New magical item: The Gambler's Dice

This is a unique and powerful non-artifact magic item, system-agnostic but written with 4e in mind. I was inspired to finish it considering the recent "Got Loot?" blogging festival, though this is something that has been incubating in my mind since at least last April. It is my attempt to bring a sort of Fortune Cards-like aesthetic into the game, without being overly intrusive, but also having consequences. It utilizes FUDGE dice, which are special six-sided dice which have two blank faces, two faces bearing a "-" and two faces bearing a "+". It was very influenced by the Deck of Many Things, among other things, and I'd hope that its implementation and manifestation could be relatively flexible to manage in-game. Players can come across individual dice, as with cards from the DoMT, or else the entire set, whichever would seem more appropriate within the story. The item, which is a set of four ivory dice inset with golden suns and silver moons, will appear to be just an ordinary, if valuable, set of dice for a game called Canicerre (can-i-sair). It will be common in the area of the world where the dice are found, but relatively rare elsewhere. I use a combination of locales from 4th edition (Bael Turath features in the story), but also a newly invented locale (the Alvastratian Empire), which I figure for story's sake existed in the same larger geographical area as Bael Turath, but perhaps pre-dating both it and Arkhosia. There is no reason why any or all of it could not be relocated to somewhere more familiar to Pathfinder fans, such as Varisia or Katapesh. I'm less familiar with Golarion and I write chiefly for 4e (being the fantasy RPG with which I am most familiar), so it becomes my "implicit" setting. Similarly I use Tieflings and Eladrin in the story text, but the storyteller himself is suspicious of those attributions. They could readily be renamed to something more appropriate.

The dice themselves should be presented, at first, as simple treasure. They are made of a valuable material (ivory), appear to be very well made and of high quality, and two sides are inset with gold, and two sides are inset with silver. It would be assumed that a reasonable player would see the value in these, at least as loot to sell for gold or silver back in town. Likewise, the location they are found in should be relatively unremarkable; maybe they spill out of an old boot that is carelessly knocked over while one of the PCs is looking for something else. Maybe they are simply set atop a table within a cave that had been at some point previously been occupied but currently seems abandoned. However, the true value of the dice only becomes apparent once the PCs attempt to sell them. When presented to a shopkeeper, especially if asked what they are for, the following monologue might occur. Alternately, if one of the characters is particularly well versed in local history, they may know the following already:

"It's an old Alvastratian game, it's called Canicerre; it's simple. Let me show you. There are four dice, they each have these symbols on them, right? The sun represents a positive turn of fortune, the moon a negative; yeah the Alvastratians were sun worshippers, what do you want? You put all four dice in a cup, and you shake it around. You try to get one die to pop out; a lot of pros get up to some pretty fancy shaking to make it happen and land where they want it to. The rest of the dice stay in the cup, and you quick turn it over and smack it down on the table so they're under the cup, still covered. Everybody bets on whether the overall outcome will be positive or negative, and then the cup is lifted. Positive and negative sides cancel each other out, blank sides don't have an influence one way or the other. If the outcome is neutral, everyone gets their money back. If it's moons, all the people who betted suns lose their money. If it's suns, all the people who betted moons lose their money, get it? It's split up evenly from all the losers to all the winners, so if you're betting on an unpopular outcome, you stand to win more money than if you go with everyone else on it. If everyone bets one way and the result is the other, the person rolling the dice gets it all; it's the only way they can win since they can't ordinarily take bets, and it doesn't happen very often, but when it does, oh man, it can be a lot of money. There was a saying back in the old days in Alvastratia, 'rich as a roller.'

"But these dice, these are special. You probably don't know what you have here. See, there's a legend about these dice. They say that there was a guy, a gambler, who lived in the port of Arkash. Arkash was in Bael Turath, so tradition says that he was a Tiefling. Makes sense to me, since everybody knows that Canicerre is a Tiefling game anyway... At least they're the ones who are always playing it anywhere they go. Anyway, there was a gambler, nobody knows his name any more. I guess it's not important. And this guy, he gambled on everything. It was just sort of his nature. He said that if he had something, it was his to lose. If someone else had something, it was his to win. And he was always fair. If he lost, he lost graciously and moved on, never held any grudges, never carried any superstitions or excess baggage along with it. Winning and losing, that was the only thing that mattered. He wasn't even known, so the stories go, for being particularly daring with his bets, I guess he just liked to leave everything up to fate or something. I don't know.

"But one day, as the story goes, he met a traveller. Now, a lot of people say it was an eladrin, but I don't know if that's so much that it was really an eladrin or if they just want some sort of trickster figure and eladrin fit but anyway, doesn't matter. This traveller is in town for a few days, watches the Gambler gambling on everything, finally approaches him. He pulls out these ancient, ancient looking Canicerre dice, inset with gold and silver, obviously well-worn but still in great shape, and says "I'll play you for these; they have a value far beyond anything you will ever possibly know." The Gambler, he's impressed by the dice, they're good looking, but he doesn't buy the yarn about any 'immeasurable value.' But a game's a game, so they go in to it. They drop in to a gambling house, the traveler hands a dealer there the dice. See it used to be polite if you were in a new town to at least make the gesture like you're contributing to the local economy, you know, give the dealer a chance to win, yadda yadda. Anyway, the dealer drops them in the cup, and the eladrin (or whoever) gestures to the Gambler, and says 'your call.'

"The dealer swirls the cup, pops a die out, it's the sun facing. Nevertheless, the Gambler says 'favor only shines at night.' See, there are a lot of traditions with the game; some people just say positive or negative, some people say suns and moons, this guy gussied up his calls with a little poetry, guess he did it so often he had to keep it interesting. Whatever. The eladrin (whatever) says 'suns' to give the opposite bid. You know, it's polite if you're playing one-on-one to pick opposing bids, otherwise there's a lot of stalemates going on. Also it's usually smart to pick the facing symbol anyway because the odds are a little in favor of what's already showing. The dealer nods, lifts the cup. There are two moons and a sun. Stalemate. Since they're not playing for money, the dealer sweeps up the dice and drops them in the cup. One pops out, it's a sun again. Yet again, the Gambler says 'dark as night, never bright.' The eladrin nods, and replies 'the sun will forever shine.' The dealer nods, lifts the cup. Again, it's two moons and a sun. Once again, the dealer scoops up the dice, pours them into the cup, and swirls it around. He pops a die, it shows a blank face. The eladrin says 'ah, intriguing! Why don't we raise the wager? If I win, I make one request, which you must abide by for the rest of your days. If you win, I remain here in your service, until I am discharged by your command.' The Gambler says, 'no sir, we began this game over these dice, and these dice are what I'm playing for. If you want to make other wagers, we'll resolve this one first and then we'll talk.' The eladrin nods and raises his hand to gesture that the Gambler make his bet. The Gambler says 'three moons hang alone in the sky, never to meet, never to die.'

"See this is another thing I forgot to tell you about the game. Sometimes people will make a wager based on what the exact configuration of the dice will be, and then they can win more of the pot than usual, but they weren't playing this game. I guess he was just making that bet for poetic purposes, it wouldn't have had any effect on the game one way or the other, just that he had wagered on 'moons' instead of 'suns.' The eladrin says 'three times three is a risky wager indeed!' Do you see where some people might think that this character might have been an eladrin, by the way? Who talks like that but them? Well, I suppose halflings do, but nobody wants to listen to a story about a mysterious halfling. Anyway, he says 'a three times three is a risky wager indeed!' I said that already, but there's a reason for that. You know, if you bet the same thing three times in a row, there's an old superstition that you'll always lose on your third time, but this Gambler, he wasn't swayed by any superstition, so he just says 'that's my wager, and I'm standing by it.' So the dealer lifts the cup, and sure enough, plain as anything, three moons are facing upwards. The eladrin stands up, pushes his chair back from the table, and says 'the dice are yours by your right, and they are parted from me duly. Good day, and good luck.' And he walks out. Nobody ever sees him again. Nobody sees him leave, like as soon as he walks through the door, he's gone. Course it was in Arkash and nobody sees anything in Arkash, at least not without the jingle of gold in their ears, so that's not really all that remarkable. A lot of people, they like to play up the mystery there in that part, like ooooh he was a ghost or something, but I've seen plenty of ghosts, and this doesn't sound like a ghost.

"Anyway that's just the beginning of the story. I could probably talk your ear off all day about this legend, s' popular with the kids and all (course some people add in lots of moral lessons like 'don't gamble' or more dubious ones like 'don't gamble with eladrin' or some such) but anyway, long story short is Gambler finds out that he got a lot more than what he bargained for. He'd only use these dice, you know, for special occasions. They were nice, you don't just sit out in the dusty street and roll ivory dice inlaid with gold and silver, but whatever, you know what I mean. But he came to realize that, not only did winning or losing with the dice seem to bring him bigger wins or losses, but the effect seemed to last for days. And now like I said, he was no superstitious man, but when weird things happen often enough, you start to think like something weird is going on. When he won with the dice, it was like he couldn't lose. He'd have streaks for days where everything he played, he played well. When he lost, he lost everything. Got to a point where the streaks scared 'im so much he all went up and almost quit gambling altogether. Didn't like the ramifications. Occasionally he'd try to offer the dice up as a prize, just like the eladrin did, to try to get rid of them. But he'd always win. No matter what he bet, the dice were always in his favor any time he tried to get rid of them. Started to think they were a curse, never used them. Gambling lost its flavor for him, these dice weighing down on him, never knowing whether they were actually cursed or magical or anything like that, or whether he was just getting old, and eventually he just up and disappeared, they found the dice on his table, four moons staring up at the ceiling, like he was there one minute and gone the next. Nobody ever saw him again, nobody claimed the dice as their rightful property, eventually the shopkeeper in town said he'd put 'em up for sale, use the money to pay for a gravestone (they just assumed if he wasn't coming back, he was probably dead), and that's where the story leaves off. Nobody knows what happened to the dice after they sold, but they say there's a plain gravestone standing in Arkash today, no name on it, just standing there like it's proof that someone was there. Where'd you say those turned up, again?"

The Gambler's Dice can be represented, in the real world, with a set of 4 FUDGE dice. The plus side represents the sun, the minus side represents the moon. The mechanics otherwise are exactly the same, each sun cancels each moon, and any left over beyond that denotes a winner. The large majority of games will result in a draw, and it is customary among most gamblers to either raise or withdraw their bets during these instances. Canicerre can be played in-game at any time, for gambling purposes or for a quick-and-dirty method of divination (will the immediate future be favorable or unfavorable? by what degree?). It is only with the Gambler's Dice that things get "dicey." Beyond their use as a gambling tool, they can also be used to influence fate. At any time, as a standard action, as a daily power, in or out of combat, the player in possession of the Gambler's Dice may roll the dice as long as there is a reasonable surface upon which to do so. The character does not need to be able to see the results of the dice, and the effect generated begins instantaneously. It is up to the GM to determine the effect of the outcome, but it should be in line with the overall "score" achieved by the roll. In other words, a roll that evens out to zero will probably not have any effect at all, +1 might make an attack that otherwise might have just missed hit, +2 might save the player from a status effect or an environmental mishap, +3 might drastically alter the strength of an opponent or the treasure encountered, and +4 will likely be some extremely unlikely, massive, and potentially game-changing event, like a god suddenly taking direct interest in the character and personally guiding their hand. Conversely, -1 might make the character's next action fail, or prevent them from achieving a critical hit on a natural 20, or something of the like, and so on. A -4 result will be catastrophic for the character. They may be pulled into a demiplane of suffering, they may be struck down where they stand by a freak accident, but the outcome should not only be dire for the character, but for the entire party. This result should also result in the dice being "lost" and unrecoverable by the party.

The Gambler's Dice are not an "evil" item, but they are chaotic in their function. It is unclear whether the dice were invented to be magical, or with any sort of magical purpose in mind, or whether they "developed" on their own. They do not function like an artifact; they do not possess any degree of "intelligence" and do not attempt to influence or direct their possessor's behavior. But nor are they a "good" item, for they do not always act in their holder's favor, letting instead the dice fall where they may, and then influence the world around them accordingly. Primarily any effect is negated every time the dice are re-rolled, but the dice roll has no effect one way or the other if attempted more than once in 24 hours. Otherwise, the effect will subside in 1d4 days, waning in influence over time. As a static magic item, they grant the possessor +1 Streetwise (or, for Pathfinder, Knowledge [local]) and -1 Diplomacy as long as they are somewhere in the vicinity of the person. For the purpose of this mechanic their "owner" is defined as the person who last touched them with their bare hands, although if that person should travel any appreciable distance away from the dice (such as leave town), "ownership" passes to any character who is nearest or currently in possession.

Beyond this, the significance, importance, and back story for the dice are entirely up to the Game Master, and entirely dependent upon their own campaign to let the mystery of the dice develop further (or not). Perhaps one of the PCs will decide to roll the dice when they are first found absentmindedly. If this occurs make note of the results, and have their influence (if any) be felt, but be unclear about whether it is the dice that are influencing how things have suddenly turned, or something else about where they are or what they are doing, then reveal it when they learn what the dice are.

Got Loot Blogfest: Wichtrift, a unique item for Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition

About a year ago, I had a game where the players were in a dungeon populated by relatively powerful undead and incorporeal enemies (usually shadow or ghost). The cleric and the wizard were doing just fine; radiant attacks from the cleric usually did some tidy damage, and area effect spells like Burning Hands, Scorching Burst, and Fire Shroud handled the waves of insubstantial enemies more tidily; trading amount of damage for extent of damage. However, only a little bit in to the adventure, I realized that even with the cleric dishing out maximum damage against the undead, the other players didn't have anything available to them to rival it, and were getting a little frustrated. I created this item an an optional tool to be wielded by someone who was not able to dish out radiant damage, and hid it behind a puzzle in a secret compartment. I tried to write the rest of the adventure so that it would not be negatively impacted by the players not finding the item, but if they had found it, it would definitely make the dungeon a lot easier.

The setting was that they had been sucked into a pocket dimension within the Shadowfell, which had been created by an ancient Shadar Kai sorcerer-king, as a side effect of his mad attempts to establish and maintain control over his domain, which had been beset by demons. Once the players hit Paragon level they would have been able to find out who he was, why he was under attack, and who was ultimately behind all of it, but the campaign fell apart. He was the last of a now forgotten dynasty, when the Shadar Kai were still a relatively young race and not yet as given to decadence and excess as they are now; his fall, in my game, was one of the events that quickened their transformation into what they are. The two symbols of his dynasty were a magic orb and a silver misericorde.

The magic orb, despite being very beautiful and expertly crafted, was not all that powerful (it was essentially just a +1 orb with a +1d6 crit bonus), but the misericorde was the special item. It was called Wichtrift, and was created by the sorcerer-king's ancestor, the founder of the dynasty. It was crafted so keen and with such care, that it could slice through spirit-stuff as if it were solid flesh. Paradoxically, it would pass through solid flesh as if it were insubstantial. The kings of this dynasty were cruel, and increasingly insane, and they would use the knife to split the escaping spirits from those whom they had slain, and then magically bind them back together into increasingly grotesque abominations, and enslave them to do their bidding. The dagger was therefore extremely powerful, but also stained by a hideously violent and atrocious past. I wanted possession of it to create a moral quandary for the players, and for it to even cause expressions of fear from the ghosts who inhabited the place since they had been created by it and knew its power. The cruellest irony of it all would have been that the king, who had entombed himself, still living, at the bottom of this structure, would have been vulnerable to the weapon. I also wanted to give the players the opportunity to use the dagger for good, so at one point they encounter a "friendly ghost" who only wants to be freed from his place, where he had been eternally bound, and they would be able to use the dagger to do that. If they'd have held on to the dagger or the orb, by around level 12 or 13 when I had planned them going into the Shadowfell for the first time, those items could have become very powerful bargaining chips with some of the major powers in Gloomwrought and abroad; even if they didn't know exactly what they were, they would have been able to tell that they had originated in the realm, and were very ancient.

I wanted the knife to be based in an unusual stat so that it wouldn't be obvious how it dealt damage, and would also be easily wielded by even a character who was not usually martial by nature. Given its creation from and capacity for evil acts, charisma seemed a good fit. Despite this, it still deals radiant damage, however this radiance does not originate from faith in the divine, but sadistic cruelty of character. Other than that, attack rolls are resolved as normal, as if it were any other knife. I marked it as level 4, but only because that's what level the party was when they would encounter it. Based on what it does, probably 5 or 6 would have been a better fit, but given that its intrinsic power does not increase over levels, it doesn't really much matter. The name originates in Old Germanic and Old English and I take it to mean "soul-divider," a reference to its ability to slice spirit asunder.

The Village Above the Sea -- A 2nd level Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition, adventure for 3-4 characters

What begins as an end-of-summer sojourn in a seaside town ends up being far more sinister. The PCs discover a terrifying secret that threatens the entire village, but can they find the source and stop the threat from getting far more out of control?

pdf, 22 pages, hosted at mediafire.com: Download link.

An entry for Jeff Dougan's blogging carnival, On a Night in the Lonesome October.

Wizards of the Coast's Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium

Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium fulfils a need that D&D 4e has had since its inception: cursed items. While I could go on and on about how it has tons of really great new weapons, weapon powers, weapon feats, magical items, and flavor text, what you're really buying it for are the cursed items. I suppose I should back it up just a little bit. MME is presented, loosely, in the fom of a book written, but then later redacted and then destroyed, by the archmage Mordenkainen. He adds in some nods to his archmage buddies (including Tenser, of Tenser's Floating Disc fame, and Bigby, as in Bigby's Grasping Hand), but mostly pontificates about himself. It's a nice stylistic flourish that makes the book more fun to read, and also is an excuse for the authors to have a bit of fun in writing it. All throughout the book, there are little sidebars with knocks about certain items by Mordenkainen, which, for the most part, are pretty entertaining, and each chapter is introduced with a longer monologue about the topic in Mordenkainen's distinctive style.

The book does have some good mundane and magical items in it. It unlocks the "superior" training feat, as well as specific weapon-based special attacks utilizing superior weapons training (and superior weapons); along those lines was something I suggested myself in one of the early days of this blog. It goes into much more detail with arcane implements, with new wands, orbs, holy symbols, tomes, staffs, foci, and totems, for all sorts of character classes that can utilize such things. Up to this point, one could easily call Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium "Adventurer's Vault 3" (which it is) and be done with it. However that would completely belittle the fact that this book is organized and presented in a far superior way to either of the Adventurer's Vault books, and is ultimately a lot more useful than those books (when it comes to wondrous items, and other magic doodads). However, my favorite thing about Adventurer's Vault 2, immurements, did not make it back to MME, which was a bit of a disappointment.

The last part of the book concerns itself with artifacts and cursed items. It defines artifacts, broadly, as those sorts of items which are more important, narratively, than mechanically. Many of the examples they list are items created by or formerly owned by the gods, and which possess extremely potent innate abilities. However, the introductory piece on artifacts makes it clear that their proper place is as the "McGuffin," an otherworldly item which moves the plot in the adventure forward, and so therefore the PCs' possession of that item may be very brief. This is a concept which I think is pretty cool, and I think the only thing lacking is variety in examples. I think there were about two or three items per tier listed.

But the cursed items are exactly as you'd expect. Many are an obvious nod to earlier, more deadly editions of D&D, recreating some infamous items for the 4e world. One of the best comments that the book makes, however, is for DMs to consider: cursed items, by and large, are extremely powerful magic, requiring a lot of time and effort, and sometimes a lot of resources to bring together. Therefore cursed items should not be used lightly, or indiscriminately. Because of the considerations involved with the manufacture of cursed items, one must assume that most are made, specifically, for the torture and punishment of one specific individual. Cursed items for cursed items' sake, therefore, would be gratuitous. But this warning about considering the cursed item's past also is a very strong reminder to justify why you, as DM, are inserting this item into your adventure; what is its background, why is it there, who was it intended for, was it successful? The best part about cursed items is that they are virtually indistinguishable from the item that they are intended to copy until the curse is activated, in which case it is too late. Mercifully, though the cursed items usually cannot be removed after they've been triggered, it is not unnecessarily difficult to remove them outside of urgent situations.

Overall, a fan of older editions might criticize Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium's cursed items as not being nasty enough. But, overall, they fit well into the general schema of how things work within 4e. I believe it is by far the best in the "loot" series of books, but is also not remarkable when compared to the others. However, a completist will find it more than satisfactory, and if one were to only buy one of the three loot books, I would argue that the Emporium would be the one to choose. There has been a clear evolution of thought and style over the course of 4th edition's publishing history, and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium reaps the benefits of this.

Wizards of the Coast's Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale

The first time I read it, i was ready to declare Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale the greatest book ever published under the Dungeons and Dragons, 4th edition moniker. While my feelings at this point are much less enthusiastic, I will still readily declare that it is a fantastic book. By the title, one can identify that it probably is in line with the "Essentials" line of products, which to many people will probably make it sound next to worthless. While I do have my own reservations about Heroes of the Fallen Lands and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, I do not believe that wholesale disapproval of the Essentials line is justified, since there are a few products (this included), that stand out, even above many "non-Essentials" books published over the last few years.

The title of the book suggests both that it is a sequel to the first Monster Vault (which it is), and that it will focus primarily on the Nentir Vale (the default setting for Essentials). Unlike the first Monster Vault, it does not come with a prewritten adventure which utilizes the monsters contained within, but instead takes a more organic approach, which I think is much more successful. The book begins with an introduction of some of the "powers that be" within the Vale, and then goes in to descriptions of the sorts of monsters found there (to build upon the first Monster Vault), and, in doing so, takes a narrative approach to describe why and where these monsters might be encountered within that setting, including often multiple adventure hooks to go along with them.

There are a few monsters in the book that seem a bit "tacked on," in that they initially seem inappropriate for the locales of the Vale, but through narrative description, their presence is justified. Many of these "tacked on" monsters were classics or peculiar ones from previous editions that had not yet been statted out, so their inclusion in the book I can understand, but the fact that the authors went out of their way to try to coax them into the narrative of the rest of the book made them really believable and appropriate. Foremost among these, for example, are the Cadaver Collector and the Penanggalan, which are pretty out there as far as creatures are concerned, but with the descriptions one can quite easily come up with ways to use them. Still, most of the statted enemies in the book are ones mentioned specifically in the introductory area, so that they are not just vague background noise, but actual, legitimate "threats." So therefore many of the described enemies are factions.

To me, the best part about the entire book are all the factions.  Factions are not a new concept in 4e; they've been used, with varying success, in almost all of the location guides (Hammerfast, Vor Rukoth, Gloomwrought, etc.), but I thought that the factions presented in this book were particularly colorful, interesting, and believable. Upon reading about many of them, I immediately had ideas in my mind about how to create an adventure featuring them as allies, antagonists, or even both at different times, as well as ways to transport them "out of" the Nentir Vale into my own game world and use them independently.

This last point brings up another aspect of the book: modularity. While it is ostensibly set in the Essentials world, in the Nentir Vale, there is not one creature, faction, construct, anything, that couldn't be lifted out of its "set" location and used elsewhere. There are a whole flock of creatures who dwell in and around the Witchlight Fens. Got room for a swamp in your campaign? Drop them there, even in the Shadowfell, in the Oblivion Bog.

The dragons in the book take a tack which has been more common in more recent D&D publications. Namely, that rather than ascribing them a color and a demeanor, the dragons are all given names and personalities. Calastryx is a three-headed red dragon; Shadowmire is a black dragon changed by his long residence within the Witchlight Fens. Dragons are among the most interesting (and enduring) enemies in the Dungeons and Dragons universe (they're even part of the name!), and so therefore the recent emphasis on individual dragons, who could be poised to be one-off adventure-ending opponents, or just as easily tier-long orchestrators and more distant threats, makes the seem a lot more interesting, alive, and, most importantly, usable.

A personal favorite from the book are the Felldrakes, low level monstrous drakes magically mutated by the corrupt wizards of Bael Turath to serve the empire and their Tiefling masters. These creatures specifically would feel right at home in Vor Rukoth, and actually I think would significantly improve the playing experience of a party exploring that city. Vor Rukoth by itself didn't seem unique enough; it had lots of locations and lots of adventure hooks, but still nevertheless didn't feel very populated, since there wasn't any time spent really getting in to the sort of things that had taken up residence there. Adding in marauding Felldrakes, gone wild from being abandoned for so long, would be a great looming threat for adventurers exploring the ruins there, and would be a great go-to creature to throw in to just about any encounter that needed a few extra jaws to chomp on the good guys. While the Felldrakes themselves are only levels 1 to 4, there are special ones described, Dark Drakes, that go up to level 8. Combining them in different ways and scaling the numbers up, one could pretty easily come up with felldrakes of any heroic or low paragon level.

Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale is probably the best Essentials-keyed product on the market, and even a strong contender among all of the monster manuals among the 4th edition products. Oh, and it comes with a two-sided fold out map (as everything seems to these days), and 8 sheets of die-cut tokens (ditto). All of these things are enclosed in a sleeve, rather than a box, so you have to be careful if you want to keep everything together to squeeze it well while you're taking it off the shelf, or else things might slide out the bottom. I could dock points for the packaging, but I'm sure they expected most people to throw the map in whatever box they have that has all their other maps, pop the tokens out and throw away the sheets, and to just file the book on the shelf. I don't use tokens, so I just keep all of it together for propriety's sake.

Winter Is Coming- New Monster [D&D 4e] The Iceshard Skeleton

This is a second entry in response to T.W. Wombat's  Winter Is Coming RPG Blog Festival.

The Arnerian Empire once stretched across thousands of miles in the furthest north, but now resides only in legend. Before their slow and steady invasion of their more southerly neighbors, it was assumed that nobody, and nothing, could survive in the impossibly high and hostile mountains known, aptly, as the Roof of the World. Tales of the brutality and unforgiving nature of the Arnerian Empire have been passed down from generation to generation and survived, even when descriptions of their people and their cities have been lost to the ages. Nothing, however, stands out as much in the imagination as the strange and terrible tales of the dark magic that the Arnerians were said to control. It is said that even the gods feared the powers that were under the Arnerians’ command; that their powers came directly from those beings from outside the gods’ domains, from the strange and terrible beings that occupy what we now call the Far Realm.

The secrets of the corrupt magic dreamed up by the Sages of the Arnerian Empire have been lost, many would say thankfully, forever, but their legacy in their creations remains. The most fearsome and terrible of their ranks were their Frost Giant slaves, magically bound to guard their lands, and tortured until death if they refused to obey or became derelict in their duties. But the torture for the Arnerian Frost Giants did not end at death: the Arnerian Sages had the flesh stripped from the giants’ bones, and then reanimated them in a state of undeath so they could continue to serve even beyond the length of their own lives. Any mind or spirit left from the Frost Giants were irrevocably lost; the giant skeletal forms did not recognize kin or kind, only the need to kill instilled in them by their masters, and the will to obey even the most terrible of commands. With the Arnerian Empire destroyed and lost beneath the shifting snow, the skeletal giants continue in their duties, directionless, without an empire to protect or commands to fulfill. Usually, the presence of one or more of these monsters is the only indication that there ever could have been a citadel or tower amidst the wastes, sometimes standing without moving for hundreds of years.

At first, the Frost Giants of the Verdenstak Mountains made war upon the abominations. Directly succeeding the downfall of the Arnerians, the giants sought revenge for their enslavement, laying waste to their wasted cities and trying to destroy everything that they had created. However, it became soon evident that wherever the skeletal monsters were felled, they seemed to eventually rise back from the rubble, and then even the giants began to shun the accursed lands. Now nothing walks among the peaks and passes at the Roof of the World, abandoned even by those who would wish to call these lands home. All the time, the silent, unmoving, unthinking guardians of the carcass of the Arnerian Empire remain, ready to confront any who dare trespass in their forgotten lands.

Alignment and the Banality of Evil

One of the biggest problems in any game I've run that deals with "Alignment" are those roleplaying choices that the players make that technically violate their listed alignment.  It's very difficult to judge what would just let slide or when I, as the game master, should call them out on it, or at least question their judgment (are you sure your lawful good paladin would be ok with slaughtering all of these orcs in their sleep?).  But as I develop my "custom" game world, I'm going to be increasingly insistent that actions have consequences in terms of alignment.  It works both ways, too.  If a PC can slowly become neutral (or even evil), an evil NPC could also become more neutral (or even good). 

I do believe that these sorts of alignment change questions, when relevant to the PC, should be discussed with the player outside of game, and perhaps privately.  Other characters might not notice the change at first, but become slowly aware of changes in the character's personality that do not mesh with what they usually expected from them.  In the case of a divine character, I don't see why they should lose their divine powers (even in the case of one who worships a lawful good deity), but the powers become warped somehow. Or perhaps they change allegiances.  As they stray further and further from the path proscribed for them by their deity, their holy symbol darkens, tarnishes, fades, or chips, something which can be noticed by their fellow adventurers. This can be played out in game, as well.  Perhaps a crusader for Bahamut begins to feel disillusioned by being constrained to only do good, even when it might, ultimately, allow an even greater evil to flourish, and instead strays to the side of the Raven Queen as the impartial Ultimate Mediator.

Corollary to this idea of alignment change is the idea of betrayal.  I have never actually had a game where one of the PCs betrays the others, but there are some games that make it much easier (such as Call of Cthulhu).  Chief in my mind here are the Horus Heresy Warhammer 40,000 novels where the titular character, Horus, is corrupted by chaos, and it slowly becomes more and more apparent to Garviel Loken as time goes on, as he acts further out of character and quickly begins to make Loken legitimately concerned.  Certainly a PC betrayal would, in most situations, result in the PC being ejected from the party and, at best, becoming an NPC.  But is there a situation where a character could become evil in a group of good PCs and still remain mostly in line with the party goals?  I can only jokingly think of the Order of the Stick, where the other characters have to keep Belkar in line, because he is Chaotic Evil, something which they have to keep a secret from NPC paladins who might otherwise want to smite him.

An evil (but otherwise harmless) PC might create similar hijinx when dealing with an uncertain populace, and constantly having to corral that character in, given an accepting group, might create fun and funny roleplay experiences.  I will be very interested to see what Rob Schwalb does with 4e Book of Vile Darkness, because I am constantly trying to think of ways to create more situations than just "good characters kill evil badguys, everybody win."  Life is more interesting than that, so why shouldn't the game be more interesting than that?  Supposedly good people are compelled into doing evil things all the time, whether by circumstance, trickery, or plain folly.  A game which allows for the "banality of evil" would probably be more interesting, but I've just never had the opportunity to put something like that together.

Magical Schools of Thought

I have been thinking, a bit facetiously, about the disconnect between Vancian magic in older systems of Dungeons and Dragons to the more unlimited "power" based approach of magic in 4th edition.  It seems that wizards, or to generalize any class from the "arcane" power source, got a considerable leg up, especially at lower levels, with 4th edition.  Besides just shrugging and making any number of arguments about why 4th edition breaks D&D or is an MMO on paper, the disconnect between earlier edition wizards and 4th can, potentially, be put to good story use in-game.  I must admit that the inspiriation comes partially from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, specifically the wizards (wizzards?) at Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork.

Chiefly, what if Vancian magic is just a theory?  Like, in the D&D universe, what if wizards traditionally were able to only cast one spell a day because that's just what they were taught?  This assumes that wizards undergo magical training at some sort of wizard school, which is well within the bounds of the theory about wizards generally.  One also can easily harken to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, with Mr. Norrell being representative, by and large, of the Vancian theory.  Magic should be properly respected, especially by younger, more inexperienced, wizards, and so it is not only improper but potentially dangerous for an inexperienced wizard to go wild with Magic Missile before he truly understands the arcane energy that he is summoning together in order to coalesce it into the force commonly referred to as a Magic Missile.  Additionally, by casting it once a day a wizard can be certain that he will have assumed all of the proper concentration and focus necessary to ensure that it will land and have an effect.

4th edition, by contrast, is a much more free wheeling, damn-the-consequences theory of magical practice, and as a result of that, is less effective.  The compromise for breaking in to the arcane energies faster than with the Traditionalist school is that, quite often, magic can come off only partially formed, and fizzle out midair rather than land its target. A missed die roll in 4e represents a failure to summon together the proper arcane forces and is not so much an abject failure on the count of the wizard himself, but a consequence of trying to do too much, too fast, which is largely representative of this school of magic to begin with.

One can almost assume that earlier editions of D&D took place in an earlier, more chaotic time in the collective D&D'verse's history, and, as time went on, not only did the world change, but the ideas of the people in the world changed as well, and part and parcel to that, one can certainly expect a paradigm shift in magical theory.  The older, more cautious Vancian approach is almost entirely subsumed beneath the newer, flashier 4e system that allows for such (in the eyes of the Old Guard) unnecessary ostentatious displays as "Jim's Magic Missile."

In game terms I see absolutely no reason why a player, even in 4th edition, couldn't create an "old style" wizard who still insisted on making the tradeoff from having At-Will powers to having spells have a much more definite chance of hitting.  Whether this is practical or simply stubbornness, it doesn't ultimately mechanically matter.  Perhaps take a page from the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and have powers that are usually At-Will not be expended if they miss, but have powers branded Encounter or Daily powers continue to get the Vancian treatment.  There would almost necessarily have to be some power creep involved in the powers themselves, to counterbalance the more limited expression they'd take with this system in 4e, breaking the balance of the game.  But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.  How this would look in Epic level though, I have no idea.  Perhaps it might be worth, at level one, awarding the Vancian "Old Guard" wizard one additional feat in order to trade off for the power imbalance.

One of the things I really appreciate about the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG is that it makes dabbling in the arcane arts extremely dangerous.  While DCC might go a little overboard with it, the lesson is still there.  Vancian magic shows a bit of respect for the forces that are behind what makes magic "work," which is something that completely disappears from 4e.  Magic becomes frivolous and carefree, which not only loses its flavor compared to other similar-leveled powers from other classes, but also makes it ultimately less interesting to play a wizard as opposed to another arcane class that might deal more damage, like a sorcerer.  Adding a little more danger, or uncertainty, or even flavor in this way might be the solution to the otherwise uninspiring wizard. If anyone tries this out, let me know how it works.

Wizards of the Coast's Dungeon Tiles DN2: "The Witchlight Fens"

I have to admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for swamps and bogs, and so when Wizards of the Coast announced that they were releasing a Dungeon Tiles set along those lines, it was just about a given that I would be buying them. The set in question, Dungeon Tiles DN2: The Witchlight Fens, however, ended up being not exactly what I had in mind.

This is my first dungeon tiles set, so I didn't exactly know what to expect, but it was largely smaller pieces that one would have to fit together with some degree of precision in order to keep any sort of continuity with fitting together larger tiles; in other words, you have the option of either dropping a smaller tile directly on top of a larger tile, making a difference in height (and allowing for the possibility that it could slip around), or else take a good number of smaller tiles and match them to the length of the side of the larger tile they're up against, rather than just use one. One would have to do a lot of pre-planning with fitting these together, because you can't just drop one and have that be the encounter location. Once you pop them out of their sheets, they immediately become unwieldy, so it would be very well worth it to have another of the Essentials tile sets that came with a box to store them in, otherwise I've been sort of popping them back in to the sheets wherever they fit just so I can keep them on the shelf like a book; not an ideal solution. How do most people store their dungeon tiles? Freezer bags? I honestly want to know, I'd like ideas.

For being a tile set for a "fen," there is not much water space. Every single tile has land on at least one side, so there is no way to create a large expanse of boggy, brambled, waist-deep water to trudge through, nor is the water by and large marked as "difficult terrain" (which seems reserved for small brambly patches). It would be difficult to create any sort of feature like a path with water on either side, either. The set lends itself to small dry paths around smaller puddles of water. Even most baffling, there are several tiles that don't have anything printed on them at all in some places, and it's just black. I have to assume that that's standard dungeon tile topology for a "bottomless pit," but that doesn't make much sense in a bog because it's a place where the water table is very high. There wouldn't be a pit if there was an expanse, it would be filled with water. I therefore consider any of the tiles with black on them to be useless, since why would you use them? It makes no sense. Most of the tiles with black attached to them also just have stone paths on them, which is completely inappropriate to a "fen" as well; give me more squishy tiles, and leave the black pits and stone walkways for other sets where those features are more appropriate. Why would I want a pit... in a swamp? I want a swamp.

There are also quite a few tiles that don't have land OR water on them, but instead have constructed objects like a house, a boat, a bridge. While these are cute little flourishes, it seems like there's probably enough tiles like that in other sets that you could combine with this one for those sorts of features that it ends up feeling just like you've been cheated of yet another useful square for creating an ample amount of boggy terrain. I've read that many people end up buying two or three sets of the same tiles, and that's why: they don't give you enough useful tiles of any one thing to really make it really useful. Maybe if I had a lot of money and I felt comfortable buying multiple tile sets I would be happier with this product... or if there were a couple more sheets of tiles?

While I don't want to leave a purely negative review, I will note that the art, overall, is very nice. I wish I did have more tiles in this set so I could build larger things with them. Each of the tiles is double-sided, so most often if you don't like what's printed on one side you can flip it over and hope that there's something more useful on the other. They also seem quite well made; I can't envision them fraying or falling apart too quickly, barring water damage or cat attack. I can imagine that for one or two encounters, these tiles would work really well and you'd probably be able to do really fun things with them. But after more than two, the terrain might get a little repetitive because there's just not enough there.

I fully expected to love this set, and being my first tile set, sort of colored my opinion of the usefulness of Dungeon Tiles overall. If somebody offered me money to take these off my hands, I would take it, but if somebody offered me another set of the same tiles, I would take that too. I don't plan on buying any more dungeon tiles, either. Perhaps what I was expecting were tiles that were more like geomorphs, where you could stick any tile next to any other tile and have a more or less consistent topology? Regardless, I can't say that this product really knocked my socks off and, in the attempt to be too varied in features, ended up having too little of anything. They sort of dashed my dreams of having a large adventure that took place entirely within the Witchlight Fens (or some other bog that was considerably less witchy)... but just as easily all of these problems might be a non-issue to people more experienced with utilizing dungeon tiles to their fullest capacity, and in which case I'll sound sort of like a deranged lunatic for all these complaints. That's fair too.

Etherkai, the Nightmare Dragon review

Etherkai, the Nightmare Dragon is the first in a series of "Worldbreakers," enemies that are so powerful that they can actually change the terms or conditions of the encounter or even literally affect the terrain. Written as modular sorts of enemies, they are designed to be able to be easily dropped in to any type of adventure with minimal or no re-skinning. That being said, as I was reading Etherkai for the first time I knew, instantly, exactly where I would use it in the forthcoming campaign, without any modification whatsoever.

The background text, which constitutes the first few pages of the "book," is very well-writen, evocative, and interesting. I don't know what else to say about it without giving details away, but the story of Etherkai, and how he became what he is, is very complex and even a little bit sad, in a way. What is clear is that Etherkai is very frightening, compelling, and obviously needs to go in a major way.

Etherkai's stat block constitutes a whole page of content, as does his worldbreaking effect when it comes into play. As a level 10 monster, Etherkai is perfectly fit for a culminating encounter at the end of the Heroic tier, and he is powerful enough that it will likely have the overall effect of a "boss battle," even if Etherkai is not, in fact, the "big bad" of the tier. Perhaps the dragon is being manipulated by an even stronger power; perhaps he is just an accidental obstacle that turns out to be far more dangerous than anticipated. But I think regardless, the strength of the worldbreaker is that, since they have the ability to change the setting of the encounter, they act as a liminal space between one kind of storytelling and another and provide a literal, as well as a metaphorical, break between two arcs.

I look forward to future releases, as the author, Quinn Murphy, has proven himself a very capable and creative writer, and I really have nothing bad to say about this invention. I only wish I could run the monster sooner.

Postmortem Studios' "6-Pack Adventures: Black Rock Bandits" by Tracy Hurley

Black Rock Bandits is a standalone mini-adventure written by Tracy Hurley as part of the "6-Pack Adventure" series, which I can only assume means short adventures that one can run and play over the course of drinking a six pack. I mean, at least that's what I'd do. All 6-Pack adventures are short, 2-3 encounter adventures, and they can be finished likely anywhere within 3-5 hours; in other words, in a reasonable night of play.

The adventure begins with a quick (1 page) overview of the setting, the town, and some of the major locations and NPCs associated with those locations, then it launches very quickly into the first scene, in which the PCs are given their quests and have the opportunity to interrogate one of the eponymous bandits, who has been captured. Wasting no time, after availing themselves of what the town has to offer, they are pointed to the ruined temple where the bandits are supposedly making their hideout, and offered a monetary reward for each bandit whom they can prove they've defeated.

It is a straightforward enough setup, but what the players discover in the temple is quite surprising and a very good twist. It is an unexpected turn of events and a quite good introduction to the world of Dungeons and Dragons as a level 1 adventure. If I had a prospective new player who had never played D&D before, I suspect that this module would easily rise to the top of my mind as something I could quickly run as an introduction to the game and to the world in which the game exists.

Just shy of half of the overall page count of the module are numerous pregenerated PCs, so the module can literally be printed and set up within minutes. If the point of 6-Pack Adventures is to have a fully-contained mini-adventure which can be played with little or no preparation on behalf of either the DM or the players, I would consider Black Rock Bandits a resounding success.

I have but one complaint, and that is at the beginning there are two blank pages, and at the end there is another blank page, which reduces the "printer friendliness" by a little bit. The blank pages make it exactly 30 pages long, front and back covers included, so it's a tidy number. But if I were to actually print it out, I would likely remove those blank pages and put them back in the paper tray; it's a waste, paper is expensive. I'd probably print it double sided as well, and exclude the front and back covers because they're very ink-heavy. Either that, or have it printed at kinkos.

The Arrostekomistes

The Arrostekomistes (Ar-roast-ay-koh-mist-ees) are (believed to be) an order of itinerant physicians, not yet very well known in this part of the world. Where they originally hail from, however, they are very respected and feared. Their true name, if they have one, is unknown, as "Arrostekomistes" was likely, at some point, derogatory. In line with that, their common names do usually follow the format of "weakness walkers" or "illness-bearers"; a reflection of their vocation. It is said that they carry with them vials containing every disease, illness, and malady known, and some that are not known, and make it their mission to assist people afraid of disease by inoculating them with less severe or virulent forms of those diseases so as to prevent them from contracting the more deadly form later in life. They only offer this service to willing patients, and always move on as soon as they are no longer wanted.

Their appearance is as shrouded in mystery as their origins. They are never seen without their cloaks, masks, and gloves, as these are the chief identifiers of their station. The masks are akin to those of crooked-beaked birds, cast in silver, with strange carvings all over them. Their gloves appear to be the finest in dark calfskin leather, almost vanishingly thin, but never tearing, and upon their left index finger they wear a silver ring, shaped like a bird's talon, and just as sharp. Over their mask, they wear an oilskin cowl, and over their cowl, they wear a heavy oilskin cloak. IF any member of the Arrostekomistes would be seen outside of their uniform, they would not be recognizable; therefore, no member of the Arrostekomistes has ever been seen, only the uniform they wear.

The Arrostekomistes seem to abide by a philosophy of "a little harm now prevents a later calamity." They do not seem to have any ability at all to heal diseases once they have attacked, and have no interest in being around the diseased. Therefore it is unclear whether they themselves have already been inoculated against all of the diseases in their bandoliers, or whether they do their job, and move along as fast as possible in order to avoid infection, utilizing their masks and gloves as ways to further protect themselves.

The method itself is straightforward: The plague-bearer picks a vial from his wide bandolier, the disease to be inoculated against, and very deftly and carefully pries the silver lid open just enough to fit the tip of his ring down into it, to rub against the small lump of something that is inside. Then, he grabs the patient's arm, and scratches small five parallel lines into it, just barely enough to draw blood. The result looks much like a cat scratch, though the lines are unnaturally uniform. As soon as the scratch is complete, he stands up, and walks away. Arrostekomistes accept no payment, do not bargain, speak very little, and do not linger. They have also never been observed eating or sleeping, though they obviously have to do those eventually.

In their own lands, Arrostekomistes are treated as bogeymen among children: a visit from the Arrostekomistes is a fearful and potentially deadly thing, yet many parents still take the risk in order to prevent greater harm from coming to their children. Young children are never inoculated, only once they reach a certain age. It does not matter if they are human, elven, dwarven, or even dragonborn, orcs, or tieflings. Anything that can contract a disease, the Arrostekomistes can try to help. To have the scar from the inoculation has subsequently become a rite of passage among children in some places: it means you have survived the infection, and become stronger.

Inevitably there have been those who have harassed and manhandled members of the Arrostekomistes, but they do not usually live for long; usually coming down with all manner of strange diseases. It is as if the Arrostekomistes are able to create a deadly aura of pestilence around themselves when they are at risk, since none have ever been reported murdered or seriously injured, only the aggressors. Furthermore, those who would attack one of their order are shunned, and their families shunned, and their family's families shunned. Some doors they will pass by no matter what sort of payment is offered them. Nobody has known any of their order to lash out or to make someone sick who wasn't deserving, but the mystery and silence about them is so complete that one wonders whether one would ever know if they had.

[Spoilers] It is a secret fact that many of the older Arrostekomistes are actually undead, continuing to perform their duties even beyond the grave. Members of their order go through many magical rites where they cut all ties to their families, their countries, and their identities, and become one of the order irrevocably and permanently. Many will still grow old, feeble, and infirm as normal people do, but some are changed in unexpected ways. Instead of growing older, they grow stranger: slowly the life disappears from them, yet they continue on their missions, traveling from land to land, administering their inoculations, sometimes for hundreds of years. When it is time to retire, they return to the secret base of the order, where they are magically put to rest.

They have in fact been rendered immune to most diseases and most poisons, and necrotic or weakening attacks do not affect them. Their oilskin uniforms are slightly resistant to fire (resist 5) but repeated attacks will eliminate that resistance. The magic that binds them to the order also gives them certain exceptional abilities, such as resistance to sleep (they don't ever sleep) and inability to be dazed, blinded, or stunned. Additionally, they give off an aura 1 Miasma of Pestillence, which will be outlined in a later stat block.

If one is actually killed, its body will begin to decay immediately, crumbling into powder and poisoning the ground around it. Anyone nearby will be very likely to contract a serious disease. If it manages to escape, other members of its order will avoid contact as much as possible, and towns where they are staying will not be visited by Arrostekomistes. Likewise, if one is killed and its accoutrements are taken, others will quickly find out about the crime and regard the party suspiciously. Those who mistrust and fear the Arrostekomistes, however, will be very interested in any information about them that can be shared.

Most Arrostekomistes are within low- to mid-Paragon level, but very old undead members can easily rise into low Epic level.

The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond D&D Roleplaying Game Supplement

Thanks to the 4th Edition D&D Webchat hosted by the brilliant minds behind At-Will, I've been able to rub shoulders with some very interesting folk in the online D&D community at large, including one of the co-authors of this box set, Matt Goetz, who convinced me (I didn't need much) to pick up the box and check it out. I apologize in advance for the verbose review, but I hope that after I am through I will have done the set justice.

First, the superficial stuff: like many WotC products recently, it comes with tokens. I am less than lukewarm about tokens; I just don't use them. But if you've seen other WotC tokens, they're more of the same: ≈1 mm thick cardstock, artwork recycled from this and previous products, you know the drill. What I'd prefer, just because I don't use tokens, is if they'd instead include some Dungeon Tiles that some of the encounters utilize; wouldn't even care if they were reprinted from other sets. But that's just me.

Then, the map: Large map of Gloomwrought on one side (useful, point a finger and say "you are here"), and a generic city-street-and-some-houses scene on the other side (less useful, but hey, they had to put something there, I'm not complaining).

Lastly among the incidentals, the Despair Deck. What can I say about the Despair Deck that has not already been said? Not much. Mechanically, you draw a card every time you take an extended rest and you are bound by what it says until you can shake it off, and these build up the longer you stay in the Shadowfell. Once you shake it off, you get a temporary boon from overcoming the effect. They're split into three categories: Apathy, Fear, and Madness, with examples like Craven, Frail, Clumsy, Reckless, Quarrelsome. It's a sort of neat idea to remind players that this realm is different from the real world, and that living people dwelling in the world of the dead has consequences; one can empathize, if only a tiny bit, with races like the Shadar-Kai, who have not really gotten terribly much character development in the published materials.

In to the meat! The encounter book, I am relieved to say, actually has some substance to it, and has battles and skill challenges for levels 7-23, although so much of the material in the Encounter book and the Campaign Guide is for low-to-mid Paragon levels that I'm just going to call this entire collection a Paragon-level setting guide. It's pretty easy to scale the 7-10 encounters up to Paragon levels, anyway. One of my favorite challenges in the Encounter book is "Scouring Undercity" which, as the name implies, involves going underneath the city of Gloomwrought. Undercity is described as a labyrinth of old buildings that have sometimes literally been sucked underground by cataclysmic events, but more often seem to have been "replaced" by newer buildings by the mysterious and ineffable Keepers. I'd like to imagine that there would be a fair amount of seepage from the Shadowdark into the Undercity, making it even more dangerous and strange than Gloomwrought above.

I'm also quite a fan of the "Rooftop Chase," which I can imagine could be run very tense and frightening, not unlike the hotel escape scene early on in the Xbox game "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth." There are also very neat enemies in the Encounter book such as the Hearth Golem and the Oblivion Wraith. Unlike a lot of the prefab encounters published in various WotC materials, these encounters give life to certain areas of the realm, above and below, and are useful, even if one doesn't plan on running them as they are written, to give those areas described in the Campaign Guide more flavor.

Lastly, the largest book is the Campaign Guide, which is also the best part about this whole set. If I'd have bought this second hand and not had any of the other material except for the Campaign Guide, I would still feel like I'd have gotten my hands on a top quality product. Also for the most part the art in this book is exceptional. Oftentimes I don't have a lot of high hopes about art in an RPG product, but here with very few exceptions (13, 36, 93, 101, 106) I am genuinely impressed. The last book I bought that had this level of artwork overall was the Cthulhutech core book, which I still think is a really great example of a small company being able to pull of top quality work.

Chapter one gives us a rough overview of the Shadowfell at large, a much-needed expansion from the depressingly small amount of information contained in the Manual of the Planes, as well as explains some of the game mechanics introduced by this set (including the Despair Deck).

Chapter Two is dedicated to Gloomwrought and is formatted just like any other location guide (such as Hammerfast, Vor Rukoth, etc.) where it gives you a map of the city, divides the city into districts, and then gives you notable locations within those districts, as well as "hooks" to help the DM come up with ideas of what sort of game ideas can come out of each of these locations. And, unlike Vor Rukoth (another of my favorite D&D products), gives a lot more detail than is usual with location guides and really helps to set the flavor of the whole city. After finishing the chapter, Gloomwrought feels like a real, living place. Of course there are some aspects that require a bit of suspension of disbelief (like the Dust Quarter, to me, seems just a little bit hokey, but given the right treatment could be done well), but overall the sort of strange and alien mood the city as a whole receives is right in tone with what a location like this should have. There are also descriptions of "factions" at work in the city, that the DM could throw in to add a bit more "local flavor."

Chapter 3 moves out to the wider world of the Shadowfell, including what I think are really neat locations like the Oblivion Bog, the Dead Man's Cross (what a way to enter the Shadowfell), the Darkreach Mountains and, to me the coolest, Letherna. Letherna seems to be a sort of "pocket dimension" not unlike Ravenloft that is the personal domain of the Raven Queen, where high enough leveled adventurers could even potentially have an audience with her. A conversation with a god? Yes, please. This is so cool I can't even really describe it well. My only complaint is Vorkhesis, but that's probably just because I don't think he's cool enough and I'm jealous.

The last chapter, Chapter 4, introduces more more factions and mostly just serves as a new enemy list (gotta provide stats for all those tokens somewhere, right?). The list is mercifully diverse: you've got domestic terrorists (the Ghost Talon), murderous zealots (the Ebony Guard), Golems (man do I love golems), and, finally, the Keepers. The chapter is rounded out with some stat blocks for some heavy hitters in the city; nobles, the ruling prince, and their ilk.

Some final observations. Gloomwrought, as a whole, seems to be overwhelmingly influenced in its tone by the film Dark City, which is not at all a bad movie and if you haven't seen it, especially if you want to run a Gloomwrought adventure, check it out. The Keepers of Gloomwrought seem very influenced in appearance and function by the Strangers, and the city rearranges itself at the will of the Keepers, again just like the Strangers from Dark City. However, this is not any sort of complaint about riffing on other content, as I think that the influence serves its purpose well here. The fact that they are called "Keepers," and nobody knows what their true function really is (but it is also a crime to bother or attack them) was also reminiscent of the Keepers aboard the Citadel in Mass Effect, who also turned out to have a sinister purpose. These are very neat concepts which I think would make it very easy to write a compelling overarching story for a Shadowfell-based campaign to exist within, and the set as a whole seems to do the realm of the dead great justice. I am very pleased with this product, and easily ranks up there among my "top 4th ed products ever" list.

Although I must add that, like so many of WotC's other books, the binding is atrocious and the book is already showing signs of strain after having being opened and laid flat only about 10 times, in total. Be gentle with this one, friends, as it may suffer an untimely decay like so much else in the Shadowed Realm.

Vor Rukoth: Review

I had been interested in this adventure site guide for a while, since I read about its publication on wizards.com. I have to admit that Tieflings, as a race, were not really interesting to me, as I think that their origin makes for potentially problematic gameplay. However, I do like the idea of an abandoned city with a dark past, so I thought I would revisit Tieflings through the setting guide, and see if I couldn't come up with some ideas for how to use them more effectively.

The first thing to note before even getting in to the module itself is that it sort of assumes that you already have the Player's Handbook Races: Tieflings book, which gives an overview of what Tieflings are, where they came from, what Bael Turath and Arkhosia were, and what happened to them. It references these things, and gives very cursory descriptions sometimes, but most of the time you feel like you do need a little more information about the background, which the Tieflings books provides.

Like the other setting guides, it consists of a cardstock "cover" which actually folds out into a map of the entire city, and encloses the actual book (which doesn't have its own cover), as well as a play map, which has an infernal looking "throne room" sort of setting on one side, and a generic ruined city street setting on the other. The maps are never alluded to anywhere in the book itself, but one can assume the throne room setting is the Horned Throne Room in the Ruby Court, where one would likely have the climactic encounter of the module, with Najala the lich queen. Unfortunately, Najala herself is never statted out, requiring you to either use a generic lich build from the MM or else build your own custom Najala. Her phylactery is statted out at level 15, however, and it looks like an interesting battle in and of itself.

There are a number of specific locations designated and described within the city (36 is the number, fact, although some numbered locations have other sub-locations), and with each location, a few adventure hooks and occasionally a statted special enemy. A lot of these are not very inspiring (as they are very specific), but most are adaptable enough to be usable. My chief complaint, however, is that since the location is intended to be a repeat adventure location over a broad spectrum of levels, each "neighborhood" has a variety of levels of encounters written in, but without much saying how players might traverse an area populated by high-level encounters in order to reach one with low-leveled encounters in a neighboring area. I suppose that is under the purview of the DM and limited only by imagination though, so it's not really even a valid complaint. They do suggest environmental effects: an earthquake, sealing off some areas and opening up others; flooding, revealing long-underwater locations while inundating others; even a meteor shower, destroying large portions of the city. Additionally, some of the adventure hooks also have their own environmental outcomes as a result of completing or failing their objectives which could have effects on large portions of the city. But it's all very sketchy.

In my current campaign, we began with The Slaying Stone , where part of the adventure was clearing the city out, so that one day people could move in again. I can foresee Vor Rukoth having a similar eventual outcome, having an epic-level campaign culminating in creating a new Tiefling homeland where Vor Rukoth is the new capital. But that's for the future, I suppose.

Overall, I wish that the module had come with more maps, rather than just the generic street view and the throne room. There are so many interesting locales described in the module, I'd have liked to have seen some settings for them to play upon without having to buy more and more dungeon tiles, especially because there are not a lot of "demonic" or "ruined" terrain tile options. With most "setting" modules, having only one map is not so bad, but with an adventure setting where the focus is tons of different locales, multiple maps would have been a plus. The adventure hooks, I feel, all said and done, are adequate enough to stimulate a lot of good ideas, and the locale descriptions, though sketchy, are still good enough to come up with more ideas. I'm excited to try to get one or more Vor Rukoth based adventures in my campaign, especially testing out some of the more interesting mid-heroic-level demonic enemies in the Demonomicon and the MM 1-3.

Adding a little Old School flavor to D&D 4e

I can't say that I honestly have much invested in the D&D "edition wars" that seem to be neverending, but I have nevertheless been observing sort of the back and forth between proponents of different systems. For instance, Pathfinder, at least to me, seems to be the system that has been fully adopted by people who didn't want to let go of 3.5, and then there are any number of "retroclones" for the previous editions of OD&D, AD&D, and even BECMI. I see nothing wrong with any of these, in and of themselves, I've even downloaded the OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord free pdfs and have been pawing through them in order to sort of see what the distinguishing features of those clones are, since it seems like even among the OD&D fans, there is dissention over what's the "best" part about that system.

But the property which I think really separates D&D 4e from ANY previous edition is the relative downplaying of magic items (and the devaluation of magic items that comes with 4's very casual dispensation of them) and the emphasis on "class powers" rather than equipment in and of itself. In other words, you've got your At-Wills, Encounters, and Dailies, and if you've built a decent enough character you may never even have to use a basic melee or a basic ranged. And it seems like this level of abstraction is what especially alienated a lot of OD&D fans, who were used to having to account for a lot more details, coming out of specific different kinds of weapons, rather than abstracting so much stuff like weight, length, shape, material, and attack style and just saying "1d6+Str." It doesn't matter whether it's a warhammer, a sickle, or a broadsword. Then even among the "military" or "masterwork" sort of weapons it's just a matter of another +1 or +2 bonus; weapons aren't interesting at all in 4e, they're just a nondescript vehicle through which to deliver (some) class powers.

So I've been thinking about this, especially with regard to 4e "Essentials" and the possibility of a 5e coming some time in the next couple years, and wondering why you couldn't build a weapons "subsystem" into 4e, which is already very modular and easy to modify, and create your own rules for weapons-heavy characters, emphasizing not only the particular qualities of the weapons themselves, but the proficiency with which each class handles those types of weapons. In other words, say you have a dwarven paladin with a particular proficiency in military hammers, which rather than to just simply get another +1 on attack rolls, you could unlock the "proficiency" option on a weapon, at the sacrifice of the regular At-Wills for the class, to instead use the weapon's special qualities.

So using the hammer example, you could swing the hammer in different ways in order to knock the enemy aside, daze the enemy, sweep the enemy's feet from under them, etc. in order to actually be "proficient" with using the weapon, and still get to keep class features, or have the option of turning one at-will or encounter into a "class feature" in order to still preserve some of those qualities. I haven't actually tried to stat out any specific weapons or make a build using this yet, so I'll have to see if it introduces too much imbalance. But I do think that it may be a way to introduce a more "old school" feel to the original game, and remove some of that abstraction that makes weapons by themselves sort of worthless, as well as remove the occasionally very silly and unbelievable class powers that have come out for each class. Though there would be a lot of work on behalf of the DM in order to set this up, it would be a much more satisfying, I think, exercise in the basic striker than what Essentials provides us with the fighter.

New Terrain: Witchwood

Witchwood is a magical vine of uncertain origin. It seems to be more prone to growing in climates which are mild year-round, as any place where the ground is subject to a hard freeze it is never found, and where the ambient humidity is generally over 70%. Its true method of propagation is a mystery, as it has never been observed to flower, but it has been observed that it has a profound ability to self-propagate through cuttings of the stem or root, with the most vigorous regrowth coming from the transplanted root crown. Functionally, this means that if the plant is cut off at ground level, the aerial vine can re-root just as readily as a new plant will grow from the underground roots still remaining, and if the vine is chopped up into small pieces, each piece has the potential to grow into a new, separate plant. Its aerial parts can be readily destroyed by burning, but as the roots remain untouched by fire, it will regrow.

For most of the year, it appears as just a thick mat of intertwined thin brown vines, forming what looks like a net which covers existing vegetation, as well as climbs up and over buildings and other artificial structures, choking out whatever it grows over. In fact, the vegetation it grows atop has the tendency to wither and die at a rate much faster than can usually be accounted for by simply light deprivation, which is in accordance with its most infamous observed property: its seeming tendency to draw the life energy from living things in its proximity. Its growth habit is usually that a cutting will first grow underground to establish a root system, and then send out a thin rhizome just under the surface, from which small suckers grow from which, in time, will result in a mass of anywhere between 1 and 6 vines. They spread out in all angles, growing around each other and climbing whatever obstacle is in their way, eventually growing small, simple, opposite, acuminate leaves, of a greenish-red color along the length of the new vine and then dropping after only a matter of a couple months. New vines grow from the tips of old vines, or else from any place where the vine is broken or cut, and only new growth gets leaves. Very old growth, that is, growth that is undisturbed for several years, can create very thick mats that are so tightly interwoven and layered that it creates a more or less steady surface that one can walk across without falling through. The youngest vine growth is nevertheless very brittle, and is easily snapped.

Though it prefers places of high humidity, moderate to high temperatures, and high light, it can occasionally be found growing in places with no light, as the vines can sometimes grow into or underneath something and be nourished by the other vines attached to their roots that are above ground. Over time, one can occasionally find startlingly large growths of witchwood in caves and abandoned buildings, as long as it has another source of nourishment at hand. Namely, sources of arcane energy. Therefore, in some places where there is a lot of magical activity, such as mages' towers and lichs' phylacteries, witch wood can grow very vigorously and even completely conceal the entrances or the entire structures.

Functionally, witchwood has its strongest effect on wizards and warlocks and those who use the arcane power source. Standing in a square occupied by witchwood, one suffers a -2 modifier on all rolls which use the arcane keyword. Furthermore, if someone drops to zero hit points in a square occupied by witchwood, they get a -2 modifier to their saving rolls, and others trying to help them get a -2 modifier on heal checks. Additionally, if an arcane character drops in a square containing witchwood, they take a -4 modifier on saving throws, as it is sucking away their arcane energy.

Lastly, witchwood, depending on the thickness of the mats, can be either difficult terrain or hindering terrain, tripping characters walking across it.

Cross-Contamination

I forget where already, but some time in the past week or so I remember reading on a blog where someone was using Fudge Dice in order to flavor up some random encounters in D&D. Fudge Dice, as we know, are 6-sided dice that have two blank sides, two + sides, and two - sides, and come in packs of four. I really liked that idea; it ties in to really what the FATE system is all about; that the dice don't so much determine exactly what will happen, but rather that they will slant the outcome one way or the other. In the case of Dungeons and Dragons, something that 4th edition doesn't really preserve as well is the idea of the random encounter. You're a group of adventurers, blazing the trail and rediscovering some lost or forgotten temple, or underground lair, or some ancient magical forest, or whatever, but you go from space to space, or room to room, and there is another group of often homogeneous monsters. But why? To ensure that the time and work spent exploring the area provides enough experience points to reach a certain goal at the end of the major quest? I have to admit that I myself design games around a set XP goal and then everything else pours out of trying to make a reasonable situation to place the encounters in, but another part of that is that I am dreadful at making believable skill challenges. But besides the standard gamut of dungeoneering, stealth, perception, whatever skill rolls determining whether or not the group of goblins detects you walking past, or whether you can find some way around the dragon's lair, why not use Fudge Dice to determine whether the dragon is even there at all. Why shouldn't there be a chance, like in the Hobbit, that it's simply out for the moment, terrorizing villages, devouring virgins; whatever dragons do. In other words, have something a little bit more dynamic than a d10 or d8 or d20 roll to determine what sort of situation they may find themselves in. I like the idea of having the players themselves roll the Fudge Dice; they're the adventurers after all, and then they can all see what sort of situation they are getting themselves in to. While it would make sense that the party leader, or at least the person in front or taking the "active" roll would make these sorts of checks most often, there could be other situations where someone else, perhaps in a failed assist roll, instead does so poorly that they "trigger" a roll, which in game terms could mean something along the lines of "you knocked the suit of armor down the well and it made a very, very, very loud noise for a very long time. Fool of a Took." In terms of actual rolls, at this point a - - - - would probably mean, if still using the Dragon Lair example, that the dragon feels like returning just at that moment, and that the entire party is right in the middle of an open space, and all the doors suddenly close, and they all simultaneously realize that they forgot to put on pants that morning. A + + + + would mean something more like the dragon decided that the weather was just not to its liking and it went on vacation for a couple weeks. In skill challenges, they could be implemented in a way to be an attempt to subtly alter fate, which would be determined by what sort of character they are like. For instance a Paladin or a Cleric character may make a sacrifice to their deities in the form of not being able to use a power for an encounter, temporarily losing access to their class features, or something like that; or a fighter would lose a healing surge or two. In exchange, instead of accepting that the critical roll on the skill challenge just failed and the entire party is going to be in a world of hurt, they can roll the Fudge Dice and instead see if the fates are actually in their favor. Something like a very positive roll could mean that even though they technically failed, they failed in such a way that accidentally made things still turn out right. And a really negative roll would mean that they failed even more spectacularly and the situation went from really bad to absolute worst. And either way, they'd be out whatever they chose to sacrifice for the encounter or situation that that event might have triggered. I see no reason why this also couldn't be used in combat, a la Fortune Cards-style meta play. Use an action point, roll the dice. Do you recover so quickly that you get to swipe your sword up ferociously and get bonus damage on a roll that at first failed? Or do you accidentally fall face-first into the magical brazier and become blinded by magical fire? For something that is such a crap shoot, I can't imagine that people would want to do it very often, but in a do-or-die sort of situation, it could mean the difference between a TPK and a clever escape; a sort of release valve to free players from their own potentially bad decisions. I can't wait to try it out.

Disfigurement and Dragons

Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead is one of my favorite volumes of addon material for D&D4. Not only is the premise of it delightfully hilarious (that it will teach you, among other things, the physiology of how undeath works in the D&D world, and justifications for it), but that they nevertheless manage to treat the subject matter so well (in my opinion).

I've decided to page through it again, and it's gotten me thinking about the mechanics of heroes in D&D. A lot of other, more high-stakes, RPG systems have rules regarding permanent disfigurement or mental damage from dealing with situations that are beyond the control or ken of the character, and even past editions of D&D had creatures that permanently sapped levels away from characters that they then had to earn back. D&D4 (as evidenced by the new "Fourthcore" movement) leaves a little to be desired in terms of high-stakes, high-impact encounters (in terms of theoretically-winnable-but-not-without-cost) sorts of situations.

Open Grave I think does a pretty good job at jarring me back into the notion of "oh yeah, undead are actually potentially really scary. There's something about the abstract, mechanical nature of 4e combat that ends up in making me a little jaded about the sorts of encounters that people can fly in to.

DM: You are surrounded by a ton of decrepit skeletons.
Wizard: Oh, I use Burning Hands.
DM: Ok, they're all dead now. again. For real this time.

There's something really existentially threatening and horrible about the idea of something that is dead rising to its feet again, charged with malign energy, that is trying to kill you too. And if it kills you, you may be dead forever. Or you may lose your mind and rise up again as one of them. I'm sorry, but the first time you walk into a room full of dead people that stand up at attention again when you step to the side and knock over a cup should be a really jarring situation, even among so-called "heroes."

I'll probably get in to why I love Heroic-Tier games much better than high-level games at another time, but Paragon- and Epic-Level undead provide a way to raise the stakes without necessarily getting the adventurers involved in a battle of potentially cosmic import. It's amazing how much godslaying there is in 4e; you begin to wonder why the gods bother to keep coming back.

But anyway, taking a page from Call of Cthulhu, I don't see why there shouldn't be a variant rule in place that dictates having encounters with something so cosmically wrong as undead that it is difficult to walk out of the situation in some way unscathed. These, of course, should be mainly boss-type encounters, but as a lot of RPG video games have taught us, optional mini-bosses can oftentimes be more frightening and more damaging than the main course of the game anyway. And this isn't even limited necessarily to undead, either. I see no trouble at all with having variations for aberrant creatures or demonic creatures, or other types of things that are belched up from the Abyss that have no business at all existing in the first place and should be destroyed as quickly as possible for the safety of the entire world. And they don't even have to necessarily be high level, either. Something the size of a pea could eventually feed and grow to threaten the entire cosmos.

But here's what I propose: rather than bringing back level-sapping attacks from previous editions (because leveling is so gnarly in 4e to begin with, unless you want to also hand out more experience things/create more experience-generating situations), to introduce variant enemy attacks that instead cause a permanent decrease in a core ability score. Liches are, after all, what's left over after a wizard or sorcerer transgresses the boundary of what is possible, so it would make a reasonable amount of sense that they might occasionally have the ability to grab hold of someone and literally sap the life from them, permanently causing a reduction in constitution, or strength, or something. Or some aberrant beast from some unknown plane that slips through a dimensional crack and literally destroys the minds of its victims, creating crazed half-dead animals in what were formerly commonfolk, and effecting a permanent loss in wisdom, intelligence, or charisma in a heroic character.

Depending on how nasty the DM wants to be, these effects could literally be permanent, or instead symbolize a sort of deep sickness from coming into contact with something so deeply "Wrong" as ordinary reality and the natural order struggle to again right themselves and restore balance (where in game terms the lost ability point would be regained after a level, a few levels, or at the next tier). Not only would these sort of profoundly weakening attacks encourage more tactical gameplay (like oh my god keep away from that lich, don't let it touch you), but would force contact-based players like fighters to have to potentially come up with alternate strategies, since just standing next to it and whacking on it while acting as a meat shield puts your character in even more mortal danger.

Lastly, it could be used as a sort of plot point for specific characters. Meaning, instead of the stat loss being literal, like they've been scarred or damaged physically in some way, that it was actually a blow to the psyche, and constitutes a loss of confidence, or faith, and that they therefore need to undertake some sort of personally redemptive quest, or join a religion (an introduction to multiclassing?), or accept some sort of stricture in order to get their abilities back. This last bit I got from Shadowrun, which I think despite some of its other faults, has a lot of really good mechanics in place to encourage good roleplaying. This sort of mechanic could also be used, in the D&D world, to explain why characters gain certain abilities and not others as they level up: this traumatic event at level 3 was why the character has the ability to do this daily at level 7. Adds depth to characters.

Finally at last referring to the title of the entry, it is a time-honored practice when referring to permanent stat loss to reflect the stat loss in a type of corresponding disfigurement. Why did the person suffer a point loss in Charisma? Maybe because that fire elemental burned his face with some sort of special hellfire. This is a readymade plot hook, as well. Perhaps over the course of their travels the party get wind of a mysterious sorcerer who has created a healing salve that can repair the damage from these sorts of attacks, but the path is fraught with danger and the salve itself is a king's ransom. And then there's the matter of the little rumor that the sorcerer himself may actually be a lich...

I love creating special magic items specifically for a particular adventure or campaign. Not only do I think does it make the adventure more immersive, but it also adds the level of surprise in case the players have been spending a little too much time reading the Adventurer's Vault. It is the latter reason that I also nearly exclusively create custom bosses for the climactic scene in adventures. Sometimes out of mixing together two or more enemies from the MM, or sometimes just out of whole cloth. It's especially joyous when I can successfully drop hints that misconstrue the true nature of the final enemy, so that the party is caught completely off guard. It would only add that much more depth to have an enemy that could potentially maim someone without having taken the necessarily precautions, which could even be hinted at all throughout the adventure leading up to it. Something to think about more fully, to be sure.