Mining Mythic Odysseys in Theros

Theros is a Magic the Gathering setting that made the leap to Dungeons and Dragons - a simple enough feat, given that the same company owns both games.

The setting itself is Greek Mythology, with the names changed (but sometimes not by much) to be 'original.'  But if you know Greek Mythology, then you can see the inspiration for many of the cards, and subsequently, the sourcebook.

When the card set was released, I was excited because recognizing allusions is something I enjoy.  After playing with the cards, I saw that the gods - legendary indestructible enchantment creatures - made for the perfect commander due to the difficulty in removing them (exiling is the simplest method, yet few cards exile enchantments).  They influenced my group and my deckbuilding - if I have a card that exiles enchantments in the color, I am running it, in case a god shows up.  I also built several decks with such cards as the commander: Athreos, Ephara, Erebos, Karametra, Keranos, and Thassa.  Purphoros is a key part of my Norin deck so dwells there.  Mogis, Phenax, and Xenagos still exist as decks, and will get eventual posts of their own.  I even had a plan for Heliod, but lacking Serra's Sanctum (and at $200+ I never will), I never built it.  The rest have been supporting pieces (except Pharika) in other decks.

Theros is the set that keeps on giving.  A set popular enough that the card game revisited it with new versions of all the gods that survived the first storyline, and Xenagos's replacement.

All that is background to my experience with the book version, Mythic Odysseys in Theros.  Last night, while my daughter browsed the local BAM for things to use Christmas gift cards on, I browsed through the book and am now actually considering buying it.  As of yet, the only WotC 5e hardback I have purchased is the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book, because I am way too fascinated in Saltmarsh through the ages and rulesets.  Tomb of Annihilation is on my short to-buy list, and now Mythic Odysseys joins it.

The book itself is more than just a sourcebook that recycles card art (but bigger!) and stats out cards.  It builds on the card text fictions. It provides additional races and magic items and spells for the 5e DnD game, all lifted from the cards.

Why it fascinates me, though, are all the random tables and maps.  Each god has an 'average' temple map, and a breakdown (through tables) of how to use it for good or bad, then some adventure hooks.  With each map being a full page and suitably different from the others.  Even shaving out all the Theros-specific stuff leaves lots of gameable material crying for use.

As an incurable homebrewer, this is why I like the book.  I doubt I'll ever run or play in a Theros campaign as is, but I will happily steal elements of the book for my home games!

MtG: Norin the Netdecked

Norin the Wary (decklist)

One of my most successful decks (judged solely by random people asking me about it and my label at the local game store as the Norin guy) stemmed from a thread at MTGSalvation.

Specifically, this masterpiece of a deck introduction by Gaka.  So yes, I netdecked.

For those unaware, netdecking is looking at refined decklists on the internet and copying them mostly or entirely card-for-card.  This doesn't guarantee victory for anyone, but some decks can effectively pilot themselves, so it can result in more victories.  Netdecking had (has?) a poor reputation because those doing so 'were uncreative,' preferring to win with known effective strategies, over their own personal designs.  

Anyhow, I netdecked Norin the Wary for Commander games, and it wasn't that I won as much as the deck worked and worked well. Lots of internal synergies and combinations to become greater than the sum of its parts.  

Most importantly, that Gaka thread explained WHY many cards are chosen or ignored.  I found the thread and built the deck back when it was only 30-ish pages, instead of the 120+ it is at today.  Even though Gaka no longer runs the thread, it has been taken over by someone as diligent, so Gaka's legacy lives on.

Those lessons were the best part of that thread, as they effectively taught me how to properly evaluate cards for a deck.  I still lean towards neat over best, but at least I now know the difference.  

For those unwilling to read all of it, the basic idea is to play Norin, and capitalize on his constant leaving and entering the battlefield.  Confusion in the Ranks and Genesis Chamber are probably the cards I most want to see when I play, so smart opponents kill these cards first.

At some point, the deck came apart for another red deck (I like monored - another sign of a filthy casual), but I recently rebuilt it.  The primer at MTGS has been discussing cards from recent sets, and I even went singles-shopping for some (and the best ones are $20-$40, so they were not purchased).

So Norin is back and likely to stay untouched, until I need some of the parts - or want to resurrect my Heartless Hidetsugu deck.  Given that two years had passed since I last tore down/built up decks, I don't see this happening any time soon.

See, I sold most of my cards, keeping enough to build and maintain only a small handful of decks, figuring if Commander is a game about single cards, my keeping more than one copy, or using the same card across multiple decks defeated the purpose.

It is too late to change that tune, as replacing the cards that I'd most likely float is prohibitively expensive.

MtG: Self-Analysis

 I spent the better part of 25 years buying Magic cards and playing Magic. If I close my eyes, I can still see the day Terry showed up for game night with a box of Revised Starter decks and encouraged us to try this new game.  Our whole group bought in, then off I went to Jump School.

We had far more free time than I anticipated at Jump School, so I made friends with a fellow student who had a car, we found a game store, and I started the cycle anew.  I distinctly recall seeing a card marked for $5 and scoffing, because who would pay real cash for a single card?

Little did I know what the future held (my personal record is $30 for a Mox Sapphire, which I then turned into $30 and some Underground Seas) with card prices.

Anyhow, through the years, various strategies and playstyles developed and with the explosion of the internet and hobby-related forums, those strategies (and more importantly decklists) grew collectively.

The result of all this is that I have the resources and knowledge to build solid decks for Commander and the more generic multiplayer 60-ish card formats the groups I am in play.  Note that this does not translate into being able to play them all equally well, but I know they are good, because friends borrow them regularly and then win.

My biggest playstyle flaw involves impatience and blue instants, specifically countermagic.  Used properly alongside blue draw spells (those I use mostly properly), a good blue deck has an immediate answer to any threat an opponent plays in the form of a counterspell.  Used improperly (how I typically pilot a deck, regardless of color), the countermagic may be in hand, but the mana is tapped out to play whatever.

That there, is my issue.  I enjoy doing things on MY turn, not maybe doing things on another player's turn.  Not only is it rude to interrupt people, but I want to PLAY MAGIC, which involves casting things on my turn.

In the end, I always have several decks on hand that kick tail when piloted by my more patient friends.

Which, honestly, is fine with me.  I only play just enough that my decks are a refreshing change of pace to an otherwise mostly static game state of known decks.  Plus, at this point, my friends know that most of my decks can win - sometimes in a funny manner - if played properly.

So we shuffle up and laugh as I lose to my own decks.

House Rules Part 2

Some more houserules for my games, although these have only rarely seen use.

Shields Shall Be Splintered! - as can be seen, this one I am able to source.  Another gaming blog, of course.  I love the flavor and the usefulness of this rule, yet it has yet to see use in the Ironguard campaign, mostly because most of the PCs don't use shields.  Enemies haven't used it because they have either been beasts or unintelligent undead.  I am confident that it will be used, and on that day it will be glorious. 

I Know A Guy - I have a source for this one, as well.  You'll note it has an impressive pedigree.  We have yet to use this one, as well, mostly because there aren't that many folks out in the borderlands where the Ironguard campaign is set.  I imagine this rule would see more play in my megadungeon campaign (currently on hiatus), which is centered around a megadungeon near the city of Skara Brae.  As cities are full of people, this seems a natural fit.

Alignment Matters - this one has no specific source, beyond the earlier editions of D&D and the fiction that inspired it (notably Pournelle's Three Hearts and Three Lions and Moorcock's Elric and Eternal Champion books).  In 5e, alignment is merely something you write on your character sheet and mostly ignore - but in the Ironguard campaign, it matters because the powers that be are locked in eternal wars between Law and Chaos, and Good and Evil.  The higher level the PCs attain, the more they become beacons and champions of their professed alignment, whether they like it or not.

I'm looking forward to the allies that task them and the enemies that hunt them down, expressly due to alignment.  Unlike the other houserules mentioned above, this one has seen some use in a minor fashion (beyond the overriding point of the Ironguard campaign - throwing down the Chaos temples to keep the borderlands for Law).  The PCs recently recovered a LG Sword named Glory.  Aside from speaking and sentience, Glory has the lovely ability of detecting the alignment of whomever holds it, and burning (like hot metal) the Evil ones.

A companion fighter had donned a Helmet of Alignment Change, switching to NE.  She then picked up Glory which burned to be let go.  And the dice exploded! 19 damage later (not quite enough to trigger death saves, but close), she let go and Glory was picked up by our Sorcerer (a LG PC) and told merely to repent and find a better wielder for it.  (That PC has a history of questionable ideas, that so far, the rest of the party has prevented from coming to fruition). 

I'd post the details of Glory, but they aren't yet set in stone.  I foresee it being given to the Castellan of Ironguard Keep to curry favor, honestly, so I may not have to set them.

That's all for now.

  

On Reading

I enjoy reading, and always have.

Starting with my older brother's comic books, then moving on to proper books: super-heroes, fantasy, science fiction, science fantasy, westerns, history, and other nonfiction.

These days, though, most of my reading is blogs and forums.  I almost said FB groups (I am a member of several D&D-related groups there), but I am both trying to wean myself of FB and don't know that FB meets my definition of reading, despite how long some posts are.

Anyhow, I read blogs and forums.  Not every day, or even every other day, but there are times I sit down and binge-read (which is cheaper and healthier than binge-drinking), following links and reading article series and entire forum threads.

Sometimes I participate with comments, but that is a rarity.  Which is different from FB, where I often comment, and occasionally get responded to (on rare occasion, my comments get responses from surviving creators of the earlier editions of D&D or published authors, which I find super exciting).  Usually I read and absorb, maybe save a document to the computer (a second step, as my online reading is mostly done on iPad), and then let the ideas percolate in my head, mixing with other thoughts.

Which is related to one of my favorite quotes: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” - Friedrich Neitzsche

It is related because that bit about the abyss drives what I do and do not read (or watch) - I firmly believe that nothing we come in contact with ever goes away.  We may consciously forget about it, but it lingers forever, affecting us in strange and subtle ways. 

But I'm not writing about philosophy (because then I'd be all over the Stoics, because it lines up neatly with my personal beliefs and Catholicism in general), I'm writing about reading.

The blogs and forums linked to the side are my most common haunts, although I drift to others as the links take me.  On occasion, those links take me to Amazon for a proper book, and then I come full circle.

So when it comes to gaming (or the fiction that I write that stays safely unpublished), you now know the source of the ideas.

Planning Process

Every DM has their own way of planning adventures.  For myself, it involves a rough idea, and then research.

For the next session, the Thursday night group, known collectively as THE Group, plan to follow a map of sorts found in a 70-year-old journal.  This map purportedly leads to an uninhabited dragon's lair, its treasures ripe for the plundering!  Or they were, 70 years ago.  

Still, something is there, or else the PCs would never have found the journal to begin with.

So now, the research begins.

I take what I already have: a sketchy map of the wilderness surrounding Ironguard Keep that I cooked up on Inkarnate and the journal-stated location, a fork in the River.  There is also a wandering monster table (complete with Revenant hunting the PCs), but that is extra.

The map suggests this location is several hexes to the north, through the Troll Hills, forested foothills of the X Mountains.  While I know they'll seek out the friendly werebear giant bee keeper for a meal and news, I don't yet know what other bits of interest THE Group will find.  

So it is to the blog d4 Caltrops I go.  Specifically the 100 hexes document there.  I reckon there is bound to be something among the Forest and Mountain hexes.

Victory! The Predator Becomes Prey, particularly the White Hart option, because it is creepy and perfect for a land growing more and more twisted by Chaos.  It has me thinking of something I read somewhere about carnivore deer spirits, so once I figure out where THOSE are, I'll be in good stead for an unHERD of encounter.  (I found them! In Echoes from Fomalhaut #6 - a fun zine if you like your science fantasy with a heavy dose of weird).

Anyhow, The Tonsured Traveler looks promising, as does A Forgotten Graveyard - though this may be more useful alongside some proper Barrow Mounds.  I'll try the mountain hexes before leaving the document to scour the site for the individual entries I know are there.

The Petrified Colossus might be turned to the Ozymandias reference I plan to work in, or the abandoned Iron Golem, so I'll pass for now.  The Mountains prove a bust for what is in my head, so now to scour the d4 Caltrops blog for additional Forest hexes.  

The Burbling Ford and the Moss Green Grotto look good, especially for nearer the River (because THE Group will most likely follow it north and west). Old Honey-Paws!  I'll need to add some references to him to the rumor table, and maybe the beekeeper knows him.  The Grandfather Tree, The Troll's Table, an Island in the Sky, and The Black Spring round things out to provide several options that the PCs may encounter.   May being the operative word, because depending on how the evening goes, the PCs might miss some of them.  The pain and pleasure of running a sandbox.

I'm tempted to use the Trail-Marker Tree, but my players will suspect it to be a portal or gate of some sort, and they wouldn't be wrong.  So it will have to be saved for another day, perhaps when it becomes necessary to deal with the Seelie and/or Unseelie Courts.  Time will tell.

Just reading through the options has my imagination in overdrive, but jamming everything together ruins it all.  So A Hoard of Headstones can be saved for the Forgotten Graveyard and Barrow Mounds plan.  The Wraithweald, as well.  I'm confident if we get to play enough, THE Group will find these places and be amazed and or scared or both. So I'll add this paragraph to my 'loose ideas' document and follow through on it later.

With a rough idea of the journey ready, I'll lay out particulars in my notebook and shared docs, and play it out on a Thursday.  Eventually, though, the PCs will reach the lair, and there had best be something worth the journey!  

I already know the lair will be flooded to varying degrees, with much of the wyrm's horde lost to time, water, and other looters.  Still, some treasures remain.  If nothing else, a Coin Golem lies in a watery cave, shining in the PCs' torchlight.  I'm not yet sure what a Coin Golem is, but it seems like good fun, maybe with a transmuting touch or spitting coins as missiles.  All I know for sure is that there will not be a sentient sword present, as THE Group already have one that they are growing to dislike (and cannot even properly use, because alignment matters in this campaign).

For the record, the PCs that currently make up THE Group are 4th level across the board, (a Cleric, a Warlock, a Sorcerer, and a Barbarian, with assorted NPCs adventuring with them) and they already know the wyrm that laired here is long dead and reduced to a massive skeleton sheltering a cave (technically, the cave houses the Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom, but the players may not know that). 

The PCs' level is somewhat important, because it suggests what makes for a good encounter - challenging, but neither too difficult nor too simple.  Being incredibly lazy, I'll just pick some thematically fitting creatures and throw them into the mix: Water Weird, Water Elemental, Mudmen, certain Mephits, Kelpies, Gray Ooze, Sprites.  It's a start - more to talk with needs to be added, a Water Naga, perhaps.

In addition to their level, I need to keep magic items in mind, especially the potion that can foul a large water source (also from d4 Caltrops), so I need to be careful about describing the lair - too much connectivity means the surrounding water sources are dead, and I can't have that.   Although, that potion plus latent chaos magic tainting the area means all sorts of self-inflicted nastiness for the PCs.  

I may even have to bust out the Monster Alphabet if Ford's Fairies doesn't have anything I can use.  The Monster Manual is a last resort.

The last things I need are the lair map and keying it with monster and treasure locations.  That and the remaining accessible treasure and the remaining buried-deep-in-mud treasure, itself.  There will assuredly be enough overall for THE Group to reach level 5, because I want to see fireballs with cascading dice truly explode.  More weird magic items - because they don't have enough already.

(That being another houserule, XP comes from GP acquired adventuring - I can already guess my next post).

So that is it, my thought process on designing 'an adventure' for my D&D game.  

I hope it proves useful.

House Rules, Part 1

Most gaming groups have at least some houserules, and mine is no exception. 

The three rules that see the most use unsurprisingly involve dice.

First up involves exploding or cascading dice.  We've only used this for damage, so far, but have briefly discussed using it for healing rolls, as well.  For those unaware, exploding or cascading dice is nothing more than rerolling and adding to max rolls.

For example, a longsword deals 1d8 damage, and the player rolls an 8, that means they roll again, and if another 8 turns up, well, it keeps going.  So our table won't use average damage, because that reduces dice rolling, and no one wants that.  Spells with more dice rolls are preferred, because they provide more chances for explosions, or better yet, multiple explosions.  

Since implementing this rule, our longest run is 5 rolls, which killed an enemy caster before its initiative even came up.  Another caster fell to the multiple exploding dice in a Guiding Bolt, where 3 of the 4d6s came up 6.  

Because fair is fair, bad guys get to be on the giving end as well as the receiving end of the exploding dice.  An owlbear eviscerated a bard (RIP Avalon of the Hurdy-Gurdy) with them.  Traps, poisons, and anything else that may cause damage explode as well.  A Neutral Evil PC grasped a LG sword, and the resulting exploding dice nearly killed that PC (because alignment also matters in my game, which is another post).

Each dice explosion is met with cheers and laughter, and occasionally fitting .gifs when the dice prove fatal.  d4s and d6s explode the most. 

The second houserule is tied to the exploding dice, and it is simply that a critical hit doesn't deal double damage, it lets you roll normal damage twice, and then add your bonus.  Why? Because the allure of exploding dice is a strong one.

Our third and final rule involves the d30.  I picked up several at one point, and wanted to see them used in play.  So once per player, per session, a d30 can substitute for any die roll involving damage, healing, a saving throw, an attack, or a skill check.  So far, it has only been used for saves and damage.  As of yet, it has not exploded, but one day it WILL, and the laughter will be loud and long.

Can these rules make a game swingy and kill off a PC or bad guy unexpectedly? Yup, they certainly can.  So far, though, none of my players have complained.

Note that I created none of these rules, instead taking them from various sources on the internet - don't ask from where.  I will say that after typing 'exploding' as much as I have, I now prefer 'cascading,' and not just because it is also a favorite MtG mechanic.  Cascade and cascading just feel more positive and exciting than explode.  The power of connotations.

Third Time's the Charm!

 Hail and well met, fellow adventurers!

This makes the third, and hopefully final, start of Thalian Musings.  The first was December 2007.  The next 2011ish.  And number three is today.  This time around, the goal is just to write about gaming.

And by gaming, I mean Dungeons and Dragons, and sometimes, Magic the Gathering.  I play other games, and own several more, but D&D and MtG are what I am most likely to be playing, so what I am most likely to write about.  

There are other games in the house I enjoy or would enjoy playing: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy box set, GURPS proper, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Catalyst Games' Battletech box sets, Munchkin, Dungeon (the good old one), Carcassone, and when it ships, the new Twilight 2000 box set - I backed the kickstarter.  

This list doesn't even touch all the games I own as pdfs only.  Suffice it to say, it is way too many, but it all provides grand idea fodder for the games I may or do run.

Speaking of games I run, I am running a D&D 5e (ish - I love houserules and a homebrewish world) game on Thursday nights.  It started as a mashup between the venerable B2 and B5, with a healthy dose of blog and forum cullings, as well as the healthy pdf collection mentioned above.  We play on Discord and enjoy ourselves.  The players are former students from my days as a high school teacher, so I am the old man.  

We opted for 5e, because it is what they are most familiar with (and two run 5eish games of their own).  Before COVID, I ran an in-person B/Xish megadungeon for the current crew plus more. I think we had 12 people at its height.  Now it is me and 4 players - a good number.

In addition to B/X and 5e, I have enough books to run good old AD&D, as well, but so far, that hasn't happened.  So I mine the books for ideas.

Beyond that Thursday night 5e game, a friend has a standing MtG Commander game every Saturday that I attend once or twice a quarter.  I sold most of my cards off, and even with what I have, the joy of deckbuilding and sifting through cards quickly becomes a chore.

tl;dr - I'm back, hopefully for good, and hopefully focused on gaming.