Thirty Plots for Seven Samurai

The Seven Samurai plot has been used in everything from A Bug's Life to Mass Effect (and every other Bioware game) to Red Hand of Doom but damned if it doesn't still work. The enemy is out there, with numbers and power too great to confront directly, and they're coming to wreck your shit if you don't find some seriously impressive way to even the odds fast. It's such an archetypal plot but you can fight off the horde in so many ways and it leaves so much room for improvisation that I never get sick of it.

Prepping for an adventure like that you need to know who the enemy is and what they can do, have a rough timeline for when and how things go bad without opposition, and think of a few likely ways the players can help their allies or hinder the enemy. But if they try something else you've already got the framework of how the enemy reacts to being foiled, maybe some cute little point chart for how minor victories and defeats build over time, and there's room for both unorthodox solutions and different degrees of partial success. Like if in your prep work you decide that blowing up the bridge in front of the enemy's march delays an attack by two days, but the druid convinces the mammoth king to stampede the enemy's baggage train instead, you already sort of have a plan for that even if you didn't know your setting even had a mammoth king until the druid's player suggested it. It's all the freedom of a sandbox setting but with the urgency of a doomsday clock - they can attack from any angle and retreat when they need to, but the army's still marching and it won't stop itself.

If your system of choice has some sort of city-building or dominion rules system (or you're feeling ambitious enough to make one), nothing makes players more invested in a location than having it be one they've built and managed themselves. It's the old "give them the sun and make them fight for the moon" bit, but again, somehow it always works.

Of course the downside of being able to try anything is having an infinite number of things to try - uninformed decisions are basically just coin flips, so scouting out priorities and opportunities should be quick and painless. If the war effort is vast and your players are in positions of authority, it's nice having a friendly advisor NPC around to handle routine scouting reports and suggest "Well if you don't have any business of your own to attend to, we've learned that these locations are particularly on fire today..."

THIRTY THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP THE WAR EFFORT

Many of these were inspired by the Myth series, which doesn't get enough love

1. Protect or recover a gold shipment sent out to mercenaries
2. Capture and train beasts of war, or liberate beasts forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena
3. Convince reluctant or blackmailed allies of the enemy to switch sides
4. Stir up internal dissent and incite rebellion
5. Rescue prisoners of war or smuggle out an enemy that wants to defect
6. Defend an isolated town from an imminent invasion
7. Clear a ruin or stretch of wilderness of monsters so you can build or repair fortifications
8. Sneak behind enemy lines to sabotage a factory or raid supply lines
9. Blow up a bridge or train tracks, cutting off enemy retreat or securing an ally's escape
10. Steal enemy battle plans or ciphers, or disrupt communications
11. Hunt down and kill or kidnap key enemy personnel
12. Root out a scout, spy, or assassin in friendly territory
13. Hold off against overwhelming odds until reinforcements arrive or a task is completed
14. Destroy or steal stockpiled ammunition or weapon prototypes
15. Kill or capture a traitor before s/he can give away plans to the enemy
16. Defend a foreign diplomat, merchant, or scientist from assassination
17. Harass an army to draw off soldiers before a major battle
18. Scuttle a flagship or moving fortress
19. Uncover the secret weakness of an invincible enemy
20. Gather a crucial ingredient to build a magical device
21. Help a town recover from a plague or natural disaster
22. Destroy whatever means the enemy is using to bring in troops behind your defenses
23. Negotiate an alliance with a neutral nation or strange outsider community
24. Recover an artifact from an ancient ruin before enemies can do the same
25. Set up an ambush for a group of troops separated from the main army
26. Secure a route through inhospitable terrain to attack from an unexpected direction
27. Take out an artillery battery or fortress to secure a key location
28. Curry favor with an organized crime syndicate to smuggle in needed supplies
29. Consult an oracle or sage at a hidden temple or place of power
30. Stage an elaborate heist from a bank, train, airship, casino, or treasure galleon

Monsters of Catalpa Lake

Went camping this weekend on a small lake near Mt. Hood. Here's what I found.

• Abiel, a subrace of bee-folk, live in subterranean colonies of about 50 – 200. Vassals harvest fireweed and rhododendron nectar to create spiced honey, naphtha, and poisons causing madness or false death. Knights are tasked with fighting off myrmidons and dracodons. All abiel are fertile, but queens kill the offspring of other unions and destroy their eggs if found. Some young queens are assassins and will infiltrate established colonies to kill the old queen and take her place.

• Avalanchers are a type of earth elemental with roughly simian bodies formed from jagged shards of volcanic rock. Like Tolkien's stone giants, they are genial bruisers who rise from the scree during thunderstorms to laugh and throw boulders for sport. Convincing the avalanchers that other species can't survive this entertainment is often difficult given the language barrier and clamor of stone.

• Bark Spiders are three-foot grey spiders that congregate along the trunks of bare pine trees. At rest they are almost impossible to distinguish from curled dead branches. Their skuttling movements are likewise almost identical to the sound of clattering branches in the wind. Bark spiders are lead by astronomer-priests (always perched highest in the trees) that give the order to attack when the stars all align for auspicious hunting.

• Chaos Flies are the least offspring of the region's many trickster spirits. Naturally invisible, they appear as dog-sized houseflies with disturbingly human smiles and hands if detected. Their words manifest as normal-sized flies that whisper eggs into your ears that hatch into cruel suggestions. If found and approached directly the chaos flies can be bargained with, secrets for secrets, favors for favors, though deals struck often have unforeseen consequences.

• Dracodons (giant dragonflies) are the region's alpha predators. Three types are known to inhabit the area. Sapphire darters are fast and nimble, striking in bolts of lightning and plucking out eyes as they pass. Emerald clubtails are slower but stronger and even more massive, and they hunt by disgorging sprays of acid on their prey. Red-veined needlers are small and fat but filled with a deadly poison that corrupts both body and spirit. They are the favored servants of minor devils, and many have been taught to measure sin for their masters or re-knit fiendish bodies. Dracodon courtship is complex, perilous, and messy - the actual intercourse is doubly so.

• Driftwood Hags are dracodon nymphs that have learned to put off their final molt so they might continue to grow in magical power and intelligence. They live in hollowed out driftwood logs with spells and rituals carved in the log's knots and whorls. Many know spells to reanimate their shed carapaces or enchant their retractable jaws as vorpal weapons.

That is not the natural order of things bugs don't eat fish fish eat bugs you cut that out

• The Faceless are a clan of lost human children that have stolen magic from the driftwood hags to keep their bodies small and nimble while their minds continue to mature. The ritual has left them blind, but they've learned to echolocate to compensate. Other tricks include drawing out shadows into black cords for rappelling down trees or strangling people, and hiding their souls in their shadows so they resurrect unless their bodies are burned or left in the sun at high noon.

• Moss wisps congregate in the branches of trees, looking like tufts of fur or vegetation with a soft, ethereal green glow. Usually immobile, they leap out and mob any sources of open flame, dying in droves to release choking black smoke and clouds of infectious spores. Strangely, they also respond to music, and skilled performers can coax the wisps from their perches to float on ley lines and reveal sites of power through their ghostly processions.

• Myrmidons (thanks, Qelong!) are a degenerate offshoot of the ant-like fomorians banished from the plane of law for their rapacious cruelty. What their legions lack in tactics or equipment they make up for with discipline, stamina, and sheer weight of numbers. Their slow march through the region ignores natural obstructions and batters down all resistance, taking slaves to infect with their squirming red broodlings and leaving behind a mathematically perfect line of chitinous brick highway.

• Scallamen are the last sorry survivors of the region's ongoing war against vertebrate life. Once a proud and noble race of philosopher-newts, the scallamen are now the “men in the walls”, hiding from myrmidons and driftwood hags in well-camouflaged mud huts and shanty towns. Though they retain their famed knack for regenerative magic, most bare the lingering scars of bark spider attacks or badly-regrown limbs devoured by dracodons. Those seeking to restore this fallen race to glory will have to overcome their lethargy and learned helplessness in addition to the driftwood hags' curses. An alliance with The Faceless might work, but the scallamen seem as terrified of the dark children as everyone else.

• Silt Sirens appear as waterlogged corpses with lamprey mouths and dead black eyes, but they can use glamour to take more beguiling forms when needed. Regardless, their skins are just husks; their actual bodies are made of stagnant water and leech-infested muck. They work in hunting packs to lure travelers into the region's still lakes - one disguised as a victim, another group "attacking", and a third lying in wait. About one in three can cast spells as druids or sorcerers. Favorite spells include animate mud, sudden decay, blood to silt, wall of leeches, and spell parasite.

• Vulture Wasps look like giant wasps and act like vultures, natch.

How do the druids get around?

1. Riding dire wolves
2. Riding bears or giant boar
3. Riding some bitchin' ungulates (elk, deer, rams, or buffalo)
4. Riding giant birds (owls, eagles, axebeaks, or thunderbirds)
5. Riding large saber-toothed cats
6. Riding dinosaurs
7. Riding in chariots pulled by friendly creatures (reroll 1d6)
8. Taking the shape of an animal (reroll 1d6)
9. Riding or taking the shape of a spirit animal at the head of a great flock or herd (reroll 1d6)
10. Committing ritual suicide only to be reborn from the egg or belly of a beast (reroll 1d6)
11. Taking the form of a cloud, whirlwind, sandstorm, or thunderhead
12. Soaring through the air, carried aloft by friendly winds
13. Dispersing into a flock of crows or other birds
14. Dispersing into a swarm of vermin or bats
15. Carried by wood, earth, and stone elementals
16. Teleporting through doorways carved in the trunks of trees
17. Teleporting between mystic circles marked by rune-carved standing stones
18. Walking faerie paths no others can find
19. Walking the secret tunnels that burrow through the shadow world
20. Running tirelessly on all fours faster than horses, like nature intended

What are the druids up to?

It's hugs, right? (It's never hugs.)

Druids don't want to live in harmony with nature - they want to tear down civilization before nature gets pissed off and kills us all. Here's 30 ways your local circle of druids is trying to do that.

1. Teaching barbarians how to attack fortifications and pillage cities.
2. Arming a humanoid tribe with captured weapons so they can better kill the druids' enemies.
3. Sacrificing dogs, bulls, and horses by cutting their throats on a great stone altar.
4. Carving intricate knotwork in standing stones to create hidden pathways between distant lands.
5. Spying or casting spells remotely through faces carved in the bark of distant trees.
6. Harvesting mistletoe with a golden sickle from the branches of an oak tree beneath a full moon.
7. Using animals to pull up mandrake roots which kill with their screams when unearthed.
8. Burning prisoners alive in great wicker cages shaped like men or beasts.
9. Killing a sacrifice in three ways at once, by hanging, impaling, and drowning in a peat bog.
10. Brewing a terrible plague in a cauldron filled with dragon blood.
11. Teaching the trees to talk and move and hunger.
12. Protecting a rural village in exchange for the first born of each family to raise as their own.
13. Attending a war council of great animal spirits.
14. Forgetting language and becoming lost in the shapes of beasts.
15. Ambushing travelers along the forest trails, leaving their heads at the edge of town.
16. Placating the demon bound in the old black hawthorn with a gift of blood.
17. Heralding the new season by dancing and leaping naked over a great fire kindled by bones.
18. Reading the future in the movements of birds and death throws of the disemboweled.
19. Searching for a lost artifact that summons earthquakes, floods, storms, and locusts.
20. Preparing magic elixirs to transform people into enormous feral monstrosities.
21. Hunting legendary beasts and eating their hearts to gain their power.
22. Animating the ancient stones to serve as their guardians and warriors.
23. Blessing or cursing the fertility of a noble lineage so the prophesied child takes the throne.
24. Applying warpaint that grants the strength of beasts and the heroism of the ancestors.
25. Gathering to decide on a new archdruid – lots of fights, scheming, politics, and kinky shapeshifter sex.
26. Completing a ritual so an ancient hero can be reborn from the womb of a wolf.
27. Bringing tribute to a great dragon, currying favor to get help sacking a major city.
28. Freeing the animals from a menagerie or colosseum to rampage through the streets.
29. Summoning the forbidden spirits of murder and decay out of desperation as the end times near.
30. Burning EVERYTHING. The garden of Earth is strangled by weeds; it must be cleansed in flame to give new life a chance to grow.

50 Random Encounters for Phandelver

I've been running Phandelver in a vaguely post-apocalyptic setting inspired by the Pacific Northwest. The included random encounter table for traipsing about through the wilderness seemed a little bland, so I made it weirder.

YOU ARE A DIFFERENT COLOR SO CLEARLY YOU HAVE MAGIC POWERS HAHA RACISM

1. Herd of elk protected by a great spirit
2. Thunderbirds on patrol or fighting serpents
3. Uncegila the smoke dragon causing havoc
4. Dragon cult seeks Uncegila to make sacrifice
5. Mother grizzly defends territory and cubs
6. Awakened black bear tribe lead by a spirit bear shaman
7. Hunting pack of wolves and direwolves
8. Reclusive sasquatch family scrounging for food
9. Mad sasquatch loner attacks with psychic assault
10. Black beast of the woods in congress with witches
11. Murderous parliament of owls
12. Werebear paladin metes out justice
13. Werewolf lumberjacks looking for sport
14. Hermit or witch gathering herbs for potions
15. Awakened trees and shrubs attack logging camp or hunting lodge
16. Druid circle with awakened animals plot destruction of a city
17. Vegepygmies and fungal zombies controlled by the Gravemind
18. Circle of myconoids offer hallucinogenic visions
19. Giant spiders whisper from the treetops
20. Giant centipedes crawl from beneath a rotted log
21. Thousand-year-old salamander prophet lives in swamp
22. Fox or coyote spirit plays cruel tricks
23. Inuksuk stone golem gives directions or aid if addressed correctly
24. Wendigo brings winter, madness, and hunger from the north
25. Vengeful ghost of a miner, elf, or ancient one
26. Seductive river spirit wants a child
27. Hag, vermin spirit, or backwards-talking dwarf invades dreams during next rest
28. Extra-dimensional wanderer descends from northern lights
29. Radiation spirits and irradiated ghouls haunt toxic crater
30. Ash zombies and pyrokinetic wraiths around burned ruin
31. Ancient war machine lurches to life
32. Hideous mutant or demonspawn crawls from the earth
33. Fungal goblin ambush with explosive traps and snares
34. Fungal goblin patrol with mole rat hounds
35. Fungal goblin brood mother with entourage in search of lair
36. Bugbear catches scent and tries to pick party off one by one
37. Orcs trying to repair rusted hulk of an ancient warmachine
38. Orcs escorting captives or purchased slaves
39. Inbred hillbilly ogres hunt with dire boars
40. Human bandits lead by a powerful adventurer
41. Human bandits possessed by primal spirits
42. Human hunters or fur trappers offer to trade
43. Wood elf scouts riding giant owls
44. Wood elves fishing or gathering berries
45. Cannibalistic winter elves on wild hunt
46. Dwarf and golem mining silver or panning for gold
47. Dwarven merchants or traders traveling with caravan
48. Mole people emerge from vault to scavenge
49. Changeling thieves steal supplies for tree fort
50. Rival adventuring party (use one of these or make up your own)

There are two different reality TV series currently airing about finding Bigfoot. My action this round and for the rest of my life is to attempt to disbelieve the illusion.

If you're lost, ask a helpful inuksuk. It usually knows the way.

In about eight months I won't have seen the sun for about eight months. So there's that to look forward to.

Uncegila is a Lakota myth from the Great Plains. The Kalapuya of Willamette Valley had a dragon too, but that dragon didn't have a name that I could find and it didn't fight Wolverine, which is a pity.

This is from the wrong side of the world but I don't care. Wherever there are ungulates, lo, so too must this thing be.

Ripping apart Phandelver, getting freaky with its bones (Part 1)

As you might have heard, the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure from the 5th Ed starter set is pretty cool for an intro adventure but needs a lot of work. This is the adventure meant to lure back bitter old timers and introduce a new generation to D&D, so it had better be good. Also, the new Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual aren't out yet, so creating new adventures from scratch is... more difficult than usual. Also also, it has the rare privilege of being an adventure out when there's only the one adventure, making it a shared experience like I haven't heard since Meepo became the star of the Sunless Citadel. So let's see what we can do with this thing!

5E really likes showing cropped portions of larger images. I dunno man.

I've started up a game with some co-workers and we're two sessions in. Character creation took about an hour and a half, which isn't great, but then we only had the one Player's Handbook and I'd added some house rule races on my laptop (more on those later). We also didn't have character sheets - I made some myself, but the office printer hates me - so there was a bit of writing and re-writing on lined paper to get everything organized. I think if we had more copies of the book and if I'd had my shit together we could easily cut that time in half, even with all the players being new to the system. Regardless, actually getting to play the same night we made characters was a welcome change from past editions.

Here's the sheet I made. See if you can guess what parts of the game I don't care about by omission!

Click to embiggen.

I: The Setting
I decided to make the setting a little more overtly post-apocalyptic than D&D assumes. The forest past the baseball field where I went to college grew out of a reclaimed landfill - the trees and ferns and fallen leaves hid most of it but sometimes you'd be walking through the woods and see an old washing machine or grocery cart sticking out of the underbrush. I wanted that sort of setting, where everything looks natural and pristine on the surface but dig down even a little and you start finding the ruined hulks of a lost age. It all happened long enough ago that no one remembers the specifics, but if players want to figure out how the demihumans are the product of genetic engineering, and the monsters are radiation-scarred mutants, and the demons and magic are from when the particle accelerators tore a hole in reality and the bad stuff slipped through, it's there in the background. I figure scavenging for relics and scrap metal is a profitable line of work the way delving is an assumed career path in core D&D, and a lot of the dungeons are actually subway tunnels or bomb shelters.

For Phandelver, I read that the big city of Neverwinter just a few days to the northwest is a smoldering wreck after the nearby volcano that had been dormant forever finally blew its top. Living in Portland Oregon, that reminded me that hey, Mount Hood hasn't erupted in forever either...

Still there... waiting...

...so now the area around Neverwinter gets near-constant rain from October to May, the elves all eat salmon and blackberries, and the woods are infested with Sasquatch. (The ancient ghosts may or may not ride fixies.)

Also I renamed Phandelver to Demonsgate. I ran with the "town built on the ruins of another town" thing and turned it into "town built on the ruins of another town built into the bones of an ancient demon that's been sleeping near death for centuries". The Forge of Spells (which is kept pretty vague and never really gets used in the adventure) becomes the demon's heart, which the bad guys want to defibrillate so they can have their very own rampagin' kaiju to command and live inside. (Needless to say this will fuck over the town something fierce.)

II: The Hook
Every campaign I run begins with one of the following:

• Washing up on shore after a shipwreck.
• Breaking out of prison.
• Being hired to rob a bank.

Okay that's a slight exaggeration but not really. The bank job is mostly for one-shots and very short campaigns with pre-gen characters, the sort where a certain amount of conceptual buy-in is assumed for the sake of expediency. The shipwreck and prison break are great because (a) if you sink a ship or throw everyone in chains after a campaign has been going for a while it's railroading, but if everyone starts out screwed it's backstory, and (b) no matter how dysfunctional a group of PCs you have you can pretty much count on them working together to survive and earn their freedom.

Phandelver on an island seemed like more reskinning than it was worth, so I went with the prison break.

Always looking for ways to make the big villains cooler and more despicable, I decided the Redbrand gang were called that because they had red marks on their chests from where their leader cut out their still-beating hearts and kept them in jars to ensure loyalty. The wizard started as a dandy named Glass Staff, on account of his glass staff, but I renamed him Glassjaw, on account of every time he uses the magic of the staff to pluck out an organ while keeping it alive another patch of his skin gets vitrified.

Sort of like this.

The party warlock sees this guy's whole left arm and shoulder and jaw (natch) are made of mirrors when she's brought before him, and he cuts out her tongue and gives it to a guard as a memento. Between her missing tongue and the guards kicking the cleric in the ribs every time he starts to pray for new spells, there's no way the party can just blast the guards to pieces with their mind lasers as they're all bound and carted off to the orcs and sold into slavery.

(Visually, orcs in my campaign are Uruk-Hai, because of course they are, but conceptually they're more like the Charr from Guild Wars. Instead of bloodthirsty warmongers they're really really competent bloodthirsty warmongers, to the point where they've already killed their own gods with giant magical cannon and the biggest thing keeping them from conquering everything is that their homeland is under constant attack from the vengeful ghosts of the people they've already slaughtered. None of this has really come up yet, but if the party ever makes it out to Wyvern Tor in the sandboxy part of the adventure the orc camp there is going to be built into the rusted chassis of a battlewagon.)

In Orc Jail (not as much fun as Space Jail), the party meets a dwarf named Gundren Rockchewer. (Much more evocative than Rockseeker. I guess he tried to dig a tunnel to escape using only his teeth? He'd have broken his teeth somehow regardless - dwarf names are written in runes meant to last forever, so their names are destiny.) After Gundren gets bought out of slavery by his brothers he sends his prison buddies a care package. The orcs pass it along. (They're not savages.) That's where the campaign starts.

The package contains a cake... a fairy cake. It's got magic baked right into the batter. It's a cake of holding. One bite and all the player's gear falls out on the floor. They also find a message in the cake: Brothers and I have struck it big. Meet us in Demonsgate. Shiv someone on the way out for me.

Shivving happens. The warlock gets her tongue back. They try to free the other slaves but there's too many orcs... they resolve to come back when they're better prepared. They steal some riding boars (these orcs aren't pig-faced, but their mounts are) and ride back to town.

That was the end of the first session. Not much time after character creation but a good start.

Next up: Demonsgate and its denizens. Also a fish bomb.

Advanced Demons & Devils: Gluttony and Pride

Been wrestling with demons of my own of late, so my initial promise of "more tomorrow!" has turned into "more sometime!", but enough of that. Let's make some fiends.

Fig 1: Warpig from Warmachine - Hordes, ready for war.

Gluttony:

Most literally you have the demons of Gluttony who eat people, corpulent monstrosities with an insatiable hunger for living flesh. The gourmands who eat only particular sorts of mortals properly seasoned with fear or despair are variations on this theme, as are the breeders who raise souls in captivity and construct vast mechanical abattoirs to assist in the slaughter. Gluttony doesn't lend itself to subtlety - a slow reveal leading up to the brutal dehumanizing gore is great, but eventually you're going to want to pull back the curtain on your blood-spattered machine for pigs (see also this, and of course this). Gluttony devils that spoil crops to cause famine, or spread flesh-eating diseases (contained by draconian quarantine), or inspire cannibalistic hunger (like the Wendigo), or promote consumption of a different kind by inventing and distributing addictive new drugs all work too, but sometimes you just want to lay on the squick. Sometimes the scariest thing a loquacious charmer can want is to just fucking eat you.

The magic of gluttony is necromancy, which prolongs life by consuming the vital essence of others. Fiends of gluttony have attacks dealing necrotic damage, which rots the body like so much meat, or slashing damage, which evokes the butcher's cleaver. Orcs are their mortal agents, Orcus is their master. Realms of gluttony include living landscapes where the ground itself can eat you, smog-choked ghettos in the sunless allies between factories full of screams, and arctic wastelands with howling winds and steaming blood on the snow.

Pride:

Fig 2: Sexy Mancandy Graz'zt

Fiends of pride are among the most powerful, but also the fewest in number - faceless hordes of demons embodying the ego over all just wouldn't work. Unlike most other denizens of Hell, fiends of pride are never easily categorized by subtype - each is a singular specimen of divine intelligence and great physical prowess utterly blind to their own faults. They scheme endlessly to advance their own agendas, even at the expense of Hell's goals overall. Fiends of envy try to expose their plots to create openings in the infernal hierarchy, but pride cares for nothing but itself. Inevitably these schemes are not to corrupt or destroy the mortal world but to ensure more power for the fiend in question, with an end goal of godhood as an absolute minimum. In battle, the devils of pride act as generals, maneuvering armies that number in the millions like pieces on a game board, while the demons of pride are champions calling out their opponents to single combat. They never cheat, unless they have to or think they can get away with it, and their word is their bond, unless it isn't.

Those with a martial bent are peerless duelists and commanders. Their warlocks claim to master all schools of magic equally, but illusion and transmutation are obvious favorites for their ability to enhance their own capabilities (or at least seem to). The elements of pride are lightning and thunder, expressions of raw power that can be seen and heard for miles. Realms of pride include glittering palaces carried through ash fields the backs of a million slaves, mile-high towers rising above blankets of acidic cloud over terrified villages, and whole cities built within titanic marble statues of their rulers.