Articles by Danny Rupp
Danny works professionally as an architect and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).
The Architect DM: Nations as Character Backgrounds
I am still in the process of brainstorming on the following topics, but this post is an essential part of the process as I express my thoughts so far and more importantly get feedback from others and hear about their experiences.
After running an adventure of D&D last week that included our friend Dixon Trimline, he and I were having a post-adventure geek out because we don’t get the chance to talk in person that often. During this geek out we discussed the history of my D&D campaign, specifically the world that has been built before and during the game, when I caught inspiration for an idea of presenting nations and world building as character background “packages” that can be taken by players.
A concept that has become very prominent for me is the use of nations/regions in world building. The first campaign map that I designed was nondescript with a series of different towns and cities connected by long stretches of road. As I’ve built that game world over the last 10 years, the rest of the map has been divided into various nations and regions that help break up and define the world, and in so doing the nondescript area that I first designed has become more interesting as a contrast due to it not being a formal nation. For your own game these don’t have to be formal nations or well defined regions but the root of the idea is to have some kind of contrast between different locales, whether they’re bordering towns, two separate continents, entire worlds (Hoth vs. Dagobah, for instance), or hell even different solar systems and galaxies.
Stick to the Basics
When you start designing these different regions, start by outlining the basics for each region and look at the overall list to see what will make up your world. If you have to define what the planet Hoth is then the words “Snow Planet” are simple enough but extremely evocative, just like how “Swamp Planet” works for Dagobah. For my recent campaign world I started by tying the prominent nations to the roots of the 4th Edition D&D system with the following defining features: Divine, Arcane, Dwarf, Elf, Eladrin, Human, and Halfling. After making several lists along these lines, and looking at the pre-existing world map I was working with, I decided to make one nation the Arcane/Elf nation and another a more Fey/Eladrin nation. I also asked the players and heard a lot of requests for more technology, so I made a Dwarf/Technology nation as well. From there I’d already started adding secondary descriptions for each nation so I simply continued along that path until I started to get more and more refined ideas for each nation in the game world. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: On Sandbox Campaigns
The Architect DM series has covered a lot of different aspects or tabletop RPGs ranging from details of a single encounter to the much larger task of planning out an entire game world. I’ve found myself tending to progress through that range from post to post instead of staying to one end or another for more than one or two posts in a row. With this in mind, today’s post comes from some of my more recent thoughts on campaign planning and how to build towards running a mostly sandbox style game.
It’s Tough to Start in the Sandbox
One of the biggest reasons there is so much material written about sandbox games, and why people look so hard for it, is because running a sandbox game is not easy. Many people may offer you advice and provide tricks to help make it easier, but in my opinion attempting to run a sandbox game takes a difficult task (running a tabletop RPG) and makes it much more of a challenge. With this in mind I’ve been brainstorming what kind of advice I would give to people who know the difficulties of running such a game but still want to try it out.
Now that I’ve been running an ongoing campaign for the last three years, I’ve started to realize that my options for running a sandbox game in my game world have expanded. My number one advice for running a sandbox game would be to not worry about it and start running your game as soon as possible. You can plan as much as you want, but the best way to help the players feel more comfortable exploring the sandbox that is your game is to start introducing the players to locations and NPCs. It’s perfectly fine for you to start out with one or more railroading plots/adventures because the more plot seeds you plant and the more familiar the players become with your game world the easier it’s going to be to run an effective sandbox game. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Give It Some Height
I’m going to clue you guys in to a nifty little secret that I’ve been using for a while now in my RPG encounters – adding height to a tabletop RPG can be one of the best ways to invigorate your encounters. You must be careful, because using something like height in your game can become something of a gimmick or a trick and if overused could become predictable or boring to your players. However, when applied correctly and in the right amount height and depth can create some of the most memorable moments of your game and can also help enforce or dissuade certain styles of play.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the majority of play in tabletop RPGs like D&D takes place in two dimensions, the table or map you’re playing on is a flat surface and even in non-miniature based RPGs I am willing to bet the majority of encounters are mostly flat as well because it’s a heck of a lot easier for the GM to manage things on a single level. If you’re lucky enough to have a GM that often runs things on different levels (height above/below the standard floor of the environment), then consider yourself lucky but even then I still believe the majority of the action is taking place on one surface while there might be some very minor action going on above or below. No matter how your DM or GM runs things, players tend to remember that one encounter that was really cool when the party was split evenly between a balcony and the room below with adversaries to fight and puzzles to interact with on both levels.
Height as a Gimmick
I said early to avoid overusing the idea of height in your encounters, but that just means you should really enjoy using it to the extreme when you can! For instance, the picture above is of an adventure in my ongoing D&D campaign that I ran in August 2010 just after GenCon with many of my regular players and Jared Hindman as our house guest and very welcome jump-in player. For this adventure I took the opportunity of the party facing growing elemental threats and my house’s tendency to collect old soda boxes to throw four huge columns of earth that extended a hundred or more feet upwards into the encounter. Naturally, the fight started out quite normal so that the players were even more surprised when suddenly one or two of them ended up stranded on a tall plinth of rock and facing earth elementals and most terrifying of all an catastrophic earthquake dragon that wasn’t impeded by the height difference. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Give Your Cities Some Architecture
Not every D&D campaign or world map includes nations or regions that break the larger mass into more digestible pieces, but this is one of the features that I’m glad I chose to be a primary element of my current D&D campaign. Inspired by a 3rd Edition D&D campaign run by our friend Dennis (aka The Main Event) where the nationality of the PCs became one of the most memorable parts of the game for me and ended up factoring into the ongoing plots in interesting ways, I decided to present my players with a world divided into various nations each with a unique flair and often divided by racial distinctions. However, one of the elements that I failed to strongly present to my players and that I’m going to discuss today is the idea of giving a unique design and feel to each of those nations when it comes to locations and buildings.
I’m not going to say that every D&D game should have nations as I’m discussing them, but when it comes to precedents the worlds of Tolkien and Robert Jordan are strongly grounded in the idea of conflicting nations so it can’t be a bad idea to build on what they used to improve their stories. I am currently reading through the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan which is one of the main reasons this topic is so fresh in my mind. Throughout the books Jordan does an excellent job of describing (in detail, at length, constantly…) the different styles of architecture, fashion, and attitudes that are prevalent in each nation.
Details Grow Over Time
At first the intricate details that Jordan presents are simply descriptive and help us visualize specific people and places that we are reading about, but without knowing much about the nation as a larger concept they remain simple descriptions and are quickly forgotten. After numerous books and thousands of pages (I’m currently on the 11th book in the series, to give you an idea) these descriptions begin to grow into definitions and characteristics. What this means is that while Jordan will still go through the effort of describing the dress styles or architecture of a specific region, the reader already has a pretty damn good idea of what it’s going to look like from the precedents he has created. I have a strong feeling this same technique could become incredibly valuable over the course of a long campaign or several games set in the same world.
While I attempted to do this in my own game, the one place I fell short was on the architecture of each region. As ironic as it may be, in my own campaign I have developed a style of DMing that does not focus very much on the buildings or architecture. That said, if one of my players reads this and chimes in that they actually do have a very good idea of what the buildings in my game world look like, then I may just be harder on myself with regards to architecture (because damn it, I can do better)! [Read the rest of this article]
Review: “Conquest of Nerath” D&D Boardgame
Today we see the release of Conquest of Nerath, the newest D&D board game from Wizards of the Coast. Unlike the last two D&D board games from WotC, Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon, which focused on heroes and dungeon crawling this new game is a take on large scale strategy board gaming along the lines of games like Risk or Axis & Allies. At the same time the game includes heroes that can fight alongside your larger armies and delve into dungeons to uncover powerful treasure that will help your armies attain victory over the other factions.
Conquest of Nerath is meant for play between 2, 3, or 4 players and can be played in a short game that will last around 2 hours or longer games that can go on for much longer (4+ hours). The game is quick to learn, plays well, and is incredibly fun. It appeals to fans of classic strategy board games while bringing familiar fantasy elements to the genre which is traditionally modern/historic.
Rules of the Game
The game Conquest of Nerath involves four factions battling over a map of two continents and one central island, including the Dark Empire of Karkoth (warlocks and undead), the Vailin Alliance (elves), the Iron Circle (goblins and orcs), and the Nerathan League (humans and dwarves). Every game starts with each faction having control of their assigned territories with a set number of starting units, so set up is quick and easy and doesn’t involve random region selection or placing of units from player to player. If you’re playing with four players then each player controls one faction, but if you’re playing with two or three players then each player will control an alliance of factions battling the other players. [Read the rest of this article]
Let’s Talk About Superhero Movies
I know a few people who are getting sick of superhero and comic book movies, and with good reason considering this year’s offering of Thor, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, and Captain America to name a few. Back when I was young you could still consider superhero movies to be a new thing, but here in 2011 we have more comic book movies than I could have ever dreamed possible as an adolescent. You’ll notice I use the terms “superhero” and “comic book” interchangeably here, but that is simply for ease of use – rest assured I am well aware of the inherent differences and that there are non-comic book superhero movies and non-superhero comic book movies.
Ever since 1989, when I saw the first Tim Burton Batman movie in theaters at an extremely young age, I have been hooked on superhero movies. Around that same time I became interested in comic books, but it wasn’t until highschool and college that I started actually reading more than single issues of titles like Batman or Uncanny X-Men. Due to this odd mixture of nerducation I have a decently even nostalgia for both the film versions of superheroes and their original, printed inspirations. I know that the Joker didn’t actually kill Bruce Wayne’s parents, but I didn’t know it the first time I saw the movie and still enjoy it even after learning “the truth”. Now when I go to see a movie like Thor or Green Lantern if I’m not already intimately aware of the source material I will take a decent amount of time to educate myself so that I can approach the movie from both perspectives and have a deeper understanding of both what has inspired the movie and also what has changed in order for them to make this material into a movie.
I’m Getting Sick of Origin Stories
When it comes to many superhero movie franchises, you can generally predict that at least 1/4 of the first film is going to be dedicated to the origin story of the main character(s). In some cases, like with the Punisher movie, you can consider the entire film to be origin story. In the case of Punisher, I didn’t mind this so much but I was disappointed that the main actor changed to the second movie which created a disconnect in my mind. The same is true of the Incredible Hulk movies, though I feel Ed Norton did a good job making the change in actor painless, and though the movie effectively retold the origin story briefly at the beginning it wasn’t blatant about it and still treated itself like a good sequel to the first movie. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Planar Modification
Last week my first appearance ever on the Tome Show podcast was posted (on my Birthday, no less!) and the topic that I was very pleased to be invited in on was Planar Advice for 4th Edition. Thank you to Jeff for the invite, and if you haven’t listened to this episode or if the Tome Show in general then you should head over to his website and check it out!
For the Planar Uninitiated
While recording the show, Jeff brought up an interesting point that I hadn’t considered with regards to the 4th Edition D&D planes. If you’re not familiar with the 4E planes, allow me to give you a very brief introduction. The material world has two mirror planes, the Shadowfell that is a darker reflection focusing on death and the Feywild which is a brighter reflection and focuses on life. I greatly enjoy both of these planes because they both thrive on the abundance of either death or life and particularly the Feywild introduces the concept that the abundance of life (killer vegetation, tricksy faeries, etc) can be equally as dangerous as anything found in the other planes.
Below the material world and its reflections is a plane called the Elemental Chaos that represents unbridled creation and destruction and is the domain of primordial creatures, while above is the plane known as the Astral Sea that closely resembles the common conception of “heaven” and is the domain of divine entities. If the Shadowfell and Feywild are death and life, then the Elemental Chaos and Astral Sea are chaos and order, and you can practically guess what alignment creatures might be inclined towards depending on which plane they originated from (if 4E still used the classic D&D alignment scale, that is).
The Planes as Afterlife
Back to the interesting idea that I mentioned, while recording the episode Jeff summarized the 4E planes as the afterlife of living beings in D&D. The Shadowfell is where all souls pass on their journey after death, the Astral Sea is where divine servants ascend if they are worthy, and the Elemental Chaos (specifically the Abyss) is where souls might end up if they’re captured by demons or if they serve one of the gods that happens live outside of the Astral Sea. I was intrigued by this view of the planes, but I quickly jumped on the fact that the Feywild as written doesn’t entirely mesh with the overall idea.
That’s exactly why I suggested modifying the planes to fit into this greater concept. After all, if you have a big picture idea such as “the planes are the afterlife” then this is precisely the kind of creativity that can make campaigns memorable. Why not use the Feywild as the afterlife of elves, Eladrin, and other fey creatures in your game world? I’m sure that in some of the material for 4th Edition there are regions in the Feywild where elves can go after death, but I’m talking about making this concept a larger part of your game world.
Imagine if all Elves, Eladrin, and Drow in your game world experienced a completely different afterlife from other races that involved their passage directly into the Feywild. For starters you could use the religions from Eberron where elves worship elven heroes of legend, but then imagine if it were common practice to journey into the Fey plane to visit and consult your ancestors. Beyond that, what kinds of benefits or advantages would these races get from being outside of the Raven Queen’s dominion? Maybe Elves and Eladrin are largely immune to corruption from Devils and Demons and thus have less to fear from Orcus or Asmodeus. This could lead to armies of devils and demons invading the Feywild in search of souls and a way to circumvent this immunity.
Don’t be Afraid to Mess with the Planes
Just with the simple act of bringing the Feywild into line with the other planes with regards to the afterlife we can come up with a handful of compelling ideas that will set your game apart from others and distinguish your game world from what is presented in the 4E books. We could develop the idea further by adapting the Elemental Chaos to be more of an afterlife than just the Abyss, possibly even taking it to the point of introducing the Primordials as a bigger influence in the game world. Since 4th Edition launched I’ve been curious what a game world would look like where divine characters were evenly split between following the gods and following primordials. Perhaps the Dawn War ended in more of a stalemate than the divine victory that 4th Edition assumes. The ways this simple change to history might impact every aspect of the game world are astounding.
Along the same lines as the afterlife discussion, you could modify the planes so that they are all reflections of the material world. This would mean that locations on your map would have an impact on the Elemental Chaos and the Astral Sea as well, but it also changes some of the big picture concepts introduced in those two realms and would probably require some more in depth consideration while developing the idea.
Lastly I’ll suggest an idea that I’ve been dying to try out in a campaign, eliminating one or more of the planes altogether! Particularly if you’re not a fan of one plane or another, imagine what would happen to the cosmology if the Feywild or even the Astral Sea were destroyed in some catastrophic planar disaster. You could have a world where the gods are homeless and stranded in the material world! Many of these concepts may already exist in one of the plethora of published campaign settings out there, so if that’s the case please let me know because I’d love to check it out!
Click here for the rest of the Architect DM Series.
Review: Battle Tag (by Ubisoft)
The odds are that you haven’t heard of the game Battle Tag that was released by Ubisoft in November of last year. How do I know that? Because so far it has only had what must be called a “soft release” and is only available through Ubisoft’s online store or in stores in Canada and Texas. Aside from some attention garnered at E3 2010, there’s not many ways you would have heard about this game. What’s surprising about this is that Battle Tag is far and away the best laser tag game I’ve ever played and may even be one of the best back yard experiences I’ve had in my entire life.
I found out about this game because my wife and our friend Joshx0rfz heard about it from a mutual friend and immediately decided it would be perfect for my birthday party last weekend. They kept it a secret from me, but through some hints I had an idea of what was going to happen, but Battle Tag was way beyond anything I expected. The key element that sets this game apart from other back yard battle games is that Battle Tag requires you to use computer software hooked up to a Ubiconnect antenna. The included software lets you name players, set up teams, and change many of the elements of the game such as health, ammunition, rules for each game such as Free For All or Team Frag, and even set the beam power depending on if you’re playing indoor, outdoor, in bright light, or in the dark.
With a company like Ubisoft behind the game, I was not surprised to find that the software made the game feel more like all of our favorite FPS games than a simple game of laser tag in our back yard. In addition to the software and the ability to customize the details of the game, it also incorporates small plastic boxes for home bases and reload stations which you tap to the bottom of your gun to respawn or to reload your gun. In addition there are eight different game types out of the box that includes one or two which involve shooting the Ubiconnect antenna or tagging specific bases as a part of scoring for that match. For our first outing with the game we stuck almost entirely to the Team Frag game type, but once I got home and looked at the different variations I decided that we definitely need to try them all.
Specs and Details
The one major downside to Battle Tag is without a doubt the cost, but when you consider how much you would spend on playing laser tag at an arena or paying for paintball equipment and course time to me it still comes out ahead. Battle Tag costs roughly $60 per player and the current software handles up to 8 players so the investment you’re looking at to get the most out of the game is steep at around $500. The two player starter set costs $130 and includes two vests, two guns, one CD of the Battle Tag software, one Ubiconnect antenna, two bases, and two ammo boxes. There is a single vest and gun expansion as well as a med-kit and two extra bases expansion but both appear to be sold out (from everywhere, unfortunately) at the moment. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Creating Histories – Part 2
Last week in my first post tackling the subject of creating histories for an RPG world I discussed relatively “meta” and experimental concepts. This week I’d like to get down to some specifics and hopefully address the concept a bit more directly. The exact question/suggestion that inspired this topic was worded as, “In my homebrew, creating histories in specific territories is a challenge – particularly linking them to the whole world.”
While last week I talked about letting your players help design your game’s/territory’s history and using your previous campaigns to build history, but today I’m going to discuss some ideas about creating histories for a new game world without relying on players to help you out.
Don’t Worry About Creating Less History
For a little bit of guidance, I asked Dave (the Game, my first DM, most likely the biggest influence on me as a DM) what advice he would give on this topic. His answer was, “Don’t build too much in advance, build it during play based on the needs of the story and the characters.” For me this advice is spot on because one of the biggest road blocks a DM can hit when planning a campaign is feeling like they are under-planning and that they are not prepared enough for their own game. There is no rule that says you have to have ‘X’ amount of back story prepared for a game or that you must have fully fleshed out histories for every single city and region that is on your map.
Don’t let getting stumped on creating a history for your game stop you from planning for the ‘present’ that the players are going to experience. If you feel like you’re starting an adventure without enough history of your game world planned, then the odds are you’re doing it right. This advice is the root behind my suggestion in the first post for letting your players help you design the backstory of your game. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Creating Histories – Part 1
World building can be one of the most intimidating tasks for DMs and GMs when it comes to running their own RPG campaign. No matter how much advice you read or receive from your friends, creating a world of your own or modifying someone else’s world can still feel incredibly daunting even for people who are experienced at running their own games.
In my last solicitation for questions and suggestions to discuss in this series on twitter, clampclontoller said this, “In my homebrew, creating histories in specific territories is a challenge – particularly linking them to the whole world.“ Since this is an issue that I’ve struggled with many times myself, it feels like a good topic worth exploring here!
It Gets Easier with Time
The first thing I would like to mention with regards to developing a history for your game world is that it gets easier. There are two sides to this statement, the first is that you will inevitably get better at developing history as you plan and run your game and learn what your regular players react to or ignore out of the history that you created. The second, and for me it was quite mind blowing when I first realized it, is that as you run and play in your game world you and the players are creating the history. The more you play, the more past there is to explore moving forward in the game.
For me this happened entirely by accident. I ran my first two D&D campaigns in college and while they took place in entirely separate areas with different stories and characters, in the back of my mind I had placed both games on the same campaign map but separated by a large sea. As the second game progressed, a handful of similar elements began to creep into the game that the same players never even noticed that tied both games together. Fast forward to six years later when Dave and I began planning our 4th Edition D&D campaigns where we discussed Dave’s dislike for large scale world building and I offered up my college game world for him and I to both run in. Dave took the game world shortly after where I’d left it off and developed it as he saw fit, and I took my game world hundreds of years in the future (after Dave’s as yet unplayed campaign, using a mysterious gap in history to account for it) and ran with it. [Read the rest of this article]
