What We Talk About When We Talk About D&D

Juno and Jupiter would have Minerva over to play 2nd edition AD&D in the basement of their parents' house. They played all through high school. Jupiter was the DM, who hacked the system for "realism" and homebrewed his own fantasy kingdom. Juno played a Cleric and was mostly interested in growing her religion in the city. Minerva played a Fighter and was the driving force for adventure. She would drag Juno into dungeons and relish in the strategic use of space and violence. Juno would mostly hang back and play support, but she would step in during encounters that could be resolved by talking. Once, in a parley with one of the settings villians, she got concessions that would bring respite to many suffering folk of the realm. After returning to the city from a dungeon delve, Juno would use the party's considerable spoils to spread her religion. In the city, Minerva would mostly hang back until she discovered the fighting pits, but they never really held her interest. As Juno's following grew, they drew the attention of a rival cult who eventually sent assassins after them. In the campaign finale, the party raided the cult temple and defeated the arch-priest in a climactic battle. That was the summer that Juno and Jupiter left for college, going to opposite sides of the country. No one played D&D after the party split that year.

Many years later, they made plans to play again when they were all back in their hometown for the holidays. They would play at Minerva's place. She had never left town, and was now a welder and married with kids. Jupiter worked in sales and Juno worked in Silicon Valley. 5th edition D&D had been out for a while and Jupiter had been listening to actual plays, and had been crafting a new setting set in the original kingdom of their high school days, but hundreds of years in the future. He could never sleep in the hotel beds he stayed in while visiting customers across the Midwest region, and often stayed up late feverishly writing the new campaign. Unfortunately that year COVID-19 hit and they called the game off to avoid flying. Soon after that, Jupiter was promoted and relocated to the company HQ in England. The three had a group chat for years, filling it with Critical Role memes, but Jupiter eventually dropped off the map getting absorbed into his new career. Juno and Minerva stayed friends and sometimes visit on the holidays. They like to talk about the latest Soulsbourne game.

OCs against Consumer Culture

Blorthax the Lizard Wizard (art by
@fitivarka.bsky.social)

I have a stack of books and zines on my bedstand, things I am currently reading by cycling through or intending to get around to soon. I've always been like this, a bit ADD and curious about more than I have the ability to actually sit down and read. In the last 12 years that I have been rediscovering TTRPGs and getting into the indie scene, TTRPG products have taken up more and more of this stack. It seems like there is an endless stream of must-have instant classics being released at all times. A recent Polygon article states that tabletop board game crowdfunding is loosing steam. The same does not seem to be true for the tabletop role-playing game world. The new Ultraviolet Grasslands boxed set seems deluxe as can be with custom dice, and Tomkin Press's latest provides options for four books and two decks of cards. If TTRPG crowdfunding is flagging, there is still enough momentum to propel our little cottage industry well into the future. 

I try to keep up with what I can, helplessly compelled to buy all these exciting new products. I probably finish one or more adventures or other TTRPG books a month, and this content inevitably shows up in my games in some form or another. I have three different groups I play with that are all curious to try different games and ideas, although a lot of people are also attached to the longer committed campaigns. I think the appeal of these longer campaigns is that players get the time to build an emotional connection, or at least resonance with their fictional characters. This is what Levi Kornelson calls Kenosis in his Manyfold Model. Characters pass into the realm of familiar, and players become comfortable inhabiting characters and interacting with one other, fleshing out their own unique rapport and shared history. This kind of play might be supported within an active zine-buying hobby, where the GM focuses on only adventure modules, rejecting products that would present too drastic of a shift from the game in terms of system or setting. I know many tables actually do this successfully, but for me and for some that I know, the depth and breadth of cool stuff being made destroys any chance to only bring zines to the table that won't break the tone of the game. It seems that overall, too healthy of an interest in the indie TTRPG scene means it's impossible to have a long, epic campaign with a familiar cast of well-worn heroes. 

Or does it.

The OC or "Original Character" is described by the Retired Adventurer blog as: 

"OC basically agrees [...] that the goal of the game is to tell a story, but it deprioritises the authority of the DM as the creator of that story and elevates the players' roles as contributors and creators. The DM becomes a curator and facilitator who primarily works with material derived from other sources - publishers and players, in practice. OC culture has a different sense of what a "story" is, one that focuses on player aspirations and interests and their realisation as the best way to produce "fun" for the players."

 The OC having their own backstory is not central to the point I am trying to make here. The important part is that the OC is the player's creation that transcends the game. An OC can appear in any system, in any setting, in any time period. Blorthax the Lizard Wizard knows no boundaries, surfing from table to table unfettered, slaying goblins in Mork Borg one day, and blasting aliens in a Starfinder game the next. OCs take on a sort of quantum nature, where alternate reality instantiations of them could multiply endlessly across groups of players.

Although OCs are thought of as a modern phenomenon, I think there are traces of similar characters that go back to the early days of the hobby. People brought characters from Gary Gygax's house to Dave Arnesen's to play in their respective dungeons, and since high lethality games call for regarding characters as replaceable pawns, created the same or similarly named characters over and over. 

The point for me in bringing this up, is that here we have two contradicting strains of play that seem to develop together because of their difference, and perhaps even depend on each other in a weird way. Not all differing styles of play are mutually exclusive. Some are even symbiotic.

Sandboxing Volturnus 2: The Octopods

Preamble 

In continuing my project to rewrite the classic Star Frontiers adventure as a sandbox, I am now moving on to one of the planets many sentient species. In the original series, there are two main entries for each species, one to introduce them, and another for a quest to win their support in a climactic finale. 

The first species encountered are a desert dwelling, dinosaur riding species of octopii that have an Avatar-like 9th tentacle that can be used to mind meld with other living creatures, including their dino-mounts. In the linear adventure narrative, these octopods rescue the party soon after their starship crashes, and together they set out on a journey to their holy city, where the players can partake in a religious ceremony doing battle with an ancient genetically engineered beast to gain favor with the tribe. Fighting the beast is part of the agreement for receiving help, so this is a section of the railroad that I am trying to unwind and turn into a sandbox. On the way back to the holy city, the party becomes separated from their guides while traversing a dangerous underground cave system/dungeon due to a cave in, and must forge on through the railroad alone. 

In their second entry in the adventure series, the party needs to once again gain favor with the tribe, this time to convince them to join an epic battle for the fate of the planet. In the second appearance, the players must once again win the favor of the tribe, this time by finding another one of these genetically engineered beasts to capture it and return it to the tribe. The two octopod quests are so similar that they are a bit boring, but I can try to imagine a greater cosmology surrounding these beasts. 

Octopods Culture

Octopods worship an essence that permeates all things in this world. Objects and individuals are merely differentiated expressions of the underlying essence. When a living thing is born, they emerge from the great world essence, and when they die, they return to it once again. Their worldview is tightly bound to their ability to use a specialized ninth tentacle which allows them to connect to nearly any living creatures nervous system via spinal cord and communicate with it telepathically. Because of this bond, they feel a great sense of responsibility to the living creatures of their world. Among the creatures they commune with, they have a very close relationship with their dinosaur like mounts called striders. Striders often play roles in their many religious ceremonies and athletic competitions. 

There are however, many genetically engineered creatures left behind by a great and malignant race of worms who reject communication with the octopods, and are thus seen as outside the great world essence. The worms set these creatures loose on their planet long ago in an attempt to conquer it, though they were driven away in a great and fabled battle. In remembrance of this history, the octopods have also taken it upon themselves to hunt these genetically engineered creatures. In particular are the manglers, a quadrupedal death machine that can shoot poisonous barbs from their tails. Many octopod ceremonies center around the capture and ritual combat with manglers. In order to gain favor with an octopod tribe, outsiders may have to participate in one of these mangler related ceremonies to prove their worthiness. Despite being wary of outsiders, they extend mutual aid such as water and shelter from extreme desert weather to all living creatures that can commune with them via ninth tentacle link. This includes almost all living creatures in space except those genetically engineered by the worms. 

Breakdown at Geyser Station

 

For this months post I am making a dungeon based on a photo I took at the Dali Museum in Paris on a recent trip to Europe. It was a great trip, I thought the cities were beautiful and spending so much time in ancient pedestrian based cities really made me realize how I always imagine my big fantasy cities as having wide roads, presumably for wagon traffic or something. 

The Dali Museum contained many of his sculptures in addition to art pieces like this one. The piece this dungeon is taken from is called Space Elephant. It contains interior room drawings inside of one of his iconic elephants with long spindly legs carrying an obelisk on its back. Dali loved elephants, often making them chimerical, for example by giving them pig tails or bats wings for ears, so I will add a chimera. He also loved Alice in Wonderland, and did an illustrated series of scenes from the book, sort of in the ink style of Space Elephant, so I will lean into that too. I also think it would be cool to try and go for a Quantum Alice angle, and do something in the style of Derelict Transdimensional Anomaly by Kirt A. Dankmyre/Xiombarg, from the recent 2024 One Page Derelict game jam.

This mechanical rambling pachyderm is captained by a salty old man and is the only way to reach your destination. However, the creature is broken down and unable to leave Geyser Station. If you want to get on the road, they might need a bit of help. 

1. Station Crewed by a Baboon who operates the pulleys and levers to dock with travelling pachyderms. He hates his job, but receives a reward of nuts, berries and cigarettes which keep him from running away.
2. Stairwell A retractable tower with a stairway that allows entry and exit from the traveling pachyderm. Electric eels in an aquarium sculpture in the ceiling provide illumination in the tower. The stairwell has exits to rooms 3 and 4 on the first landing and to 5 and 7 on the second landing. 
3. Foyer Changes every time you visit.
• 1 A bundled traveler in a waiting room at a long distance train station which connects to a cold and distant country.
• 2 Two angry opossums nested away with some rotten food in an upended cabinet in a Victorian waiting room.
• 3 Three ghosts floating in alcoves of a small crypt. They visited their living families and are now heading back to the gates of the underworld.
• 4 Four acrobats in a changing room, waiting to be called out to begin a performance for a powerful lord. The performance is themed around a fable of forbidden love.
• 5 Five golems with bodies full of drawers sit in a room with walls also full of drawers. They say that every drawer contains a secret.
• 6 Six witches and fey creatures sitting in a waiting room with bronze trim and large potted plants. They are travelling to a great effigy burning.
4. Gallery Steam elementals are forbidden from entry. Artwork of elephants with long spindly legs carrying obelisks on their backs taking part in a great war. In the center of the room are two mirror orbs that show the true intentions of anyone reflected in them. 
5. Captains Bedchamber Captain Kudzu was once a pachyderm cavalry general for a great and powerful wizard named Aleph. When Aleph was killed by adventurers, Kudzu was reduced to making a living in commercial transportation. 
6. Cockpit Here are the main control panels, observation deck, trunk docking controls and many gauges showing temperature and pressure.    
7. Engine Room Boilers powered by steam elementals. This area also serves as a kitchen for Aleph and any guests on the traveling pachyderm. The steam elementals were subdued by the wizard Aleph. When Aleph was killed long ago, Kudzu did not tell them. Steam imps from a nearby geyser have revealed Kudzu's lie to the steam elementals and they are now in open rebellion. 
8. Obelisk A chimera lives here. It is Kudzu's loyal familiar and will act in his best interest. They have been together since the war and it will do his bidding, running errands and communicating messages. A maintenance hatch in the Obelisk leads to the aquarium full of electric eels which illuminates the stairwell below. Roll d66 for animal type and body part until a complete creature emerges.
• Animal
• 1 Bat
• 2 Ox
• 3 Dragon
• 4 Lobster
• 5 Ant
• 6 Human
• Body Part
• 1 Torso
• 2 Legs
• 3 Head
• 4 Tail
• 5 Arm
• 6 Eyes/Ears/Nose/Mouth

Aggregate Arcs

Author Kurt Vonnegut talked about what he called the shapes of stories. One of the basic plots he described, Man in Hole, starts at a high point with the protagonist doing well, then they are brought low by falling into some trouble, and finally they get to another high point after resolving their troubles. Novels and TV shows that capture popular attention often follow such structures. Many shapes are studied and reproduced meticulously in today's blockbusters, like Joseph Campbells Hero's Journey, where the hero embarks on an adventure, encounters adversity, and then returns home changed. 

Many game masters will write stories ahead of time, and guide their adventuring party through a predetermined set of events. In this case, a campaign may have a well defined shape, where clear recognizable plot points occur to give a story different progressions of highs and lows. 

There is a way that stories develop in games if the GM refrains from writing a story before hand that I think of as an aggregate story arc. In a game that values player agency, the highs and lows come much more randomly and unpredictably. So you have little chapters and vignettes that tie together probably leading towards one or a handful of overarching quests or themes. They are more or less a series of collisions between players and the game world. Ultimately there is a story shape or arc, but it is an aggregation of many different things that happen over the course of months and years of playing to find out what happens next.

I had a moment in a recent game I run, where following a players curiosity and improvisation based on random tables felt very much like one little chunk of a larger aggregate campaign arc. The group was traveling by boat through a jungle when their boats were damaged by rocks. They spent the evening and night on a river bank doing repairs, and in the meantime one of the characters (the thief of course) decides to wander into the jungle looking for anything valuable. After a few rolls of the dice and some random generators, we found out that they do in fact find something. It was a giant ameoba with a glowing flower in it, strangely undigested inside the amoeba's body beside bits of decomposing debris. The players use a bag of salt that they happen to be carrying to easily overcome the amoeba and recover the flower, which they will be able to use to create a regeneration potion. They discussed some plans, which included trying to cultivate and grow more of this flower. The regeneration flower could be a footnote, or it could be the start of a new agricultural dynasty. 

This was one short chapter among many in our campaign, made up on the spot, but memorable and potentially game changing. It seems to me that these little chapters aggregate, being created through randomness and letting things happen spontaneously and organically. Events layer one after another to create a richly varied, moving story line that is much more satisfying than any prewritten plot arc. 

Kitchen Sink Fantasy

When I first moved to the Denver area I was searching for local TTRPG book stores and discovered Black & Read, a used music, books and games store. It has an impressive section of used (and new) TTRPGs and board games tucked behind the fantasy and sci-fi novels. My first visit there I picked up two games I remembered seeing in middle school, Shadowrun 2nd edition and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, both first published in 1992. Reading them back to back I came away with an impression of how different ingredients combine to create new fantasy worlds. Shadowrun's world has a magical aura that waxes and wanes causing apocalypses, tying the game world to our real world and to the publishers medieval fantasy game line, Earthdawn. All this is of course a pretext to doing cyberpunk with orcs and dragons. Werewolf's ingredients in their broadest strokes are that you have secret werewolf tribes fighting a cosmic Wyrm who is destroying the earths life force, acting through modern industrial society. These two games both use simple combinations to create their worlds, Shadowrun adds fantasy to cyberpunk and the werewolves protect mother Earth.

I want to continue in the vein of some discourse that followed the death of Dragon Ball author Akira Toriyama. Toybox Creativity: The Genius of Dragon Ball talks about rejecting genre conventions by being open to combining disparate fantasy/sci-fi/other elements without worrying about explaining everything. Toy Box Naturalism builds on this idea by sprinkling in a little bit of Gygaxian Naturalism, which is the idea that a limited amount of backstory and ecology behind monsters makes them come alive and become more interesting in game. I really agree that explaining elements of your fantasy with more fantasy lore rather than technicalities can be a lot of fun. 

I think my two 1992 "classics," Werewolf and Shadowrun, both demonstrate this ethic to create new fantasy worlds. They go about it very differently from each other but also have a lot in common. Both games frame campaigns that are politically charged, Shadowrun as corporate espionage lowlifes and Werewolf as... furry ecoterrorists. Both feel very '90s to me, both books are similar in size and pretty proportional in their levels of lore and rules crunch. Maybe Shadowrun has more crunch because of all the hacking rules and cyberware, but overall they feel close to me. 

The lore that creates Shadowrun's fantasy universe feels a little like it is an ends to a means, like the goal was to figure out a way to combine the two genres. I do think the ebbing and waning of the Earths magical field is a very cool bit of world building, but the amount of effect it has is minimal aside from weaving fantasy into cyberpunk. The emergence of horrors with the growing magical field gives the setting a Lovecraftian, post-apocalyptic element, but our attention is drawn to the dense city centers for corporate intrigue.

Werewolf's lore leads in almost the opposite direction. It creates an acute genre, centered around secret werewolf societies that all work towards a mission aligned with their spiritual position in the universe. Part of this difference between the two games is because genre is such a broad term. Genre can describe the world your story takes place in, but it can also describe the characters in the story. The genre of detective stories, for example, its not about whole worlds full of detectives, its just features detectives. Werewolf makes use of this, where being a werewolf is not just something that you are, but an identity and worldview. 

I have a world building game I play with some friends that started out as a way to choose which movie to watch from a shelf of VHS cassettes. Everyone pulls out one or a few cassettes a little bit out from the shelf, and then everyone takes turns pushing cassettes back into the shelf one at a time, until just one remains. The final remaining movie is the movie for the night. My friends and I use a similar approach for a world building exercise. Everyone writes a genre element on a notecard and puts them on the table, making and adding as many notecards as they want. Next, we all take turns removing cards until we are left with a handful of elements that we think we can work into a cool campaign framework.

Halfway through this game, you end up in a place that is sort of Toybox Creativity taken to its extreme. With every genre your group can think of thrown in the mix, it becomes a Kitchen Sink Fantasy, a fantasy where all possible fantasy elements exist, the collective product of your imaginations all together in one universe. The first half of the game up to here is freewheeling brainstorming. In the second half, you break the Kitchen Sink Fantasy down into increasingly specific combinations, things that you never thought of putting together become world-defining realities. This part is about being critical. We are making those tough decisions. What can we cut? What do we want to keep? This half is more serious in contrast to the light-heartedness of the first half.

So my point in all this, is that to me Shadowrun exists on the first half of this journey, optimistically brainstorming and adding to the pile. Werewolf exists on the second half of the journey, on the way back down toward an intentional aesthetic, brooding and paring away from Kitchen Sink Fantasy. 

Sandboxing Volturnus 1: The Pirate Ambush

The idea of a shipwreck leaving passengers stranded and having to survive a harsh environment has been an interesting starting point for many a story. The "starship crash on an isolated alien planet" particularly has been used a few times in media that I love, for example in Scavengers Reign and Rimworld, so it makes sense for me to use it to frame a TTRPG campaign. (There is also its sci-fi counterpart, the "Otherworld Arrivant," mentioned by Old Gus on the NSR Discord.) 

This is the first worldbuilding post of my "Sandboxing Volturnus" adventure, discussed in this previous post. In it I will cover the starship crash that kicks off the campaign. Although this is a sandbox adventure intended to give players open ended control, railroading the crash is necessary for the concept to work. So we'll kick off the campaign in medias res, with the players on a starship that is severely disabled by a pirate attack. There is no safe way home from here, and the players will have to survive the planet and find a way off on its own alien terms. 

The players are members of a survey crew, sent on a mission to explore a little known remote alien planet. The previous survey crew sent here has gone missing, so their mission is to find out what happened to them. Unfortunately, soon after arriving at the planet, while the players were still sleeping, there was a surprise pirate attack which destroys the survey ships engines and defensive capabilities. Their pirate scrap ships have attached a boarding tube and are overwhelming the survey ship's meagre defenses. And to make matters worse, the ship is slowly plummeting into the atmosphere and will burn up in a few hours!

The players wake up in their own private quarters or perhaps are awoken from cryosleep. In the case of cryosleep, their belongings will be stowed away in a luggage compartment. The ship is mid-siege and the damage to the ships systems is done. Pirates have boarded through two boarding tube breach points near the front of the ship each guarded by two pirates. Twelve pirates boarded from each of their ships, and a pilot remains on each one. If anyone other than a pirate attempts to cross the boarding tube, the pilot will immediately eject the tube. With superior numbers and firepower, the pirates quickly took over the bridge and are looting the stores looking for valuables. 

The crew quarters are the furthest point away from the bridge, with separate rooms for engineering, telemetry, cargo, mess hall and a gym between. Aside from the players there are a few specialists on the crew, who can be saved and possibly help out later. There are probably no more than 15 crew on the survey in total.

The safest way off of the ship is to sneak to the escape capsules near the bridge and escape in the chaos of the attack. If the pirates complete their raid, or if all pirates on the ship are neutralized, the scrap ships will detach to allow the survey ship to crash on the planet. If the escape pods are not used, the ship can possibly be navigated to land "safely". 

Pirate Ambush Encounter Table

1. Terrible noises coming from the engine

2. Gunfire and screaming from down the hall

3. Running injured survey crew member

4. Pirate chemheads, out of their minds on chem

5. Pirate goon squad, looking to hurt people

6. Pirate leader, sadistic, melodramatic and loves the arts

Possible crash sites

1. Desert

Home of the Ur-Octopod land-dwelling octopii people. They possess an extra neuro tentacle similar to those in the Avatar movies, and are friends to many animals. To win entry into their tribe and gain their trust, you must make a pilgrimage to their holy city through the Rocky Badlands and prove yourself in battle with a terrible beast. 

The desert also holds occasional ruins of an ancient advanced dinosaur civilization which might be used as shelter and water sources. 

2. Glass Grasslands

The grass itself is incredibly sharp and prohibits free travel. Certain native fauna have evolved ways to clear paths in the glass grass, and following their trails is the best approach to travel.

3. Megaflora Forest

Home to the Kohnots, a species of furry and diminutive tree dwellers who build tree villages with hanging walkways and swing by vines. They have also developed hang gliders which allow them to foray safely into the adjacent Glass Grasslands. The Kohnots have a complex social life characterized by ritual and paying respect through gifts and favors. 

4. The Northern Hills

Cold hilly lands occupied by the Plodin, a species of land bound crustaceans whose bodies have a three-fold axis of symmetry. They have an animistic religion and have a different spirit to worship for just about everything and every situation. They have carved a great temple out of a naturally occurring crystal occupied by the highest ranking members of their religion. 

5. Rocky Badlands 

The holy city of the Ur-Octopod octopii people is here, only accessible through dangerous networks of caves that contain many terrifying creatures. In the holy city, outsiders can do battle with a terrifying beast in their ancestral tradition to enter their tribe.

6. Volcanic Wastes

The wastes are largely uninhabited and present many natural hazards.

A group of pirates led by The Star Kraken also make the planet their home, and have established a few bases of operations on the surface, as well as an hidden mothership in orbit. The attack that downs the players' ship is made by a few smaller vessels that come from this mothership. The Star Kraken has connections to corrupt officials in the government in the more civilized regions of space, and make a fortune by trading resources mined here. Their operation depends on labor of the Plodin, who they have deceived into working with them by pretending to be gods that speak to their religious leaders. 

The pirates have two main planetary bases, one to the north near the Plodin, and another near the forest, where they often clash with the Kohnot. The southern forest base is their main scientific facility, where they bring unconscious Plodin religious leaders for surgery that renders them pliable to Star Kraken control. Each facility has considerable defenses: electrified fences, artillery guns, atmofliers and a host of robots in addition to the hardened pirates themselves.