Tag Archives: dnd
Hill Challenges for Low Levels
Low-level challenges are tricky. Most characters are delicate little flowers that can be accidentally group-wiped with one unlucky tumble of an eight-sided die. They’re underpowered and underequipped. One fumble, failed save, or bad choice might be all it takes to take them out – and even healing up from the less-than-lethal consequences is usually a painful process. You want to give them a challenge – a taste of adventures to come. You want them to learn to use their limited resources and bond as a group over adversities. What small bumps in the road can we throw into their path to elevate the game and help them climb into their characters? I present: the humble hill.
The Case for Collectables
Wizards have united and they’re collecting Weasley’s and Dumbledore’s down at the local park on their smart phones! The Fortnite kids are stockpiling skins and dances (which sounds freaking terrifying if you don’t know what that game is all about). And the Pokemen were apparently such a nuisance that over a billion users had to download the app just to thwart their takeover of the Earth’s augmented surface! What are we talking about? Collectables! Can you use them in your TTRPG’s in between hunting dragons and hunting Cthulhus? Or, are they bound to stay in the realms of video gaming, trading cards, toys, and comics? Oh, and coins. And stamps. And Beanie Babies and Pop Figures… jeez, we collect a lot of stuff.
The Initiative Ritual
Composing Your Counting Customs
In the old Final Fantasy JRPG video games, there was a moment before the beginning of a battle where the screen would flash, an 8-bit sound effect would play (which may or may not have been trying to imitate the sound of clashing swords?), and the image would shift from a top-down overworld view into a statistic-heavy side-glance at the battle scene with all its menus and short, memory-frugal names. It is a video game sequence that elicits a Pavlovian response of joy/dread in those of us who ground out our childhoods (and some of our adulthoods) in the pixelated playlands of old. It was also a brief moment for mental preparation – a subconscious shifting of gears from “explorer” to “warrior.”
You can do something similar when it’s time to roll combat initiative in your game. Treat it like a formal rite and customize it to fit your group’s needs. Elevate it from simple bookkeeping into a ritual summons – drawing attention and setting the mood you wish to set. Conduct your initiative ceremony with the same care that you give to other parts of your game and you will reap the roleplaying rewards.
Five-Minute Languages
J.R.R. Tolkien spent years developing his fantasy languages and then wrote a handful of books to test them out (you’ve probably never heard of them, they’re pretty obscure). Klingon and Dothraki were developed for film and TV – carefully encoded over time with great care. But you’re you. You need to crank out some gobbledygook for game night and you need it fast. Well, hold on to your diphthongs and protect your predicates because we’re doing a crash course on fast-and-dirty language creation.
