Is Your Party Democratic?

   Don’t worry: this post isn’t political.

   It’s a reflection on which in-game means belong to one character alone, and which resources belong to the entire party or group. In some instances, said question can be annoyingly and surprisingly problematic.

   To demonstrate, I’m going to talk about the amazing game my friend Jean-Pierre has been running since the early nineties. Bear with me for a while, ladies and gentlemen, and you’ll see exactly what kind of pickle I’m alluding to.

   Jean-Pierre’s game is a genuine homebrew world with its own original mechanics, stats, proficiencies, and magic system. We also get something called “Dragon Points,” possibly the most valuable resource in the game. Dragon Points are not like Fate Points in Warhammer — they are not “spare lives” for your character, video game style. (“I’m fresh out of Fate Points; the next time I die, I die for good.”) Rather, Dragon Points are like Anything Points, in that you can spend one — or more — at any given moment, to secure those additional arrows your character forgot to buy while passing through town, or to ensure that the sacred scroll he or she is carrying miraculously didn’t get wet when a tidal wave swept the coastal village, or to add a number of successes to an important To Hit roll or ability check. Dragon Points allow you to intercede directly, like if you were to become your own Dungeon Master for just a second...

   As the party is waiting outside the throne room, they happen to hear some other guest mention that Her Majesty the Queen absolutely LOVES a rare wine from Ullendale. Your character can choose to spend a Dragon Point to actually have a bottle of Ullendale wine in his or her pack. When the party is finally allowed entry to the throne room, the Queen’s mood immediately lightens as she is presented with such a thoughtful gift.

   You only earn a Dragon Point when your character does something formidable, heroic, or truly hilarious. They’re hard to come by.

   Around Christmas time, two years ago, Jean-Pierre sent an email to all his players. It was a quiz — five increasingly difficult, in-universe questions about his game world, with a total of 15 Dragon Points to win, per player!

   Personally, I have been jotting down notes and sketching cool NPCs and redrawing city maps in my little notebooks for over twenty years, so I got four out of five questions right, for a total of 12 Dragon Points. No other player approached that in the quiz. One player didn’t even bother to answer the email, not because he’s a bad player, not at all, but he knows he isn’t good at remembering weird fantasy names and fictional places.

   So now my character, Stygia Steve, has a huge pool of 12 Dragon Points. I’ve never had so much of that precious asset in all my years playing in this game.

   First time we get together and play since the pandemic began, our party finds itself into an especially nasty fight with an unkillable samurai zombie and a tough Dwarf zombie, plus a couple undead wolves — and our big plate-mail-clad 17th-level tank is rapidly dropped to 3 HP. Fuck…

   We don’t have a healer per se, so the monk tries his very best at first aid, and my character decides to use the free-form magic system to conjure up some degree of healing, but it is costly, very costly indeed; I’m gonna have to roll at least 30 on my 3d12. Almost impossible.

   “What if I spend a Dragon Point on that roll?” I ask.

   “You add 10 to your result,” Jean-Pierre says.

   “I’ll do it.”

   I roll 3d12, and get 6, 4, and 2. Plus 10 for the Dragon Point, it’s a total of 22, and I needed 30 for that spell to take effect. I wasted a Dragon Point, damn it.

   We need our tank to get through this accursed place — so I try again, and this time, I spend 2 Dragon Points, adding 20 to my roll. The roll succeeds. Our tank regains 30 Hit Points, putting him at 33, but it is still an awfully long way from his max HP.

   So, guess what? I do it again. Two more Dragon Points, and another 30 Hit Points healed.

   The big guy is at 63 HP now. It is safe to continue the adventure, right?

*

   Stygia Steve has 7 Dragon Points left, and the adventure is not over yet. What happens after the next nasty fight? Everyone will pressure me to “heal” the tank, even though healing spells are not my character’s specialty…

   I’ll be able to burn another 6 Dragon Points for three 30-HP healing surges, and then attempt a fourth and last one with 1 Dragon Point… and then…

   What is the worst thing that could happen?

   You can almost see it, don’t you?

   My character could eventually find himself in a situation where he must make a very important dodge to avoid falling into an acid pit; 26 to succeed, 16 on the roll, and if he had a Dragon Point in his sleeve, he could push that roll to 26 and make it by the skin of his teeth.

   Or, he could be hanging off a cliff, while the other characters are either down or busy fighting several opponents some fifty feet away. No helping hand available for Stygia Steve; he loses his grip, and falls to his death. If he’d had at least 1 Dragon Point, I could have said, “I spend a Dragon Point and there’s a long, gnarled root not ten feet beneath me — and I try to grab on to it…”

   But I don’t have any Dragon Points left.

   So I die.

   It’s hypothetical. But still a head-scratcher.

   One player takes comprehensive notes for years and years, draws sketches, memorizes the names of kingdoms and cities and rivers and remote mountain ranges, and then, one day, it pays off. Boom: 12 Dragon Points!

   The party’s tank alone is going to benefit from that.

   Might seem wildly unfair, sure, but the tank protects you and everybody else in that party, doesn’t he?

   Yes he does. He is always right between us and danger.

   So where’s the problem?

   It’s a conundrum; sooner or later, somebody’s going to die for lack of a spare Dragon Point — and it might very well be the one guy who had all the Dragon Points to begin with.

   Am I entitled to keep at least 1 Dragon Point in my sleeve, you know, just in case? In other words, what resources are mine and mine alone?

   I remember seeing this in the early eighties: the paladin is at 2 HP, and the thief (there were no rogues back then) is the only one in the group with a potion of healing… and he refuses to “waste it” on the paladin. Different times. We were way more selfish.

   Now that we live in a sharing economy, naturally, we share resources. Your character found a potion of extra-healing during a solo game last weekend? That potion is still going to benefit the next character in your party who ends up in dire need of healing, whoever he or she may be. And yes: when comes your character’s turn to be in dire need of healing, there might not be any healing resources left in the party’s pool.

   Here’s one easy solution. If you create a quiz to reward those players who take abundant notes, the rewards should be ability improvements and / or single-use powers.

   Question 1. Difficulty: average. Reward: add +20 damage to any melee attack your character makes. One use only.

   Question 2. Difficulty: hard. Reward: increase your character’s Constitution by 1, permanently.

   Question 3. Difficulty: very hard. Reward: even if your character isn’t a spellcaster, he or she gains the ability to regenerate 1d20 Hit Points, 25 times (3/day max). Self only.

   See what I mean?

   While we’re here, let’s broaden the scope of this rumination. Why not replace most magic items with innate character abilities? It’ll only prevent preposterous min/maxing shenanigans. I have seen players transfer all useful items and amulets and bracers and rings to one Dwarf fighter, and then this super-buffed character entered the boss’ lair alone, and fought the entire combat all by himself, while the rest of the party cowered in the corridor, “feeling naked.” And this wasn’t in the eighties, mind you; it was four years ago.

   Not fun tabletop role-playing. Again, video game mindset.

   The ultra-selfish players of 1983 look pretty good now, don’t they?

   Three words: Innate personal powers.

   And it works wonders on NPCs, too. Instead of giving Fingon the Elf a +3 longsword, give him an added +3 proficiency bonus, and the innate ability to hit creatures that can only be hit by magical weapons. It’s much better. The bonus lives inside that NPC instead of in a blade that can — and will — be stolen from him at the very first occasion.

   I’m not mad because of the Dragon Points thing. If I burn them all to heal our party’s tank, so be it. And later, if good ol’ Stygia Steve croaks because he doesn’t have any Dragon Points left — so be it. But it’s a thought-provoking prospect, and writing an article on this topic seemed like a worthy idea.

   We’re due to play our next game in three weeks. Literally anything can happen. And I shall write about it right here. Of course.

   I’ll share.

Low-concept vs High-concept

   What makes a good franchise, and, coincidentally, a good tabletop role-playing game?

   It boils down to two things: low-concept, and humor.

   For example, my next dungeon is a “psionic dungeon.” The party is gonna have to make lots of Psionic Saving Throws if they want to progress within those eldritch alabaster walls. Let’s say there’s a giant flow of ⸨psionic⸩ lava rolling down the stairs. Those who make their psionic save won’t see anything but a regular set of stairs, and they can reach the top in two rounds; but those who fail the save see that huge wave of lava all too well, and if they get too close to it, they even feel the scorching ⸨psionic⸩ heat, and if they actually step into the lava, they take actual ⸨psionic⸩ fire damage… And they can die. And their friends can’t do anything about it, even if they keep yelling, “There Is No Friggin’ Lava! It’s All In Your Head!!!”

   There’s a humor factor in this, of course. Big letters sculpted right into the floor of a room read: “Tangled Forest.” Everyone but the cleric saves against psionics. The party crosses the room in a few strides, but the cleric has to go around tree trunks and step over misshapen roots and fallen branches only he can see and touch. It takes him fourteen rounds to join his comrades at the other end of the room.

   If you can insert a psionic dungeon or, let’s say, a zombified Walmart in your campaign, then that game is low-concept – and it is not a flaw, mind you.

   You can have a zombified Walmart in D&D, why not? Omin Dran and the gang once ended up in Seattle and found a PlayStation console, didn’t they?

   And you can have a zombified Walmart in Marvel, of course.

   And you can even have a zombified Walmart in Star Wars; you just need a weird enough planet where strange vortices keep spewing out junk snatched from the future in “galaxies far, far away.”

   You cannot have a zombified Walmart in Nibiru.

   You cannot have a zombified Walmart in Dune: Adventures in the Imperium.

   D&D has humor. Marvel has humor. Star Wars has humor.

   That is key.

   Purple Worms on strike, demanding better working conditions? Totally okay.

   Arrakis sandworms on strike? Nope.

   Twi’leks launching a new social media platform? No problem.

   Mentats launching a new app in Dune? Nope.

   Psionic dungeons in D&D? Sure. In Marvel? Sure. In Star Wars? Why not? The cave on Dagobah is basically a psionic dungeon.

   Dune is very high-concept indeed, and it won’t make a very good franchise. Apart from the sandworms, there are no monsters to speak of. And you can’t play a wicked Ferengi or a woke Ithorian or a scheming Githyanki.

   If you want your next game to be a zombified, psionic Walmart, you’re in for a treat, I guarantee it. If you just want your heavily-armored highborn from House Whatever to square off against heavily-armored fighters from House Harkonnen, well, I bet there are several video games out there that can do it for you – and much faster, too.

   Whenever they make a high-concept thing like Curse of Strahd, they say it’s a demiplane – in other words, a pocket dimension inaccessible and thoroughly cut off from the rest of D&D. If you take a fantasy setting and make it high-concept without the demiplane hack, it becomes some sort of Middle-earth. You can’t have Tomb of Horrors in Middle-earth, because it would imply that Acererak once ruled – in lich form – a vast kingdom of the undead, and now you have to fit that element in your timeline. Is a lich stronger than a Maia, or weaker than the Witch-king? How did this vast kingdom of the living dead impact the Sindar, the Ents, the Dwarves?

   Middle-earth only have something like 12 sorts of monsters in all. Ogres, Trolls, Uruk-hai, Orcs, Goblins, but no Gnolls, no Hobgoblins, no Troglodytes, no Lizardfolk, no Kobolds, no Hill, Stone, Frost, Fire, Cloud or Storm Giants, no Otyughs, no Xorns, no Ropers or Storopers, no Beholders, no Mind Flayers, no Umber Hulks, no Githyanki or Githzerai, no Mimics, no Piercers, no Trappers, no Carrion Crawlers, no Green Slimes, no Black Puddings, the list goes on and on and on—

   You can’t have hundreds and hundreds of different monsters in a high-concept setting like Middle-earth or Dune.

   Modrons? They’re from Nirvana. Devils? They come from the Nine Hells. Apart from the Timeless Halls and the Void, are there planes of existence in Tolkien’s cosmology?

   High-concept means explanations.

   Explain that Balrog? It is the last of its kind, created by Morgoth during the First Age, and annihilated – except for this one who fled the scene – when the Valar came and destroyed Thangorodrim.

   Explain Shelob? Well, she’s also the last of her kind, a rather puny descendant of the great spider Ungoliant, the one who consumed the Trees of Valinor.

   Now, explain those Gelatinous Cubes, please…?

   Low-concept doesn’t need any explanations: it’s an open buffet, and you can have whatever the hell you want, really. Rabbitfolk? Yes! A Lamborghini? Why not! AD&D had cowboys from Boot Hill, after all. A Star Trek phaser? Sure! Dave Megarry’s druid actually had one. A karate robot? Absolutely! There’s one in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks…

   What you can’t have is a crashed spaceship full of Vegepygmies in the Misty Mountains south of Rivendell. It would shatter Tolkien’s cohesiveness – like Peter Jackson did in The Hobbit when Bilbo and the Dwarves are trying to cross the mountains and stumble right into a titanic rock hurling match between 300-foot tall Earth elementals.

   You broke the world, Peter.

   The largest “monsters” in Middle-earth are Smaug and the Balrog; but if you suddenly introduce 300 feet tall elemental giants that could stomp on a Balrog with one foot and kill it stone dead – that changes the whole story since Beleriand. Indeed, if such gigantic creatures had existed, wouldn’t Morgoth had made good use of them? If he could recruit Ungoliant, he could also recruit those guys. Forget Gothmog: one such elemental giant would have sundered the ramparts of Gondolin like a sledgehammer pulverises a watermelon!

   Peter Jackson took this well-balanced, high-concept world, and tried to turn it into a low-concept monster extravaganza not unlike D&D. Read my lips: It. Doesn’t. Work.

   Imagine this scene in Dune: Harkonnen ships are leaving Giedi Prime to return to Arrakis, when all of a sudden they come across two Borg Cubes, or two Cylon Basestars. WTF?!?

   This is essentially what Peter Jackson did in The Hobbit.

   You can still take a low-concept setting and “high-conceptualize” it with lots of writing, abundant explanations, and the “demiplane” trick, but you can never take a high-concept setting and make it low-concept. Try as much as you like; you won’t succeed.

   Some gamers on social media seem to hate Greyhawk, and I don’t understand why, since they also admit that Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms ultimately suffered from the same flaws as the World of Greyhawk. Lots and lots of monsters and weird kingdoms and character classes and planes of existence? “Fun” is the word you were looking for. All low-concept settings are more or less kludged together: it is the only way to go.

   Low-concept makes for funnier games, while high-concept brings about better novels. Movies and TV shows are somewhere in between.

   Disney seems to be more interested in buying low-concept franchises, which are easily manageable. I wouldn’t be surprised if Disney ended up buying Dungeons & Dragons. The endless deluge of bad TV shows and movies directed by J. J. Abrams would be something to Behold.

Pokémonization

   Someone on the Internet talked about Lucifer, the TV show. They said, “Get Ready For Lucifer’s True Final Form!”

   At first, in 2016, Lucifer had glowing red eyes. Then, he sported beautiful angel wings. Then, he showed us his devil face. Later, Lucifer lost his angel wings. Later still, on Netflix, he got demon wings instead. Then, a full demon body. And finally, he was revealed with his devil face and demon wings and demon body all at the same time.

   Lucifer Mega EX, if you will.

   Slowly but surely, everything is being “pokémonized.” Everything in the mainstream media – and also in tabletop role-playing games, obviously.

   In role-playing games, it translates into each individual paragraph having its own little title. Reading through monster descriptions, each new paragraph has a header or subtitle: “Malicious Glee,” “Challenging Lairs,” “High and Mighty,” “Chained to the Grave,” “Dwellers in Darkness,” and so forth – like lists of powers and effects on Pokémon or Magic cards.

   Incidentally, the first Monster Manual was the original set of critters with stats, but instead of acquiring 10 little monsters at a time in random booster packs, you purchased the complete monstrous collection all at once, from Rot Grub to Demogorgon – from Smeargle to Mewtwo.

   The Monster Manual was so damn popular in ’78 and ’79 that it spawned a monster creation craze in the UK and the rest of Europe, which they called “The Fiend Factory.” Yep, that’s where the Fiend Folio comes from.

   The “build” philosophy is another pervasive effect of pokémonization: you no longer just roll up a new character, you build one – like you build a powerful, kickass deck.

   In First Edition AD&D, a level 10 ranger with STR 18/00 and a +3 longsword could strike a Troll or Hill Giant and do a minimum of 20 points of damage, and he or she got a second attack in that same round. Maximum possible output: 54 damage in one round. A 1e Hill Giant can have up to 66 Hit Points.

   What else do you need to build here?

   Before the pandemic, one of my players decided that his new cleric was a hermaphrodite. That’s cool. A few weeks later, I emailed him a two-page backstory that (kind of) made his character an offspring of the Cat Lord... because the Cat Lord looks pretty androgynous to me. No new shapeshifting powers, no formidable DEX bonuses or catlike reflexes – just a nice and slightly wicked background.

   The character’s mother had gotten lost one evening, and was being pursued by a bunch of zombies – like in Thriller. The Cat Lord showed up and rescued her. The next morning, two giant panthers escorted the young woman back to her village. A few months later, her parents found out that she was pregnant. “The Cat Lord’s baby!” she repeated. Village elders went to find the Cat Lord, demanding explanations. But the Cat Lord insists that the child isn’t his – like in Billie Jean.

   Player gives Dungeon Master something to work with; Dungeon Master gives player something new and original. Player has the right to refuse, of course.

   He could have said, “No way. I hate it.”

   But he didn’t.

   Another player sold his character’s soul to a devil in exchange for two experience levels. That’s gold, right?

   He could have refused to sign the contract. “No way in Hell, man.”

   But he didn’t.

   If and when another player gives me something to work with, I’ll come up with twisted new ideas and outrageous new deals.

   That’s how you “build” a unique, interesting character: not by min / maxing everything all the time and replacing Clustered Shots with a better Metamagic feat, but with some funny, flamboyant, original backstories – and by actually doing crazy shit.

   Sometimes you get the impression that Mike Krahulik and Scott Kurtz don’t really understand how all the game mechanics work – and yet their characters are larger-than-life, and Krahulik’s and Kurtz’s presence at the table is impossible to ignore.

   If you’re dull and uninteresting, your overpowered Sorcedin or Wizarbarian will be dull and uninteresting; at the end of the day, the most important part of your build is you.

*

   Our fact-obsessed culture has pokémonized the work of great authors like Tolkien, Lovecraft, and now, Frank Herbert.

   We gladly forget the writer’s original message, and focus solely on the characters or things he or she had to evoke in order to articulate that message. Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth and Hastur and the Nightgaunts are unimportant in and of themselves – they are but the various embodiments of Lovecraft’s fear and chief concern: the unknowable.

   Since we cannot “play” with the message, we dismiss it out of hand – and invest all our efforts in the systematic enumeration and precise categorization of all those imaginary creatures. A Great Old One isn’t the same as an Outer God, the Outer Gods are totally different from the Other Gods, and so forth. We’ve created a set of Pokémon with HPL’s symbolism: now, the whole thing is gameable, and we know whether Cthulhu is stronger than Mother Hydra, whether a Mi-Go can kill a Fire Vampire, and if the Yithians are in fact older than the Flying Polyps.

   Formless Spawn of Tsathoggua, low-level card. Y’golonac, “EX” card. Nyarlathotep, “Break” card... You get the gist.

   Same thing with Tolkien. Can Saruman defeat a Nazgûl? Is a Troll stronger than Shelob? Could a Balrog actually vanquish King Fingon?

   In the Lord of the Rings video games, you assemble your formidable army, customize your Rohirrim, and recruit some Ents. We have made Middle-earth into one more game of Pocket Monsters.

   And now, since the release of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, people begin to pokémonize the Duneverse, too. And why not? Someone on Facebook asked if the Jedi or the Sith could stand up against the Bene Gesserit.

   That’s certainly not the point of Frank Herbert’s books – but that’s where we are.

   We don’t care for metaphors; we want collectible, sortable critters and beasts.

   The systematic proliferation of minute, easily-accessed, easily-understood snippets of information is making the fluff a bit crunchier by the day. Creative Dungeon Masters could easily bestow new feats – or even a subclass – on any character through storytelling alone. You say: “Ever since you’ve been told that the Cat Lord might be your sire, you have developed a few thief-like skills. You can Hide in Shadows and Climb Walls...”

   Why not let DMs do that instead of feeding the endless stream of stuff that obsessive players can browse and choose and maximize?

   The overall trend is here to stay, I know.

   The only thing we can do is to manage and hopefully keep pokémonization within bounds at our own tables and in our own games.

   I guess I’m suggesting mental Poké Balls –– yes, kids, you got it right.

Dungeon Tiles: Are They Useless?

   There’s been a lot of talk about Dungeons & Lasers, and it should be no surprise; these sets are absolutely breathtaking. But before you dish out enormous sums of money, ask yourself this question: do I need modular dungeon floors and walls?

   Who runs endless megadungeons these days? Who has the time? If you manage to get your entire group around a table for a few hours, first, you’re my hero, and second, would you like to run a fresh, eventful adventure with beginning, middle, and big finish – or are you simply going to pick things up where you left off three months earlier, in room number 18c, and proceed to rooms 19 and 20... and perhaps 21a, if all goes well?

   So here’s the truth.

   You can handle the truth.

   Corridors are a nuisance.

   Corridors are killing the fun of role-playing games by making it always the same fight: wizard in the middle, fighter up front, rogue rearguard, cleric at the ready to heal the tank. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?

   Static. Boring.

   Even in Gloomhaven. Yes, and the reason why so many groups fail within the first room is because it’s the first room: you can’t park your tank in the doorway and then do everything else with ranged attacks – which is what you do in rooms 2 and 3. Not always, mind you, but most of the time.

   You cannot change Gloomhaven, but you can change your own game of D&D—

   Get rid of corridors. And staircases.

   Open spaces only, à la Chris Perkins.

   Take Prisoners of Slaughterfast, for example – the game they played at PAX Prime 2010. Aeofel is stranded in Hell, all alone, standing in front of a huge fortress. In other words, he is fucked. And then, just in the nick of time, his three friends appear in the distance, riding on the back of a hell-cow!

   The entire fight takes place in front of that hellish fortress, in the open, with the big bad looking on from the top of the battlements. Now that’s D&D.

   In the PAX Prime game of 2015, a robot beholder apparatus takes the party to a cavern somewhere in the Underdark. There is a noxious pond in the middle, steep cliffs on both sides, and the head of a (dead) purple worm jutting out from the top of a mound; there’s even some sort of lodging inside the worm’s gaping maw. Looking for loot, Jim climbs up there – and starts hallucinating. Meanwhile, Viari is up a cliff and cutting off a rope bridge, while Omin and Binwin are down by the pond, gauging an Illithid and a weird, shambling Kuo-toa.

   They didn’t split the party, not really, and yet they’re all over the place – still within earshot of each other – in that awesome-looking cave. It ain’t static. It ain’t boring or tedious.

   Another example: the PAX Unplugged game of 2019 happens in and around a colossal hell-vehicle made from part of a tarrasque’s carapace, complete with a stage on top of it, and seating for more than 60 people.

   You should always run that.

   I blame video games for the way doors and corridors are “tactically” put to use in tabletop role-playing games these days.

   Imagine you’re reading one of Robert E. Howard’s classic Conan the Barbarian stories, and you get to a part that goes like this:

   “Broadsword in hand, Conan stepped into the sanctuary; eleven demons lurked in the low-lit columned room, wielding warped, unholy blades. The Cimmerian quickly closed in on the first two demons, delivering five savage slashes and two backswings – but then he had to retreat into the corridor, because his arms and chest were severely lacerated by the demons’ nasty claws and curved blades.

   “Conan drank his first potion of healing.

   “When he reentered the sanctuary, he noted that one demon was in his death throes, sprawled on the blood-soaked pavestones. More demons charged towards the intruder.

   “Conan’s sword chopped off an arm and punched right through another demon’s jaw; that opponent toppled immediately, while the one with the chopped arm was reeling. Conan freed his weapon just in time to swing it at another demon – then, alas, he had no choice but to retreat again into the corridor.

   “He was bleeding profusely from at least ten grievous cuts.

   “He downed another potion of healing and ate a magical berry that the priestess of Asura had offered him right before he journeyed to this fell temple.

   “Conan reentered the sanctuary. Eight demons left.

   “The melee resumed, and the Cimmerian parried scores of deadly blows. He managed to hit the two demons closest to him; one died, and the other lost a leg below the knee.

   “Conan retreated to the relative safety of the corridor yet again.

   “He was covered in blood: his own, and the demons’ evil blood that burned his torn flesh.

   “He quickly drank his third potion of healing.

   “Five down, six to go, he thought.

   “Bellowing Crom’s name, he charged back into the sanctuary...”

   Who would read that? It’s absurd. It ain’t entertainment.

   Personally, I would throw such a book out the window.

   But that’s how most video games work.

   Don’t allow that to happen in D&D. No corridors. Your game can only be improved. There are no downsides whatsoever. And if the party is overwhelmed, the wizard can still cast rope trick, and they can take refuge in there for a while.

   The Dwarven Forge and D&L stuff is beautiful, but you don’t really need it. The only thing you need is one fantastic location, Sly Flourish style, with lots of different things going on in that place. Players and monsters will do the rest.

   And sometimes you don’t even need miniatures, only a detailed diorama – this is gonna blow a few 40K minds, obviously. Take a look at the PAX West 2017 game (Tomb of Annihilation), or the Apothecary / Switcharoo games of 2018, or that one with the aforementioned tarrasque vehicle, and you’ll see.

   I don’t despise modular dungeons per se; I just don’t want D&D to become Warhammer – loads and loads of terrain with a tiny thread of actual gaming buried underneath all that pricey hardware.

   Folks who build and assemble their entire dungeon up front suffer from what we might call the Minecraft Syndrome. If they have fun doing it, that’s fine. Personally, I don’t have that kind of time, so I cut corners – like a movie director. Indeed, when you shoot Star Wars, you don’t build an entire Death Star, you only build the 5 or 6 parts you need for your story.

   I’m not against D&L or Dwarven Forge: I just can’t afford it. But if you have the money, knock yourself out. I shook Stefan Pokorny’s hand after the premiere of The Dwarvenaut. “Lucky you,” I said. “You do what we all love.”

   Model-building is a wonderful craft: you listen to your favorite music, drink some tea or coffee, and forget about absolutely everything else. Hobbyists have been doing it for over two hundred years.

   If you still want to build the whole thing, suit yourself; play Minecraft D&D and then Call of Duty D&D if that’s what your players want. The only overarching rule is fun.

   But if your group seems to be ready for a style that is more targeted and more “open” at the same time – get rid of corridors! Instead of building megadungeons to accommodate your awesome adventures, build awesome adventures to accommodate unique, extraordinary locations, whether it be a vast purple worm cavern or the Darkmagic mansion or the Moloch statue from the iconic cover of 1978’s Players Handbook or a gigantic tarrasque vehicle in Avernus or Arneson’s Comeback Inn (e.g. once the PCs have entered, whenever they try to leave the establishment, they “come back in,” as in inescapable pocket dimension).

   Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins and Dave Arneson all did it.

   Why wouldn’t you?

Most Popular Posts & Why Stay on Blogger

   A few months back, Jeremy of Black Magic Craft shot a video in which he was sort of reflecting on all the things he’d built since the beginning of his YouTube channel, looking back at his entire journey. Personal inventory, et cetera. I couldn’t help but think, “Is he about to call it quits?”

   But he wasn’t. Thank the gods.

   As a blog admin, you get a nice little control panel with all sorts of numbers and statistics and traffic info, so you can confirm that 12% of your blog’s visitors use Firefox – that sort of thing.

   Every time I check those “statistics,” it’s always like, USA 50 views, Canada 35 views, UK 25 views, Germany 12 views... and there’s always: Mozambique 1 view.

   Mozambique? That’s awesome! One person in Mozambique checks out my blog every time I post a new article? One person in Mozambique loves hearing about old-school tabletop role-playing games. I absolutely love that.

   Or maybe Blogger is in fact throwing random statistics in your face just to keep you happy, as they are wont to do. Who knows?

   Blogs do not get tons of comments. It’s not Facebook. The blogosphere is definitely not a Like-based or a Share-based platform. People read a post, they agree, or perhaps disagree, but they still move on to the next post – or the next blog. I’ve been reading lots of blogs since 2010, and I don’t think I have written much more than 50 comments in all those years.

   Blogger is frustrating, that’s for sure. Fonts keep changing randomly, line spacing keep changing, and sometimes you have to tweak the very same thing three or four times before it looks okay – and it looks okay in the web version, but not on phones.

   I read somewhere that no serious employer will ever contact you if your blog has a blogspot address. Well, okay then. A talented person in a cheap car, or a dumbass in an Alfa Romeo, is that really the question?

   Bottom line is: if Blogger was good enough for Grognardia and Chirine’s Workbench, then it’s good enough for me. You’d probably have to tweak as much stuff on WordPress anyway.

*

   Looking at my most popular posts is an interesting and funny exercise. People come to my old-school tabletop role-playing games blog for the things that aren’t old-school tabletop role-playing games. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Blibdoolpoolp

[January 2015]

   This post was just plain silly. I wanted to speak about the goddess Blibdoolpoolp, that’s all. But I made the mistake of mentioning a porn star. And that’s it. That is my blog’s most popular post. If you mention a porn star, you’re gonna get traffic, even if it only pops up on the sixth or seventh or eight page of search results.

   If you want to read this one, read it now, because I might delete it soon.

The Desperate Housewives One Page Dungeon

[August 2014]

   This one is my second most popular article. It was also quite silly, although not as much as Blibdoolpoolp. Let’s assume that it gets this much traffic because of the “Desperate Housewives” part, and not because of the “One Page Dungeon” part.

Behold!

[June 2014]

   Third most popular. This one was made mostly for my friend Jerry who is obsessed with Beholders and has always wondered how Beholders manage to reproduce. I’m not sure what key word gave it away – or maybe it was just a couple 10-year-old boys who found it and sent the link to all the other 10-year-olds. It’s the Internet.

   Really not one of my best articles.

Arneson and Saint Paul (not the city)

[March 2016]

   In my top four, this is the only one that sees traffic because of actual RPG reasons, and not a TV show or a porn star or whatever.

   This is a good one indeed, and I still like it five years later.

Top Five Monsters

[August 2015]

   What do you know – a post on the top five monsters or role-playing games is in my top five most popular posts! I like that. Well done, monsters. Especially you, cultists.

   Guess what? I’m not about to call it quits. We’ll see how it goes. I won’t mention porn stars or TV shows or Shawn Mendes unless I absolutely need to.

   According to those mysterious Blogger statistics, I get something between 80 and 100 readers per article. That’s good enough, right? So I’ll keep blogging for a while.

   I’m doing it for you, Mozambique.

"Bad" Treasure

   Last winter, people on Twitter talked about the new Pathfinder book, and they noted that most of the treasure troves provided within were “questionably sourced.” Their words, not mine.

   But it got me thinking: what is a perfectly “good” treasure?

   Obviously, it would need to be collected with full voluntary consent from each and every contributor – but that is no longer treasure, it’s a fundraiser.

   What is the very first treasure a party of adventurers might find at level 1 in The Keep on the Borderlands? Let’s assume it’s the Mad Hermit’s treasure. Dagger +1, Potion of Invisibility, Ring of Protection +1, 31 g.p. and 164 s.p.

   Upon finding this modest stash, the party should immediately turn back, stop looking for those infamous Caves of Chaos, return to the Keep forthwith, and start investigating. What travelers were robbed of a dagger +1? What nearby farm was recently burglarized? Who lost 31 gold pieces? Is there any story about a lost Potion of Invisibility?

   That +1 dagger belonged to someone before it came in the Hermit’s possession. It should be returned.

   That potion was intended perhaps for a wizard’s unjustly detained mother. It should be handed back.

   Those 31 gold pieces were stolen from various shrines and temples in the country. They should be redistributed.

   Abandoned shrines... Ruined cities... Forgotten temples...

   Maybe they were not abandoned willingly. Maybe the people who built and maintained those places were forced out by an epidemic or some other gruesome calamity – and they couldn’t haul everything away with them? Does it make it fair game? Pompeii is destroyed by a volcano; the magic item that is later recovered from Marius’ house should become the property of Marius’ niece who lives in Rome, right?

   A sword +1 doesn’t just appear out of the blue one day. A wizard had to craft it and enchant it, and the finished weapon was surely meant for someone very specific, maybe the wizard’s nephew, or a trusted ranger friend, or the local castellan. How that sword was taken from the castellan or the ranger or the wizard’s nephew ain’t relevant: it should be handed back to its rightful owner, period.

   See where I’m going with this?

   Locals don’t usually venture into ruined temples or abandoned tombs, because they respect tradition and fear the wrath of the gods – or spirits – or ancient fallen warriors – or whatever. Venturing into ruined temples and abandoned tombs is a foreigners’ thing, like those British “explorers” who went to Egypt in the 1880s. They were no explorers, mind you. Just bored rich guys. The poor working man stuck in a remote mining town in South Wales couldn’t afford to go fool around with his peers in far-off Egypt.

   Is that what a party of adventurers in D&D actually is? Bored, rich folks who can afford to leave their villages and go break into ruined temples and forgotten tombs?

   Let’s take a step back.

   What are the most famous treasures of all?

   Ali Baba’s treasure

   It’s been a while since I read One Thousand and One Nights, but the hoard hidden within that “Open Sesame” cave belongs to the Forty Thieves, right? These guys were not even Rogues, no; just plain old thieves, like in First Edition AD&D. Questionably sourced, for sure.

   Also, the Forty Thieves are stupid. Why have a cave full of unimaginable riches that just sit there, doing nothing? They should put all that money in hedge funds – like the normal thieves do.

   Smaug’s treasure

   It’s been a while since I read The Hobbit, but I don’t recall Smaug volunteering to work with special needs children in Esgaroth and receiving lots of gifts from the very grateful parents. It’s more likely that he ravaged the town several times over the years, and made off with everybody’s own little retirement fund. Same thing he had done to Dale and the Lonely Mountain. Questionably sourced, yes.

   Treasure Island’s treasure

   It’s been a while since I read Treasure Island, but the titular Treasure, which is buried in several locations on the Island, is what old Flint amassed during years and years of piracy throughout the West Indies: Spanish merchants, French traders, English passenger ships and Portuguese caravels. Questionably sourced, arr!

   As for real-life treasures, most of the time they’re just rumors, and so it’s even harder to tell if they’re “good” treasures. Chances are, they are not.

   The Templars’ treasure? The Templars had some gold in each of their monasteries, but not the unique Treasure Tower people talk about. What would have been the point? They were bankers – they needed a gold reserve at every one of their major “branches,” not all in one place.

   Captain Kidd’s treasure? This madman made just one voyage as a pirate captain, and captured three ships. Then his own vessel wasn’t seaworthy anymore, and Kidd had to leave it behind in Madagascar. How much gold are we talking about here? They didn’t capture a friggin’ Spanish galleon. His men probably spent it all on rum and whores.

   The Nazis’ gold? Confiscated jewelry and art collections, sure; but there ain’t no massive iron chest full of eagle-stamped gold bars buried somewhere in Argentina.

   Oak Island’s treasure? Gimme a break. There is no treasure on Oak Island. This whole affair started when two kids noticed an odd circular depression in the ground. Who in the world is dedicated enough to dig a 100-foot pit and then refill it, and careless enough to leave a depression to mark the spot? It makes no sense.

   King Tut’s treasure? This one’s real all right, but it was grave robbery. If I ransack King Henry III’s sepulchre in Westminster Abbey, they’ll throw me in jail. But a Pharaoh’s final resting place, that’s okay? Again, bored rich guys. Questionably sourced.

   I also have a bone to pick with the verb sourced, believe it or not.

   “Sourcing” implies a contractual agreement between parties. Outsourcing: having something made in another country. Crowdsourcing: having something created by many collaborating individuals.

   If you take a walk through the woods and happen to pick up a couple perfect mushrooms, you can’t say they were sourced from the woods; there wasn’t any contract there. The mushrooms were right where they’re supposed to be. You just picked them up. Let’s not invent fancy new verbs for old things. Even the yogurt I ate this morning is made with “peaches harvested in Canada.” Harvested, not sourced.

   But I digress – as I often do.

   Treasure troves are always “bad.” They’re questionable. Sane people don’t amass treasure.

   Smaug is evil.

   Kidd was crazy.

   The Templars were corrupt.

   The Forty Thieves were, well, thieves.

   Now, what does it say about your own treasure-hauling character?

   They, too, are crazy.

   Yep.

   We play these games because they allow us to be crazy. It’s a luxury that real life can’t provide anymore.

   That’s the real treasure.