Since the opening days of my RPG life, I’ve created backgrounds for my characters. It’s just how my brain works. I love creating characters and their backstories. Don’t worry, I don’t force my GM (or fellow players) to endure reading the pages and pages of hastily-written material I’ve made for my characters. You shouldn’t do that either. Any backstory of more than a single page will end up in the “TL;DR” pile and will never come into play.

However, I’m not here today to talk about extensive backstories for your characters. I’m here to give some advice to the GMs out there creating adventures for their group. At the start of the adventure, there is a thing called a “story hook” that I’ll be covering in more detail next month.

Two elements of an adventure (or any ongoing campaign) that can help generate quality story hooks are backgrounds and factions. By providing a short list of options that are closely tied to your adventure setting, you can sprinkle hooks throughout the adventure to keep the PCs on track toward the end goal of confronting the adventure’s Boss.

Most of this material may feel like Session Zero goods, but its really not. Yes, backgrounds and faction alliances (and oppositions) should be determined during Session Zero, but they must come into play throughout the adventure. Otherwise, there is no point in including them at all. The key here is to ensure everything drives the adventure forward, deepens the experience for the players, or gives them motivation to be included in the adventure’s premise.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds come in a wide variety of flavors and styles, depending on what game you’re playing. It might be a Fate aspect. It might be a D&D 5e background. It could be a series of die rolls on Cyberpunk 2020’s lifepath system. The list goes on and on and on. I can’t possibly cover all of the distinctions here. If I try, I’ll miss your favorite game’s background system, and then the hate mail will flow in. (Or maybe not; you’re a bunch of nice people.) Instead, I’m going to approach this from a higher-level and more generic angle.

Backgrounds should include hooks into one or more of the following aspects of the adventure. Don’t try to wrap all of these into a single background. Otherwise, it’ll just be too much and will overwhelm the player while they try to keep track of how their background impacts their character.

• Relationship with an NPC
• A different style of relationship with a different NPC
• Alliance with a faction
• Opposition to a faction
• Investment in the story hook
• Creation of a bond with a key location or object

Life is better and creation is easier with examples. Here are a few:

Mentorship – Your character is a mentor to Allela. She is interested in learning from you, is always attentive, and brings you a piece of candy during each of your teaching sessions. (Then, in the story hook, Allela goes missing while on a field trip in the nearby Duldin Forest.) (This creates a relationship with an NPC and the story hook.)

Business Venture – Your character is attempting to get a local merchant guild, The Red Consortium, to invest in an import/export idea that you have. Garlu, the headmaster of the consortium, is reluctant, but will agree to entertain the idea if you do him a favor. (In the hook, the favor requested will be to return a family heirloom that his son lost in the recently discovered ruins in the nearby Duldin Forest.) (This ties the character to a faction, an NPC, a location, and possibly an object.)

Forest Warden – Your character is a member of the Wardens of Duldin Forest. You tend to the forest for Duke Arglist, the local leader of the area, by reducing dangers within the forest and preventing poaching of the duke’s deer. Lately, however, the duke has become concerned with a recent discovery of ruins in the forest. He’s unsure how his royal records and maps never revealed the ruins until its discovery last month. (This ties the character to the duke, a faction, and a location within the forest.)

As you can tell, the ruins within the Duldin Forest are probably going to be key. There is some mystery to the ruins as they were recently discovered. There a few minor hooks here, but they have yet to be fully triggered until the opening few scenes of the adventure. If you can “aim” backgrounds toward the same or similar areas, then hooking the characters (and hopefully the players) into the story will be much easier.

As an addendum, these backgrounds are small elements of a character, not the complete story of the character. Don’t write up a character’s background for the player. Just provide some options for them to pick up and build around while they come up with their own stories about what their characters did before the adventure started.

Factions

As you can see from my examples above, the factions are woven into the backgrounds. In my three examples, I made use of two different factions. You can include all of the factions into the backgrounds if you choose, but keep in mind that some of the factions may be opposition, not allies. This is easy enough to incorporate into backgrounds by simply having a faction do some wrong or misdeed to a character within the background.

Not all factions require background hooks, though. It’s easy enough to keep some aside, or even secret from the PCs, until it’s the right moment to incorporate them. While I’m talking about secret factions, I’m going to advise you to use those sparingly. If every other faction is a “surprise reveal,” then the shock value will wear off very quickly and have the impact of yawns and boredom, not actual surprise.

Most factions should be known to the players, even if they are not attached to or opposed against one another. There are plenty of factions in the real world that have zero impact on my life, but I’m aware that they exist. (I’m mainly thinking of the artificial construct of home owner’s associations here.) I would recommend only creating the factions that will have a direct and tangible impact on the adventure’s story flow. Give each faction a brief description, and create a “faction handout” for the players to peruse and reference. Obviously, if you have a secret faction or two, you’ll want to avoid putting those on the handout.

Some details about factions that I like to come up with are the leaders, organizational structure, goals of the faction, why the faction wants to accomplish those goals, and identifying marks (if any) of the faction. I don’t detail the membership rank and file beyond noting how many members exist within each city, village, or key location. For the identifying marks, I break those into two categories. The first is to note how members are marked. This could be a uniform, badge, secret handshake, a tattoo, or something else to allow either the public or fellow members to know who is in the know. Secondly, how do the faction “mark their territory” to let opposing factions know to stay away or stay out?

Conclusion

I hope this article helps you come up with some quality adventure-related backgrounds and factions to put to use. I touched on story hooks a little in this article, but next month, I’ll be doing a deep dive into story hooks and how to lay them in front of the players with proper bait on the hook.

This time around, I’m going to talk about the order in which you design your adventures. There are many takes on this, and loads of approaches to use. However, I’m going to focus in on what works for me. If it works for you, great! If you give it a try, and it doesn’t quite jive with how your creative processes work, that’s fine too.

As you can tell from the title of the article, I’m going to be talking about adventure design in the order of do the back of the book first, then work toward the front of the book, with one exception. I encourage to know where the story starts at a high level. Determine your location, setting, situation, and any NPCs needed for that opening scene. Don’t setup the story hook just yet. That’ll come later because the hook will point the PCs toward the Boss fight and the final scene.

Opening Scene

Figure out where in the world you want the PCs to start. This can be a village, a city, an outpost, a set of ruins, or some place that has a named marker on your overland map. Then, determine the specifics of where in that location you want the PCs to be when they get the hook. This could be a tavern, a temple, the village square, a row of merchants’ tents, or something similar.

Don’t determine your hook yet. The hook is a pointer to the first stop across many navigation points. You’ll need to determine where the PCs are going to go and what they’re going to face prior to pointing them in a direction. Not having your final location and scene determined is like shouting “ROAD TRIP!” and diving into the car without having a map or a plan. Sure, you might have some fun and adventures, but without that map, you’ll soon wonder where you’re going to end up. That’s not the best plan of action when it comes to planning out an adventure for your players.

The Boss

Figure out who the Big Bad Boss of your adventure is going to be. The world is your oyster, but make sure the Boss reflects that mood, tone, and theme of your adventure. If you’re going for a whimsical, humorous story about unrequited love, the Boss should probably not be an eldritch horror from the depths of the ocean. I mean, that could work, but the bar for success will be set very high.

Once you know who the Boss is, determine what they are trying to accomplish. Does the Boss want to perform a ritual to douse the sun for a full month? Does the Boss just want to open a portal to escape to another realm? Does the Boss want to open a gateway to summon horrific creatures from a far realm into the local area? Does the Boss want to take over a local trade route to make some coin? Perhaps the Boss is a spurned lover of a local NPC, and the Boss just wants to make that NPCs life as miserable as possible.

Whatever they are trying to do, it is paramount to also document why the Boss is trying to accomplish their goals. This motivation will allow you to adjust the Boss’s goals and approaches when the party gets in the way of the goals. A good Boss has a backup plan.

The Lieutenants

Once you know your Boss, go out and create or find appropriate Lieutenants for the adventure. It’s pretty rare that the party will beeline from the opening scene to the final location to confront the Boss. There are going to be obstacles, side treks, mini-quests, and other things to pull the party aside from going straight to the Boss’s lair and putting a good whippin’ on them. This is where the Lieutenants come into play. Depending on the length of your adventure, find some varied Lieutenants for the party to work their way through. A good range of headcount here is 1-3 Lieutenants. You can do more if the adventure is longer of if the party is going to encounter more than one Lieutenant in a single location.

The Underlings

All Bosses and Lieutenants need people to give orders to. Otherwise, they’re not very good at their jobs. This is where Underlings come into play. These people and creatures are generally more numerous and weaker in power than the Boss and Lieutenants that you’ve come up with.

Underlings can be absolutely loyal, completely fanatical, swords for hire, or thoroughly unreliable. They can also be a mix of those attributions, so there might be a chance for the PCs to undermine the Boss’s power structure by hiring away, cajoling into cooperation, or dominating into fleeing some groups of Underlings. Straight combat and slaughter of the Underlings will most likely happen in some encounters, but that gets boring if the Underlings’ sole purpose is to sap the PCs’ resources and hit points.

Final Location and Scene

Once you have your power structure of Boss, Lieutenants, and Underlings in place, you’ll need to figure out where the Boss is going to be encountered and who will be with them when the PCs finally arrive on the scene. This location needs to be discoverable by following a trail of clues, information, and signposts (not literally) that the PCs come across throughout the adventure. They need to be able to clearly traverse from the opening scene to the final location.

Document what the final scene will look like. Where is it? What does the room, set of rooms, complex, or arrangement of buildings look like? What’s the exterior and interior made of? Give some good, potent descriptions here of the setting that support your mood, tone, and theme.

Also figure out what else is going on here beyond “The Boss is waiting for the PCs to show up.” Areas always have activities going on, even when the PCs aren’t present. Figure out what those activities are to make your setting pop and come alive.

Work Back to Front

Have you ever cheated at solving a maze? Yeah. You. I’m looking at you. It seems to me that mazes are more difficult to solve if you start at the entrance and work your way to the exit. However, it just seems to be easier to go from the exit toward the entrance. Maybe it’s just me.

Once you have your final location, setting, and scene established, you can work your “adventure maze” backward toward the opening scene. You know where you are at the end. You should have an idea of what information the PCs need to get to that location. Where can they find that information? Build out that new location with proper setting, Lieutenants, Underlings, mood, tone, and theme.

Now you have a new location that the PCs will need information to get to. Where can they find that information? Hey! Now you have yet another location to detail.

Repeat the above process until you’ve followed the trail from back to front to get to the opening scene.

Set the Hook

The location of interest nearest the opening scene in the order of the story arc needs to be pointed to via information. This is your story hook. This is the first piece of pertinent information the party is going to receive. This is probably the most important piece of information the party is going to receive. If they ignore it, dismiss it, don’t latch onto it, or just plain miss it, then the adventure is dead in the water. You don’t want this to happen.

This means your opening salvo of information needs to be timely, pertinent to the PCs, actionable, achievable, and not too horribly risky at first glance. Once you have momentum in the story, your future bits of information can be helpful in nature, but if you can make each piece of information along the way as vital to the PCs as the opening story hook, all the better.

Up Next!

Next month, I’ll be talking more about backgrounds and factions. These will help you out in creating and setting that initial hook. If you have proper backgrounds and factions in place for the players to incorporate into their characters, then you can even develop multiple hooks for the various backgrounds and factions that all point in the same direction. This will make the start of your game even more potent! More on that next month, though.

When starting to design an adventure for your home group, the first things I always consider are the mood, tone, and theme of the adventure. This will dictate all design decisions, descriptions, monsters included, sometimes the treasure gained, and the general aesthetics of everything I create for the adventure.

Before I jump in, you’ll note that I’m leaving genre out of this list because I’m assuming you already have an established genre for the game you’re running for your group. If you’re working with a “clean slate” (meaning no campaign in flight for this adventure), then you really should determine the genre(s) you’re going to take into account for this adventure. Picking the genre first will drive many of the tropes, assumptions, styles, and approaches for storytelling within the adventure.

Having said all of that, I’m going to delve into mood, tone, and theme, in that order. I truly feel that one leads to the next that leads to the next. I always do them in this order.

Mood

This is the emotional resonance of the adventure. This encompasses the presentation of the material and the feels you want to evoke in your players by way of their characters’ experiences. I highly encourage you to head over to David Hodder’s web site and look at the top “emotion wheel” he has posted there. You’ll start with the innermost level of the wheel and pick an emotion. Then drill toward the outer edges to find more precise emotions.

I recommend having several moods/emotions chosen for your adventure, but make sure they’ll mesh together or have one lead to another. Sometimes, an adventure can present different moods at different stages of the adventure. Perhaps the adventure starts with a village celebration (jubilation) that gets invaded by nearby ravagers (panic) until the party of adventurers restores calm (content). However, during the invasion, the beloved mayor of the village is slain (rage/hate), so the adventurers take it upon themselves to venture into the nearby wilderness to put an end to the ravagers once and for all (stimulated). When they successfully return from their mission (satisfied), the villagers heap glory and accolades upon them (relieved/passion).

Tone

The tone of the adventure is how things are presented to the GM and the players. I’m assuming the GM is you, so you’ll want to make sure your notes, ideas, writings, and concepts reflect the tone you want to present to the players. By approaching your writing of notes with a specific tone in mind, you’ll be more consistent in your presentation of that tone to the players.

Some examples of tones for adventures are:

• Optimistic
• Pessimistic
• Joyful
• Sadness
• Fearful
• Hopeful
• Humorous
• Serious
• Horrific
• Mundane
• Warmongering
• Peaceful
• Weird
• Normal

Theme

The theme of your adventure can, I would argue should, borrow from literary themes. They are well-established, well-researched, and in many places are thoughtfully presented for your education. There are numerous lists of themes on the Internet. A quick search for “story themes” will produce gobs of results. Set a timer for 20-30 minutes before doing any research like this to avoid wasting hours down “the Internet rabbit hole.”

The lists of literary themes are so numerous and lengthy, I’m not going to try and reproduce them here. Instead, I’m giving you the above homework of doing your own research. I just don’t have the space or word count here to even sum up themes that can be applied to adventure creation.

Most of the themes are going to reflect how your PCs interact with the events and situations in your adventure. If you come up with your theme and then design an encounter that doesn’t support or mirror that theme, then the encounter might feel like a waste of time to the PCs. If you can tie every setting, every encounter, most NPCs, and the story arcs to your theme, the adventure will feel more like a cohesive whole rather than random bits tied together with string.

Taking my above example of the ravagers attacking the village during a celebration followed by the PCs tracking down the ravagers in the wilderness and putting an end to them, I would propose that my theme should be something along the lines of “righteous justice.” However, if I shift things around a bit and have the ravagers motivated by their leader’s love for the mayor’s daughter, the theme can change to “unrequited love.” If the daughter loves the leader back, it changes again to “fated love.” If there is no love element in the story arc, but the ravagers are going through a famine and just needed some food the villagers wouldn’t (or couldn’t) sell to the men and women in the wilderness, then you have a “survival” theme. This can be especially true if the famine of the wilderness is creeping toward the village and its farmlands.

The key is to pick a theme to run with, so that it can properly inform and color your story as you put the pieces together.

Changes Over Arcs

I’m also going to add on here that if you have multiple “acts” or “story arcs” within your adventure, you can have a different theme (or mood or tone) for each act of the adventure. I’m mainly working off the assumption that your adventure is a single act, but if it’s longer, then you can definitely have multiple choices going on here. The longer your adventure, the more opportunity you have to explore different aspects of storytelling within your plans.

Stay Tuned!

Next month, I’m going to tackle a concept that I came up with (though it’s probably not unique) called “designing back to front.” I hope you liked this article and stick with me for the next one.

Welcome to a series of adventure design articles that I’m going to publish over the course of the next many months. The idea for this series hit me hard while I was at the bus stop waiting to pick up my man-child. I’d gotten there about twenty minutes early, and the ideas just starting flowing. Like any good writer, I have a notepad and pen in the center console of my car. Within a few minutes, I had the small notepad page filled with ideas. Before I was done, I had most of the following ideas brainstormed and titled.

I also reached out to social media to see if anyone had concepts to add to the list, and an additional idea came in. If more good ideas come in, I might expand upon this series.

The core conceit of this series is to give you bite-sized chunks to chew on and think about as you design adventures for your home game. This might help you in creating adventures for publication as well, but my main target audience is for the home brew GM that is making adventures for their personal group. If there is interest, I might include a wrap-up article from my perspective on how to organize an adventure for publication.

I’ve tried to order the articles in such a way as to allow you to build upon the knowledge step-by-step without getting overwhelmed. As I move through the series, if you think of ideas that I can add to the list or concepts you want me to cover, feel free to comment on the articles. I’ll see what I can do to provide details in those areas for future articles.

For now, I’ll leave you with a teaser list of titles that I’m going to cover with this series of articles. I hope you find them useful and thoughtful.

1. Mood, Tone, and Theme
2. Detailing Back to Front
3. Backgrounds and Factions
4. Story Hooks
5. Thematic Environments
6. Thematic Bosses
7. Thematic Mooks
8. Combo Encounters
9. Maps and PC Handouts
10. Supporting and Opposing NPCs
11. Clues, Rumors, and Connective Tissue
12. Node-Based Design

• Symphony Entertainment
• Sorrow in Tsavo
• Carousel of Fears
• Miskatonic Repository

I like the lore, the gore, and the story of it. Iron shoes stomping lonely travelers and then, just to add insult to death, the Redcap dips their cap in their victims blood to keep themselves sated. Nice and gruesome. So I dropped one into my game, called it The Redcap, capital THE, as part of a dark fey thing going on in my campaign. Thing was I wanted to make the Red Cap part of the Redcap a little more special. So I came up with a mechanic to allow the players to rip the cap off its head. A Descending Difficult Check.

I’m going to give you the example first and then follow it up with the format so you can use this idea in a game where it would make sense.

The Redcap’s cap provides the creature with a bunch of buffs: extra defenses, damage reduction, stronger attacks. The Difficulty Check to pull the cap off the Redcap’s head started at 30. Just about impossible in the game we were playing. Every time someone managed to grab the Redcap’s hat and try to pull it off but failed, the DC was reduced by 2. This meant with effort, in the form of actions taken, the difficulty would eventually be lowered enough so the cap could be taken off the Redcap’s head. Once that was done those buffs disappeared and any damage done to the cap would deal double damage to the Redcap.

Outlining This Process

With the example set up let’s talk about outlining the process for building out a descending difficulty check.

1. Situation. You need a tense situation where effort over a short time would matter. Getting the cap off the Redcap’s head.
2. Stakes. Figure out what the stakes are for engaging with the task. Removing the cap from the Redcap greatly weakens it.
3. Difficulty. Decide the level of difficulty you want to set the task at but don’t tie it to a skill or ability. If someone comes up with an idea that makes sense in some way, utilize the mechanics of your game to give it a chance. DC 30 to remove the hat.
4. Actions. What taking action will do. Decide how much a check will lower that difficulty. You can put levels into this if you’d like. For instance, with the Redcap I could say only a check that was over 15 would reduce the difficulty by 2 and any check below 15 only reduced the difficulty by 1.

With those steps you have a descending difficulty check for your game.

A More Complex Example

Let’s come up with another more complex example with some different parameters. I think I’ll use that well known Dragons with Dungeons RPG.

Situation: There’s a magical ritual that is currently summoning something terrible into the world. Powering the ritual is a head cultist and their allies. 

Stakes: In order to shut down the ritual you need to understand how it works. Once you understand how it works you need to shut it down. The longer this goes on the longer you have to deal with the empowered cult. To make things worse, if four rounds pass a very powerful demonic entity is summoned and then you’ll have to deal with the entity. This creates a two step process with the stakes being an empowered group of cultists and the potential summoning of a powerful demonic entity. Let’s flesh out the first step.

Step 1

Setting the Difficulty

Understanding the Ritual. DC 40 This game has an action economy so I’m going to want to take into account how that affects understanding the ritual. We’re only letting someone try understanding the ritual once per round. They can either use a free action or a bonus action 

What acting will do

• If you try for free. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 2. A roll above 10 reduces the DC by 1. A roll below 10 increases the DC by 2 as poor information has been given, confusing the situation.
• If you use a bonus action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 5. A roll above 10 reduces the DC by 3. A roll below 10 increases the DC by 2 as poor information has been given, confusing the situation.

I chose this design because it allows for players to take a regular action to do things while trying to figure out what’s up with the ritual. It also has a risk element so that if a character who isn’t competent at figuring out magical rituals tries to help, they could end up interfering with the operation by increasing the difficulty. 

Now that we’ve done it once, let’s do it again.

Step 2

Setting the Difficulty

Shutting down the ritual. DC 30. Let’s up the stakes a little here since we’re acting and not just trying to study and understand something. It’s either use a bonus action or a regular action and we’ll put the rider on here that the PC’s action needs to be something that can interact with the ritual, so magic or some kind of action that messes with the ritual. 

What acting will do

• If you use a bonus action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 2. A roll above 15 reduces the DC by 1. A roll below 15 causes magical backlash dealing 4d6 damage to the character but still decreases the DC by 1.
• If you use a regular action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 4. A roll above 15 reduces the DC by 2. A roll below 15 causes magical backlash dealing 4d6 damage to the character but still decreases the DC by 1.

I chose this design because it ups the stakes by making the players need to use their actions to accomplish the task, which creates choices. Plus, a failure doesn’t strengthen the ritual but causes the magic from the ritual to lash out and harm the character. This feels more appropriate for the situation.

The other thing that can happen here is the Head Cultist can try and put their will against the ritual to try and strengthen it to keep it going. The Head Cultist, instead of casting spells or fighting with the player characters, can take their action to make a spellcasting check to reinforce the ritual. Just use the same what acting will do section but instead of decreasing the DC their actions increase the DC. It’ll put another choice on the board for what the players should do. Interact with the ritual, deal with the Head Cultist, keep the Head Cultist from strengthening the ritual, or deal with the other cultists. Not only that, but handle the ritual in 4 rounds or deal with something worse.

So that’s a more complicated example just to show off some different ideas surrounding the concept of a descending difficulty check. I’m curious to hear if others have tried things like this in their games and how they’ve made it work. I’m always looking to expand my choice of tools to provide the best experience I can for my players. Also, if you have any thoughts or examples of situations this would work in I’d love to see them in the comments.

The Call of Cthulhu… is Calling You to Self Publish 

Horror is my happy place. It’s a great contrast to my typical exuberant, happy self. Horror can truly pull the curtains back on human nature and give you some great perspective on what makes people tick. Personally, I love the type of horror that makes people think. Historical horror is my favorite playground.

If you’re into horror gaming, you’ve probably comes across one of the most famous and widely recognized horror TTRPGs in the industry: Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu. If not, check it out! You won’t be disappointed.

Based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Chaosium is on its 7^th Edition of Call of Cthulhu. Statements from leadership suggest that we’ll be enjoying this edition for quite some time (i.e.: don’t worry, it won’t jump to 8^th Edition by the time you finish this article). It’s not the new Samsung, Apple or D&D 3.5 product. cough cough

Anywhoo, Chaosium affords creators a unique opportunity to self-publish their 7^th Edition Call of Cthulhu games online for sale (or for free)!

Wanna know how?! Feeling excited? Been thinking about writing a Call of Cthulhu game? Looking to support some creators? This article will briefly tackle some of the heavy lifting and serve as a reference resource.

Miskatonic Repository

Per their page, The Miskatonic Repository is an official online collection of user-made content, allowing creators to sell their own original Call of Cthulhu material. Creators can make money from their published community content or make it freely available — it is entirely up to the creator.

Publishing on the Repository is fairly easy! There are no fees involved. You don’t have to secure an independent license. You can reference materials such as the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook, Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook, Keeper Screen Pack and even Pulp Cthulhu! Chaosium even provides templates to help you format your game (in both Word and InDesign). Best part? You can sell, sell, sell!

Get moooooooooney!

Seriously, I get paid?

Oh, for sure! You can list your product for free, PWYW (pay what you want), or for a fee.

Once you list your product, the math is pretty simple. You keep 50% of the sale price. The other 50% is split between Chaosium and DriveThruRPG (well, their parent company, OneBookShelf).

The entire process is automated, so you don’t have to be a bookkeeper to track your sales. You can log onto your account and see exactly how much money you’ve made and how many sales have been completed. Cash out via PayPal or keep the money in your account and use as a credit for future purchases!

Are you ready to publish, but not sure how to price your product? General rule of thumb is to charge 10 cents/page. So, a 30-page scenario would be listed at about $3.00. However, if you really broke the bank on some spectacular art, outsourcing editing/layout, or whatever else… increase the price accordingly.

You’re excited now. I can tell.

Okay, what exactly can I publish?

Things can get a little interesting here! I’ll review broad strokes, but listen, as the creator, it is your responsibility to know what is and what is not allowed. At worst, you can open yourself up to lawsuit. At best, your product may be pulled down if you color outside of the lines.

Also remember, the Miskatonic Repository focuses on playable content. Here are some guidelines to follow.

Read them. Seriously. It’ll make your life easier. I promise. I know that it’s a lot, but listen… the best way to eat an elephant (metaphorically speaking, please don’t eat elephants), is one bite at a time. Take your time. Go through these. Still have questions? Ask them!

Ummm… I still have questions and I need support.

Lord, don’t we all? Okay, so look, I’ve self-published on the Miskatonic Repository. I 100% would not have gotten as far as I did if I didn’t have the best support network EVER! Allow me to share these resources with you!

•  The Miskatonic Repository Creator’s Group

This is a private Facebook group for Miskatonic Repository creators. This is a great place to soundboard, ask questions, solicit feedback, gain advice, and to connect with other creators. There is a direct Chaosium ambassador in the group who does a phenomenal job of keeping us current and informed (Allan Carey–thank you!). You can even solicit help for proofreading, editing, layout and play-testing.

Earlier this year, the Miskatonic Repository Creator’s Group hosted an AMA with the one and only, Mike Mason, Chaosium’s Creative Director. There are FAQs, documents and so much experience there. Seriously, join it today!

• Evan Perlman, a phenomenal content creator and all around amazing and supportive guy, put together an awesome step by step guide to assist creators with navigating (I should say hoop jumping) the upload process of DriveThruRPG. I literally have this document up anytime I upload a document to the page.
• The Miskatonic Repository offers additional support here!

This document is also a lifesaver in so many ways! It’ll help guide you from avoiding clichés, tips on the mythos, tone, and technical tips! It also includes great resources for art.

• Art can get tricky (if you allow it to), so here are some bonus tips!

Images printed prior to 1923 are considered public domain. So, go wild with those. Looking for something recent? Check out Pixabay, Unsplash, or Wikicommons for royalty free images. Just be sure to cite it correctly if it’s creative common. Always give artists credit, if not money if you can. Also, never sleep on the great Google. You can adjust your settings to include royalty free art! BOW!

The FAQ of FAQ’s

Nick Brooke and Allan Carey compiled a list of FAQs for publishing on the Miskatonic Repository, and it is incredibly thorough! I still learn new things as I reread and reopen this document.

Metals

As your product grows in sales, you’ll achieve metals, sponsored by DriveThruRPG.

• 50+ Copper
• 100+ Silver
• 250+ Electrum
• 500+ Gold
• 1000+ Platinum
• 2000+ Mithril
• 5000+ Adamantine

**Note, metals are awarded once you cross the tiers above. So, 51 is a Copper. 

These are really cool to achieve and should be worn as a badge of honor. Each time your title hits a new tier, remember to upload your cover page displaying your new fancy badge!

Fun note! Chaosium will not immediately allow you the option to send your product to print, however, if it reaches Electrum or by their own invitation (don’t reach out to them, they’ll reach out to you), you could very well have your own creation in print!!!

Author’s Note: When you support the Miskatonic Repository, it’s kinda like supporting local. The MR gives us new creators an opportunity to race for the stars. Please support us. Check out our products. Run our games. Join in on the discussion tab. Leave ratings and reviews. We work really, really hard… for YOUR enjoyment. Looking for some great MR Content? Chaosium ambassador Nick Brooke has a living catalogue of every Miskatonic Repository submission! See it here!

In Conclusion

I know that this is a lot of information to digest and navigate, but know in my heart of hearts, this is not here to overwhelm or discourage you. I’ve written this to inspire and encourage you!

If you love Call of Cthulhu and you think others would enjoy running amuck in your mythos imagined world, you have options! You can self-publish on the Repository. The most important thing? You don’t have to do it alone. We all started somewhere. So, whether you have a nagging scenario idea chewing a hole through your brain, or you have a fully completed scenario hiding in the dark recesses on your hard drive…

Maybe it’s time to bring it to the light.

What other questions do you have about publishing on the Miskatonic Repository? Creators, what has been your experience publishing? What did I miss that someone desperately needs to know? Are you finally ready to descend into madness and bring everyone with you? Tell us in the comments what you’re working on!

Pete’s Deadbeat Dark Comedy Block Tower RPG launches on Kickstarter 9/29/2020 at 10am CST!

How do you run better games?

You deliver more immersive stories.

The Recipe

• Rising Tension
• Invoking a Variety of the Five Senses
• A Risk Worth Putting It All on the Line For

Delegating to the Dice

In the time honored tradition of tabletop role-playing games, the outcomes of tension and risk have been delegated to the dice. You say, “What do you do?” When the player responds, you say, “Give me a roll!” Anything so vital to the story that its success weighs in the balance requires a little luck…a randomizer. Why? Because we play unwinnable games to see what happens–to see where the story goes. To know, just how the story ends, makes it routine, predictable, less stimulating. The anticipation of not knowing is a reason we play, a reason we run games as well. We want to know who wins, who loses, and at what cost. We let the dice roll and see how they fall.

As a GM you can help players immerse themselves into characters faster by invoking a variety of the basics senses. The five senses are how we perceive our world. The more senses you can use to deliver description, the better you can connect with your players on an innate human level. Words often deliver unintended mixed messages. Help your players better understand their imaginary surroundings by speaking THEIR language, the language of how they perceive their world.

What better way, than with a better tool?

Rest in Pieces’ Death Spiral of Infinite Influence! Ok, so it is just a two-color block tower to you….womp womp.

The Building Blocks of RPGs

Do we ask too much of the dice? I mean, look at the rise of the Jenga tower in RPGs. Dread’s contribution is in its simplicity. It replaced dice as a randomizer for success with a tactile tool that also visually ramps up the tension. Like a clock at the center of the table, it paces player expectations in a way that the GM can anticipate. It is evocative! If you’ve considered holding your breath while pulling a block from a teetering block tower, then you know what I mean. Each pull can feel a little like rolling a natural 20–but over and over again! So, somebody tell me why we’re still rolling dice?

Block Tower RPGs

• Dread – Winner of the 2006 ENnie Award for Innovation, Nominated for Best Game and Best Rules.
• Silent Memories – Winner of the 2013 ENnie for Best Free Game
• Star Crossed – Winner of the 2019 Diana Jones Award

What if you wanted to take the numbers out of your role-playing games to focus the players on filling the shoes of their character, the narrative, and the rising tension? You could make an argument that a Block Tower RPG is easier to play and easier to teach, further opening up the hobby to welcome more players. That is the story behind Dread’s conception, you probably know it as THE Jenga RPG. Dread popularized the use of a Jenga tower in place of dice. And in one fell swoop, the tool, not the GM, checked off all of my points of interest.

To Deliver More Immersive Experiences

• Rising Tension
• Invoking a Variety of the Five Senses
• A Risk Worth Putting It All on the Line For
• No Math

Designer’s Block

I write this as a game designer that has been tinkering at the use of a Jenga tower in RPGs for the past couple of years. Cards are growing into the mechanics of tabletop RPGs more and more everyday. The Block Tower RPG has also been evolving as the RPG audience broadens and more blending within the many different types of tabletop games occur. As a GM, it may be time to revisit the tools we use at the table, or at least, to ask ourselves, “Why not a Block Tower?”

There is a finality to the tower falling and a bit of lazy desire to leave it in ruins. Could there be a better representation of a messy death or a forbidden love? The game mechanic tempts you with the forbidden fruit of success, all the while, you know that each pull inevitably draws you closer and closer to the end. Each collapse of the tower is dramatic, but let’s not kid ourselves, it’s a chore to put a Jenga tower back together. In a game with the potential for multiple collapses, each reconstruction is a break in the tension, and likely, the narrative. This is great if you’ve matched the inevitable crash to coincide with a story beat worthy of reflection or pause (Great Sacrifice, Character Death, Tragedy, Session’s End). Otherwise, each collapse is an increasingly tiresome break in the action. For this reason, you may find the use of a block tower better for one shots than prolonged play.

Star Crossed Character Sheets

Another interesting benefit of the Block Tower RPG is the advancement of character creation as a questionnaire. Just as the block tower reduces the need for math that generally dominates traditional RPG gameplay, it also reduces the amount of character creation know-how each player needs to make their character. We can ask questions about who a character is and assign value based on that description and not the summary of its attribute scores. This further lowers the bar for learning how to play and getting started with tabletop role-playing games.

Since 2005, Dread has inspired many designers (such as myself) to delve into the block tower design space. I’m reading one right now by the great Ryan Boelter of the Character Creation Podcast! I’ve read stories of GMs using the block tower for dream sequences in D&D or as an alternate rule system for their campaign’s big Halloween game session.

Has it inspired you?

What has Dread inspired in your gaming?

How have you used a block tower in RPGs?

What are you doing on 9/29/2020?

*Di’s 7 Swords is a collection of views, opinions, and her overall stance on what elements make good Tabletop RPGs. These are by no means absolute catch-alls, and simply reflect a single person’s beliefs.

Table of Contents

Preamble
[The 1st. Resolution Mechanics Must be Fast]
The 2nd. Endless Depth in Customization
The 3rd. True Strength Lies in Simplicity
The 4th. Dissociated Mechanics are Fine; Fiction is Cheap
The 5th. Agency is an Illusion; Slay It or Play to It
The 6th. Chase the Consequences to their Limit
The 7th. The GM is a God to be Slain.

Note: This list will be updated with links to the articles as they come up.

A rad knife from Northmen.com

Resolution Mechanics Must be Fast

If I had to lean in on the Sword metaphor, my 1st Sword is by far my most reckless of the bunch. It’s hard to defend with, as there exist many games here and there that are all about the long and poignant moments between your actions–games that emphasize counting all our bonuses and conditions before giving you the final result. But my 1st is also perfect to attack with, as there is very little to guard back with it. If I had to give it a shape, it’d be a viking seax. Simple and cutting, and lacking a guard to protect itself.

Good lord, someone please stop this pompous writing.

Hey look, a segue.

The 1st Sword is simple: when you design a game, whatever conflict resolution mechanic (CRM) you decide on MUST be fast enough to execute immediately.

Please don’t let the dragging preamble of this article suggest otherwise.

What this means is that when you decide to play your card or roll the dice, you should have a rough estimate what the result is the MOMENT it drops. Not counting modifiers, weird rules or conditions, or anything else in-between. It should be unambiguous and, hopefully, you shouldn’t be referencing any tables as you do so either.

Furthermore, when a conflict arises and it is decided that you need to resolve it, the point from “I need to do x” and “resolving x” needs to be as short as possible. If it takes a player more than a minute to gather all the dice they need to roll (for example rolling 3d6 for base, +2d6 for a skill and +1d6 for a boost) then the game better be only using the same type of dice. If you’ve ever dealt with a player having to either find all their relevant dice after referencing their sheet, or having to outsource and borrow dice from everyone else, then you know what I’m talking about. Anything more than 30-seconds feels too long, let alone having to handle everyone taking 1—2 minutes per die roll.

Assume Event X

For the sake of representation, X is the event in which you actually attempt to resolve the conflict. For many games, this is rolling dice or drawing a playing card. From this, there are three possible points for the conflict resolution to lag at, ‘Before X,’ ‘During X’ and ‘After X.’

Before X is the amount of time it takes to reference and gather all the rules necessary prior to a roll. This is looking up which roll or (in Powered by the Apocalypse) this is looking up which move you are using. For ability heavy games like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, this is where the Wizard – upon their turn starting – often decides is NOW a good time to open up their spellbook and choose the perfect spell to use.

During X, as stated earlier, is when you actually do the action, and obtain a result. For the most part, I use ‘roll’ generally as it’s the most common (and simplest) form of conflict resolution. There are definitely games out there that require longer elements such as drawing a face-down card from a person’s hand. This specific example leads into an entire sub-game where you need to read the opponent before drawing the card. There are most certainly games where this is the whole point (for a board game example, Sheriff of Nottingham is perfect). Us dice rollers often take this step for granted, though if you’ve ever had trouble with players rolling on the table or rerolling, During X can still be affected.

After X is the amount of time in your game for you to figure out what Event X /means/ and how it is to be affected. This is simply known as ‘Interpreting the Result.’ If you’re in a game with modifiers, this is where you add them to the dice. If you’re in a game that uses Armor Class/Difficulty Check (ACDC yeaaaaah), this is where you check them against the number to beat. If you have a penalty from somewhere, this is also where it applies.

Slower resolution can actually do a lot to affect tension and mood in game. However, if it’s slow at all three points of Event X, then the entire game becomes a slog and will drag on exceptionally long. The most common gamemastery tips when it comes to speeding up your game involve getting your players to think about their turns beforehand or rewarding fast declaration of their actions. It’s also often about getting your more anxious players to not spend their turn going “if I do this, what will happen” for about 20-minutes. This is about reducing the amount of Before X events, which can work, but do nothing to really affect After X events.

This doesn’t even take into account the overall pace the GM might have, the players might take in roleplaying, or even the delays anyone might have in just deciding what to do. Add in online Virtual Tabletop issues such as lag, connection, or just figuring out /how to roll/ your dice, and you have a million points where a game can slow to a crawl.

Note: there’s nothing wrong with roleplaying, as that’s all part of the story-game, but imagine dealing with everyone roleplaying without you because you’re not in the scene.

A quick peek into 5e (and the D&D CRM as a whole)

If you’ve read my past articles or (by the Gods, forbid) my Twitter, you might know that I’m particularly critical of 5e for its pace. Combat in 5e tends to take forever for me, and I’ve had games where players can take anywhere from 1-15 minutes per turn, and a round of 7 players and a bunch of creeps can take up to 45-minutes just to get back to me. Why is that?

Dungeons & Dragons, as a whole, tries to be a particularly robust game. This means there are unique abilities, effects, and conditions, as well as the creatures using them. Lets use an Event-X Template.

• Before X: Check abilities (HUGE), check conditions (do you have advantage/disadvantage).
• During X: Roll dice (more if you have dis/advantage).
• After X: Modify result, check reroll abilities (if applicable, return to During X), check vs AC/DC, check conditions (do you have penalties), check dis/advantage, check own abilities, check enemy abilities, check resistances/vulnerabilities

When you succeed in 5e rolls, you actually have more to check (abilities/resistances/vulnerabilities/conditions). When you fail, it can typically stop after modifying the result, checking AC/DC, conditions, and dis/advantage. For 5e, failure is the FASTER result, which is odd as speed is supposed to be a favorable result.

Part of what I found so interesting about 5e was its dis/advantage system, because it was able to remove more complex conditions and replace them with dis/advantage. Rolling dis/advantage is a During X event, and it often results in more immediate knowledge of success and failure. Because advantage bumps a Nat20 from 5% to 9.8%, you’re more likely to see a Nat20 and to have the GM just ‘hand wave’ a bunch of steps.

Advantage actually moves the time burden from Before/After X events into During X, which is way easier to resolve.

D&D, however, loads a lot on Before/After X events. Even if you find ways to quicken the game for your players, it doesn’t change that the system itself is designed to be bulky and slow. As I covered before, the most common tip for gamemasters is to get the players to think about the Before X events. Despite all the changes and shifts towards simplicity, as it is touted as the most ‘streamlined’ edition of the game, it’s unable to completely avoid the weight bulked on After X events. Unless that itself gets fixed, Dungeons & Dragons is always going to be slower than its contemporaries.

Resting Thoughts

Whatever CRM you ultimately decide on has to be fast enough that the During X event is as quick and painless as possible. Things like having to redo (reroll) the During X event shouldn’t be a pain in the ass and, instead, be something fun to look forward to. A game will always have things in the Before/After X, so that’s not something I can particularly critique. However, reducing all sides of the equation (even the inside), can always speed up the game significantly.

Game Speed is imperative to controlling the overall pacing. At the end of the day, no matter how many techniques you might have to speed up the game and handle the players, you’re never going to really be able to outpace the rate in which the game resolves its conflicts. It’s like attempting to run a mile in weighted clothing; unless you unburden yourself and reduce the mechanics slowing you down, the amount of effort you put into it will always result in sub-optimal results.

And with that, I hopefully put away my 1st Sword. I hope you’ll stay tuned for the rest.

~Di, signing off

<— [Preamble]
[The 2nd Sword]: Endless Depth in Customization

So far in this series of “interesting” articles, I’ve covered food, weather, foliage, and urban locations. I think it’s about time to talk about the creatures that inhabit the world. That’s right. The fauna of the world can be even more interesting than many of the above topics. I think that’s because we can get all mythological on things and combine different animals into their own ecology. Even if we don’t feel like playing Doctor Moreau with existing creatures, it’s easy enough to twist around an existing creature. Heck, if we really want to, it’s easy enough to go hog wild with some unique creations. Of course, there’s always the option of delving into science and basing the characteristics of an interesting creature on exotic and interesting climates.

Hybrids

There are a great number of examples out there. You really don’t have to look further than most mythologies for examples of how different creatures (even humans) have been merged with other creatures. Quite honestly, if enough imagination is applied in this area, the merger of any two creatures can be justified. It might take some leaps of logic (or powerful magical applications) to justify some combinations, so while creativity in this area is encouraged, please don’t stretch your players’ suspensions of disbelief too far.

Twists on Nature

Vampiric rabbits? Teleporting dogs? High-speed mosquitoes that dive-bomb through their victims? Extraordinarily large insects? Snakes with elk-like horns? A perfectly-balanced species of one-legged kangaroos?

Yeah. All of the above can trigger the creepy weirdness that players love to experience. Think about the weird things taxidermists built for circus sideshows back in the 1800s and early 1900s. Yeah. Use that for inspiration and then make those oddities real in your world.

Taking something normal and adding (or changing) one aspect can make the creature super special and memorable. It really doesn’t take much to impress (or scare or intimidate) your players. This is especially true if you have that player at the table who has memorized every page of the monster manual.

Unique Creations

Of course, coming up with something completely new can be amazing. Look at classic D&D creatures like the carrion crawler (my first PC death was to a carrion crawler), the rust monster, black pudding, displacer beast, and even the iconic beholder. These creatures weren’t yanked from mythology. They were created whole cloth from the minds of the creators of role playing games. From my understanding (and this could be a completely untrue story, but it’s a good one), Gary Gygax went to a toy store to find some “monster miniatures” to use at the table. He found these little plastic and rubber “dinosaurs” and brainstormed up the first use of the rust monster and displacer beast from those inspirations.

Look around the world and do your own brainstorming. There are quite a few artist hangout web sites (I highly recommend Deviant Art) where you can find your own inspirations.

Creatures of Interesting Climates

Look at the real world in extreme climates: Hot, cold, dry, wet, high pressures at the ocean bottom, top of mountains, etc. You will find some amazing adaptations that allow creatures to not only survive, but thrive, in those environments. If you care to do the research into the mutations that have allowed these creatures to dominate in an oppressive environment, then you can apply those same changes to other creatures. This is where the players will automatically accept anything you throw their way.

Statistics and Attributes

For a long time, I’d lovingly handcraft artisan statistics for my monster creations. Then I realized the players don’t really see or know the full extent of that work. That means much of it is wasted. Borrow from what already exists. If you want a creature to have regeneration like a troll, find that section of the monster manual and do a copy/paste into your own document.

Re-skinning is also a favorite of mine. I’ll take stats from an existing creature and not change a thing as far as the game mechanics go. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I’ll just slap a new skin or description onto the numbers and feed that description to the players. For veteran players it will either excite them, intimidate them, inspire them to interact, or some of all three of those reactions. This is because the monster is “new and interesting” when really it’s just a vrock (demon) in disguise as a giant, flightless bird with a powerful screech, and a cloud of floating feathers around it.