Badass lines from MacBeth to use as your headings

Inspired by:

(Cheers to this Monster and Manuals post)

Here's a list of lines from the final fight in MacBeth that you should use for headers in your RPG's combat section.

• Bear-like, I must fight the course
• Swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn
• With my sword, I'll prove the lie thou speak'st
• Though thou call'st thyself a hotter name than any is in hell
• The devil himself could not pronounce a title, more hateful to mine ear
• Tyrant, show thy face!
• My sword with an unbatter'd edge I sheathe again undeeded
• Turn, hell-hound, turn!
• I have no words: My voice is in my sword
• Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests
• I bear a charmed life
• Despair thy charm
• From his mother's womb, untimely ripp'd
• Then yield thee, coward
• Our rarer monsters
• Here may you see the tyrant
• I will not yield
• Baited with the rabble's curse
• I throw my warlike shield
• Damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'

Designing Dungeons: Or, How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less is now Complete

At my day job, I’m a technical writer. In the evenings, I blog about RPG stuff. I am combining these professional interests into this series: I am using my career of instructional design to tell you how I play games. This makes me the most boring person alive.

At the beginning of the year, I began a project with my colleague Warren from ICastLight called the:

Designing Dungeons Course

or

How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less

Click the pic!

After six months of writing, the course is now complete!

In this free series, I provide practical, step-by-step instructions on how to make a 30-room dungeon that is fun to play. You’ll learn the nitty gritty of writing a dungeon from inception to completion: drawing the map, numbering the rooms, populating them with monsters, hiding treasure, and putting together notes that you can use at the table.

Together, we’ll create a dungeon. Like Bob Ross, you can follow along at home using the provided workbook. At each step, I’ll talk through the design choices and philosophy of why I do things a certain way. And, like Bob Ross says, there’s no wrong way to do things—you can make different choices as you follow along. At the end, we’ll have a working dungeon you can actually run at the table.

To give you a sense of the content, here's the chapter list:

Chapter 1: Course Overview

Chapter 2: Brainstorming

Chapter 3: Refining the Theme

Chapter 4: Creating the Map

Chapter 5: Dungeon Checklist

Chapter 6: Experiments and Surprises

Chapter 7: Talking and Fighting

Chapter 8: Running and Resting

Chapter 9: Exploring and Returning

Chapter 10: Formatting Room Descriptions

Chapter 11: Keying Room Descriptions (Part 1)

Chapter 12: Keying Room Descriptions (Part 2)

Chapter 13: Writing Random Encounters

If you find this helpful, let me know what you create with it!

In games I write, I tend to be pretty uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Reddit neckbeardy about religion (despite being a somewhat religious person). There are powerful religious institutions in the real world. They can't all have a direct line to cosmic truth, it's mutually exclusive. Having churches and priests be important in the same way as they are in the real world is more interesting to me than having a strange plurality of quasi-polytheism ala D&D. This is all to say, I rarely write/run games with traditional clerics or where divine truths are knowable. 

There are a few early adopters to His Majesty the Worm who saw this as a gap to be filled and did a bully job filling it (Paths of the Devoted is a published example). Here's my take on doing a more trad fantasy cleric for the Worm. 

This path has a real focus on Camp Actions, where they pray, sing liturgy, chant stories from the canon, and minister to their flock (the guild). Members of the Path of the Grail have an unprecedented mastery of fate as they can manipulate the minor arcana deck in new ways.

Note: If used for your games, the intention is for this path to replace the Path of Cups from the His Majesty the Worm core book.

Path of the Grail

Anybody can be shown the lesser mysteries of Mythrys, but only the Secret Pope knows the last mystery, and only the four members of the highest initiation even know who the Secret Pope is. As such, the identity of the Secret Pope is a thing of much conjecture. Some say it is a child and that the final mystery is “innocence.” Some say it is a corrupt and bloated vampire, and that the final mystery is “eternal life.” Some say it is His Majesty the Worm; nobody speculates as to what He knows.

Common motifs: animal-loving cleric, epicurean friar, battle nun, false prophet, idealistic templar

Art by Fernando Salvaterra

Grail talents

Blessing

As the High Chant talent from the core book, page 79, except you must say a grace before you break bread. 

Counsel

As the talent of the same name from the core book, page 78.

Lay on Hands

You may provide healing to your companions. You can expend a vial of holy water to Heal someone (p. 12). This effect cannot be used to clear the Stressed condition.

Additionally, this talent gives you a new Camp Action: Lay on Hands. When you use Lay on Hands, you give everyone in the guild (including yourself) 1 free charged Bond to be spent during the Recovery step of this Camp Phase. If you expend a vial of holy as part of this action, adventurers who used the Rest and Recovery action gain 4 burned charges for the purpose of recovering from an Affliction (p. 137).

Magic of the Welkin

As the talent of the same name from the core book, page 82. 

Omen

This talent gives you a new Camp Action: Prognosticate. When you Prognosticate, draw the top three cards from the top of the minor arcana deck. Put one card back on top, put one card on the bottom of the deck, and discard one card. 

Additionally and optionally, you may make a pact. When you make a pact, charge one religious icon that you're carrying for each pact made. 

You may pray over a charged religious icon you're holding in your hand. This is equivalent to casting a spell. The spell cast is determined by the GM, using their judgement for whichever spell would be most beneficial for the guild at the present time. 

Each religious icon may be charged only once. Your pact lasts until broken or until the spell is cast. Icons remain charged until the spell is cast or until you break the pact. If you break the pact, draw on the maleficence table (Appendix A, p. 201).

Pacts:

• Forego edges: You may not carry a blade of any kind, nor may you shave or cut your hair. Bladed weapons, cutlery, hatchets, shears, razors, etc. are all forbidden to you. 
• Poverty: You may not carry more than 25g.
• Ritual purity: You may not touch or handle the dead. You may not take the life of a (demi)human. You may not drink wine or strong drink, nor handle vinegar. 
• Self-mortification: As the pact in the core book, page 83.
• Self-mutilation: As the pact in the core book, page 83.
• Silence: As the pact in the core book, page 83.
• Verity: As the pact in the core book, page 83.

Turn Undead

When you use a religious icon to ward away the undead (core book, p. 168), you gain an additional effect determined by the number of face cards (page, knight, queen, king) in the minor arcana discard pile.

# of Face Cards	Effect
1	Your religious icon glows, casting bright light.
2	Gain favor to the turn undead attempt.
3	Undead up to 2 Health suffer a Critical Wound instead of being Displaced.
4	Undead up to 4 Health suffer a Critical Wound instead of being Displaced.
5+	Undead up to 7 Health suffer a Critical Wound instead of being Displaced.

In Praise of Prep

Weird Writer's prep post has started a bandwagon. I have enjoyed reading people's various modes of prep.

As I am preparing a campaign right now (running the Yellow Book of Brechewold using His Majesty the Worm), it feels interesting to me to explain my own approach.

Reflections on extremes

My understanding of the games I like to run is based on my matrices of blorbiness theorem. 

Read this post first to understand my silly vocabulary

In my RPG history, I have experienced both underprepping and overprepping.

Underprepping (improvisation)

I have never felt confident in my improvisational abilities, so have never tried to sincerely improvise large swaths of a campaign (of course, some improvisation is part of the gig). However, I have played in such games.

I have been at games that were mostly planned by the GM on the drive to the game. Some of my fellow players loved those games. But, to me, it always felt like the GM was just making stuff up--in a bad way. I didn't feel like I was exploring a realistic world; it felt like I was interacting with cardboard scenery that fell over when I touched it.

Put another way, when I've sat at a table where the GM created content mostly through improv, I could always tell. I never thought "Wow, when did they have time to plan such an amazing story!" I was always mildly disappointed.

Put a more charitable way, blorb-style games are a preference not just when I am running games, but also playing them.

Overprepping (set piece encounters)

In a past life, I would work all week to prepare for game night, like homework before a class. Because I was in school (high school, then college) during this period, I suppose this felt natural. 

• I would fill out a Word doc with all the beats of the next session: monster stats, villain monologues, scenery descriptions. 
• I'd meticulously build "balanced" fights. Lucky Sven had power X, but was weak towards Y. Hairo would want a chance to show off their Z power, but I couldn't let them beat the encounter too fast, so let me give the boss a 1x/encounter perfect defense. Etc.
• I'd read forums and discuss techniques for monsters and combat encounters. I'd buy the new books. Everything was an arms race.
• The players would make a mess of it. They zig instead of zag. They'd roll luckily and one-shot my monster. They'd have unforeseen stratagem I hadn't balanced the fight against.
• My prep was often wasted, and everyone had a blast. They ruined my plans and I chuckled ruefully and did the same thing next week.

It was an ouroboros merry-go-round.

The Golden Mean 

Today, I have an approach to prep that feels better than either of the two extremes mentioned above. It works for me based on my own preferences. 

I like to prepare for a campaign with a healthy stretch of "lonely fun" where I set up all the dominos.  Then, the campaign consists of the players knocking them down. Between campaign prep and the end of the game, I do very little preparation weekly, instead relying on my initial work.

This requires a bit of prep. 

What is important for me regarding prep:

• Doing the "right size" of prep
• Collecting and collating tools to use
• Frontloading my work and completing everything I need, more or less

Right size of prep

Hearing "Don't prep plots, prep situations" might sound like old hat at this point in blog theory, but it meant the world to me in 2009. 

Instead of writing scene descriptions and balanced fights, I need to write interesting things. Write interesting locations. Write interesting NPCs with terrible powers. Write interesting things these NPCs want. Make sure these things are wired together, so players are pushed and pulled into different directions and can explore all the stuff I did prep. 

A corollary to this is: Don't hide your prep. 

Collecting tools to use

An important part of "right sizing" prep is collating a series of tools: things that will always be useful during the entire run of the campaign. Nick at PapersAndPencils said it best: Don't prep adventures, prep tools. 

I start almost every campaign by reading my entire run of Knock! magazines. I know the basic themes I want to explore (magical school! Zelda-esque campaign! fairy tales!), and I build those themes out with the cool stuff other people have made: NPC names, equipment packs, themed monsters, house rules, weird tables. 

Frontloading and completing the work

When I first have an idea for a new game, I'm pretty excited. Hooray! A new game! I'm bursting with ideas! 

I have learned that this excitement dulls over time. Things that I put off tend not to get done. 

It's important for me to prep most of the game before we start playing. If I'm making a campaign where the players collect the five body parts of the Sun Princess from five dungeons, I need to have all five dungeons written before we start. I need to create the hub city. I need to have the NPCs of the city written out. I need the bridge trolls statted. 

Then, the players can go anywhere they want. I'm not concerned about staying "one step ahead of them." I know what's there. They just get to explore and discover it.

Is it a lot of work? Practically speaking, I do do a lot of writing. But at this stage of the campaign creation process, it's also easy and fun work. I need to strike while the fire is hot.

Reflections on the Golden Mean

His Majesty the Worm's default campaign style, where you create a megadungeon (5 dungeons in a trenchcoat) and then restock it only during a City Phase, is reflective of this approach to prep. You need to spend a couple weekends setting it up, but then it runs itself.

Do the work! Spend a few weekends getting your maps ready, your encounter tables stocked, your treasure budget spent. Then, press "Go." Let your players loose in your weird little world. You can play for months on just a few weekends of honest prep. It's not that hard! (Especially if you embrace the copy and paste manifesto.)

I think this prep is valuable and (importantly) fun! It is worth doing. I am pro-prep.

Guest post: His Majesty the Worm monster threats

User castella on the Worm discord did a great write up of the different ways a monster can inflict harm and setbacks to adventurers in His Majesty the Worm. Because this essay isn't published anywhere else, they gave me permission to link to it from here.

Click the image to see the essay.

There's a good mix of examples from the book and novel implementations that help you attack every part of the character sheet. GMs running Worm might find this examination useful for their devious purposes! I know I'm going to revisit it when I stat out some new creatures for my next campaign.

Cockroachatrice

The cockroachatrice is, like all animals with a stupid name, the result of a wizard's bad sense of humor. Goddamn, those idiots ruin everything.

These 1' cockroaches have a glossy, rainbow-esque carapace. Now that they've escaped containment (seriously, wizards ruin everything), they swarm in dark, damp environments. 

art by tori-otto

Armour Class 9 [10]

Hit Dice 1/2 (2 hp)

Attacks 1 × bite (1d6 + petrification)

THAC0 19 [0]

Movement 90’ (30’) / 180’ (60’) flying

Saving Throws D14 W15 P16 B17 S18 (NH)

Morale 7

Alignment Neutral

XP 200

Number Appearing 2d4 (1d8)

Treasure Type None

Petrification: Anyone bitten is turned to stone (save versus petrify).

Slush Pile: Phases of the Character Lifecycle

I had this "aha" moment a few weeks ago, sketched it out, and shared it. Unfortunately, that drained all the endorphins out of it, and I never got around to really exploring the idea fully. I still think it has merit, though, so I'm going to post it here in hopes that either a) blog dialectics will transfer the idea to someone more productive or b) I will return to it in time.

My goals with listing this out is to make explicit what is implied by the rules of OD&D. I think there's fertile ground there (still).