Knock! #5 - one week to go!

I assume the Venn diagram of "people who read my blog" and "people who have already backed the Knock! Kickstarter" is a perfect circle, but if not, I wanted to say (shout! scream!) that the campaign for Knock! #5 campaign is one week from completion!

What is Knock!?

If you have taken a strange road to get here, Knock! is one of the most well-known publications in the OSR space. Since 2021, it has collected and curated important ideas from the scene's game designers, theorists, and fans. It bills itself as: 

An Adventure Gaming Bric-a-Brac. A Compendium of Miscellanea for Old-School RPGs. For OSR weirdos and curious D&D heads alike.

Blogs are the bedrock of the OSR community. They are the place where its ideas are invented, traded, and iterated on. Knock! is inspired by (and inspires!) this creative energy. Recognizing the importance of blogs to this game-design space, the magazine has brought the "canon" of OSR theory into print, allowing for a wider audience.  

It's latest issue, Knock! #5, is currently fundraising on Kickstarter. There is one week left until the end of the campaign!

The book funded in a wink (merci!). It's already laid out. It's currently being copyedited. Soon, the only thing that will be left to do is collect your pledge and ship you the book. So don't miss out! 

What's in this issue?

This issue contains a diverse group of contributors and contributions: a mix of OSR mainstays and new blood, a blend of old favourites and hitherto unpublished essays. Each page is a sigil that’s trapped some strange idea or gameable spark. This issue contains: 

• Monsters! (The hydra knight sprouts riotous limbs each time they’re hit! Scary!)
• Essays! (Ever wonder why kobolds are sometimes depicted as lizards and sometimes as dog people?)
• New rules! (Put some strange weather in your dungeon.)
• Random tables! (100s of names and quirks for your next familiar.)
• Magic items! (What will you get from the dungeon vending machine?)
• New classes! (Ever wanted to absorb a monster’s powers by eating them? Now you can!)
• Adventures! (What happens when a goblin gets a hold of a ray gun?)

There’s even a short section in the back where we indulge in a bit of navel gazing, thinking about the state of the scene itself.

The book is 212 pages (A5 format: 5.9’ x 8.25’, slightly bigger than digest size) in beautiful full colour, printed on quality paper (coated 130 gr, with a cover on coated 300 gr).

Hey what's up with shipping?

The shipping is two tiered - France and The Rest of the World - for a simple reason: it is being shipped by Le Poste from France, where the Layout Lord Olivier lives. That is the system that Le Poste uses. The rates are Le Poste's rates. They aren't something the Mushmen have set. 

Let me assure you: shipping prices are my enemy too! But the world is falling down around my ears, and I cannot improve global commerce by myself. So let us drink and read funny RPG books and eek out what little joy we can in the world we have left. 

Don't split the party

Unique to this campaign, there's a pledge tier that gets you every single issue of Knock! magazine, 1-5. That's over a thousand pages of rules ideas, game design essays, random tables both serious and silly, adventures, character classes, monsters, and multifarious goblins. 

If you haven't yet taken the deep dive, I really think this is the best bang for your buck. I don't use any product more than my issues of Knock!. Whenever I start a new RPG game, I go there first for inspiration. I return again, and again, and again.

Reflections on my first Kickstarter campaign

It is strange and thrilling and humbling to be editing a magazine that I loved from the second I picked up the first issue. 

Something that has struck me as I have joined the Mushmen is that this is quite literally a cottage industry. From the outside, there was such a level of polish to everything the Mushmen did, it was easy to imagine that there was a large company behind the craft. But no, it was just two guys (now three!). 

I really respect the Mushmen's ethos in not having weirdo physical add-ons. They add a level of complexity (and failure) to Kickstarters that isn't necessary and contributes to a weird culture in the crowdfunding space. 

But! I also respect their ability to just add value to each campaign. For example, in this campaign, we're adding a searchable index of all Knock! articles, past and present. This will help you track down that article you were thinking of and let you put your hand on the issue and page number. This is free!

Also, if you're missing a back issue that you want to add to your order? At the end of this campaign, you'll receive a 10% discount code usable for your next order on our website, themerrymushmen.com.  

I'll probably have more to say about participating in my first crowdfunding campaign later, but I definitely learned a lot. My biggest takeaway is probably "I can do this." 

Call to action

OK but seriously. I am holding your head in my hands so gently right now and staring into your eyes and saying so sincerely: You don't want to miss this.

More than just trapping a blog post in amber, Knock! is a community of contributors who revel in the spirit of weird ideas, quick iteration, and messy creativity. It contains everything I love about the RPG space. And it's good. There's so much good stuff in here!

Interested? Head over to the campaign page before May 21st and get the new issue at a discounted rate! For those newly curious about the OSR scene and those who have vociferous opinions about what that mysterious acronym actually means, Knock! represents a fun addition to your gaming bookshelf.

Come join us!

Embedding Lore in your Classes

A while back, I wrote about the tensions between wanting no homework and settings with rich lore (and some potential solutions). Today, I'll write about another solution: embedding your lore into your classes.

Brief summary of the problem I'm trying to solve

There is fun to be had when everybody at the table deeply understands the setting and the lore. Getting mastery of these elements requires solo prep time and can be pretty boring; contradictory to the purpose of roleplaying, which is getting together with your friends to have fun.

People have come up with different solutions to this problem. One often cited one is collaborative worldbuilding. You and your friends come up with the lore together, thus moving it from solo and boring back into the core premise.

Creativity is fun. But it's not the fun of discovery.

Discovery requires prep. The more you want to have the feeling of exploration at the table, the more your prep must adhere to blorb principles.

Embed Lore Everywhere

The point of my Dark Souls-esque Worldbuilding post (referenced above) is that you can embed lore into unlikely places, like your equipment lists. 

To build on that, you can embed lore everywhere. In this way, you feed the lore of your setting to your players like feeding your dog a pill wrapped in a piece of bologna. 

Embed Lore in your Classes

One strong way to embed lore is to put it into your classes. 

Players love reading classes. They love imagining characters. They love seeing powers and abilities. 

If your game comes with a setting and isn't a generic game, this is a huge opportunity for you. And not having weird ass classes is a missed opportunity.

A fighter is boring. Even something like a druid or a bard is boring at this point.

A sword-lord just sounds cooler. And gives you an opportunity to talk about how sword-lords fit into the social structures of your setting. 

The Ichabod class from Spiceomancy is probably my favorite example of a weird class. Goddamn, it's so cool.

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Sidebar

One of D&D's weirdest features at this point is its half embedded setting and half generic. Half of the game begs you to think about your warlock's patron, revoke your paladin's powers for breaking their oath, consider the organization of druids. The other asks you to consider each class as a bundle of mechanics with no representation: do you want to make a clumsy oaf who blunders their way into success? Just use monk stats, it doesn't mean anything. The tension in the contrast between these two points is a huge weakness in the game. 

+++

GLoG classes are cool and easy to make. People like making them because its pretty easy to think about a class's essential gimmick as four chunks of mechanics. 

One of the things I noticed about GLoG classes is that people are embedding some essential setting elements in the template A of a class. I think this is great (this is what gave me the idea for this post). For example, for a Princess class, you might add a template ability called Noble that says "You're a member of the nobility. Everyone treats you with respect. Also, you're worth more alive than dead. You'll be ransomed instead of killed, if possible."

These abilities might be called "Ribbon abilities" in 5E. They don't have a lot of crunch, but they're fun to have. 

You might ask: Shouldn't roleplaying and GM fiat just add these? (Yes, and...) Are these abilities really necessary? (Yes! They're the difference between a monk being someone who studies the Way of the Iron Palm versus a lucky oaf flavored with monk character abilities.)

And, crucially, they're a really good opportunity to hide nuggets of lore into the actual text of your game in a way that's fun to consume and easy to remember.

Here's an example of what I mean from CanFormerIncelsBePunk:

Joesky Tax:  False Shepherd

Here's an example class to further show how you might go about this:

When the signs were right - the daystar burned in the sky, the lambs gave forth bloody young, the olive trees bloomed in winter, the dead sang hymns of welcome - everyone knew the Shepherd was soon at hand. The Wheel of Fortune spun out many would-be Shepherds in those days, doling out many miracles in anticipation of his coming. 

There was a Conclave. All the would-be Shepherds gathered and discussed among themselves who amongst them would be most worthy. All then beheld the True Shepherd, and knew him, and rejoiced. 

You were one of the False Shepherds. Perhaps you even believed in yourself, at that time. But now there's no doubt. Yet, you still have your miracles.

Start with: hair shirt, shepherd's crook, and a musical instrument (pan pipes, a lyre, or a horn)

A - Penance of Humility, Gesture of the Wheel 

B - Signs and Wonders

C - Prophecy

D - Minor Sainthood

Penance of Humility

You were ordered to renounce the world by the true Shepherd. You are forbidden from carrying money as penance for your false claim. 

When you beg for charity, make a reaction roll; on favorable result, you get food, shelter, and reasonable aid.

Gain +1 to all reaction rolls; people remember how you served the land when you falsely proclaimed.

Gesture of the Wheel

The Wheel of Fortune weaves as it will, but you are at a confluence of threads--important to fate.

Once per session for each False Shepherd template you have, you may reroll any dice.

Signs and Wonders

Once per session for each False Shepherd template you have, you may invoke a Sign and Wonder. Once a Sign and Wonder has been used, you cannot use the same one again until you go to a conclave and confess.

1. Gesture of Command

You can issue a one-word command to anything the Creator made (except for humans, who have free will). Nature will obey implicitly: trees will fruit, rain will fall, embers will kindle into a blaze. Creatures like angels and demons and undead are allowed a save. If the command lasts more than a single round, the target gets a new save at the beginning of each of its rounds.

2. Song of Reincarnation

Used at funerals. A dead body will sing the praises of the Creator, then the Wheel will accept their soul. They will enter the cycle of reincarnation. This deals 2d6 damage to a corporeal undead.

3. Miracle of the Moving Moon

The Wheel turns. You may select a different time of day, different position of the heavens, and different time of year. For the next day, the world exists in this new time. The flow of time is restored at the dawning of the next day.

4. Gesture of Learning

You are given a memory of a past life. Ask a question of the GM. 50% that your past life knows a relevant and true answer.

5. Miracle of the Maker

A natural feature, such as a standing stone, old pine tree, or hillside will be spontaneously carved into the shape of a religious icon. This effect is permanent. Sleeping at this site heals an additional +1 hp.

6. Miracle of the Burning Building

When you use this Sign, remove one worldly impediment from one target:

• The need of food for one day
• Pain from fire or cold
• Exhaustion from toil in the sun
• The drowning of waters

This miracle will only benefit those who have never taken an innocent life.

7. Gesture of the Thunderbolt

The Creator will throw a thunderbolt at your behest. 2d6 damage to anyone visible to the open sky, the target can save for half.

Prophecy 

You have one prophecy inside you. This is what the Wheel wove you for. 

You can feel the prophecy in the back of your throat. When you choose to let it out, it's as if someone else is speaking through your mouth. Something everyone intuitively understands is true.

A prophecy has this format:

This will come to pass: ________________________ (anything you want to happen)
When ________________________ (condition spoken by the GM)

You will say the first part of the prophecy, and the GM will stipulate the second. For your section, you can say anything that you want to happen in your game world: the king will be reborn, the evil empire will fall, the broken sword will be remade. The GM also has free range to impose difficult conditions that are necessary to achieve this. 

By achieving template C, your prophecy will be spoken. If you die before you have a chance to utter it, it will issue forth from your corpse. 

Minor Sainthood

You gain 1 MD and learn one magic spell from the Elementalist spell list. You can cast this spell intuitively as a miracle. Your MD is a d4.

You no longer need to confess your sins to re-invoke a certain Sign and Wonder.

If and when you die, your body will be uncorrupted and never rot. Your spirit will ascend to Heaven. The site of your grave will become a holy site, and your miracle will manifest here upon occasion. 

By the way: Knock! #5 is now crowdfunding

While I have you, I wanted to mention that Knock #5 is currently on Kickstarter! Knock! is that hoary and honored old mainstay of OSR theorycraft and gameability: a bric-a-brac of adventure gaming for the true grognard connoisseur and curious D&D-heads alike.

We have surpassed 1158% of our funding goals! If you haven't backed yet, do so now! You don't want to miss this addition to your adventure gaming shelf. 

Library Heretical - Third-Party Supplementary Materials for HIS MAJESTY THE WORM

I really do believe that indie games live and die by their third-party support. 

Mothership is probably the best in the business with this right now (although lots of cool games have super active, super productive communities(. Really an inspiration!

Shortly after my new-school game with old-school sensibilities game, His Majesty the Worm, was published, I asked Sean McCoy of Mothership for advice on this. He suggested I run a game jam. So I did! The Worm Jam was a success! People made all sorts of stuff: dungeons, NPC generators, fishing minigames! And since then, new third-party material has continued to flow in. 

I have a dedicated space for all published third-party materials called the Library Heretical.

Lots of interesting stuff here (much of it free) - check it out!

Submitting to the Library Heretical

His Majesty the Worm was designed to be accessible and easily hackable. As such, we've chosen simple language to communicate that you can create derivative or supplemental content. 

I would love for the community to make content for His Majesty the Worm. Make dungeons. Make extra rules. Make alternative rules. Make monsters. Make art. Make random generators. 

You can publish your content for free or sell it (without us taking a cut). You can read the text that guides this spirit of innovation here. 

To help get you started making stuff, I put together this Creator's Kit. It contains the InDesign design files, fonts, and styles that were used to make the core game. Use them to make your submissions have the same look and feel!  

Last but not least, the Worm Discord is very creative space - people are putting together lots of neat stuff there!

By the way: Knock! #5 is now crowdfunding

While I have you, I wanted to mention that Knock #5 is currently on Kickstarter! Knock! is that hoary and honored old mainstay of OSR theorycraft and gameability: a bric-a-brac of adventure gaming for the true grognard connoisseur and curious D&D-heads alike.

We have surpassed 1158% of our funding goals! If you haven't backed yet, do so now! You don't want to miss this addition to your adventure gaming shelf. 

The Memory of the Meatgrinder

My colleague, Warren at ICastLight, posited that we can embed short-term memory into tables like your encounter table to create a more dynamic or interesting engine for exploration.

Example of an encounter table with "RAM"

So, in his example, each time you roll a "dungeon event", you put a checkmark next to the box. Once it's been rolled three times, there's a cave in. 

It occurred to me that the Meatgrinder in His Majesty the Worm already has some in-built short-term memory just by virtue of the random encounter being card based instead of dice based. In the normal flow of game, unless there's a combat (in which case a reshuffle is very likely), you won't get the same random encounter on the Meatgrinder in an evening because the card that triggered it is in the discard pile.

By default, His Majesty the Worm plays with the inherent short-term memory of cards only a little. This post imagines some subsystems that could exploit that feature more.

The Creeping Dark

Here's a variant rule proposed by the folks on the Worm Discord server: When a Meatgrinder (random encounter) event is ticked off, it is replaced with "Torches gutter." The longer you spend in the Underworld, the more the darkness closes in around you. Soon, you won't be able to take a step without your candles going out.

Ranger's Wisdom

Riffing on Warren's idea of a single event having a clock, a ranger might have a class feature that adds a checkbox to monster encounters. The first time they encounter a monster, they don't - they discover its spore. Then, the party has a heads up that a monster of that type is lurking on this floor of the dungeon.

This class feature may be tied to their level. At level 1, they get one checkbox for one monster encounter. As they level up, more and more encounters have buffers. 

Ranger's Wisdom, card redux

Obviously the last idea wasn't thinking about cards, I just liked it. Here's one that thinks about card tech a bit more.

When the ranger uses the Range action, they can take a look at the top card (or top 3?) of the Meatgrinder. If they pull a random encounter card, they are shown a spore that tells them what the type of monster they will eventually encounter. 

The ranger can spend a Resolve to put the card onto the bottom of the deck instead of the top. They take a careful path around the sphinx. They're not ready to fight it, yet.

Discard as a value

Mechanics can be tied to the number of discarded cards in the major arcana discard pile: the more Meatgrinder events that have happened, the higher the number. It's a clock that counts up throughout the game.

For example, in a zombie horror movie game, whenever you make a loud noise, [discard] zombies show up. At the beginning of the evening, this will be one or two zombies. By the end of the evening, you could have significant hoards descending. 

Because the GM shuffles their discard pile back into their deck when they run out of cards, the game has a natural swing between "easy" and "hard." Also, in such a game, you could have player abilities that oblige the GM to shuffle cards from the discard to the bottom of the deck, or trigger shuffles.

Discard as a clock

You could have significant events happen at certain intervals based on how many cards you have discarded. Once 5 cards are discarded, the lights in the dungeon go out and players have to rely on torches. Once 15 cards are discarded, zombies encounters are upgraded to skeleton encounters. If the GM runs out of cards, the ritual is complete and Zog takes over the multiverse. 

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Anyway, I think the idea of encoding memory into game procedures with cards to be a rich vein to tap.  These are just a few ideas I had resting on the top of my brain. If this triggers some good ideas for you, why not blog about them?

Worldbuilding through the Rebuking Cleric

As Dan pointed out in his post, the cleric's Turn Undead ability says something about the default setting of D&D: there are undead here. Indeed, for this to be a core class core ability, there has to be a lot of them. Barrows teaming with draugr. Unquiet ghosts lingering near their graves in cemeteries. Abandoned castles ruled by a vampire lord and his brides.

But if we want to have a special theme for our campaign setting, one way we can broadcast that is to change the cleric's Turn Undead ability to focus on our main antagonists. 

Indeed, historically speaking, the sign of the cross was said to ward away almost anything evil, not just undead - devils and demons, werewolves, mermaids, storms, etc. A real swiss army knife. 

So. What does our D&D look like with different Turn Undeads? 

Turn worms

Saint Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland. He did this by turning worms and other crawling crawling things. 

At low levels, clerics can turn venomous snakes and serpents. At high levels, they can turn literal dragons. 

In such a setting, dragons plague the land. They kick dwarves out of their homes and sleep on their piles of gold. They crawl down into wells and poison the water. They bother the Smith of Wootton Major. Clerics go about, rebuking them in the name of Saint Patrick, and driving them continuously towards the wastes (as long as their luck holds).

Turn trolls

When Christianity came to the north of the world, the sign of the cross could drive away the trolls that haunted that land. (Of course, the trolls could smell a priest coming.)

A campaign setting framed in Norse mythology might give clerics the ability to rebuke trolls. In such a setting, clerics are adherents of a foreign religion, driving out the folk ways as much as they drive away trolls. 

Turn fairies

The ringing of church bells is one surefire way to drive away fairies of all sorts - banshees, dapplegrim, red caps, bugbears, hobby lanthorns, etc. 

A cleric in a Celtic themed campaign might drive away fairies instead of undead. These clerics keep the peace between human and fairy settlements, and serve as exorcists for mischief of all kinds - animate furniture? Call the priest. Baby crawling up the wall? Nope, that's a changeling, call the priest. Richard the Miller's Son came back with a wife with a hollow back? NOPE, CALL THE PRIEST. 

Stranger things

You can imagine not just defining a campaign setting through a cleric's mechanics but inverting and subverting them. 

A cleric might Turn Humans in an evil campaign, where they worship the dread lord Sauron. Here, clerics are sorcerers, sending forth their Black Breath to inspire fear. 

A cleric might Turn Apes in a far future campaign. They invoke the light of the Claw of the Conciliator, that most precious of jewels. An ape "destroyed" by the ability might join the cleric instead, offering their service.

Ten Staves of Wizardly Might

1. Weirwood Staff

Made of white weirwood, carved with a mournful face. On nights of the new moon, you can ask the GM about a past event. On nights of the full moon, you can ask the GM about the present. The GM will describe a vision that attempts to answer your question.

2. Staff of the White Hand

A staff of white entwood, topped with a carven hand. The hand is fully articulate. While holding the staff, you control the hand as easily as you control your own. In a simple way, this is like an extendy shark grabber. But the hand can also be commanded to hold things (a wand! a torch! a sword!). When you attack with your staff, the hand curls into a fist. If you misuse the staff, it will extend its middle finger to you frequently (but still obey your commands). 

3. The Walking Staff

Beechwood staff fitted with a white gold foot at its end. The staff is ambulatory; you can call it to your hand. Given its experience traveling, you can ask its opinion about which way you should go and it will make a considered guess. In a dungeon, if given a choice of doors, it will point towards the one that leads in the quickest way to the exit. When hexcrawling, the staff increases the likelihood of finding a notable feature and reduces the chance of getting lost.

4. Horned Staff

Carved of an oak that has grown around the skull of an elk, with only the antlers now protruding. While carrying it, you can pass through overgrown areas (thorns, tangled undergrowth, briar patches, etc.) like a druid. You never leave a trail. While in the forest, you can cast misty step by spending 3 HP.

5. Living Staff

A branch of the ur-Apple Tree from the Garden of Eden. Each night, it can be planted in almost any soil (but not, like, carven rock) and sprout into a great apple tree. The apples provide enough to eat for a small host. The tree is easy to climb and provides almost perfect protection from the elements. Each morning, the apple tree begins to die, but a new living staff can be cut from one of its branches. Can only be carried by those bound to Law. If carried by anyone else, withers away.

6. Nail Bat

This staff is a heavy blackthorn shillelagh studded with iron nails. Acts as a +2 weapon against the fay. You are immune to charm while carrying it.

7. Staff of the Key

A wrought brass staff shaped like a large skeleton key. Runes cut into the teeth of the key contain the spells knock, lock, gate, and magic mouth, allowing you prepare those spells if you are a magic-user of appropriate level. The staff can be used to pick locks with a X-in-6 chance, where X is equal to your Intelligence bonus. Once per day, you can touch the staff to a door and receive a list of the true names of all who passed through the door since the last time the sun crossed the horizon.

8. The Kite

A cedar staff, topped with a crucifix on which a mummified leprechaun is crucified. When the staff or a spell you cast kills a creature, any damage beyond what is needed to reduce a creature to 0 HP is stored in the staff. 20 damage can be stored in this way. When making an attack with the staff, you may add an extra dice of damage. The size of the damage dice is determined by how much damage is stored in the staff. The dice size steps up for every "platonic interval": a d4 if 4 damage is stored, a d6 if 6 damage is stored, etc. 

9. Staff of the Cup

A staff of yew, wrapped with tattered prayer flags and topped with a carven wooden chalice. Natural animals will not willingly attack you while you bear this staff. When filled with water from a clootie well or sacred spring, it is charged. A charge can be spent in the following ways:

• Create a use of holy water in the cup
• Heal 2d6 damage
• Cause a natural spring to burst forth from the ground

10. Arachne's Distaff 

A pine staff, topped with a carved spider. While carrying the staff, your clothes are always immaculately clean, never rip or tear, and appear to be of the finest quality. You can change the color of cloth you touch with the staff at will. You may cast the web spell by spending 2 HP. Whenever you would suffer the effects of the web, you are immune, but the staff is charged with one free casting.  

The Worm's Economy

"How much treasure should I be giving out in His Majesty the Worm?" I get this question sometimes, and wanted to address it in a blog post I could link to for posterity.

Admittedly, the book addresses this only very briefly to say that boom and bust cycles are both acceptable, and that it wasn't something to worry too much about. I did not mean to be obscure about this. It's probably just a result of how my brain works--I know its an economy that I control instead of, like, danger levels of a monster which are wildly different based on party composition and player strategy. Because I control it, I don't worry about it. But I should definitely broadcast my intentions here!

A game like OD&D cares more about a budget for treasure in a dungeon than it strictly does about monsters because treasure is how you level up. In future editions, this consideration is mostly inverted.

In His Majesty the Worm, both your treasure and monster budget can be a little messy. Characters can (should) have lean times and surplus times. Characters can (should) have hard fights and easy fights. Player choice and strategy will matter a lot here.

Guiding principles

Ideally, characters should get a lot of treasure, go back to the City, spend all of it, and go back into the dungeon broke and penniless. This parallels the lifecycles of stories like Conan or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, who regularly win fabulous riches and begin most stories with empty pockets. A lot of mechanics are there to enforce this genre convention. 

Creating a budget

Imagine you are going to rate your adventurers from rank F to rank S. In rank F, players don't engage with anything in the dungeon, run from room to room, don't explore, never solve any puzzles, never press their luck. In rank S, they essentially clear the dungeon level, find every secret door, loot every chest, kick every monster's ass. Now, take your average party. For me, it's about 6 players. In a 30 room dungeon, the average party might go back to the City once, maybe twice. Because S rank should be rewarded with luxurious upkeep, that's a budget of 200 gold for S rank. For each time they visit the City, the players should have some small amount of extra gold for actions like Commission Craft, Research, and Training. For S rank players, maybe its 100g per City Phase. Don't forget taxes. Double your gold that you've earmarked because half of it is going away as soon as you step into the City. So 6 players x 2 (taxes) x (100 gold (upkeep) + 100 gold (extras)) x 2 (average City Phase visits per dungeon level) = a budget of 4,800 gold per dungeon level hidden in every nook and cranny. Assuming players, in general, don't find every cache, every secret, every hidden door, every monster hoard, it basically boils down to "just scraping by." This is back of the napkin math. It is not exact.

The diminishing returns of dungoneering

Caveat 1:  Don't "solve" money problems

One of the big risks for Worm games is messing too much with the essential assumptions of the game. Don't solve "fighting monsters" by giving players a magic sword that kills every monster. Don't solve "tracking food" by giving players a magic lunchbox that infinitely burps out rations. Don't solve "getting broke" by giving players too much treasure. Players who want to set up shop and game the VERY BASIC treasure economy should press pause on their Worm game and start playing a different game instead (I really encourage you to play lots of games!). It's kind of easy to break if you let it be easy to break. 

If players want to buy a house in the City to try and avoid paying for Upkeep...well, don't let them. You bought a house? Sure, you're not sleeping in the inn anymore! Fine! But now you have a mortgage. Some of the City actions are essentially there to just buy doll houses and doll clothes for your dolls. They're not supposed to reflect anything close to a "real economy." 

It is better for the experience that the game is trying to achieve to give players too little money than too much.

Caveat 2: Don't restock treasure (maybe)

Treasure is one of the things that should have diminishing returns as the dungeon restocks. As treasure is stripped away, players are incentivized to delve deeper and deeper to afford their adventuring lifestyle. Elsewise, players will often just linger in the uppermost reaches of the Underworld, and long-term megadungeon campaign play can grow stagnate. As with everything, let your taste and good sense guide you here.

By the way

Have you been keeping up with my course Designing Dungeons: How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less? Chapter 8: Running and Resting (on boss monsters and empty rooms) just released! Come build a dungeon with me, step by step.

Dungeons & Deconstruction

What is deconstruction?

In 1967, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida published the book Of Grammatology. In it, he reevaluated traditional Western ideas, claiming there is no synthesis in the dialectics of text and meaning. He called this philosophical approach "deconstructionism." 

As J. Hillis Miller, the preeminent American deconstructionist, has explained in an essay entitled Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure (1976), “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air.” 

Derrida went through some lengths to say that deconstructionism was hard to define (not a method! not an analysis! not an approach!), but let's keep it simple: 

• Cambridge Dictionary states that deconstruction is "the act of breaking something down into its separate parts in order to understand its meaning, especially when this is different from how it was previously understood." 
• The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that deconstruction is "the analytic examination of something (such as a theory) often in order to reveal its inadequacy."

Deconstruction as literary criticism

Deconstruction wasn't intended for literary analysis. Deconstruction was intended to be a criticism of European philosophy in general, especially New Criticism (which was applied to everything, from literature to music to history). No, it said, you cannot create universal meaning! Even simple meanings break down! And so, literary critics took Derrida's paradigm and applied it to literature. 

In literary criticism, deconstructionism is practiced by "reading against the text." First, a close reading of the text is performed to fully understand and articulate the authorial point. Then, the reading is inverted to demonstrate the author's assumptions and flaws in their reasoning. 

A silly example: "How can you feel sympathy for the protagonist of 30 Rock, Liz Lemon? She is clearly the villain of this show! She holds out for a perfect partner but refuses to act decently to the people she's in a relationship with, she sees herself as a model of liberal values but compromises them consistently, she asks for sympathy from others but cannot produce a sympathetic reaction from an audience that literarily interprets her actual actions in the narrative at 30 Rockefeller Plaza."

The ultimate end of the act of deconstruction was the discovery of "aporias": a conundrum, a paradox, a irresoluble impasse in an inquiry. When reading a text against itself, it inevitably breaks down.

The signified butts head with the signifier

According to Derrida, and taking inspiration from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, language as a system of signs and words only has meaning because of the contrast between these signs. That is, being subjective, the text has no fixed meaning, so when we read, we are prone to misread. 

D&D is a great example of the breakdown of meaning inherent in a text.

The meaning transcends the author's intent, evolving into a new form with repetition, reinterpretation, and the cultural context in which the text lives on, lives longer than the author. 

Gary Gygax scoured books of mythology for monsters to put into his rules for fantastic miniatures campaigns. He found the word "kobold" and described them as "a type of goblin" (more or less true, in a folklore sense). As supplements accumulated, there were a preponderance of goblins. To differentiate them, Gygax and other authors who came after, put flourishes on the description or art: the goblin had a dog-like bark, or was dog-like, or was horned. The art of the "doglike kobold" was put into the computer game Wizardry, which was a big hit in Japan. While kobolds had further evolutions in America, where D&D3E described them as lizard like, Japan continued with their depictions as dogs. Divergent species on two continents.(For a full discussion on the history of kobolds as a monster in D&D, see Knock! issue 5, forthcoming.)

There are many such cases. Many monsters don't resemble their folkloric counterparts ("trow, or drow, a type of troll" has become "sexy dark elves."). The terms "bard" and "paladin" have outstripped their source material (how can there be paladins without a Palatine Hill?). Even the more modern pulp fantasy inspirations have become misunderstood. What was referential in the text with a wink and a nod for the author and the audience of 1974 is unknown to the modern audience. Obvious references to the alignment patterns of Poul Anderson, the magic swords of Michael Moorcock, the magic systems of Jack Vance, are now obscure to the majority of players. 

Now, when you say "kobold" to an American fantasy adventure gaming enthusiast, the original meaning of "a type of goblin" is gone. If you show them a picture of the kobold in the book that Gygax found the term originally, they say "That is not a kobold." 

Deconstructing D&D

Critics of D&D (of which I am undoubtedly one) have practiced a cottage industry of deconstructionism for many years. Because gaming is mostly a hobby industry not an academic tradition (yet), this deconstruction is mostly done by instinct. Astute readers can tell that a close reading of the text of the game (we'll table the conversation of "where" the text of the game is - game manual? play culture? conversation during play? - until later) reveals inherent contradictions. 

The game says this, but really that. 

The game says its about heroic fantasy, but the heroic actions players are called on to make include "killing pregnant orcs so that the newborn orc will not trouble you later," aka, literal war crimes.

The game says its inspired by fantasy stories (the game is like Tolkien! Howard! Vance!), but the narratives of the modules don't have the same storybeats. Instead, the storybeats are more reminiscent of Westerns, stories loaded with manifest destiny colonialization subtext.

The game says its set in a medieval time period, but the essential touchpoints are all anachronisms (rapiers are Renaissance, the ships depicted are all Age of Sail, and taverns are essentially modern).

We do not name this action, or couch it in literary terms. But both RPG enthusiasts and RPG detractors have unfairly criticized D&D using deconstructionist techniques since its creation.

Unfairly, I say, not because the critiques of D&D are wrong, but if the same techniques for reading against the text were applied with the same rigor equally, every RPG would break down as well. 

However, the methodology for reading against D&D's text is applied so regularly, the components of the argument have become folklore for the RPG community. And people, when learning how D&D's text breaks down when you apply these arguments, think its a problem with D&D. 

It isn't. It's just that you learned the formula that makes that specific compound break down. There are stronger acids out there!

My point

Let me backtrack a minute. I'm not a deconstructionist, and I'm not really making any big claims about the approach. 

I'll quote the somewhat dismissive Khan Academy introduction on deconstructionism: "Junior misreaders worked away, becoming ever more like C.I.A. operatives, decoding false signals sent by a distant enemy, the writer. Deconstruction exalted itself with ever higher pretensions. ... Deconstruction transformed everything into social commentary, easily making affinities with sexual and racial politics, two other militant philosophies that challenge the sanctity of text."

RPG criticism is still fairly nascent as a lit crit movement, and most people doing it are hobbyists not academics. It would be unfair to criticize this labor, especially because it comes from a place of genuine interest in RPGs as an art space. The point of this blog post is not to do so. 

I'm trying to say: If you are interested in RPG criticism, there are traditions of literary criticism (etc.) that you can start from. That by studying literary criticism, you might arm yourself with the vocabulary to use to express your ideas more clearly. By reading other approaches to text, you can say "Aha, of course, that is what I meant all along! I'm so glad someone else has had this thought before and understands me!" 

Different Character Creation Methods at Different Times

In many RPG books, character creation is right in the front of the book to give the new reader a sense of what the game is about, help them picture who they'll be playing and what they'll be doing, and discuss character-facing rules (hopefully with references to fuller explanations later in the book). 

For veteran players, the instructive "new player" language of this character creation section is often glossed over. They've made 100 characters at this point, sometimes just for fun. They don't need the support structures of walking through a character step by step. Indeed, perhaps they have learned advanced strategies--which feats are best in their group's play style, how to create synergies between choices, and so on.

Fair enough.

But what if this was more explicitly part of the game? What if...

• New players or a group starting a new campaign would use one set of rules (new players | new characters)
• If your character dies mid-game and you need a replacement, you use a separate procedure to quickly roll up a new character and jump back into the action (lost adventurers); and
• If your character gets to a high level, you can choose to retire them. Your next character uses a different procedure to create a higher-level character to join the existing party (veterans).

Additionally, all three tiers might have fundamentally different character options!

Let's dig into what this might look like.

Note on system

Throughout this post, the system I'll be using to illustrate my point is Beyond the Wall (frankly, my favorite OSR game). I think it already has some of the best character creation rules out there, and I think riffing on the paradigm would be rad. 

In case you're unfamiliar with the system, here's an example of what a character playbook looks like to get you on the same page.

New players | new characters

If you are new to the game or if you are starting a new campaign, you'll use these rules.

This set of rules is probably what you're used to seeing in the chapter called "Character Creation." 

• It's coded for new players
• It assumes you're starting at level 1
• Explicitly associates players with each other; player characters designate how they know each other, establish bonds, why they're adventuring together, etc.
• Equipment comes in flavorful packs tied to a character's backstory
• Fewer choices to allow for new players learning the system

Changes to the rules

Characters that you create using this procedure are the baseline for the campaign setting. This here procedure is for regular walkin', not fancy walkin'. For example, you can only create humans + fighter, thief, magic-user, and cleric.

In a Beyond the Wall paradigm, use the character playbooks from the Village in the core book: Self-Taught Mage, Untested Thief, Village Hero, Witch's Prentice, Would-Be Knight, Young Woodsman.

Lost adventurers

If your character dies midgame, you want to leap back into the action as soon as possible. It wouldn't make sense to use the normal playbooks: oh, and it's me, your friend from the village, the Young Woodsman. This isn't the time for Merry and Pippin to join the campaign, this is the time Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality.

• It's designed to get the player to rejoin the game as quickly as possible; mostly random generation
• Character start at level 1, but have a calibration mechanism to "catch up" with the general table level
• Includes some contrivance for the character to show up and join the adventure

Changes to the rules

Characters you find chained to the wall of the dungeon waiting to be released and join the party have an opportunity to be weirder than the people from the Village. Here, you can introduce character options that are further afield from the baseline: elves, dwarves, princesses, talking dogs, etc.

In Beyond the Wall, you can use playbooks that include Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, the Nobility, and even the "Normal Bear" playbook. I'd edit them to cut the "You know the person on your right because" worldbuilding questions and replace them with d100 - Introductions for Newly Minted PCs In Medias Res. 

Veterans

When a character reaches a name level or completes a satisfying arc, I think it's fun to retire them. Why would I go adventuring at this point in my character's story? I did the quest. Let me put my blorbo on their farm with their wife and live happily ever after. But I, Josh, still want to play the game.

These rules are for players who have mastered the game. 

• Characters start at a higher level
• Characters are built in a bespoke way, picking and choosing traits, feats, and equipment from a list
• Start with a number of randomly generated minor magic items to represent their previous accomplishments
• Starting level, wealth, magic items, etc., based on level of retired character

Changes to the rules

Characters that join the game at a high level have an opportunity to serve as mentors to lower level characters in the same way that veteran players can teach newer players how to play the game.

In Beyond the Wall, unlocked characters can be made using the character creation rules from the book instead of being created via playbooks. Options from the Elders playbooks can be made available: the Dungeon Delver, the Dwarven Mentor, the Initiated Magician, the Landless Noble, the Learned Tutor, the Retired Veteran. Let these characters start with higher level spells and some magic items from the expansion books.

Closing notes 

His Majesty the Worm does this, kind of. New characters get XP to spend on cross-Path talents for every XP and arete point your retired character has. Making a character to join a game already-in-progress allows you to utilize a "quantum character" where you answer questions about your talents, what's in your pack, etc., as it comes up during the game. I could have leaned into this harder, though. Perhaps a second edition paradigm advancement?

Cargo: Boxes of Carpathian Soil: A narrative game microblog

I had an idea for a narrative game while watching Nosferatu. Not my usual deal. Jotting down the idea as a microblog for posterity.

The game is called...

Cargo: Boxes of Carpathian Soil

The game is on a boat, taking an odd shipment from the Old World.

One player is the vampire. All other players are sailors.

The game is played out in a series of scenes between the vampire and one sailor. Only these two players talk each scene, but all the other players listen silently.

Each scene, the sailor tells the vampire their life story, then asks the vampire 1 question about theirs. At the end of the exchange, the vampire and story-teller vote simultaneously.

If even one player in the pair votes "negative," the vampire devours the sailor. The sailor describes how they're killed. It's probably messy.

If they both vote "positive," the vampire allows himself to be caught by the story. The vampire dies, crying, stepping into the sun.

Treasure Thoughts Microblog

Every time I go to a museum, I think "Wow, these artifacts are so interesting. The real world is so much weirder and more fantastic than the loot described in the pages of dungeon modules. Treasure should be WEIRDER."

I think that might be broadly true, but it also carries some risks for usability at the table.

Because the real world does have these layers of history (that's why I'm in the museum! to learn about this stuff!), the baseline for my expectations is different. If I were to just straight port the treasure I am looking at into a dungeon I ran, I'd have to explain what the hell I was talking about to my players. Saying "Golden idol with ruby eyes" is probably aligned with me and my players baseline. 

Torque, Virginia Museum of Fine Art

Saying "Torque, which is used as a trading currency," I'd have to act as a museum plaque for my players for a minute. Which is fine, but does take some extra time at the game table, and that carries a cost if you do it too much.

I wrote about my experiences running the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game. Check out the loot that the players find in the troll hole in that module. It was a lot of treasure!

I think having rooms full of treasure make sense. A hoard should feel like a hoard, you know? Be overflowing with goods of different types. Coinages of different make, for instance! But when reading a list of 50 items to the players, you can see they get overwhelmed. 

Anyway, here are some things that I think would be good treasures for your dungeon, if given in moderation.

Kovsh, Virginia Museum of Fine Art

Shabits, Virginia Museum of Fine Art (Should be animated servants instead of just like, raw treasure)

Cloak of duck feathers, Virginia Museum of Fine Art

Arms and armor, Musée de Cluny

"Unicorn horn," Musée de Cluny (I already wrote about this one)

Relic of a Saint, I forget which one, Musée de Cluny

Designing Dungeons Course

Hello, happy New Year! 

As we start 2025, I have noticed that many people are spinning up dungeon-creation projects (Dungeon23 continues into its third year, and the Zungeon Manifesto has launched a Zungeon Jam). To help with this effort, I have teamed up with Warren at ICastLight to launch:

Designing Dungeons Course

Or, How to Kill a Party in 30 Rooms or Less

Click the pic for the link

This course is a series of discussions, practical examples, and exercises designed to walk new Game Masters through the process of creating a new dungeon from scratch. The course provides a hands-on approach to the act of dungeon writing in an attempt to demystify the process. By following along, you’ll construct a dungeon for your players to explore.

If I didn't chunk the work into sections and release them incrementally, I'd never get it done. Therefore, I'm just launching with the first two chapters, with a goal of releasing a new chapter every week.

So, if you're interested in this, please give it a look and get in on the ground floor. Every week, you can follow along with me and Warren as we make our respective dungeons. 

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