Moving

I'm packing up and heading to Rochester over the next couple of days to begin graduate school, so I doubt I'll be posting for the next several days.

Pioneer Companion Clusters

The past couple of posts had lots of ideas but no executions or suggestions.  I lost my internet due to some outside factors, and that gave me time to work without its distractions, and that produced some excellent ideas for handling NPC groups in the context of this expedition.

First, stop thinking of each NPC as an individual entity.  Instead, think of NPC clusters, groups of people who have a pre-existing relationship who are entering into the expedition's company.  The people interested in traveling far away from civilization and probably never seeing it again are of a specific sort, and the list is tailored to groups of that ilk.

1: a fairly self-sufficient or desperate person
2: A pair of competent individuals, or two folk drawn together by circumstance and seeking out of their particular situation.
3+: Family groups, seeking a better life elsewhere.

I'll further detail the different clusters for each size, but I wanted to present some cluster interaction rules which might be useful outside of this context.

Roll Charisma for each cluster, representing how sociable and likeable the group is as a whole.  Add the number of children in the cluster to the final result, and then determine the resulting score modifier.  Double it to determine the number of strong feelings the cluster engenders from other clusters.  Then, roll a d20 against the cluster's Charisma to determine whether the feeling is positive or negative (rolling over for negative, rolling under for positive), with the recipients determined randomly.

For example, a family of 3 (two parents, 1 kid) rolls a Charisma score of 16.  We add 1 for the kid, which is 17.  In LotFP, this gives a modifier of +2, so the family inspires strong feelings from 4 other clusters of NPCs.  Rolling the d20, we get 3, 5, 19, and 12.  We interpret this to mean that 3 other clusters view the family well, but another cluster views the family poorly.

The party is also a cluster, and for the purposes of this relationship web, use the median value of all the characters' Charisma scores.  Clusters that like, or feel neutral about, the party are under their control, as long as they act in good faith and are competent leaders.  Clusters that dislike the party are under the DM's control - not to become enemies of the party (all involved recognize that the success of the whole venture requires cooperation between the different groups), but they will grumble and look to take control of the group away from the party, if possible.  By making a meaningful, personal sacrifice, the party can attempt to change the opinion of a cluster that dislikes them.  After making the sacrifice, the character involved can make a Charisma check to influence them.

This might play out in any number of ways - a family might be quite nice, but they have a brat of a child who is insufferable and obnoxious.  Perhaps there is a very competent ranger in the company, but her brother is a drunken lout who can't do much of anything, forcing the ranger to spend most of her time helping him out.  Either way, that one person makes it hard to appreciate the cluster's company.

While clusters are happy to separate as needed for short-term tasks (the group needs to clear a tree from the trail, for example), for long-term or obviously dangerous tasks, roll a d4.  If the result is higher than the number of people in the cluster, someone from it will volunteer for the task.

Lastly, here's a table documenting the different types of clusters that can be recruited for the expedition.  The levels listed are a guideline.  As you can see, most of the people on  this trip have few skills (the families are likely all farming stock, and so would be knowledgeable about plants, planting, housekeeping skills, etc.

Size	Category	Level	Description
1	Ranger	2d3	Hunter, explorer, trapper
1	Criminal	1d2-1	Seeking new life or escaping old crimes
1	Former Soldier	Ftr 2d4	Retired, looking for quiet place to die
1	Non-inheriting child	0	Lacking trade or prospects
2	Professional Partnership	varies	Pair of hunters or master and disciple
2	Siblings by blood	0	Might have tradeskills
2	Odd Couple	0	Unusual pair, united by circumstances - 2 criminals, 2 ex-soldiers, something else
2	Romantic couple	0	Want to start a family
3	Family	0	2 parents, 1 child
3	Family	0	1 parent, 2 children
3	Family	0	2 parents, 1 grandparent
4	Family	0	2 parents, 1 child, 1 grandparent
4	Family	0	2 parents, 2 children
4	Family	0	1 parent, 3 children
5	Family	0	2 parents, 3 children
5	Family	0	1 parent, 4 children

The Pioneer Hexcrawl

This is probably going to be the most familiar part of the entire pioneer endeavor, and that presents a unique challenge.  This hexcrawl has to be different than any other hexcrawl you have ever run.  Even if your players have traveled extensive distances with wagons and gear, this will be an entirely new hexcrawl for both them and you.  This hexcrawl is responsible for setting the tone of the entire settlement adventure, introducing your players to a different way of thinking, one much more grounded in the physical reality of their characters' situation.

We'll start at the beginning: preparing for the journey.  The full traveling group should number at least 20, including player characters: if the players want to do more than build and operate a single farm, they'll need more bodies.  The more hands on deck at the end of their journey, the easier constructing the settlement will be (remember that video last post of the approx. 50 workers raising a barn in 10 hours?).  Also, some of the non-adventurers will die along the way.  That will be a consequence of the journey.

The group's makeup will factor hugely into the success or failure of the venture, with regard to both the overall skillset and the relationships between each individual member.  I'll devote a post just to talking about the expeditionary group, which is why I'm going light on the details here.

Once the group has been created, the party needs to acquire supplies.  While I love fiddling with spreadsheets and accounting and looking at all of the fiddly details, I recognize that not everyone finds it fun.  Tough.  While you, the DM, absolutely must help the party choose supplies and quantities (offering suggestions and observations frequently), when the party makes all of the final decisions, they assume the responsibility for all of their equipment.  When a crucial supply is necessary and they didn't buy it (or didn't buy enough of them), they can only get angry with themselves, as opposed to blaming whatever abstraction is used so that your players didn't have to sit through and approve every blessed item.

As a rule of thumb, the group needs enough wagons that everyone in the expedition and all of the equipment can fit into the wagons.  Give each wagon a name and character sheet and distribute them to the players.  Wagons will have hit points and take damage from terrain hazards.  When they lose all of their hit points, they break - either the wagon tongue snaps, a wheel breaks or (eesh) an axle cracks (determine this randomly, say on a 1d6, 1-3 break a wheel, 4-5 wagon tongue, and 6 break the axle).  Repairs take a half-day, assuming appropriate replacement parts are on hand.  Unlike a regular injury, determine the next kind of break the day after the first one has been repaired - so if a wagon busted a wheel yesterday and was fixed, today the DM would determine what would break next - as the expedition travels, people will keep an eye on the wagons and will notice that the axle has developed a small crack, which is fine right now, but a couple big jolts will splinter it.

Every item brought on the expedition needs to have some condition for it to not perform as expected or needed - tools need a breakage chance, stored food needs conditions under which it will spoil, etc.  These odds should be slight and conditions unlikely - but they need to be explicitly stated and recorded somewhere.

You will need foraging rules - if a full day is spent foraging, how much food can be brought back per forager?  They'll need to account for vegetation and foraging skill.  I have a Hunter skill: it is an Apprentice task to find food for 1 in the woods.  Plains and scrubland are a Journeyman task, and desert and similarly inhospitable terrain require a Specialist Hunter test, and the difference between the check result and the test's difficulty (minimum 1) is the number of people that can be fed on a successful roll.

Lastly, in addition to the normal encounters of your hex crawl (random encounters, interesting location-based encounters to keep things different and interesting for your players), you will need journey hazards that put stress upon the wagons, equipment, and expeditionary group.  Things like needing to clear a path through a forest, crossing a river, a rockslide coming towards the wagon train or a mudslide that has washed away the path.  I'm a big fan of a 1d6 encounter die for most wilderness encounters, with a check every day.  Here, I'd roll 2d6 - one to determine whether an encounter occurs or not, the other to determine the type: 1-3 for a typical hexcrawl encounter, 4-5 a travel hazard, and 6 an interpersonal conflict within the expeditionary group.

So: takeaways from this brainstorm.  The Hexcrawl section requires:

Wagon character sheets

Expeditionary group mechanics to randomly create clusters of people interested in joining the party's caravan and simulate their interpersonal relationships

Thorough equipment lists, detailing dimensions, components, break or spoilage conditions, etc.

Hexcrawl encounters including typical hexcrawl items (wandering monsters, lairs, ruins, etc.), travel hazards, and interpersonal conflicts

That's a start.

The Settlement Campaign - Agenda

I talked about the settlement campaign a while back, and the idea has been percolating in my brain since then.  What I want to do is outline, roughly, what game structures and information are necessary to run a successful settlement campaign.  Alexis talks about players not choosing to settle (hah!) in favor of adventuring because the supportive mechanics don't yet exist, but I think from the DM's side of the issue, we have to know the kinds of things necessary to present that option to our players - I gave my players a square mile of land and within minutes I was scrambling to generate a whole lot of information about farming, crop yields, sufficient caloric intakes, building times, and other stuff that I hadn't prepared.  They were patient as I frantically researched and deferred answering questions, but that'd be enough to dissuade most DMs from trying such a stunt again - the necessary knowledge is probably no more to learn than what a well-researched DM knows about the Medieval and Renaissance period, but because we don't know what we don't know, it seems much more daunting.  In many ways it is an entirely new game because much of the rules we have do not apply or cover the situations that will arise with land management.

So, it's time to figure out what we don't know.

First, I think there are two kinds of settlement campaigns, at least starting out.  The first is to expand the frontier, moving past the edge of civilization to create a new population hub.  The community will still have strong ties and frequent communication with the rest of the world and serve as an extension of it.  An example of this would be the European colonization of Africa - once the Europeans had the technology to move beyond the coasts, they'd gradually settle the land while keeping strong trade and communication routes to the towns behind them.  The second is like the American pioneers - travelling for months before reaching their destination without a firm connection to the rest of civilization.  It is about creating an entirely new, independent community.

There will be a lot in common between the two, but the major difference is the expansionary community still has access to the economic system of their community of origin.  The pioneer community doesn't - they have to make, find, or do without.  That crucial difference will play out in a number of subtle ways - the expansionary community will retain much of the customs and habits of their origin, whereas the pioneer community, by necessity, will need to behaviorally adapt to their new setting.

While I'm working on an economic system similar to Alexis', I don't have one yet, and my world is far less settled than his, lending more opportunities for parties to try the pioneer campaign.  Therefore, I'll focus my attentions on the pioneer settlement campaign first, and come back to the expansionary campaign after I've built a stronger framework.  Now, the pioneers traveled in the early 19th century, whereas the effective time period for many D&D worlds spans the 13th to 17th centuries.  However, given the technology of magic and somewhat more modern social infrastructure found in most of these worlds, I don't think such a trek would be infeasible.  Furthermore, I think the ability to build a kingdom from the ground up would appeal to many, many players.

There are three main phases to the pioneer campaign.  The first is the physical journey to the new digs, which includes surviving the hostile wilderness and picking a good spot for the settlement.  The second is the construction of that settlement, and the third is creating a larger community (via alliances, war, or just making babies and building more houses).  Obviously, the community can and will develop after that, but we need to be able to handle these three stages before we can do anything else.

The physical journey is just a hexcrawl, albeit one of extraordinary length.  The Oregon Trail spanned just over 2,000 miles.  Remember those 20-mile hexes on my map?  That's a 100-hex hexcrawl.  Now, there were stops along the way, places pioneers could resupply and recuperate, but at about the 1/3rd mark, these supports fell away: Fort Laramie was, I believe, the last bastion of civilization and left the pioneers some 1,400 miles to travel, with wagons laden with all of the supplies they'd need.  They'd be expected to blaze much of the trail as they traveled, making the wilderness a much more pervasive threat than most hexcrawls I've seen.

Remember Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?  The final site chosen has to provide some way of obtaining food, potable water, and a safe place to sleep.  Since this is still D&D, it should also be a somewhat defensible site, and there should be a number of monster dens and ruins nearby that the party will need to clear.

Once the resources above have been harnessed and every person and animal has some kind of shelter, the settlement has been established.  That's going to look very different depending upon what food and building materials are easily available, and also the weather.  Roofs are only necessary when precipitation happens on a regular basis.  Timber, sod, and clay bricks are commonly-used building materials.  Depending upon the area's climate, different crops can be grown - rice paddies or wheat fields, root vegetables or vine vegetables, berries or orchards.

At the third stage, communities are self-sustaining and your players can look to expand their influence, either by finding other communities settled in a similar way, making the return journey to civilization to recruit more settlers, or waiting until the next generation.

This is intended to be a brief overview of the process, and I'll focus in-depth on each stage drawing out more specific mechanical needs.  Just from this overview, though, we can make a list.  We need a massive hexcrawl, the length and hardship of which discourages casual travel back to civilization, we need to know the climate of the settlement region as well as its ecologic, hydrologic, and geologic makeup, we need to be able to generate a number of potential settlement sites with advantages and disadvantages for each (which means we need to find a way to mechanically evaluate settlement sites), we need to determine the wild food resources available (to sustain the party until the next planting season), we need to determine the threats in the area (dungeons, lairs, large predators, etc.), and we need to determine what nonessential resources are available (ore veins, cash crops, etc.) for trade or enrichment.

See, this is the excellent thing about lists.  Sure, it's a lot to cover and we have barely started examining this process, but each of these items is achievable and the whole process isn't quite as daunting anymore, is it?

Bardic Art Series Summation

The first major project on this blog is finished: the Bardic Art series.  The goal of this series of posts was to:

1. Provide a framework for bards to create artwork meaningful on a mechanical level.
2. Provide a list of medium-specific effects to make different kinds of bards have different effects upon the world, reflecting the differences in their medium.

At 1st level, a Bard is considered an Apprentice artist, 3rd a Journeyman, 7th a Specialist, 12th a Master, and 18th a Grandmaster artist.  The table below shows the general duration of effect for a piece of art at the given quality level as well as how long it takes a bardic artist of the indicated skill level to create a piece of art at each level of quality.

More profound artwork are capable of expressing more supernatural effects and sustain them for longer, since they are by nature more complex and deep.  Except in a few cases, the artwork itself is not magical; the magic lies in the response of people/the world to the artwork.  Because of this, the effects generated by bardic artwork are not permanent - a Grandmaster work of art loses its potency after 10 years of exposure - it ceases to inspire in the same way it once did and thus can no longer conjure the same magical response.

I think that about 50% of the effects generated by a given piece of art should be under the control of the artist, while the other 50% are random - art does not always do what the artist expects or asks of it.  Apprentice artists can trigger 2 effects, Journeymen 3, Specialist 4, Master 5, and Grandmaster 6.

Alternatively, and I think I might like this approach better, each bard has a list of 6 or 8 effects they can draw upon for their art, taken from their medium's table.  When they use an effect in a piece of art, it is replaced by another one, determined randomly from the larger table.  In fact, the size of their effect list could increase with their skill level as well, perhaps 2 for Apprentice, 3, 5, 7, and 9 for Grandmaster bards, and they would be able to choose all but 1 of the magical effects of a work of art (which would be rolled randomly from the larger list).

Furthermore, bards are able to copy other artworks, duplicating their effects.  Copying from within the same medium produces an identical artwork, but all effects are reduced by 25% (their numerical effects or, if no numerical aspects, there is a 25% chance the effect will not manifest).  Copying from a different medium entirely has a 50% reduction on efficacy.

Now for the list of mediums and concentrations.  Each bard must choose one concentration within the medium.  They are able to produce artwork with another concentration within their medium as though they were a bard 25% lower level (so a 4th level Drawing (Charcoal) bard could produce paintings as though they were 3rd level), but they cannot produce artwork from a different medium (they can only copy it using their own, as described above).

Architecture
Ceramics (Hand-building or Throwing)
Cooking
Drawing (Charcoal, Painting [Ink], Painting [Oil], Printmaking, or Tattooing)

Literature (Poetry or Prose)
Music (Court [Instrumental], Court [Opera/Vocal], Regional Folk, or Liturgical)
Performance Art (Dance or Theatre)
Sculpture (Bone and Wood, Glassblowing, Metal, or Stone)

I will say that this is only a first draft of all of these tables - I'm done with this project for now, but I'd like to at the very least double the size of each medium's table sometime in the future.

The Bardic Sculptor

And we come now to the last kind of art, sculpture.  Unlike the other art forms, I've divided the table below not on specific sub-medium but on the subject of the artwork.  Representational statues are of a specific thing (a person, creature, or tableaux).  Totemic statues are more abstract, attempting to sculpt intangible properties or indescribably beings (we don't have full-on abstract sculpture until, I believe, the 20th c. so this is as close as we get).

Bardic sculptors would still choose a concentration: wood, metal, stone, glassblowing, or wax.  They would then be able to choose the subject of their sculpture, representation or totem, which would determine which column to use as a source for the artwork's magical effects.

Also, I wanted to make explicit that the Totemic category goes remarkably well with Alexis' work on Fetishism.

Roll	Representational	Totemic
1	The figure depicted is majestic, refined.  Increases the demand for luxury goods by 20%, as well as the chance to find rarer items.	The statue can only be properly viewed in the light of the full moon, wherein it calms the restless dead and grants the ability to see fully in moonlight for a lunar cycle.
2	The figure is industrious and focused, inspiring others to be the same.  All projects finish 20% faster.	The figurine is ghoulish and crude.  It scares away evil spirits as a cleric turns undead.
3	The statue commemorates a great deed, reminding passers-by of their old glories.  Increases nativism, increases morale by 1.	The statue is forbidding and fearsome, warding off outsiders as a Magic Circle, but is seen as friendly to those living near it.
4	The statue depicts a Divinity.  Where such depiction is allowed, belief is further strengthened, increasing the power of divine spells cast nearby.  Where such depiction is forbidden, the statue increases resistance to the faith's teachings, decreasing the power of divine spells cast nearby.	The totem is designed for a specific (wilderness) location.  After 1 year of being placed, the statue will be covered in plant growth and reach its full potential.  It showcases the eventual triumph of nature over the machinations of mortal-kind and boosts druidic magic in the region.
5	The statue is of a local military leader, increasing pride in the military and also boosting the enlistment/volunteer rate from the region by 10%.	The statue appeals to the spirits of wild creatures, allowing them to flourish.  Wild animal-based industry flourishes by 20%.
6	Depicting different creatures and races collaborating in common cause, the statue fosters cooperation between unlikely allies.  Persuasion attempts are easier nearby it.	The totem is grotesque and ugly, attracting hatred and vandalism from the local community and providing a focus for their resentment.  Happiness for the majority population increases, while minority groups are ostracised and victimized.
7	The statue attempts a cultural fusion, merging symbols and figures from a distant place with local ones.  Local views will change for the better or the worse as per the intentions of the bard.	The totem is precariously placed.  When creatures of ill intent pass by, it will topple.
8	The statue draws on divine or unholy imagery, sanctifying or desecrating the area around it.	The totem is hollow on the inside and can trap incorporeal creatures who draw too close.
9	An array of statues makes the chosen installation imposing and powerful.  Commands given from within the array are more likely to be followed.  Increases patriotism.	The totem absorbs magical energy over time.  Meditating or praying near it has a heightened chance of summoning a powerful spirit to converse with the supplicant.
10	The statue does not depict an actual individual or creature.  The community's collective unconscious creates a new myth surrounding it, which has a chance of becoming real.	The totem is linked to a local population - if the community is 'good', the totem grows beautiful; if the community is 'bad', the totem becomes malformed.

The Bardic Performing Artist

The performing arts, theatre and dance, are frequently referenced as being 'bardic' but bear the least resemblance to how the bard's abilities traditionally work.

Theatre would include professional actors doing plays (Moliere, Shakespeare (although his plays aren't translated out of English until the 19th c.), etc.) as well as improvisational acts like Italy's Commedia dell'arte tradition.

Dance is complicated.  In 17th c. Europe, we have 'folk' dance traditions, with group and partner styles and we have 'court' dance traditions (minuette, rondo, waltz a little later on, etc.), but ballet is rising to prominence at this time and is one of the hallmarks of the French artistic scene.  Going outside of Europe, each of the tribes of Africa had indigenous dance traditions as part of their religion, just to start.  The dance effects I list attempt to create some sort of singular whole that can accommodate for a variety of foundations for a bardic dancer.

Roll	Acting	Dance
1	The performance is cathartic.  The audience leaves satisfied and happy.  All resistances are slightly improved for 24 hours.	The dance summons spirits of hearth, home, and healing, who bless the dancers and audience.
2	The spectacle presents a great injustice that incenses the audience, who riot from the performance to right the wrong.	The composition embodies the heights of human grace.  In memory of this, the audience's Dexterity increases by 1 for 1 week.
3	The play satirizes a prominent local institution, formenting dissatisfaction with it.  Or the inverse.	The dance invites a non-corporeal entity into the body of the (lead) dancer.
4	The work presents characters struggling with and overcoming personal trials.  Increases number of lvl 0 hirelings available by 20% for 1 week.	The piece is narrative, representing a local myth or legend.  The resultant patriotism increases morale by 2 for a week.
5	The performance uses semiotic ghosting to create a secondary narrative, inviting underworld types and others who play double games to contact the performers.	The piece is an abstraction of a local myth or legend.  Trying to link movement to action forces the audience to think more broadly, increasing Wisdom by 1 for 1 week.
6	The work subtly rewrites recent history.  The local populace will remember the play's version, not the 'real' one.	The movements reinforce the ley currents of the area, bringing good weather and banishing bad.
7	The play is both deeply intellectual and crudely funny.  It dominates all conversation in the area for the next six months, bringing (temporary) fame to the performers.	The work is transcendent, bringing attention to every subtle move the dancers make.  The attention to detail increases experience earned by 10% for 1 week.
8	At the heart of the play lies an old incantation that, when recited to a full audience, enacts a high level wizard spell.	Hidden within the dance are the foundations of martial arts.  The region will see a 10% increase in the number of unarmed fighters over the next 10 years.
9	The play emphasizes a specific character trait.  Repeated works emphasizing the same trait will impart it upon the community.	The dance uses an ancient, potent movement vocabulary, allowing it to expel malevolent forces: all suffering from poison, disease, or compulsion effects receive an additional saving throw.
10	The text is an adaption of a preexisting bardic literary work and may duplicate its effects in full.	The coordination of the dancers is remarkable.  For the next week, characters acting in tandem receive a +2 bonus.