Spes Magna Games

You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (The Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians 2:19-22)

All religions and secular ideologies hold up certain people as exemplars for those who adhere to the beliefs of the religion or ideology. In the United States, we see this with respect to the Founding Fathers, for example. In the Church, most obviously we see this in the hundreds of saints venerated for their heroic virtue. Numerous other examples could be provided across a wide variety of societies, cultures, religions, political parties, et cetera. When it comes to the various versions of D&D, I’ve often read suggestions that saint-like figures be treated as demi-gods or maybe lesser gods. Most famously, D&D presents to us St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel, a mortal who ascended into the ranks of divinity.

If I were to write up something like a cult of the saints for a fantasy deity, I’d be less inclined to treat those saints as divine themselves, but what would I treat them as? Well, primarily they’d serve the same function as they do in the world today. They’d be role models, men and women and children who offer others examples of grace under pressure. In AD&D terms, they’d be heroes or quasi-deities rather than gods or goddesses. In 5E D&D terms, strong devotion to one of these heroes could be treated as a feat. Here’re a couple of examples:

Sacred Fool
You possess a strong devotion to a sacred fool. This hero is likely someone born into wealth and privilege who renounced his or her birthright in a dramatic fashion, thereafter living life as an example of traits counter to the hero’s culture. For example, a sacred fool born into an sophisticated urban society that strongly emphasized the acquisition of wealth might have become a humble beggar and preacher. Your devotion to a sacred fool provides the following benefits:

• Increase your Wisdom or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• You have advantage on Wisdom (Insight) and Charisma (Persuasion) checks as long as you have not inflicted damage on any intelligent creature since your last short or long rest.
• Choose one of the following spells: animal friendship, charm person, sanctuary, or speak with animals. Using this feat, you can the spell once at its lowest level, and you must finish a long rest before you can it in this way again. Your spellcasting ability is Wisdom or Charisma, depending on which score you increased with this feat.

Scion of a Divine Host
You possess a strong devotion to a martial figure known for his or her victories over unnatural creatures. Choose one type of creature from this list: celestials, elementals, fey, fiends, or undead. Your devotion to a scion of a divine host grants the following benefits:

• Increase your Strength or Constitution score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• When attacking your chosen type of creature, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls.
• When you can see your chosen type of creature and it attacks a target other than you that is within 5 feet of you, you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against that creature.
• You have advantage on saving throws made to resist attacks, spells, and magic effects made by your chosen type of creature.

Tags: 5E D&D, Catholic

Travelers travailing across the Saar Desert face many hazards and obstacles. Sandmen prowl moonless nights. Windstorms whip up scouring clouds that can strip flesh to the bone. Brutal heat and numbing cold alternate each day and night. Wicked water elementals pose as life-giving oases, and all manner of venomous creatures lurk and hunt. Centuries of flash floods during the all-too-brief but fearsome rainy season gouged miles of twisting canyons, the deepest and most treacherous of which is the dreaded Saar Chasm.

The hissing Sybil ants build vast networks of tunnels and chambers in the chasm. Those stealthy, precognitive insects have swarmed more than one careless traveler, their venom quickly inducing paralysis but not unconsciousness, making it easier to drag their hapless prey underground to be drained of blood over a period of several days. Other ambush predators, most of them solitary and reptilian, wait in the chasm, often lairing in the crumbling cliff crypts built long ago by a now dead yet territorial race of deaf necromancers. Would-be tomb robbers venturing into the chasm must do so with the utmost care and quiet. Vicious enchantments etched into the very walls of the chasm transform echoes into stinging words of rebuke and ridicule, made all the more hurtful because they often carry the weight of truth.

Sounds louder than normal speech echo in the Saar Chasm. When such echoes occur, roll 1d4, but rolling no more than once per round. Add +1 for very loud noises, such as multiple combatants smiting about. Consult the list of effects below. In all cases, such effects only apply to those who can hear them and have a language. Creatures hear the echoes of Saar Chasm in their native tongue.

1 – Succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or take 1d4 psychic damage and have disadvantage on your next attack roll made before the end of your next turn.

2 – Succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or fall prone, becoming incapacitated with laughter at another’s expense. You are unable to stand up 1 minute. At the end of each of your turns, and each time you takes damage, make another DC 13 Wisdom saving throw. You have advantage on the saving throw if it’s triggered by damage. On a success, the effect ends.

3 – Succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or take 2d4 psychic damage and have disadvantage on your next attack roll made before the end of your next turn.

4 – Succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or fall prone, becoming incapacitated with laughter at another’s expense. You are unable to stand up 1 minute. At the end of each of your turns, and each time you takes damage, make another DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. You have advantage on the saving throw if it’s triggered by damage. On a success, the effect ends.

5 – The echoes reveal your darkest, most embarrassing secrets. Make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or drop whatever you are holding and become frightened for 1 minute. While frightened by this effect, you must take the Dash action and move away from others by the safest available route on each of your turns, unless there is nowhere to move. If you end your turn in a location where no creature has line of sight to you, the creature can attempt a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. On a successful save, the effect ends.

Tags: 5E D&D, place of power

Matt Jackson, gamer/mapper icon, recently posted CollaboDungeon 01 on his site. As Matt explains, “An idea that came to me while walking my pooches just now. A dungeon and collaboration between all of us to to make something, just for fun. The CollaboDungeon! I post a new map, you blokes and I turn it into an adventure.” Since I’ve turned one of Matt’s maps into an adventure before, I figured why not? Also, I needed something to run for my middle-school gamers at this week’s Ludi Fabularum meeting, so Matt’s map became a stone, and I killed two birds with it.

The result? The Barnacle Barrow of Blunderbuss Crain, a Dungeon World adventure set on Jonathan Newell’s wonder-full Genial Jack from Lost Pages . (Nota Bene: That second link in this paragraph is an affiliate link. If you use it to purchase the PDF, then I got a few coppers. The third link is for the store that sells copies from the first print run. The first link lets you glom the adventure via Google drive.)

When I cobbled together my brief review of Genial Jack, I noted that none of the new races introduced in the book have subraces. To quote me, “Oddly, none of the races have subraces. …. [This] seems a blank space that begs the application of creativity by the players and DM.” Permit me to muse about how subraces might be presented for one of the groups residing in Jackburg.

My choice? The Fomorians. Another quote, this time from Genial Jack: “The giants know as the Fomorians were banished from Faerie by Queen Mab after their leader, King Balor, sought to depose her.” These outcasts went off and conquered an island, which later got earthquaked and deluged, vanishing beneath the waves. Genial Jack literally took in the survivors, and they’ve been part of Jackburg ever since.

Since the book itself establishes that there are two types of Fomorians, it seems most sensible that those become subraces. If I make up a Fomorian PC, I choose between Fair Fomorian or Foul Fomorian. Reading the Fomorian traits presented in the book, I start to see a way they can be retooled gently between “core” traits and subrace traits. Ergo:

Fomorian Traits

Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2.

Age. Fomorians age slowly, reaching adulthood around 25 years of age. They can live indefinitely, with some being thousands of years old.

Alignment. Fomorians retain a tendency toward Chaos from their former ruler, the mischievous Queen Mab.

Size. Fomorians vary in height widely, but all adults are over 10 feet high. You are Large in size.

Speed. Your walking speed is 40 feet.

Tool Proficiency. You gain proficiency with your choice of smith’s, brewer’s, or mason’s tools.

Languages. You can read, speak, and write Common and Jetsam, as well as a dialect of Giant.

Fair Fomorian

You appear very much like a human, but of prodigious size. As a Fair Fomorian, you may be considered comely to human eyes.

Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.

Persuasive. You gain proficiency with the Persuasion skill.

Benevolent Gaze. You can cast Bless once, and it recharges after a long rest.

Foul Fomorian

About nine of out ten Fomorians have warped bodies, perhaps missing a limb, or having mis-sized limbs or misshapen bones.

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.

Intimidating. You gain proficiency with the Intimidation skill.

Evil Eye. You can cast Bane once, and it recharges after a long rest. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell.

Tags: 5E D&D, Dungeon World, Genial Jack, Lost Pages, Matt Jackson, place of power

Nota Bene: The first link below is an affiliate link. If you use it to purchase the PDF, then I got a few coppers. The second link is for the store that sells copies from the first print run (not print-on-demand as I mistakenly had thought). That’s the route I went. All direct quotes come from the book itself.

Jonathan Newell’s Genial Jack from Lost Pages astonishes from cover to cover. Within its 50ish 8.5-inch-by-11.5-inch pages, one finds a fascinating introduction to Genial Jack, “a whale the size of a mountain” that has been for hundreds of years “the host to the teeming town of Jackburg”. Oodles of creatures representing more than a dozen different races/species call the buildings both within and without Jack their home. Ships anchor in Jack’s cavernous mouth. Elevators climb Jack’s inner mouth to reach Mawtown. One can ride the Esophogeal Tram to reach the villages in Jack’s guts. If that’s not one’s cup of tea, then wander across Jack’s immense back, marveling at the Coral Fortress or sampling the wares of the Dorsal District. Able to breathe water? Then dive in and swim down to the Grooves or visit the Barnaclebank Fish Market. All along the way, rub elbows with Draugar, Finfolk, Fomorians, Jellyfolk, and nine other races ready for use as PCs.

After a short introduction that includes a bit of Jack’s history and suggestions about how to use Jack in your campaign, the book details the People. Each of the 13 races are presented on a single page along with a portrait of a representative member. The races include 5E D&D stats, and each is sufficiently detailed and different to avoid Finfolk seeming too much like Jellyfolk. Unsurprisingly, many of the races are aquatic. Each race has a niche carved out in or on Jack. For example, Octopoids “have become merchant princes and princesses par excellence, with tendrils in every business in the city.” The shark-like Selachians tend to live on the fringes of Jackburg society as they hail from “nomadic warrior-bands who roam the seas, taking contracts as they come from islanders and other merfolk, living off what they kill, and in some cases turning to piracy.” I like this approach to handling races. Each has its distinctive appearance, racial abilities, and a societal role within the context of the setting.

Oddly, none of the races have subraces. Perhaps these will be detailed in the next issue of the Genial Jack? If so, it seems an odd way to present the information. If not, it seems a blank space that begs the application of creativity by the players and DM.

Jackburg itself is divided into two sections: Outer Jackburg and Inner Jackburg. Multiple districts comprise each section, and Genial Jack doesn’t so much as detail the districts as it presents them in a few paragraphs of evocative text that introduce the general flavor of the district and then briefly describes possible encounters and noteworthy locations. The encounters and locations sections are like oysters. Pry them open, and one can find pearls, if by “pearls” one means hooks for adventures both short and long. Along the way, the reader gets to meet some of the power groups and movers-and-shakers of Jackburg, from the Whaleguards to spectral pirates to Selachian clerics serving the Sharkfather. Jackburg’s government, laws, and criminal organizations (of which there are five mentioned) also get some description as well.

Smack in the middle of the book is a wonderful double-page poster of Genial Jack, showing the locations of the different districts. It’s not really a map per se. There’s no scale, for example. A nice touch is that back of the right half of the poster includes examples of Jackburg slang. When a ratfolk ruffian says you’re “eelish”, you’ll know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. (Hint: It’s not a good thing.) Then, if you’ve got the “cannonballs” for it, you can pummel him until he’s half “crab-eaten”.

One oddity is the back of the left half of the poster, which is blank. Page 26 talks about the Melonward district. Page 27 is nothing but white. Paolo Greco on DriveThruRPG explains that the page “is blank on purpose, when printed is the back of the removable centrefold.” I’m a bit meh about this. There should be something there. Perhaps more Jackburg slang? A typical tavern menu? Just about anything rather than a blank page. If you’re the type of person who would unbend staples to remove the center map, don’t fret. The two-page illustration of Genial Jack appears near the end of the book as well, right after Appendix A, which is a d20 list of interesting Jackburghers, each one of which could become an adventure hook.

In addition to the lack of subraces and that blank page, there is one other oddity: The table of contents appears at the end of the book, right before the Open Gaming License. It wasn’t until my third or fourth flip through the book that I noticed what I thought was the missing table of contents. The Draugr race is also missing from the table of contents, but they’re a bit aloof, being undead and misunderstood, so they probably don’t mind.

So, Genial Jack isn’t perfect, but what is? Rather than perfection, Genial Jack achieves others effects, all on me the reader. It enchants, amuses, and inspires. Most of the money I spend on RPG products buys something that either sits in a computer folder or gathers dust on a book shelf. Not so with Genial Jack. I want to use it. I want to share it with others via the medium of a game. Indeed, I am doing so, adapting it piecemeal for Dungeon World with my group of middle school students with whom I game about once a week.

I’m most pleased with Genial Jack, and I eagerly await the next issue.

By the way, each picture below embiggens when you click on it.

Tags: 5E D&D, Genial Jack, Lost Pages, reviews

Today is the first day of Epiphanytide, assuming one is using the Gregorian calendar. For the octave of Epiphany, my Magus character class written for Swords & Wizardry is available as a pay-what-you-want product. This means you can snag it for any price between free and, say, $250. Almost a year ago to the day, I wrote up gold, frankincense, and myrrh as magic items for D&D 5E. That post is here.

One of the better changes introduced into D&D quite some time ago is the idea of domains or spheres of influence through which clerics end up getting themed abilities based on deity, ethos, et cetera. These sorts of clerical special abilities appear early on the game.

For example, in 1988’s Greyhawk Adventures by James M. Ward, we find out that Boccob’s clerics “gain limited sage ability” at 8th level. The ever-popular St. Cuthbert has three orders of clerics: “the Chapeaux, the Stars, and the Billets.” Each order has a different special ability. The Billets, for example, “can cast one friends spell per day.” By the time AD&D 2E was all the rage, specialty priests were an established thing, at least in the Forgotten Realms. No more were the clerics of different deities the same.

(N. B.: That previous link is an affliate link. If you click and make a purchase, I get a wee bit of money.)

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (The Gospel According to St. John 1:5)

In D&D 5E, a cleric chooses a divine domain related to his deity. This choice grants access to special domain spells, maybe some sort of bonus proficiency or cantrip, and various special abilities that kick in as the cleric advances in level. Since one of Epiphanytide’s motifs relates to light, I thought an alternate 1st-level Light Domain ability might be fun. This ability would replace Warding Flare.

Confounding Light
Also at 1st level, when in an area of dim light or darkness, you can emit a divine light. You shed bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light for an additional 20 feet. This light can be colored as you like. Aberrations, evil-aligned elementals, evil-aligned fey, fiends, and undead creatures treat the radius of bright light as magical darkness. Your Confounding Light lasts as long as you concentrate, up to 10 minutes. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Tags: 5E D&D, Catholic, Character Classes