Janx

Television and other fiction can be a great source of ideas for stories. I've used Star Trek episodes for adventure ideas, and I've used the Babylon 5 TV series for a campaign setting. In both cases, I adapted a science fiction series to a fantasy campaign world. The same idea can be done with movies or books.

A very important thing to remember is that you should not expect to reproduce the show in the game. Your game can get the PCs in the same situation, but you should not expect the same outcome. Otherwise you risk a railroad. The whole point of this is to set a situation up, and see what the players and their PCs do. Otherwise, you might as well pop in the DVD and watch that instead.

For one campaign, I decided to adapt the show Babylon5 to D&D. What I did is a good demonstration of how to transform the elements of a show to something different.

Here's an important point, don't tell your players what you're doing, and make sure you change enough things so it isn't obvious. Your campaign will be better for it, and it'll help prevent railroading tendencies if you relate too closely to the show. It will also stop them from googling up spoilers.

******* spoiler alert *****
There may be some spoilers here as I talk about the show.
******* spoiler alert *****

Babylon5 is a space opera. I decided to make my D&D setting a sailing "opera". Space and the age of sailing are kind of similar. So I used a program to generate a watery world with lots of islands. The islands being "planets".

I mapped out all the major alien races to the D&D races. I also renamed them, so in the game, there were no "Minbari" or "Narn". I had the elves designated as the Minbari equivalent, and the dwarves as the Narn, and the gnomes as the Centarui. This led to some surprise for the players as the dwarves had recently overthrown an occupation and enslavement by the gnomes. This radically altered their perception of the world. It wasn't the same old game.

The series made a big deal about telepaths, and how human telepaths had to be registered. In my game, I decided that telepath mapped to arcane magic users. Dwarves had no telepaths, so they had no arcane magic users (which was also a nod to previous D&D editions). Humans just recently discovered Magic, so I let them be wizards, but no sorcerors. Instead of PsiCorp, the organization that all humans telepaths were required to register with, I made the "Circle of Magic" a wizards guild.

The show took place on the space station Babylon 5. I decided to rewind the clock and start my game before the Earth-Minbari war that later inspired the station to be built. Partly because if my PCs were to run B5, they'd need to be leveled, and party because doing so would encourage more deviations from the show.

I also decided to follow the human side of things, so my starting party was required to be all human and all serving on a military ship. This set the tone for character creation. The players accepted this as I had got their buy in to play a naval campaign, where the PCs served on a ship. We'd all recently seen Master and Commander, so they were inspired. They'd also never see the series, so was pretty safe from spoiling it.

With this in place, the first few adventures were missions where the ship sailed somewhere, and the PCs were sent in as an away team (similar to star trek). The PCs were junior officers or enlisted. I gave them some meta-game guidelines on behavior (as in don't be over-bossy just because you're an officer to another player). They handled it well.

I also brought in back-story elements where the humans have first contact with the elves and it starts a war. This in turn led to the Battle of the Line, an major event in the campaign and it surprisingly followed the series outcome.

Now one reason I was able to follow the series more closely, and it was risky, is because the character creation phase required the players to effectively make PCs that would follow orders and likely end up in the same scenarios. If I had let them "pick anything", I would have run a different campaign in the same universe. In the same vein, the PCs could have grown dissatisfied with the military and turned pirate, which would have led to a different outcome.

This is something you have to accept as a GM, you can't mirror the show exactly. Your goal should be to capture the flavor and style of the show, not the exact recipe.

The trick to transforming a show is to adapt the ideas and material to fit your game and setting. There's a wealth of shows to steal from, and the act of transforming it will actually reinvigorate the idea. Otherwise, you might as well just buy the "Knight Rider" RPG and be done with it.

Feel free to put some comments with show treatments turned into D&D fantasy campaign. Knight Rider may actually be a good example of a challenge:

There's this good agency, that's got this wagon, except it's really a wizard who's been polymorphed. And it talks, and sometimes the wagon, I mean wizard can cast spells, like Magic Missle and Turbo Boost to help out the PCs.

Not all shows make good campaigns. But sometimes an episode might work...

I was driving back from a birthday party with my friend Ned, when we got to talking about his Vampire campaign and the game in general.

Bear in mind, we'd only played one game, and had skimmed the rules a year ago.

One of the chief observations was that it seemed like the default starting age for vampires was way too young. Basically, a new PC was likely to be made in 1980 or more recently.

I suppose from here, players can roleplay the horror of being new, or whatever. But that also skips the fun of being older than all the humans. Who doesn't enjoy one-upmanship conversations like, I remember when the declaration of independance was signed.", or "I barely survived the beaches of Normandy". New players will have to settle for "yeah, I remember when the Challenger blew up" to which the human will respond with "me too, so what".

What makes it worse, is that like most RPGs, the players are gunning for the top position and higher levels. When the game started, there was all this flavor and prestige that the top positions were run by old vampires. The players whole goal is to take these dudes out and usurp their place.

That means, in a few real-years time, and not likely much game time because you'd then be playing CyberVampirePunk, the fresh young vamps have completely taken over and wiped out the oldies.

D&D suffers from the same scenario. The PCs start at 1st level, and in 3 months game time, they're 20th level and they've got more skills than the most grizzled veteran.

Now if you don't consider any of this a problem, you're probably a player. It's OK. I don't blame you wanting more power, who doesn't. And there are some campaigns where this pattern will fit. However, I'm going to give some consideration to it as many GMs complain about it.

Overall, there's two basic vectors for this problem. The rate of XP given over real time, and the rate of XP earned over game time.

Gary Gygax even complained about it in The Strategic Review, the pre-cursor to Dragon Magazine. He had an expecation of how fast people should level up, and he was tired of hearing of high level PCs in a game that he didn't think should outpace his own.

The main value of XP is that it give the player a sense of accomplishment and progress. If you give it out too slowly, the players may feel like they're not getting anywhere. Give it out too fast and you get the problem I initially described.

A wisdom I learned a long time ago, is that if you don't play that often, be a bit more generous with the XP, so the players feel like they're getting somewhere. I'd temper that with the idea that a level increase is progress, you don't need to hand out more than one per session.

With that in mind, the power of math can be used to set a rate of advancement to pace yourself by. Since 3e based levels in 1,000 point increments, just use that as a max and multiply by the PC's level to bring it into scale.

First, estimate how many sessions you're going to play per year (the frequency). Estimate how many levels you want the party to gain that year (the goal). Let's go with a group that meets once a month, and the GM wants to get to 15th level.

15 levels times 1000 = 15,000
divide by 12 sessions = 1250 per session
in game, multiple that 1250 by the PC's actual level to make it scale correctly.

Barring a math error, you'll get the pace you want. If you play VERY infrequently (once or twice a year), you should lower your level goal. It's probably a good rule of thumb that you NOT set it to be much higher than the frequency you play at.

Quick math fun, if you play 50 games a year (nearly every week), at the same level goal,you'd hand out 300 XP as your base (multiplied by the PC's actual level).

That can be construed as "pretty skimpy" which is why as a GM, you'll have to negotiate your numbers to what is palatable for your group and for your own tastes. However, you may find, that if you're playing that often, slowing down the speed will have some benefits.

Now that you've done some math, and presumably are attempting to rein in the leveling speed, you've solved a portion of the advancement problem. By not handing out levels every sesssion (especially in a more frequent game), more game time is naturally going to progress between levels.

The other half of the problem is to let game time pass. If you play very frequently, the tendency is to pick up play as the "very next moment" since we last played" which is till fairly fresh in your mind. If you play infrequently, odds are good the GM has some game time pass between sessions, as he doesn't expect a "moments of your life" memory.

For a player, the inclination is to pick up where we last left and do more stuff. This rushes the pace of things, such that a lot gets done in a short time. And in D&D, getting stuff done gets you levels, and in short time, you're the king.

This can be fun, but it lacks verisimulitude. The trick then, is to set the pace such that time is allowed to pass, but not so much that the player misses opportunities.

Some DM's keep very close track of the passage of time, others don't. If you don't keep track of time at all, I recommend you start doing some basic tracking. Call the first game you start as year 0, and assume a 12 month calendar year just like ours. Then just note what month the game started in, and note what month it is as the start of each session.

Nextly, make time pass. Even in a highly magical society, assume a more medieval (or even 1800s) pace of things. Unlike today, the culture back then was more laid back. Things took time, and the people knew it. You couldn't get instant access to other people. Letters took time to deliver. Seasons impacted travel.

Here's some specific examples: Winter pretty much shuts down roads and mountain passes. Nobody goes to war in the winter (except Napoleon and he lost). This means that once you get to November, nobody wants to do a major journey or military campaign until the spring. There's no resources to support it.

This translates to "adventuring season" being between May and October. Which is a good run. By having travel time force the game clock, a few trips to the Dungeon, will eventually move the clock to Winter, and the PCs will have to wait for spring.

When the PCs get to a stable state, where that are not destitute, they've got new positions and enterprises, advance the clock between sessions. Let a year or two go by, tell them how "great" things were going until Plot Hook X reared its ugly head to threaten their interests. Players like hearing how successful they've been and will be vested in defeating the Plot Hook which threatens to take it all away.

It takes time for news to gather, and for enemies to gather strength. Let a few weeks go by as the adventurers hang out at the inn basking in the spoils of their last conquest. You may or may not "blow their money" in the style of conan (conan always started each adventurer broke and on he run, as he had wasted it on wine and women). The point is, nothing interesting can happen for a few weeks between sessions. This lets time pass. If you keep up a rapid day-by-day pace of enemy after enemy, it's equally unrealistic (if there were that many problems going on in such a short span, the village would have been overrun weeks before the PCs arrived).

In a game like Vampire, where the PCs are sort of supposed to be "ageless", ignore the default rules on how old a vampire is. Let each generation be a span of up to a hundred years. This lets a new vamp PC be minted in 1920, which can add some flavor at no cost in power.

For a real trip, start the PCs in the 1500s and play out snapshot sessions in 100 year intervals (until the present), letting them rise in some power before the "real game" begins. In a small group, you could even have players run the "children" of the other players creating a henchmen-like effect, with players having even more team-work due to the sire relationship.

To sum up, pace yourself on how much XP you hand out. At the minimum, do the math, based on your expectations and compare that to what you're actually handing out. In game, don't be afraid to have some time pass between sessions. Don't use it against the PCs, use it to add some flavor. By trying these methods, you should be able to avoid the PC who reaches 20th level in 3 game months, and instead get a PC who lives a full life and achieves much over a 10 year span of adventuring, and still has fight in him.

A while ago, I invented my Friend Classification System. It's a bit silly, but it sticks in people's brains, reprogramming them to look at their friends in a new way.

It all started with John. John was a friend of my other friends. When I first met him, I was over at a friend's place, playing video games. Apparently he was notorious for having smelly feet, so they wouldn't let him take his shoes off. And since all the seating was taken, he had to sit on the floor.

At that point, I mentioned that John must be a Class C friend. Good enough to be let into the house, but not allowed on the furniture.

The nickname stuck, and to this day, John's in my phone as Class C, though he has since moved up the ranks, which is in itself a funny story. The day I finally upgraded John to Class B, we were playing MageKnight Dungeons in the garage. I passed him my bucket of miniatures, which he then dropped, and a bunch got broken. He was of course apologetic and we jokingly bumped him back to Class C for the day.

Anyway, the point is that we have many kinds of friends, some closer than others. Some you see a lot, some infrequently. Some you'd call on when you need help, others not so much.

Here's my silly ranking system so you can rank your friends as they currently stand. Remember, their ranking isn't a negative thing, it's just describes their relationship to you

Class I: A new rank I just made up, it describes the people you know online, but not personally. Sure, you may know more about them as time goes on, but you don't actually personally know them.

Class C: a friend of a friend or aquaintence. A simple example is the guy you keep running into at your friend's parties. You both recognize each other, and can talk about something in common, but you're not going to invite him to a movie. A friend you invite to do something may ask if this person can come with, and you'll say yes.

Class B: you see this person fairly regularly, or at major events. But you don't share your private life details with them. They might help you move.

Class A: your best friends, people you do lots of stuff with. You tend to share what's going on in your life with them. They'll help you hide the body.


What does all this have to do with gaming? These are the people you are playing with. Some you know better than others.

I've met folks at a game shop who have invited me to their house to game on the first meeting. That's pretty trusting, especially without a Class A or Class B friend to vouch for me.

While it's a good trait to make friends easily, it's a good idea to temper that with getting to know people, and move them through the ranks, if you will.

This can help you build a gaming group of people you actually like and can trust. Life is too short to play with people you don't like.

Here's my methods for describing combat:

be familiar with the types of weapons involved in combat. Not an expert, just be aware that a short sword is more of a stabbing weapon, a longsword a slashing weapon. This will help in your descriptions (and for most swords, thrusts, jabs, slashes and hacks will be good enough verbs).

get a list of all the kinds of verbs to describe an attack. A thesaurus may help. For martial arts, know all the kinds of real attacks most schools teach is useful. One my other blog posts has such a list (as I posted one of the monk schools I wrote up, based on my own background). You don't need to be an expert, but just having a sense of how these weapons are used will help you describe attacks beyond "you hit him for 8 damage"

When a player makes an attack, describe each attack differently, using your newly upgrade vocabulary.

Don't overly describe the damage. Firstly, it gets cumbersome when the GM tries to get gruesome. Nextly, since damage in D&D is nebulous, you don't want to commit to a specific injury, lest the players try to lobby for special effects based on that injury. Additionally, combat is fast paced. Your descriptions should be as well, to invoke that feeling.

Since combat takes place in 2 5'x5' squares, there's plenty of room for side-stepping and moving and jumping, enough to explain a miss, besides just blocking it with a shield, or parrying with a weapon, be bouncing off his armor (which are also good explanations).

Here's some examples of what I tell players during their attacks:
"you jab at him, but he just barely sidesteps"
"he catches a grazing blow from your hammer"
"he deflects your attack with his sword, and readies to return the favor"
"your blade skips across his armor"

In all cases, keep it short, and choppy, just like combat itself.

Never use a description that adds more actual event or action that what happened mechanically. If your hammer attack can't knock somebody out of their current square, than don't describe it as "your hammer blow sends him flying across the room." Additionally, since you'll be describing how a PC avoids getting hit, you don't want to ascribe an action the PC didn't actually take, nor block him from his next action that he can legitimately make.

Using these tips will add flavor, without slowing down the game.

My last blog article justified the existence of magic shops. I'm going to look at the topic from the opposite.

First off, let's agree that a small community probably doesn't have a shop, as there is not enough demand or money to support it.

Nextly, let's agree that any magic shop is likely limited in its inventory. It is improbable that a shop could exist realistically, that had every item possible. It's even possible that all the magic shops in a region may still not cover all items (items may very likely have regional availability).

Those first two points bound the problem such that a PC should not expect to get whatever they want, whenever they want, just because they have the money. In short, if you are going to have magic shops, there are rational limits as to what they contain.

Let's cover the social barriers a magic shop would have to overcome.

A king might be leery of having unregulated magic items flowing through his kingdom. If he's not regulating them, he doesn't know what they are. If he doesn't know what they are, he doesn't know who has what items that could be a direct threat to him. That alone would encourage a king to restrict and regulate the flow of magical goods and services.

This means our magic shop has even less inventory, due to outlawing of certain products. It also means it can't buy or trade certain items, at least without permits and registrations.

All it takes to make this happen is a king of this mind-set (perhaps warned by a wizard advisor, who seeks to limit any threats to himself even). Then he sets up a regulatory board, maybe requiring a geas from people seeking a permit to posess, and things are rolling.

The church can also have a hand in things. In the real world, various religions considered charging interest on loans to be a sin, as the loaner was making profit, without doing work. At one point in history, the catholic church forced prices to be static on commodities, not yet being aware of the laws of supply and demand, nor the science of economics. It is entirely possible the church can condemn the use or ownership of certain items that it deems harmful to society.

Odds are good, the only things on the shelves of s magic shop would be low-threat items. Anything else would be black-market.

Lastly, let's consider the rogue element. Namely the 5 finger discount, referred to as shrinkage in the retail industry. A magic shop with rows of items on racks, particularly not behind a counter would be rife with stealing. New shop-lifting spells would have to be invented, because there don't seem to be any that can protect an entire store, not just single items. A building built for customers to walk in, would be a target for after-hours break-ins as well. Once again, requiring siginificant steps to protect against. It would take a high-level wizard to run such an establishment (which would justify the high value amount of gear he owns).

It may be possible that somebody is dealing in small quantities of items, sub-1000 GP perhaps. The risk isn't any greater than a jewelry store.

But larger stuff, is more likely to be black market, heavily regulated, or private transactions. All of it low inventory count.

Because you can easily protect that extra longsword +4 you're trying to sell. Not so easy is protecting a rack of wands, rods and staves, a shelf of armors, and rack of swords, a box of rings and a case of potions.