Aetrimonde

Heroic Roleplaying in a World of Swords, Sorcery, and Steam

I’d like to introduce Aetrimonde, a TTRPG I’ve been designing with heavy inspiration from the houserules my group used back in our Dungeons and Dragons 4e days. I’m not ready to publish Aetrimonde yet, but I’m opening up this blog to discuss its design principles, mechanics, and systems.

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Economist by profession. Game theorist, enjoyer, and designer by vocation.

  • Aetrimonde Anniversary Post: Steam Golems

    I’ve been reminded that the first anniversary of my starting this blog recently passed without my noticing or doing anything special for it. So I’m going to fix that! Over the next few weeks, I’m going to put up a few posts on iconic elements of Aetrimonde: creatures, rules, and concepts that tie together its default setting and design philosophy in ways that exemplify the kind of game I’m writing.

    Today’s topic: steam golems. I previously put together several posts about golems, but somehow I neglected to post any of Aetrimonde’s most common (and in my opinion, most flavorful) variety of golem. So today, I’ve got three basic (meaning civilian-grade and standard-model) golems that the PCs might find turned on them by their operators.

    Mining Steam Golem

    The Mining Steam Golem is exactly what the name says: a steam golem for mining. To that end, it lacks arms and hands, and in their place features an earthmover bucket and a piledriver that is nominally for breaking rocks…but which also packs a punch in a pinch.

    Like all steam golems, this is a big, stompy, tough creature, with plenty of hit points, armor resistance, and some hard-hitting melee attacks. But it has its own twists on that recipe, tied in with its flavor as a glorified piece of mining equipment:

    In a fight (e.g. against an illicit mining operation with the funding to operate a golem), the Mining Steam Golem has a fun little three-part combo: it opens by using Dredging Swipe, which hopefully hits and drags in one of the PCs, but more importantly, fills up its excavator bucket. On its next turn, it uses Fling Debris, showering a clump of PCs with enough earth and stone to knock one of them prone. And once a PC has been knocked prone, the threat of its Piledriver, which automatically does 37 damage to a prone creature, becomes a pressing issue for the party.

    Its other two quirks are common to all steam golems. Dim-Witted gives it an external vulnerability, in that it can no longer use some of its more dangerous actions if the PCs eliminate its (likely easier to tackle) handler first. Overheat gives the PCs a sizeable burst of extra damage each round if they choose to deal fire damage…which they might instead avoid if they don’t have a way to handle the golem’s subsequent increased speed and power.

    Logging Steam Golem

    The second steam golem I’m presenting today is similarly industrial, but with a more forestry-oriented flavor. As Aetrimonde’s equivalent to a logging harvester, the Logging Steam Golem has a big grabby hand, just right for lifting tree trunks in one hand, and an utterly devastating rotary saw mounted on the opposite arm. This is the sort of golem that the PCs might encounter despoiling an elven forest or clearing the overgrowth from an ancient ruin.

    This combination of limbs gives the Logging Steam Golem a similarly devastating, and even swifter, combo: it opens by using Grasping Swipe, preferably against PCs that are bunched up, in an attempt to grab one. And if it succeeds, it spins up that rotary saw blade and menacingly lines up an attack of similar lethality to the Mining Steam Golem’s piledriver. The grabbed PC and their allies then only have a short window of time to either get them free or, if all else fails, bait the golem into swinging the saw at them via Hazardous Equipment and (hopefully) miss, or at least not crit.

    The Logging Steam golem shares the Dim-Witted and Overheat traits with its fellow steam golems.

    Stevedore Steam Golem

    The final steam golem in today’s lineup is the Stevedore Steam Golem, which is the simplest of these three: it has no special built-in equipment, just a couple of big grabby hands for hefting giant crates and containers onto ships and traincars. That doesn’t make it any less dangerous than the other big, piston-driven, iron-plated golems we’ve seen today–just less specialized.

    Personally, I’ve always found that picking up an enemy and using them as a bludgeon gets a good reaction at the table: for whatever reason, there’s always someone at my tables who gets a kick out of doing it to a goblin or having it done to themselves. And the Stevedore Steam Golem does just that: its Brawl action gives it two chances to catch up a PC in its big grabby hands, swing them bodily at their allies, or hurl them into the distance. (This naturally hurts the grabbed PC as much as the actual target of the attack.) There’s no fancy combo here, unless grab-then-throw counts as a combo: the Stevedore is just a straightforward Brute, but one that a certain kind of PC will have a lot of fun fighting.

    Up Next

    At some point over the next few weeks, I’ll follow this up with some actual militarized golems that pose a greater threat for more experienced PCs. Until then, stay tuned!

  • GM Advice: Planning and Linking Scenes

    Today, I’m going to talk about some of the early steps in writing an adventure: planning the scenes that will go into it and linking them together into a cohesive framework. I tend to write adventures from the top-down, starting with a few big-picture concepts and fleshing out various scenes and encounters to support those concepts; the advice in the GMH, in the best tradition of “write what you know,” follows on from that approach.

    Planning Scenes

    Previous chapters have discussed how to design a scene in isolation, but when writing an entire adventure there is also the issue of choosing scenes. Before putting in the work of designing each scene, it helps to consider the entire collection of scenes together: this way you can build a framework of how scenes relate to each other and how they fit into the larger scope of your adventure before fleshing each of them out. Big-picture factors to take into consideration at this step include:

    • Types: An adventure intended for a general audience should have a balanced variety of scenes, including exploration, interaction, and both combat and non-combat encounters. Aetrimonde is a fairly combat-focused system: a good basic approach is to, for every 10 scenes, start with 5 combat encounters and one each of exploration, interaction, and non-combat encounters. Then, fill in the remaining two scenes as you feel fit.
    • Variety: It is generally a good idea to break up scenes of the same type to provide players with a little variety. If using the basic approach above, in which half of the scenes or more will be combat encounters, that generally means interspersing other kinds of scene to break up long stretches of combat, and if you have duplicates of other scene types, do not set them one after the other.
    • Significance: Not every scene has to be vital to the plot–in fact, for longer adventures, having every single scene introduce new plot twists, supporting characters, or locations can make it hard to follow. It helps to have some scenes that don’t bear significantly on the plot: these can be plot-related but not advance the plot, like a fight against an antagonist’s minions who are just standing in the PCs’ way, or they can be completely unrelated, like a game of riddles against a giant who just happened to be wandering through at the wrong time.
    • Difficulty: As a rule of thumb, most scenes should be of default (i.e. moderate) difficulty. For every 10 scenes, one or perhaps two should be difficult, and an equal number should be easy. Significant scenes do not have to be difficult, although a final climactic battle against an adventure’s villain should generally be on the harder side. In fact, making significant scenes difficult can make an adventure harder to complete, by raising the risk of failure at crucial junctures.

    Linking Scenes Together

    Once you have a general idea of what scenes your adventure will contain, but before fleshing them out, it pays to think about how the scenes flow together and how the players may move from scene to scene. The goal of this step is to establish a structure for your adventure, defining the order that the players are expected to progress through each scene (although they may get inventive and find unanticipated ways to progress, which is where the GM has to do some quick thinking…). It’s particularly important to make sure that all of your scenes are reachable—that you haven’t done the narrative equivalent of locking the key to a door behind the door itself. Factors to consider here include:

    • Geography: Where do the scenes of the adventure take place, and how can the characters physically move from scene to scene? Scenes taking place in a wide-open wilderness may allow the party to move freely from any one to any other, but scenes set in a ruin, fortress, or some rougher kinds of outdoor terrain may limit the party’s movement. It may be necessary to first defeat the guards at the gate to the fortress before attempting to rob the fortress’ vault or face the sorcerous overlord, for example.
    • Ordering: Do the players need to complete one scene before attempting another? For example, do they first need to shoot down the dragon using the ballista atop the castle, before they face it on the ground? If so, they need to be able to reach the ballista on the roof before fighting the dragon—but they might be able to pass through the courtyard where that fight will take place, just with no dragon currently in it. In fact, having the players pass through locations where later scenes take place—perhaps with separate scenes occurring on each visit—is a great way to provide foreshadowing and let the players have advance knowledge of where they’ll be fighting.
    • Knowledge: Are some scenes inaccessible without the players getting a clue or advice? This might be the case with scenes taking place in remote caves that aren’t on any map, or that require the players to speak a password that they have no way of knowing until they interrogate a prisoner from another scene. If so, think about which scenes would give the PCs the appropriate clues—you may want there to be several options so that the players don’t miss them. Like with ordering, scenes requiring knowledge might take place in the same location as previous scenes, with elements of the location only becoming noteworthy or understood with the benefit of further knowledge.
    • Points of No Return: When the players start a scene, does it lock them out of other scenes either temporarily or permanently? This could be a matter of geography (attempting to cross a bridge causes it to collapse and forces the PCs to find a way out of the ravine before doing anything else) or it could be because plot developments in a scene make another scene moot (attacking the warlord in his throne room draws all of his guards to the battle, and so the guards formerly in the barracks aren’t there anymore).

  • Aetrimonde Gazetteer: Resurrection

    I recently wrote about failure modes and what a GM might be able to do if an adventure goes awry. One of those things is resurrection: bringing back a dead character so that they can still participate in the adventure. Today, I’m going to go into more detail about how that works in Aetrimonde.

    The Problem with Resurrection

    Resurrection has two drawbacks, one mechanical and one narrative.

    Mechanically, resurrection lowers the stakes of the campaign. Being able to bring a character back from the dead lessens the incentive to keep them alive in the first place. If resurrections are simple and easy, players may throw their characters into greater peril, expecting that they will be able to bring them back instead of making a new character, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy: taking those risks is likely to cause more character deaths, and a high rate of character deaths makes it tempting to employ resurrection as a solution. Campaigns with frequent deaths and resurrections have their fans, but Aetrimonde is not designed for them by default.

    Narratively, easy resurrections raise a lot of questions with regard to the campaign’s setting, mostly related to why it isn’t widely used among NPCs. If it’s within the realm of possibilities for mere adventurers to resurrect one of their own, surely it must be feasible for kings, wealthy merchants, and other powerful personages to arrange for their own resurrection–which, for players who think about such things, takes a lot of the urgency out of trying to prevent (or arrange) the assassination of powerful NPCs. Depending on the exact mechanics of resurrection, it might even raise the question of why anybody ever dies, even of old age. Campaign settings that explore questions like these have their place–but Aetrimonde is not intended to be one of them.

    The Purpose of Resurrection

    With those drawbacks in mind, Aetrimonde has a fairly narrow intended role for resurrection. It is a solution for a character death that either:

    • Interferes with the plot because the dead character was somehow integral to it,
    • Cuts short a story arc or series of encounters that the GM or player had put a lot of work into, or
    • Occurs at a really inconvenient point in the plot, where it would be difficult to introduce a replacement character.

    It should not be a solution for every character death, at least not in a typical campaign, but it still has a niche.

    Mechanics for Resurrection

    Aetrimonde’s philosophy on mechanics for resurrection is simple and straightforward: there are no such mechanics. Because resurrection should be employed to resolve plot-related problems, it should always work in the manner that the GM needs it to. This means that unlike many systems, Aetrimonde contains no “Raise Dead” or “Resurrection” spell accessible to players. Instead, it has guidelines for how a GM can employ it, which lead naturally to a few different scenarios:

    • Resurrection Should be Difficult: Performing a resurrection is not something that ordinary characters can do on the regular. It should require special training and knowledge, special circumstances, or special resources that aren’t generally available.
    • Resurrection Should Involve the PCs: Resurrecting one of their number shouldn’t be a process where the PCs drop off a corpse and pick up a live character an hour later. It should require them to participate in the process, or at least do something to enable it. It can even form the basis for an adventure in itself…
    • Resurrection Should Have a Cost: A resurrection solves a problem, but it should not be a perfect solution: either the PCs performing the resurrection or the resurrected character should have to pay a price for the solution.

    Forms of Resurrection

    So with that in mind, here are three different formats that a resurrection could take:

    • Illicit Vitalism: In an effort to resurrect their fallen comrade, the PCs take his corpse to a vitalist: a mad scientist practicing the forbidden art of vitalism, reviving the dead using lightning bolts and chemicals. The vitalist requires a bit of assistance obtaining supplies for his machinery, including some chemicals that have been impounded by the watch specifically because they can be used in vitalism…and the process is still experimental, of course, which means that the resurrected character might have a few…quirks…to sort out afterward.
    • Churchly Resurrection: Because of the world-saving nature of their quest, the PCs seek out a suitably large temple, with suitably potent clergy, in the expectation that they might be able to reunite body and soul. Which they can…if said soul can be found in the Underworld, contained, and brought back to the land of the living. And the clergy may also require the resurrectee or one of their intercessors to make certain vows to justify performing such a sacred ritual…
    • Embodied Spirit: Having discovered that their fallen comrade had earned enough of a reputation to form a spirit of sorts in her image, the PCs decide to embody the spirit, binding it into her corpse as an emergency form of resurrection. This requires, first, that they strengthen the spirit by telling stories about her living self, until it has the power to animate a corpse…and then to continue telling these stories to ensure that the resulting person stays a person instead of being a spirit inhabiting flesh.

    There are any number of other forms that a resurrection could take, dependent only on the inventiveness of the GM, but these three provide examples of the level of difficulty, involvement, and cost that it should involve.

    Having dipped my toes into the topic with mentions of vitalism and other forms of resurrection, I think I may put out a couple more posts touching on mad science and occult magic in the near future.

  • Aetrimonde Gazetteer: Alcohols of Aetrimonde II

    Today, I’m going to continue my series on Aetrimonde’s alcohols, ordinary and unusual, with a discussion of wines:

    • Imperial Purple: The Novan Imperium, like the Auran Empire that came before it, has a long history of winemaking, and wine is the alcoholic drink of choice in the Imperium even today. Sadly for the Imperium’s urban underclass, however, wine fermented from actual grapes is expensive and largely a luxury for wealthy fabricians. Most affordable “wine” in the Imperium is distilled grain alcohol diluted with water and given color and flavor using additives. Imperial Purple is the epitome of such drinks, given an artificial violet hue using beet and red cabbage juice.
    • Reveler Sacramental: Although almost as cheap as Imperial Purple, Reveler Sacramental is the real deal, made from grapes grown, juiced, and fermented by a monastic order dedicated to Deum Reveling, the Chancel of Vines. In accordance with Deum Reveling’s doctrine of spreading joy and gaiety to all, the monks focus on large harvests and efficient fermentation over flavor. Reveler Sacramental is thus a serviceable but uninspiring wine, best drank as an accompaniment for food or entertainment and not for its own merits. The wine is sold at cost by the monks, although they share it for the asking at their services, which are rather more convivial than most religious rites.
    • Gynnande Onyx: The winemaking regions of the Petty Kingdoms are not large or productive, owing to the region’s backwardness and instability. Currently, the most renowned vineyards are located near the town of Gynnande, where the soil and the local varietal of grape combine to produce a juice so darkly purple as to be almost black (hence the name). Gynnande Onyx is a sweet dessert wine, served at the tables of the Kingdoms’ nobility and exported in small quantities at exorbitant prices, which have grown ever higher as the Iron Duke’s armies press closer to Gynnande’s vineyards.
    • Cession Sekt: Sparkling wine was invented more or less at the same time in three or four city-states in what is now the Cession (and it is hotly debated which one of them got there first). The Cession already had a strong reputation for its dry white wines, made from grapes grown in terraced vineyards along the steep banks of the region’s winding rivers. The addition of bubbles further popularized Cession wines, to the point that sekt is now a major export from the region, and its vintners fiercely defend the name against foreign producers seeking to capitalize on its recognizability.
    • Formic Mead: In what is possibly the strangest origin for any of Aetrimonde’s alcohols, formic mead is brewed not from honey, but from the crystalline sugar produced as a happy by-product from one of ancient Gobol Karn’s bio-weapons that found a niche in the wild. So-called “honey ants” were engineered to sabotage enemy food supplies: an anthive surreptitiously introduced into a fortification (or catapulted over the walls) would see the inch-long insects seek out and consume any source of carbohydrates they could get their pincers on, refining it into solid sugar while multiplying exponentially and biting anything that got close to the hive. Honey ants are a perpetual nuisance in the south of the Unclaimed Reaches, but a mature hive can contain hundreds of pounds of crystalline sugar which, when dissolved in water and fermented, produces a beverage similar to mead with a unique acidic tang.
    • Deepwoods Rootwine: The elves of Tir Coetir, living as they do in the depths of a primeval forest, do not have vineyards. They do brew alcohol from fruit and berries, but their most prized drink is rootwine. This drink gets most of its (actually quite minimal) alcohol content from fermenting fruit juice, but the exact choice of fruit matters little: the supposed merit of rootwine comes from the medicinal herbs, spices, and of course roots that are added to the fermenting pot. According to elven folklore, rootwine promotes everything from good health and keen senses to prescience and a deeper connection with the forest spirits. Rootwine isn’t often found outside of Tir Coetir other than in enclaves of wood elves, but specialist bottle shops sometimes carry it for discerning customers.

  • GM Advice: Adventure Seeds

    Since I’m on the topic of adventures, in preparation to write Aetrimonde’s starter adventure, I think a great subject for this week’s post is adventure seeds: short, flavorful concepts that can form the basis of an adventure for a GM willing to write their own.

    The advice I’ve written in the GMH on writing your own adventures uses adventure seeds as the foundation of an adventure: start from one simple concept at the core of the adventure, and build out from there. Today’s excerpt covers three common kinds of adventure seed (which are not the only ones that the book discusses) and how each one can define an adventure.

    While I’ve got your attention: I have ambitions to write a starter adventure for Aetrimonde using feedback from reader polls on this blog to guide how the adventure develops. The first poll is already up, and asks which of several regions of Aetrimonde sound interesting for an adventure. Want to be involved in the development of Aetrimonde’s starter adventure? Go vote now!

    One of the easiest ways to start writing an adventure is to start from an adventure seed: a concept, usually no more than a sentence or three long, of something that would be fun to play through. Adventure seeds are usually focused on one aspect of the prospective adventure, and turning one into a full-fledged adventure means fleshing out its other aspects to better serve the core concept in the seed.

    Conflict

    One kind of adventure seed, and the one that many first-time adventure authors might gravitate toward, focuses on an interesting conflict that can drive the adventure’s plot. Possibly the most straightforward way to base an adventure on conflict is to find a group of enemies in the Bestiary that would be interesting for players to fight, and then come up with a reason why the PCs would be fighting them. Other forms of conflict that could be turned into adventures include:

    • Two or more rival factions are fighting over territory, resources, past insults, or some other provocation. The PCs have the opportunity to side with one and help them achieve victory, or possibly, if they play their cards right, find a peaceful compromise. (Example: A clan of modernist dwarves who make firearms are fierce competitors of another clan who make crossbows. The business competition is approaching the point where they are about to start turning their weapons on each other.)
    • Something bad is happening, but nobody knows why and everybody is pointing fingers. The PCs need to investigate these happenings, find the actual cause, and figure out what to do about it, all while preventing the victims from turning on each other. (Example: A remote village suffers a spate of obviously supernatural thefts, kidnappings, or murders just as the PCs are passing through. As the prime suspects, they first need to clear their names, then find and deal with the culprits before the locals start burning their neighbors at the stake.)
    • A town, country, or organization profits from an ongoing injustice, and the PCs undertake to put an end to it, against the interests of those in power. (Example: A wealthy trading port still practices slavery under the guise of indentured servitude. The PCs decide to put an end to it, but must rally support for their cause and undermine the merchant prince’s position before they can topple him and start an uprising.)

    Antagonist

    Another adventure seed may revolve around an antagonist: the villain of the adventure, who opposes the PCs and is responsible for the challenges they face. The antagonist may not actually be fought in the adventure, but for antagonists who are personally powerful, it’s common for the final scene before the epilogue to be a climactic “boss fight” against them. The important thing about an antagonist is not their appearance or their fighting style (although it helps to make those memorable), but the way that their influence is felt throughout the adventure. Examples of potentially fun antagonists include:

    • A powerful monster that the PCs must track down, bring to battle, and defeat. (Examples: Dragons, demons, powerful undead.)
    • \item A mastermind who commands hosts of lesser foes but doesn’t deign to face the PCs until they have fought their way into a position where they pose an actual threat to their agenda. (Examples: Warlords, powerful fey, necromancers.)
    • \item A secretive manipulator, who puts sinister plots into motion but who avoids fighting and whose actual identity is only shockingly unmasked near the end of the adventure. (Examples: Master thieves, double agents, changelings.)
    • \item A conspirator who is only powerful because of their position in politics, society, or an organization, and who the PCs can’t even touch until they gain an equal amount of support. (Examples: Corrupt politicians, greedy robber barons, heretical priests.)

    Setting

    Some adventures revolve around a setting rather than a conflict or antagonist. A setting that is the basis of an adventure might be where the entire adventure takes place, or it might be a hub that the PCs operate from during an adventure that takes them all around the region. The important thing when basing an adventure on a setting is to make the setting a kind of character” in the adventure, rather than it being a purely passive backdrop to more interesting events: the setting itself needs to interact with the PCs somehow in order to make an adventure focused on it memorable. Ways to do this include:

    • Letting the PCs alter the setting in various ways over the course of the adventure. (Example: An initially dying frontier town, which the PCs can reinvigorate by driving off bandits, breaking curses, and investing the loot from their adventures.)
    • Having the setting pose unusual dangers that the PCs must take special steps to stave off. (Example: A haunted manor filled with ghosts that attempt to possess the PCs if they try to rest outside of specially-warded safe rooms.)
    • Tying the setting to an overarching mystery that the PCs gradually solve over the course of the adventure. (Example: A centuries-old wizard’s sanctum, filled with oddities and artifacts, but that the former owner appears to have abandoned abruptly, leaving numerous experiments unattended…)
    • Giving the PCs novel powers tied to the setting, letting them do things that they wouldn’t be able to elsewhere. (Example: An abandoned city whose past is mystically overlaid onto its present, allowing the PCs to move between the two time periods to cross bridges in the past that have collapsed in the present, or walk through gaps in walls that are intact in the past.)

    Up next in this column, I’ll be looking at factors involved in adventure writing like length, structure, and pacing. Stay tuned!

  • GM Advice: Adventure Structure

    Today, since I’m gearing up to write Aetrimonde’s starter adventure (and if you haven’t voted on a setting for that adventure yet—please do! I want feedback here…), I’m going to talk about adventure structure: the way that scenes link together in an adventure to form a plot that the players can work through. The structure of an adventure determines both player agency (which we want!) and the amount of work that has to go into writing and preparing the adventure (which isn’t bad—I sometimes enjoy the challenge of writing and prepping big, complex adventures—but is sometimes inconvenient).

    The excerpt I have for you today comes from the section of the GMH dealing with running adventures: the topic also comes up later in the same chapter, when the book discusses writing them, and there the book provides guidance on how to use adventure structure to manage pacing, create tension, and give players agency.

    An adventure is a collection of scenes that relate to each other—but those scenes can connect together in a variety of ways that make an adventure feel and play differently. Depending on your players’ tastes, your own ambition, and the amount of time you have to devote to a campaign, you may want an adventure with a specific structure.

    Linear

    In a linear adventure, the scenes largely have a set order, and the players have to play through them sequentially. That makes linear adventures simple to run (and write), which is great for GMs that have limited prep time and groups that play in short sessions , but also it limits player agency. Linear adventures are good representations of plots like:

    • Fighting through a ruin, fortress, or other environment with multiple chambers filled with enemies, one after the other (oftentimes called a dungeon”).
    • A journey along a fixed route, with encounters at set points along the way.
    • Withstanding a lengthy siege where enemy attacks come in a set order.

    Branching

    A branching adventure allows the players to choose which scene to engage with next (which direction to go”) at certain points. However, there are still well-defined start and end points to the adventure, and the players’ choices at these branching points is not about where they’re going in the end so much as how to get there. Branching adventures are good structures for plots like:

    • Hunting down a foe based on a handful of clues that each suggests a different course of action.
    • A journey where the route is only roughly set ahead of time, allowing for (or requiring) detours and diversions.
    • Helping to besiege a city, with multiple ways that the players can help undermine the defenses, culminating in a decisive battle.

    There are several ways to have an adventure branch:

    Optional Branches

    Optional branches present the players with some scenes (in sequences that can be as short as a single scene) that they don’t have to succeed in, or even engage with at all, to complete the adventure. Optional branches can provide the players with:

    • Changes of pace to break up a section of adventure with many scenes of a similar nature.
    • Opportunities to learn secret lore, gain allies, or find loot that would be helpful but not required later in the adventure.
    • Challenging fights or other encounters to test themselves against, without making it necessary to overcome them.

    The drawback of optional branches is that the players may simply not engage with them, wasting the effort that went into writing and preparing them.

    Alternate Routes

    An adventure with alternate routes contains two or more distinct sets of scenes that are equally viable ways to proceed through the adventure. Ultimately, though, alternate routes all lead to the same destination in the adventure. Alternate routes can give the players:

    • A way to avoid encounters they’re not prepared for, like challenging fights when the party is already wounded.
    • A choice of storylines, letting them advance the story in the way they find most interesting.
    • A choice of rewards, letting the players pick the most valuable option.

    As with optional branches, alternate routes mean that whichever routes the players don’t pick (assuming they don’t or can’t go back to them later) are wasted effort for the GM—but with careful planning, you can set up the choice of route at the end of one session, so that you know which material to prepare before the next one. If alternate routes are exclusive (the players can only choose one), it may also cause the players to feel that they missed out on something interesting in the routes they didn’t choose.

    Multiple Requirements

    An adventure with multiple requirements presents the players with several tasks they need to undertake before they can reach the adventure’s climax, but gives them the option of completing them in any order. They might even be able to switch between them, going partway before one branch before going back and trying out another. However, in the end the players will need to play all the way through each of these branches.

    Adventures with multiple requirements offers many of the same benefits as ones with alternate routes, and they avoid the problem of wasted effort writing and preparing scenes that the players don’t see, as is an issue with optional branches and alternate routes. However, multiple requirements also offer the players less agency, in that they will end up playing through all of the material in the adventure and only get to choose the order of it.

    Branched Endings

    An adventure with a mostly linear structure may have branched endings, similar to alternate routes but leading to different versions of the adventure’s ending. This might give the players choices of how and where to fight the adventure’s villain in a decisive confrontation, let them influence the fate of the town or region where the adventure took place, or force them to choose between saving an NPC ally or the treasure hoard they were seeking.

    The players’ choices, successes and failures earlier in the adventure may influence the choices available to them in this endgame. Siding with one faction over another might give the PCs access to different allies in a final battle; succeeding at optional objectives like keeping magical artifacts from being destroyed could give the PCs a way to avert a dilemma and both save their beloved NPC ally and lay claim to a treasure hoard before it is buried.

    You can absolutely mix and match different forms of branching to have an adventure with alternate routes through one section, multiple requirements through another, and optional scenes and encounters scattered throughout.

    Mesh

    A mesh adventure does not have the well-defined end point of a linear or branching adventure. Instead, each scene connects to other scenes in defined ways, such that overcoming the challenges in certain scenes unlocks access to others, and the players can move more or less freely to any scene they’ve unlocked. Because of this interconnectedness, if you were to draw out the connections between scenes, the resulting diagram would resemble a mesh (or spiderweb!).

    Mesh adventures may have a single ending that can be reached from several other scenes, which is similar to a branching adventure with alternate routes or multiple requirements, depending on whether the players need to complete just one scene to reach the ending, or several. They may alternately have several possible endings, like an adventure with branched endings, or they may not have a true ending but rather several different sets of events that occur (giving the players a similar sense of accomplishment to an ending) as they complete key scenes, but allowing them to experience all of them at their own pace.

    The mesh structure provides players with the greatest degree of agency, but requires more design work from the author and prep work from the GM. Mesh adventures are good for plots like:

    • A murder investigation where the players start with some clues leading to encounters which themselves contain more clues once overcome.
    • Exploring a ruined city or a stretch of wilderness where points of interest are uncovered bit by bit.
    • Prosecuting a war, where the players can freely choose what theater of the war to lend their aid.

    So that’s the GMH’s take on adventure structure: the diagrams I’ve included here are rough drafts (because I’m definitely not a graphic designer, nor an artist), but I think get the concept across. I’ve thought about ways to convey other information, like where in an adventure it might be safe to rest, or whether it’s possible to backtrack to previous scenes, but I think that these diagrams benefit from being simple.

    One more reminder: go vote on the setting for the sample adventure! I don’t need to be told what to write about, but I think it’d be fun to crowdsource my inspiration for this…

  • GM Advice: Failure Modes

    Today, I thought I might talk about failure, and how Aetrimonde handles it. Failure is a looming threat in any roleplaying game: at any moment, you might make the wrong decision, or just have a horrible streak of luck with the dice. It’s my opinion that failure should matter: it should have consequences, but ideally not ones that bring the campaign to an end.

    Aetrimonde puts a lot of the burden of avoiding terminal consequences for failure on the GM. Here’s what the GMH has to say about failure.

    Before I get any further, let me just remind you readers that I have a poll open in which you can help choose what Aetrimonde’s starter adventure will be like. Go vote: I want reader feedback!

    Sometimes, an adventure doesn’t go as planned, and the characters fail to overcome a challenge put to them. Failure does not have to be the end of the adventure: in moments like these, your job as GM is to find ways that the characters can keep progressing.

    Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of failure mode with lasting consequences that you need to worry about: plot collapse and character death.

    Plot Collapse

    A plot collapse happens when the characters fail at a challenge in a way that keeps the adventure’s intended plot from moving forward, or means that they can no longer achieve a broader objective: their enemy beat them to the dangerous artifact, they failed to make it across the bridge before it was blown up, or they misunderstood a riddle and went to entirely the wrong place. Plot collapse can also occur if the players find a way of bypassing the plot, rendering the adventure moot. Regardless of cause, a plot collapse means that the adventure seems like it is about to come to an anticlimactic end. There are a few ways to resolve this, and most of them involve tinkering with the adventure to alter future encounters or even change the flow of the adventure:

    • Helpful Nudging: If the players are leaning toward a decision that would cause plot collapse, you can nudge them away from it. Depending on context, this might mean hinting that their characters can tell this is a bad decision, or outright telling them that what they’re about to do is not something you planned for and would derail the plot.
    • Regroup and Retry: If plot collapse occurs not because the PCs have outright failed but because they just can’t get past an obstacle (like a locked door, sheer cliff, or powerful guardian), you can just let them back up, gather their resources, and try again. In some cases, all they need may be a rest to regain powers, hit points, and resurgences; in others, they may need to collect tools, information, or allies in order to have a better chance of success.
    • Soften the Blow: If a plot collapse has already occurred, one option is to work around it and find some way of getting the players back in the action. Their failure should have consequences, but you can soften them so that it merely makes some future scene more challenging, or raises the stakes. If the PCs were delayed so that the enemy beat them to the treasure, perhaps this means that only half of the treasure has already been removed by the time they get there, reducing the rewards the PCs can lay claim to; or perhaps the enemy has activated a dangerous artifact from the treasure hoard but hasn’t figured out how to fully control it in the ensuing encounter, so that it becomes a hazard to be compensated for instead of an insurmountable obstacle.
    • Reroute the Plot: If you can’t soften the blow, the next best option is to rework the plot of the adventure to account for the PCs’ failure. Failing to stop a villain’s getaway can mean that they have to face the villain again in a new encounter, or that they alert other enemies so that future encounters are different or more difficult; following a clue that was a red herring can mean that the PCs are now shorter on time, and must overcome different or additional challenges to make up for lost time.
    • Sequel Hook: If you just can’t find a way to compensate for a plot collapse, that might mean that it’s the end of the current session…but a failure like that might still be a fun premise for the next adventure: what happens after the villains win? Given a little time to prepare, you may be able to set up another adventure as the logical consequences of the PCs’ failure, even reworking the parts of the current adventure that the PCs missed out on into parts of this new adventure.
    • Retcon: If all else fails, you have no way to fix the plot collapse, and the players are disappointed to have missed out on the rest of the adventure, the last recourse is a retcon (short for retroactive continuity): you simply declare that the failure “didn’t happen,” and either give the players another chance at success, or pick up as if they had succeeded. A retcon is the last recourse, because it is generally unfulfilling: the players will know that they were only able to progress because you “took mercy” on them, and this can taint the remainder of the adventure or even campaign—so before you employ a retcon, be sure that your players are up for it.

    Character Death

    The second variety of failure mode is the death of a PC. Aetrimonde’s rules aim to make random character deaths unlikely: it should take bad tactics from the PCs, antagonistic GMing, or a really awful string of rolls to outright kill a PC—but it can still happen. Aside from disappointing the character’s player, who now misses out on any character development they had hoped for, it also means that the party is down one character and thus less capable of handling future challenges.

    Character death can usually be dealt with in similar ways to plot collapse, but there are some unique considerations as well:

    • Just Maim Them: One option for handling what would be a character death is to merely maim or seriously injure the character: given time and resources, and possibly another adventure to make it possible, a character can be healed of just about anything, including missing limbs and head trauma. This avoids permanently killing off a PC, which is useful if a player had put a lot of effort into character development or you had made the character relevant to the plot, but it does still mean that the party will be a character short.
    • Replacement Character: If the plot permits it, you can insert another character into the adventure to be played by the player who just lost theirs. (This works even if the PC was just maimed…) This could be a captive who the PCs find and set free at the start of the next encounter, a companion that the PCs had with them and rises to the occasion, or even an enemy that they browbeat into having a change of heart. They don’t even need to be a full-fledged PC: it may actually be simpler to give the player an NPC, since they won’t necessarily be playing the NPC for long and an NPC will generally be simpler, with fewer powers and traits to learn the rules for.
    • Replacement Party: If the worst has happened, and most or all of the party is dead, maimed, captured, and otherwise out of action, you may need to introduce an entirely new party. They could be reinforcements gathered by a sole survivor, backup that was on its way when the first party was wiped out, or opportunists drawn by rumors that a bunch of adventurers died and their loot and equipment is up for grabs. Since this would generally involve at least a little delay, it might be appropriate to rework some of the scenes later in the adventure, and especially the encounter where the PCs died: after all, it would be kind of repetitive to just go through the exact same encounter that they already had “spoiled” for them.
    • Handle Like Plot Collapse: If the PC or PCs died in a time-sensitive or plot-sensitive part of the adventure, it may wind up having the effect of a plot collapse. In which case, you will need to handle the deaths like a plot collapse: soften the blow, reroute the plot, treat it as a sequel hook, or just retcon it, as discussed above.

    That’s it for today—and if you haven’t yet voted to give me guidance on writing Aetrimonde’s starter adventure, here’s the poll!

  • Lore Drop: Spirits of Aetrimonde

    Continuing on with my effort to go into the lore of other classes the way I have with Divine classes, I’ll be talking about the various kinds of spirit that empower Spiritual classes through their bonds. (Not to be confused with the next part in my Alcohols of Aetrimonde series…)

    The rules for Spiritual classes don’t require characters to have defined spirits empowering them, leaving that up to the players and GM to sort out. Depending on what they want, they can leave their spirits entirely nebulous and undefined, or they can create a backstory for each of their spirits that explains why their bond lets them use each of their Spiritual powers. There is a little bit of a mechanical tie here, in that certain powers are associated with different types of spirit, but I believe I’ve left plenty of room for players to design and flavor whatever kind of spirit they want…

    The four most common kinds of spirits are ancient, animal, elemental, and land spirits. They are divided up in this way because each of the four groups has certain commonalities in how they behave both in isolation, and in their interactions with spiritualists.

    Ancient Spirits

    Ancient spirits are predominantly the spirits of people, whether real or imagined: they are equally likely to arise from stories told about people who really lived and figures of myth who were simply part of a story that took root in a culture and was retold until a spirit formed. Most ancient spirits blur the lines somewhat: it’s rare for a spirit to be a truly accurate representation of a real person, and most of those cultural heroes originated with real people and events, even if they grew exaggerated over time.

    The defining trait of ancient spirits is their interactions with mortals: they are the most like mortals, and their fundamental natures are based on mortals’ interactions with each other. Ancient spirits want to do things that mortals do: some try to protect their supposed descendants and pass on their wisdom…while others play nasty pranks or simply break things. When bonded with spiritualists, ancient spirits push their bond-partner to express this fundamental nature, whether personally, or by inspiring it in other mortals.

    Animal Spirits

    Animal spirits are based on animals, or rather, on how mortals perceive them: most animal spirits behave exaggeratedly compared to the actual animals they are based on (and there are some rare spirits based on strange beasts that may be mythical to begin with). Some animal spirits arise from generalized traits of their representative animal, while others are based on specific creatures that were notable for their size, appearance, unusual behavior, or involvement in specific events.

    The fundamental natures of animal spirits are tied to form and behavior: they allow spiritualists to express this nature by transforming their bodies, growing features like claws, fangs and antlers, or by bestowing them with instincts that influence their behavior. Spiritualists bonded to animal spirits commonly feel urges to behave like the spirit, which can be as subtle as becoming unusually sleepy in winter under the influence of a bear spirit, or as overt as trying to headbutt threatening figures when bonded to a stag spirit.

    Elemental Spirits

    Elemental spirits are predominantly related to the four classical elements of air, earth, fire, and water, with plants as a common fifth variety. Like all spirits, elemental spirits are shaped by mortal perceptions, and they are by far the most diverse kind. Fire is associated with warmth and industry as well as destruction and war; plants embody both growth and plenitude as well as the creeping influence of nature over civilization. Inconveniently, the most powerful elemental spirits are shaped by destructive events like earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes that affect mortals en masse, and they are therefore considered the most dangerous and destructive of spirits even if weaker spirits are less wantonly dangerous.

    Fundamentally, elemental spirits want to influence the world around them. Fire spirits want to burn, plant spirits want to grow, and earth spirits want to stay still—until they abruptly decide to move. While they don’t influence the behavior of their bonded spiritualists, they do push—steadily and inexorably—to be unleashed.

    Land Spirits

    Land spirits are created when mortals perceive a place or region as distinct from its surroundings. While this can happen with ordinary lands, like a people’s homeland or a piece of especially productive farmland, the spirits of such places are generally somnolent and difficult to form productive bonds with. The sort of land spirits that are both useful and willing to bond tend to be dangerous to mortals in some way, like freezing glaciers and parched deserts.

    As an extension of how they tend to be perceived as dangerous, bonded land spirits also tend to be expansionistic: they want to spread their influence, making the rest of the world a little more like them. Like elemental spirits, land spirits consistently push to be unleashed, although as long as no mortals are in the way, is it much less immediately dangerous to unleash land spirits. However, if used repeatedly in the same place—especially if that is near the spirit’s place of origin—this can have lasting effects on the terrain, either by strengthening the spirit so that it can expand its influence, or by creating a new spirit related to the original in a new place.

    Complex Spirits

    Not all spirits fit neatly into these categories. Some spirits blur the lines between categories, as in the case of an ancient spirit based on a bear so dangerous that it became anthropomorphized as a force of destruction, or a land spirit formed from mountains shrouded in constant storms, so that it also has influence over the element of air. Others, thankfully rare, defy categorization entirely, and have unique powers that make them difficult to handle…or sought-after by those who would control them.

    To wrap up this series on the lore of different class types, I’ll be covering Martial training and how Martial characters develop their peerless skills with weapons and armor. Stay tuned!

  • Lore Drop: Theories of Magic

    While I was building Ipki Chainbreaker, I went into a lot of detail about Aetrimonde’s gods, religions, and even a bit of metaphysics, to give context to the Divine classes. Not all of that information is in the CRB (some of it is relegated to a section of the campaign setting in the GMH, and other stuff won’t make it into the initial books at all), but out of fairness, I think this is a great time to circle back and discuss some of the lore that the CRB contains for other class groups.

    So today, I’m going to present some of the theories of magic that the CRB discusses when introducing the Arcane classes: these are purely flavorful (although I’ve got some ideas on how to represent them mechanically, which sadly didn’t make the cut for the core rules…), but they provide players with context as to how an arcanist might think and behave in this setting.

    The mindset that an arcanist twists their mind into to cast spells is called their theory of magic. While most arcanists eventually develop their own unique theories, there are several common theories taught to apprentices as a starting point, and arcanists group themselves according to what they were taught when first learning magic.

    High Magic

    High magic is the original theory of arcane magic, as practiced by ancient elven sorcerers and eventually adapted into wizardry. Practicioners of high magic immerse themselves in studies of the forces they aim to control, internalizing how those forces behave naturally until they can visualize the effects of their intended spell in minute detail. Training in high magic is a slow, painstaking process, but its practicioners claim that it offers the most potential for those who master it. High magic is the theory most heavily associated with wizards and academic arcanists.

    Low Magic

    The name “low” magic was originally an unsubtle insult aimed at the first humans to successfully use arcane magic, because their spells were crude compared to those of the high magic that preceded them. Low mages train themselves to associate their spells with specific emotions, memories, or sense impressions, and then embrace those sensations when they intend to cast the spell. Low magicians tend to use simple, brute-force spells, and are widely feared for the possibility that strong emotions can cause them to lose control of their magic. Low magic is stereotypically practiced by sorcerers and hedge mages without formal training.

    Rune Magic

    Originally a dwarven form of magic, rune magic allows its practicioners to construct complicated spells out of simpler parts. The runes in rune magic are symbols representing parts that are common to many spells; by training to associate these common steps with a rune, runescribes are able to construct “phrases” of runes to form a complex spell. Rune magic is often cast by tracing out the runes of a spell, or (if a practicioner uses a runic alphabet with phonetic meanings) by speaking it aloud. Rune magic is most commonly practiced by artificers.

    Geometric Magic

    Much as rune magic represents the parts of a spell with symbols that form a sentence, geometric magic represents spells as geometric designs, with lines, arcs, and nodes representing the parts of the spell. This allows the parts of a geometric spell to be connected together with more flexibility than runes, which–as a theory of magic based on writing and symbols–has a rigid, sequential grammar dictating how the runes must fit together. Geometric magic is often cast by tracing out a spell’s diagram using one’s hands, with the order of the tracery allowing the spell to be altered on the fly. Geometric magic is closely tied to ritual magic, which makes heavy use of diagrams in ritual circles.

    Physiognostic Magic

    Physiognostic magic is often treated as an offshoot of rune and geometric magic due to apparently combining the symbolic aspects of rune magic with the gestures of geometric magic, but it is a distinctly unique theory. Practicioners train to associate stances and movements with parts of a spell: by moving through a sequence of poses in the correct form, physiognostics move their minds through the appropriate contortions to work their magic. Many physiognostics are easily mistaken for boxers or soldiers, until they throw a punch with their fist wreathed in flames. Physiognostic magic is associated with so-called battlemages, who combine their spells with the use of weapons and armor.

    Deep Magic

    It’s debatable whether deep magic properly counts as a theory of magic, because the core of the practice requires the practicioner to change themselves on a deep level (hence the name). Practicioners of deep magic inevitably become something other than entirely mortal, by internalizing principles of magic that twist their minds beyond the point of no return, absorbing sources of power that alter them on a fundamental level, or accepting the tutelage and influence of otherworldly entities. Deep magic is often treated as one step short of dark arts like diablerie and necromancy, and is most commonly used by warlocks.

    Stay tuned for more lore about Aetrimonde’s classes: I’ll be covering the different kinds of spirits that bond with and empower Spiritual classes next!

  • GM Advice: Exploration and Interaction

    In my continuing column on the Game Master’s Handbook’s advice to would-be GMs, I’m going to cover the book’s introduction to two of the core components of Aetrimonde’s adventure structure paradigm: exploration and interaction.

    There are a lot of ways to approach writing and running RPG adventures: the way I’ve chosen to describe things in the GMH for novice GMs revolves around scenes, being self-contained pieces that can be strung together into a narrative. Among the types of scene I discuss in the book are exploration and interaction, as well as non-combat encounters (which I’ve already touched on in this blog) and combat encounters.

    Exploration

    In exploration scenes, you present the players with an opportunity to examine scenery, objects, and other elements of the scene to uncover information that furthers the plot of the adventure. This might be:

    • Breadcrumbs: Information that plainly reveals a next step in the adventure, such as a hastily-written note that reveals where a kidnapped NPC is being taken, or a map to a hidden treasure.
    • Clues: Information that the players can piece together to figure out a next step or overcome an obstacle, like a poem concealing the secret word that opens a magical door, or a set of receipts from several shops in the same area, which hints at the location of a thieves’ hideout.
    • Lore: Obscure knowledge about people, places, events, or objects in the setting where the adventure takes place, like who built and lived in some ancient ruins, or the origin of a magical sword. Lore might become important over the course of an adventure or campaign, or it might simply be a fun tidbit for the kind of players who like understanding the fantasy world that they’re playing in.

    When running an exploration scene, you’ll need to:

    • Describe the Scene: You are the players’ guide to the adventure: they only know as much about the scene as you tell them. You’ll need to give the players all of the relevant information about the scene, so that they understand what their characters are facing, and have enough information to make appropriate choices. This includes just telling the players what their characters see and hear, but can also include narrating changes (“You push down on the statue’s arm, and it moves; the floor shudders, and elsewhere in the temple complex you hear the sliding of stone on stone…”) and suggesting what their characters might feel about a scene (“As you set eyes on the fabled lost library of Gjalerbron, the very weight of eons seems to press down on you…”).
    • Answer Questions: As they interact with the scene, the players will have questions: “What do the murals on the walls depict?” or “How cold is the tea on the colonel’s desk?” Some of these questions will (hopefully) be related to information you want them to get out of the scene, but remember: the players don’t already know what’s important in the scene like you do. Often, they will ask questions about aspects of the scene that aren’t relevant, and you’ll need to come up with an appropriate answer on the fly.
    • Adjudicate Checks: Sometimes the players will need to make checks to uncover information in a scene: they might try to use Athletics to climb up and inspect a wall carving in detail, or translate some ancient writings using History. You’ll need to set a Difficulty for these checks, if you haven’t already planned on the players making them, and adjudicate what happens based on how the players roll.
    • Drop Hints: Sometimes, players get stuck in an exploration scene, and they don’t find the information that they need. And sometimes that’s fine—the players don’t need to uncover every last piece of lore or unlock every hidden door in an adventure—but sometimes, missing out on a clue means not being able to progress further in the adventure until they find it. When that happens, you may need to drop hints like “Would you like to make an Intelligence check to decipher the riddle?” or “Maybe you should look for hidden doors…”

    Interaction

    In an interaction scene, you present the players with one or more NPCs and roleplay their conversation or other interaction with the PCs. There are a range of things that the PCs can get out of these interactions:

    • Exposition: NPCs can be a source of information, much like an exploration scene with more opportunity for roleplaying. They might be forthcoming or outright talkative, or the PCs might need to prompt them for relevant information or outright convince or coerce them into revealing what they know.
    • Aid: With the right prompting (or, again, convincing or coercion), NPCs can do useful things for the PCs. This can range from the simple and routine (selling them equipment and supplies or translating obscure languages), to the more complicated (agreeing to serve as a local guide, or serving as a distraction while the PCs pick someone’s pocket), to the plot-advancing (giving the PCs access to their extensive private library, or raising an army to resist a dark lord).
    • Fun: And of course, roleplaying an NPC can just be fun: memorable NPCs are one thing that gets PCs attached to a campaign, and interaction scenes give the players a chance to get into their characters and explore their mannerisms, outlooks, and motivations.

    In an interaction scene, you’ll need to:

    • Play the Part: Like always, you’ll need to play the NPCs. Depending on the particulars of the scene and the importance of various NPCs, you may also want to narrate notable features and habits (like for an NPC who hiccups uncontrollably when nervous, or whose every appearance has them wearing a different outrageous set of clothes). And, if you have the acting chops for it, giving NPCs different voices helps distinguish them from each other.
    • Convey Mood and Motivation: NPCs have moods and motives that can (and should) inform how the PCs approach them—and it’s up to you to convey this all to the players. If you’re up to it, you can often convey this through body language and tone of voice as you speak for an NPC—but if you need to convey a particularly complex motivation or attitude, it helps to state it outright in the narration, e.g. “She violently twitches as you mention Inverchyle, spilling red wine over her dress and breaking into vituperous swearing in Victish” or “He eyes you up and down as you speak, seeming to ignore you as he focuses on the quality of your clothing and jewelry.”
    • Adjudicate Responses: Depending on how the PCs interact with an NPC, the NPC’s attitude toward them may change. This may be the product of pure roleplaying, but use of social skills (particularly Intimidate and Persuasion) can also be involved. You’ll need to decide how NPCs react to what PCs say and what checks they make—and since players can be unpredictable, you’ll sometimes need to decide on the fly what an NPC does in response to particularly strange or unexpected prompts.
    • Take the Lead: As in exploration encounters, the players may get stuck when speaking to an NPC, either because they’re not sure what to say, or they haven’t picked up on a social cue, or similar. Dropping hints can actually be easier in an interaction scene, because if necessary you can have an NPC take the lead to bring up an important topic of conversation. You can also drop hints to a player by suggesting what their character might think of an NPC (“You find it odd how he’s been steering the conversation away from the topic of…”).

    This passage from the GMH serves as an introduction to these two types of scenes, but as I have it planned, they also get their own chapters later in the book offering more detailed advice on running (and writing!) these scenes effectively. Stay tuned–excerpts from those chapters will be showing up here eventually!