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: Give Your Cities Some Character
As with nearly every topic I cover in this series, I’ve touched on the idea of adding character to settlements and cities before but now I’d like to put it in the spotlight. Let’s face it, your players will only remember select portions of the adventures you run even on the best of days. The elements that players seem to remember the most are specifically striking elements of a few NPCs, villains, encounters, and social interactions. Generally speaking, they will not remember a location very much unless a specific element of that location ties directly to one of those elements. They may not remember a location featuring a really sweet bridge if you describe it to them, but set a dramatic encounter on that bridge and they’re much more likely to remember the details of that location.
When it comes to settlements, whether it is a village, town, city, or capital, they were founded for very specific reasons and often their nature reflects those reasons inherently. If a city is built on the edge of the ocean, then it is most likely going to have thriving docks, abundant fish markets, and a bustling economy built on trade from abroad. When you present a new city to your players these are the aspects that you want to put the most effort into preparing and presenting to them to help solidify the character of the new location in their minds. As with most of my suggestions for designing based on realistic concepts, in the end thinking about these concepts can also help you develop more ideas for your game while you’re planning everything out.
There’s No Such Place as Default Town
I would be willing to bet that the large majority of places a D&D group visits come off as nothing more than ‘generic fantasy town’ with perhaps one or two interesting elements that feel tacked on and unincorporated into the overall life of the area. No matter where the city you’re designing is located, you can add a handful of interesting elements with relative ease. The key to making this work is presenting these elements to your players up front, and not always leaving them free to discover everything on their own. If a town is located in the middle of rolling grasslands, begin by telling the players that the town is easily twice the size of any other town they’ve visited due to the flat nature of the terrain and the availability of space. From there you can branch into a large variety of interesting elements, and I have found that the more specific and unique you can get the more the location will stand out. With our grassland town, you could emphasize that the only food readily available within the town is that of the grassland lions found in abundance nearby. Your average D&D characters (and players) are not going to expect a town to eat mostly lion meat, and small details like this can really make a location stand out in your game. [Read the rest of this article]
Review: Heroes of Shadow
The book Player’s Option: Heroes of Shadow is the first real print product we have seen for 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons since the Essentials line and also marks what I hope is the end in what I perceived as a lag in print products for the game. Heroes of Shadow was delayed from March until April so that it could be printed as a hard cover book instead of a smaller format paperback, and I am very pleased with having a larger sized hardcover in my hands with 4E content in it after months without one. What this book contains is exactly what you would expect from a book focusing on player characters that tap into the shadow power source and draw their inspiration from the darker corners of your D&D universes. Its contents range from entirely new classes to new builds for existing classes to new races and more than a handful of new options for characters of all types that want to have a bit darker tilt to their abilities.
My first impression of this book is that it is a perfect combination of the production level of the original 4th Edition books with the quality of content that we have come to expect as 4th Edition and Essentials have progressed. One of the highlights that has stood out to me so far is that in reading through the book nearly every option presented for players seems appealing and immediately playable to me whereas in many 4E products usually 1/3 of the content has felt too specific or restricted for me to consider using it right away, in this book it seems like once you are past the primary caveat of wanting to play a character based in using the shadow power source many of the options are very interesting. If you are at all interested in playing classes like the Assassin and the Blackguard, races like the Revenant and the Shade, or making a Wizard that specializes in necromancy then this is a book that you will definitely want to pick up!
Details of the Book
The book is hardcover and is 159 pages long, overall the production quality appears to be top notch and consistent with some of the best 4th Edition content we have seen to date if not better. Classes included are the Essentials build for the Assassin, the Black Guard build for Paladins, the Vampire presented as a full class, and a Binder build for Warlocks. A selection of shadow based powers are presented for Clerics including some focusing on the death domain, as well as a selection of new warlock powers and the new Gloom Pact for the Essentials Hexblade build and the full Necromancy and Nethermancy schools for Wizards.
Races presented in the book include the new rules for the Revenant, the Shade race that represent people who have traded their souls to the darkness in exchange for new abilities, and the Vryloka that are aristocratic pseudo-vampiric humanoids. At first I was unimpressed with the Vryloka but as I read more about their concept and back story I was reminded of the first time I ever read about Tieflings and I started to enjoy the race more and brainstorm various interesting character ideas that could be used with this race. On top of that both the Shade and the Vryloka have a racial feature that inherently allows you to swap out utility powers for racial utilities which I think allows for some further customization and character to be added to the race and is an interesting design decision for the game. Lastly the book includes quite a few pages to the classic D&D races and how they relate to the shadow power source and presents ideas for shadow characters of each of those races. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: On Dungeons
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the iconic “Dungeon” concept that many of us think of when we think of it in the context of Dungeons & Dragons. Also because only a month or two ago Dave wrapped up his 4E run through the Temple of Elemental Evil with custom mechanics to add to the “large dungeon crawl” feel of the adventures. Now I find my own campaign on the verge of the epic tier (the characters are currently level 19/20), and I am beginning to brainstorm a series of elemental dungeons that they will have to go through as a form of the Temple of Elemental Evil now fractured and embodied in five separate temples. Yes, I loved The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and I plan on stealing liberally from it.
My first inclination when thinking about the classic dungeon is to envision a many of the old D&D module dungeon maps, or even some of the newer ones from modules, and for the most part the style of dungeon that is represented enrages me more than it interests me. I feel that many classic D&D dungeons seem to be embodied by hap-hazard and random design that appears as if it was put together by a child. I will be the first to say that there is a time and a place for that style of design, and that it is not always a bad thing, but I’ve seen more than a handful of dungeons designed in that style which leads me to believe that it is a style some people purposefully apply to their “classic dungeons”. I believe designing a standard dungeon in that style is a big mistake.
I began to address this topic a month ago when I discussed Negative Space in Dungeons, but at the time I kept my thoughts focused on the idea of having space the your players can’t occupy to add differentiation into a dungeon. This post is about a higher concept level of design but is grounded in the same ideas.
Design with Purpose and Style
Let’s face it, the D&D dungeon you’re looking at has been designed by someone who set out to design a dungeon for the specific purpose of it being used in a game of D&D. I believe this is why we see the kind of nonsensical dungeon that feels so “classic”, because the design mindset used is that of making it appear as if the dungeon was not designed by a person setting out to design a D&D dungeon. The intent has completely eroded over the years so that now it is painfully obvious when you’re looking at a dungeon that can be described as stereotypically “D&D” in design. [Read the rest of this article]
Battletech Introductory Box Set Preview & Review
I have been a die hard fan of Battletech since I first picked up a Technical Readout book and wondered what all of the information about awesome looking giant mechs was really used for. Three years ago when Catalyst Game Labs acquired the Battletech license and put out the Classic Battletech boxed set, I was excited but didn’t get a chance to pick one up before the print run completely sold out. That’s why I flipped out when I saw the new Battletech Introductory Boxed Set in a vendor’s stand at PAX East and quickly picked up a copy.
This new boxed set is being released on March 30th, 2011 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Battletech, and it retails for $49.95. The box includes:
- 24 unpainted, ready-to-play plastic BattleMech minis
- 2 unpainted, premium-quality plastic BattleMech minis
- One 12-page full-color quick-start rulebook will have players into the action in minutes
- 36-page book of pre-generated BattleMech Record Sheets
- One 80-page full-color rulebook
- Inner Sphere at a Glance, a 56-page full-color book of universe
- One 16-page full-color Painting and Tactics Guide
- One two-sided heavy-duty card of compiled tables
- Two 18? x 24? game-board quality maps
- An 8-page color guide to the Battletech Core Rulebooks
- One huge full-color poster of the Battletech Galaxy/Universe
- Two 6-sided dice
Let me tell you right from the start that this is a high quality boxed set. All of the books and printed material are extremely well produced and the two premium quality plastic Battlemech miniatures are the best plastic Battletech minis I’ve ever seen. The 24 regular plastic Battlemech minis are of a much lower quality but they are pretty much equivalent to what came with any of the previous Battletech boxed sets I’ve purchased. All of the rulebooks are full-color and on good quality paper, but more importantly they offer a wide variety of information for beginning players with the quick start rules all the way through experienced veterans with the Inner Sphere At a Glance book and the guide to the core rulebooks. Perhaps the biggest thing to point out is that this time they’ve provided thick card stock quality maps instead of the standard paper maps we’re used to with Battletech products, and though they are a bit fussy with laying flat when they’re brand new the sturdiness and durability are a very welcome change. [Read the rest of this article]
Danny’s PAX East 2011 Recap
Just over a week ago we returned from Boston and from my first PAX ever, which I’m very happy to say was incredibly fun for both myself and my wife from start to finish. Without a doubt the highlight of PAX East for me is much the same as other conventions like GenCon, and that’s meeting great people and getting to play games with people that I don’t normally have the opportunity to game with. However there are a few big differences that I noticed which really made PAX East stand out from the other conventions that I’ve been to.
First and foremost PAX East is very clearly a convention designed with gamers in mind, and this concept oozes through every aspect of the con that we experienced. The amount of open console and computer gaming is absolutely staggering, if you wanted to go to the con and do nothing but play console games you could do it and have a hell of a time while you’re at it. I’m talking about an entire hallway of rooms set up with hundreds and hundreds of TVs and computers alongside libraries of nearly every game you could wish for, all there simply for your entertainment and enjoyment!
Who Knew that Gamers like Playing Games?
As if the amount of electronic gaming was not enough, a section of the convention center main hall as large as the exhibit hall itself was willed with tables and dedicated to open tabletop gaming of all kinds. When we first arrived on Friday morning this area was mostly underutilized but through the rest of the convention the area was packed to the brim with thousands of gamers playing various card games, board games, and roleplaying games. It should be no surprise that this room became our designated meeting area, as several of us would stake out a table and sit down to gather friends through the next few hours as they inevitably walked by.
One of the best decisions made about this room, that I hope to see replicated at places like GenCon someday soon, is that a handful of local gaming shops had sales booths set up around the open gaming area. If that doesn’t sound good enough to you, the real icing of the set up is that these vendors often stayed open well beyond the exhibit hall closing which I’m sure only benefited them as gamers seemed incredibly eager to buy all kinds of Magic: The Gathering cards and various board games well into their evenings of frivolous gaming. It was at several of these booths that I did the majority of my shopping at PAX East. I finally purchased a copy of Fiasco to play with friends when Dave isn’t around (who likes gaming with him, anyway?), but the item that made me positively giddy as a school girl was the brand new, still unreleased, boxed set of Battletech from Catalyst Game Labs which I was very happy to get my hands on. A full review of that boxed set is coming very soon, oh yes!
The Exhibits, Let Me Show You Them!
Throughout the three days of PAX East I spent a lot of time around the exhibit hall, but as a matter of choice I decided not to spend any of that time waiting in line. Let me assure you that there were plenty of lines available for waiting, and almost as many that I would have been very eager to join, but I couldn’t allow myself to waste much time at the convention waiting to see a video of a game or play a few minutes of a game that I would inevitably see/play in the next few weeks anyway. The consistently biggest line definitely belonged to Star Wars: The Old Republic, which even had a waiting line during the hours the hall was open early exclusively for press.
The nice thing about not waiting in line to play The Old Republic is that there were still several places that you could watch those people who had waited in line playing the game, and several monitors playing awesome trailers and gameplay footage of the game. For the most part everyone that I know who watched the game at this booth is dying to play the game, and probably the best way for me to summarize it is that it looks like the ‘World of Warcraft’ of Star Wars MMOs. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: How to Improvise Fantasy Buildings
In an ongoing effort to help new and experienced tabletop RPG storytellers improvise and design locations, I started by talking about urban open spaces and provided what I called a design toolbox for that purpose. In this post (and most likely several future posts) I will attempt to provide an extensive and easy to use design toolbox for “Fantasy Buildings”. What type of buildings fall into that category is not set in stone, so I invite you to comment on this post or suggest on twitter (tag me with @Bartoneus) any types of fantasy buildings that I don’t cover in this post that you think should be included in future posts on the subject.
The Classic Inn / Tavern
What better way to start than with the cliche and classic starting location for most D&D parties? Your average fantasy Inn/Tavern is going to focus on the main sitting room which can take any shape that you prefer, but the simplest to start with would be a rectangle (due to structural concerns of limited span distance). The length of the rectangle is entirely up to you, but the width can be easily determined on the spot by how many tables you wish to fit in the room. For simplicity I’m going to base much of the design off of 5 foot squares because the most recent version of Dungeons & Dragons use the standard, but I will try to discuss things in feet instead of squares to make it easier.
For the most part your classic fantasy table is going to be 5 ft. wide and as long as you like (10-15 ft. typically). Then you have to account for seating on both sides of the table, so if we allocate 5 ft. on each side for seating your table space ends up being 15 ft. wide clear. Next a very important consideration is how much room for movement there is around the table. If you want your Inn to feel cramped, then assume chairs are pushed under the table and circulation takes place within the 5 ft. around the entire table. If you want it to feel more open, then provide an addition 5 ft. on each side increasing the single table to 25 ft. in space required. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Negative Space in Dungeons
A very important design concept used in Architecture that I would like to discuss today is the concept of negative space. This topic flows naturally from the discussion in last week’s post about the open spaces in an urban setting being defined by the buildings that are placed around it. In addition I have been thinking quite a lot about the topic since seeing the post on Boing Boing about classic style D&D hand-drawn dungeon maps. If you haven’t seen those maps yet, they are indeed very classic but they are also, unfortunately not examples of good dungeon design.
There is certainly something to be said for that style of dungeon map and the feel it creates, but the simple truth of it is that one of the reasons they feel so classic is because they are inherently illogical and impractical. I admit that logic and practicality are not necessarily the primary concerns addressed by good dungeon design, but at the root of those dungeons there are a handful of factors at play that should not be in play when designing a location for you and your players to explore at the table.
We All Love Graph Paper
Everyone knows it. We really do all love graph paper. If you’re designing dungeons and have never used graph paper then you are missing out on a certain form of exploratory design that most DMs hold very close to their hearts. The problems that are apparent from the “classic” dungeon designs shown in the above Boing Boing article almost all stem from the use of graph paper. For starters, the extents of the dungeon are clearly set at the very edge of the paper itself but far worse than that is the fact that the designer seems to have been overcome with the strange desire to populate every single square of the graph with dungeon.
The next big problem is that the designer has decided to get “creative” and go against the nature of the graph paper by making roughly 50% of the walls at various angles to one another. The end result is a series of straight/angled corridors forming a rough grid around far too numerous rooms almost all of which are forced into harsh triangular shapes. Players and DMs the world over might enjoy looking at these graphite and graph paper dungeons for pure nostalgia, but the fact remains that the only thing gained from playing through them at the table is a shared sense of pride in having survived a horribly designed dungeon. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Open Spaces Design Toolbox
As I introduced in my last post about improvisation, I believe that the key to being able to design a location (whether beforehand or on the fly) is grounded in what I’m calling your toolbox for design. The key is that once you have a well developed toolbox to pull ideas from, you can more readily and quickly design a location for your tabletop Roleplaying Games on the spot or adapt your planned locations to fit the developing needs of the game table. An underlying goal of this series of posts is to help you develop the toolbox required so that you will be able to accomplish this task with relative ease and a good amount of confidence.
I’m going to start by discussing the open spaces that come into play in your average D&D game. The locations I’ll cover in this post will include streets, plazas, and markets but should be adaptable to a larger variety of spaces if you apply the pieces correctly. I started some discussion on open spaces in my post about incorporating them and the larger concept of holidays into your games, but today I’m going to focus more on the specifics of the design process.
Starting in the Streets
Let’s assume that you’re planning a street ambush, inner-city brawl, or an encounter that involves the party protecting (or assaulting) a caravan and you find yourself in need of designing a street location. Your typical town or city street is going to be incredibly easy to design the basics of, but the details can be what really define it as a great location for your game. The first big concern to figure out is what kind of traffic your street handles, it can range from a larger alleyway that mostly sees foot traffic to a bustling medieval highway full of horse drawn wagons. More fantastic concerns may also come into play such as what a street might look like in a city built by giants or even smaller creatures like kobolds. This decision should also directly tell you what kinds of buildings will run along both sides of you street. I’m focusing more on the urban street concept right now, but if there is demand I can get into the specifics of rural roads and trade routes in a later post.
Once you’ve decided on some of the key factors mentioned above, designing a street on the fly should be relatively simple. If you’re running D&D you can quickly count off 10 feet (or 2 squares, whichever you prefer to use) for a cart path in the road and assume 5 ft. (1 square) on each side for general wiggle room and/or foot traffic. So for a one-way or single-cart street you would use roughly 20 ft. as your width, or if you want to do a two-way street you would have 30 ft. (10 ft. x 2 for carts, 5 ft. path/sidewalk on each side of the street). At this point you can decide to keep your street mostly straight or have it be a turn or whatever your heart desires, just make sure that any turns are of a gentle curve so that they’re believable for carts or your desired type of traffic to easily navigate the turns. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: On Improvisation
I am extremely happy for February to be here because it means Winter is getting closer to ending and with it hopefully the seemingly annual lull in gaming activities that often afflicts our group of friends. There was an unintentional break from my regular D&D campaign from late November until the very end of January due to a combination of weather and horrible holiday scheduling conflicts. Last year I somehow managed to go from thinking about canceling my campaign in early December to running three full adventures within January alone. Thankfully my game got back into the swing of things two weeks ago and now I am gearing up for another adventure this weekend. As I’m getting back into planning my adventures, I’ve been thinking more and more about improvisation in tabletop RPGs.
Seeing as talk about improvising dungeon and location design during a guest spot on the DM Guys Podcast is what inspired me to begin the Architect DM series in the first place, it seems like fitting topic to discuss! If I had to guess I would say that over the last year of running my D&D campaign I improvise between 50% and 75% of any given adventure. This ratio has developed over time as I’ve learned that planning too much can be just as detrimental to my games as not planning at all. It might be an extremely common sense statement for some of you, but what I’ve come to realize is that the best way to prepare yourself for improvising in a tabletop RPG is to make sure that you have the right spread of elements available to you that aren’t too specific but are also clear enough that they will aid you as your improvise.
Tools to Match Your Style
If you look around the internet at various tools and posts or books offering advice on running RPGs, you will often come across tips such as generating a list of random names to pull for NPCs or random encounters to pull from if your party goes in an unexpected direction. This kind of advice is great, and it can be a real eye-opener for DMs struggling with those aspects of running. However, what I’ve found is that the list of names I generated and was used regularly throughout the Heroic Tier of my D&D game has gone almost entirely unused in the Paragon Tier. My campaign breaks down nicely into roughly one year per tier of play, so what this means is that while I used this resource quite a bit during my first year of regular DMing (ever) it was a resource that has become less useful to me as I’ve developed in my style. [Read the rest of this article]
Unboxing: Wrath of Ashardalon D&D Board Game
For those of us who have been playing and enjoying the game Castle Ravenloft, anticipation has been building for the quick release of the second D&D Adventure System board game Wrath of Ashardalon! We were fortunate enough to get an early preview copy and so what I’d like to provide for you today is a brief post about the box and its contents as well as a preview of what to expect from the game based on a preliminary look through the rules and components.
Wrath of Ashardalon is presented in a nearly identical manner to Castle Ravenloft; the box is the exact same size and the spread of components is the same as well. If you’re not familiar with Castle Ravenloft then you can check out the unboxing video that Dave and I did at GenCon 2010 to see what I’m talking about. The pieces that come with Wrath of Ashardalon are clearly designed with compatibility in mind and it feels like the aim was to provide a bunch of new rules, miniatures, tiles, and cards that can be interchanged between the two games with incredible ease. To see a larger version of any picture in this post, just click on it!
Whereas the first game focused on exploring the crypts of Ravenloft filled with vampires, wolves, and undead the Wrath of Ashardalon game is focused around the dungeons beneath Firestorm Peak and includes more aberrant and natural creatures to challenge the party.
Here’s what you’ll get inside of the box:
The game comes with 5 hero figures, 30 monster figures, and 7 villain figures that are all different from those we saw in Castle Ravenloft and include some great sculpts that I’m happy to see such as the Red Dragon, Otyugh, Cultists, and Gibbering Mouthers. It also includes 200 new cards including 50 new power cards, 53 encounter cards, 30 monster cards, 33 treasure cards, and 6 boon cards (all of which could easily be combined with those from Castle Ravenloft except the Boon cards which are new). [Read the rest of this article]
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