Spes Magna Games

If I were handing out trophies to character classes, the prize for Most Liked But Least Played would go the monk. As a player, I like monks. They look like a lot of fun. Since I started RPGing in the late 70s, I’ve seldom played a monk. (The most I’ve played a monk was in the Neverwinter Nights computer game.) The same situation applies to other games. For example, in super hero games, I dig the martial artist, but when I (rarely) get to play in a super hero game I’m most drawn to the brick archetype.

In earlier editions of D&D, monks tended to all be pretty much the same. The introduction of prestige classes brought with it some variety, to be sure, but we old-timers had to wait until the 3E DMG for those. Before that? Well, there was September 1981’s articles about the monk published in Dragon, and our AD&D campaign quickly switched over to the rewrite of the monk class presented in that issue. That really didn’t introduce variety. I suppose a gaming group could have used both the AD&D PH monk and the Dragon magazine monk, but the former’s clear inferiority would make that an odd choice.

Nowadays, in 5E D&D, the rules rewrite the prestige class concept into various subclasses, with each character choosing a subclass at 3rd level. For monks, this means a choice between various monastic traditions. In the 5E PH, we have the Ways of the Open Hand, Shadow, and Four Elements. Xanathar’s Guide expands choices with Ways for the Drunken Master, Kensei, and Sun Soul. (I’m sure there are others examples out there, but I don’t own those books.) Based on the idea that options are good, this is a good thing, but my grognard sensibilities still pop up once and a while.

Back in the day, all monks were human. Period. That was it, no other choices were officially available, et cetera. What’s more, every monk of X level had the same abilities as every other monk of X level. This wasn’t a bad thing. It wasn’t a bug; it was a feature derived from a specific vision of what a certain fantasy campaign world looked like. Newer editions of the game have gone different ways. Today, any race can be a monk, and (after 3rd level) monks vary quite a bit in terms of class features.

A while ago, I published The Dwarf. I wrote The Dwarf because part of me still loves the idea that a dwarf character’s class is Dwarf. Such a Dwarf was my very first character (although he soon morphed into an AD&D fighter/thief while our young selves gradually figured out that B/X D&D and AD&D weren’t quite the same game). To quote me: “Old School meets New School in The Dwarf, a new combination character class/race. Now you can relive the glory days of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game, back when a dwarf was a dwarf instead of a dwarf fighter or rogue or whatever. The Dwarf presents a complete race-as-class, including two new subraces, three new archetypes, and three new backgrounds.”

So, with all of this in mind, I thought, “What if some monk subclasses were race specific?”

In 5E D&D, anyone who wants to can play a dwarf monk, for example. When that dwarf monk reaches 3rd level, the player gets to choose whatever monk subclass seems most fun. The player can have a dwarf Drunken Master or a dwarf Shadow monk. Any other race can also follow any of the monastic traditions available. So, if we compare a dwarf Drunken Master and a human Drunken Master, the thing that distinguishes them is race. The class features are identical.

But ought dwarven monks not have a specifically dwarven monastic tradition? And if the dwarves do, wouldn’t the other races as well?

And so I’ve been working on monastic traditions that are race-specific. I’ve left out humans, half-elves, and half-orcs. They can remain content with the plethora of other options. Dwarves, elves, halflings, gnomes, and dragonborn, however, have their own unique monastic traditions that reflect a particular way of viewing the world and using ki. As of the typing of these words, I’ve completed rough drafts for every monastic tradition except the one for the gnomes. I’ll almost certainly have the playtest PDF available via DriveThruRPG by the end of this week.

When I’m done, seven (maybe eight) new monastic traditions become possible. So far, I’ve written the Ways of the Blade and Bow (high and wood elves), Brimstone (tieflings), the Cave (dwarves), the Dragon (dragonborn), the Hearth (halflings), and the Spider (drow). The gnomish Way of the Prank remains undone, and may turn into two monastic traditions: the Way of the Prank for forest gnomes and the Way of the Clank for rock gnomes.

To end this post, a sample of a few racial monastic tradition features for tieflings, dwarves, and drow, respectively.

Hellish Castigation: Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, your furious indigation at being injured causes your ki to boil. If you spend 2 ki points, you have advantage when attacking with a monk weapon or unarmed strike any creature that has damaged you since the end of your last turn.

Deep Earth Way: At 6th level, you learn to speak, read, and write Terran. Also, you can expand your senses by spending 3 ki points. For 1 minute, you gain tremorsense with a range equal to your bonus unarmored movement. While your tremorsense is functioning, you also have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on hearing.

Greater Spider’s Transformations: At 11th level, your ability to channel your ki along eight-fold pathways improves. As an action, you can spend 4 ki points to transform and gain one of the following benefits:

• You can climb difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings, without needing to make an ability check. You ignore movement restrictions caused by webbing.
• Gain blindsight with a range of 20 ft.
• You gain a bite attack that is treated as a monk weapon. Your bite inflicts damage as a monk weapon plus 2d6 poison damage.

This ability has a duration of 1 hour. While this ability lasts, you can end one option as an action to gain the benefits of a different one.

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

I’ve a confession. I never really cared for Ravenloft, either the classic AD&D module or the setting. To be fair, it probably had more to do with the GMs than the material itself. I understood that Ravenloft adventures were supposed to be scary and suspenseful, but, in my experience, they never were. Ravenloft had its charms, and I like the idea, to be sure, but it never quite clicked for me. Well, never quite clicked for me with one exception: TSR’s wonderful Masque of the Red Death campaign expansion. I only ever played in that setting once or twice, but I enjoyed it. It combined the better elements of AD&D and Call of Cthulhu to craft an intriguing setting.

Before moving on with the further thoughts about Victorian-era Gothic D&D, let’s sum up the conclusion from my last post about using The GUMSHOE System’s concept of investigative skills with 5E D&D.

The GUMSHOE System divides skills into two large group: investigative skills and general. No die roll is ever required to gain information with an investigative skill. If the right skill is applied to the right situation, information is uncovered, and the mystery proceeds apace.

For 5E D&D, the obvious investigative skills are Arcana, Deception, History, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Persuasion, and Religion. That’s ten skills. In an adventuring group, each of the skills should be found among the proficiencies of the characters at least once. This ensures that no clue will go undiscovered because no character has the right skill for the job.

The GUMSHOE System has built into it a limit to how to often investigative skills reveal useful information. In 5E D&D, this same limit can be implemented as X number of uses. I still like the idea of making X equal to the character’s proficiency bonus. Thus, a 1st-level character gets three automatic investigative skill successes. This pool of automatic successes recovers one use after a short rest or all uses after a long rest.

Now for some specifics. In D&D 5E, characters start with at least two skills based on class and probably two other skills from background. If we count tool proficiencies as skills, most characters have at least one more skill. Some have more. For example, a dwarf rogue with the charlatan background starts with a dwarven tool proficiency, stonecunning (a sort of specialized History skill), four class skills, thieves’ tools proficiencies, two background skills, and two background tool proficiencies. If we count most of those as skills, that’s 10 of them (ignoring stonecunning). Change the class to fighter and the character still has seven skills (losing thieves’ tools and two class skills).

Let’s say that we treat the character’s total number of racial, class, and background skills and tool proficiencies as points that can be used to purchase skills and tool proficiencies. Thus, the dwarf rogue (charlatan) gets 10 points. If the character were a right, he’d get seven points. The players and GM make this determination for each of the characters. When selecting skills and tool proficiencies, the top priority is the investigative skills. As mentioned above, each investigative skill must found among the proficiencies of at least one character. Duplicates are fine, of course. Once the ten investigative skills have been accounted for, the players get to spend their remaining skill points on whatever skills and tool proficiencies make sense for their respective characters’ classes and background.

Back to Masque of the Red Death. In that setting, dedicated spellcasters such as clerics and wizards aren’t really a thing. Spellcasting ability is sharply curtailed, and the variety of spells is limited as well. Non-human player character races are also rare if allowed at all. For now, I’m ignoring those aspects, and I’ll likely continue to ignore the limited race selection, mainly because I’m fascinated by the idea that the British Isles are ruled by high elves while France is ruled by drow under the iron fist of their Moon Queen.

What probably merits adapting to 5E D&D are the character kits. For those unfamiliar with 2E AD&D, a character kit is sort of like a 5E D&D background, and turning the Masque kits into backgrounds ought not be too difficult. The kits that would need backgrounding are Cavalryman, Charlatan, Dandy, Detective, Explorer/Scout, Journalist, Laborer, Medium, Metaphysician, Parson, Physician, Qabalist, Sailor, Scholar, Shaman, and Spiritualist. Some of these already appear 5E D&D (such as Charlatan and Sailor), but they might need tweaking to fit the late 19th century Victorian millieu of the Masque.

Of course, no foray into Victorian-era Gothic horror can ignore Chaosium’s excellent Cthulhu by Gaslight. From this fine book, I’m reminded of the importance social class had in the era. Characters are Upper Class, Middle Class, or Lower Class. Occupation is the main factor for determining social class, which in 5E D&D terms means sorting backgrounds by social class. For example, a Laborer is very unlikely to be Upper Class (or even Middle Class). Gaslight offers new occupations specific to its setting: Adventuress, Aristocrat, Clergyman, Consulting Detective, Ex-Military, Explorer, Inquiry Agent, Official Police, Rogue (not to be confused with the character class), and Street Arab (period slang for Lower Class children “adept at surviving on the street”) (Gaslight, page 12). Some of those occupations repeat character kits (i.e., Parson and Clergyman). Even after eliminating repeats, that leaves an impressive list of setting/genre-appropriate backgrounds.

Nota Bene: All of the links above are affiliate links. If you click and buy, I get a pittance.

Tags: game play, GUMSHOE, horror

Well, what an eventful month that seldom saw me leave the house or even move too far from the my official corner of the sofa.

It’s not that I’ve done nothing. I finished up the 2019-2020 school year, including about two months of “remote learning” with my 7th and 8th grade students. Providential was the year-plus that I was self-employed mostly as an on-line tutor. Many of the adjustments that might have otherwise made the transition from classroom to virtual classroom? I’d already done those for months prior to leaving self-employment to return to the classroom.

On the gaming front, little has changed in our schedule. We meet about once a week via remote conferencing. I’m still running my mash-up of d20 Modern, 3.0/3.5 D&D, and old school Chaosium Call of Cthulhu. Our Sunday 5E D&D game goes on. For that latter game, the GM uses Roll20 for displaying maps. For my former game that I’m running, we’re not even that high-tech. No virtual tabletop, no virtual dice, no programmed character sheets, et cetera. Just us sitting in front of computer cameras saying what happens and then rolling actual dice.

I’ve done a bit of reading, but nowhere near as much as I should considering how much time I’ve had on my hands. I did watch season one of Fargo. Good stuff. Started and stopped watching several movies, most of them horror or thrillers, and all of them not worth the time it’d take to finish them.

It’s not that I’ve done no reading. I’ve finished about half of three books. I also read through the SRD for The GUMSHOE System as well as skimmed a couple of the settings for that game. I’ve yet to play GUMSHOE. I like the theory behind it, but I’m not sure how much I’d like it in actual play. Of course, as I just said, I’ve not played it, so I’m probably wrong, and I would like it. That remains to be seen.

But about the theory of GUMSHOE. To quote the system’s site: “GUMSHOE is a system for designing and playing investigative roleplaying games and adventures, emulating stories where investigators uncover a series of clues, and interpret them to solve a mystery.” I like mystery stories. Lots of character interaction and intriguing clues punctuated by acts of violence. Good times. Unfortunately, most game systems don’t handle mystery well, which leads to many GMs also not handling mysteries well (myself included at times).

Two problems may pop up when running a mystery scenario using a traditional RPG, such as, say, 5E D&D:

1. A single low die roll grinds the investigation to a screeching halt.
2. A single character ability makes finding clues way too easy, as might be the case with certain divination spells.

I encountered the hazards of clue finding once at a gaming convention. We were playing Empire of the Petal Throne with an Important Gaming Person as the GM. Everyone was having a grand time as our characters set out to track down the bad guys to mete out some justice. About half way through the session, every player at the table blew a difficult but important check to find the hidden entrance into the bad guys’ lair. At the point in the convention event, the game just kind of trickled to a halt. The Important Gaming Person explained that that’s what happens some of the time, and implied that that’s part of the fun. He was half right but not about the fun.

The solutions? Well, in my experience, the most common are these:

1. Ignore the die roll and/or modify the scenario on the fly.
2. Figure out ways those pesky clue-finding abilities won’t work.

Neither of those solutions have much merit. If a write a scenario and then have to ignore die rolls and/or modify the scenario on the fly because of a bad die roll, I didn’t put enough thought into the design. Why did I have so much hinge on a single die roll? If failure was not really an option, why have the die roll to begin with? Why didn’t I already have other avenues of investigation built into the scenario?

“Solution” 2 is even worse. It’s just bad form to tell a player that his or her character’s abilities don’t work. It’d be like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writing a story in which all of Sherlock’s amazing deductive powers failed at each important point in the story. That would ruin the story. The fun of Sherlock Holmes is not wondering if he’ll notice the clue. The fun is watching Holmes in action and then having him explain how what was elementary to him should have been elementary to anyone who was paying attention.

GUMSHOE gets around both of these problems by proposing two different solutions:

1. A die roll is never needed to find an important clue.
2. A character’s special clue-finding abilities always work when applied to the correct situation.

For example, persuasive skills exist as investigative skills in GUMSHOE. A character might have Charm or Bureaucracy, for example. Consider Charm, which says, “You’re good at making people want to help you, whether you utilize compliments, flattery, or flirting.”

A player running a charming investigator applies the Charm skill against an NPC, and the NPC will reveal at least one clue, assuming the NPC knows anything to begin with. No die roll is needed. It happens, and the interaction is roleplayed. This same concept applies to other investigative skills, such as those relating to specialized areas of knowledge and technical skills.

What’s more, as part of the character creation process, the players build their respective investigators so that at the characters as a group have skill in every one of the investigative skills, divided up between the different characters with some duplication highly probable. No more not being able to find a particular clue because no one in the party has Skill X.

There’s no good reason why this same concept can apply to pretty much any RPG. Consider again 5E D&D. The obvious investigative skills in that system are Arcana, Deception, History, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation (duh), Nature, Perception, Persuasion, and Religion. That’s ten skills. When putting together the adventuring party, the players and the GM should work together to ensure that each of these skills is known by at least one PC. This probably requires tweaking starting skills a bit, but so what? It’s not going to unbalance the game if a fighter starts with three skills instead of two.

During the mystery scenario in which these D&D character find themselves embroiled, no player ever rolls a die to get information using one of these skills. The player describes the skill in action, and the GM describes what happens. If the situation is one in which that particular skill can reveal useful information, then useful information is revealed.

GUMSHOE does have built into a limit to how often investigative skills reveal useful information. Each skill has a pool of points of sorts. When a character is out of points, that character can still use the skill, but it doesn’t work automatically. In 5E D&D, this same limit can be implemented as X number of uses per long rest, for example. My first thought is to link the number of automatic successes with investigative skills to the character’s proficiency bonus. Thus, a 1st-level detective fighter would get three automatic investigative skill successes per long rest.

Tags: game play, GUMSHOE

New magic items ought to appear in 5E D&D games. (Well, really, in any version of D&D, not just 5E.) Part of taking the game-as-written and making it my own involves changing, deleting, and adding things that fit my vision of the campaign world I’m sharing the other players. I’ve offered on this site several examples of new monsters, magic items, and spells for different fantasy games. More often than not, some game, movie, book, or picture has inspired these new monsters, magic items, and spells.

Today is no exception. I present below a few magic items for 5E D&D inspired by the 2001 edition of Kenzer and Company’s HackMaster GameMaster’s Guide (HMGMG hereafter). HackMaster is one of many systems which own at least one book for but which I’ve never played. The HMGMG has impressive density. It’s more than 350 pages of two-column rules, commentary, and advice set forth in a too small font. Seriously. The font aspires but fails to reach 10-point.

But I digress, and now move on with 5E D&D versions of my some my favorite HMGMG magic items.

Belt of Diminished Size
Wondrous item, uncommon

While wearing this belt, you may speak the command word and use an action to cast reduce on yourself. For 1 minute, your size is halved in all dimensions, and your weight is reduced to one-eighth of normal. This reduction decreases your size by one category — from Medium to Small, for example. Until the spell ends, you also have disadvantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws. Your weapons also shrink to match your new size. While these weapons are reduced, your attacks with them deal 1d4 less damage (this can’t reduce the damage below 1). You can end the effect early by speaking the command word and using an action.

Boots of High Kicking
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)

While you wear these boots, you can use a bonus action to kick a target as an unarmed attack. You gain a +1 bonus on the attack roll, and your kick inflicts 1d4 + Strength modifier points of bludgeoning damage. You also make Charisma (Performance) checks related to dance with advantage.

Longbow of Strumming
Weapon (longbow), rare (requires attunement by an elf, half-elf, or bard)

This elegant longbow has six strings instead of one, resembling a cross between a musical instrument and a weapon of war. While unattuned to the bow, you have a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls with this magic weapon. When attuned, you can call upon the full powers of the bow. As an action, you can strum one of three chords on the longbow. The effects of the chord last until the end of your next turn.

First Chord. The first chord grants you advantage with the attack you make with the longbow after strumming the chord. Your nonmagical arrows inflicts +3 additional points of piercing damage instead of +1 additional point of piercing damage.

Second Chord. The second chord causes any nonmagical arrow you fire with the longbow to transform into a fiery missile. The arrow inflicts fire damage rather than piercing damage.

Third Chord. The third chord causes any nonmagical arrow you to fire with the longbow to change course in flight as it races to its target. Your target does not get a bonus to AC from half cover or three-quarters cover. Full cover has its normal effects.

Nose Ring of Viscid Globs
Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement)

This nose ring has 3 charges, and it regains 1d3 expended charges daily at dawn. While wearing the ring, you can use an action to expend 1 of the nose ring’s charges to attack one creature you can see with 60 feet of you. This causes you to expel “a vast quantity of sticky mucus” (HMGMG 230) at your target. The creature must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the creature becomes poisoned and restrained for 1 minute. A creature caught in the mucus can use its action to make a DC 15 Strength or Dexterity check (its choice). On a success, it frees itself, ending both conditions.

Potion of Gnome Gibberish
Potion, uncommon

After drinking this potion, you can speak, read, and write Gnomish for 10 minutes.

Curse. After drinking this potion, you must make a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, you can speak, read, and write only Gnomish, but your spoken and written words are jumbled to the point of incomprehensibility. This effect lasts for 10 minutes or until you are targeted by the remove curse spell.

Tags: 5E D&D, magic items

Last week, I got my print-on-demand copy of Alan Bahr’s Tiny Supers, published by Gallant Knight Games. (Nota Bene: The first link in the previous sentence is an affiliate link.) In my last post, I offered my initial thoughts, praises, and criticisms for Tiny Supers. I also presented the heroic Shaolin Beaver as a Tiny Supers character.

Speaking a superheroes, if you’ve never seen The Pumaman, you have missed one of the worst movies ever filmed. The plot is jaw-dropping. You see, a really long time ago, aliens visited the Aztecs, became the Aztecs’ gods, and, it would seem, one alien took a human wife. Their son was the first Pumaman, a demigod with superpowers and a mind-controlling mask made of gold.

Fast forward to the late 70s/early 80s. The evil Dr. Kobras (played with minimal investment by Donald “I Won Four Lead Actor Tony Awards” Pleasence) has acquired the mind-controlling gold mask and a collection of crude mannikin heads resembling important men. Kobras plans to use the mask and the heads to mind control his way to world domination.

Meanwhile, American Tony Farms gets chucked out a window by Vadinho, the hulking yet wise Aztec who is the last high priest of the alien Aztec gods. Vadinho knows that Tony is the only living descendant of the first Pumaman. With the aid of a magic belt and Vadinho’s coaching, Tony learns to use his Pumaman powers in order to save the world. The Pumaman’s powers? Well, just like a puma, he can fly and phase through solid objects. Also, he’s got really good eyesight and is super-strong.

As ridiculous as all that sounds, it’s ridiculouser watching it unfold on the screen. How ridiculouser? Well, Pearl forced Mike and the bots to watch The Pumaman on Mystery Science Theater 3000 back in 1998.

Which, of course, brings us to Pumaman for Tiny Supers.

Pumaman
Real Name: Tony Farms
Belief: “I am the Pumaman, guardian of the world!”
Weakness: “I’m a ladies’ man. No, really! I am.”

Archetype: Paragon
Archetype Trait: Extra Power. Select an additional Power from the Power List.
Stress: 7

Powers:
Armored (Tier 1). You reduce all damage by 1 (to a minimum of 1).
Flight (Tier 1). You can fly, moving to near the speed of sound at your peak. It takes you two actions to reach your top speed.
Phasing (Tier 1). You may become incorporeal. You may not interact with physical objects and cannot be harmed by physical attacks, although energy attacks are still effective. You may only move at half your normal rate while you are incorporeal.
Super Senses – Sight (Tier 1). You ignore any penalties for having your sight impaired or reduced (such as ignoring blindness).
Super-Strength (Tier 1). If you don’t have it, you gain the Strong Trait. Your Melee attacks do +1 damage.

Traits: Educated, Strong
Mastered Weapons (3d6): Puma Claw Strike
Proficient Weapons (2d6): Punch

Tags: superhero games, Tiny Supers