Roleplaying Tips Weekly E-Zine Issue #453
5 Uses for Heroes
Contents:
This Week's Tips Summarized
5 Uses for Heroes
- Patrons and Role-models
- Unfinished Business
- Rivals
- Allies
- Underlings and Followers
Johnn Four's GM Guide Books
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Johnn Four's Gold Standard
New Contest: Combat Hazards
It's time for another community contest. This time it
focuses on interesting combat hazards. What would are some
cool terrain, trap, environmental, obstacle, and strange
hazards that could affect the PCs or their foes during
exciting combat action?
Examples:
- Ye old pool of lava
- Strong gusts of wind that push combatants around
- Teleportation circles combatants use to jump around the
field of combat
- Combat takes place on large disks attached to ceiling with
chains - you get swinging motion plus tippy ground (thanks
White Plume!)
- Thin ice over bone-chilling cold pool
How to Enter
Email me [johnn@roleplayingtips.com] as many combat hazards
you can think of. Each entry gives you a chance to win a
prize, so send along everything you can think of. Use email,
Word, or whatever format works for you. Send entries in
batches if that's easier for you. Everything gets put in a
spreadsheet in the end anyway, for random prize selection.
Feel free to let me know your prize preferences as well.
Deadline
Contest ends July 21. Multiple entries are welcome, but they
must be emailed to me by Tuesday, July 21, 2009.
The Prizes
In total, there are 18 prizes up for grabs.
Winners will be selected randomly, so don't worry about
writing skills - it's the ideas that count.
Entries will be compiled and edited and given back to the
RPG community for free, as I've done with previous contests.
Thanks for helping other game masters with your combat
hazards!
Email johnn@roleplayingtips.com your entries today.
Battle Graph Dry Erase Boards Are Awesome
Last session I had the chance to use Battle Graph Dry Erase
Boards by Longtooth Studios and they are excellent game
master aids.
Each board is dry erase and 11" x 11" x 1/8". The boards are
sturdy and gridded out. Hex grid boards are apparently in
development, too.
A set comes with 4 boards that interlock with each other
like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
The boards are versatile, as you can use them singly or
linked together. For example, in my last session we used a
board to extend a graph paper battlemat out a bit. That
saved paper and a lot of shuffling of books and dice on the
table.
It's been two weeks since my last game. I just tried erasing
the boards now. The dry erase ink came off no problem. Whew!
Thanks a lot to Brian at Longtooth Studios for sending me
these boards for review. I already consider them an integral
part of my GMing kit now. Great product.
Tips readers, you can find out more about Battle Graph Dry
Erase Boards at:
www.battlegraph.com
A Couple of Interesting GMing Articles
I list updates to my blog later in this issue, but wanted to
call out two articles in particular that you might enjoy.
The first is called "Say Yes, but Get There Quick." It picks
up from a tip that appeared a couple times in past
Roleplaying Tips about saying yes more often to achieve
excellent game flow.
This article expands on that tip, and discusses different
uses and cautions about saying yes to your players all the
time.
The second is actually a pair of related articles about DM
screen hacks and recipes. DM screen tips have been popular
in the ezine before, so I thought you might be interested in
more tips and ideas for crafting screens that suit your exact GMing needs.
Have a game-filled week!
Cheers,
Johnn Four,
johnn@roleplayingtips.com
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Twitter
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Reader Tip Request: Merging two WOD campaigns?
Hi Johnn,
I am currently leading a "Vampire - The Dark Ages" campaign,
but soon I will be in charge also for our "Vampire - The
Masquerade" sessions.
I would like to know whether you or your readers have
suggestions about a campaign merging these two games
together. In my opinion, this could be really entertaining,
if well planned.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance and cheers from Italy. :)
Chiara
Send advice, ideas and feedback to: johnn@roleplayingtips.com
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5 Uses for Heroes
Plenty has been written about villains: how to play them,
what motivates them, how they fit into a campaign. Unless
your campaign world is a desolate moral wasteland though,
there's probably a favourable hero to villain ratio, and
that means you have more do-gooders running around than just
the party.
Where do these other heroes come from? Where do they go? And
how can you make them a part of your campaign world without
overshadowing the hero-y-est heroes of them all, the PCs?
Following are a few ideas for your campaigns.
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1. Patrons and Role-models
There were heroes before the PCs came about, and there will
be heroes afterwards.
For at least part of the party's adventuring career, they
will likely be low on the food chain. This means a few of
the heroes around will be more powerful than the party.
These heroes can make great role-models for the party,
offering a glimpse of what the PCs might one day become. A
noble paladin, champion of her god's followers, showered
with accolades wherever she goes. A great and terrible
wizard, his mind nearly gone with madness after endless
pursuits of powerful spells. A brave and brawny fighter,
whom women wish to have and men wish to be.
With heroes like these around, who needs the PCs? Why aren't
these guys solving all the world's problems?
There are many possible reasons:
- They are off fighting greater threats. A world-renowned
paladin might be too busy slaying liches to help a village
with its kobold infestation.
- It's not that they're busy, but more that they're
arrogant; even with no liches to slay, the paladin won't
stoop to clearing out measly vermin.
- The fighter, champion that he was in his heyday, has hung
up his sword and retired. Old age and old wounds have made
him too weak to fight the way he once did.
- Another adventurer might still be in his prime, but have
retired for other reasons: a wife and family or lands to
govern.
- Retired for yet other reasons, the wizard has seen too
many of his adventuring companions slaughtered. Now he hides
from the world in his tower, a shadow of the man he once
was.
Just because they aren't adventuring doesn't mean they're
out of the game. These NPCs can act as patrons for PCs,
dispensing advice on how to fight and live as heroes, or
just telling stories of the good old days.
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2. Unfinished Business
Just because the PCs succeed in all their quests doesn't
mean everyone else does. Perhaps the village is infested
with kobolds because another group tried to raid the nearby
lair and failed, and now the kobolds are out for revenge.
What about that legendary sword, the one that boosts stats
and drains life and is on fire and hurls lightning? The
legends had to come from somewhere: other groups who tried
and failed to retrieve it.
Or the puzzle that has defeated all-comers, the one that
guards the tomb of the ancient high king? The party might
run into a group of defeated adventurers in a tavern,
grumbling about how they knew they should have double-
checked their book of runes before trying to reason with the
obsidian gargoyles.
Other adventurers might get lost in a maze, or raise an
ancient evil they can't quite manage to put back
underground. And what about the Wish spells the players
always word so carefully? Not everyone is quite so cautious.
It seems like every merchant caravan around wants some
heroes to guard them before they'll travel from point A to
point B; and let's not even get started on unwed daughters
of local nobility. If other adventurers make a mess of
something like this, how can the party help sort it out?
It's not that all the other heroes in the world are
incompetent, or even that they're all of a lower level than
the party. It's just that some of them - much like the party
- bite off more than they can chew. But unlike the party,
they don't have the force of the narrative to bail them out.
Not only does this approach provide a lot of non-villain-
related plot hooks, but it also provides a reminder to the
players of what the world looks like when heroes fail.
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3. Rivals
Plenty has been written about the party of rival adventurers
that steals your quest items, runs away with the princess,
and in general is a bunch of conniving wolves in heroes'
clothing. But what if the other party is an alignment other
than Obnoxious Greedy?
A group of rival NPCs might be so goody-good they make your
teeth hurt. They raid the lair of the evil black dragon,
then donate the proceeds to orphans. They rescue the duke's
daughter, then help her get together with the poor farm boy
who was her childhood sweetheart. They clear the rats out of
the tavern basement, then distribute pamphlets on the evils
of alcoholism.
This might be comic relief in one sort of campaign, or
inspiration in another. For yet another campaign, it might
just be economics - how can you deal with a party that is
constantly undercutting your bids, since they'll do anything
for free so long as it helps the greater good?
If your players can't find a creative way to deal with an
entire party of saints, you can always reveal them to be
secretly servants of the most evil god of them all, biding
their time until their fiendish plan was complete.
And what about a party that isn't any better or worse than
the PCs, but merely different? They might all evangelize for
some strange god: not an evil god, just one whose dictates
aren't quite aligned with the deities the PCs serve.
The rival party might not serve a foreign god, but they
could be from a foreign culture. They can still be honest
and valorous, but perhaps their culture is racist, or
sexist, or opposes the current form of government; anything
that would be distasteful to the PCs without actually being
evil.
The opposite could even be true: the rival party might think
the PCs bestow too few rights upon servants or animals, and
compete with the party to show their own way is better.
Whatever the reason, an equally heroic party with a
different moral compass makes an interesting change from the
typical rival group.
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4. Allies
One of the major advantages good has over evil is that good
generally cooperates. So why can't a similarly-powered party
be allies instead of rivals?
There probably isn't a huge market for that +2 flaming sword
you want to get rid of, now that you have the +3 life-
drinking version. It's not as if peasants can afford it,
after all. So why not give it to your friend the NPC
fighter, whose party is heading north for some arctic
adventuring? She might find something up there that would be
more useful to you than to her.
The other party of NPCs can also be a good way to funnel
information to your players about whatever larger story arc
is happening. If the PCs come back from dealing with ogre
unrest in the mountains, only to find that pacifying the
desert ogres was the NPCs' latest mission, they'll know
something much bigger is going on.
Trading items and information can be great for both groups.
It also lets you make recurring villains twice as menacing;
they must be truly villainous if they can harass both
parties at once.
Having a group of allies opens up more adventuring
opportunities. Want to throw in a challenge the party isn't
quite ready for yet? They can team up with their friends to
tackle it. The friendly party is facing a foe they can't
take down alone? They can call in the PCs to help. This
latter choice is especially good for one-off adventures when
you need a pause in your main storyline.
An allied party can also fill in the roles of missing
background NPCs. The cleric's player might not have bothered
writing up a family history, but if he's friends with the
other party's paladin, then at least there's one NPC in
whose fate he has an interest.
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5. Underlings and Followers
The PCs might start out on the bottom of the ladder, but
odds are, they won't stay there. One day, they'll be the
shining heroes parading through town to the adulation of the
masses - and the imitation of lesser heroes.
Lower-level heroes might seek out the PCs for advice,
training, or merely as role-models. They could be accepted
into the party as an apprentice, or merely become yet
another friendly NPC contact.
Either way, there's no end to the trouble the fledgling
heroes can get into. Anything that could trip up a PC -
blackmail, powerful foes, curses - and more. Even if your
PCs all took to the adventuring life because they were
orphans whose parents were killed by savage raiders, that
doesn't mean all heroes are that way. NPC heroes have
families and friends who can get into trouble on their own.
Your PCs might reject this sort of follower, but that
doesn't mean the NPCs will stop trying. A fanatical fan
could be a minor nuisance, or a serious threat. A local
noble's son or daughter with adventuring inclinations might
demand the party take them along.
If the PCs do take on followers, it could attract the
attention of other powerful figures who are jealous of the
party's retinue. And how do you get half a dozen apprentices
safely across a crumbling stone bridge over a fiery chasm?
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business.]
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For Your Game: Magic Item Backstories
- Necklace of Strangling
From: Brad Chacos
The party has been living the adventurer's lifestyle,
spending their platinum in a ferocious way - mostly in the
areas of negotiable repute at best.
One night, the party's barbarian is resting on a couch
after enjoying the company of a beautiful succubus at the
local bordello when she leans forward. She has a unique
proposition; there is a lot of wrangling for position (err,
career-wise) at this particular establishment, and she has
located a wonderful item that would provide her with quite
the leg up over the competition - if the strapping young
berserker and his party would be willing to retrieve it for
her.
The Necklace of Strangling was last seen in the household
of Onasdarae, the third daughter of the Head Assassin. If
the party got it back to the succubus, she would be able to
provide their future services for free, and of course, she
would need to play with the Necklace with a willing soul
before using it for the happiness of the other customers.
- Potion of House Cat Control
From: Beckett Warren
Not so long ago, potions of House Cat Control were
plentiful. They were found in goblins' sacks and dragons
hordes. However, the last two decades have been turbulent
times, with new ruling dynasties, referred to commonly as
"Editions," decreeing what magic was acceptable to be used
within the realm. These once very common potions have all
but vanished.
The heroes, having recently obtained a bracelet of untold
arcane power, have returned to their homestead before
embarking on the final leg of their epic quest. Also living
in the heroes' domicile is a colony of kitties.
One of the feline friends has absconded with the bracelet
and hidden the artifact somewhere within the house. Due to
the anti-scrying wards in place, it is hidden even beyond
the eyes of mages. Only Sir Snowbottom, Slayer of Mice,
knows the location.
Before the heroes can complete their world saving quest,
they must find a now rare Potion of House Cat Control to
persuade Sir Snowbottom to retrieve and return the arcane
bracelet. Doing so might prove to be as difficult as
herding cats.
- Phylacteries of Faithfulness
From: Brad Chacos
Benumk is a dashing young Goblin who recently converted to
the Light of Pelor after being given a back rub and a copper
by a traveling cleric.
He just had the darndest time figuring out what was
acceptable to his new god sometimes - who knew that farting
in the cathedral or taking a shirt from a clothesline was
frowned upon?
The head of the local chapter took pity on Benumk and
strapped a small box with some funny lines on paper in it to
the goblin's forehead, and he's been clear sailing ever
since. He even wears pants and has a job dragging trash from
the local tavern!
Benumk loves his new life, and wants to get his clan in on
this civilized fun. But when he tried to explain the
grooviness to the brood, they either laughed and farted at
his new Happy Box, tried to take his pants, or both.
Determined to improve the life of his clan, he returns to
the cave with a trunk chock full of Phylacteries of
Faithfulness, again courtesy of the head cleric. Now, he
just needs to convince Tebudm and Soruxg and the rest of
his drinking buddies to slap them on and see what they are
missing.
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New GM Advice @ CampaignMastery.com
Campaign Mastery
Read the blog of Johnn Four and Mike Bourke that discusses
game mastering advice and issues.
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Johnn Four's GM Guide Books
In addition to writing and publishing this e-zine, I have
written several GM tips and advice books to inspire your
games and to make GMing easier and fun:
How to design, map, and GM fresh encounters for RPG's most
popular locales. Includes campaign and NPC advice as well,
plus several generators and tables
Advice and tips for designing compelling holidays that not
only expand your game world but provide endless natural
encounter, adventure, and campaign hooks.
Critically acclaimed and multiple award-winning guide to
crafting, roleplaying, and GMing three dimensional NPCs for
any game system and genre. This book will make a difference
to your GMing.
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