images all zoomed in, and I don't see a way to adjust the zoom. Let me know if the maps give you grief.

Will rejoin in a day or three

If you haven't checked out this blog yet, I highly recommend it. Today's post is especially interesting.

Folks, I'm going offline on Sat, 2/13 for a week. So, 2/13 will be my last update until sometime on Sunday, 2/21, or Monday, 2/22.

I'll be spending a week in Paris with my wife to celebrate our 20th anniversary. While there, I hope to take in as many medieval sites as I can for inspiration. My wife doesn't think Fantasyland in Disnleyland Paris is worthwhile, but maybe I can talk her into it. Wish me luck!

Happy Anniversary!

We skipped DL Paris when we were there, and wish we hadn't... But there is also so much to do that it is hard to justify that over other great choices... including just taking some time to walk, sit in cafes and soak up the atmosphere. Good luck! And have fun, no matter what you decide.

Sounds great - have a wonderful time!

Nicolae missed him on a 26?

need some time to level

Is this considered a rest/recovery of spells or do we only get the level 4 etc spells?

For level 7, I'm taking Rogue, making Lleidr a Rogue (5)/Tattooed Sorcerer (2).

no ability increase

Rogue 5 hp: 1d8 ⇒ 8 +1 (CON)
new max hp=56

no change to BAB and saves

+7 skill points:
* +1 Acrobatics
* +1 Bluff
* +2 Disable Device
* +1 Perception
* +2 Stealth

sneak attack damage increases to +3d6

level 7 feat: still researching

favored class bonus: +1/2 circumstance bonus to crit confirmation checks with daggers