Mining the D&D Anti-Canon

This month the RPG Blog Carnival is all about Cabals and Congregations - which got me thinking about the organisations and factions we use (or rather don't use) in our games.

When I play D&D particularly, I get the feeling there's a whole load of built-in backstory that often gets ignored because it's not used going forward, especially in published adventures. I'm fully in agreement with Luka Rejec on canon and anti-canon and that I'd rather do this stuff at the table to make our own world than spend days reading and remembering details of someone else's world.

None of our PCs exist in a vacuum; explicitly Bards have Colleges, Druids have Circles, Rangers have favoured enemies, Sorcerers have Bloodlines - these are all potential factions to draw into our stories, and more are implied for all classes.

Since Dungeon World and Stars Without Number* helped change my DM worldview I've been keen to try to build the story round the PCs, not push the PCs into the story. 

Here's some session zero thoughts to bring these background factions to the foreground, e.g:

• Barbarian - who are your tribe? Who are their enemies and allies? Who else roams your lands?
• Bard - where did you train? Are/were you part of a troupe? Who have you worked for?
• Cleric (also Druid) - do you belong to an order? Who are the enemies of your god/religion? What are your holy gathering places?
• Fighter - where did you train / who did you train under? Is there a local fighter's or mercenary's guild (and what's your relationship with them)?
• Monk - where is your monastery and what are its rites and rituals? Who threatens or empowers your way of life?
• Paladin - draw from Fighter and/or Cleric, but also: what organisations are aligned with / opposed to your Oath?
• Ranger - who else lives outside of the points of light (and what is your relationship with them)? Who of your favoured enemy do you have history with / are currently active locally?
• Sorcerer - who shares your bloodline and how do they live among other people? What organisations seek to regulate or exploit your magic?
• Warlock - are you part of a cult to your patron? Who are the enemies (or allies) of your patron?
• Wizard - where did you train/learn? Who is/are the largest/wisest holder(s) of arcane knowledge in the region?

I've talked before about how I like to use factions to help generate plot threads and story arcs and (I think) making the movers and shakers relevant to the PCs helps to tie the characters to the world.

The above are version-independent ideas, but if 5e is your D&D flavour  there's also backgrounds to mine (as well as them being bags of proficiencies)! 

• "Guild" backgrounds aside - Acolytes, Entertainers, Gladiators, Sages, Soldiers all probably belong to some sort of professional organisation
• Charlatans, Criminals and Urchins surely must have had run-ins with (or been members of) underworld organisations
• Folk Heros need a folk to be the hero of!
• Sailors have crews, Knights have orders, Nobles have houses... Outlanders have people back home
• Even Hermits have people, even if it's just the ones they are pointedly avoiding!

These low hanging fruit are often overlooked, but I'll be making a point to try to remember them in my future games. How do you go about creating and using factions?

For more information on the RPG Blog Carnival, or to check out the archive (going back more than a decade) make sure to check out the link - you can sign up to host here too.  Thanks to Gonz for hosting this month!

* I'd forgotten, but I started working on something similar for SWN a few years back too!

Running 5e as OSR: Monsters by HD not CR

Some of my friends love 5e, only play 5e, only will play 5e. I find 5e unwieldy and time consuming to prep and run, whereas I love the flow of OSR and PBTA games. But 5e has been around for nearly a decade and apparently isn't going away soon either.

What I want to know is whether I can run 5e for them, RAW or RAW-ish, in a way that means I a) don't have to bog myself down in encounter building and all that crap and b) can use all the cool OSR stuff I have lying around.

Encounter building is painful; it sucks all the joy out of running a game for me. However, embracing "Combat as War, not Sport" I'm sacking off encounter building for good so I don't need CR. What I could do with, however, is an idea of general stats against Hit Dice in 5e so I can use OSR resources or eyeball stats in play.

Late to the party: Dissident Whispers

I recently found out about this collection of 58 double-page adventures and promptly ordered myself a copy from Melsonian Arts Council.

It arrived today and I've thumbed through already.  Most of the adventures within look viable, some are entertaining or humourously written, many are beautifully presented.

One-Roll Random D&D 5e Characters

I have been working on a procedural character generator for 5e, as I find the system isn't necessarily built around making characters interesting, but it's involving learning a new language so is taking a while.  I'll post it when it's done!

Image (cc) Mikeypetrov

SO! Here's a quick generator you can use now, with a reason to take non-minmaxed stats and a life event to add some inspiration for background colour.

Why not grab a set of polyhedrals or use the button at the bottom to generate someone interesting?

The d8 - Race

1. Human
2. Elf
3. Dwarf
4. Halfling
5. Dragonborn
6. Tiefling
7. Gnome
8. Half Elf or Half Orc

One Roll Weapons of Destiny for D&D 5e

Image (cc) Blazbaros

I'm always toying with ways to tie the PCs, the world, and the story together.  These are weapons that can be found and used by starting characters but are in some way destined for the end game, and requiring the completion of a mid-tier quest arc.  Roll a set of polyhedrals (or use the button at the bottom of the post) to discover your destined weapon!

The d20 - Crafted long ago by...

1. Dwarves, from rare minerals and alloys
2. Gnomes, from fine silver woven with spells
3. Elves, from a branch of the oldest tree
4. Drow, from darkness made tangible
5. Angels, from a fragment of a star
6. Elementals, from distilled elemental energy
7. Fey, sung into shape from some organic matter
8. Merfolk, from the horn of a narwhal
9. Slaadi, from the remains of a dead Modron
10. Mind flayers, from psychically infused iron
11. Devils, and was forged in the fires of the Hells
12. Demons, from solidified corruption
13. Centaurs, from finest polished bronze
14. Yuan-Ti, from the bones of a Naga
15. A vampire, and was forged and cooled in blood
16. A lich, by corrupting a hero's weapon
17. A banshee, and lost by her in death
18. Lizardfolk, from the bones of a gargantuan beast
19. A sphinx, from a treasure of the gods
20. Orcs, by melting down the weapons of their foes

Making Skill Checks More PBTA

Image (cc) oxpal

One thing I loved when reading Dungeon World was how all the moves fall into the same basic pattern:

• 10+ (on 2d6 plus modifiers) means clean success
• 7-9 means success, but with a cost or limitation
• 6 or less means failure and the DM moves the story along

It's an easy change from pass/fail and it runs right through all "Powered by the Apocalypse" games.  Note how there's no DC. I like this. So often my players roll skill checks and announce the result before I decide the DC that I end up just eyeballing it - so why not get rid of it? This is all about stakes and not about difficulty.

Character - Marigold Silvereyes

I'm playing in a 5e campaign from next week, and I find 5e can be dull and uninspired. So I left it to this generator for my 5th level starting character...

Marigold Silvereyes is a halfling barbarian, a war orphan who was good with her hands and left empty and angry by the war.

I rolled 16, 13, 12, 10, 7, 7 and decided to put the 16 in STR and use her halfling bonuses to bump DEX and CON to 14s. Not too shabby, but still with two dump stats to assign I decided to take CHA as the better one as I already had Persuasion from Guild Artificer and thought Intimidate might be fun from the Barbarian skill list.  Tough cookie.  I also took Athletics so I could run, jump, and climb trees as well as bully monsters.