DoMT: Talons and Ruin

A slow-rolling series of how the Deck of Many Things works in my homebrew world of Ironguard.  (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Infuryana is an ancient red hellkite, spawned in the chaotic fire and madness at the beginning of the time, the template from which all stories of dragongreed (and other dragons) come.  Even Tiamat and Bahamut are respectful in her presence.

But Loki wasn't.  His bargain with her was that based on the cards, her hoard would increase significantly.  And over the centuries, it has.  He neglected to tell her that her hoard may shrink as well, as the cards required.  

She has vowed to deal with Loki eventually.

Talons:  All magic items you possess disappear, permanently.

Such items, be they on the person, loaned to another, or hidden away, immediately disappear, fading into nothingness, to reappear in the horde of Infuryana.  Observant card drawers have noted a rumbling laughter rolling through the air as their treasures disappear.  This laughter is Infuryana's gloating at her newfound loot.

Ruin: Immediately lose all wealth and real property.  (nonmagical wealth is specified later in the description.)

This card, too, is accompanied by deep peals of laughter, as Infuryana's horde increases by the amount the drawer has lost.  Granted, this only applies to monetary wealth and portable trade goods.  Property such as land and buildings suffer a disaster of some sort (infuriating the various deities of nature and specific places besides).  

Recovering lost wealth is ... not exactly impossible, but certainly improbable.  Other cards in the Deck of Many Things may recover, or at least replace the lost goods.  Wishes, divine boons from certain deities, and DM fiat also return treasured things.

In theory, diligent PCs could discover the location of Infuryana's lair, and then beard the hellkite in its den, but that is considered folly by even the most jaded treasure hunters and explorers.

Still, the glory of being the ones who broke the Deck of Many Things is alluring to some.

Crowdsourcing Faith

The other day, in my post about using College Football Teams as the basis for Cleric religions, I half-joked about the new deities Avrae and Ikea, then hit FB to crowdsource more in that vein.  As can be imagined, it was a popular topic in both groups I posted in (Dungeon Master Resources and D&D DMs Only).

So thank you to all that participated, to include the honest individual stating that they would avoid a game that used such deities.

One of the responses sent me to a pair of blog posts by the Angry GM: Conflicted Beliefs: Building a Perfect Five God Mythology for D&D | The Angry GM and Conflicted Beliefs: Fluffy Story Bulls$&% | The Angry GM.  Both are worth reading if you’re serious about building your own pantheon.

A few kind folks shared their homemade pantheons, and one even went so far as to provide some creation myths and necessary domains.  While I was initially planning to politely ignore the bit about domains, it occurred to me that having them allows me to focus my researches.

When it is all said and done, several recurring themes appeared: Disney, Uber and Lyft, and Amazon.  Between this and my recent perusal of the game iHunt, I hit upon the following plan: to make full use of the panoply of apps out there and to avoid the easy pickings of using political figures/policies in the main pantheon (although it can be easily argued that such figures would be saints and champions of various deities).

Typing this up, I realize that it is American-centric.  It happens.

I present to you the Meme Pantheon.   Clerics (and others) praying to these deities first reach a Cosmic Call Center, where they are put through to the proper extension.  Clerics with some levels already know the proper extensions. There is but one holy set of scriptures, contained within the Book of Faces.  Each temple holds a copy of the Book of Faces, and the (not-so-)faithful carry a copy with them.

Holy Symbols of each faith are the brand symbols, worn on chains and/or tattooed to body parts.

Alexa - Goddess of Servants

Amazon - a demigod of delivery and messages and couriers 

Avrae - Goddess of Chance

BigBox - known variously as WalMart, Target, and other names; once known as KMart, but that aspect died in the godswar.

Bowie - genderless Deity of Change and Music

Caffeine - God of Inspiration and Relief

Contractor - God of War and Ill-Gotten Gains

Covid - God of Disease, Fear, and Ignorance

Discord - God of Communication

Disney - God of Illusion, Entertainment

Dyson - God of Winds and Cartographers

Emoji - Deity of Symbolism and Misunderstandings

Evian - Goddess of Water

Gig - God of Short-term Jobs; favored by adventurers and mercenaries

Ikea - Goddess of Creation

Kellogg - God of the Harvest and Grain, attended by three faithful servants named Snap, Crackle, and Pop

Montsanto - God of deceit, greed, and the destruction of nature

Nestle - God of Drought, Rain, and Chocolate

Nicotine - Goddess of Diets, Appearance, and Anxiety

Petroleum - God of Energy (slowly dying as he is worshipped more and more)

Propaganda - Goddess of Truth

Twitter - Goddess of the People

Uber and Lyft - sibling demigods of travel, transit, and pilgrimages

Viagra - Goddess of Insecurity, Fertility, and ; loyally served by Tindr, Grindr, Zoosk, Eharmony, and others.

WHO - God of Healing

Wikipedia - Goddess of Information and Rumor

Zippo – God of Fire

Of course, the list can be refined, both with names and which domains they represent.  Still, I think it can be fun, and at least some will find their way into my homebrew world.  If I get to play a cleric and am offered the opportunity to choose my own religion, it is bound to be one of these (because Ecnep, Voice of Pmurt the Orange has been played and died by sentient pumpkin.  I'm not even lying.)

DoMT: Knight and Rogue

A slow-rolling series of how the Deck of Many Things works in my homebrew world of Ironguard.  (Part 1, Part 2, Part 4)

There is a temptation to tie Knight in with Throne, but for now, they will fall under two separate posts.

Knight: gain the service of a 4th level fighter.

When Ser James 'Jamie' Blackthorn cut a deal for immortality and travel, this was not his intent, but it is what he has.  Over the centuries, he has served dozens of masters and mistresses, primarily adventuring sorts, and has visited cities before they were ruins, tombs and dungeons when they were new, and mountains before they were rolling hills.

So he is a jaded bastard who has been everywhere and seen everything.  This makes him a sarcastic font of information, who may or may not volunteer knowledge, depending on how well he likes his current master or mistress.  

Despite his vast experience, Ser Jamie never mechanically proceeds past the fourth level.  

When active, he makes it a point to check up on his known and suspected heirs while traveling, going so far as to steer his master/mistress in their direction.  On the rare occasion that an heir draws his card, Ser Jamie is overjoyed, and has been known to shower that lucky soul with locations of hidden treasures (that Ser Jamie may have hidden away himself), as well as useful advice.  There is a reason that certain upstart kingdoms lasted as long as they did - Ser Jamie was the voice in the ear of the King.

If slain, dismissed, or the current master/mistress is slain, Ser Jamie awakens/appears in his chambers at the Keep of the Throne, holding and wearing whatever he had when he left.  Once there he passes time playing chess with Steward, drinking wine, and writing his never-ending memoirs until the card is drawn again.  

At that point, Ser Jamie is whisked away, wearing and carrying whatever he had at the time the card was drawn.  Tales note that several times, he has arrived naked, the Card having been drawn while he was bathing.

Rogue: one of your friends turns against you. Nothing less than a wish or divine intervention can turn the traitor back - which suggests that if the Rogue is slain, they will rise as undead or otherwise return to haunt the Card drawer.

DM Note: at no point will Rogue turn Ser Jamie of the Knight card, STEWARD of the Throne card, nor any PC against the card drawer.  This leaves a wide range of meek and mighty NPCs at the DM's disposal, however.  That said, the Card prefers to turn those with some measure of power against the PC, if only to ensure grief.  It will not hesitate to use family, if that is the best choice.

This card is powered by the unnamed deity of lies and treachery and narcissism, sometimes referred to in whispers as the forty-fifth.  When drawn, a cold chill and mild electric shock passes through the drawer as the magic of the Rogue card examines the drawer's being to decide who best to turn against them.

At this point, the Rogue realizes that it is card drawer who is the cause of ALL the Rogue's woes.  The magic bound within the card nurses the fears and suspicions until what begins as a smear campaign becomes outright attempts at assassination.  If confronted, the Rogue attacks the card drawer in a blind rage.

On occasion, the Rogue falls in league with the Fiend of the Flames card, and then life turns ugly for the poor fool that drew both cards.

DoMT: Donjon and The Void

A slow-rolling series of how the Deck of Many Things works in my homebrew world of Ironguard.  (Part 1, Part 3, Part 4)

Donjon:  You are imprisoned. You disappear and become entombed in a state of suspended animation in an extradimensional sphere.  Everything you were wearing and carrying stays behind in the space you occupied when you disappeared.  You remain imprisoned until you are found and removed from the sphere.  You cannot be located by any divination magic, but a wish spell can reveal the location of your prison.  You draw no more cards.

All this time, I thought it was just like the Imprisonment spell, itself a reference to the Dying Earth story Cugel the Clever.  As for the spell - I must say that I far prefer the AD&D version of Imprisonment.  (Both a summary of Cugel the Clever and the AD&D version of the spell are HERE).  Regardless, the 5e rules are rather... tame.  Leaving behind the gear and belongings means that some tables will never bother with a search, because the replacement PC will get most of the last one's gear, anyhow.  

So much digression to say that this card will see change.

Dragon Isle (so named due to its shape - an open-mouthed dragon's head) is lost to modern navigators, as is the ruined settlement upon it.  One building that stands strangely intact is the Dragonseye Beacon - a lighthouse rising up from where an eye would be if the Isle would be viewed from above.  Under the right conditions, it is said that the Beacon can still be seen and followed into the decaying harbor of nameless ruins from which it rises.

Within Dragoneye Beacon dwells the Keeper.  Another mortal bargaining for immortality with Loki, the Keeper now guards those imprisoned by the Donjon card.  Deep beneath Dragon Isle, deeper than the caves that are said to run under it, teeming with darkness, water, treasure, and horror, lie the hundreds of spheres imprisoning the unlucky fools that drew this card.

If found and bargained with, the Keeper can call forth a specific being's sphere, allowing freedom.  

Of course, what the Keeper may want in trade for such a service is unknown.

The Void: Body functions, but soul is trapped elsewhere.  

Dao are exemplars of greed and power, rivaling dragons in the hoarding of wealth.  When Loki offered the Dao Sultan Haris al-Sijan a chance at becoming a private jailer of sorts in exchange for gems, Haris gladly accepted.  

Since that time, whenever The Void is drawn, the stolen soul becomes a large, pampel-cut ruby, appearing on a cushion near the throne of Haris al-Sijan.  These soul rubies glow with their own inner light, and upon close inspection, a humanoid shadow can be seen within.  The Sultan has these soul rubies affixed to gold chains, and he wears them as proof of his might.  

A pampel-cut gem. 

On rare occasions, someone has been freed from their gem, and this freedom comes at the cost of negotiations and deals between the Dao Sultan and the card-drawer's allies.  

Those freed return to their home plane and tend to embrace life to the fullest, having seen what missing it is like.

It is said the half-elf sage Anacharsis in the city of Skara Brae has spent the last two centuries collecting tales of those who have been affected by drawing from the Deck of Many Things, and among those tales are the location of Sultan Haris al-Sijan's palace at the intersection of Carceri and the Plane of Elemental Earth.

The bodies of those that draw the Void must be kept alive, and are effectively in a deep coma, from which only the return of the soul can waken.  Given lack of care, these bodies die, leaving the soul forever trapped in its ruby.  That said, there are whispers of great-great-great-grandchildren still tending to an ancestor's body, waiting patiently for the soul's return.  Perhaps Anacharsis can provide details.

Note that the Vizier card (or perhaps consulting with Heimdall, the Far-Seeing) can provide the location of people trapped by both Donjon and the Void.

Heimdall, himself.

Hexcrawling Youtube

Maybe a month ago, I began compiling hexcrawl resources on an irregularly-edited post.  Missing from it are YouTube videos.  This post addresses that.

A rather simplistic hexmap, source unknown.

I have given in to YouTube; typically, I am not a fan of YouTube gaming things, because I cannot watch them in meetings that are really just conversations between two people with mandatory attendance for the rest of the staff.  Despite this, there are several DnD-related channels and videos.

In today's edition, we look at various hexcrawl videos.  Not addressed are various videos on Sandboxes, a related term.

Bandit's Keep shares Building a Hexcrawl.

Dungeoncraft offers How to Design a Hex Crawl.

Matt Finch  RPG Studio interviews Bill Webb in the episode How to Run a Hexcrawl.

WebDM runs a two-part hexcrawl-related series: part 1 and part 2.

Bardic College provides Advanced Hexcrawling Kung Fu: Techniques and Tools.

Hexed Press has a variety of videos, including How to Play through a Hexcrawl, Designing a Random Encounter System for your Hexcrawl, Prepping Your Hexmap for a Hexcrawl Campaign, and a Dungeon Master's Intro to Running a Hexcrawl.

It appears that Hexed Press is a prolific hexcrawl video maker; Hexcrawl Tools: d30 Sandbox Companion part 1 and part 2.

GFC's DnD posted How to Hexcrawl.

For now, here is the search I ran on youtube.  Most of the above are there, plus a few more, if 105 minus the above is a few.

Is there overlap across these videos? Assuredly.  Is it still worth watching them all? Also yes, if only to learn or better understand hexcrawls, or at least discover new resources for your own games.

Latest edit: 11/7/21

MtG Monday: The Forgotten Realms Set

It's been some time since my last MtG Monday post.  It has been almost as long since my last game of Magic, in person or on Arena.

Inevitability exists in many circumstances, to include my buying a bundle of the Forgotten Realms set of Magic cards.  While the cards intrigued me, it was the promise of the d20 that sealed the deal, as it were.

Isn't it pretty?  Below it towers over some of my other d20s, but not the d30.

Opening the packs, I know I didn't break even, monetarily, but I'm not all that concerned about doing so, because I got some neat cards, to include a few I want to eventually jam into a Commander Deck or two.  That is the allure of packs, though, the rush from opening one, the sound of the foil tearing, the smell of the ink, and the crush of disappointment as you realize the Rare or Mythic is shitty draft chaff or worse.  Sometimes, though, you win the lottery and open a card that has actual value of $5 or more.  For me, that was one card out of the ten in the bundle.

Mordenkainen.

I know - Mordenkainen is a staple of the Greyhawk universe (as his biography attests).  Yet WotC brought him to a new generation of gamers (but not his Disjunction, that needs to be houseruled back into games - and it should be), first in the adventure Curse of Strahd in 2016, and then with the hardback Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes in 2018.  

So it was inevitable that he end up in the Forgotten Realms.  Maybe next set will take us back to Greyhawk, with Mordenkainen leading the way.  I doubt it, but a man can dream.

A card that had to be included in this set, given its title.

Modal spells (cards that provide options, like above) are a big deal in Magic the Gathering, especially when you are trying to keep your deck to the minimum allowed amount of cards due to math.  There are several modal spells in this set, of which I ended up with five: You Come to the Gnoll Camp, You See a Guard Approach, You Find the Villain's Lair, You Find a Cursed Idol, and You Happen on a Glade.  These card titles suggest demand some means to turn them into a random events table, kind of like random encounters, but instead of dicing for them, you shuffle up and draw one.  The biggest hurdle is how few there are -11, if my math is right.

I would need to buy the others, which is easily done, but they are so cheap that I would inevitably buy other cards from the set, if only to get a reasonable order of $20 or so. It will be simple, as WotC did a fine job in choosing which DnDisms to place in the set.  

Chiefly, though, I would buy Froghemoth, because Froghemoth.  Plus, I am a firm believer in keeping opposing graveyards empty, and Froghemoth lends itself to this belief.  

Inevitably, I will play MtG again, but I really can't say when, or if I will be bothered to actually use any of these cards in the decks.

 

DoMT: Introduction and Flames

I've written before about how the Deck of Many Things creates stories for sandbox games.  Now I would like to explore this theory more in-depth, by providing a homebrew history of the Deck of Many Things, then detailing a card or two with each post, and how it fits in to my game world as a whole.

To prepare this series, I spent some time comparing the DoMT between rulesets: 3.5e and 5e.  Both hew close to the original from AD&D, but wow, does the 5e version break down specifically how each card works.  

I'll be using the 5e rules for this series, but will likely mix and match rulings to better fit my game.  (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Basically, the DoMT was crafted by Loki to embody the lyrics of Tom Waits, who said, 'the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.'  Along the way, the DoMT spreads Chaos throughout the planes, as it forces those bound to it to act in rather specific ways.

Flames - Enmity between you and an Outsider. 

The specific contract between Loki and Etrigan is unknown to mortals, but it stings the devil enough that when Flames is drawn from the Deck of Many Things, Etrigan takes special delight in ruining the mortal drawing the card, if only because Etrigan cannot affect Loki even if it wanted to - and he dearly wants to.

So with Loki unavailable, the poor fool drawing Flames is a suitable replacement.

Initially, Etrigan sends cultists and agents to learn about the card-drawer and regular companions - with the goal being to ruin his life, not end it.  Ending the life and ruining the soul comes later.  

With time, Etrigan sends potent devils and sublieutenants to ruin the card-drawer.  These agents are under strict orders to speak before and during combat.  Specifically, they tell all within earshot that they are doing what they are doing because of the card drawer.  

The final fight between Etrigan and the card drawer has so far resulted in the death and dissolution of several world-class heroes through the ages.  The truth is, though, that most often the card drawer dies to a minion of Etrigan.

At the table, this means that that - like it or not - there are attacks aimed at the card drawer every other session, with evidence of other mischief designed to ruin the reputation and life of the card drawer during the in-between sessions.  All told, drawing Flames results in Etrigan's ire being seen and growing as the card drawer foils attempts on his life and reputation until the final battle.

Note that whether or not the DM embraces Etrigan's namesake and only speaks in rhyme is very much table dependent.  That said, I will do my best to speak in such a manner.