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Traits of Exotic d20 Substitutes pt 2: The Slightly Strange

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in D&D / Pathfinder, Game Mastering, Mike, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, PCs, Rules & Mechanics, The End Of The Rainbow, House-Rules, Metagaming & Metagame Theory, All Genres on Oct.28, 2025

Lots of die configurations can substitute for a d20, or for 3d6. This article looks at some of the more unusual. Part 2 of 3.

The image of the balance is by Anna Varsányi from Pixabay. I’ve changed it’s balance, added a load of dice, and changed the background color.

I made the time-out logo from two images in combination: The relaxing man photo is by Frauke Riether and the clock face (which was used as inspiration for the text rendering) Image was provided by OpenClipart-Vectors, both sourced from Pixabay.

Progress on writing this post has been a lot slower per word than I was expecting. That’s partly down to the attention to detail, partly it’s the complexity of the subject, partly its’ my refusal to do a half-arsed job, but mostly it’s the intensity of focus and concentration.

I can get about 2/3 of the way through an analysis – at which point my brain is fried. I need 30-90 minutes of recuperation before I’m ready to go again – but a part of that second session is refreshing my recollection of the results so far, in minute detail. With that taken into account, it’s two equal servings per entry.

On top of all that, there have been a couple of bonus entries added to the list along the way, so even though it only contains half the number of analyses so far, in word length this part seems fairly comparable to the first.

The upshot of all of this is that what was originally intended to be one quick post is taking 3-4 times as long as expected, and so the content has now been subdivided into three parts.

Here’s the revised table of contents:

Part 1: The Standards & Mildly Exotic:

4d6: The Methodology Demonstration

d20: The Yardstick

Boring Workaround #1: 10 x (d2-1) +d10

Boring Workaround #2: 5 x (d4-1) + d5

3d6: The Standard

Exotic Choice #1: 2d10

Exotic Choice #2: d8+d12

Exotic Choice #3: 2d4+d12

Part 2: The Slightly Strange

Exotic Choice #4: 2d6+d8

Exotic Choice #5: d10+d12-1

Exotic Choice #6: 2d8+d6-2

BONUS EXTRA: Exotic Choice #6a: 3d8-3

Exotic Choice #7: d4+d6+d12-2

BONUS EXTRA: Exotic Choice #7a: d4+d8+d10-2

Part 3: The Really Weird

Exotic Choice #8: d4 x d6 – d4

Exotic Choice #9: d30+1-d10

Exotic Choice #10: 5d4 / d5

Exotic Choice #11: (3d6+2) / d4

BONUS EXTRA: Exotic Choice #11a: (d6 x 2d5) / d3

Exotic Choice #12: (4d10 / 2) -d2 +1

Summary of available d20 substitutes

Summary of available 3d6 substitutes

Exotic Choice #4: 2d6+d8 (vs 2d4+d12)

We start this post with a die combination that wasn’t even on my radar until I got into the last offering of part 1.

And isn’t THAT interesting! It’s a proper dumbbell curve! So much so that I had to generate a second chart…

Notice that I’ve applied a -1 modifier to the 2d6+d8 curve to get it to align with the 3d6 curve.

If you had asked me before I wrote last week’s post, this is exactly what I would have expected to see from 2d6+d8 – but it’s also exactly what I expected to see from 2d4+d12, and you only have to look at the first of the graphs above to see how that worked out last time…!

Let’s dig into the specifics.

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum 3
Maximum 20
Average 11.5

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

1% is just below 4 and 19, in fact that are so close that I’m going to round them down to include them. so 3-4 and 19-20.

The 3% Threshold

3% is about 2/3 of the way between 5 and 6 on the low side and 1/3 of the way between 17-18 on the high side. So 5 and 18 are in this zone, everything else is not.

The 5% Threshold

Results of 7 and 16 are higher than this threshold by enough that there is a clear separation. So 6 and 17 are in this zone, while 7 through 16 are outside it.

The 10% Threshold

This falls between 9 and 10 on the low side and 13 and 14 on the high. So 7-9 and 14-16 are in this zone.

The 15% Threshold

No result gets this high, So 10-13 is below this threshold in the peak probability zone.

Four results in the peak probability range, 3 to either side of it at 5-10% probability, and every result outside of that is less than 5% likely. In fact, 3 and 20 are so unlikely that the effective range of this roll is 4-19, and 4 and 19 themselves are barely more than 1% – so for most practical purposes, the effective range is 5-18.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

As usual, I’m going to start by breaking up the range of results and seeing what the total probability is across that range.

Range Of Results

20-3=17, plus 1 for 3 itself, is a range of 18 results. As noted above, the effective range is 4 results smaller than this, or 14 results.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

11.5 – 3 = 8.5 (effectively 6.5)
20-11.5 = 8.5 (effectively also 6.5)

The probability curve is symmetrical.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 x 8.5 is 2.8333. Adding the minimum back puts the 1/3 results mark at 5.8333.

So the low-results zone contains 3, 4, and 5.

These have a total probability of 3.47%

Six out of 10 of these results will be a 5, three out of 10 will be a 4, and 1 in ten will be a 3.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 x 8.5 is 5.6666; adding the minimum marks this band as containing 6, 7 and 8. They have a total probability of 19.44 – 3.47 = 15.97%, so this band is 4.6 times as likely to contain the results of a die roll than the lowest bracket.

The Lower Core

That defines the lower core as 9, 10, and 11, with a total probability of 50 – 19.44 = 30.56%, almost twice as likely as the middle band.

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

Since the roll is symmetrical in probability, this is the same size as the lower core, 30.56% and results 12, 13, and 14.

If you combine the lower and upper cores, you find that 9-14 will result more than 61% of the time!

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

This will contain 15, 16, and 17, and will again hold 15.97% of the outcomes.

The Lofty Outcomes

Rolling really well will only happen 3.47% of the time, and will yield outcomes of 18, 19, and 20 when it does – with 18 being 6 in ten of the results.

2d6+d8 (vs 3d6):

03-05: 3.47% (03-05 4.63%)
06-08: 15.97% (06-08 21.3%)
09-11: 30.56% (09-10 24.07%)
12-14: 30.56% (11-12 24.07%)
15-17: 15.97% (13-15 21.3%)
18-20: 3.47% (16-18 4.63%)

I don’t know about you, but I find these numbers really interesting. The low results are not stretched in span to make room for the extra results at the top, at all – but they are even less likely to be the outcome.

The lower middle also isn’t stretched at all – but the probability total is a lot lower.

All the stretching happens at the very top of the probability curve, the most likely results – instead of a core only stretching to 12, it now continues all the way to 14.

What’s more, the total chance of those middle results occurring is significantly higher than in the case of 3d6. So 2d6+d8 manages to be wider, flatter, AND steeper than 3d6!

This, of course, is only putting some numbers on the observations that could be made just from studying the second probability chart above.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

Okay, so let’s slice up the 100% of outcomes into 5 bands of equal probability, in sequence of result. This is always an informative analysis!

The Lowest 20%

The lowest 20% band lands just after a result of 8, so this band contains results from 3-8.

Second Lowest 20%

We find the 40% probability total just after a result of 10 – so this entire zone consists of 9 and 10.

The Middle 20%

60% is reached just before 12, so this entire band is just one result: 11.

Second-Highest 20%

The 80% mark is just below 14, in fact it’s so close that 14 can be reasonably included. So this band is 12-14.

Highest 20%

And that leaves the 15-20 band as ‘rolling high’ with this die configuration.

As usual, I’ll now look at these results another way, dividing the peak probability into low rolls, medium rolls, and high rolls.

Peak Probability

Peak probability is shared by both results 11 and 12, and is 11.11% in both cases.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

1/3 x 11.11% is 3.7033%, which is just above a 6 result. So 3-6, a span of 4 results, is at or below this threshold, and this is matched by 17-20 on the high side.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 x 11.11% is 7.4066%, which is below 8. So this is a span of 2 results – a little smaller than the first span, indicating that the sides of this curve are indeed steeper.

That, of course, means the 9-15 span is at the top of the probability curve, a span of 7 results In fact, this span accounts for 100% – 2 x (11.11) = 77.78% of the outcomes.

2d6+d8:

00-20%: 3-8 (span 6)
21-40%: 9-10 (span 2)
41-60%: 11 (span 1)
61-80%: 12-14 (span 3)
81-100%: 15-20 (span 6)

< 1/3 peak probability: 3-6 (span 4)
1/3 – 2/3 peak probability: 7-8 (span 2)
2/3 – peak – 2/3 peak: 9-15 (span 7)
2/3 – 1/3 peak probability: 16-17 (span 2)
< 1/3 peak probability: 18-20 (span 3)

I’ve reformatted the second table to be more like the first because I think it might be just a little clearer. And I’ve started noting the results spans because that highlights some interesting anomalies.

Summary Of Results

You don’t have to look very hard at the first chart to see that 2d6+d8 is biased high relative to d8+d12 and biased slightly low relative to 2d4+d12. The second chart shows that it’s also biased high by a whole integer of result relative to a 3d6 roll.

For me, it’s that second probability curve that really tells the story. The 3 and 20 results are so unlikely they may as well not be there – so what we have, effectively, is a 3d6+1 curve that is significantly flatter, more d20-like, in a very wide range of the middle results.

When To Use This Substitute

As a replacement for a d20 roll, I wouldn’t use this at all. In every measure that counts, there are better options already listed, especially 3d6+1.

But as an alternative to a 3d6 roll, 2d6+d8-1 has a lot to commend it. The results are going to be more anarchic, more random – across a span that’s slightly more than 1/3 of the total, wide. The price for that is vastly lower chances of an extreme result.

But, in particular, I want to highlight how responsive this is to modifiers relative to a straight 3d6 roll. If I ‘add’ a modifier of 1 to the base 2d6+d8-1 roll (to get straight 2d6+d8), the chance of rolling particular results becomes very interesting.

03   0.35 – 0.46 = – 0.11%
04   1.04 – 1.39 = – 0.35%
05   2.08 – 2.78 = – 0.7%
06   3.47 – 4.63 = – 1.16%
07   5.21 – 6.94 = – 1.73%
08   7.29 – 9.72 = – 2.43%
09   9.03 – 11.57 = – 2.54%
10   10.42 – 12.50 = – 2.08%
11   11.11 – 12.50 = – 1.39%
12   11.11 – 11.57 = – 0.46%
13   10.42 – 9.72 = + 0.7%
14   9.03 – 6.94 = + 2.09%
15   7.29 – 4.63 = + 2.66%
16   5.21 – 2.78 = + 2.43%
17   3.47 – 1.39 = + 2.08%
18   2.08 – 0.46 = + 1.62%
19   1.04 – 0 = + 1.04%
20   0.35 – 0 = + 0.39%

If I increase the modifier from +1 to +2, giving 2d6+d8+1:

03   0 – 0.46 = -0.46%
04   0.35 – 1.39 = – 1.04%
05   1.04 – 2.78 = – 1.74%
06   2.08 – 4.63 = – 2.55%
07   3.47 – 6.94 = – 3.47%
08   5.21 – 9.72 = – 4.51%
09   7.29 – 11.57 = – 4.28%
10   9.03 – 12.50 = – 3.47%
11   10.42 – 12.50 = – 2.08%
12   11.11 – 11.57 = – 0.46%
13   11.11 – 9.72 = + 1.39%
14   10.42 – 6.94 = + 3.48%
15   9.03 – 4.63 = + 4.40%
16   7.29 – 2.78 = + 4.51%
17   5.21 – 1.39 = + 3.82%
18   3.47 – 0.46 = + 3.01%
19   2.08 – 0 = + 2.08%
20   1.04 – 0 = + 1.04%
21   0.35 – 0 = + 0.35%

And, if I increase it again from +2 to +3, giving a roll of 2d6+d8+2:

03   0 – 0.46 = -0.46%
04   0 – 1.39 = -1.39%
05   0.35 – 2.78 = – 2.43%
06   1.04 – 4.63 = – 3.59%
07   2.08 – 6.94 = – 4.86%
08   3.47 – 9.72 = – 6.25%
09   5.21 – 11.57 = – 6.36%
10   7.29 – 12.50 = – 5.21%
11   9.03 – 12.50 = – 3.47%
12   10.42 – 11.57 = – 1.15%
13   11.11 – 9.72 = + 1.39%
14   11.11 – 6.94 = + 4.17%
15   10.42 – 4.63 = + 5.79%
16   9.03 – 2.78 = + 6.25%
17   7.29 – 1.39 = + 5.90%
18   5.21 – 0.46 = + 4.75%
19   3.47 – 0 = + 3.47%
20   2.08 – 0 = + 2.08%
21   1.04 – 0 = + 1.04%
22   0.35 – 0 = + 0.35%

2d6+d8+2 has diminished chances of rolling anything below 12 (not gone) and massive boosts to the chances of a 14-18 result. 19s and 20s and even 21s will result on rare occasions, and any result below 7 is extremely unlikely.

Does it work in the other direction, you may be wondering? Well, what if I add a -1 modifier to the ‘base’ -1 to get 2d6+d8-2?

01   0.35 – 0 = + 0.35%
02   1.04 – 0 = + 1.04%
03   2.08 – 0.46 = + 1.62%
04   3.47 – 1.39 = + 2.08%
05   5.21 – 2.78 = + 2.43%
06   7.29 – 4.63 = + 2.66%
07   9.03 – 6.94 = + 2.09%
08   10.42 – 9.72 = + 0.70%
09   11.11 – 11.57 = – 0.46%
10   11.11 – 12.50 = – 1.39%
11   10.42 – 12.50 = – 2.08%
12   9.03 – 11.57 = – 2.54%
13   7.29 – 9.72 = – 2.43%
14   5.21 – 6.94 = – 1.73%
15   3.47 – 4.63 = – 1.16%
16   2.08 – 2.78 = – 0.70%
17   1.04 – 1.39 = – 0.35%
18   0.35 – 0.46 = – 0.11%

You might think that these results are comparatively mild in comparison to the big differences we saw earlier – but that’s exactly what you want – you want to penalize a PC, make life more difficult for them, but not to the point where they are helpless to do anything; that’s just frustrating.

Adding another -1 starts to grow significant:

00   0.35 – 0 = + 0.35%
01   1.04 – 0 = + 1.04%
02   2.08 – 0 = + 2.08%
03   3.47 – 0.46 = + 3.01%
04   5.21 – 1.39 = + 3.82%
05   7.29 – 2.78 = + 4.51%
06   9.03 – 4.63 = + 4.40%
07   10.42 – 6.94 = + 3.48%
08   11.11 – 9.72 = + 1.39%
09   11.11 – 11.57 = – 0.46%
10   10.42 – 12.50 = – 2.08%
11   9.03 – 12.50 = – 3.47%
12   7.29 – 11.57 = – 4.28%
13   5.21 – 9.72 = – 4.51%
14   3.47 – 6.94 = – 3.47%
15   2.08 – 4.63 = – 2.55%
16   1.04 – 2.78 = – 1.74%
17   0.35 – 1.39 = – 1.04%
18   0 – 0.46 = – 0.46%

Your chances of rolling a 14 are halved by the -2 modifier to the base roll and replacement of a d6 with d8-1. Your chances of rolling a 6 have almost doubled! (Both in comparison to a straight 3d6 roll).

You may also be wondering how this compares with a the same modifier applied to 3d6. The answer is that this penalizes characters slightly less. Again, the base roll is flatter and a little more anarchic, or perhaps you would prefer egalitarian.

So PCs would have better chance of getting themselves out of trouble, after a struggle – but they would definitely know that they have been on the wrong end of the odds at the end of that trouble.

So, when to make this substitution? The key is in the flatness of the curve and the increased unpredictability that results. In particular, I would be inclined to use this when the outcome of the roll won’t make a great deal of significant difference – increasing the anarchy while still leaving a situationl salvageable is a prompt for roleplaying, and for the awarding of a small bonus (or penalty), which, as you’ve seen, can make a significant difference!

Exotic Choice #5: d10 + d12 – 1

I gave serious thought to pulling this construction from the list. How different would it be from 2d10?

Well, as it turns out….

This was originally going to be about d10+d12, no -1 to be seen – but when I noticed that it aligned the result with 2d10 perfectly, simplifying the comparison, it seemed obvious to change it.

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum 1, Maximum 21, Average 11.

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

2 and 20 are considerably higher than 1% probability, so the only values that don’t exceed this (low) limit are 1 and 21. As explained with other analyses, anything this low might as well not be part of the roll – so the effective range of this configuration is 2-20.

The 3% Threshold

3% falls between 3 & 4 on the low side and 18 & 19 on the high. So 2-3 and 19-20 don’t reach this target.

The 5% Threshold

6 and 16 are exactly on this limit, so 4-6 and 16-18 are in this band.

The 10% Threshold

Nothing in this roll gets this high, which means that all results from 7 to 15 are more probable than on a d20 but not by very much. I keep saying it, but this is another very flat roll. That’s mostly because steepness comes with many dice – 3 or more.

That’s 9 results in the peak probability range, 6 in the 3%-5% range, 4 in the 1%-3% range, and 2 in the 0-1% range.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

21-1 = 20, plus 1 for the 1 itself, =21. This can be verified by adding up the results in the different bands above – 9+6+4+2=21.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

11-1=10;
21-11=10. The probability curve is symmetrical.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 x 10 +1 = 4.3333. That’s a little higher than the chance of getting a 5, so 1-5 form the first group of results. Collectively, these have a whopping 12.5% chance of showing up.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 x 10 +1 = 7.6667. That’s just above 9, so 6-9 fall into this category. Between them, these results have a 37.5 – 12.5 = 25% chance of occurring.

The Lower Core

We haven’t had a case in this second part where we have to split a result into two bands – it happened a number of times in the first. But that’s the case this time around.

This band contains 10, and 11 has one foot in it as well (and one in the next). So the total probability encompassed by this band is 8.33 + 1/2 x 8.33 = 12.495%.

Except that it’s not. Closer examination of the probabilities shows that each increases smoothly by 0.8333333333333 etc % for each result closer to the average – which is why the ‘curve’ is actually a straight line. And, when I calculate 1 1/2 times this, with all those repeating threes, it comes to exactly 12.5%.

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

In the ‘above average’ category of results, we have 11’s other half and 12, again totaling 12.5% of results.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

13 to 16 are in the ‘above average’ result category, and have a 25% chance of occurring.

The Lofty Outcomes

And that means that the best results, 17-21, will occur 12.5% of the time.

d10+d12-1:

01-05 12.5% (span 5)
06-09 25% (span 4)
10-11 12.5% (span 1 1/2)
11-12 12.5% (span 1 1/2)
13-16 25% (span 4)
17-21 12.5% (span 5)

Notice that if you put the two middle results together, you get a smooth 5-4-3-4-5 pattern of result spans. I suspect that’s because the probability increases at such regular intervals.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

0-20% encompasses results from 1-6.

Second Lowest 20%

21-40% contains 7-9.

The Middle 20%

41-60% is results 10 & 11. Twelve almost makes it, but doesn’t quite get there.

Second-Highest 20%

61-80% gets us from 12 to 14.

Highest 20%

Which means, obviously, 15-21 are the highest 20% of outcomes.

Peak Probability

Three results share the peak probability of 8.33333333333333%, as can be seen on the probability chart.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

1/3 of 8.333333333333 (I’m being careful with the rounding!) is 2.7777777778.

This is located between the probabilities for 3 and 4, and also 18 and 19. So this band contains 1-3 and 19-21.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 of 8.333333333333 is 5.5555555556.

This falls on the curve between the results of 6 and 7, and again between 15 and 16. This band contains 4-6 and 16-18.

There’s an important lesson here. For some reason, instead of 4-6, I had written the above as “5-6 and 16-18”.

I immediately observed that these spans were of different size – 2 vs 3 results – and had a gut reaction of “that’s not right”. So I double-checked and found that there was indeed an error.

You can’t trust your instincts 100%, but as a motivation for double-checking something, they are always worth paying attention to.

That also defines, by exclusion, the peak probability zone, containing results of 7-15, a span of 9 results.

d10+d12-1:

00-20%: 1-6 (span 6)
21-40%: 7-9 (span 3)
41-60%: 10-11 (span 2)
61-80%: 12-14 (span 3)
81-100%: 15-21 (span 7)

< 1/3 peak probability: 1-3 (span 3)
1/3 – 2/3 peak probability: 4-6 (span 3)
2/3 – peak – 2/3 peak: 7-15 (span 9)
2/3 – 1/3 peak probability: 16-18 (span 3)
< 1/3 peak probability: 19-21 (span 3)

Summary Of Results

This ‘curve’ is slightly flatter than 2d10, but starts a little higher at the extreme values. The two chart lines cross at 6 on the way up and 16 on the way down. Unlike 2d10, this has a flattened probability cap over three results, creating a small plateau.

But really, it’s 2d10 stretched one result further in each direction.

When To Use This Substitute

The big thing with 2d10 is the degree of push toward the middle of the results – it’s not a lot, but it’s constant all the way through.

The d10+d12-1 alternative makes extreme results just a little more likely, and resists this push enough that it has a small probability plateau.

That means that it’s not quite as egalitarian as a d20 roll, but it’s one of the more egalitarian of the alternatives.

And that’s the key to when this option should be considered – any time a 2d10 alternative comes up as a possibility, the two factors (greater potential for extreme results, more evenly distributed result probabilities) should tell you whether or not this is a better option.

If both factors are in agreement, congratulations – the choice is made. That will usually be the case.

When they disagree, you have to decide which of the two is the more important, given the in-game context at the time – and that choice then controls, breaking the tie.

Exotic Choice #6: 2d8+d6-2

This option completes this family of related die roll options. I wasn’t all that surprised when it came up with another dumbbell curve.

This was always on my list of combinations to examine.

If you took a straightforward 3d6-3 roll (so that the minimum is zero), multiplied the result by 19/15, then added 1, you would technically be stretching the dumbbell curve to fit a 1-20 range.

There are two problems with this approach: first, it’s a fiddly three-step calculation to extract a result (and 19/15 isn’t a convenient multiple to work with, to boot), and secondly, there would be gaps due to rounding – which specific results would depend on how you rounded the results to get them to integers.

If you round down, the gaps are found at 5, 10, 15, and 19.
If you round off, 3, 8, 13, and 18 are impossible results.
If your round up, you cannot ever roll 2, 6, 11, or 16.

There are always four outcomes missing because you’re stretching 15 numbers to cover 19 possible results.

I thought all along that this construction might be the answer, and that was a large part of the starting point for this 2-part article. But, cool as that might be, it lacked a purpose – which is why all the other die roll configurations were brought on-board.

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum 1, Maximum 20, Average 10.5. And it’s a perfect bell curve.

The Thresholds

As usual, we start by looking at the probabilities of individual results and classifying them into bands.

You may be wondering why I chose the bands that I did. I started with 5%, because that’s the d20 probability of results; anything more than this will be more probable than on a d20 roll, anything below it will be less.

Everything from that is roughly a multiple of 2, or of 1/2.

5 x 2 = 10.

5 x 1/2 = 2.5, which either rounds to 2 or 3 – I chose 3 as being more ‘in the middle’.

5 x 1/2 x 1/2 = 1.25, which can only reasonably round to 1.

Finally, I knew some curves would have some probabilities above 10, so I needed a cut-off for the most extreme results. The technically-correct choice would have been 20%, but it takes a d4 or d5 to get up that high, so this would not have been all that useful. So I compromised on 5 x 3 = 15.

The 1% Threshold

Just above 2 the curve crosses this mark, and just before 19 on the way down. So 1-2 and 19-20, spans of 2 results.

The 3% Threshold

A little beyond 4, this line is crossed, and a little before 17, it gets crossed again going the other way. So 3-4 and 17-18. These are also spans of 2 results.

The 5% Threshold

With most bell curves, this is usually the vicinity of the inflection point, where the probability starts rising comparatively quickly. That results in smaller spans – in other words, we get to 5% from 3% a lot more quickly.

So it is in this case: the 3-5% band contains just two results, 5 and 16.

The 10% Threshold

Almost all remaining results fall into the range of 5-10% probability. Only the very peak – 10 & 11 – lie above this limit. So the 5-10% range contains 6-9 (a span of 4) and 12-15 (likewise).

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Next, we break up the range of results into 6 groups as evenly as possible – 3 low and 3 high – and see what the probabilities are for each group and which results they contain.

Range Of Results

20-1=19; +1 for the 1 itself = 20.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

10.5 – 1 = 9.5. And 20 – 10.5 also = 9.5. So the curve is symmetrical, as has been the case for every construction that we’ve looked at so far – but won’t always be true.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 x 9.5 + 1 = 4.16667. This is the division point between worst results and poor results – so 1 to 4 are the worst results. These have a combined probability of 5.21% and a span of 4.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 x 9.5 + 1 = 7.333, so that sets the ‘poor results’ as 5-7.

The total probability of a poor result is 21.61 – 5.21 = 16.4%. This bracket spans 3 results. 16.4% is a little over three times 5.21%, so these are about three times as likely to occur as the worst results.

The Lower Core

Everything between 7.333 and the average of 10.5 is a ‘below average’ roll, by definition. so results 8-10 fall into this bracket.

This band spans 3 results and has a total probability of 50 – 21.61 = 28.39%.

28.39% is about 1.73 times 16.4%, so this band is not that much more probable than a poor result. That speaks to this being a relatively flat probability curve.

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

Because the curve is symmetrical, this will mirror it’s below-average counterpart – span of 3 and 28.39% probability. So that defines this band as containing 11, 12, and 13.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

For the same reason, this is also a span of 3 and has a total probability of 16.4%. That encompasses 14, 15, and 16.

The Lofty Outcomes

And that leaves the final span of 4 results (17, 18, 19, and 20) with a combined probability of 5.21%.

2d8+d6-2 (vs 2d6+d8-2):

01-04: 5.21%   (01-03: 3.47%)
05-07: 16.4%   (04-06: 15.97%)
08-10: 28.39% (07-09: 30.56%)
11-13: 28.39% (10-12: 30.56%)
14-16: 16.4%   (13-15: 21.3%)
17-20: 5.21%   (16-18: 4.63%)

That this probability curve is even flatter than 2d6+d8 is obvious, and for the same basic reason that 2d6+d8 is flatter than 3d6 – it’s range stretches out two extra results, to a top of 20 from a top of 18.

That flatness manifests as a lower chance of a result in the lower and upper core probabilities and an increased chance of a result outside of that central region. Those ‘outside results’ will still cluster toward the average, because that’s what bell-shaped curves do – but this result is even more extreme than 2d6+d8 in that department.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

Finally, we slice the probability ‘cake’ two ways – first into bands of 20% from lo high, and then as equal portions of the peak.

The Lowest 20%

Results of 1-6 are the lowest 20% in terms of probability. 7 is almost low enough, at 21.61% cumulative, to be included in this category as well.

Second Lowest 20%

The bracket from 20% to 40% encompasses results from 7 to 9. Note that 9 only just scrapes in, with a total cumulative probability of 39.84%.

The Middle 20%

Sitting across the middle, the 40-to-60% range contains results 10 and – being generous – 11. The cumulative probability is 60.16%, that’s close enough for inclusion I think.

Second-Highest 20%

The 60-to-80% group comprises results 12 and 13.

Highest 20%

Which, in turn, means that 14-20 are the highest 20% of results that will occur.

Peak Probability

There are two results at the peak of probability: 10 and 11. That peak is 10.16%.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

1/3 of 10.16 is 3.3867%. This is close to a result of 5’s probability but not close enough. So the “polar lines” of this die configuration separate 1-4 and 17-20 from the rest of the results. That’s two spans of 4 results each.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 of 10.16 is 6.7733%. That’s more-or-less midway between results 6 & 7 – so the “tropical lines” of this configuration exclude 5 & 6 and 15 & 16 from the remainder. Those are spans half the size of the previous band.

Living “in” those tropics are 7 to 14. A span of 8 results, divided across the “equator” that is the average roll (10.5) – so two spans of 4. The “Temperate Zone” that would result if these corresponded to latitude markers would thus be extremely narrow.

What’s all this talk about “Latitudes” all of a sudden? Long-time readers know me, I’m always looking for a different metaphor to help people visualize what I’m describing – and this one just came to me.

2d8+d6-2:

00-20%: 1-6 (span 6)
21-40%: 7-9 (span 3)
41-60%: 10-11 (span 2)
61-80%: 12-13 (span 2)
81-100%: 14-20 (span 7)

Notice that rounding errors have ‘stolen’ 14 from the 61-80% band and given it to the 81-100% band.

< 1/3 peak probability: 1-4 (span 4)
1/3 – 2/3 peak probability: 5-6 (span 2)
2/3 – peak – 2/3 peak: 7-14 (span 8)
2/3 – 1/3 peak probability: 15-16 (span 2)
< 1/3 peak probability: 17-20 (span 4)

At least this table is symmetrical!

Summary Of Results

It’s a bell curve that runs smoothly from 1 to 20. The peak probability is a little less than a 3d6, but that’s understandable given the stretching across 20 results. Minimum, Maximum, Average – they are all bang on. If you want to replace a d20 with a bell curve, they don’t come much better than this.

When To Use This Substitute

I think the question then has to be asked, why use 2d6+d8-1 when you’ve got 2d8+d6-2? And it’s a fair question, if interpreted as “Under what circumstances would you NOT prefer to use 2d8+d6-2?”

For the answer, I think we need to go back to the probability chart with which this analysis started. Here it is again:

Compare the two. 2d6+d8 starts, natively, with the same result as 3d6 and stretches to 20, a full 2 points higher than a 3d6 roll goes. That shifts its peak forward – it will tend to roll high. And that always helps make players happy. It’s completely fair if the NPCs / monsters are using it too – it just makes everything that little more dramatic, that little bit more inclined towards a success than a failure – which, once again, is completely fair if both sides get the same benefit. Tacking on the -1 to the base roll shifts the curve so that it fits perfectly on top of a 3d6.

This roll, 2d8+d6-2, starts two lower than a 3d6 roll and still ends two higher, and the probability curve is flatter. It’s less dramatic than a 2d6+d8 plus modifiers-1, and that is the real point of difference between the two.

Whenever I want the PCs to feel like they were winning (even if they weren’t), any time I wanted to push or milk the drama of a situation, I would choose the 2d6 variant, with modifiers.

Any time I wanted to calm the players, while still retaining the advantage of a bell curve over a flat line, I would consider replacing the normal d20 with 2d8+d6-2. Making extreme results less likely makes them more significant, more special, but also makes them less of a problem any time you want to soak the campaign in Calm for a while.

The difference is psychological and all about controlling the emotional pacing of the campaign. I’ve written two major series on that subject:

Swell And Lull: Emotional Pacing in RPGs (2 parts), and

Further Thoughts On Pacing (4 parts)

– and this is absolutely going into my locker of techniques as a tool to help make the drama ebb and flow. You want it to ebb (at the right times) so that when you ratchet things up, there is a visceral reaction to the excitement.

As a replacement for 3d6, this option creates the latitude and some of the probabilistic diversity of results that you get with a d20 while retaining the trend for results to be consistently average, most of the time. A best of both worlds, if you will.

As a replacement for a d20, this retains the potential for extreme results while making those more unlikely, introducing the ‘trend toward the average” of a bell curve.

In both cases, the difference is in extreme results and their merits under the circumstances of the campaign.

BONUS EXTRA: Exotic Choice #6a: 3d8 – 3

When I look at this chart, the adjective that comes first to mind is that it ‘lopes’ casually from one extreme to the other.

I want to draw attention, right off the bat, to the fact that 0 and 21 have a 0.20% probability. You would expect to see each once in every 500 rolls. Outside of theoreticals, for all practical purposes this is a gentle bell curve from 1 to 20.

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum 0
Maximum 21
Average 10.5

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

The 1% chance falls between 1 and 2. So 0-1 are below this threshold. On the high side, it’s 20 and 21.

The 3% Threshold

The 3% line is just above 4, so 3 and 4 are below this threshold, and 18 & 19 are the high-side equivalents. These will come up less than half as often as with a d20 roll.

The difference between this and 3d6 are more interesting – a total probability of 6.84% in this case plays a total probability of 1.85%, or 3.7 times as likely.

The 5% Threshold

The 5% line is between 5 and 6, so this no-dices-land contains just two entries – 5 and the corresponding high result, 17.

The 10% Threshold

Nothing quite gets to the 10% mark, so everything else is more probable than a d20 rolls but nothing is twice as likely.

3d6 has much sharper sides and a taller peak. So most results in this range will occur less often.

6-16 is a span of 11 results, the largest that we’ve seen to date.

Completely irrelevant but very interesting – I wanted to look into the differences between 3d8-3 and 3d6. So I tried division and got the expected result, which wasn’t especially illuminating. To make sure that the curve captured the nuance, though, I multiplied the 3d8-3 result by 10.

So I changed the division to a subtraction, and – in a momentary lapse in concentration – forgot to take away the times 10.

The results are predictable, beautiful in their own way, and very strange! I had to share them with readers :)

Definitely one of the weirdest probability charts that I’ve ever seen!

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

Results span from 0 to 21, so 22 wide.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

No surprises here – 10.5 – 0 = 10.5, and 21-10.5 = 10.5. Both are the same, so the curve is symmetrical.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 x 10.5 + 0 = 3.5. So the lowest results band contains 0-3. There’s a cumulative probability of 3.91% for this group of results.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 x 10.5 +0 = 7. Which means that 7 has one foot in the middle lower band and the other in the lower core.

This band therefore contains 4-7, which have a cumulative probability of 23.44 – 1/2 x 7.03 – 3.91 = 16.015%. That’s a little more than 4 times the low band.

The Lower Core

Results 8-10, plus half of 7, form the lower core, the below average results. There is a cumulative probability of 50 – 23.44 + 1/2 x 7.03 = 30.075%.

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

Because the curve is symmetric, this is the same size as the lower band, containing 11-13 plus 1/2 of 14. The cumulative probability of these results is also the same at 30.075%.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The middle upper band hold results of 15-17 plus half of 14, with a cumulative probability of 16.015%.

The Lofty Outcomes

The best results band runs from 18-21, and have a total probability of 3.91%.

3d8-3:

01-04: 3.91% (span 4)
05-07: 16.015% (span 2.5)
07-10: 30.075% (span 3.5)
11-14: 30.075% (span 3.5)
14-17: 16.015% (span 2.5)
18-21: 3.91% (span 4)

If I were to ignore the math and go for the more aesthetically-pleasing breakup, 7 shifts completely into the middle lower band, and 14 into the middle upper band, and that looks like this:

01-04: 3.91% (span 4)
05-07: 19.53% (span 3)
08-10: 26.56% (span 3)
11-13: 26.56% (span 3)
14-17: 19.53% (span 3)
18-21: 3.91% (span 4)

The previous section of results highlighted the massive span covered by the probability range of 5-10%, and that same message is reinforced by the small difference in probability distribution shown. The ‘correct’ breakup emphasizes the differences a little more – 30.075% is almost twice 16.015% – but the ‘aesthetic’ breakup, in which the core bands are only 1.36 times as probable as the middle bands puts things into a clearer perspective, I think.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

Breaking up the outcomes by probability, the 20% line falls between 6 and 7, so one-fifth of results will be 0-6.

Second Lowest 20%

The 40% mark is just below 9, so the next 1/5th of results are 7s and 8s.

The Middle 20%

The 60% mark is just above 11, so the middle band holds 9-11.

It’s interesting that the second lowest 20% only had a span of 2 results, while this band has a span of 3, and those are 3 of the 4 most probable outcomes.

That highlights why this approach to analysis, while sometimes useful, is employed way too often and can be misleading.

Second-Highest 20%

80% lands between 13 and 14. So the second-best 20% of results will be 12s and 13s.

Highest 20%

Which means that the best 20% of results will contain everything from 14 to 21, a span of 8 results.

The real problem is that the actual rolls will be fuzzy around the edges. 8^3= 512 combinations of die faces. Exactly 1 of them will be 0; so many will be 1, so many will be 2, and so on. The odds that 20% won’t include some that are on this side or that of the dividing line are remote to say the least.

The cumulative probability through to results of 6 is 16.41% – and 16.41% of 512 is 84.0192. We can assume that the extra decimal places are rounding errors and say that from 512 rolls, 84 of them will be 6 or less.

The cumulative probability through to results of 7 is 23.44%, because 7s have a 7.03% chance of showing up. 7.03% x 512 = 35.9936, and again, the difference from a whole number is down to rounding errors. So you would expect 36 results of 7 from the 512 rolls, and some of them will be in the lowest 20% of the 512 rolls, and some will be in the band above it.

It gets worse: a perfect 20% of 512 is 102.4 rolls. What does “0.4 rolls” mean? Does it mean that 0.4 of a result of 7 goes onto one side of the line (2.8) while the rest (4.2) goes onto the other?

The point is this: there are inherent and unavoidable limits to precision that can and do distort results. You need to take this into account when analyzing die rolls (or when interpreting someone else’s analysis).

The differences show up all the time in computer technology. “One K” is 1024 bytes, not 1000. “One Meg” is 1024 K, or 1048576 bytes.

But disk manufacturers use “Meg” in the “1,000,000” sense because it makes their hard disks sound larger – so a “1 Meg” hard disk (or USB stick, these days) is 1.048576 Megabytes. And a 4.3 Gb disk is roughly 4.3 thousand million bytes of capacity and technically is really only 4.004687 Gb, or 4100.8 Mb.

Don’t expect to pack 1024 four-point-three megabyte files onto one, because you won’t (but some unscrupulous manufacturers used to charge as though you could).

What’s more, not every byte of storage will be accessible; some of them are used to label blocks of information, and you can’t have a block that’s partially one file and partially another. So actual size on the storage medium always rounds up to the size of a block.

Back when 100Mb was the ‘typical size’ of a hard disk, and I was in the IT support game, the number of calls we used to get from irate users whose new Hard Disk showed only 97 Mb was astonishing – and it all stems from the difference between 1024 and 1000.

Peak Probability

Results of 10 and 11 share the peak probability of 9.38%.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

1/3 x 9.38 = 3.1267%. This lands in between 4 and 5 on the low side and 16 and 17 on the high. So the low probability results are 0-4 and 17-21.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 x 9.38 = 6.2533%. This is found between 6 & 7 on the low side and 14 & 15 on the high. So intermediate probability results are 5-6 and 15-16.

That means that high-probability results are 7-14.

3d8-3:

00-20%: 0-6 (span 7)
21-40%: 7-8 (span 2)
41-60%: 9-11 (span 3)
61-80%: 12-13 (span 2)
81-100%: 14-21 (span 8)

< 1/3 peak probability: 0-4 (span 5)
1/3 – 2/3 peak probability: 5-6 (span 2)
2/3 – peak – 2/3 peak: 7-14 (span 8)
2/3 – 1/3 peak probability: 15-16 (span 2)
< 1/3 peak probability: 17-21 (span 5)

These show properties of bell-curves that you see all the time. The 20%-band breakups shuffle extreme results off to the top and bottom; 25-50% of these will never show up unless you roll a lot (or get very lucky or unlucky). The peak probability scales the extremes more usefully, but shifts medium-probability outcomes into the peak bracket because of the steep sides of the bell curve, and the natural ‘crown’ of the curve..

Summary Of Results

When I look at the two of them side-by-side (or one above the other as they appear in my Window), the comparison of greatest interest and that is the most compelling is with 2d6+d8-3.

The 3d8-based roll is flatter but broader, with an increased chance of extreme results – and those results extend further to both the left and the right.

The crossovers are between 5-6 (low) and 14-15 (high), so results of five or less and of 15 or more are more likely while the distribution of probability from 7-14 is more even.

When To Use This Substitute

The thing that strikes me most about this construction, especially in comparison to 2d6+d8-1, is how much room there is for positive modifiers.

For it to be useful, therefore, two conditions have to be met. First, a positive modifier has to be applicable. Any amount from +1 to even as high as +6 is fine. And second, I have to be willing to live with the chance of an extreme result, even a result as high as 24 or 25 (only possible with a +3 modifier or better).

This configuration already has an average of 10.5, and every +1 modifier increases that by 1. So this is most useful for rolls when I want the PCs to succeed but need to still preserve a chance of failure, no matter how slim that might be.

Exotic Choice #7: d4+d6+d12-2

Here’s the secret sauce to any substitution of a single dice: for every extra die you’re adding, increase the desired maximum by 1 so that you can include a default modifier that brings the minimum, maximum, and average back to what you want. So, 1 dice -> 2 dice? Aim for a maximum of D#+1. 1->3 dice? Aim for a maximum of D#+2, and so on.

Single dice have a minimum of 1, unless modified in some way, and that points the way to adjusting that principle for the replacement of N dice. The best approach is to reduce both minimum and maximum by (N-1), effectively putting the construction on a shape that looks like that of a single die. You get bonus points for making the modifier in the D#+modifier cancel out that (N-1). 3 dice -> 2 dice? That requires an (N-1) of -2, and a D#-1 to boot. 3 dice for 3 dice? (N-1) of 2, and D#+0.

Which brings me to this particular construction. It has every opportunity for every feature we’ve seen to date, and I have no idea what to expect. 3 dice, so a bell curve, differences in die sizes, so maybe a plateau. – who knows? I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it looked like a step pyramid with the top missing!

Let’s see what we get…

Is that it? My first reaction was to be underwhelmed. But then I started noticing details.

There’s an obvious inflection point at 3 – but then there’s another one at 6, and the two are linked by what appears to be a plumb-straight line. The same is true of the descending side of the curve, with the inflection points being 15 and 18.

These inflection points are of opposite sign – the first steepens the increase in probability and the second one diminishes it. We’ve seen that before, with the 2d4+d12 curve (from part 1) – but that had inflection points on successive results, so they were even less obvious.

There’s a central plateau. that’s 4 spaces wide and then a very gentle rolling off on both sides, which is also reminiscent of 2d4+d12 – but that had comparatively steep sides and a larger plateau.

The scales can be hard to read, but 4.50% half-way up means 9% at the top and the intermediates are, well, in-between. 9% is a fairly high probability for a d20 substitute but not an atypical one. Some rolls, like 3d6, go even higher at the peak of their bell-curves. The peak probability looks very similar to 2d4+d12, which had the exact same peak probability as d8+d12.

What it doesn’t seem to have is the bias that 2d4+d12 exhibited – it was always either biased high or low relative to 3d6.

So there’s a lot of subtlety going on, and plenty to talk about.

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum 1
Maximum 20
Average 10.5

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

Results of 2 and 19 happen at 1.04%. This is so close to the line that they should be included – so 1-2 and 19-20 are really improbable results, akin to rolling 01 or 00 on d%, or worse.

The 3% Threshold

3% falls in between 3 and 4, and again between 17 and 18. So results of 3 and 18 will occur about half as often as they would on a d20.

The 5% Threshold

5% divides 5 from 6 and 15 from 16. So results of 4-5 and 16-17 will occur a little less frequently than they do on a d20.

The 10% Threshold

Nothing gets above this on the chart. In fact, as noted earlier, nothing even gets as high as 9%. So everything from 6 to 15 will come up more often than on a d20 – but not as much as twice as often.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

This combination gives a range of 20 results, obviously.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

Both of these calculations yield ranges of 9.5, so the curve is symmetrical.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 x 9.5 + 1 = 4.16667. This divides worst outcomes (1-4) from the rest. There’s a combined probability of 6.94%; 2d8+d6-2 had the same set of outcomes, but only a 5.21% chance of them occurring.

This curve has a flat – steep – flat – steep – flat thing happening, courtesy of it’s total of 4 inflection points. What this probability total shows is that the flattest parts are even flatter than some of the others that we’ve examined, making it more possible to get extreme results.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 x 9.5 + 1 = 7.3333, so 5-7 are the ‘poor but not worst possible’ results. These have a combined probability of 25.35 – 6.94 = 18.41%.

Again, this is higher than the results of 2d8+d6-2 but occupies the same range.

This section of the curve carries us past the first inflection point and into the ‘steady rise’ part of the graph.

The Lower Core

That means that the lower core has the peak probability, the second inflection, and most of the steep-rise section between the inflection points – an absolutely huge total probability. Results of 8-10 are in this zone, and they have a total probability of 50 – 25.35 = 24.65%.

Another indicator of the overall flatness of the probability curve is how close this total is to the previous one, despite all those noteworthy inclusions – 24.65% vs 18.41% is not a huge difference, by any means. More of the probability is spread over more extreme results with this construction.

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

Since we know the curve is symmetrical, this is the same total percentage chance as the lower core, 24.65%, and the same span of results – in this case, from 11-13.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

Better than merely “above average”, the good results band spans from 14-16, and has a total probability of 18.41%.

The Lofty Outcomes

Which leaves the ‘best’ results as 17-20, with a total probability of 6.94%.

d4+d6+d12-2:

01-04: 6.94% (span 4)
05-07: 18.41% (span 3)
08-10: 24.65% (span 3)
11-13: 24.65% (span 3)
14-16: 18.41% (span 3)
17-20: 6.94% (span 4)

The only results here that are so unlikely they are only theoretically possible most of the time are 19-20. At 0.35% each, they can be expected to appear once each in every 288 rolls.

If you take these out, the very even spread of results that you get from the table above becomes evident.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

20% probability (cumulative) falls above 6 but below 7, so 1-6 form the lowest band of results. Notably, 1-4 are 10% of results and 5-6 are the other 10%.

Second Lowest 20%

40% probability is reached between 8 and 9 – the latter almost gets into this category but is not quite close enough. So this band contains results of 7 and 8.

The Middle 20%

60% probability is between 11 and 12, so results from 9 to 11 can be found here.

Second-Highest 20%

The 80% mark is just below 14, so this band is 12-13.

Highest 20%

That leaves 14-20 as the highest 20% of results. As with the lowest 20%, 14-15 are 10% of the results and 16-20 are the remainder.

Peak Probability

Peak probability is 8.3333% – again.

If you search the two articles for 8.33, you’ll find that this peak probability occurs time and time again. There’s obviously some significance to that, it’s happened too often to be a coincidence, but what it might be escapes me.

So I asked an AI, and what I got back highlights that 8.3333% is the same as 1/12, and the various combinations where this has resulted all have dice that are factors of 12 – four, six, twelve – and so the peak probability is going to be a numeric fraction of the possible results that will simplify to 1/12.

It also pointed out that the size of the plateau. is always equal to the size of the smallest dice in the combination, an observation that I had already noticed for myself, but that I hadn’t mentioned because I didn’t have a large enough sample to be sure of the relationship.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

1/3 x 8.3333% = 2.7777%. Only the results of (low) 1-3 and (high) 18-20 are below this threshold.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 x 8.3333% = 5.5555%. This threshold is exceeded by 6 (low) and 15 (high) so 4-5 and 16-17 are in this band.

Which means that 6-15 are in the top third of results in terms of probability – a span of 11 results!

d4+d6+d12-2:

00-20%: 1-6 (span 6)
21-40%: 7-8 (span 2)
41-60%: 9-11 (span 3)
61-80%: 12-13 (span 2)
81-100%: 14-20 (span 7)

< 1/3 peak probability: 1-3 (span 3)
1/3 – 2/3 peak probability: 4-5 (span 2)
2/3 – peak – 2/3 peak: 6-15 (span 11)
2/3 – 1/3 peak probability: 16-17 (span 2)
< 1/3 peak probability: 18-20 (span 3)

Summary Of Results

The probability curve and that last table of results are, to me, the definitive characteristics of this die combination.

When To Use This Substitute

In a nutshell, this is an alternative to 2d8+d6-2. it can be used anytime you would consider using that configuration. The question then becomes, when to use this choice instead of that one. To find out, I generated one more probability chart comparing the two.

It’s clear that this is a flatter, squatter version of that chart, with greater potential for extreme results. There is still a strong central plateau. – results from 6 to 15 are far more likely than anything outside that range – but results outside that range will still occur. 1-5 and 16-20 results each contain 4.86% of the outcomes – so 4.86% x 4 x 6 x 12 = 14 in 288 times, each. Between them, 7 in 72 outcomes will be outside the ‘core range’ – which means that 65 out of 72 will be inside that range.

So if you want a 2d8+d6-2 chart, but with a (slightly) increased potential for extreme results and a more even spread of results, this is the option to choose.

BONUS EXTRA: Exotic Choice #7a: d4+d8+d10-2

Another of the curves that weren’t on my list, this is a variation on the previous one. The d6 has grown to a d8 and the d12 has shrunk to a d10 – and the results should be quite interesting in comparison. I don’t expect to dig too deeply into this one (or this article won’t be ready in time, I’m already pushing my luck), but it needs to be included, I think.

These three curves are so close together that to be be able to show things clearly, I’m going to need to offer up an enlargement.

Even this wasn’t enough, so if you click on the thumbnail above, it will open a still-larger version in a new tab. But below is an even-more-enlarged extract from that image, focusing on the complex interplay between results 6 and 8.

So. what do I see when I examine this?

The previous combination told me that this curve was going to be closely related to both that (d4+d6+d12-2) and 28+d6-2, analyzed earlier.

The relationship between this new construction and those alternatives was going to be critical to evaluating it. So I deliberately included them in the probability chart for comparison purposes.

The results show that for the most part, this curve is bound by those others, occupying some middle ground between them. Initially, d4+d6+d12-2 has the higher probabilities, and this curve tracks along with it fairly closely in shape.

However it does slowly lose ground to that roll and gets closer to 2d8+d6-2. Between 6 and 7, they cross, and for a single result (7), d4+d8+d10-2 is actually the lowest of the probability curves.

That doesn’t last because between 7 and 8, 2d8+d6-2 flattens out massively, heading for it’s broad plateau.; it crosses both the other probability tracks before 8 is reached.

It started as the highest of the three, and at that crossover point, abruptly switches to being the lowest.

The object of our interest, meanwhile, tracks very closely to 2d8+d6-2 right up to the point of peak probability and back down to the equivalent situation on the high side.

The differences in probability are very subtle up to the point where d4+d6+d12 flattens out and crosses over the other constructions and remain so when comparing d4+d8+d10-2 with 2d8+d6-2.

To sum up the differences in a nutshell:

Compared with d4+d6+d10-2, this curve is a full dumbbell curve; extreme results are slightly less likely but central results are far more likely. The crossover point between the two is between 7 & 8 and 13 & 14.
Compared with 2d8+d6-2, this curve makes extreme results a little more likely and centralized results a little less likely. The crossover point is between 6 & 7 on the low sides and between 14 & 15 on the high.

Min, Max, Ave
The Thresholds
Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability
Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values
Summary Of Results
When To Use This Substitute
Okay, that gets the only slightly-strange choices out of the way. Next week, in Part 3, the really strange stuff and the wrap-up.

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Traits of Exotic d20 Substitutes pt 1

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in D&D / Pathfinder, Game Mastering, Mike, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, PCs, Rules & Mechanics, The End Of The Rainbow, House-Rules, Metagaming & Metagame Theory, Traps, All Genres on Oct.21, 2025

There are lots of dice configurations that can substitute for a d20, or sometimes for a 3d6. This 2-part article looks deeply at some.

The image of the balance is by Anna Varsányi from Pixabay. I’ve changed it’s balance and added a load of dice.

Not all RPG players and GMs are Geeks, it has to be said, but many of us can spend hours noodling over dice and probability curves and other Geeky dice-related subjects, like “Does my die roll true?” and “Are results more evenly distributed on a die if all opposite sides sum to Maximum + Minimum or can you get high-and-low rollers by clumping results together?”

Well, I’m not going to get into those issues today, but I am going to take a deep dive into d20s and a whole heap of alternatives that might merit consideration from time to time.

In addition to analyzing the bog-standard d20, I have 2 boring alternatives for when you can’t find yours, and 11(+) possible substitutes ranging from the boringly obvious 3d6 through to some quite exotic constructions.

In addition to analyzing and comparing to a vanilla d20 and the obvious 3d6, a number of these rolls merit comparison with each other. Because all that is a LOT of work that I might not get done prior to publishing this article, I’m going to use a lot of headings and subheadings, and indent these, so that you can find and compare the results from one to another for yourself.

This was originally intended to be just one post, but eventually I thought of one exotic die roll too many, and then another (exotic choices #3 and #8, respectively) and was left with no real option. (I’m saving the most interesting alternatives for part 2!)

Index Of Analyses

I wasn’t going to include this, but decided to throw it in at the last minute.

Today:

4d6: The Methodology Demonstration
d20: The Yardstick
Boring Workaround #1: 10 x (d2-1) +d10
Boring Workaround #2: 5 x (d4-1) + d5
3d6: The Standard
Exotic Choice #1: 2d10
Exotic Choice #2: d8+d12
Exotic Choice #3: 2d4+d12

In Part 2:

Exotic Choice #4: 2d6+d8
Exotic Choice #5: d10+d12
Exotic Choice #6: 2d8+d6-2
Exotic Choice #7: d6+d4+d12-2
Exotic Choice #8: d4 x d6 – d4
Exotic Choice #9: d30+1-d10
Exotic Choice #10: 5d4 / d5
Exotic Choice #11: (3d6+2) / d4
Exotic Choice #12: (4d10 / 2

These choices all derive from thinking about the minimum and maximum results. They are all (with one exception) ways of getting a result from about 1 to about 20, some more effective than others. This article is all about what the differences in probability curves do to the results of using them as a replacement when a d20 or 3d6 roll would normally be called for.

4d6: The Methodology Demonstration

For every roll type to be analyzed, I’ll be presenting a set of probability curves generated by AnyDice.com. This article literally would not be possible in terms of practical delivery without this vital tool.

It’s actually possible to display virtually every parameter to be measured on a single graphic, just barely.

But, when I add labels, it gets a little congested and they are very hard to read. So clicking on either of these images will open a 200%-sized version in a new tab that is a LOT clearer.

Let’s run through the content of each analysis. It will start with a graph of the probability curve, just like the ones above (but much simpler, with fewer labels).

Beneath that, I’ll give a verbal summary of what the chart shows. These will be very brief and ignore details.

Those details will be given in an inset text block with a subtitle, as below, and sometimes subdivided into sub-subtitles that are further inset to make them clear. Unlike my normal practice, I WON’T be insetting the titles, only the content under those titles – I think this will help the titles stand out a little more.

Min, Max, Ave

The first set of specifics will be the minimum, maximum, and average result values. These will be compared with the values for a d20 and for 3d6 if relevant (at least one of the two always will be).

The Thresholds

That will be followed with a set of analyses relating to the probability distribution. I’ll use seven of these, between them defining results. It will actually be quite rare for a result to match the distribution parameter precisely; in most cases, I’ll round up (and comment on the fact) but when that distorts the outcome too much, I’ll round down (and again comment).

The probability distribution parameters are mostly defined as “probability thresholds” and the measure that will be given is the result that matches that probability. This will become clearer in a moment!

The 1% Threshold

What’s the first result with a 1% probability of taking place or better? Results lower than this may technically be possible, but to all intents and purposes, they might as well not exist, and those are the results – both low and high – that this test is intended to highlight. On 4d6, 6 or less and 22 or more fall into this classification.

The 3% Threshold

I strongly debated whether or not to include this measurement until I saw the ‘analysis’ of the 4d6 roll used for the explanatory images above. This again covers very low-probability events that are very unlikely to show up unless you roll a lot of times. On 4d6, results of 7, 8, 20, and 21 qualify as falling into this probability band – which means that the results most likely to occur are 9-19.

The 5% Threshold

I was always going to include this category, however, because (by definition) any result on a d20 will be at this threshold. So the results in this band are less likely to show up than on a d20 roll. On 4d6, that’s a 9 and a 19. Which means that on 4d6, 10-18 are more likely to result than on a d20 roll. That’s an important point to note when considering a substitution of 4d6 for a d20.

But another way of looking at these results are defining the results that are realistically as likely or more to occur as on a d20 – so this can be considered the true basis of comparison with a d20. It’s not technically accurate, but for practical purposes, you can actually define a 4d6 roll as giving results of 10-18 with a slight chance of slightly more extreme results. And that’s exactly the sort of comparison that this article is intended to discover and convey.

The 10% Threshold

This selects out only the most likely results. Some rolls may not even reach this threshold. Depending on the probability curves, there may also be a 15% Threshold canvassed in these results. On 4d6, 12 and 16 fall just below this threshold but they are close enough to it that I would (and have) counted them as being in this band of results. So 12-16 are the peak results of 4d6.

What’s most interesting and useful about this metric is the range relative to the previous category, which also includes 10, 11, 17, and 18. That’s four results, while this top category (in this case) includes 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 – five results. If we exclude the exact average result (14) then – in this case – the peak probability band is the same size in terms of number of results. In cases where the average ends in a decimal place, it wouldn’t be necessary to exclude it or treat it differently, because actual results will always be higher or lower than the average.

Peak Probability

The peak probability is usually but not always the average result. That’s certainly the case when it comes to 4d6, with an average result of 14. That’s four results higher than the average result of a d20 – 11, 12, 13, and 14 are all above the d20 average of 10.5. Four results out of 20 are a full 20% of the possible d20 results, so this is a noteworthy result – but the primary focus of this section of analysis is listing exactly what the probability of the most likely result actually is. In the case of 4d6, that’s 11.27%.

1/3 & 2/3 Peak Probability Results Thresholds

Why is that important? Because it is used to set a second pair of thresholds – one at 1/3 of that peak probability and one at 2/3. This divides the entire range of results into three bands of equal probability, or as close to it as possible.

In the case of 4d6, 1/3 x 11.27% = 3.75667% and 2/3 x 11.27% = 7.51333%.

The 3.75667% threshold falls somewhere in between 8 and 9 on the low side and 19 and 20 on the high. That means that 8 and 20 are outside of it and 9-19 are inside it. Observe that in the case of 4d6, these are the same results given by the 3% threshold – which is not too surprising, there isn’t a lot of difference between 3% and 3.75667%.

The 7.51333% threshold falls in between 10 and 11 on the low side and 17 and 18 on the high. So 11-17 are above this threshold and 9-10 and 18-19 are in the middle bracket but not this one. That’s an important measure of the steepness of the gradient of the probability, I think – we’ll have to see if actual results bear that out. If I’m right, some of the steeper curves – the ones with only two or three dice – will have even fewer results in this classification, while those that are flatter – like 5d6 or 6d6 (neither of which I’m using) – would potentially have more results.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

That ends the probability-based analyses and lets me move on to the results-based analyses, where the results are a net total probability. The previous set of results are something of a bridge between the two!

So this section of analysis is all about slicing up the range of possible results and looking at what the probabilities are of that sub-range.

There are two preliminary analyses and then six bands. In mathematical terms, this section is more about the area underneath the probability curve, i.e. the cumulative effect across a range of results. It may or may not yield the same specific transition points as the probability-based analyses in the preceding section.

Range Of Results

First, what’s the total range of results? In the case of 4d6, results run from 4 to 24 – which gives a range of 24-4+1 = 21 results (it’s not 20 because that would exclude the 4, which is [technically] a valid result}).

Compared to a d20: 20-1+1=20 results. Not much difference. In fact you could argue that 4d6-3 is a valid substitute for a d20 – and one that’s not on my list! But since I’m analyzing it anyway, I don’t think there’s any real cause for complaint.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

With the less exotic die rolls, these should be the same – but it’s not so when some of the more complicated substitutions come under the microscope..

Take 4d6. Average 14, Minimum 4, maximum 24. 14-4=10; 24-14=10. Perfect symmetry around the average.

There’s actually not a lot to see in this section except in the case of those stranger die rolls, but it’s a necessary procedural step to defining the bands of results.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 of (Ave-Min) + Min defines the lowest 1/6th of the results. In the case of 4d6, 1/3 x 10 + 4 = 3.333 + 4 = 7.333 – so everything below 8 is the lowest one-sixth of possible results.

The “At Most” table from AnyDice translates that, adding up the percentages (even if they are less individually than 0.01) – a total probability of 2.70%.

Previous to 2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

This defines the second sixth band. In terms of results below average, this is the ‘middle 1/3’.

For 4d6, 2/3 x 10 + 4 = 6.667 + 4 = 10.667. So results of 8-10 fall into this band. The probability of results from 4-10 are 15.90%; subtracting the probability of results 4-7 (calculated in the previous sub-section) of 2.70% gives a result for this band of 13.2%.

It’s the ratio to the low that’s of greatest interest, though – 13.2% / 2.70% is a ratio of 4.889. So the results in this band are almost 5 times as likely to come up.

The Lower Core

The Lower Core is the 1/6th of results below the average from the previous result up. If the average result is an actual possible result, as it is in the case of 4d6, then half of the probability of that average has to be added; the band splits it right in two. Life is simpler when that’s not the case.

Results of 11-13, plus half of 14, give 4d6 probabilities of 44.37 – 15.90 + 1/2 x 11.27 = 28.47+ 8.635 = 34.105%.

Again, it’s the ratios of lesser value that are of greatest interest. 34.105 / 13.2 = x 2.583; and 34.105 / 2.70 = x 12.63. So the low end of maximum probability is more than 2.5 times as likely to result as the middle lower band, and more than 12 1/2 times as likely as the lowest results.

The Upper Core: Average to 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

I’ve given the technical definition above, but in most cases this is more easily calculated from the work already done: the % is 34.105% again, and the values are half of 14 + 15-17, the same width as the Lower Core. Only where a roll’s probability is asymmetric will this not be the easier way of handling this result. There won’t really be a lot to say, for most results, but some of the more exotic options may be interesting.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The same goes for this band of results – we already know that it’s 13.2% of the results, and three results wide – so 18-20. Again, things will get more interesting with some of the exotic results.

The Lofty Outcomes

And, the uppermost band of results – for 4d6, that’s 21-24, and 2.70%.

I’ll then wrap up this section by giving a table of the bands and their probabilities. I won’t be doing any fancy formatting, so the columns probably won’t align very well:

4d6:

04-07 = 2.7%
08-10 = 13.2%
11-14 = 34.105%
14-17 = 34.105%
18-20 = 13.2%
21-24 = 2.7%

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

That was dividing the results up into six unequal bands. Next, I’ll divide the probability up into 5 equal bands and look at what results are within the probability distribution. I expect these to be a bit of an eye-opener, even with the hints given by the results above.

The Lowest 20%

The cumulative probability of results puts the 20% mark between the results of 10 and 11. So 4-10 are the results in this band.

Second Lowest 20%

We know the lower value result in this band is 11, but where does the cumulative probability cross the 40% mark? The answer, for 4d6, is between 12 and 13. So this entire band is defined as two results – 11 and 12.

The Middle 20%

Using an odd number of bands avoids the complications of the average result sometimes needing to be split. With 4d6, the 60% mark falls between 14 and 15 – so this band is also just two results, 13 and 14.

Second-Highest 20%

The 80% mark with 4d6 lands between 16 and 17 – so, again, 2 results wide, 15 and 16.

Highest 20%

Which, by definition (having excluded everything else), leaves the highest 20% of results containing 17-24. That’s a band 8 results wide, one more than the lowest 20% band.

Peak Probability

We already know this from earlier, but it needs to be recapitulated at this point. The peak probability for 4d6 comes at a result of 14, which has a probability of 11.27%. It’s what I now do with that information that I hope will be informative.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

So, at 1/3 of this peak we define two bands, one low and one high. With 4d6, 1/3 of 11.27 = 3.756%. The result with a matching probability doesn’t exist – it’s between 8 and 9 – but using that as a dividing point works. So the bands for 4d6 are 4-8 and 20-24.

I’m honestly not entirely sure whether or not this test will reveal anything significant, but I’d rather include it than risk not doing so.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 of the peak defines another 2 bands, one high and one low, and – by exclusion – a band in the middle. For 4d6, 2/3 x 11.27 = 7.513%. That’s between 10 and 11, and between 17 and 18, so the lower band is 9-10 and the upper is 18-19. The central band is therefore 11-17.

I’ll then wrap up this section of results with a pair of tables, each with 5 bands, summarizing all of the above:

4d6:

00-20%: 4-10
21-40%: 11-12
41-60%: 13-14
61-80%: 14-16
81-100%: 17-24

04 – 08: < 1/3 peak probability
09 – 10: 1/3 – 2/3 peak probability
11 – 17: 2/3 peak probability to peak to 2/3 peak probability
18 – 19: 1/3 – 2/3 peak probability
20 – 24: < 1/3 peak probability

Summary Of Results

A brief verbal summary of the results. I’ll try to highlight the significant bits without getting into recapitulation of specifics. In particular, I’ll want to compare and contrast with a d20.

In the case of 4d6, it’s not an entirely inappropriate substitute for a d20, especially given how low the probability of extreme results is. The fact that the effective range is 7-21. A numeric modifier can shift that towards a more equitable substitution – minus three means that the effective low is 4, the effective high is 17, and the average is 11. There would be a very low probability of 1-3 or 18-21 resulting.

When To Use This Substitute

And then, the real meat: the conclusion. When might this be a useful replacement for a d20? Do the implications of the statistics make it a better fit for skill rolls or attack rolls or saving rolls under certain circumstances?

I’ll also cast a weathered eye (very briefly) over the possibility of substituting the roll when a 3d6 would normally be called for. The same basic questions and options as above.

So, 4d6-3 would be a useful substitute when there is little value in an extreme result – an everyday skill check, for example, or routine training exercise that lacks the real adrenaline ‘punch’ of actual combat. You can reduce that -3 to nuance the odds in the character’s favor, and this would actually represent a significant improvement in the chances of success – useful when there is no serious opposition or difficulty in what the character is trying to do, biasing results in favor of a success.

Substituting 4d6-3 for 3d6 is a more interesting story. There’s a slim chance of a worse result or a better result than is possible on a 3d6 roll, and the average is ever-so-slightly higher. Varying the -3 permits nuanced shading. But the 4d6 roll overall is flatter than a 3d6 roll, so there would be a broader distribution of results and less of a knife-edge. That suggests that this would yield more drama when used in combat or saving throws, if the 3d6 chances were fairly even. if the chances were not even, this would amplify the bias in outcomes – again, more dramatic. I would also be inclined to make this substitution for skill rolls in which there IS significant difficulty or opposition to overcome. In effect, this is the complete opposite of a d20 replacement!

I’ll then conclude the analysis with any other notes that might be of interest – especially comparing one exotic option to another, and any further conclusions that result.

d20: The Yardstick

Probably the most boring probability chart ever, matched only by any other single die chart. It is, as you would expect, flat as a pancake from 1 to 20.

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum 1, Maximum 20, Average 10.5.

3d6 has a minimum of 3, a maximum of 18, and an average of 10.5. From which, you might conclude that 19/15 x (3d6-3) +1 would translate a 3d6 roll into a d20 roll. Let’s test that:

Minimum: 19/15 x (3-3) +1 = 1. Correct.
Average: 19/15 x (10.5-3) + 1 = 19/15 x 7.5 +1 = 9.5 + 1 = 10.5. Correct.
Maximum: 19/15 x (18-3) +1 = 19/15 x 15 +1 = 19 + 1 = 20. Correct.

If 3d6 were a flat roll, a single die, that’s “all” there would be to it. But it’s not. You’ll see how much it’s not when I analyze 3d6 as a d20 substitute, a little later. For now, I wanted to present this as a warning against assuming that getting the right minimum, maximum, and average was all there was too it – that’s the beginning of the story, but nothing more.

The Thresholds

Ho-hum. Anyone expecting anything other than an anticlimax needs their head read. Instead, let me relate an anecdote. I once knew a guy who very carefully and meticulously beveled the edges of the “1” face of his d20 on the premise that if the die was teetering on the edge of one of the surrounding faces, this would make it more prone to roll onto the 20. After a little thought, I let him use the die in-game.

Why? First, the converse was also true – if his theory was valid, a potential 20 was just as likely to roll to one of the adjacent sides. And since there were three adjacent faces, this was three times as likely to happen.

Second, by carving away a bit of the dice on one side, he had slightly altered it’s balance so that it was heavier on the side of the 20 – so that would decrease the probability of a 20-or-adjacent, just a little, but probably by more than the increase that he achieved!

In six months of gaming, he never did manage to roll a 20. At that point, he binned it and went back to using an undoctored die. And got a 20 in the first session after he made this change.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing…

The 1% Threshold

Never happens, it’s that simple.

The 3% Threshold

Same with this result.

The 5% Threshold

Every possible result meets this threshold. What does that tell us, really?

The 10% Threshold

And, once again, this never happens.

Peak Probability

This is 5%, and it applies to every result. I don’t think I’m telling anyone anything new at this point.

1/3 & 2/3 Peak Probability Results Thresholds

Anyone want to guess which results meet these thresholds? Right, None of them.

Now, maybe things will get a little more interesting, if no less predictable.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

1 to 20. Are we excited yet?

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

1-10 is the low band, 11-20 is the high. No surprises here. Both have a range of 10 results.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 of 10 is 3.333. So 1-3 is the lowest 1/6th of the results, with a net 15% chance of occurrence.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 of 10 is 6.667. So 4-6 are the second 1/6th band of results, again with a net 15% chance of occurrence.

The Lower Core

So the lower core therefore has to be 7-10, with a total 20% occurrence. This shows the effects of rounding errors in going from fractional results (that don’t exist in real life) to integer results (which do).

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

1/3 x (20-10.5) + 10.5 = 1/3 x 9.5 + 10.5 = 3.167 + 10.5 = 13.667. So 11-13 is the upper core, with a 15% rate of occurrence.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

2/3 x (20-10.5) + 10.5 = 2/3 x 9.5 + 10.5 = 6.333 + 10.5 = 16.833. So 13-16 is the second-highest band, again with a 15% chance.

The Lofty Outcomes

That leaves 17-20 and a net 20% at the top – again showing the rounding error effect.

d20:

01-03 = 15%
04-06 = 15%
07-10 = 20%
11-13 = 15%
14-16 = 15%
17-20 = 20%

That’s the most even that you can slice 100% into six ‘equal’ chunks with an indivisible unit of 5% at a time.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The difference between division into 6ths and division into 5ths is a profound one – when it avoids the rounding errors that showed up in the previous tests.

The Lowest 20%

1-4 comprise the lowest 20% of d20 results.

Second Lowest 20%

5-8 are the second lowest 20% band.

The Middle 20%

9-12 are the middle 20% band. Unsurprisingly, these perfectly bracket the average of 10.5.

Second-Highest 20%

Would anyone be surprised by a 13-16 result set?

Highest 20%

And finally, we have a perfectly satisfactory 17-20 as the highest 20% of results.

Peak Probability

This is 5% but we already know that there will be no matching results from this metric. Skipped.

d20:

00-20%: 1-4
21-40%: 5-8
41-60%: 9-12
61-80% 13-16
81-100%: 17-20

Summary Of Results

a d20 has a flat probability curve. Unsurprisingly, it makes a perfect substitute for a d20 roll. But let’s look at subbing in a d20 for a 3d6 roll, just for a moment.

Your average results are a LOT less likely to occur. The chances of extreme results are a LOT higher, at both ends of the scale. The dumbbell-curve of the standard 3d6 roll ‘steals’ probability from extreme results to bolster those middle-of-the-road outcomes.

The reality is that most biological systems and measurements have a dumbbell-shape when you plot them out, all other factors being equal. So the 3d6 roll is a good way of simulating normality, and a d20 is a bad way of doing so.

That’s why D&D uses d6s to generate stats instead of a d20, even though it’s now d20-based in play.

When To Use This Substitute

That doesn’t mean that the d20-for-3d6 substitution is entirely without merit. As soon as non-randomness enters the picture, it can give a better simulation of some outcomes. Five or less on 3d6 represents the lowest 5% chance of success – so for an experiment involving genetic manipulation, you might use d20 instead of 3d6, with the instruction to re-roll any result of 5 or less. This simulates culling the obvious failures and produces a far greater likelihood of successes – exactly what you would expect in such an artificial situation.

That brings me to the two boring workarounds – for when you need a d20 but can’t find one. I wasn’t originally going to include these, but changed my mind when I remembered someone with little grounding in mathematics who absolutely could not be convinced that this was a valid substitution.

Boring Workaround #1: 10 x (d2-1) + d10

Using a d10 and any dice that gives a high-low result of even probability (don’t try using a d5 or d7) is the standard workaround for occasions when your d20 escapes for a time.

Min, Max, Ave

The high-low tells you whether or not to add 10 to the d10.

The minimum is 1, the maximum is 20, and the average is 10.5 – exactly what you want in a d20.

The Thresholds

These results are exactly the same as for a d20.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

1 to 20, obviously.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

1-10 and 11-20, both a range of 10 results.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

The Lower Core

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The Lofty Outcomes

These are all exactly the same as a d20. Right down to the rounding error effect.

5 x (d4-1) + d5:

01-03 = 15%
04-06 = 15%
07-10 = 20%
11-13 = 15%
14-16 = 15%
17-20 = 20%

Exactly the same as a d20.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

Second Lowest 20%

The Middle 20%

Second-Highest 20%

Highest 20%

Once again, these are all exactly the same as a d20.

10 x (d2-1) + d10:

00-20%: 1-4
21-40%: 5-8
41-60%: 9-12
61-80% 13-16
81-100%: 17-20

Summary Of Results

There’s a reason why this is the first substitute that comes to mind – it’s the obvious solution to the problem.

There is a question of dice etiquette when someone wants to use this because their d20 is misbehaving, though, because it is more work and that makes it harder to police for cheating. As a general rule, that sort of thing doesn’t bother me, but others may be more sensitive to the issue, so I thought it worth mentioning.

When To Use This Substitute

When you need a d20 and don’t have one to hand – but you do have a d10 and a d-something else.

Boring Workaround #2: 5 x (d4-1) + d5

Look familiar? This is a perfect substitute for s d20.

Min, Max, Ave

d4-1 gives results of 0-3. Multiply by 5 to get 0, 5, 10, or 15. Adding a d5 makes each of these 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, and 16-20 respectively.

The minimum is 1, the maximum is 20, and the average is 10.5 – all exactly as they should be.

The Thresholds

As the probability curve above confirms, these results are exactly the same as for a d20.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

1 to 20, as noted earlier.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

1-10 and 11-20, both a range of 10 results. Perfect.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

The Lower Core

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The Lofty Outcomes

These are all exactly the same as a d20. Right down to the rounding error effect.

5 x (d4-1) + d5:

01-03 = 15%
04-06 = 15%
07-10 = 20%
11-13 = 15%
14-16 = 15%
17-20 = 20%

Exactly the same as a d20.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

Second Lowest 20%

The Middle 20%

Second-Highest 20%

Highest 20%

Once again, these are all exactly the same as a d20.

5 x (d4-1) + d5:

00-20%: 1-4
21-40%: 5-8
41-60%: 9-12
61-80% 13-16
81-100%: 17-20

Summary Of Results

The only real problem with this method is that if you’ve got a d4 and a d10 to use as a d5, there’s a simpler approach – using the d4 (or a d6, more commonly) to get high or low ranges and then a d10 within the range.

When To Use This Substitute

There’s one theoretical occasion when this might be the way to go – when all you have is a d4 and a 6-sided dice. By ignoring sixes on the d6 (re-rolling them) you turn it into a d5 – so the combination is a workaround for when you have neither a d10 nor a d20.

3d6: The Standard

Okay, now we’re getting into more interesting results. 3d6 make a poor substitute for a d20 in strictly mathematical terms – but the resulting probability curve – especially when shifted with a modifier – might be exactly what you need under some circumstances.

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum: 3
Maximum: 18
Average: 10.5 (this is the characteristic that is most like a d20).

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

Only 3 and 18 are below the 1% threshold, though you could argue that at 1.39%, 4 and 17 should be included. I’m not gong to do so. So this threshold is not met by just 1 number from each end of the results.

The 3% Threshold

This falls between 5 and 6 and between 15 and 16 on the other side. Which means that 4 and 5 don’t meet the target on the low side and 16 and 17 on the high – making this 2 results wide on each side. Immediately, there’s a pattern, which is why I stuck to my guns in the previous section – I could see this coming!

The 5% Threshold

Sadly for that pattern, the peak of 3d6 rises so quickly that this target is met between 6 and 7 & 14 and 15. So the band of results which don’t rise to this standard of probability contain just one number from each side of the average – 6 & 15.

The 10% Threshold

8 and 13 almost get there with 9.72% – but rules are rules. And so the pattern continues – One, then Two, then One, and now 2 results again (on each side of the average). 7, 8, 13, and 14 fall below the 10% threshold.

Nothing gets as high as the 15% mark, so that leaves plateau of results as 9-12.

Peak Probability

Both 10 and 11 share this property – 12.50%.

1/3 & 2/3 Peak Probability Results Thresholds

1/3 of 12.5 = 4.1667%, and double that is 8.333%.

The probability band defined by 0-4.1667% almost includes a six and a 15 at 4.63%, but they just sneak into the middle bracket. So 3-5 and 16-18 are in the lowest tier. That’s three results on each side.

Things are a little more clear-cut with the upper limit of that middle tier – 7 and 14 are definitely in the middle group, 8 and 13 are clearly not. so 6-7 and 14-15 hold the middle ground That’s 2 results on each side.

Which defines the high ground as 8-13. And that’s three results on each side again. Those six results occur, according to the statistics, no less than 67.6% of the time – That’s 2 times in 3 and one extra in a blue moon territory!

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

3d6 consists of 16 different results. That’s only 80% of the d20’s range.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

10.5 – 3 = 7.5.
18-10.5 = 7.5.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

7.5 / 3 gives us probability bands that are 2.5 results wide. So the first of these is 3 to 5.5, i.e. 3-to-5. These results have a probability of 4.63%, collectively.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

Adding another 2.5 to 5.5 gives 8. So this band of results runs from 6 to 8, and has 25.93-4.63 = 21.30% of the probability.

That’s a ratio of 4.6, almost exactly. Compare that to the 4d20 ratio of 4.889, and you can see that the 4d6 curve is flatter than the 3d6 (a higher number = a flatter result).

And when you think about it, that makes sense – the more dice you roll, the smaller the difference any one individual high or low result makes. If you were rolling 10d6, and 8 of them came up 3.5 on average (an even mix of 3s and 4s), and those last two were box cars, you have a total result of 28+12=40. That will happen 4.8% of the time – but compared to the average result of 35, it’s only 14.28% higher.

Most of the gain from those box cars is taken up just getting to the average, 7 result increases, leaving just 5 to go beyond the average.

The Lower Core

So the lower core is 9 and 10. Between them, 50 – 25.93 = 24.07% of the probable results will be one of these outcomes, on average.

24.07 is 13% higher than 21.30%. The ratio is 1.1300. That’s a massive difference to the 4d6 ratio of 2.583 – close to half of it, in fact. So the lower core is smaller relative to the results band below it in the case of 3d6 than is the case with 4d6.

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The upper core is the same size as the lower, so the same ratios will apply. It consists of results of 11 and 12.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The upper-midband is the same size as the lower midband, 21.30%. It consists of 13, 14 and 15 results.

The Lofty Outcomes

So the upper end of town is 16, 17, and 18 – and these have a total probability of 4.63%.

3d6:

03-05: 4.63%
06-08: 21.3%
09-10: 24.07%
11-12: 24.07%
13-15: 21.3%
16-18: 4.63%

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

20% cumulative probability comes between 7 and 8, almost midway between them in fact. So 7 is in but 8 is out, giving a results range of 3-7.

Second Lowest 20%

The 40% threshold is just above 9. This band therefore contains results of 8 and 9.

When you consider the anatomy of a dumbbell curve – flat bottom, inflection point, flat crown of diagnostic width, and a slope connecting the crown to the flat bottom through the inflection point, the fewer the results of this band relative to those above and below, the steeper that slope. In the case of 3d6, it took 5 results to get to 20% and just two to get to 40, indicating a severely sloping upswing in probabilities.

So much so that I would predict, from these results alone, that the inflection point – where the slope of probability changes from more horizontal to more vertical – is at or near 7 or 8, and probably the first.

What do I mean by ‘Definitive?’

Every probability curve has certain attributes that, when quantified, define the shape of that curve. 3d6 is NOT QUITE the same shape as, say, 3d8 and VERY different from, for example, 6d3. The width of the crown, the width of the tails at top and bottom, the location of the inflection point, and the steepness of the slope from inflection point to crown, are such ‘definitive’ attributes. It’s an esoteric area of statistics that only people deeply concerned with quantities of dice being rolled simultaneously and summed – which we do all the time in RPGs – would ever become aware of, let alone analyze.

The Middle 20%

The 60% mark is just short of 11, so we’re still within the crown when we get to this point – or, to put it another way, the crown is wider than this 20% net probability. In fact, this consists of a single result, 10.

Second-Highest 20%

The 80% mark lands about 2/3 of the way between 12 and 13, so this band contains 11 and 12.

Highest 20%

And that leaves 13-18 to encompass the rest.

It’s worth pointing out that despite having a symmetric probability curve and definitively symmetric breakup of probabilities, rounding error has produced asymmetric results – six results in this upper band vs 5 in the lowest 20%.

And, if we were to start at the top and count down by 20%s, we would observe the same pattern – 5 entries in the first band and 6 in the last.

Peak Probability

Two results share the peak probability of 12.50%, balanced on either side of the average result – 10 and 11.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

1/3 of 12.5 = 4.1667%. That’s just below 6. So the matching result rounds in this case to the 6, and this band is therefore 3-6, or 4 results wide.

On the upper end, we also get 15-18 within this band.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 of 12.5 = 8.3333%, and that’s so close to midway between 7 and 8 that I can’t – at a glance – tell which way to round. So I’ll have to calculate it.

7: 8.3333% – 6.94% = 1.3933%.
8: 9.72% – 8.3333% = 1.3867%.

So it’s not quite enough to round up to include the 8. That steepness of slope at the inflection point strikes again, with a single result occupying this entire band – a 7, and it’s upper-side counterpart, 14. Is it just a coincidence that both of these are even multiples of the average result of a d6 roll? Despite being able to convincingly fake it, I’m not really an expert in everything – and that’s where my expertise reaches it’s limits.

So, I did what many people these days do in order to fake being better-educated than they are – I asked an AI. It took a bit of conversation back and forth, but eventually we drilled down to the central point: both 7 and 14 are exactly 3.5 away from the 3d6 average. Because of the symmetric nature of the 3d6 probability curve, if you get a 7, you also get a matching 14. It’s that interval to the average that produces the relationship between the average of 1 dice and the results of 7 and 14; the fact that a particular method of selecting intervals led those to be the points chosen is where the coincidence lies, and why there’s no deeper significance to this observation.

That, by definition, gives the crown of the curve, on top of that 2/3 probability line, as 8-13 – a whole six results wide!

3d6:

00-20%: 3-7
21-40%: 8-9
41-60%: 10
61-80%: 11-12
81-100%: 13-18

Notice that it’s in excluding 11 from the central 20% that the rounding error manifests. If 11 were part of the central 20%, then 12-13 would be the second-highest band and 14-18, the highest – and perfect symmetry results.

03-06: < 1/3 peak probability 07: 1/3 - 2/3 peak probability 08-13: 2/3 peak probability to peak to 2/3 peak probability 14: 1/3 - 2/3 peak probability 15-18: < 1/3 peak probability

Summary Of Results

If it were a flat curve, this would be like a d20 with the extremes lopped off at either end. But it’s not a flat curve. There’s a much higher chance of getting an 8-13 result than in a d20 roll, and even 7 and 14 are more likely than on a d20. All that extra probability has to come from somewhere, and in this case, it’s not only come from the lowest and highest range of rolls, but also from those results that are possible on a d20 but not on 3d6, like 1, 2, 19, and 20.

When To Use This Substitute

I need to highlight the impact of modifiers to a 3d6 roll. 3d6+1 and 3d6+2 are significantly different beasts to a straight 3d6 – in comparison to a d20. And the same is true of 3d6-1 and 3d6-2.

Those modifiers apply to every result on the 3d6, shifting it this way or that relative to the average d20 result.

3d6-2: 1 and 2 are now possible results, but the best you can get is now a 16 – and the average is just 8.5.

3d6-1: Results now range from 2 to 17 and the average is down to 9.5.

Straight 3d6: The average result is exactly the same as a d20 but massively more likely to occur.

3d6+1: Only adds 19 to the mix (0.46% chance, a one in 217.4 chance) but takes away 3 as a result, and increases the average to 11.5. So it’s a less extreme modification, one that’s hardly worth making.

3d6+2: You can now get 19 or 20, though they are unlikely (1.8% chance), but 3 and 4 are off the table, and 1 and 2 were never on it to begin with. The average result is now 12.5 – significantly better than the average d20 result.

So use a straight 3d6 when you want to take extreme results off the table and when you want to increase the reliability of getting close to average. This is useful when characters are doing something relatively trivial and mundane, with somewhere close to a 50-50 chance of success.

This can be nuanced with 3d6-1 and 3d6+1 respectively, representing slightly adverse or advantageous situations, or slightly lower or higher chances of success.

When both those factors apply, the effects can be said to compound, or to compensate (depending on the combination). Compensation leads back to the basic 3d6; compounding leads to the more profound 3d6-2 or 3d6+2.

And that’s also true in combat situations (attack rolls and saves), though some of the 4d6 constructions discussed earlier might be even more applicable.

Having both options in your pocket gives further room to nuance and finesse the simulation of reality.

Exotic Choice #1: 2d10

On general principles, I would expect 2d10 to offer a still more nuanced option relative to 3d6, especially in 2d10-1 and 2d10+1 configurations. I will also be interested to see whether 2d10-2 and 2d10-2 yield more or less extreme probabilities than 3d6-2 and +2, respectively. But let’s see what the actual analysis yields!

I’m not sure why, but a lot of people don’t seem to think about 2d10 as a substitute for a d20. It seems a perfectly valid (if perhaps flawed) alternative, to me!

I remember the first time that I realized that two dice – 2d-anything – gave straight lines rising to a point like a triangle; my early education in gaming had told me to expect a dumbbell curve.

A little later, I realized that it WAS in fact a dumbbell curve – just one in which the sides of the curve had been flattened into a perfectly straight line. And the way you can tell this is because 4d-anything won’t give a scaled representation of this straight-lines curve – instead, the dumbbell will manifest as a distortion of those straight lines, a predictable and measurable one – see, for example, the 4d6 analysis earlier; it doesn’t look like this!

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum 2, Maximum 20, Average 11.

So the minimum is a fraction higher, and that lifts the average a fraction higher, too.

In theory, if you did 2d10 – 0.5 and then used a d2 to decide whether or not to round up or down, you might think that you would get a perfect d20 simulation – but it still has the basic 2d10 shape when you plot it out. No matter what you do, it doesn’t quite work – and always has the characteristic 2d10 triangle shown above..

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

When you look at the probabilities that go with those positions on the curve, you find that each +1 result increases the probability of that result by a perfect 1% from an initial 1% until you get to the peak probability – and then back down the other side of the triangle. The probability, all the way up to 11, is always (R-1)%.

So 2 and 20 are exactly on the 1% threshold and everything else is above it.

The 3% Threshold

And 4 and 18 are exactly on the 3% threshold, so this contains 3-4 and 18-19.

The 5% Threshold

…and the 5% threshold is reached at 6 and 16, and therefore contains 5-6 and 16-17.

The 10% Threshold

The 10% threshold is met by only the peak probability, which happens to be exactly 10%.

1/3 & 2/3 Peak Probability Results Thresholds

1/3 of 10% us 3.333, and 2/3 is 6.667.

2-4 are therefore below the 1/3 threshold and 5-8 below the 2/3 mark. On the other side of the triangle, it’s 18-20 and 14-17, respectively.

That leaves 9-13 as the upper band with respect to peak probability.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

2-20, or 19 results.

But that lets me bring up a pattern that someone once claimed to see that doesn’t actually exist. Specifically, the claim was that if you had an odd number of results possible, you would get one result at the average that had a higher probability of occurring – the peak of the triangle in this case – and if it was even, then the results would be evenly split on either side of a non-integer average, like 10.5.

Here’s where it comes unstuck: 3d6 had 15 results and no peak point. 1d20 has 20 results and – by definition – no peak point.

I suspect (but haven’t sat down to prove) that the true relationship is not to the number of results but to the number of results PLUS the number of dice IF the latter is greater than 1. Consider:

▪ 2d10: 19+2=21, odd, single peak.

▪ 3d6: 15 + 3 = 18, even, no single peak.

▪ 4d6: 21 + 4 = 25, odd, single peak.

It’s not proof – just an observed pattern.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

11-2 = 9; 20-11=9.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 of 9 is 3, and 3+2 = 5. So the bottom 1/3 of lower results are 2-5, and they have a total cumulative probability of 10%.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 of 9 is 6, and 6+2=8. The middle third of the lower results is thus 6-8, and they contain a cumulative probability of 28-10=18%.

“Wait, what?” I hear someone shout. No, it’s not a perfect x2, which people seem to instinctively expect from the shape and the 10% in the previous result.

1+2+3+4 = 10; that’s why the previous section had a probability total of 10%. 10+5+6+7 = 28, less that initial 10%, and you get 18. Deal with it.

The Lower Core

With a single peak, we again have to split that peak both ways as it ‘stands astride’ the boundary between lower and upper core, one leg in each, as it were.

9-10 is 45-28= 17%, plus 1/2 of 10% = 22%.

“Wait, what?” I hear, again. “How did the missing 2% end up over here?” By not being ‘missing’ in the first place, of course. Neither mathematics nor reality have no need to accommodate simplified human biases toward whole numbers that end in 5 or 0. But it still throws some people for a loop. I even used it in a magic act when I was about 6, making 2% ‘magically’ disappear and reappear, long before I’d ever heard of a d10 – I used a spinner in the act (home-made, of course).

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

Therefore, the upper core is 22% and runs from 11 to 13.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

And the middle upper band is 18% and contains 14-16.

The Lofty Outcomes

Which leaves 17-20 for the top echelon results, and a total probability of 10%.

2d10:

02-05: 10%
06-08: 18%
09-11: 22%
11-13: 22%
14-16: 18%
17-20: 10%

It’s worthwhile comparing the ratios of highest to lowest for this as compared to 3d6 and 4d6.

▪ 2d10: 22 / 10 = 2.2
▪ 3d6: 24.07 / 4.63 = 5.2
▪ 4d6: 34.105% / 2.7% = 12.63

If you think of a dumbbell probability as being a triangle which is pinned part-way up the sides and the upper part is then squashed inwards toward the center to create a sharper rise – that’s inflection point and upper slope to the crown – then this is an indicator of the relative steepness of that slope. With 2d10, it’s not squashed inwards at all; with 3d6, it’s squashed inwards a bit; and with 4d6, it’s squashed inwards a lot.

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

The cumulative probability gets to 20% just below 7, so 2-6 are in this band.

Second Lowest 20%

The 40% barrier is almost midway between 9 and 10. So the second lowest 20% contains 7-9.

The Middle 20%

Where would we be without rounding error? Probably a lot less confused about some of this, to be honest. We get to the 60% mark almost midway between 11 and 12, to 10-11 is contained herein.

Second-Highest 20%

The 80% threshold is just above 14, so 12-14 occupy this bracket.

Highest 20%

And the highest 20% of results are therefore going to 15-20.

That’s 6 results wide, compared to the 5-wide of the lowest 20%.

Peak Probability

As already mentioned, result 11 contains the peak probability of 10%.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

1/3 of 10% is 3.3333 and that falls between 4 and 5 – but it’s closer to 4.

On the other side of the peak, 18-20 are also in this low-probability domain.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 of 10% is 6.6667 and that’s between 7 & 8, and 14 & 15. But it’s closer to 8 and 14 so they get included in this band.

That means that the top band contains 9-13.

So, in summary: 2d10:

00-20%: 2-6
21-40%: 7-9
41-60%: 10-11
61-80%: 12-14
81-100%: 15-20

02-04: < 1/3 peak probability 05-08: 1/3 - 2/3 peak probability 09-13: 2/3 peak probability to peak to 2/3 peak probability 14-17: 1/3 - 2/3 peak probability 18-20: < 1/3 peak probability

Summary Of Results

When you get right down to it, d10 behaves like a dumbbell curve – it’s just one with unusually flat sides, an even probability increase and decrease up and down the results table.

Some people think that makes it the perfect half-way house between a d20 and a full-on dumbbell curve. I’m not going to buy into that debate on either side.

Ultimately, a native 2d10 roll does two things: it rules out a result of 1, and it makes middle-range results more likely.

It can also be said that extreme results, while still rare (especially in comparison to a d20), are a lot more likely than with greater numbers of dice. Consider:

▪ d20: Minimum 1, probability 5%
▪ 2d10: Minimum 2, probability 1%
▪ 3d6: Minimum 3, probability 0.46%
▪ 4d6: Minimum 4, probability 0.08%

So risk of failure is mitigated but not entirely removed.

When To Use This Substitute

The most significant application of this alternative comes with taking fumbles off the table – if you use fumbles in your game. The price of doing so is making mediocre results more frequent.

That’s the only justification for using this straight-up unmodified substitute, but it’s a powerful one – especially if you give a player the choice: play it safe, or take the risk? Fumbles, in this context, become the price you pay for a better chance of a critical success.

2d10-1 puts fumbles back and takes away the critical success option – but still makes mediocre results more likely than either, and far more likely than a d20 roll. There may be times – especially attempting to perform a task unskilled – where that might be appropriate.

It’s also a useful option to consider when the game system mandates that you need a certain attack bonus to even hit an enemy – because it turns “impossible” into “possible but unlikely”. That can not only be a life-or-death difference to the PCs (or to NPCs if the PCs are decked out with magic gear), it restores an element of player agency that “impossible” takes away. That’s always food for thought.

2d10+1 increases the chances of 20+, which is important if you consider that to be the threshold of a critical success instead of a nat 20. It’s worth noting that the chances of getting 20+ with this construction are still less than with a d20, though. But it takes fumbles completely off the table, emphatically. Nevertheless, I don’t recommend this substitution.

And with 2d10+2, that balance shifts slightly – 6% chance of a 20+ result instead of a d20’s 5%.

Again, the price of these benefits is the increased chance of a mediocre roll, but that also shifts with +1 or +2. With +1, the average result becomes 12, and with +2, it’s 13. Both are significant improvements over the d20 average of 10.5. Psychologically, a 13 average feels a lot more profound than a 12 average, and that’s actually a legacy of having grown up using 3d6.

▪ 3d6: Average 10.5, chance of a 13 or better = 25.93%
▪ 2d10+1: Average 12, chance of 13 or better = 45%
▪ 2d10+2: Average 13, chance of 13 or better = 55%.

A “mediocre” result on 2d10+2 is not a bad result at all. How “not bad” it is depends on the target number to reach – but even if it’s a 14 or a 15, you’ll have about as or better chance –

▪ 14: 36% on 2d10+1, 45% on 2d10+2; 35% on d20.
▪ 15: 28% on 2d10+1, 36% on 2d10+2; 30% on d20.

– with these options than a native d20. So I would also use these alternatives when a player indicates that “near enough is good enough”, as a way of baking that attitude into the outcome of the roll.

Exotic Choice #2: d8+d12

I wasn’t originally going to do 2d10, but I always had this option on my list. It will be interesting to see what differences there are, if any, between this option and that one.

Because I expect that to be of special interest, I’m including the 2d10 chart on this probability chart, and…

…and WHOA, I was not expecting that! There’s a CLEAR difference between the two, with the top of the triangle lopped off – and has ALL that probability really gone into making the sides just that tiny bit steeper??

Min, Max, Ave

Minimum 2
Maximum 20
Average 11

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

2 and 20 are only just above this marker at 1.04%. It’s so close that I’m going to include them anyway.

The 3% Threshold

This falls a little way under 4 and 18, both of which score 3.13% probability. But that’s not close enough in my book, so the 3% threshold is only occupied by 3 and 19.

The 5% Threshold

It’s a little closer to 6 than to 5, but not close enough at 5.21%. The match on the other side is 17. So this band is occupied by 4-5 and 17-18.

The 10% Threshold

No results get here – there are 5 results with an 8.33% probability.

1/3 & 2/3 Peak Probability Results Thresholds

1/3 x 8.33 = 2.7767.
2/3 x 8.33 = 5.5533.

The 1/3 mark is closer to the 4 than the 3, but not close enough. So 2-3 and 19-20 fall into the 1/3 peak probability zone.

The 2/3 mark is above 6, but nowhere near making it to 7; the corresponding high side result is 16. So the middle third contains 4-6 and 16-18.

That leaves the top of the charts as containing 7-15, a whole 9 results or 1 1/2 times the results span of the zone below. Despite having a more aggressive probability rise and fall, this is actually a LOT flatter than 2d10. Part of that is the ‘plateau’ – but that alone isn’t enough to fully account for it; it’s a genuine statistical phenomenon.

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

2-20 – which is 19 results wide, the same as 2d10..

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

Ave – Min = 11 – 2 = 9.
Max – Ave = 20 – 11 = 9.
Symmetrical about the average.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

9 / 3 = 3; 3 + 2 = 5. So a result of 5 marks the boundary between these layers. Just as I’ve had to do when the overall average ‘overlaps’ the lower an upper core, that means that 5 has to be treated as half-in and half-out of this results band.

2-4 gives 6.25%. 5 alone is worth 4.17%, so half of that is 2.085; adding that to the 6.25 makes this zone 8.335% tall.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

If 1/3 is 3, then 2/3 must be 6, and 6 + 2 = 8. Once again, a result that is astride two different zones.

6-7 are 21.88 – 10.42 = 11.46%. Half of 5 adds 2.085, and half of 8 = 7.29 / 2 = 3.645. Adding those makes this band of results 17.19% tall, which is a little more than twice the height of the previous zone.

The Lower Core

It’s not particularly surprising to me at this point that the overall average of 11 has to be split between lower and upper core. So the lower core is half of 8, plus 9 & 10, plus half of 11:

3.645 + (45.83 – 29.17) + 8.33 / 2
= 3.645 + 16.66 + 4.165 = 24.47%.

That’s about 1.42 times the lower middle total, and almost 3 times the bottom-most bracket – which, as a ratio, is rather low, and signifies that low results are relatively likely compared with other constructions.

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The set of results above the overall average mirror those below. So the upper core is also 24.47%, effectively creating a single span through the center of the results that comprises almost half of ALL the results.

The upper core is half of 11, plus 12 & 13, plus half of 14.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The upper middle band, like the lower middle band, is 17.19% in height, and consists of half of 14, 15 & 16, and half of 17.

The Lofty Outcomes

Which leaves half of 17 plus 18-20 for the top end results, and a probability of 8.335%.

d8+d12:

Lowest Results: 02-05: 8.335%
Lower Middle: 05-08: 17.19%
Lower Core: 08-11: 24.47%
Upper Core: 11-14: 24.47%
Upper Middle: 14-17: 17.19%
Highest Results: 17-20: 8.335%

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

7 is almost in the lowest 20%, but the cumulative probability is 21.88% – so just a little too high.

This band is results 2-6. Again, the flatness of the ‘curve’ is apparent from the 5-results span.

Second Lowest 20%

The 40% probability mark is closer to midway between 9 and 10 – it’s about 1/3 of the way up. So 9 is in but 10 is not, making this span, 7-9.

The Middle 20%

Rounding error strikes again!! The 60% total probability mark is between 11 and 12, closer to the higher number but not quite getting there.
So the middle “20%” is 10 & 11.

Second-Highest 20%

The 80% mark is a little above 14. So this band spans results from 12 to 14.

Highest 20%

Which means that ‘rolling high’ with this construction is anything from 15 to 20.

Peak Probability

8.33%, as already noted.

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

1/3 of 8.33 = 2.7767. That is higher than 3 but lower than 4, so 3 is in and 4 is not. On the high side, 19 and 20 are also in.

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

2/3 of 8.33 = 5.5533, which is between 6 and 7. So 4-6 are in the middle 1/3 of probabilities, matched by 16-18, and 7-15 are the most probable results.

d8+d12:

00-20%: 2-6
21-40%: 7-9
41-60%: 10-11
61-80%: 12-14
81-100%: 15-20

02-03: < 1/3 peak probability 04-06: 1/3 - 2/3 peak probability 07-15: 2/3 peak probability to peak to 2/3 peak probability 16-18: 1/3 - 2/3 peak probability 19-20: < 1/3 peak probability

Summary Of Results

Extreme results are possible, and even a little more likely than with other constructions – but the difference is so small that few will care. 2 & 3 have a total probability of about 3.1% – any two results like that on a d20 have a 10% chance.

The dominant feature of this construction is that plateau of results, 5 – almost 7 – results wide.

Things get a little more interesting when you compare to a 3d6 roll. Not only are low results a LOT more likely, but they also extend both higher and lower by 1 at the bottom and 2 at the top. there is also far less focus on the average result than on 3d6 – there’s a greater spread across the top of the probability chart. So there is greater uncertainty over the outcome – and a greater potential for near-miss results if the target is close to the average result of 11.

When To Use This Substitute

Over the central plateau, this is a lot like a d20 in that the curve is flat. In fact, the wider spread of mediocre results is more likely to eventuate than on a d20. That makes this an appropriate substitute for a d20 in cases where someone is being taught a skill – there’s a supervisor who will step in (if he can) before things really go pear-shaped, but beyond that, the student lives and dies on the merits of his own effort. This construction simulates this situation very well, with both extremes less likely for different reasons.

Things get a little bit trickier when discussing replacing 3d6 with this roll. Extreme outcomes are both more likely and potentially better, or worse. And yet, the vast majority of times, you will get a result somewhere in the middle. The most appropriate use for this substitution is for the simulation of some poisons and diseases, where some damage is almost certain to take place, and extreme results are possible but unlikely – but potentially better or worse than a 3d6 roll. It might be necessary to scale the results before it can be used this way – dividing by 4 would give a results span of 0 to 5, with 2-3 the most likely to result; dividing by 3 would give a span of 0 to 6, with 2-4 most likely. But I’m not sure that it;s worth the extra trouble. There are other ways that are even more dramatic.

“Like what?”, you ask. Well, imagine a disease or poison that is represented by 4d6 or 5d6. Every time a 1 comes up, the sufferer takes 1, 2, 3, or even 4 points of damage and 1 point of stat loss – for each 1 showing. On a 2, you take half this and no stat loss. When your rolls have accumulated a certain number of 6s, the poison / disease has run it’s course; until then, you roll at regular intervals. If you roll lucky, you get only a passing brush with the disease; if you don’t, it can ravage even the healthiest of bodies. Rolling multiple dice using such a system is inherently dramatic and scary for the players, helping them get into the correct roleplaying mindset.

That said, the d8+d12 option is, at the very least, exotic, and that can be useful in and of itself in such situations. So save this as a 3d6 substitute for when you want to emphasize and punctuate that exotic quality.

Exotic Choice #3: 2d4+d12

The d8+d12 option soon suggested this three-dice alternative, but I wasn’t 100% sold until I saw how interesting that two-dice was. I have to admit to not being quite sure what the resulting probability curve would look like. The results are perhaps even more interesting than I expected them to be!

The first thing you notice is the flat top with exactly the same probability as d8+d12. Then you notice the curvature of the walls. Third, you notice that relative to d8+d12, results are biased high.

Let’s get into the details and see what makes this probability tick.

Min, Max, Ave

The minimum is 3, the maximum is 20, and the average is 11.5. The plateau is 6 spaces wide, not 5.

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

3 and 20 are below this threshold – for practical purposes, the range is 4-19.

The 3% Threshold

5 and 18 are just above this threshold, so even 4 and 19 are improbable results.

The 5% Threshold

6 and 17 are just above this threshold, so even 5 and 18 are less likely than on a d20 roll.

The 10% Threshold

No results exceed this threshold, so everything from 6-17 are in this band – that’s 12 results!

Peak Probability

This is 8.33%, the same as d8+d12.

1/3 & 2/3 Peak Probability Results Thresholds

1/3 x 8.33 = 2.7767, which falls between the probabilities of 4-5 and 18-19. So the most improbable results are 3-4 and 19-20.

2/3 x 8.33 = 5.5533, which lands between 6 and 7 on the low side and 16 & 17 on the high. So the middle probability range holds 5-6 and 17-18.

That means that the top tier of probability holds all results from 7 to 16, a range of 10 results. Since there’s a total results span of 18, that’s more than half of them!

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

18 results range from 3 to 20.

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

11.5 – 3 = 8.5.
20 – 11.5 = 8.5.

So the roll is symmetrical.

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

1/3 x 8.5 is 2.8333. So 1/3 of the way through below-average range of results is 2.8333 + 3, or 5.8333.

The bottom range of results is 3-5, which have a total probability of 5.21%.

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 x 8.5 = 5.6667. So 2/3 of the way through the below-average range of results is 5.6667+3 = 8.6667. So the lower-middle sixth contains results 6-8 at a total probability of 25 – 5.21 = 19.79%. Not quite 4x as likely as the lower band.

The Lower Core

That means that the lower core is 9-11, with a total probability of 50 – 25 = 25%. This is only a little over a 25% increase on the previous band, an indicator of the extreme flatness of this probability distribution.

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

2.8333 + 11.5 = 14.333, so the upper core ranges from 12 to 14, and represents 75 – 50 or another 25%. The core, in total, is going to come up on half of all rolls.

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

5.6667 + 11.5 = 17.1667, so the middle upper range contains 15-17, with 94.79 – 75 = 19.79% of all rolls falling into this area.

The Lofty Outcomes

And, the top of the range is therefore 18-20, with a total of 5.21% of results – most of which will be 18s.

2d4+d12:

03-05 = 5.21%
06-08 = 19.79%
09-11 = 25%
12-14 = 25%
15-17 = 19.79%
18-20 = 5.21%

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

Breaking the 100% total probability of results as evenly as possible into bands of 20% shows 3-7 as being the bottom range. 20% of the time, you’ll roll a number in that range.

Second Lowest 20%

The 40% threshold is just below 10, so results 8 & 9 occupy this space.

The Middle 20%

60% is just over 12. so 10-12 are the middle bracket of possible results.

Second-Highest 20%

The 80% threshold falls just below 15, so the band of results that fall into the 61-80 range are 13-15.

Highest 20%

Which in turn defines ‘rolling high’ with this construction to be any result from 16-20.

Peak Probability

I’ve just realized that I’m already calculating this in a previous section – no wonder I kept getting deja vu. So this sub-section, and the two that have been following it, are redundant. But since they seem more relevant to this area of analysis, it’s the earlier one that’s going to be excised hereafter.

2d4+d12:

00-20%: 3-7
21-40%: 8-9
41-60%: 10-12
61-80%: 13-15
81-100%: 16-20

04-05: < 1/3 peak probability
06-07: 1/3 – 2/3 peak probability
07-16: 2/3 peak probability to peak to 2/3 peak probability
17-18: 1/3 – 2/3 peak probability
19-20: < 1/3 peak probability

Summary Of Results

This gives the flattest dumbbell shape that I’ve ever seen – though it may not hold that record for long.

I couldn’t help but notice that this curve has inflection points at 6 and 17. There are three results before the first, and three after the second. Those are the parts of the probability chart where probability is rising faster with each successive result – a positive rate of change.

Above these inflecton points, probability increases are getting smaller, until they hit zero at the very broad plateau of results.

That’s prompted me to add a bonus extra alternative, not on the list presented in part 1. Specifically, I wondered about the size of the plateau and the effect on the slope of 2d6+d8 as an alternative.

Just thought I’d mention it!

Extreme results are even less likely than with d8+d12 but the construction will generally roll higher than that particular d20 substitute.

Once past the inflection points, result probability is very even, with just a little drop-off on both sides of the plateau.

The final and most significant observation about this construction is that, relative to d8+d12, and d20, and 3d6, it tends to roll high. Not by much – the average is 0.5 higher than d8+d12 and 1 higher than the other two – but, over multiple rolls, that adds up. These rolls are biased toward success.

But it only takes a -1 modifier for the shoe to be on the other foot. Now, they bias toward failure.

Using +2 and -2 modifiers results in even more extreme examples.

For example:

What’s more, because the likelihood of extreme results is so low, this substitution can me adapted ignoring those results.

2d4+d12+2 may have a maximum of 22 – but 21 and 22 will come up so infrequently that they might as well not be there. At the low end, it’s 5 and 6 that are orphaned – the roll is essentially 7-20 with diminished chances of 7-8 or 19-20.

That gives GMs a lot of latitude to play with.

The other thing that struck me – how could it not? – is how closely the curve of the curving part of the 2d4+d12-2 matches the curve of the 3d6 roll. They are almost identical! Which gives this construction a couple of bonus points as a 3d6 substitute in my opinion.

Finally, you can gild the lily; instead of 2d4, roll 3d4 and keep either the best two or the worst 2.

Sadly, that graph is beyond what AnyDice can analyze, so I’ll have to do it with a spreadsheet. Here’s what I came up with:

Right away, though the effect is subtle, you can see that the curves are no longer symmetrical. The plateau and results to either side of it are unchanged, but the side described by what you ‘keep’ then follows a more gentle curve for a bit, then parallels the converse at 1 result higher, then declines more steeply at the last to meet up with the final data point of it’s opposite number.

Yes, I know that’s a lot to work through. Take your time and look at each of those descriptive statements, I’m not going anywhere.

(later)

The net effect is of +1 to some of the results, and a shift of the average – to 14.39 if you keep the best two, and to 12.61 if you keep the worst 2. Both should be compared to the roll with straight 2d4, which has an average of 13.5.
/ol>

When To Use This Substitute

This is a combination that’s very sensitive to nuance, as expressed by modifiers. At the same time, it’s relatively forgiving and flat, offering a variety of results about the average. A combination of predictability and randomness, in fact.

I would consider using this combination when that sensitivity is likely to come into play – when decisions or conditions can shade outcomes one way or another.

This would be especially appropriate when one character is actively trying to hamper or support another, instead of doing their own thing. Maneuvering into a position to flank while attacking some other target, or attempting to assist (or distract) from an important use of skill, for example.

You’ve effectively got no less than 27 variations to reflect nuance. Here they are, ranked from most penalizing to most beneficial:

1. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12 – 4:
ave 7.5 – 0.89 = 6.61, min -1, max 16, non-ignorable 1-14

2. 2d4 + d12 -4:
ave 7.5, min -1, max 16, non-ignorable 1-14

3. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12 – 3:
ave 8.5 – 0.89 = 7.61, min 0, max 17, non-ignorable 2-15

4. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12 -4:
ave 7.5 + 0.89 = 8.39, min -1, max 16, non-ignorable 1-14

5. 2d4 + d12 -3:
ave 8.5, min 0, max 17, non-ignorable 2-15

6. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12 – 2:
ave 9.5 – 0.89 = 8.61, min 1, max 18, non-ignorable 3-16

7. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12 -3:
ave 8.5 + 0.89 = 9.39, min 0, max 17, non-ignorable 2-15

8. 2d4 + d12 -2:
ave 9.5, min 1, max 18, non-ignorable 3-16

9. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12 – 1:
ave 10.5 – 0.89 = 9.61, min 2, max 19, non-ignorable 4-17

10. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12 -2:
ave 9.5 + 0.89 = 10.39, min 1, max 18, non-ignorable 3-16

11. 2d4 + d12 -1:
ave 10.5, min 2, max 19, non-ignorable 4-17

12. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12:
ave 11.5 – 0.89 = 10.61, min 3, max 20, non-ignorable 5-18

13. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12 -1:
ave 10.5 + 0.89 = 11.39, min 2, max 19, non-ignorable 4-17

14. 2d4 + d12:
ave 11.5, min 3, max 20, non-ignorable 5-18

15. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12 + 1:
ave 12.5 – 0.89 = 11.61, min 4, max 21, non-ignorable 6-19

16. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12:
ave 11.5 + 0.89 = 12.39, min 3, max 20, non-ignorable 5-18

17. 2d4 + d12+1:
ave 12.5, min 4, max 21, non-ignorable 6-19

18. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12 + 2:
ave 13.5 – 0.89 = 12.61, min 5, max 22, non-ignorable 7-20

19. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12 +1:
ave 12.5 + 0.89 = 13.39, min 4, max 21, non-ignorable 6-19

20. 2d4 + d12 +2:
ave 13.5, min 5, max 22, non-ignorable 7-20

21. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12 + 3:
ave 14.5 – 0.89 = 13.61, min 6, max 23, non-ignorable 8-21

22. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12 +2:
ave 13.5 + 0.89 = 14.39, min 5, max 22, non-ignorable 7-20

23. 2d4 + d12 +3:
ave 14.5, min 6, max 23, non-ignorable 8-21

24. 3d4 (keep the worst 2) + d12 + 4:
ave 15.5 – 0.89 = 14.61, min 7, max 24, non-ignorable 9-22

25. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12 +3:
ave 14.5 + 0.89 = 15.39, min 6, max 23, non-ignorable 8-21

26. 2d4 + d12 +4:
ave 15.5, min 7, max 24, non-ignorable 9-22

27. 3d4 (keep the best 2) + d12 +4:
ave 15.5 + 0.89 = 16.39, min 7, max 24, non-ignorable 9-22

I’ve numbered them so that they won’t take up as much room on this chart:

Yellow is ignorable, green is possible or even likely, and the average is shown as a line graph, to scale.

My approach would be to pick the base roll and modifier according to the default average result I thought appropriate, locate it on the list, and proceed up or down the list from there as seemed appropriate.

And that’s where this part has to come to an end. Next week, part 2 (if all goes according to plan)!

Tags: DM-Advice, Game-Mechanics, Hero-System, House-Rules, Inspiration, PCs, D&D, NPCs, Pathfinder, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Metagaming, All Genres

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Campaign Creation Through Iteration

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Creation, D&D / Pathfinder, Mike, The End Of The Rainbow, Tools & Techniques, Writing & Authoring & The Games Industry, World Design, All Genres on Oct.14, 2025

Iteration is one of the most useful campaign planning tools I can think of. This article demonstrates the technique and why it should be your favorite, too.

To create this image, I blended a Recursion Icon by mcmurryjulie with a mandelbrot image by AlexN20, both from Pixabay.

It’s been a while since I wrote about iteration and how to use it – in fact, the last time it was the focus of attention was, (I think), Adding Stealth Dynamics To Sandboxes back in 2024 (but that was about adventures).

There was 2019’s Into Each Plot, A Little Chaos Must Fall which is about randomness and translating layers of plotlines into plot sequences within adventures – again, not quite the same thing, though it touches on the subject.

There was a similar theme to the 2017 article, Tying Plot Threads Together: Concepts to Executable Plot.

And the tool was described as a problem-solver in Fire Fighting, Systems Analysis, and RPG Problem Solving Part 2 of 3: Prioritization – which is closer to the mark, but still not squarely hitting the target.

No, to really find something about campaign development and iteration as a tool for that development, you need to go all the way back to Top-Down Design, Domino Theory, and Iteration: The Magic Bullets of Creation, written in January 2014. For one of my favorite tools, that’s almost scandalous.

Basics

In the case of this article, I want readers to focus less on the actual outcome (the generated campaign concept) and more on the process that I’m demonstrating.

Iteration is the process of performing the same simple steps over and over to accumulate a complex outcome.

The process in this case is:

1. Ask a question or add an idea seed.
2. Identify the ramifications for the campaign world.
3. Identify the intersection point with the PCs.
4. If a new idea seed was just added, ask “why and where” and proceed back to step 2.
5. If not, return to step 1 unless satisfied with your overall world building.

This loop repeats endlessly until the test condition in step 5 is satisfied.

It’s possible to refine it further by inserting a step 3a:

3a. Have all the consequences and ramifications been explored? If not, go back to step 2.

The power of the system comes from the systematic integration of new ideas into a broader tapestry. You can start with the same initial premise multiple times and end up with a completely different campaign.

Of course, you don’t want to do that per se; instead, you want to leverage that to make your campaign different from any others that have the same central premise as their foundation.

Basic assumptions

I’m going to assume that there will be a session 0 for character creation, and therefore that I don’t yet know who’s going to be in the party and what their character classes are.

1. Central Premise

This is your initial starting point. This may end up being a prominent feature of the campaign or it may get buried into the background, lurking as a campaign-level plot twist until the PCs are powerful enough to deal with the situation.

A note about nomenclature

I’m going to inset actual campaign creation content. Each step will be in a sub-section by itself and the title of those subsections will be preceded by the step number of the process. That’s what the “1” is doing there in the section title preceding this subsection.

Key building blocks will be in Bold Italics. This makes them leap off the page and reminds you that they need expansion.

A note about genres

It must be pointed out that while the specific example is for some form of D&D / Pathfinder, the same techniques work in any genre / game system.

A note about established campaign backgrounds

This can be both good and bad. Good, in that there are all kinds of resources and ideas out there already for you to build on; bad in that those can constrain you, if you let them, and can be a little daunting, again, if you let them be that way. Good, in that players will have some idea of the kinds of adventures – the “style” of the campaign – to expect, bad in that the GM then has to deliver on that implied promise.

1. Central Premise: The Banning Of Magic

King Theovold of the kingdom of Astrangier has just issued a proclamation banning the use of Sorcery and Spellcasting throughout the kingdom, with the penalty being immediate death without trial.

A strong opening, with lots of room to grow, but it’s been done before. I’ll need to work on making this version distinctly different from the others that have appeared, and especially from my Fumanor campaign where this was a historic event long before the PCs were even born.

2. Ramifications

A grace period of 14 days is allowed for mages and other professional practitioners to relocate from the Kingdom. During this grace period, the use of magic will still be interdicted by the Scarlet Legion, a force of 1,000 elite warriors sworn to the King’s direct service. They function as his central military defense and strong right arm. It is rumored that they are actually a double-legion, with a secret sub-organization known as the Black Shadows who are spies and secret police.

I’m getting a strong whiff of a very repressive society here. In old-school alignment terms, it sounds very Lawful Evil or – at best – Lawful Neutral.

What are the consequences likely to be of such a mandate?

Anyone who practices Magic or Sorcery will have to sell everything they can’t take with them and flee. The markets will be awash with furniture and possessions, and there will be a flood of real estate on the market. Over-saturation means that people will be able to buy up their lifestyle on the cheap – someone‘s going to make a lot of money in the long term. The losers will be those practitioners, who will have to settle for pennies on the pound, getting no more than about 5% of what their belongings are actually worth.

Higher level practitioners might have the resources to take almost everything, but lower- and mid-level practitioners won’t have that option. And I note that nothing has been said about where the banned can find refuge – perhaps this proclamation has come out of the blue and no-one’s had a chance to react yet.

So markets will be in turmoil, and the economy is going on a roller-coaster ride. The makers of furniture are going to find their prices undercut massively by the flood of used goods onto the market.

In any modern society, 14 days is NOT enough time to actually sell things like real estate. But this is a simpler time, so it’s just plausible that a sale can be completed that quickly – leaving the former owners rushing off at the last minute, trying to get away before the Scarlet Legion, guided by the Black Shadows, come looking for them.

There’s been nothing said yet about Public Reactions to the ban. There’s nothing about Clerics and the reactions of the Temples / Churches, or any other recognized organizations.

Notice that we aren’t really building out on any of these elements yet – we’re still working on the main premise and simply listing all the other things that need to be detailed.

It can be useful to maintain a running list of such things, because it’s easy to overlook them if you don’t. So here’s our world-building checklist so far:

King Theovold
Astrangier (Kingdom)
immediate death without trial – is this normal? What else is punishable this way?
The Scarlet Legion
The Black Shadows (secret police)
Someone’s going to profit
Economic Turmoil (I missed highlighting this one!)
Neighboring Kingdoms for Mages to flee to
Public Reactions
Clerics & Temples / Churches – Permitted? Banned? Reactions?
Other Recognized Organizations & reactions

I find that’s also a good practice to jot down any preliminary ideas on such a list, so that you can interrupt your world-building and resume it a day or two (or a week or two) later:

King Theovold
Reputation as an enlightened monarch, making this action all the more remarkable.
Astrangier (Kingdom)
immediate death without trial – is this normal? What else is punishable this way?
‘High Justice’ – can anyone other than the King’s Scarlet Legion dispense it? Princes? Dukes? Barons? Counts? Sheriffs? Other Officials? The general public?
The Scarlet Legion
Name comes from Scarlet tunics worn over armor. Outside the control of any other nobility – which means they can target that Nobility. Connect with questions of High Justice, above.
The Black Shadows (secret police)
Name comes from secrecy. More spies than police force. Maintain trustworthiness of the Scarlet Legion, probably fairly small in numbers – but no-one knows.
Someone’s going to profit
Could be the crown, could be upper nobility, could be wealthy private citizens, most probably all three to differing extents. Will impact public opinion over time.
Neighboring Kingdoms for Mages to flee to
How many days of travel will it take to get there? If a mage can fly or teleport, they have time on their side – but if they can’t, two weeks might demand leaving right now!
Economic Turmoil
Short term, there will be bargains. Medium term, there will be price rises. Anything that used to be made more efficiently with magic will show the steepest increases.
Public Reactions
Clerics & Temples / Churches – Permitted? Banned? Reactions?
I’ve used the Clerics vs Mages trope before, so prefer another path. Menaces best confronted by Mages – Clerics etc have to pick up the slack. A large temple might offer to act as sales agents on behalf of those having trouble selling property – for 5% of the take. All this suggests a ‘soft opposition’ to the policy, overall, but some will no doubt take a harder line – which ones?
Other Recognized Organizations & reactions
- Merchant’s Guild – opposed because of the economic impacts.
- Bandits – lots of money moving around the countryside in the pockets of mages.
- Thieves Guilds – generally stronger in cities and larger towns, which is where there is suddenly less money but more property to pilfer. Largely neutral on the subject.

3. Intersection Points

This is tricky, without knowing who’s in the party. We need to list the possible situations and permutations and have ideas ready to go, but focus on the most probable one.

I can think of four major alternatives.

A. No mage in the party.
B. A mage in the party goes into exile and the party splits.
C. A mage in the party goes into exile accompanied by the party.
D. A mage in the party ‘goes underground’ in defiance of the law.

I rate A and B as least likely, C and D as more likely. If they are low-level, and unlikely to be able to impact the situation (yet), C is the most likely; if they are mid-to-high level when all this goes down, D becomes the more likely.

I also note that there will be NPCs taking options B, C, and D, regardless of what the PCs choose.

Intersection Points: No mage in the party

If they weren’t aware of the threat immediately (higher INT, remember), it won’t take long for mages on the move with lots of cash to become aware of the Bandit threat. They will look to hire PCs for escort duty if they can – as a general rule, Mage level = total levels in the party that they can afford to hire. Focus of an adventure.

Party will be routinely interrogated by Scarlet Legion – ‘seen any mages lately?’ Legion will take names, so any ‘passive resistance’ by offering false leads will cause a party to acquire a reputation and eventually create interest by the Black Shadows. Assumption: It’s against the law to lie to the Scarlet Legion. Punishments initially minor but ramping up with repeat offenses.

If the party are inclined in the Murder Hobo direction, they may become bandits themselves, leading to a Chicago-style gang war through the early campaign! If they lose that war, that can be enough to push them into exile or the underground.

Intersection Points: Party splits

Party may or may not escort the mage to safety. This splits the campaign in two at least temporarily; if that is unacceptable, then reasons need to be found to rule this option out. Perhaps the best option: it becomes publicly known BEFORE the law is announced that there is a mage in the party. When they contemplate splitting, they discover that the Black Shadows are targeting them as potential violators of the law. Persecution to be real, however unofficial and unjustified.

Intersection Points: Party go into exile

I need somewhere for them to go. I need adventures to happen there. Eventually, I need some trigger event to pull them back into the plotline.

Somewhere for them to go: The Elven Kingdom of Lethorial welcomes exiled human mages. So does the Human Kingdom of Sandival. Let the PCs choose.

Adventures to happen there: set this question aside for later.

Trigger events – Elvish Kingdom: The former mentor / master of the party mage reaches out to the PC to recruit him (and his friends) into the underground, bringing the plotline back to the forefront.

Trigger events – Kingdom Of Sandival: King Theovold becomes convinced that the civil unrest perpetuated by the Underground are acting with the covert support of Sandival. He mounts an invasion / crusade to “Kill All The Mages”. Makes this plotline front and center.

Intersection Points: Party join underground resistance

If the PCs are low-level, they will be assigned low-level tasks without explanation. Assuming intelligent leaders, some of these will be tests, and some will have significant impact – but only afterwards will the PCs be able to connect the dots as they see consequences of their actions. Multiple adventures possible.

If the PCs are mid-level, they will be assigned tasks without specific instructions on how to proceed. Some of these will be tests, but most will be targeted at outlying districts. At least one should be aimed at generating / disseminating propaganda to shift public opinion further against King Theovold. At least one should be an attempt to rescue a mage. At least one should be an attempt to recruit a high-level mage who has resisted out of distrust for the secretive heads of the underground. And at least one should be a diplomatic mission to somewhere, probably neither Sandival nor the Elves. Dwarves are the most likely option but that doesn’t seem to be a great ‘fit’ – needs further thought.

Okay, so it doesn’t matter what classes the PCs choose, the event is still going to impact them, as something of this magnitude should. Time to move on.

3a. Further consequences and ramifications

What we’ve got at the moment is pretty good in terms of the short term impact. We still haven’t really dug into the medium and long term. So it’s back to step 2.

2. Medium-term Impact

Certain magic items should be banned, confiscated by the State. Other magic items should attract a ‘Licensing Fee’ from the owners. Specific inheritance taxes should penalize the generational passing of such items. Finding / looting of such items should also attract a one-off tax.

All this aims at restricting and controlling the spread of magic through the broader community, especially any magic that can ‘replace’ having a Mage on hand. This is a logical extension of the initial proclamation.

It will impoverish the lower-middle class and lower classes, and enrich the throne and the upper social echelons. It will mean that Banditry remains an ongoing problem.

The Black Shadows are certain to have identified the existence of the underground by now, and will be actively operating to uncover their identities and turn the Scarlet Legion loose on suspects.

Expect a law to be passed making it a capital offense to harbor a known mage. That won’t make a lot of difference to anything, but it is a clear escalation and sharpens the dividing lines within society.

For some within the Scarlet Legion, this may be a bridge too far. Expect a Black Shadows -led purge of the ranks. This is likely to harden public opinions further – some in favor, some opposed. Being a fence-sitter will simply get you targeted by both sides.

3. PC Intersections

There are all sorts of ways the PCs and their adventures can intersect with these developments. In some cases, depending on their initial choices of response, these will be the focal points of adventures; in others, they will be background events. There are too many combinations possible to do much advance planning until that initial decision is made.

In general, tension and hostility will ramp up, and this element of the campaign will become more dominant, either in the form of encounters or as elements of adventures.

2. and 3. Long-term Impact

Eventually, the ban-on-magic plotline will come to a head and be resolved, one way or another. This may involve the deposing of the king and elevating someone else in his place, or not. Either way, there will be short-term chaos within the society of Astrangier.

This might seem to be the big finish for the campaign, but one further escalation is possible into a big finish. Remember the warning of the Churches / Temples, that there were menaces out there that are best addressed by Magic and that others (themselves included) would have to pick up the slack? That should have manifested in at least one such adventure in the medium term, where the PCs find themselves at the focal point of dealing with just such a threat.

As the big finish, though, an even bigger such threat should manifest, attempting to take advantage of the combination of the chaos and the moment of greatest vulnerability. What form this ‘ultimate menace’ should take is not yet clear. I also made a point of signifying that at least one set of Temples / faiths should support the ban on magic. Their motivations for this agreement should be reasonable and rooted in the gain of power and authority in general – opportunistic, in other words, but in keeping with their general theology. But I can’t help but think that this might be just a cover for their real motivations, which derive from the behind-the-scenes string-pulling of the ultimate big-bad.

Okay, so that finally lets us escape the clutches of step 3a and progress to step 4.

4. The Why and Where

The ‘where’ is the easiest to dispense with, so let’s tackle that first.

4. Where?

The Kingdom of Astrangier is going to have a capital city, still unnamed.

That capital city will contain a Castle, where the King lives, and where the various government functions are headquartered. That’s obviously ‘where’ the critical events are going to begin.

At the moment, the PCs are not going to be moving in such lofty circles, so we don’t need any real details of the Castle – just some general description. At some point, that will change and we will need to supply more specifics.

Whether or not the same is true of the Capital City is another question – it depends on where the campaign is going to be initially based.

I can see arguments both for and against starting things off in the capital.

For: It puts the PCs closer to the heart of the action, and amplifies the challenge posed by the initial proclamation. It keeps D alive as an option. A major population center is more likely to have mages around, so it’s more sensible for any PC mage to be based there.

Against: It doesn’t force the PCs to engage directly in the plotline before they are ready to do so, enhancing campaign viability. It lets the campaign start in a more ‘traditional’ fashion, easing players into events, and increasing the shock value when the proclamation gives the campaign an early plot twist. It makes the more likely early options, A, B, and C, more viable. And, it defers the detailing of the capital until you have more time to lavish on it.

Ultimately, though, this decision should not be made arbitrarily by the GM; it should be a consequence of the planned Session 0, and the character classes chosen by the players for their PCs.

I would rank each of the PC classes from -2 (strongly urban) to +2 (strongly rural) in terms of their preferred operating environment.

Clerics are everywhere, but there would be a slight concentration in the capital, so -0.25. Rogues would also be everywhere, but there would be an even stronger concentration on the urban setting, so -0.75. Mages can be either urban or rural, so either -0.5 or +0.25. Fighters are everywhere, so +0. Druids are strongly rural, so +1.5, and Rangers are even more rural, so +2. And so on. I would make these assessments as each character gets generated, not in advance. Add them all up, and you will get a total. To accommodate groups of differing size, divide the total by the number of PCs to get an average.

-2 to -0.5: Strongly Urban. Start in the capital or another major city.
-0.5 to 0: Weakly Urban. Start in a large city other than the capital or a large town.
0 to +0.5: Weakly Rural. Start in a moderately large town 2/3 of the way from the borders to the capital, on the fringes of the Inner Kingdom.
+0.5 to +2: Strongly Rural. Start in a small town or village not too far from a larger town, located 1/3 of the way from the borders to the capital at most.

This preserves a semblance of urban civilization for those classes that need it, or a connection to a rural culture for those classes that need it, while placing most PCs in a workable environment. There may be some element of specific individuals being slightly ‘fish out of water’ necessary, which the player should incorporate into his character.

Remember, too, that the relative likelihoods of C and D are contingent on the degree of “urban” to the initial setting. Strongly Urban makes D more likely to eventuate, anything else makes B or C more likely. A can happen equally in either setting. This should inform your choices for adventure prep. Obviously, the longer you can put off doing something major like generating a city, the more you can invest in the necessary prep, so if in doubt, swing rural.

The worst possible outcome: Strongly Urban, so much so that the capital is the only realistic option – and for the party to then choose options B or C (if applicable), so that all the prep invested goes to waste, at least in the mid-to-short-term.

4. Why?

We’ve decided already on the principle agent of the proclamation: King Theovold. Our notes suggest that he had a reputation as a kind and progressive King, so this harsh action is noticeably out of character – and that makes the ultimate ‘why’ of critical importance.

You can expect the players to speculate endlessly, and every possibility that they come up with (and more besides) will probably circulate as rumors. Come up with as many half-baked theories of your own to add to the mix.

There are several obvious options. The King has been replaced (a twin, or a doppelganger). The King is being influenced by an outsider (either mentally or criminally or by magic).

Both are entirely too predictable, I think. So let’s complicate the why with two causes: a Proximate Cause to initially justify the harsh laws, and a True Cause to give the PCs something to overcome in the penultimate climax of the campaign.

4. Why? Proximate Cause

The Wizard’s Guild have been agitating against other groups for a while now, in particular disliking the Merchant’s Guild’s ability to constrain rates charged for services and some of the Temples for their ability to override what the Wizards deem acceptable. When their level of frustration grew too much, they attempted a coup of sorts, seeking to dominate the King’s thoughts with Magic. It’s not clear whether this was a separate sect within the Guild or if the entire leadership was in on it, but their efforts were thwarted somehow and the King declared them the equivalent of a terrorist organization (he would probably have used the term ‘subversive’ but that’s what he would have meant).

That gives a real, concrete reason for a draconian response. If you don’t know who to trust, you can’t trust anybody. The slightest hint that the Wizards are generally prone to being seduced by the practice of their arts, overriding their consciences and any wisdom they possess, and their fate would be sealed. The forces that the Guild had been agitating against would have been only to happy to put the boot in, amplifying the perceived threat and disloyalty shown.

Was this conspiracy real, or just an excuse? The entire Guild Leadership were publicly hanged while bound and gagged. There was no trial – they were guilty because the King said they were guilty.

Let’s consider the possibilities:

4. Why – If The Conspiracy Wasn’t Real?

Then the Wizard’s guild were fall guys, removed from the picture because the ultimate big bad is vulnerable to magic. It’s neat and tidy but seems too simple a picture. You also find that the ultimate “Why?”” has become more of a “How?” – remembering that the King would have been protected against anything and everything that could be thought of.

This doesn’t exclude the possibility that the King has genuinely fallen into Madness, but there isn’t a whole lot that the PCs can be expected to do about that, so I don’t regard this option favorably.

4. Why – If The Conspiracy WAS Real?

Then the Wizard’s Guild really were the bad guys, and the ban was justified – though a possible over-reaction. Maybe the King is prone to that in cases of Dishonor or Betrayal or threats to his family.

I like this option because it’s not going to be expected – “the plot twist is that there IS no plot twist!” – but it’s likely to put the nose of any Mage-player out of joint.

This only shifts the subject of the “Why” from the King to the Guild, but that innately gives us more options, some of which can assuage the anger of any Mage-player by recasting the Guild as victims, not criminals.

A while back, I took part in an online conversation speculating wildly about better choices for a Lich’s phylactery. Amongst the more interesting options suggested were,

An ordinary copper coin released into general circulation, indistinguishable from any other;
A single facet of an incredibly valuable gemstone, so that not only would there be resistance to breaking it, doing so would not actually destroy the phylactery.;
An Iron Golem;
The Heart of Bahamet;
A magical ring that bestowed great powers upon any who wear it (the One Ring kinda fits this description);
The City Of Brass;
A Relic or Artifact.

Let’s take that last one. If such a relic or artifact were uncovered by an adventuring group, and it was clearly inherently evil, it might be turned over to the Wizard’s Guild who would search for ways to unmake it. If they did not suspect the Lich‘s presence within the relic, they might not take adequate precautions, and so could prove vulnerable to subtle but growing manipulation.

Petty complaints and general disagreements would initially become fiery and escalate. Feelings of persecution would begin to grow as the other parties to those complaints and disagreements argued against the mages, any wins being minimized and any losses amplified in the mage’s perceptions. Over time, they would be increasingly corrupted – until the conspiracy came into being.

The conspiracy was real, and the victims – the guild – were also the villains that they were accused of being.

Now that’s got some texture to it. It’s not as simple as the alternative, it contains nuance and leaves a lurking menace at the center of the Kingdom – that’s great for what will initially appear to be the climax of the campaign. And, in the form of the adventuring group who initially recovered and turned the relic over to the guild, but who have not put two and two together, it creates a group who knows at least part of the story-behind-the-story, and who can be encountered by the PCs at some future point.

The Lich has not been simply waiting around for his machinations to unfold; he may well recognize his slight vulnerability to the secrets known to those adventurers and would seek to influence others to get rid of them. The Secretive Head of the Black Shadows would be a particularly compelling target because of the very secrecy surrounding him, and his ability to covertly act.

Better and better – this adds a direct confrontation with agents of the Black Shadows to the adventure in which the PCs start to learn the truth! What’s more, even if the Black Shadows complete their assignment of assassinating the last member of that old adventuring party, who has seen his comrades cut down one by one no matter where and how they hid, it has to be assumed that he may have lived long enough to pass on his secret – so it’s now the PCs who have infinite knives at their backs. What they do about that is up to them – but self-preservation should incline them to get involved in the real plotline at this point. It’s no matter an abstract good-vs-evil story that they can take or leave, it’s a direct threat against them.

4. Is the Lich, the Ultimate Big Bad?

If just any Lich could use a relic as a phylactery., they’d all be doing it. But if we assume that this ability is an unusual choice not normally available, then we create room for a real ultimate big bad to have facilitated this, making the Lich a lieutenant at worst and an Agent at best.

This reasoning demands that the ultimate big bad be something more akin to a Morgoth or a Sauron, a manipulator capable of making Artifacts of great power and evil, who conceived of this plan and manipulated the circumstances to make it possible. Someone who has been lurking in the shadows even less suspected of involvement than the Lich has been.

All that is needed to initiate the ultimate climax of the campaign is for the PCs – already weakened and exhausted, one hopes, by their battle with the Lich – is for them to spot the shadowy hand of this hidden evil, causing it to fully reveal itself for one epic final battle within the campaign.

5: Are You Satisfied with the worldbuilding?

So let’s take stock for a moment.

The fundamental premise of the campaign has carried it from its earliest in-play beginnings all the way through to plot twists and an ultimate menace, with significant heightening of tension and drama in the end.

The last four or maybe five adventures in the campaign show this escalation quite clearly:

F-4: Learn of the relic, direct confrontation with Black Shadow assassins.
F-3: Learn more about the artifact and the leadership of the Black Shadow assassin while realizing that they are now the targets of the Black Shadows.
F-2: Travel to the Capital City of Astrangier, confront the head of the Black Shadows, discover the hidden Lich.
F-1: Confront the Lich without time to recover from the fight with the head of the Black Shadows and his bodyguards. Defeat the Lich and discover / confront the Ultimate Big Bad.
Final Adventure: Confront the ultimate big bad in an epic conclusion.

Insofar as outlining the campaign, then yes, I would be happy with this. However, there are a great many elements that have been name-dropped along the way and need further development before this campaign would be ready to play. The last time I listed them, there were ten of them, most with some initial thoughts, but some not even with that much done. And there have been more added since then.

Which means that it’s back to step 1 to work on the first item on the list, King Theovold. And when he’s done, the whole process will repeat for Astrangier, the Kingdom, and so on.

I think it worth a time check at this point.

Coming up with the ideas presented in this example took me about 20 minutes to go from an empty page to everything listed above. Writing them down (typing them up) in this case took another 20 minutes or so, maybe 30.

I started writing this at 1:37 PM and it’s now 6:52 PM – so that means that explaining the process has consumed 4 hrs 25 minutes. The real number to pay attention to is that 50 minutes. In fact, I’ll be generous and bump it up to an even hour.

With about 14 items left on the list to develop, if I spend just as much time on them as I have the initial construction of the campaign, I end up with a total of about 15 hours from blank page to fully-playable campaign.

The reality is, though, that part of the development process so far has been deciding the framework and campaign structure. That’s a lot of detail that doesn’t have to happen a second time, and so it would not surprise me if the time needed to generate and document concepts for the remaining items were halved or even quartered.

That’s either 8 1/2 or 4 3/4 hours. A solid day’s work, and my mind (these days) would probably be fairly fried at the end of it – but in days gone by, I could manage that in a day and be ready to run by evening. If I’m more willing to improvise and come up with details when I need them, that additional development time gets slashed again, probably to another hour, especially if I could dip into my library of resources for appropriate city maps and the like.

A note about additional plotlines

No campaign should ever rely solely on one single plotline. Instead, I would designate this as the Wizard Plot Arc and generate other plot arcs for the different character classes. These would not be as detailed as this one, which lies at the heart of the campaign; but they should be there ready for any PC who chooses that particular character class.

I’d probably spend 20-30 minutes on each possible plot arc outside of this one. That would mean that each and every PC had their own plotline through the campaign, so that this main plotline could fade into the background most of the time.

With unused plotlines, you have several options to consider.

They can describe background events, sources of news and rumors, keeping those relevant beyond the mere gossip that would be 80% of such content.
One of the PCs can be cast as “a fish out of water” and flung headlong into some other classes’ character arc instead of their own. This choice works especially well if the player shows no interest in what you had initially planned.
You can save them for a future campaign.

In none of those cases is the development work that has been done, a wasted effort. Only if you simply throw them away is that the case.

Having a plotline squarely aimed at making their PC the center of attention, and progressing from one plotline to another, with foreshadowing and the other tricks of the trade making the transitions more seamless, is the best way that I know to create player investment in both their characters and the campaign.

And, ultimately, this is yet another set of iterations of the iterative process. Simple steps accumulating to a rich and complex amalgam. That’s the power of iteration, and why it remains my number one campaign planning and development tool.

Tags: Campaigns, Inspiration, D&D, Tools & Techniques, Pathfinder, Writing, All Genres

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Expectations and Promises, Real and Imagined

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Creation, Campaign Management, D&D / Pathfinder, Game Mastering, Mike, PCs, Planning & Preparation, Players, Tools & Techniques, World Design, House-Rules, Metagaming & Metagame Theory, All Genres on Oct.07, 2025

We all have expectations when we belly up to the game table. Sometimes, the GM delivers on promises both real and implied, and sometimes those expectations were never realistic in the first place.

This merges two images, First, the book, Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke, and second the magic, Image by Stefan Keller, both via Pixabay, with additional effects by Mike..

After struggling with the most recent installment of the Topologia game setting (it really should have been three parts, maybe 4, but it broke so naturally into two more-or-less even pieces), I’ve barely made a dent in the next part of the Trade In Fantasy series, which is now way behind. So I thought up this post ideas as I was going to bed last night and am going to use it to steal an extra week of writing time.

Every person who sits down at the game table brings expectations with them. This is true whether this is an RPG “Blind Date” (players and GM have never gamed together before), if there is history of which the person is aware, or if the situation is more akin to old friends with an actual history of gaming together, though the expectations can be different in each of these cases.

Superficially, these can look quite simple, but as soon as you start digging into the subject, complications and nuances begin to exert themselves and situations can become a lot less simple in a hurry.

Over time, as participants in the campaign get to know both it and the other participants, expectations can and will evolve, and that’s a source of additional complications.

I’ve broken the subject down into 21 key aspects – you read that right, I said 21 – and I’m still not sure that I’ve captured everything that falls under this topic heading. Since this is supposed to be a fairly quick fill-in post aimed at making deadline tonight – a little less than 10 hours from now – I don’t have a lot of time to spend on each. Take off an hour for pre-publishing and an hour for meals and a break somewhere along the way, and I have about 8 hours to get this written. I’m also going to take an hour out as a reserve, to be used where things take a little longer than scheduled or go wrong or I get sidetracked. So, 21 topics, 7 hours – that’s 20 minutes to each topic.

Let’s go!

1 Blind Expectations – Players

A player sitting down at a game table for the first time may have no idea of what to expect or may have expectations deriving from past experiences in other campaigns with other GMs and players. If those expectations exist with no knowledge of the other participants and no prior knowledge of the campaign, they are ‘blind expectations’.

The more experience a player has, especially outside this particular group, the more of these pre-formed expectations they will carry with them. As they grow more familiar with this particular social group coalescing, these blind expectations will evolve and get replaced with a history of playing with these particular individuals in this particular campaign using this particular game system.

That last one is important, because a lot of blind expectations will be carried by the player’s sense of what the game system embodies, permits, requires, and symbolizes. What sort of adventures can they expect? What sort of characters? What sort of choices?

Bringing pregenerated characters or preexisting characters into a new campaign adds to this mixture, because players expect to be able to marry the characters with the campaign background and setting. In fact, these expectations – like all expectations in this context – can be broken into Rules, Campaign, Adventure types, Adventure Participation, Character Agency, Spotlight Share, and Social Compacts.

Rules – preexisting house rules, rules-as-written, rule enforcement, gaming philosophy, GMing style.
Campaign – the background and backdrop, internal cohesiveness, and how the PCs will integrate with these. In particular, if there’s a conflict, which takes priority and how can / will that conflict be resolved? The campaign is what distinguishes this story-line from every other one run with the same game system, and derives directly from the GM and what they are bringing to the table.
Adventure Types – if you know nothing about the campaign prior to play, you have only whatever knowledge you possess of the game system and the types of adventures permitted, to guide you. That can become a problem if you expect one thing, and design your PC with that in mind, and the campaign wasn’t designed to accommodate that. It’s less likely to be a problem if the GM incorporates a session zero for character construction and background briefing, because player choices can be tailored to better fit the campaign world. I’ve participated in session zero’s (long before the term was invented) that were as short as 5 minutes or as long as three game sessions. I’ve even been involved in one where characters were entirely abstract and conceptual for the entire session zero, not being translated into game mechanics until a session 0.5 either later in that game session or in a separate game session.
Adventure Participation – There’s a reasonable expectation that their characters will get to participate in the adventure of the day, whatever it may be. They may not be the center of attention in that adventure, but there is an equally-valid expectation that they will get their share of starring roles in the future. Some players demand attention from the first day of play, others prefer to get used to the campaign, GM, and background first, keeping an initially low profile before being put on the spot. All of this translates into the GM preparing adventures for the group of PCs that he’s got and not shoehorning them into a preexisting structure of which they were not advised during character construction. That’s why session zero can be so important.
Character Agency – There’s a reasonable expectation that PCs will have an impact on the game world. Initially, it will probably be the case that the world has a greater impact on the PCs, but over time, that should reverse. Initially, those impacts may only be felt locally; by the end of the campaign, they may be profound, even existential. At the end of a campaign, each player should be able to look back on it and say that if their character had been different, it would have changed the story, sometimes in part, and sometimes profoundly, even if the broad shape of the skeleton remained unchanged.
Spotlight Share – There’s a reasonable expectation that their PC will get a fair share of the spotlight during each adventure. Sometimes, GMs balance these things over the span of many adventures, giving rise to the choices discussed in the article Ensemble or Star Vehicle – Which is Your RPG Campaign?
Social Compacts – Everyone carries expectations of how game participants will interact socially. If no-one knows anyone else, there’s an expectation of politeness, respect and tolerance at the very least – but a stiff formality is often better than an excessively casual approach, at least at the beginning. Novice players also sometimes have trouble separating character from player, NPC from GM. This revolves around expectations of fairness in decision-making and rules interpretation, too. If a GM is seen as being unfair, a campaign is almost certainly doomed. I always like to schedule in a session “1.5” at the tail-end of the first day’s actual play for people to talk about the campaign and themselves and actually draw a line between the exhibited traits of their characters and the beliefs and practices of the players. Sometimes its not needed, but sometimes it can be all-important.

Blind expectations can also stem from genre interpretations provided by media. Those may or may not be relevant to the actual game on hand. If you keep your eyes open, you can see the impact of Star Wars, of Lord Of The Rings, of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, of the Big Bang Theory, and so on – each creates a ripple effect that permeates gaming for a while and informs how participants view the content of a genre, and hence what expectations they have of that genre. And, before movies and TV were as big, there were books. How past encounters with a genre have shaped expectations of that genre is one of the hardest things to pin down, and at the same time, one of the most profound influences on an individual’s playing style and expectations.

The problem with blind expectations is that they are often inchoate and unstated. They can be fuzzy and undefined. They can be baggage from the past, which makes them more clearly-focused and defined. They can be reasonable or unreasonable. None of which makes them any less real.

2 Reputational Expectations – The GM

If the GM has been in that role for a while, even outside of this new group, that creates expectations based on their history and reputation. “GM for 12 years” – or “20 years” – or “44 years” in my case – definitely creates expectations. That may or may not relate to any particular game system, but the longer it spans, the broader their expertise is likely to be.

Imagine that your entire history as a GM is archived on the internet somewhere and you were to ask an AI – with a reference link to that history – “what is my reputation as a GM?”

The results are likely to be ‘as viewed through rose-colored glasses’, though I’m fairly open about past mistakes and misjudgments. If I were to use Campaign Mastery as my reference source, the results of such a question would be very much an idealized version of myself as a GM – I know because I ran just such a search for the purposes of this article. The practical reality is likely to be somewhat less perfect and idealized than expectations if this is the foundation. They would not be completely wrong, but the reality would be less perfect than expectations might hold.

And the same holds true, to some extent, regardless of the information source, though sources outside the direct control of the GM in question are just as likely to amplify negative traits and events, and those are also going to influence expectations while comprising only a small part of the GM’s actual ability. Anything that creates a false expectation, either good or bad, is a potential problem, because those expectations are extremely unlikely to actually represent the reality of the game experience..

3 Promises – The Campaign

Any campaign briefing carries with it promises both explicit and implied about the campaign, the adventures, the style, the genre, and so on. I often preface mine with a statement that the briefing represents the game world as the PCs understand it – giving me the freedom to expand on or depart from that blueprint. I can also incorporate deliberate ‘errors’, giving the players the opportunity to uncover ‘secrets’ about the universe their characters inhabit, and ensuring some surprises along the way.

I went a step further with the Fumanor campaign – there was a group of common pages of text, but those with extensive theological training (clerics etc) got additional information (not all of it accurate), mages got different information (not all of it accurate), and so on. And none of it was, therefore complete.

A lot of GMs spend a lot of their time and effort in making their campaign plans exciting and interesting with lots of plotline potential. That’s great,. and to be encouraged. Others put all of that effort into campaign backstory generation, under the premise that it doesn’t matter where the PCs choose to go and what they choose to do, there will be something interesting for them to do and find – but that can also imply a lot of development work that never sees the light of day.

This can be both bad, and good. It’s bad if it’s wasted effort, it’s good in that it means there’s content for a sequel campaign to pick up on.

Very few GMs take the time to think about what their briefings are actually promising potential players, and what scant attention is paid usually focuses on the explicit promises. The implied promises are poor second cousins in comparison. Partly, that’s because it’s hard, and partly because the GM is not omniscient and hasn’t encountered every possible combination of media inspirational source material. But it’s worth spending a little more time on it than most people do, and asking yourself about the expectations of those participants with a media consumption profile that includes the dominant sources of the day – just so that any false expectations that might be generated get headed off at the pass.

4 Promises – GM Skill-set & Infrastructure

At first glance, this might seem to be inherently derivative of the previous section but that’s because almost everyone will misinterpret the meaning of “GM Skill-set”.

I richly illustrate my adventures. Sometimes with the results of deliberate image searches, sometimes with hand-drawn or digital illustrations. I’m fairly good at editing and compositing image elements into a whole utterly distinct from the source material. I’ve made explorations into using AI generation for images (which is a subject for a whole other article). A current adventure I’m working on employs sound effects for the first time (harmonious and discordant Gregorian chants, back-masked, plus various mechanical sounds and violent sounds. Those are all about creating atmosphere). For only the second time ever, another adventure has relied on the creation of custom animations, like this one:

Because it’s been reduced in size to fit the screen real estate at Campaign Mastery, here’s a closeup view that’s closer to how it will appear when used in play:

Okay, so back to the point: The “GM Skill-set” refers to everything else that the GM brings to the table outside of his ability to deal with rules and craft campaigns and adventures and encounters. It?s whatever personal resources the GM has to bring the game world to life. It might be voice acting, with several different character voices on tap; it might be image creation / manipulation; it might be poetry or song, or 3D battlemaps or custom miniatures or just well-painted miniatures. It might be having access to a vast library of sound effects and the ability to mix and compose them on the fly.

And yes, it can include tools for interaction with the game mechanics – how you track initiative, for example. It can be mandating a particular character sheet, or even a bespoke one specifically for this campaign.

It can even be homework: “Jim, you’re playing an Elf. In this world, they have a very lilting speech pattern, a little like Irish. Here’s a link to an interview with an Irish comedian, I want you to watch it a couple of times, practice saying the same words the same way he does a couple of times, and then practice saying things your character might say as though he were saying them. Marty, you’re playing a Dwarf, they have a far more guttural speech pattern and one that lacks the expression even of German. Here’s a link to speech by Londo Milari, a character from Babylon-5; the actor based his accent on Hungarian which I think would sound just about right. I want you to do the same thing for your character, but with this voice. One hint: the character has a very particular way of naming another character, sounding out each syllable – Mis-ter Gar-a-ball-di, which the actor found was a ‘touchstone’ for letting him get immediately into character, even sub-vocalized. You might find it works for you, too.”

My players know what to expect – that I will carry part of the load of the suspension of disbelief and a lot of narrative description through images and the occasional extra – from my campaigns. It only takes a single session for new players to get used to it, and another for them to come to rely on it. It’s a key part of my game prep.

It creates expectations – the more complex a scene, the more I will have found some way to represent or depict it. It might be as simple as drawing parts of the map only when they come into view, with the players adjusting their positions as crosses on the map each time they move, or covering part of a map with post-it-notes so that they can’t see what’s underneath. But there will usually be something. If ever there isn’t, they feel a little short-changed, even though they don’t make a fuss about it – and the strength of those feelings can differ from one player to another.

It’s all part of my GMing style, and the players have an expectation that I will deploy my full armory of tricks to execute that style, even in a new campaign, unless I’ve deliberately told them to expect something different..

5 History & Implied Player Expectations

Every GM has a history that leads them to expect certain things from players. Every player has a history that has taught them to provide certain things in play. The two may not match, in fact they probably don’t. The GM needs to be upfront about the minimum engagement that he expects from players – but that necessitates his being clear on what his expectations can reasonably be, in the first place.

Several of my players, for example, have a great deal of trouble shifting gears from talking in character to a more omniscient perspective in which they represent their characters thoughts and words in the third person. As a result, it can be like pulling teeth getting them into first-person mode for roleplaying immersion. Unless it’s absolutely critical to a scene, I don’t even try, most of the time.

And, when it is critical, I make efforts to sustain that mode of interaction without forcing them back into the world of game mechanics. There have been times when I’ve even had them roll a series of results (writing them down) which I then commandeer and interpret whenever a roll might be needed in-game – because I’m better at shifting back-and-forth than they are, most of the time.

I will even break a scene into two parts and spend time interacting with another player to keep the immersed-roleplaying part of their sequence whole and intact, or to give them time to reset their mindset before going back into character if for some reason they do have to break character and go into ‘character-narration’ mode.

When I first started as a GM, my expectations in this respect were framed by the experience I had with the players in other games, and were a lot higher than this current group could readily meet. It took time and experience to ground my ‘minimum levels’ at a more reasonable standard, resetting my expectations. Anything now delivered in excess to those expectations is a bonus. (The illustration-rich aspect of my GMing style was also founded on the principle of forcing fewer breaks in perspective onto the players, at least initially).

6 Implied Promises – Adventures

If your campaign briefing talks about the sort of adventures that the players will experience – and it should – that carries an explicit promise to deliver that type of adventure to the game table. If it doesn’t, something that happens all too often, players are left to surmise on the adventure types they will ‘enjoy’ from what is implied by what briefing is provided in advance, by reputations, by media-driven perceptions of genre, and by their own past experiences. All of the latter are Implied promises, and they can be viewed by players to be just as binding as explicit statements.

What you deliver will rarely match the resulting expectations. Sometimes they will come close enough, and sometimes they will be worlds apart.

I get why GMs don’t want to tip their hat in this respect in the briefing materials. Doing so invites the construction of characters designed to interact with the game world in the specified manner, rather than being ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times – which is often what the GM is aiming for the campaign to be. So I have two different bodies of advice for dealing with this situation.

6.1 Avoid Implied Adventure Promises If You Can

If it’s at all possible to do so, be explicit about the types of adventures that are to take place. Any surprise factor won’t last long anyway, and most players are capable of separating player knowledge from character knowledge for long enough that the real focus of the campaign becomes clear to them.

I’ve had some success – and some failures – running little slice-of-live vignettes or micro-adventures taking PCs through key formative events in their childhood in play as part of a Session Zero. So that’s an alternative to consider. But the failures have convinced me that the first approach is the better one – be explicit and up-front. MAYBE you can justify delaying this until after characters are generated. My experience is that this just creates ill-will amongst players, because their expectations get derailed immediately.

6.2 If you can’t, pay extra attention to the implied promises – and construct a campaign plot arc that transitions slowly from those base expectations to the endpoint

My, but that’s a mouthful. If, for any reason, you don’t feel you can be explicit about the types of adventures to come, this is the advice to follow. DO put in a statement of the “ordinary people adventurers who find themselves living in extraordinary times” type, just as a hint – and a note of forewarning.

More importantly, study what you have prepared to tell the players, looking for any hints or ways of interpreting it that suggest a particular type of adventuring to follow. Tweak what you are going to give them until it’s not incompatible with your plans, and that you can reasonably forecast what the players will expect in response to the content.

Then, deliver that content – at least at first. Make the transition to the ‘true shape’ of the campaign a gradual one that begins only after those expectations have been met. I don’t care if it adds 5 adventures or 3 character levels or whatever – that’s better than the jarring that can otherwise result. Insert events that naturally and gradually reshape the campaign and the adventures of which it is composed.

But there’s a downside to be wary of, too – if you spend too much game time constructing plot elements that will eventually come together, players can feel like the campaign is stagnating and nothing big ever happens. You need to balance the resolution of some plot arcs with development of the big picture – even if that means deliberately inserting plot arcs for that specific purpose.

Six sections done, how’m I doing for time? Midnight minus an hour is 11 PM. It’s now 5:36 PM – so 5 hrs 24 minutes from now. Take off the hour in reserve and the hour for meals and that leaves 3 hrs 24 minutes. With 6 out of 21 sections done, that leaves 15 to go – at an average of 13.6 minutes each, not the 20 minutes originally scheduled.

To be fair, I have used a little of those breaks already – but not that much. 15 x 20 = 300 minutes; I’ve only got 204 left – so the six sections written have used 96 minutes more than expected, less about 10. And 86 / 6 = about 14 minutes too long, each, on average.

That says I’m not gonna get there, not without picking up the pace. But if I have to, I’ll publish a day late rather than splitting this into two pieces.

So let’s carry on.

7 Implied Promises – Campaign Backstory

The Fumanor backstory included the Godswar, in which whole pantheons were (mostly) slaughtered, the Kingswar in which the conflict in “heaven”” was mirrored by political conflicts on Earth, the consequent economic and social and political collapse, the Reformation when the surviving gods founded a new, blended, pantheon, and the beginnings of a slow recovery on Earth. Clerics blamed Mages for unleashing the events, and came this close to having magic banned entirely; it was very much driven underground. That’s the backstory, in a nutshell.

It carries within it certain expectations and implied promises. Were mages to blame? Maybe. If not, could they be reformed in the eyes of society? Maybe, just maybe. if theology was shown to be wrong or incomplete or inadequate, there would be social consequences for the churches, who were becoming so dominant socially that the political reality was verging on a theocracy. Not all the temples and chapels dedicated to fallen deities had given up hope of a miraculous resurrection, if they just prayed hard enough, a hope buoyed by the fact that none of those clerics dedicated to the fallen had lost their powers. Was their faith enough on its own? Or was something more going on? Heck, no list of ‘surviving deities’ had been compiled or generally accepted, and all the old religious conflicts and rivalries were still going full tilt. Obviously, there would have to be a reckoning. So there were strong implications for mage characters and for cleric PCs.

The initial PCs included a mage and a cleric. The mage had the choice – be open about their status (and hence controversial) or secretive – the player chose the first. the cleric had a choice between being open-minded and willing to evolve, or theologically hide-bound – the player in this case also chose the first option. So the pair of them deliberately put themselves on a path to confronting the errors, misjudgments, and lies of both commission and omission implicit in the background material.

They correctly deduced the implied promises of engagement with significant plotlines for those character types and chose to take them on, which would reshape the campaign world in the process, rather than letting it define and confine them. Either would have been valid character choices, but the chosen paths promised greater and more significant adventures.

A third arc revolved around the restoration of Elves and their place in society. The player who chose to take on an Elf paid lip service to the different foundation, but found translating that into an atypical mindset much harder than they expected, falling back on familiar tropes and attitudes all too often. Eventually, this led to them leaving the campaign, their burden of social reformation incomplete. I had the choice of letting the arc continue with an NPC as the focus, letting the arc die, or letting the character die and placing the burden on the shoulders of one of the other PCs. Because it was critical to the endpoint of the campaign, I ruled out the first two options – one would have derailed it, and the other would deny critical elements of PC agency that were crucial to the plotline. That left only the third choice, and the Mage-playing character (who had already completed a lot of making Mages respectable again) stepped up.

Adventures should be shaped by player expectations – you should always give ‘the paying audience’ what they came for. That gets a lot easier if you have shaped those expectations around the plotline that you want the adventures to deliver, in the first place.

Either your campaign should be a natural outgrowth of the backstory, or the backstory should be shaped around the campaign that you want to run. Anything else subverts expectations and can lead to campaign collapse and failure.

8 Blind Expectations – GMs

I talked in the first section about the blind expectations that players can have of a GM they have never gamed under. The converse is also true – the GM will have expectations of players that they have never shared table space with, too.

You can have a lengthy debate about which one is more important. It really depends on what those expectations are and how reasonably the person holding them can expect them to be fulfilled. A GM can, for example, reasonably expect players to commit to the campaign, attending as often as they can, being on time, and following the social contract of the group – I’ll talk about the latter a little later.

Attendance in my campaigns is mandatory – with a lot of reasonable exceptions. I want my games to be beloved social activities – less important than real world emergencies, subject to real world problems like employment demands and health, and even overridden by the occasional major family event. I work with regular schedules in an attempt to let players schedule other events around their commitment to the game, creating the maximum opportunity for the two to work hand-in-hand with each other.

Committing to the campaign also means accepting the premise and central philosophies on which the campaign is built, regardless of personal feelings on the matter – see Moral Qualms on the Richter scale – the need for cooperative subject limits – if you can’t do that, don’t sign up for it. And if you aren’t sure, talk to me about it before it becomes a problem.

It means accepting the occasional bit of homework – be it reading some briefing materials in between game sessions, or developing a key NPC deriving from your PC’s background, or writing up part of that background, or revising a character’s abilities (that doesn’t happen often).

GMs can reasonably expect players to implement the PC that the GM agreed to in prior discussion, defined within the context of the game world, and not some other character. They can reasonably expect players to try and play the character that their character sheet describes, which should also match that conceptual agreement.

Most of the time when this doesn’t happen, it’s “Magpie Syndrome,” where an immature player becomes captivated with a “newer, shinier” character construction. But I have met at least one player who deliberately reinvented his character before game session 1 to demonstrate that they had power over the campaign, believing that the GM had to accept the revised character or the campaign would fail. Well, there’s an old saying about paying the danegeld…

For anyone who doesn’t recognize that reference, it’s “Once you pay the Danegeld, you NEVER get rid of the Dane.” Originally attributed in somewhat different language to Rudyard Kipling and also referenced by Shakespeare, the premise is that once you pay blackmail or extortion, you will never be rid of the blackmailer, who will return regularly with a new demand for more.

In this case, it means that once you let a player hold the campaign hostage, they will do it again whenever they want something you don’t want to give. And you had better believe that the other players would be paying close attention, too.

When something like this happens, you have only two choices: Come down on the character, hard, immediately, and figure out how to deal with the consequences afterwards, or let the player think they have gotten away with it for a while – until you’ve figured out how you’re going to deal with the fallout – and THEN lower the boom on the character, maybe with an encounter that would have had a completely different outcome if the character matched what was originally promised.

A different variety of the same sort of thing was a player who kept reinventing their character mid-game, and cheating (badly) to improve it. This was in a points-buy game system and never seemed to understand that paying points for something meant that the GM couldn’t take it away from the character permanently – at worst, they would get the points back, more commonly they would get back what they had previously had, possibly in a variant form. But if you rort the system to get something for nothing, the GM is under no obligation not to take it away from you or reinvent it to make it a poisoned pill. I walled the character off in a side campaign and let them do their worst, because they never came up with anything that I couldn’t turn to my (plot) advantage. That campaign was more like a chess game than a traditional RPG, but – as a solution – it worked well, and kept everyone happy.

But I have also seen that same player exhibit some behavior that was even less commendable. He was providing transport to and from gaming for his GM of the time, with whom he had been friends for well over a decade, and (for most of that time) had been a player in that GM’s D&D campaigns. Almost always with a variant on the same basic character, but that’s neither here nor there. But at one point, he threatened to leave if the GM didn’t give the character something he badly wanted the character to have. Or maybe it was ‘didn’t do something to the character that he didn’t want to happen’, or some other variant – I was busy running my own game at the time. This goes beyond trying to take the campaign hostage – he was confident that since the GM had no other way to get to gaming, the GM would back down. The GM didn’t back down, and called the players’ bluff, so the player walked out and left. It was years before there was peace between them after that.

Before you get too sympathetic to the GM in question, though, there is another war story to relate. At one point, both the player and this other GM decided to join my campaign, which was insanely popular at the time in terms of attracting most of the best players in the group. I told the tale of what transpired in the preface to If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis but – in a nutshell – the GM/player in question decided to actively sabotage the campaign so as to pry players loose from it so they could join his campaign, which had been shut down when the other player in question joined mine – and who he then blackmailed / bribed into helping him.

While there’s no ill-will between any of us these days, I would never have either of them back in one of my campaigns, and none of the other players who witnessed all this unfold would ever join their campaign either.

He did later admit that he was not in his right mind at the time for personal reasons, and that was why he didn’t simply approach me to try and sort out the problem like an adult.

Of course, since I knew both of them already, these weren’t blind expectations (maybe blind-spot expectations would come closer), but they do reveal what sort of problems can arise from blind expectations not being met.

9 Reputational Expectations – Players

And that feeds straight into the next topic, which is also the mirror-image of an earlier section. If a player claims to have 5 years experience at gaming, you expect a certain level of expertise from them. If they have a claimed 5 years at playing a different game system, some of those expectations change, but either way, there’s a certain level of ability that you expect to result.

There’s one colossal problem with that, right off the bat. How many times a year did this person play, and how many hours at a time?

I was once approached by a player who claimed umpteen years of playing experience – but who didn’t seem to know the basics when engaged in conversation. It came out that they played once a year at a convention for about 10-15 hours total a year, and had always used pregenerated characters provided by the convention GM. Hence the puzzlement when I asked questions about what sort of character they might want to play. “You mean, you don’t tell me what to play?” – “Anything you like that doesn’t step on the toes of an existing character is fine,” I answered.

When I started playing, the day started at Noon and went until 2-4 AM – every week – plus the occasional game session outside of that. And then I added a Friday night from about Six PM to about 2 AM on top of that 20-24 hours a week, 50-51 weeks a year. Around 1200 hours a year. It only took me a year of that to be more than ready to GM; to get the equivalent level of experience in sheer hours, it would have taken this player around 74 years.

As a popular advert on TV said when I was a teen, sometimes “Oils ain’t Oils” – meaning that there’s a difference between generic and premium quality.

And there’s a second problem, too: how many GMs have they played under? If it’s the one GM for say, 1000+ hours (even spread over multiple years), they will be used to what the GM wanted and the way he handled the role, and will be fairly firmly set in their ways. If there has been a variety of GMs, is there some problem that caused him to continually shift from one campaign to another? Either road can lead to trouble.

Some GMs and sites recommend a questionnaire to get to the bottom of such things. I prefer a conversation. You aren’t really looking to triage players, you trying to assess what’s going to be needed to get this prospective player to fit – assuming there’s room in your campaign for one more, and a conversation is less formal and less judgmental.

10 Implied Promises – Players & GMs

The previous section, in turn, flows into things the GM should expect from players that they do accept into the game. I’ve covered a lot of this already, so I’ll tip my hat in the direction of the earlier sections and move on.

What hasn’t really been mentioned so far is the expectations that players should have of a GM.

They should reasonably expect that the GM will be close to being ready-to-run when they arrive. At absolute worst, no more than an hour before play can commence – most of which can be consumed by the players eating a meal or talking between themselves.

They should reasonably expect that the GM will not play favorites, and that if a PC gets more of the spotlight this time around, it will be someone else’s turn next time – and that the other players were engaged enough, often enough, that they don’t feel completely left out.

They can reasonably expect that there won’t be one rule for the PCs and another for the NPCs – and that the NPCs will rarely, if ever, be better at the adventure than the PCs are. That can get tricky with some campaigns, in which the PCs are juniors or subordinates to the NPCs.

That was one criticism of the Adventurer’s Club campaign before I started co-GMing it. My now co-GM had created the NPCs based on the famous archetype characters from Pulp novels and movies and what they were capable of – which meant that each of them was capable of solving most adventures on their own. His notion was that these would backstop the PCs, be a resource that they could turn to if they became stumped on how to proceed, but that they would otherwise stay in the background. But they still cast a long shadow and there was the continual inference that the GM loved his NPCs more than he loved the PCs who were supposed to be ‘the stars of the show’.

Three of the first changes that I made to the campaign, after discussion of this perception with the GM, were:

The PCs may have been less-capable individually than the NPCs, but collectively they were just as good and – with their capability of doing multiple things at the same time – potentially even superior.
The NPCs had problems of their own that were scaled to their capabilities and they never worked together to solve these problems, they were too busy being solo stars. In fact, if any of them found that they had bitten off more than they could chew, they would call on the PCs for help – because the PCs were used to working in a group, and their compatriots of similar vintage were not.
The NPCs were to become increasingly aware that they were aging – slowing down just a hair, just enough that trying to live up to past glories would place them increasingly at risk – and that they needed the PCs to pick up any slack.

You can see how this trio combined to solve most of the problem. It took a while for perceptions to change, but the above – combined with throwing adventures the PCs way that were WAY bigger and more complex than what the campaign had been delivering before – the difference accumulated until it became profound. The bottom line was that the PCs were the stars and the NPCs were enablers and backstory supplements – perhaps better than the PCs in one particular area, but far less capable in several others. Where the NPCs sometimes excelled was at managing to force events to play against their strengths – but this didn’t always work, and sometimes got the NPCs in deeper trouble than they already knew they were in. (Hmm, it’s about time for us to reinforce that lesson with an NPC needing the PCs help – and probably one outside our ‘usual suspects’).

The GM can’t know what the players are going to expect of him unless he’s gamed with them before, and those expectations can be further colored by genre. He has to make his best guess, relative to what he would expect if he were a player, be prepared to make mistakes and adapt to them, as each side gets more comfortable with the other.

11 Social Contracts – Explicit Table Behavior

There are three related aspects to the question of social contracts. The firs governs explicit table behavior. Eating at the game table. Eating during play. Requesting breaks. Breaks being time out for one, or for all. What constitutes a ‘cocked’ die and what’s the procedure to be for handling one. What happens when a die goes off the table. Can a player ask for Divine Intervention and how is it handled if he does?

(A quick side-story – I once had a player seek Divine Intervention. Beelzebub showed up instead, saying “God’s on vacation, I’m filling in. What can I do for you? Just sign here….”)

Other elements of social contracts that govern at-table behavior – interrupting or talking over others; interrupting or talking over the GM; mobile phone usage; touching another player’s dice; lending another player dice; moving another player’s mini; the list just goes on and on.

Here’s a biggie that most people don’t think of: passing notes from one player to another without funneling them through the GM.

There are so many situations and possible situations that even if your group has evolved specific approaches to each of these questions, these are better not written down. Things can get even more complicated when you are hiring hall space and have to provide your own insurance – that was the governing force that led our group to formally structure, back in the early-to-mid 80s.

The problem that sometimes come with putting such things in writing is the mentality that anything not forbidden is permitted. That’s asking for trouble. A better approach is to employ general principles and peer group pressure – and the first time a situation occurs, the GM explains how he thinks it should be handled and lets the group find its own way forwards on that basis. Over time, an accepted “acceptable standard” of behavior will emerge.

12 Social Contracts – Explicit Social Behavior

The same applies to the second tranch, which governs non-gaming social behavior. If bring snacks or drinks, are you expected to bring enough for everyone? Is one person designated responsible for such? Is everyone expected to chip in, i,.e. to share some or all of the costs? What about expenses incurred by the GM in prepping for the day’s play – should they be expect to be compensated?

As a general set of rules, a starting point for discussion, at my table, everyone brings their own snacks and if they offer them around, or to the GM specifically, that’s their prerogative. DON’T take unless offered. Everyone provides their own drinks. People should make some effort to clean up after themselves at the end of the days’ play – unless the GM pushed the session later than usual, in which case that’s on him. The GM covers their own costs of GMing as a general rule, unless discussed and agreed-to in advance. If there is some shared expense – hiring a venue – then everyone pays equally EXCEPT the GM.

But there are other approaches. I’ve heard of a group which includes one player who loves to bake; they provide snacks for the whole group, every time, and in return, gets an automatic success on their first save of the day – which the GM agrees to hold until it’s a significant save, not something cooked up just to get their “immunity” out of the way.

And another group, where each person takes it in turns to provide snacks, and another person takes it in turn to provide snacks – and if there’s an absence, the roster is permanently re-ordered, so you can’t simply not show up when it’s your turn and get away with it. The snacks person always precedes the drinks person by two on the rotation, it can never be the same person responsible for both.

That only scratches the surface of the many possible configurations of social contracts in this space.

If you’re always gaming with the same people, you probably don’t need to write these down anywhere. That can change when someone new joins in.

13 Social Contracts – Implied & Evolving

It’s the habits that come to be accepted norms while never being explicitly stated – sometimes. not even noticed – that are the most problematic. The previous social contract elements have evolved and been recognized as the way this group does things. It’s the etiquette of the game. A lot of the time, though, things will become habit that don’t even draw attention to themselves. And sometimes, an existing ‘rule’ will be varied for practicality and usage reasons.

There are occasions when I’m GMing where I will need to take a player aside for a private briefing, some private role-play, even a die roll or two that the others aren’t to know about. I work hard at keeping these brief and succinct. It’s often the case that if they really tried, the non-participating players could listen to parts of the conversation, even if they don’t hear it all – but the expectation is that they won’t do so, unless I deliberately locate the conversation so close to the game table that the others can’t help but overhear (I only ever did that once, and the reasons became clear almost immediately – it’s hard to keep secrets when there’s a telepath in the team).

14 Realistic Expectations

Some expectations are realistic, meaning that they are practical, and fair, won’t step on the toes of anyone in the playing group, and will achieve the desired results almost all the time.

All four of those criteria have to be met in order for the expectation of behavior to be considered reasonable..

Practical – is the expectation something that a person of the type to whom the expectation will apply will be able to carry it out? If you’re all struggling students without two coins to rub together most of the time, a swear jar or penalty fine for misbehavior is not practical. With a different group under different circumstances, it might be entirely practical.
Fair – even if there’s only one participant who is likely to offend against the expectation, it still has to apply to, and restrict, everyone equally – including the GM who is setting the expectation. The way expectations become rules is pertinent – everyone brings their own way of doing things to the table, and – when there’s a problem or a conflict – the group decides whose approach is going to be The Rule from now on, usually based on the fairness and practicality. Another GM I know once had The Black Chit – a home-casino-kit plastic coin that he had spray-painted black. Especially grievous behavior at his table led the black chit to be bestowed for a range of time frames – 30 minutes, an hour, a game session, two game sessions. Holding the chit meant that for every roll the character made, the owning player had to roll twice and take the worse result. The only parole came if someone else committed a felony of equal or greater measure – when the chit would get passed on and the clock restarted. The GM also warned that there were 49 others still in the kit and he could spray paint as many of them as he needed – a threat against too many such ‘paroles’. Is this rule ‘fair?’ – only if it also applies to GM misbehavior, which can take many different forms and only partially overlaps the pool of player offenses.
Won’t offend – This is usually a fairly low bar to jump, but it can catch you out when you least expect it. A trivial example – expecting everyone to offer a christian prayer before play each session, regardless of their faith (I don’t know anyone who actually does this). There are plenty of more subtle examples, too – expecting people to discuss adult situations in a PG13 rated game, for example, regardless of individual moral stances that may be wildly at odds with the morality of their characters. Or requiring a vegetarian to eat meat or someone with an allergy to eat peanut butter, just to stay in character, though you could argue against those on practicality grounds.
Will achieve the desired results most of the time – This is often where the rubber meets the road. I’ve seen countless examples of social rules that weren’t fit for purpose (mercifully few of them at the gaming table) – dress codes come to mind, immediately. I once knew someone (a non-gamer) who claimed to be so sensitive to smoke that she demanded all smokers who visited to shower and change into clean clothes for the duration of their stay – yet burned incense at regular intervals.

Any expectation of behavior has to pass all four of these tests, but they often don’t get explicitly tested against them – which means that the failure to pass one of these tests results in an unrealistic expectation being fostered upon the group.

15 Unrealistic Expectations

A certain level of exposure to unrealistic expectations will often be tolerated – for a while. Then it will generate complaints, then arguments, then ultimatums, and finally, group disintegration as a cohesive entity. When that happens, people start dropping out, or finding excuses not to attend. The situation becomes toxic.

During the ‘tolerated’ phase, there are few indicators of trouble. That means that the process is already well underway by the time actual complaints start – I’m talking something more serious than table bellyaching. When there is a serious complaint made, however informally, and even if the party making the complaint is smiling at the time, dig out the four criteria of ‘Reasonable’ and give the ruling a fair-dinkum test against that standard. ‘Fair Dinkum,’ in this case, means honest and without preconceptions.

It might be that the expectation passes the tests and the complaint is unreasonable. It might be that the expectation seems reasonable to you but is failing the third test for some reason you aren’t taking into account. Or it might be that what seemed like a good idea at the time is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was; that can happen because of changing economic circumstances, for example.

When anything but the first is the judgment, the rule has to be changed or voided. This is especially true if the rule fails one of the first two tests – practicality or fairness.

Things get a little stickier when the problem lies in the third rule, because now you’re dealing with personal opinions, with which someone can reasonably disagree. It can be considered unfair to force conformity on someone, for example. Some people will be happy if you find a way to meet them half-way; others will insist on their own standards of behavior as the minimum tolerable level.

By the time you get to the complaints stage when there is a conflict between standards of offensiveness, it’s often the case that positions have hardened, and it can be too late for a compromise to be acceptable. That’s when trouble is most likely to escalate, so solving such problems has to be a priority.

16 Recognizing Expectations

Most expectations evolve naturally, without anyone really noticing until a newcomer arrives who wasn’t part of that evolution and the only explanation offered is, “that’s just the way we do things around here”. For example, a dropped die doesn’t count, it has to be re-rolled – at my game table. It’s completely acceptable to handle someone else’s dice – if it has been dropped and ended up closer to you than to them. It’s usually acceptable to borrow a die for a roll, so long as it is then returned. Cocked dice have to be re-rolled, and the test is to place a d6 that is smaller than the die being tested on the top of it; if the d6 will stay there on its’ own, the roll is valid, if not, re-roll.

Other groups have other expectations, other rules, that have evolved from their past experiences. I once visited one such group where the GM insisted on eyeballing every roll for himself – the result of catching someone cheating, I expect.

That means that it can be tricky to recognize uncodified expectations. Your best guide is to watch for ‘habitual ways of doing things’. When you see one, you then need to ask yourself whether you need to formally codify it into a social house rule, or if it’s fine being left as a voluntary practice. What will your tolerance level be for someone who has a different approach? What will the group’s tolerance level be? Those are the questions that will guide you to an answer about codification.

17 Assessing Expectations

It’s fair to expect that most people reading this already have some expectations in place, recognized or unrecognized. The first doesn’t represent a general problem; individual rules can be assessed as necessary, but until there’s a problem, the group has accepted the restrictions imposed so there’s no problem (yet).

It’s the unrecognized etiquette rules that are where the real dangers lie, waiting like land-mines to go off underfoot. It can be hard to observe these after the fact; after all, you were busy running the game, or playing your character. The time to pay attention to the way things are done is when the example is right in front of you.

If the subject seems serious enough, take a minute or two for a discussion of the subject. If not, let it slide. You’ll generally find that once you notice one, you’ll start to see others intruding into your awareness, as yo become more sensitized to how others are doing things.

Your opening question – to yourself, if not to the group generally – is why is that person dealing with that situation in that way? Once you have either an answer, or a working theory, you can assess the expectation that has manifested in the practice in question. Critical to this assessment is the question of tolerance for other approaches – but, unless the group have only just come together for the first time, it’s likely that this is fairly high.

I can’t stress this strongly enough: If you don’t need a formal rule about something, don’t impose one. Too many rules end up getting in each others’ way, and distracting from serious concerns with trivialities. If the situation changes and a practice becomes offensive or permits behavior that is unacceptable, a rule can always be imposed – but it’s often better to let sleeping dogs lie.

18 Communicating Expectations

So you’ve noticed some practice or habit spreading amongst the group, and you either find it acceptable or not. When that happens, it’s time to communicate your expectations and discuss reasonableness. This can easily be misconstrued as criticism of the individuals employing the practice, so you need to be very clear from the outset about what the problem is and whether or not the practice is a solution. If you have objections, make them clear, and grounded in dispassionate reality, not in personal judgments.

The other times that expectations need to be communicated is when someone is joining the group, or the group is gathering for the first time. For the most part, you can let group practices evolve on their own, responding to specific issues as they arise. But there can be exceptions, and they need to be announced up-front.

There are four that seem to come up more often than most, generally because they are imposed from the outside.

Smoking – There was a time when smoking restrictions were unheard of. Now, they sometimes seem ubiquitous. It’s quite common to require people to go to a designated area to smoke, even in a private residence – it might be a balcony, or a back yard.
No Food Or Drink in common areas – This used to be quite common, where a facility made premises available for social use by groups. My first regular RPG groups were in such an area attached to the University Of NSW; we would play from Noon on Saturday until 1, 2, 3, sometimes even 4 or 5 AM Sunday Mornings. Fortunately, they didn’t have this rule. Unfortunately, the bins provided by the university were entirely inadequate for clean-up afterwards, and campus security hated having people active on campus so late at night. Their complaints eventually led to us being denied permission to assemble in those premises, forcing our relocation (the first of many over the years). But this was the rule at the apartment building I was living in at the time, and it was strictly enforced – even eating an ice-cream as you passed through the lobby was grounds for possible eviction. It’s all about how much work you create for the cleaners, and how much it will cost to have that work attended to.
Post-activity cleanup – The gaming group in question moved to the MLC Insurance Building in North Sydney. Government regulations then required groups such as ourselves to carry our own public liability insurance, and the providers of such insurance demanded formal structure within the group – so we had to get serious in our organization. Eventually, we had to relocate to the Institute Of Technology in central Sydney (now the University Of Technology), then moved again within that complex a couple of times, and finally to a Council-owned building in Burwood, where we gamed for many years. In those earlier moves, we were very conscious of the basis of the complaint which led to our initial move – inadequate capacity for clean-up – so we were careful to always meticulously clean up after ourselves, and this became a recognized benefit of the group – we tended to leave areas spotless, even cleaner than we found them. That, perhaps, is more extreme than is needed for most groups – but expectations about post-game cleanup are one of the most poorly communicated and implemented social rules, in my experience outside of the organized group.
Noise restrictions – If you’re playing in a public space, these apply as soon as the noise of multiple conversations intrudes on other patrons. If there are no other patrons to consider, if you have exclusive use of the space for a period of time, then this is usually not an issue. In a private residence, the story can be quite different, depending on local laws. In general, you’re good until some point in the evening – it’s been 7:30 at times and 10:30 at times and Midnight at other times, here where I am. Beyond that, you have to keep the noise down. I once had a neighbor call the police to complain about the noise and concern about the content – typical gaming banter about hacking people up, beaning them with a mace, and so on. Police knocked on the door at about 1 AM to advise that there had been a complaint about ‘terrorists having a wild party’. RPGs weren’t well known at the time – this coincided with the Satanic Panic of the 80s – but once we explained what we were doing and promised to keep the noise down, everything was fine. The next day, I made it a point to apologize to the neighbor for disturbing them, explaining again what we were doing and that there was no real mayhem involved, and patched things up on that front. At a different location, I once had a neighbor who was not so easily mollified; he thought RPGs were dangerous and subversive, and complained so regularly that the police no longer took his calls seriously. So rules in this area depend massively on factors completely outside your control – but they are a community and legal standard that you have to accept and obey.

19 Communicating Explicit Promises

Anything that qualifies as an explicit promise by the GM, or an explicit expectation that the players need to promise to adhere to, should be spelled out in writing in the campaign briefing materials. Some heavily sandboxed groups may find that this is the totality of the notes made available pre-game to the players!

It’s often a good idea to have a serious review of your explicit promises before making this list public.

Is there anything by which your campaign would be better served if it were implied, and how can you make that switch?

Is there anything that will only apply in the latter or mid-parts of the campaign, and if so, is it appropriately ‘fenced off’, i.e. wrapped around appropriate limiting language?

Is there anything in those lists that should catch the players by surprise as it develops – if that’s the case then your explicit promise should be more general and vague, even though you know precisely what interpretation you are going to place on it.

What about explicit promises that are only going to apply in the early campaign – these are the ones offering guidance to the players as to what kind of characters to create. Are they appropriately restricted, and are some going to be more dominant than others?

Are there any that synergise, that – in combination – say more than either does alone?

What expectations are you seeking to create in the minds of the players and why?

20 Communicating Implied Promises

This is a lot trickier. First of all, you need to recognize that there is an implied promise. Second, you may have a specific interpretation in mind, but all possible interpretations are equally applicable – if anyone builds toward the wrong interpretation, will they be put out? Or is there scope for you to enlarge upon your basic plans to accommodate the interpretation of the player and his character – a way to play to the PCs strengths?

The answer is usually yes, with a bit of effort. If you need to revise your campaign plan to accommodate the actual PCs you’re being offered, the time to do so is now, so that any hints and plot seeds that you plant (intending them to bloom later) will be consistent with that eventual manifestation.

Probably the hardest thing for any GM or writer to do is look at their text critically as though they have never read it before, looking for the nuances and textures and implications, for what is hinted at but not stated outright, for what is implied by the actual text and not what the GM / writer intended to foreshadow. It’s incredibly hard to separate what you know or intend from what is actually on the page. But it’s necessary to find a way to do it.

One approach is to let an experienced player review it – one who is not going to be part of the campaign. In return, you can at some point perform a similar service for them. Get them to generate a summary paragraph outlining what they would expect from what you have written, edited to conform to your actual intent and not to any false impressions – unless you want to reserve the accurate foretelling as a campaign-level plot twist.

Some people can achieve the right frame of mind by letting the campaign briefing sit, unread, for a couple of weeks while you work on something else completely, doing nothing regarding the campaign in question. It can also help to be reading something else for 30 mins to an hour before you start reading the campaign briefing.

One technique that works is to copy and paste the whole briefing to an AI like ChatGPT and ask for the implications it can perceive concerning the overarching narrative that is to emerge from this foundation. Sometimes, it will get things wildly wrong, sometimes it will be close enough to the mark to be useful, and sometimes, it will reveal things to you that you never realized were there. Those light-bulb moments make the effort of reading and assessing the resulting review line by line, item by item, worth the effort ten times over.

It’s usually helpful, when doing this, to explicitly define the copy-and-pasted text as the outlines of a series of fictional stories that will combine into a broader narrative. And mention that it’s for an RPG, so there will be character-driven elements that will only emerge from actual play and decisions by others, and which can’t be predicted in advance with any certainty.

You can also ask what character race and class combinations would be best served in the broader plotline, and how can the text be improved to better serve them? Again, most of this will be exactly what you expected to be there, but sometimes there will be a surprise or two.

Are there any character race and class combinations that are served particularly badly by the plotline that is implied? You can consider warning players explicitly that these combinations may not work well in the campaign.

Here’s a valuable tip I haven’t seen elsewhere – if you bookmark the actual chat session in which these things are discussed and then return to that bookmark when next you have a question about the campaign or something you want to develop with AI assistance, it will be a continuation of the same session with the AI remembering everything that’s been said on the subject as though it had just been said. This saves you from having to repeat yourself. As preamble to further discussions and planning, copy and paste an updated version of the briefing materials, especially if it’s now in its final form.

Once you have recognized the implications of what you’ve said, the next question to be answered is, “is this what you meant to imply? If not, is it better or worse? Will it create false or misleading expectations?”

Revise the text accordingly. And, if the changes are radical, review it again (which is even harder to do, but necessary).

There are certain things that you want to communicate explicitly to the players before character construction begins. Things like variations on races, and social attitudes toward specific classes and adventurers in general. A few highlights of the things the characters would know all about from growing up in the cultures of their birth / childhood, like societies and economics and recent history and so on. And there are going to be other things that you only want to hint at or foreshadow. You communicate the latter through implication, saying things that suggest them without coming out with a declarative statement. Those are the implied promises that you need to communicate.

21 Communicating Failures

No plan, no campaign, no adventure, survives contact with actual PCs and their players, unscathed. They will all misinterpret something at some point, they will shoot off on tangents, they will decide they aren’t interested in the adventure premise the GM is holding out in front of them.

So it is, too, with created expectations. There will be pathways that you intended to explore, but that don’t fit the mix of characters with which you have been presented – if you were to actually go down those pathways, the PCs would be fish out of water, and while that can be occasionally fun if that’s what’s to be expected, it can be problematic in the long run.

There will be social contract elements that don’t work or that fail under particular pressure. Handling these is as much an element of administering the campaign as is the handing out of experience. YOU have to lead the discussion of what failed and what should be done about it.

That can be awkward when it’s a failure on your part, an inability to deliver on a promise made or implied, but that doesn’t abrogate the responsibility; it’s your campaign, and you have to manage these things, setting aside game time if necessary.

Be dispassionate. Don’t make it personal. Be self-critical to the same extent as you would criticize others. Treat every failure as an opportunity to improve, to do better or make the campaign better. Roll with the punches, as I had to do in the case of My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton Moment, one of my greatest failures – and an object lesson for other GMs.

Every cloud has a silver lining, but sometimes you have to look for it. Doing so makes you a better GM and a happier person. There are no magic bullets when it comes to relationships, and those include the GM-player relationships, the Campaign-Character relationships, and even the Player-Character relationships. Failures can happen in any of these spaces. It’s up to you to communicate them, articulate them, offer up a proposed management plan for dealing with the problem, and lead a review of that plan, knowing that it could be rejected by the players.

Afterword

I’ve seen a lot of suggestions over the years regarding player survey forms. They often sound good, a way to get players to articulate what they like and don’t like about the campaign. My experience has been that they only work well if the players take them seriously, and only work at all if they have sufficient critical facilities to analyze the campaign properly. And sometimes, they will say things that the player didn’t intend to say, or to make a fuss about, “but I had to write something”.

Whether you use them or not is up to you. But my experience is that if you provide players with a forum, you had better act and act quickly on whatever issues they raise. By offering up the form, you are making a binding and implicit promise to act on the feedback that you receive. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

If you don’t change something the players don’t like, it might be that they aren’t seeing the implications and consequences that are intended to develop as a result. The path of development of the campaign can be lost in white noise. It doesn’t matter how random an event is – it still has to factor into the broader story that you and the PCs are telling, and give players a space to express their own creativity. Forging those connections is up to you, an essential part of being a GM. But something has to change in response.

That’s why I like character-driven plot arcs so much – they provide a definitive pathway, a road-map to a resolution, and that can be as definitive or profound as the player wants it to be. There are other solutions, but that’s one that works for me – far better than player surveys.

Tags: Advice, Campaign-Setting, Campaigns, House-Rules, PCs, Plausibility, Players, Races, D&D, Sci-Fi, Adventure-Creation, Metagaming

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Post Delayed

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Blog Admin on Sep.29, 2025

I’ve been working hard at a post for Campaign Mastery, it’s 75% done, but just won’t be finished in time. Depending on when I get it done – much of my week is already committed – I will either post it on Thursday, or more likely, hold it off until next week.

Tags: Site-Admin

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Topologia: A Strange Campaign Setting, Part 4b

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Creation, D&D / Pathfinder, Mike, Fantasy Games, Horror Games, Pulp Games, Superhero Games, SciFi & Space Opera Games, Western Games, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, PCs, The End Of The Rainbow, House-Rules, Mystery & Detective Games, Spy & Secret Agent Games, Steampunk on Sep.23, 2025

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series The Topologia Game Setting

Today, Part 4b of the Topologia campaign completes exploration of the Ironbarb Crags and their many wonders.

The Ironbarb Crags (Volcanic Wasteland) – (continued)

A huge number of images have been edited and composited to create this otherworldly landscape – to many to actually credit in a caption, so I’ve done so in the boxed text below. Click on the image to see a full-sized version (1280 x 2328 pixels, 912K).

The base image is colorful-grand-prismatic-spring-3864377.jpg by Mike Goad.

I replaced the trees in the original with extracts from the Bryce Canyon photo that I used in the previous post, by Pexels and extended the sky massively.

To the foreground, I added a color-shifted extract from geothermal-1230618.jpg by chenyenting1218.

The mud pools were extracted from a number of images in combination, with lots of color-shifting and editing:

thermal-spring-63080.jpg by WikiImages;

geyser-6707021.jpg by Siegfried Poepperl;

grand-prismatic-spring-4356635.jpg by laserdad;

yellowstones-opal-pool-3866233.jpg, also by Mike Goad.

I also mixed in a little mud-85.jpg by Simon, suitably color-sihifted and perspective-shifted, of course.

I constructed the dome-shaped plants from
crystal-7428278.jpg by Fractals99.

The smaller flowers were created from
ice-crystal-1749562.jpg by none other than long-time provider of images used by Campaign Mastery, Gerd Altmann.

The crystal spires were assembled by combining original artwork with various distorted extracts from multiple images in combination, color-shifted as necessary. I knew I needed a lot of these, so I resourced accordingly:

pure-quartz-67383.jpg by Stefan Schweihofer was the main source; plus,

pure-quartz-67382.jpg also by Stefan Schweihofer;

crystal-1685590.jpg by Robert Strasser;

fluorite-2467110.jpg, by Jasmin777;

rock-crystal-4572588.jpg by Hans;

quartz-7224817.jpg by beauty_of_nature;

stone-9792655.jpg by u_x2otn2b6rr; and

rock-crystal-238075.jpg by Manfred Antranias Zimmer.

All of the above were sourced from Pixabay.

Finally, I threw in some Orcs for scale, extracted from an image by JonHodgson on Deviantart. This image was actually created for the One Ring supplement, “Rivendell” by Cubicle 7 (NB: The link on the DeviantArt page is out of date). Unfortunately, they did not renew the license in 2019 and you might have trouble finding a copy these days. The license is now held by the Free Publishing League and they haven’t republished Rivendell – but they do have an expansion that logically includes Rivendell, Realms Of The Three Rings.

Whew – by my count, that’s 19 source images, and more than 6,000 layers of composite!! No wonder it’s taken almost a week to assemble…

Plant Life in the Ironbarb

From Fire-cacti to Tumblingweed, from Honey Spores to Dagger-root, from Applebombs to Ghost Orchids, Mire-Blooms, Glass Coral and Sun-Eater Moss, it’s fair to say that for a wasteland, this area is fairly teeming with life, and all of it unusual and different and interesting – and much of it dangerous. And that’s before we even consider the animal life!

Some of these plants can be found throughout the Crags, some can be found only in isolated regions within the broader Crags. Most of it doesn’t just survive the environment, it has evolved to turn that environment to its advantage. But none of this plant life is completely ubiquitous – even the more widespread plant varieties will not be found in some of the niche habitats. In all cases, it is a matter of a plant species being “everywhere but,” or “nowhere but”.

Goldengrass

Probably the most ubiquitous plant-life in the entire Crags, found everywhere but in the mudflats. This is a short-bladed grass whose blades are darkish green on one side and golden yellow on the other. The blades turn so that the green ‘face’ perpetually faces the sun, unless the latter is hidden by dense clouds. It is able to do this because, like Lichen, it’s actually a combination of both plant and animal in symbiosis. Most of the time, it’s blades are only ten-twelve inches in length, even in a mature plant.

When it rains, the plants experience a period of rapid growth, about half-a-meter per full day of steady rainfall or per hour of more intense rain. In the process, they soak up metallic contaminates dissolved in the pooling waters with which they partially coat spores. This growth takes about 90 minutes per half-meter of additional length.

When the rain stops and things dry out – which happens very quickly due to the heat – the long blades with and dry as quickly as they grew. This releases the spores into the wind that follows the rain, a cloud of glittering dust that is potentially fatal to anyone with a susceptibility to asthma. These spores eventually fall to ground and lay dormant until the next rainfall, lodged in cracks and crevices or simply lying loose on the ground. When next it rains, the acidity from the water dissolves the metallic coating, enabling the spores to erupt as rapidly-growing new plants. Only if the water is too acidic will the plant fail to take root and thrive. An immature plant does not yet have the capacity to launch spores; it’s first 4-6 rainfalls are spent maturing and reaching the ‘basic length’ described. That might take 6 months, it might take a year, it might take longer.

The plant-element is chlorophyll-based and absorbs sunlight for energy and air for carbon dioxide and trace elements. It provides the green coloration on one side of the compound symbiote. In the process, it releases waste products including oxygen. Metallic salts carried on the wind, especially those formed with sulfur and dissolved in sulfuric acid (H2SO4) that dries into a powder with the dissolved minerals present as a contaminant, are also absorbed; the Sulfur is useful to the plant, as is the hydrogen, but more oxygen is produced than needed. Some of the oxygen is combined with some of the Hydrogen to make a small amount of pure water, which is used by the plant to sustain itself between rain periods.

However, unlike normal grass, there is not a lot of oxygen released to the atmosphere through this respiration process. The animal part of the symbiote consumes almost all of it, and some of the water produced by the plant, to keep itself alive, expelling its own waste in the process, and using the solid wastes produced by the plant – those metallic salts, returned to a metallic state – as a scaffolding exoskeleton on which to grow. The animal component gets the most nutrition when the plant component is at its most productive, which is achieved when the plant surface is exposed to the greatest amount of sunlight and air – so the natural ‘instinct’ of the animal is to achieve this by turning the stalks of its exoskeleton so that the plant face is as flat to the sun as possible.

Another way to think of this process is “Goldengrass thrives when it’s sunny and blooms when it isn’t” – not entirely true, but not entirely inaccurate, either.

More traditional animals are an excellent source of nutrition for both plant and animal components. The metallic exoskeletal layer that bonds animal to plant and vice-versa is typically very thin, like a razor-blade and quite capable of inflicting 1000 small cuts with every step of the animal if it is careless or foolish enough to sit or lie on the grass. Any corpse not consumed by a predator is quickly covered in a green carpet of Goldengrass that breaks it down. Thus, there is little need to bury the dead, which is a good thing, because the rocky ground is not amenable to such a practice.

Soft leather boots and shoes provide insufficient protection; hardened leather boots are the minimum protection needed. Fortunately, Goldengrass lies fairly flat to the ground compared to other grass varieties (except when triggered into rapid growth by rainfall), so such boots provide good protection until the plant enters it’s post-rainfall ‘bloom”, and the growth is such during such times that the plant can be more safely handled at such times. So it is safe for creatures to push through the larger plants; if it weren’t, few animals would be able to live in this ecology.

There are few permanent water-sources within the Crags, and some of these are too acidic for Goldengrass to tolerate; but when this is not the case, Goldengrass will float on the surface and extend roots to the ground beneath the water. Goldengrass in such conditions is in a state of perpetual “bloom”, but the spores that are produced are not developed enough to be fertile. But they can still impede the passage of vessels, particularly in the Everflow. It’s fair to say that the river is even more choked in plants in the wastelands even than it is in the adjacent swamps of the Shadowfen!

Goldengrass forms a critical ecological element of the Crags, supporting a variety of beetles and insects, which in turn supports birds and larger animal life. By insinuating itself into cracks in the rocks, it also facilitates the conversion of rocks into more fertile soil. In sci-fi terms, it could be said that it perpetually terraforms the hostile environment into a more viable ecological foundation.

Some creatures have been known to harvest Goldengrass and weave it into protective cloaks – a difficult and dangerous process, so these tend to belong only to the extremely wealthy or powerful, and a very thick / tough hide is needed to protect from this ‘coat of razor-blades’. Orcs can’t wear them – but Lizardfolk can, and so can Ogres. The latter are more inclined to weave them into mats, though – something that can catch less well-armored species out if they aren’t careful. Even the hospitality within the Crags can be dangerous!

Fire-cacti

Fire-cacti are relatively rare. They are red tree-like cacti with foot-long barbs, capable of inflicting lethal damage on anyone wearing a porous armor (chain-mail, ring-mail, bone-mail) if the wearer is careless. Soft leather and cloth provides no protection, either. While they can be seen everywhere but the mudflats and fields of Glass Coral, they are most common in the flatter regions where the crags are worn down, such as the Greater and Lesser wastes. They grow to heights of 1-2 meters (roughly, human height). Little is known about them.

Perhaps the most important fact is that their red coloration makes them blend into their environment, and that they feed on the fluids in any creature foolish enough to come into unprotected contact with one, sucking blood through the hollow barbs. One or two such are not life-threatening, but 50-100 such punctures can cause lethal blood loss in seconds.

As a general rule, the number of punctures for lethal effect is proportional to the cube of the height of the animal (or length if they are on all fours). So a 1/2m goat would be killed in 10 seconds by 50-100 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 = 6.25-12.5 = 7-12 punctures. If they take double that number, death would be in about 5 seconds.

Striking fire-cacti inflicts about 3 punctures per square inch. So hitting one with hands or an arm at right-angles to the cactus body would not be lethal to a human but the same could not be said of a small animal or a bird (5 square inches x 3 = 15 punctures).

Striking with an arm in line with the cactus body, or a leg, or an equal area is a bigger problem. 2 inches x 2 feet x 12 inches in foot x 3 barbs per square inch = 144 punctures. That’s lethal in 144/100 to 144/50 = 1.44 to 2.88 seconds. But most people pull away from such punctures instinctively (if they can), so they would survive the direct effects. However, blood loss of this scale leaves the victim delirious, dizzy, and possibly unconscious (an immediate save is called for), and in a dangerous environment that can be lethal indirectly. For a smaller animal like a goat or dog, even a large one, they have so much less blood volume to lose that there isn’t time to pull away – 1.44/8 = 0.18 so 0.18-0.36 seconds; unconsciousness would occur in about half this time. Just brushing against a fire-cactus will stun such an animal, and have a 50% chance of causing unconsciousness (with a 50-50 chance of falling against the cactus body). That’s a superficial contact; if the barbs penetrate fully, there isn’t time to pull far enough away to get free before unconsciousness and death.

Walking into a cactus body, or being thrown into one, doubles the number of penetrations to 288, halving the time to react before dying, and achieving full penetration of the barbs. There isn’t enough time to pull away before unconsciousness results. But a larger animal – a horse or cow – could do so, though there would still need to be a save vs unconsciousness, and – at best – they would be delirious from blood loss.

Tumblingweed

Unlike most life in the Crags, Tumblingweed is not dangerous, which is a good thing as it blows out of the crags into other regions with regularity. It’s a plant that blows from place to place like tumbleweed – but it’s alive and blooms when it finds moisture.

Image by Mark Marathon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons, Resized and converted to webp by Mike (webp images are nothing but inconvenient in every way possible, but the original file was 83Mb as a gif, the resized version was 36Mb as a gif, and the webp is just 7.78Mb – so it was worth it!)

Tumblingweed looks like traditional tumbleweed until it blooms. The ends of each stalk produces a vivid tropical flower, and since the stalks are arranged in a more or less spherical structure, the visual becomes a ball of tropical flowers. The stalks behind these flowers become green and vibrant, and the central stalk that binds all of these stalks together into a single entity extrudes a taproot that begins to project through the natural floral arrangement.

But the interior is still highly dependent on sunlight, which is now blocked by the flowers. If the Tumblingweed root manages to find soft soil – Gardenia, Splinter, the Shadowfen fringe or even (less frequently) Zugarth or the Glassdust Desert – it anchors the plant, which waits to attract insects to spread its pollen. When that pollen encounters a suitable location, it forms a new plant which eventually seems to die and its central stalk to break apart, releasing a new Tumblingweed into Topologia.

Brunsvigia bosmaniae in flower near Nieuwoudtville, Cape Province, South Africa. Image by Rachel Saunders, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Curiously, the blooms are not even close to identical; the slightest difference in conditions encountered seems to trigger a different set of genes controlling appearance, so that each Tumblingweed in bloom more closely resembles an arrangement of tropical flowers than an arrangement of a single species of tropical flower. The plant’s survival is greatly enhanced by offering as many alternative forms of ‘bait’ as possible, because it is already dying from a lack of light. But if you make allowance for that difference in appearance, the plant otherwise resembles the image of Brunsvigia bosmaniae above. To help visualize the difference,, here’s a tropical flower arrangement:

Image by Linnaea Mallette, CC0 Public Domain.

They mostly start out on the fringes of the Shadowfen (plenty of water there, so they bloom constantly), and from there, spread with the winds. There’s nothing to get in their way in the Greater and lesser wastes, or in the Glass Delta, so sightings in those areas are infrequent but regular occurrences. Those in the South eventually reach the Rainbow Falls or Optica River, where a secondary population always blooms. The central regions are dominated by the Everflow, which is a tertiary population running through the heart of the Crags; it would be dominant, but for the presence of Goldengrass, which (effectively) forms a barrier between the water and the Tumblingweed. In the North, they tend to bank up on the eastern side of the Fields of Glass Coral, making it difficult to transit from that area to the East.

Winds to the North: Tumblingweed reaches the edges of the Forests of Asthar. There’s moisture there, more than in the Crags, but the other thing that Tumblingweed needs is sunlight, and a lot of it; without it, the plant quickly dies, and loses its cohesion, falling apart. So you will hardly ever find Tumblingweed in the forests, and never in the southern mountains of Zugarth.

Winds to the South: Tumblingweed are mindless plants, so they don’t get confused by the directionless void. But they do tend to get caught by the comparatively dense crags from time to time, adding to the maze-like qualities of that area. Eventually, some will make it to the northern mountains, and can often be seen in the lower hills and valleys of Northern Zugarth. However, there’s lots more water here, and that limits how far they can tumble before blooming.

Winds to the West: Tumblingweed ‘encounters’ are comparatively rare through the rest of the Crags to the west, but occasionally a lone plant will reach the Gilded Glassdust Desert – where there is little to stop them other than a chance encounter with the Everflow or the central Oasis, which only spawns more of them. Almost all the Tumblingweed that gets into that region makes it through to the farms of Gardenia, where water is more likely to be encountered (but not certain). It’s relatively rare for any to reach the streets of Splinter.

Winds to the East: propels any loose Tumblingweed into the border fringes of the Shadowfen where one of two things happens: it finds water and blooms, or it dies from a lack of light (there’s a reason they are called the SHADOWfens).

There is one significant impact from the fact that these are living plants which have detached from their root system rather than dead ones, like ‘normal’ tumbleweed. They are very resistant to fire, and cannot be easily burned away to gain passage through one. Since the largest can be two meters (6 feet) in diameter, with hundreds of blooms, it forms a semi-impenetrable barrier to passage until a day or two after it blooms – given the frequency of rainfall in the Crags, that can be days or even weeks, and in the Desert, months.

Careful pruning can open passages for sunlight to reach the green leaves at the heart of the plant, so Tumblingweed is popular throughout Topologia for gardens. If the plant is still receiving light and moisture once the flowers die off, it will bloom every few days, until the stalks wither, die, and fall off, revealing new growth from the still-living roots and central stalk. The largest blooming Tumblingweed ever recorded (and verified) was an astonishing 24 feet in diameter! Caring for it was a full-time job for 3 gardeners and a supervisor!

Honey Spores

Less benign are Honeyspores, plants that capture hot air and explosive gasses like balloons and use them to move from place to place, dropping seeds like ballast as they go. Structurally, these are shaped roughly like inverted balloon-shaped cups, which trap the gasses naturally released in some areas of the Crags. The ‘cups’ are actually overlapping flower-petals, generally blue-to-purple in color, fading to white at the petal edges. When they achieve sufficient buoyancy, these break free of the parent plant and float away on the prevailing winds. A Honey Spore can flower multiple times in a season, but it’s a fragile plant in many respects, and does particularly poorly in colder temperatures.

It takes two Honey Spores to germinate a flower; almost half of them are infertile when released as a result. Only a germinated flower, with an insect intermediary, can distribute living seeds which will grow into new plants. It is to compensate for this that the plant flowers so frequently.

Because hot air rises and cool air flows in to take its place, any open flame tends to attract any Honey Spores in the immediate vicinity; since they are held aloft, in part, by explosively-flammable gasses, this is not good news for anyone using that flame for light or heat.

Most Honey Spores are about 10 inches in diameter, and a similar length, they hold about 8.6 liters of gas or less. Given the structural strength (weak) and the opening at the base, this is not enough to form a dangerous explosive per se; but it is enough to go off with a loud bang, the equivalent of a firework. Temporary hearing loss is possible, and burns, but the greatest danger comes from setting fire to other flammable things nearby.

The name itself is also significant. “Spores” are used to name a number of similar species in fantasy, so it’s an established name, even if a misnomer. “Honey” refers to the plant in two respects: the seeds are a creamy yellow color (actually, they are translucent but contain a creamy-yellow-colored liquid nutrient to assist the seed in growing); and the petals create an internal sticky honey-like sweet liquid that assists in binding the petals together into an air-tight surface. This makes the plants valuable, because the petals, when dried, can infuse that sweetness and flavor into drinks, cakes, and so on.

Dagger-root

Goldengrass isn’t the only plant that helps break down the rock into soil. A more dangerous one that can be found in most of the Crag Regions is Dagger-root. This is a vine that grows ‘underground’ but erupts in sharp vine-like tendrils in places eroded by the acidic waters. Eventually, this causes the rock to break apart, creating gaps that fill with water when it rains; in the extremely infrequent cold snaps, this can occasionally freeze and cause additional erosion, creating more opportunities for further growth of dagger-root.

The plant comes by it’s name because of the ‘blades’ of the root, which visually resemble tiny daggers (with broader blades than a dirk) and because walking on one is like attacking yourself with a -1 dagger (0-3 points of damage). Unless you happen to be wearing soft leather or cloth footwear, in which case it’s a +0 or +1 dagger, respectively, or (worst of all) barefoot (a +2 dagger), with damage to the feet doubled for the purposes of assessing movement rates.

Why on earth would you find yourself barefoot in the Crags? The answer lies in the many environmental hazards, several of which can save your feet at the expense of your footwear. In particular, wading through pools of concentrated acid can be very bad news. In fact, the only thing worse is staying put if you aren’t in some sort of protective shelter!

Image by NoName_13 from Pixabay.

Applebombs

Applebombs look like apple trees, with a pronounced color difference. Immature fruit are traditional apple-red and have a sour flavor that some people like. As the fruit mature, the skin becomes more purple and deeper; this tint starts at the base of the fruit and spreads upwards, the darkening preceding the color shift. They never quite reach the color of plums, however. It is at this stage that they are most tasty – and most dangerous to pick and consume. Their flavor is like that of a roasted apple with a slightly nutty hint, and they are very sweet at this point. Gradually, the base of the fruit darkens still further and becomes quite bluish; it is at this point that they are ready to drop. When the fruit fall, they explode, scattering the seeds and attached nutrients within the upper half. This explosion is comparatively gentle – they are not little hand-grenades – but it blows the fruit into up to half-a-dozen chunks and distributes the 3 or 4 seeds over an area of about 20m diameter (66′), so it’s not inconsequential, either.

The danger in picking the fruit is that chemical compounds from the tree actually inhibit and delay this ripening at the top of the fruit so that the fruit doesn’t detonate prematurely; pick one, and this inhibiting is no longer in effect, and in just a day or two, they are ready to detonate.

Every now and then, some bright spark gets the idea of using these as a weapon. Individual fruit can provide a potent distraction to any creature that doesn’t recognize their nature. However, even mild jostling if carrying many of them can trigger a chain reaction in any sort of carrying container, and this is when they are the most dangerous, capable of inflicting half a d6 of explosive damage per fruit detonated.

For their weight, these explosive fruit are not worth the dangers of carrying them as a weapon. Individual trees can produce 50-100 fruit per year, and up to 1/6th of these can fall in strong winds before they are ready to detonate. They immediately begin the countdown to readiness for self-destruction, hidden beneath pools of acidic water or mud, should they land in one; they do not float on the surface. This is when they are potentially the most dangerous due to the potential secondary effects of detonation.

They are most concentrated in the lesser wastes, but have spread to the coast of the Southern Crags and into the greater wastes and the fringes of the fields of Glass Coral and the Mudflats..

Ghost Orchids

A delicate-looking but resilient flower that grows in the Directionless Void. It has translucent, iridescent petals that absorb and refract light, acting like a natural camouflage. It opens at night when the light and shadows are less confusing. Its roots extend deep into the earth to find pockets of water, and its seeds are so light they can be carried away by even the faintest breeze or a minor air disturbance created by a passing creature, helping them to scatter across the desolate void.

Mire-Blooms

Mire Blooms are found in the mud-flat. These low-lying, fungus-like organisms have a porous root system that acts as a natural filter, absorbing the toxic, mineral-rich mud and stripping away the harsh acids and heavy metals. Their surface is glassy, almost crystalline, and as a result they look like gemstones floating in the mud, content in temperatures measured in the hundreds of degrees. Minor variations in the concentrations of mineral nutrients give each a different color. Those minerals that the plant does not require as nutrients are then excreted in a hardened, crystalline form from the central stalk, floating on the surface surrounding the mire bloom. When these reach a size where they threaten the buoyancy of the central bloom, they break off and float independently around the plant. The resulting flat crystals are known as “Spectral Shards”.

The plant itself is a low-growing, hemispheric disc-shaped fungus that can survive by being partially buried in the mud.

Spectral Shards are often swept away by dust-storms or flash-floods and can be found scattered across the landscape.

There is something reminiscent of a giant snowflake to the Shards, but they are also unmistakably crystalline and organic in nature. Most of them exhibit 6-fold symmetry, but 5, 7, 8, 10, and 12-fold are not unheard of. 4-fold symmetry is comparatively rare and closer examination generally finds these to be more subtle variations on 8- and 12-fold symmetries.

Suneater Moss on a Spectral Shard. Refer to the panel on the left for image credits.

Created as a composite of:

snowflake-1093162.png by Samuel1983,

snow-1847359.png by Anna,

star-6852416.png by stcr68, and

fall-304509.png by Clker-Free-Vector-Images,

all from Pixabay. Colors by Mike.

Sun-eater Moss

Spectral Shards provide a platform for the growth of a second life-form native to the mud pools, the Sun-Eater Moss. This plant has a complex biology.

This isn’t a typical moss that clings to rocks. Instead, it’s a type of parasitic lichen that attaches itself to the Spectral Shards. The moss uses a symbiotic relationship with a microscopic organism to absorb and convert the intense solar radiation of the crags directly into energy. When acidic rain falls, the moss releases a cloud of spores that are impervious to the acid and can travel to found new colonies. As with several of the organic and inorganic structures of the Crags, trace minerals impart different colorations to the Moss, sometimes bright but usually just a pale hint.

Moss colonies float on the mud until one touches the edge of a Shard. The presence of a stable platform enables a more rapid growth phase in the direction of the shard, growth that is (in part) achieved by starving that part of the colony not in contact with the shard, As a result, over the course of a week or two, the colony appears to ‘crawl onto’ the shard.

When it has colonized the shard, the moss becomes almost translucent, in order to capture light reflected by the shard, which – because of the dark background – has an extremely mirror-like appearance.

It is critical to understanding this organism that it requires quite a lot of light energy to thrive. The fact that there is very little to create shade in the mud-flats is vital to their natures. As it grows, the moss extracts trace minerals from both the Shard and the surrounding mud, which it uses as a food source. Technically, many of the biological processes of the Moss are actually inorganic chemistry, which anyone who engages in scientific study will find fascinating – alchemists, chemists, herbologists, etc.

To bind itself to the spectral shards, the moss exudes as a waste product a powerful, virtually-transparent, resin (were it not to have this vital quality, it would block the light that the moss needs in order to survive).

It is important to note that the moss is an extremely thin, light-weight passenger on the Shard. Where the shard goes, the moss goes with it. When two shards happen to land in the same place, they can bond together, creating a larger and more complex structure. These are grown both up and down into the mud until they anchor to the bottom of the mud-pool, resembling a mound of crystals.

This foundation is substantially hollow, filled with criss-crossing inorganic crystals bound together by the moss, which grows to fill the foundation; enough light trickles down the crystal forms that some of the moss even survives as much as a foot below the surface of the mud. The moss grows to completely fill the hollow structure, creating a super-colony. This super-colony exudes waste energy as heat, even in comparison to the geothermal heat of the mud-pools; this creates updrafts above them.

As additional Shards are blown through the air, they become vertically-oriented by these updrafts, creating a crystalline spire consisting of thousands or even millions of individual shards. Over millennia, layer upon layer of Shards, purified and excreted by generations of Silt-Sifters and then bonded together by the Sun-eater Moss, have grown into the massive, monolithic Crystal Spires that tower like redwoods above the mud flats, standing as a testament to the incredible, and often grotesque, adaptability of life in the Ironbarb Crags.

When these grow so large (3-5m diameter) that sufficient light can no longer penetrate deeply enough into the interior to feed the moss, it forms a multicolored rainbow ‘spine’ through the center that is refracted by the less opaque living moss and the fragments they bind together. The moss within isn’t dead; rather, it enters a third stage of life involving a crystalline cell structure that is more efficient at harvesting what little light still reaches them. More importantly, this reinforces the structural integrity of the Spires, enabling them to ascend to heights of 100-150 meters (330-500 feet) or more. The maximum thickness that can be achieved is around 8 to 15 meters (26-50 feet) at the base.

The largest spires weigh around 23.4 Kilotonnes, or 25,800 US tons. This, of course, is far too much to float on any mud, no matter how thick, hence the need for the foundations.

The spire, as it grows, weighs the existing foundation down, forcing it deeper into the soft bottom of the geothermal mud pool. The moss super-colony in the base must continually expand the foundation upwards and outwards to compensate for this; parts of the super-colony finding themselves too far below the surface die out, and strengthen and anchor the internal ‘vine’ of third-stage Moss that results. The spires are always well-supported as a result.

Because there is an organic and random element to the growth of these towering crystal spires, it is common for them to develop complex shapes over time.

Evolution of a Crystal Spire

This graphic illustrates the process. The original spire is shown as figure 1.

In figure 2, a new Shard has attached itself to the side of the spire.

By sheer chance, in figure 3, it has been joined by another that almost lines up. This shifts the support of the internal spine.

In figure 4, that shift causes a slab of the spire to break off and become a free shard. This causes the spine to return to something close to in-line with the original once past the ‘bulge’

Figure 5 shows the growth in the new crystal side-panel from the Moss’ growth, and how this extends the distortion in the spine upwards.

Eventually, as shown in figure 6, it reaches the top of the spire and further growth upwards continues to be centered around the spine’s new alignment. The nutrients, depth of the mud-pool, and size of the foundation all limit the cross-sectional size of the spire to a range centered around an optimum, but with increasing height this gradually narrows, resulting in a complex shape.

Figure 7 depicts all of these processes continuing. By chance, a new shard has attached on the opposite side to the first two, again shifting the alignment of the spine and causing a shard to detach from the right. This again shifts the strongest point of the spine, and creates a ‘knuckle’ in the spine where the old spire-tip was located. The shard that has broken off makes the resulting imbalance worse; the resulting tip is more likely to fracture back into loose shards until a more stable shape is achieved. Any further vertical growth in the meantime only exacerbates this tendency; eventually, either the entire section of ‘new growth’ will have broken away in small pieces, or a stable configuration will have evolved.

The featured illustration at the top of this article shows some of the complexity of form that can result.

The under-mud foundations create a new micro-environment, a labyrinth of interconnected Spectral Shards and the dormant, solidified forms of Sun-eater Moss. Naturally, a life-form has evolved to occupy the resulting ecological niche. Cue the Glass Coral!

Glass Coral

Glass Coral is another variety of filter-feeder, similar to sea-coral and sponges, but adapted to the high-pressure, acidic, and nutrient-rich environment of the mud. They grow in colonies that encrust the base of the spire and the surrounding bedrock.

Their bodies are composed of a tough, acid-resistant chitin-like material, and they have a system of internal channels that filter nutrients from the mud that flows over and through them.

Glass Coral thrive on the very toxins that kill other life. They absorb the acids and heavy metals, converting them into a harmless metallic crystalline waste product that helps solidify and stabilize the mud around the spire’s base. This in turn makes the mud a more ‘hospitable’ dwelling-place for the Mire Blooms.

Thus, the coral forms a unique three-cornered symbiotic relationship with the Sun-eater Moss and the Mire-Blooms. None of them can survive very well, let alone thrive, without the other two.

From time to time, a mud pool dries out, which of course kills the Mire-Blooms, and sends the Glass Coral into hibernation. To survive, the Mire-Blooms bury seeds in the chitin of the Coral, where it waits for life to again become possible beneath the mud. The exposed Glass Coral is iridescent because of the outer surface, a plant that shares many characteristics with petrified insects.

This is far more likely to occur away from the Everflow, water being an essential ingredient in mud; hence the northern part of the mud flats is known as the Fields Of Glass Coral. The Spires that grew back when the Fields were last vital remain, solidly anchored to the now-exposed pool-bottoms, but the Moss that binds them together no longer has access to the nutrients needed for growth; they can do little more than sustain themselves from sunlight and cannibalizing the minerals within the Spire.

This both weakens the spire and damages the perfection of its appearance; if revitalization through water turning the geothermally-heated earth back into mud does not occur in time, the spires will eventually collapse back into loose shards and the construction process will have to begin all over again at some future point, when conditions are again amenable.

This causes the average height of the spires amongst the fields of exposed coral to be 1/2 to 1/3 those of the mudflats.

But the damaged spires have one extra trick up their sleeves that makes them distinctive: the cannibalization process leaves small channels through the spires, causing them to whistle in the wind. Depending on its direction and strength, the spires thus produce different harmonies and natural song. When the wind is strong, this music tends to grow discordant and shrill, almost as though the spires themselves are protesting the increased likelihood of collapse under those conditions; when the wind drops to a light breeze, the melody is at it’s most musical.

Other Life in the Ironbarb

Despite the appearance of aridity, the plentiful vegetation supports a wealth of animals, the bulk of them hidden from view.

Beneath The Surface

There are dozens of varieties of insect that live beneath the surface of what soil there is. In fact, their primary reason for existing is to break down the rock that breaks loose or dissolves in the acid rains and turn it into something resembling soil. North of the Everflow, this all drains (eventually) into the Mudflats; South of it, everything heads for the Central Crags and the Directionless Void. Significant amounts also wash downriver in the Everflow, which acquires a rather muddy brown color from this point downriver.

But the next land downriver is the Glittering Glassdust Desert. Not only does the sand there capture some of the resulting soil to keep the banks of the Everflow green and fertile throughout its length, but they strip away virtually all of the toxins, depositing them in vast sediments of tiny crystalline shards and metallic particles deep below the surface. Over the length of the Everflow’s course through the Deserts, the looser ‘soil’ is cleansed of impurities, and almost all of it is then deposited on the banks of Gardenia, where the river becomes far shallower. By the time it reaches splinter, the water is again close to pure, though still colored with minuscule deposits of trace mineral salts. Today tinted blue, tomorrow violet or golden or red or even green or white, the Everflow is an ever-changing rainbow as it heads for the great waterfall, the Everflow Plunge.

In a very real sense, life all the way downstream is dependent on what happens in the Crags and how that is utilized downstream to contribute to the other unique environments of Topologia.

Surface Insects

Those who abide below the surface are fairly ubiquitous, spread evenly everywhere in the Crags to different extents, creating the very soil underfoot or contributing to its erosion should it be geothermally-created rocks. The occasional laval flow melts the soil and covers it with new rocky deposits, like a tree’s growth into rings or the layers of an onion.

As such, they have no need to display the abiding characteristic of all surface insects in the Crags – they do not swarm.

Almost every ecological niche that you can think of, with only a few exceptions, are fulfilled by one variety of swarming insect or another.

There are insect swarms that function as grass, binding areas of soil together with waste products, that live on nothing but the noxious air and cleanse it – a little – of anything worthwhile.

There are insect swarms that live on these insect swarms, concentrating the nutrients and discarding what they do not use, much like cattle.

There are insect swarms that hunt those cattle-swarms like lesser predators, some staying low to the ground and some soaring through the air like birds.

There are even some swarms that hunt and feed off those predatory swarms, intermediate-level predators.

And there are swarms that function as scavengers, recycling the dead into raw nutrients that are used by the sub-surface swarms to make new soil.

Swarm Characteristics

I have to emphasize that what follows is intended as guideline, suggestion, and sources of inspiration, only. I have not given these mechanics as much thought and testing as usual.

If a result seems wrong, too much or too little, change it. It’s a lot easier to make such assessments when starting with someone else’s numbers than when guesstimating your own answers in isolation, have you noticed?

Swarms can be identified by a number of traits that distinguish one from another. For any ecological niche that you name, there will be several different swarms that occupy that niche. These swarms do mutate and change regularly, so it’s actually rather pointless singling out which ones are currently dominant; eventually, that swarm will die out and be replaced by another, whose members are already gathering in numbers.

Defining a system of classification of Swarms is thus more useful than identifying specific varieties of insect.

As a general rule, swarms are identified by adjectives describing three attributes – a color attribute, a physical attribute, and a member size – coupled with the dominant ecological niche within which they operate, though these can be changed in sequence to more naturally roll off the tongue. “Greater Long-tailed Red Carpet-bugs” is a typical example.

Together, these labels define the type of behavior exhibited, the threat that they pose to humans and more conventional animals, what a swarm looks like as it approaches, and it’s collective size. But the characteristics for which they are named are actually (mostly) derivatives of six primary characteristics. These are: Swarm Volume, Packing Density, Population Density, Wing Length, Dominant Body Color, and Bond To Water.

Those characteristics can then be used individually or in combination to derive six secondary characteristics: Number of Targets, Total Mass of a swarm, Individual Insect Mass, Insect Size, Thorax Length, Total Body Length, and Operational Altitude.

Some of those – notable Insect Size and Thorax Length – then define three Tertiary characteristics: Intensity Of Attack, Damage Done by a bite or sting, and Thorax Girth. These 15 characteristics, plus the ecological niche, tell the GM everything he needs to know to ‘handle” a swarm in both in-game terms and game mechanics.

There is a set sequence in which these characteristics should be set to optimize the delivery of a particular swarm. But, rather than list that, let me instead simply describe the process. I’ll box off commentary and details on each characteristic so that readers can focus on the process and only delve into the details when it is useful to do so.

Swarm Volume

How large a volume of space typically contains a swarm?

If this swarm is to be the equivalent of a more normal animal, use 8 x the approximate volume of that animal, or 16 x for larger insects.

Otherwise just define a volume in cubic feet. If you more naturally think in meters than feet, one cubic meter is 35.3147 cubic feet, and 1 cubic foot is 1728 cubic inches.

Then take the logarithm (base 10) of the result and divide by 0.30103 for the actual Swarm Volume rating.

If you’re thinking “rabbit”, then length is a foot, width is about half a foot, and height (bent to create the body shape) is about 1/3 of a foot. Multiply those together and you get 1/6 cubic foot. x8 for the swarm equivalent is 1.3333 cubic feet, x16 would be 2.6667.

Log (1.3333) / 0.30103 = 0.125 / 0.30103 = 0.41.
Log (2.6667) / 0.30103 = 0.426 / 0.30103 = 1.42.

“Divide by 0.30103” converts a base-10 logarithm in to a base-2 logarithm, so each +1 to the score doubles the volume occupied by a swarm.

Feel free to vary these results if your mental image is different.

Number of Targets

Multiply the volume rating by 4 and round up.

That’s how many human-sized targets the swarm can attack at once.

A size rating of 0.41 x 4 = 1.64, rounds to 2.
A size rating of 1.42 x 4 = 5.68, rounds to 6.

A cow is about 4 x a person, a large bull maybe 6 x, a horse maybe 8 x, a centaur 10 x. Use a quick estimate in all three directions and multiply the three together to convert as necessary.

Packing Density

This is an indicator of how much space an individual insect needs around it as a cube of space. The diagram below illustrates this using a common bee.

Based on insect-6532612 by matrix infotec from Pixabay.

So a bee is 1.9 thoraxes long, and 1.75 thoraxes high and wide. The wings are also 1.75 thoraxes in length, and are attached to the body such that the tips are 2 thoraxes from the underside. That’s a volume of 5.82 cubic thoraxes.

Note that in terms of volume, the legs and antennae can be ignored, they are far smaller than the rounding errors involved.

But the wings need a little more clearance and there needs to be a gap between individuals, so the space within a swarm that each occupies is 2.75 x 2 x 2 = 11 cubic thoraxes.

Dividing one by the other, the Volume occupied by a bee in flight is 11 / 5.82 = 1.89 cubic bees. Or, to put it in a more useful way, the bee’s body including wingspan is 5.82 / 11 = 53% of the total volume occupied.

Which means that if we estimate the in-swarm dimensions in a more meaningful real-world unit, and convert it to the same unit used to estimate the total volume of the swarm, I can get a head count. It’s this overall-volume-occupied-by-insect that this characteristic describes.

Estimate the total volume of air required by one insect within the swarm, in cubic feet.

Take the log (base 10).

Divide by 0.30103 so that both index values are to the same base number.

The critical values here, based on honeybees, are 1.9 thoraxes and 1.75 thoraxes. Dragonfly proportions would have wider wings, but half-as-much vertical component – and while those wings are bigger, they are actually about the same relative to the body length. So the thing to think about is the overall shape that seems most appropriate for the function of this swarm.

Rabbits – while I was thinking ‘fat hare’ when estimating the volume of the swarm-equivalent, I think rabbits are actually fairly long and lean. I’m thinking about four inches in length, about four inches in width, and about 1.5 inches in height, which is more dragonfly than bee, but that’s okay. That’s a total volume of 4 x 4 x 1.5 = 24 cubic inches. There are 1728 cubic inches in a cubic foot, so each cubic foot can hold 72 of these insects. And the inverse: that means each insect takes up 1/72 cubic feet, or 0.01389.

log (0.01389) = -1.8573
-1.8573 / 0.30103 = -6.17.

So the packing density of the swarm is -6.17.

Total Mass

Subtract the packing density from the swarm size.

Raise 2 to the power of the result.

Multiply by 0.65.

The result is the total weight of the swarm if all the insects were in a heap, in kg.

Multiply by 2.20462 if you prefer pounds, or 35.274 if you prefer ounces.

Our ‘rabbit-swarm’:

0.41 – (-6.17) = 6.56.
2 ^ 6.56 = 94.35.
94.35 x 0.65 = 61.3275 kg = 135.2 lb = 2163.27 ounces.

Population Density

Determine the number of insects per cubic foot, if you haven’t already.

I’ve already done this calculation for you – 72 insects per cubic foot.

Individual Insect Mass

2 ^ swarm size x 72 = number of insects in a swarm.

Total Swarm weight / total number of insects = weight of 1 insect (maximum).

Divide by a number between 1.5 and 10, with the typical number being between 4-5..

The higher the final number, the smaller the insects actually are. The calculations so far tend to overestimate the density of the insects and hence their size. Without this step, your insects will be too large.

2 ^ 0.41 = 1.3287.

1.3287 x 72 = 95.6664.

61.3275 / 95.6664 = 0.641 kg.
0.641 x 2.20462 = 1.4 lb.
0.641 x 35.274 = 22.6 oz.

For the rabbit-sects, I’m going with a slightly lower-than-average divisor of 3.

0.641 / 3 = 0.214 kg = 0.472 lb = 7.55 oz.

These are not small, light-weight insects. Their weight is that of a small parrot or large lorikeet. But they lack the wingspan of such birds by about 50%. It’s entirely likely that these insects can only just fly, and only because of the thermal air currents created by the Crags.

A Rainbow Lorikeet with a bowl for a sense of scale.Image by Tracey Wong from Pixabay.

Insect Size

We have two different ways to measure insect size – the first is using the Insect Dimensions graphic, and the second is to take the weight and divide by the average insect density of 0.65 g/cm^3 (converting units as necessary). The latter is more technically precise, but 0.65 is an estimate – anything from 0.48 to 0.78 is possible, and that’s quite a wide range. So the better method is the insect dimensions.

Besides, we’ve already decided on the insect dimensions! What we’re mostly interested in here is the overall length of the insect. These insects are 4 inches in length.

For comparison purposes, Rainbow Lorikeets can grow to about 30 cm including the tail, or 11.8 inches.

4 inches long.

Intensity Of Attack

This size is large enough that a swarm probably wouldn’t attack all at once, it would be a couple of individuals at a time.

Attack intensity takes two factors and conflates them – the likelihood of success of any one attack, and the number of such successes that are likely in a combat round. The maximum of the latter is the square of the cube root of the number of insects per cubic foot.

If there are going to be hundreds of attacks (very small insects, very aggressive behavior), then it is best to treat the entire swarm as a single ‘enemy’. If the number per target is smaller, like 2 or 3, then they can be resolved individually.

72 ^ 1/3 = 4.16
4.16 ^ 2 = 17.3.

20 x 2 individuals / 17.3 = 2.3 out of 20.

But this is one instance where our ‘rabbit-sects’ aren’t going to be helpful. So let’s look at an entirely different swarm. For the sake of argument, 1000 insects per cubic foot, 0.1% chance each.

1000 ^ 1/3 = 10.
10 ^2 = 100.
100 x 0.1% = 10%.
10% = 19 or 20 on d20.

What if the success chance had been 1/10th this value? Increase the number of opportunities, i.e. slow the rate of attack.

1000 ^ 1/3 = 10.
10 ^2 = 100.
100 x 0.01% = 1%.
5% / 1% = 5, so once the swarm attacks a target, and they need a 20 to hit, they can’t attack that target for another 5 rounds. But this success chance really is too low.

I should also point out that this attack chance does not take into account armor, reflexes, etc. It’s against an unprotected target. You could argue, on that basis, that even the 0.1% was too low.

At the same time, there can be many more attacks in a round – the square of the cube root is a reasonable method of estimating a typical number based on the exposed surface area that can be ‘occupied’ by the swarm.

A single ‘hit’ can represent one insect bite – or 100.

Damage Done by a bite or sting

Decide how much damage is done by a successful hit.

Bear in mind that this could – as I just said – represent one insect bite, or 100.

100 attacks doing 1/4 HP each is 25 HP a round! 25 attacks doing a similar amount is only about 6.

Thorax Length

Take a look back at the bee morphology. It’s thorax is 1 / 1.9th of the total body length, or 52.6% of the total.

Some insects will have shorter, rounder thorax shapes; others, longer and probably thinner.

Decide on the thorax length percentage of THIS insect variety.

Our rabbit-swarm insects are 4″ long. If half of this is thorax, that’s 2 inches. I could easily make it longer, maybe up to 3 or 3.5 inches.

Thorax Girth

The longer it is, the thinner it will be, i.e. the lower the thorax girth.

The formula for the volume of a spheroid is 4/3 pi a b^2, where the b is half the girth. If the height differs from the girth significantly, use b x c instead of b^2.

We don’t know the volume of the thorax, and don’t care.

Estimate the girth in thorax units, then multiply by the length of the thorax.

Let’s say the length of the thorax is 3.25 inches, splitting the difference between the two rough suggestions. A Lorikeet has a girth of about an inch. So that seems about right for our rabbit-swarm insects, too.

Technically, that’s a girth of 1/3.25 = 0.3077 thoraxes across.

Total Body Length

Estimate the length of the body by subtracting the thorax and head from the total length of the insect.

But we haven’t decided on the length of the head yet. So, do that in Thorax units, using the bee as a model. Then get the body length as the difference between the total and what’s already been accounted for.

I’m going to make the rabbit-insects heads be about 0.3 inches in length. So, 4 – 3.25 – 0.3 = 0.45 inches.

Wing Length

Estimate the total length of the wings.

Note unusual numbers or widths.

While my initial estimate was 4″ wingspan, the size of these insects persuades me to increase it to 6″, but not to make them proportionately broader. So this species will continue to struggle to fly, riding warm updrafts and gliding, but it seems more plausible. In compensation, because their wings don’t have to flap as much, the height can shrink, affecting the wings but not the body, so that the separation between insects stays about the same overall despite this increase. I am going to make these insects 4-winged in shape, reducing them to four legs.

Operational Altitude

Bees don’t tend to fly very high. The same is true of a lot of insects. But this variety of insect is more like a bird, and a gliding bird at that, and they can reach much higher altitudes. That’s especially true in this case, because they are thermal gliders, not active fliers.

The Andean Condor can reach heights of 15,000 feet – but it’s a much larger bird than this insect. Some ducks and swans get above 20,000 feet – but they are larger again. The current record is held by Ruppell’s Griffon Vulture, at 37,000 feet.

The height reachable is roughly proportionate to the wing surface area. The condor has the greatest wings, a mean wingspan of 9 ft 3 inches. The Duck can have 32-39 inch wingspans. The Griffon Vulture has a wingspan of up to 8 ft 6 inches.

Our insect has wings that are 6 inches long and at best, 1 inch wide. But it has four of them operating in unison, twice the number that birds have. Let’s compare the lower altitude bird – the Condor.

15000 / 9 ft 3 inches = 15000 / 111 inches = 135.135 feet per inch. The condor’s wings are about 1/3 as wide as they are long.

Our rabbit-insect has wings that are 6 inches long, giving it a wingspan of about 7 inches (with a 1 inch body in the middle). It’s wings are only 1/7th of this in length, but it has twice as many. So the total surface wing area is going to be about 7 x 1 x 2 = 14 inches.

14 x 135.135 = 1892 feet – call it 1900 for convenience. Most birds operate at 500 feet or less for daily activities, and this is well on its way to being four times that value.

But there’s one final factor to take into account: Feathered wings are more efficient than insect wings, for all sorts of reasons, not all of which are going to apply equally to any given species. I couldn’t track down even a ballpark estimate, only “significantly less efficient”. That generally means at least an order of magnitude difference, but that seems an extreme in this case – though it might be true of smaller more ‘traditional’ insect body-types. Even so, and even with a couple of the key factors not necessarily fully applicable or relevant at all, a factor of at least 5 is probably appropriate. So, 1900 / 5 = 380. That’s a reasonable number for the size and shape.

I also looked up – or tried to – the height achievable in flight by a Rainbow Lorikeet, that being our bird of direct comparison. Again, got only generalities, with the note that they tend to be high-flying. In terms of range, they can travel up to 50km (31 miles) a day in search of food, and do so in about an hour!

Again, these numbers probably won’t translate directly. The condor factor of 14/111 seems a bit extreme for this, but not by a whole lot; instead of x 0.126, double that (about x 0.25) seems about right. In terms of speed, I’ll boost that further to x 0.4.

So these insects can travel up to 12.5 km (7.75 miles) in a day, but can hit speeds of 20 km/h (12.4 mph) – which is lightning-fast for an insect, and appropriate for our ‘rabbit-sect”.

Dominant Body Color

Pick a dominant coloration, from the perspective at which the insect swarm is most commonly seen.

For a high-flying insect like this one, the coloration of the underside would be the most noticeable. From above, brownish reds, the color of the ground, would be most appropriate, but what to choose for beneath?

When I think of rabbits, I think of the pink of the ears, and a generally white or light-gray fur. Pink is also often associated with sunset, so if these insects were nocturnal or evening-hunters, that might be most appropriate and symbolic; but as thermal-riders and gliders, they are most likely to be most active in the middle of the day and early afternoon, so that doesn’t fit.

That leaves middle-gray or white. The first offers benefits of natural camouflage against a clear sky, the second against clouds. They both seem reasonable, though the natural habits of this insect would favor sunny days and that’s the gray – but I don’t consider that to be a decisive argument.

With rabbits, though, it’s the belly-fur that tends to be white, the rest can be either white or gray. And since we’re talking about the underside of the insects, white gets my final nod.

Bond to Water

Some creatures get their water needs satisfied directly. Others satisfy those needs through the bodies of their prey. Some need a lot more than others – and size is definitely a factor in that consideration; the bigger the insect, the less it can rely on prey to meet its needs, and the more it will have to do it for itself.

Purity of the water-source is also a hugely-important factor to take into consideration. The Everflow comes out of the bogs of the Shadowfen and enters an area where acidic mineral-rich runoff gets added, as noted earlier. If an insect can handle that, it will dominate to the west; if not, it will dominate to the east. The waters of Rainbow Lake and the Vertigo River are the clearest and cleanest in the crags, especially to the south; so especially sensitive types will dominate the southeast and southwest corners more than anywhere else. There’s not a lot of water flow in the north, though insect swarms can penetrate the Forests in search of clean water. Outside of these areas, insects whose needs can be met by consuming prey are going to have an advantage because of the environment.

It follows that identifying the nearest source of desirable water is critical to establishing which habitats will be most favored by a particular breed of insect.

Once you know or have decided on the characteristics, sum it all up in a description and move on.

Borer Worms – an unlikely ally

One thing is certain – spend enough time in the crags, and you will get hurt and/or burned by something. Whether it’s hot mud (ouch!), hot lava (even worse), acid rain, flensing winds, or toxic insect bites, or even something more exotic, doesn’t matter.

And if you don’t have a healer / cleric / medic with you, or if they happen to be the ones who are hurt, you can give thanks to the gods for their cruel jest in providing Borer Worms.

The term “worms” is slightly misleading; they have as much in common with snakes as with other forms of worm. While they can happily live beneath the thin carpet of soil, their all-time favorite delight to munch upon is rotting flesh. Drawn to its scent, they will seek it out if there is any to be found nearby, coming from as much as a kilometer downwind in pursuit of this delight.

They concentrate acid run-off in ‘poison’ sacs, giving them an extremely excruciating bite. The acid dissolves the target flesh, and the worms suck it up voraciously, reclaiming whatever’s left of the acid in the process.

So great is their preference for this diet that they will ignore healthy flesh and fresh meat, boring through it only if they are seeking rotten meat on the far side.

On top of that, they leave in their wake a kind of silk coated in a natural light adhesive, which helps prevent infection of the exposed healthy tissue. They use this to pull themselves free (painfully, for the host) if they detect anything they consider dangerous.

Physically, they are white worms about 1/50th of an inch across (0.51 mm) and 2-4 cm (0.8-1.6 inches) in length. Their bodies are ringed by red stretch marks.

When there is no other recourse, they have been used to save many a life – subjecting the host that they are healing to intense pain as a byproduct.

Each Borer Worm present ‘heals’ 0.2 HD of physical damage and replaces it with 0.1 HD of shock damage. To apply the ‘treatment’, one simply digs around in the earth until you find a colony of the worms, scoop them up and place them on the affected tissue. They will immediately do what comes naturally.

As the host heals, it becomes increasingly disturbing mentally to see the fat and contented Borer Worms writhing around underneath the skin, which – thanks to the lattice of silk and hormones excreted by the Borer Worms – regrows more quickly than the underlying flesh, by a factor of two.

It’s obvious to the host when the Borer Worms have completed the task for which they were inflicted; they will start to munch on living tissue, amplifying the pain factor ten-fold or more. Every worm in this state inflicts 0.2 HD of physical damage and 1 HD of shock damage each day – and if you are hosting 20 or more Worms at the time, 20 HD a day of shock on top of 4 HD of real damage is far from inconsequential! Most victims pass out from the pain, and some even become comatose.

When this happens, the worms have to be withdrawn. A shallow incision is the preferred method, and placing a piece of 3-day-old meat next to it; the worms will be irresistibly drawn to this new meal, binding the incision shut as they depart!

Even the incision is ultimately not necessary; they will burn their own exit paths through the skin of the host if they have to. Their ability to sense rotting flesh is more than acute enough to reach them even through several layers of skin.

Things take a more unpleasant turn when the host has inhaled hot gasses or swallowed caustic liquids. In the latter case, the victim either has to wait until the liquid burns a path through their throat before the Worms can be put to work, or they have to put them into their mouth and swallow them. They will immediately begin to cough uncontrollably as the worm’s silken trails cause them to lodge in the throat at the site of the damage. Some few will fail to ‘hang on’ and be swallowed; immune to stomach acid, they will then begin to bore their way through flesh and stomach lining to reach the site of the wound.

In the case of damaged lungs, there is no option – the victim has to inhale the worms.

In both cases, when the work is done, coughing and / or vomiting must then be induced to release the worms from the body, and many hosts are forever convinced that at least one has been left behind.

Note that while the worms can “seal off” healthy tissues, even in badly-scarred lungs, they cannot restore tissues that couldn’t be replaced by natural healing, were the victim to live long enough. Vocal chords, windpipes, eyes, tongue – these can be partially or wholly lost, forever (without magical intervention or surgical reconstruction). The host will have a far better chance of surviving, more is usually beyond the Worms’ abilities. But, as a last-ditch resort, a colony of 20-50 Borer Worms are better than nothing at all.

It also has to be observed that their ability to scent ‘food’ is sufficiently great that the Worms may not give them a choice. Simply placing a victim down to rest is enough; any nearby colony will in but a few minutes erupt from their ‘nest’ and wriggle over to where the feast lies waiting. Only cleansing and binding of the wound can prevent this, and not even that is enough if there is any necrosis or infection.

Lizardfolk

So much for the lesser life-forms. Now we come to those creatures at the top of the heap, starting with Lizardfolk. These are exactly what you would expect – half-alligator humanoids – who live in the Southern Crags and come together to trade and worship at Mekkaresh. I discussed the city and its inhabitants last time, so there’s not much more to add.

Orc Tribes of Zasleen

Also discussed last time was Zasleen and the Orc Tribes that surround it, all of which lay claim to the “city”. This is little more than a collection of temporary grass huts, when you get right down to it; “Civilized” races attach more meaning to it than is warranted. An Orc Tribe is quite capable of setting up a new collection of huts miles from Zasleen and considering it also to be “Zasleen”, and something they have in common with the established residents thereof. That’s because the Orcish meaning of the term is slippery and hard for outsiders to understand; they perpetually read things into it that simply aren’t there in the Orcish mind-set, and miss some of the things that are there (or are implied) as a result.

Dragons

You read that right. There’s at least one of every type of common dragon-kind abiding at the top of mesas, somewhere in the Crags. How they order their society is largely unknown – they are fairly standoffish and have little to do with “civilized” folk.

Should one observe a party in trouble due to the harsh environment or other dangers, they may choose to intervene; the more metallic they are, the more noble, the greater this likelihood. But they won’t go a great distance out of their way to do so, and will rarely put themselves at risk.

The colored dragons are less likely to offer assistance, but will render aid should there be some quid-pro-quo that they can conceive. If not, lunch is on the hoof today – unless the hapless strangers convince the dragon that they are sufficiently dangerous as to not be worth the risk.

The one exception to these statements is the absence of any Green Dragon. It is surmised that one resided in what is now the Glass Delta, but – being flightless – it was unable to escape the outpouring of lava from Mount Optica that created this feature of the modern Crags.

Others claim that the Green Dragon has actually become an Undead Necromancer hiding in the heart of the Lava Uprisings, waiting for its opportunity to… well, no-one really knows, every version of this myth ends differently. Some versions are even more outre, with the body being hag-ridden by an Ilithid who keeps the flesh animated and the will subdued – but none have ever seen it and lived to tell the tale, or so the story goes….

The Dragon most reliably findable is “Noxxia” (not its real name), who is frequently seen drifting around the top of Mount Redtop. Ancient and grouchy, the kind who yells at clouds and challenges the sun to duels, he is surprisingly approachable, and willing to do almost anything – for the right price. You want an evening of urbane conversation? That can be arranged. You want something incinerated from above? No problem, if you can afford it. You want to be taught Dragon Magic? Bring plenty with which to barter – and get the agreement in writing (and receipts) because tomorrow or the next day, he will probably forget.

To the Orcs of Zasleen, Noxxia is the best kind of God – one that leaves them alone to fend for themselves. Every year, they will raid the Forest for game, which they will then carry up Mount Redtop as tribute to The Great Noxxia. In exchange, they will usually request one favor of the Red Dragon, which is usually granted.

The Golden Dragon, who delights in inventing a new name every time he is encountered, seems to hang around Mount Vertigo more often than anywhere else, but those visiting this wonder can wait for weeks without seeing him.

Others

There are a few other types of inhabitant here and there, according to legend. In particular, the fringes with the forests and mountains are home to unlikely residents according to some stories. Quite often, these have a basis in truth; there are Trolls who are known to inhabit the Crags near the mountains, for example, though no-one knows exactly where, and Ogres who have one (metaphoric) foot in the forest and one in the Northern Crags – somewhere.

The most ‘reliable’ (for lack of a better term) sightings appear to be a nest of Fomorians somewhere in the Directionless Void, which seems to pose no handicap to them for some reason.

Mineral Wealth of the Ironbarb

Given the harshness and toxicity of the environment, why would any Humans, Elves, or Dwarves ever want to spend time in the Crags? Well, some (especially humans and elves) are natural sightseers. Dwarves find the Crystal Spires and Mount Vertigo to be awe-inspiring.

But the real reason soon surfaces. There’s an abundance of metallic crystals and salts in the Crags, and there’s huge reservoirs of heat and pressure, and that turns those crystals and salts into gemstones.

On top of that, there are some resources that can be found nowhere else. This includes Ferrovine, though no practical use has been found yet for that particular mineral.

Counting them up, there are 7 good reasons to wander around the landscape here.

Opals

Black and Blue-based opals can be found in the vicinity of the Eastern Crags and Glass Delta.

Firegems

Firegems are small pieces of Frozen Fire – yellow-edged gems with what appears to be a captive red flame dancing within.

Diamonds

The walls of Skygorge contain a number of diamond deposits, and loose diamonds are sometimes found elsewhere.

Rubies

There are lots of reasons for Mount Redtop to carry its’ name. One of them is that there are lots of rubies found there. Be prepared to give Noxxia 10-25% of your finds, though.

Emeralds

The Southern Crags are the preferred location to hunt for these. Be aware that they are considered Holy Relics by the Lizardfolk, who will react accordingly to any found on the person of a traveler. They welcome exchanging such discoveries at Mekkaresh, though – this is being ‘respectful’ in their eyes.

Dies

Several varieties of insect, when crushed and dried, permit the extraction of a number of dies of different (and quite vivid) hues – purples and reds and blues and – more unusually – deep sea greens. The Elves both come to the Crags in search of such, and happily purchase any that are found by others.

Vanadasite

This rare mineral has three general applications of note.

Containers and Tools

Since the region is prone to Acid Rain and acidic flash floods, making containers and tools from the acid-resistant alloy are invaluable for the holding and transport of corrosive materials. Furthermore, it’s natural resistance to heat means that it can be carved into molds placed into an active lava source with metal to create other objects. The Lizardfolk excel at this.

Armaments

While it is not a primary material for swords or armor due to its crystalline nature (it shatters under a heavy blow), it can be and is used for specific disposable components – Arrowheads, Dagger tips, the edges of pickaxes and mining tools. This enables these tools to resist the corrosive effects of the environment and the weapons to resist the effects of the creatures that inhabit the Crags.

In particular, a weapon designed to fight an Acid-spitter creature might have a blade sheathed in the alloy.

The Orcs of Zasleen have mastered this application of the alloy.

Pigment

The distinctive greenish hue can be ground down into a fine powder to create a rare, vibrant, and highly-sought-after green pigment for dyes, paints, or inks. All three “civilized” races place great value on this, especially since the results can be almost infinitely concentrated, from a barely-discernible green tinge to a green so dark that it can be considered black.

The Elves of Asthar have mastered the art of adulterating the green hues with other colors to create still more variations, which give some of their weaving and leatherwork almost-perfect camouflage – in one specific environment of Topologia (which one depends on the colors).

Travel To The Ironbarb

I’ve obviously edited this image to show the passage through the archway to the fields, but there have also been a number of other subtle changes to the lighting to get the archway to ‘pop out’ a little more from the landscape..
The base image, geology-4258703.jpg, is by Pete Linforth from target=”_blank”Pixabay, and the fields is a modified extract of my modified version of the fields image shown above (refer to it for image credit).

The map presented in part 4a does half the work of this section, so I won’t belabor the points presented. Clockwise from the west – Glassdust Desert, Forest of Asthar, Shadowfen, Zugarth Mountains, got it? The Everflow heads downstream to the west and upriver to the east, okay?

Good, that lets us get down to the exotic stuff.

The Pillar Of Fire

Prominent on the map is the Pillar Of Fire. Walk through it, and – if you aren’t incinerated – you will find yourself deep in the Glassdust Desert, and a long way from anything else. What’s more interesting is that the Desert end of this ‘bridge’ wanders from place to place in a predictable but unstable pattern. It stays in one location for 2-4 weeks, takes a week transiting to it’s next location, stays there for another 2-4 weeks, and so on. There are 12 destination points arranged in a roughly circular pattern around the axis of the central salt lake.

Migration Path of the Pillar Of Fire

If position 0 (where it was after it last moved), it will move 5 spaces anticlockwise to 1, then 5 more to 2, and so on, until it gets to 12, which is the same place as position 0 was.

It will then move one space anticlockwise, to 13, and then the opposite pattern will take place – 5 positions clockwise – until it ends up being back there at 25.

It then moves another space anticlockwise to 26, and from this new position, then repeats the first pattern (anti-clockwise movements) until at it ends up back in this location as 37.

Move another space anticlockwise to 38, and repeat the second pattern (clockwise movement by 5) – so position 39 will be the space originally labeled 2, and that was also visited in 16 and 30.

A predictable but very complicated pattern that seems to have had significant psychological effects on the Dromedyn – compare this to the pattern of migration of the 12 tribes that was shown in Part 2 of this series (note that a rotation of 5 steps is the ONLY pattern with 12 stop positions that encompasses all 12; every other choice only reaches a sub-set of the 12).

Rocky Arch

Described in part 2, and with the illustration repeated above, this permits bypassing the entire Desert to appear in Gardenia.

Crossing Mount Optica

It’s not easy to climb Mount Optica, but it can be done. The sides of this dormant volcano are steep, but the slope is little easier to the east and south. When you crest the rim, you start down an equally-steep incline until you reach the lake that gathers rainwater and releases it as the Rainbow Falls. Circle the mountain the long way around until you come to the falls, and then climb the rim in the same direction you originally did – North if you came from the south, and West if you came from the East. When you crest the rim, you will see below you the sides of a peak in the central Zugarth Mountains. That’s quite a lot of up-and-down that you don’t need to do the hard way!

The Cliff of Trees

Deep in the Directionless Void, the Zugarth Mountains form a cliff in front of you. In that cliff, there is a cave – well, actually, there are several, but this one is special. Why? Because that Cave runs about a mile deep before entering a crystal grotto. Natural waterfalls, light carried down from the surface by an immense crystal spire – both enough to show that you are, in fact, still in the Crags. But someone has helpfully carved steps into the side of the spire, steps which slowly spiral up. The going is steep – the steps are near vertical, and spaced about 5 meters apart, so they are more like ledges, really – but it is (barely) navigable. At the top of the spire, so close to the ceiling of the grotto that you can literally reach up and touch the underside of the mountain, there are the roots of a great tree. Climb into them and you can find a passageway to the surface; and when you arrive at ground level, you will find that you are in the Northern part of the Forests Of Asthar, and not far from the Enclave Of Shadows.

Topologically, it makes no sense – you head a mile south to end up many miles to the North – but that’s the reality of Topologia..

EDIT: Okay, so right after I hit ‘publish’ I realized that “Thorax” means “throat” and I’ve used the wrong term throughout the swarm discussion. It’s too late to change it, this post is already 2 hours late. My bad.

Tags: Campaign-Setting, Encounter-Design, Inspiration, Monster-Design, PCs, Races, D&D, Cultures-&-Societies, NPCs, Pathfinder, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Adventure-Creation, Resources, The Topologia Game Setting

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Out Of The Blue: Thinking about Thinking

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Management, D&D / Pathfinder, Game Mastering, Mike, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, PCs, Players, The End Of The Rainbow, Tools & Techniques, Opinion, Metagaming & Metagame Theory, All Genres on Sep.16, 2025

Can thoughts pass from one dimension or reality to another? In the real world, no, so far as we know, but the realities our games create have no such limitations – so let’s examine the concept further.

A composite of two images and two backgrounds, some distortions, and some original line art. The images are man-suit-tie-311134 and avatar-messenger-person-user-beard-153139, provided by Clker-Free-Vector-Images and OpenClipart-Vectors, respectively. The backgrounds are office-7829030 by Graphix Made and vienna-1652799, no source listed, both of which have been expanded and cropped. All images from Pixabay.

Certainly, it can seem that way when a radical concept floats into your head, seemingly from nowhere. In the old days, when everything was viewed through a religious context, this was occasionally referred to as Divine Inspiration. In modern times, subconscious cues and problem-solving would be invoked to ‘explain’ the phenomenon – with really strong evidence that either of these things actually exist, it must be said; they are just the best explanations that we have.

It’s not just that the notion is radically different from others that you might have had; it’s the way that it unfurls in your mind near-complete, with a richness of detail that you might expect if you had been thinking deeply on the subject for quite some time – when you know darned well that you haven’t.

The biggest problem that you face when this occurs is getting it all down on paper before it begins to fade, overtaken by conscious thoughts – because the inspired mind leaps forward from what is on your head, not what you’ve been able to capture on the page, and does so far faster than most people can write or type.

Background Context

So, I have been beavering away on the next part of the Topologia series, as last week’s post should have made clear. As soon as you break a post in two, you need a new feature illustration to give readers a point of visual context, a notion to hold onto and associate with the article – because you’ve already used the best you have available in the first part (unless you plan a long way ahead). Right away, I knew what that feature image should depict – the most complex ecology in Topologia, the Mud Flats and Crystal Spires. I also knew, in my mind, exactly what it should look like, so I was able to immediately go out and gather the resources needed to assemble what I saw in my mind’s eye.

Nineteen source images and more than 6,000 image layers later, and it’s still only 75% done. I had expected that it would take a day, maybe a day-and-a-half – instead, getting to that point has required 4 days plus of intensive effort. It’s been such a complex assembly process that I’ve already had to step my planned full-sized image down in scale from 2000 pixels wide to just 1280. For the first time that I can remember with my current hardware, the ‘working image’ in memory topped 1GB of RAM – the most complex image that I’ve ever created on my old desktop system exceeded this (I can remember 1.2 GB, 1.4 GB and 1.6GB) – but this was enough that the system became sluggish to respond. So I had to scale it down.

But the real problem is that it’s taken so long – it’s cut deeply into the time that I had for writing the text, so much so that by the time I went to bed last night, I was no longer confident of being able to complete both image and text in time. One of the two, yes – but not both, and I needed both to be ready before it was publishable.

No problem – “I’ll just pivot to the plan B that was always in the back of my mind, another part of the Best of 2016. I know that I’ve got enough time to make that happen” – such was my thinking. But this morning, today’s article came to me, whole, and unbidden, from completely out of the blue. And now I’m racing to get it done before the clarity of the original concept fades.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Thoughts

So let’s examine the fundamental concept. In another reality (which may or may not be part of the same physical space), an individual encounters a situation and thinks about how best to handle it. Thinks so intently that their concentration projects that thought out into the void (completely ignoring things like Psionics that may or may not be part of the conceptual landscape in which they reside). And these are then picked up on, and resonate with, the most receptive possible recipient, another variation on that individual in a different reality – you.

Under the parallel worlds theory, there are an unknowably vast number of realities in which the differences are some quantum fluctuation in a galaxy millions of light-years away. So far as you’re concerned, there is no measurable difference, and hasn’t been since the instant of bifurcation between the timelines. The only non-infinite number that dwarfs this huge reality are the number in which some event turned out differently, for whatever reason – a sliding doors moment – because there are many such possible, and chaos theory dictates that there are even more than we realize, and each of those is bifurcating to the same extent from the moment of initial difference on.

The earlier the point of separation, the more variants there are going to be. Go back far enough, though, and we reach the instants just after the big bang (and I know that it’s not called that anymore, but it’s a convenient label). At that moment, time itself had only just begun, and the other physical laws of the universe had not yet emerged. It follows that there are infinitely more variations on your reality which operate under completely different physical laws than are those with which you are familiar. Unless there is some sort of ‘reality filter’ involved, with only a limited number of stable configurations of such laws possible. And all it takes is for one of them to be a reality in which such communications is possible for there to be a non-zero probability that it will occur.

That is how a thought could – in a theoretical abstract metaphysical possible reality – pass from one mind across the interdimensional gulf to find a new home in another thinking being who happens to be receptive by virtue of being a variation on the person thinking the original thought. To compress the narrative, let’s call such a person a ‘resonant individual’, okay?

Degrees Of Resonance

Originator thinks a thought. Resonant Individual has that thought manifest as an inspiration, complete and from nowhere, in their own heads. Clearly, the more divergent the timelines, the less resonant the individual will be, the more they will be different from the originator, even though they are similar enough that both are recognizably variations on the same person.

In this reality, my current occupation is writer / artist / editor / publisher, and I do this for a website, Campaign Mastery. In a similar but slightly-different one, I might do the same thing but for a different website, being a staff writer for Gnome Stew or something. In a slightly-different reality again, I do the same thing for a publisher of RPG games. Which one? The most probable one, which is probably Paizo. And then through variations of all the lesser-probability ones that are out there. And then we get the variations in which I write on something other than RPGs – maybe I’m a Hollywood scriptwriter or a novelist. With all the possible variations of success, I might add, according to the statistical probability of achieving that success. So in most of these realities, I have another day job on the side. Or maybe I work for a great metropolitan newspaper (if any such still exist). And so on, and so forth.

At one point, I was a MIDI-based composer, and pretty good at it. I was on the verge of transforming the music that I had created into a series of for-sale CDs – Track lists were done, and I had almost completed production of the first CD when random chance – hardware failure and a total failure of the backup software to restore from the archived backup – killed the whole thing. If I had been more successful, or more driven, I might still be a composer. With all the possible degrees of success that this entails, as sub-variants.

And so on. You can see why the number of distinct variations massively outnumber the number of almost-indistinguishable ones.

I’m a big fan of these general concepts in my games because it provides a loophole in the physics that prevents FTL travel and time travel – the act of doing either forces you out of your timeline of origination and into another one. Because they are closer and therefore more accessible, the odds are that this will be a universe of no discernible difference – so it might as well be the same one that you departed from. But there is always a low probability, rising with length / duration of voyage, that you will encounter a variant. It’s most probably a variant that doesn’t personally impact you greatly – “John C Kennedy” instead of “John F Kennedy”, and since I’m neither of them… but changes cascade and multiply, and small fluctuations even on the micro-scale can accumulate like dominoes falling until they create measurably-distinct differences in the Macro world. All Grandfather Paradoxes go away when ‘side-slips’ are involved.

The same statistical modeling would apply to the degree of resonance of a thought that’s crossing over from one reality to another.

What is a thought?

The most pragmatic answer, shorn of all metaphysics, is that a thought is a configuration of electrical energy within a matrix of chemical compounds that react to, and respond to, that electrical configuration. The electrical energy in that particular pattern triggers changes in the chemistry, and the chemistry triggers changes in the (transitory) electrical patterns that are thus created. A domino effect archives the thought in a memory buffer and may trigger associations and further thoughts, like ripples in a pond.

I’m sure this is horribly oversimplified, perhaps to the point of being completely wrong, but it’s my best understanding of the answer to the question.

So, given this working definition, how would a trans-dimensional communication manifest?

The Significance of Resonance

If we assume that in variations of the same individual, the greater the divergence, the greater the variation in personal history, and therefore the greater the variation in the personal experiences that comprise that history, then the greater the variation, the more different will be the arrangement of the chemical part of the brain’s structure. Which means that when a particular electrical signal manifests in the individual’s brain, the way that it is interpreted by that brain will vary. The message that is ‘received’ will have little or no resemblance to the original thought that is transmitted, and the greater the variation between individuals, the greater the divergence in interpretation. The other day, I thought up a recipe for a Tropical Jam (Mango, pineapple, and Passionfruit). I have no idea where that idea came from, and I didn’t write it down – but I can still remember it.

If that thought had originated with some variation of myself, it might have been perceived as something completely different – an adventure idea, or a social / political insight, or the design for a new kind of solar panel, you name it. The interpretation that results would have to have a foundation in the prior experiences of the resonant individual – so, to get the solar panel idea, they would have to be a physicist or an engineer (probably). That foundation is what they use to interpret this garbled thought.

The greater the resonance, the more common experiences there will be, and the more likely it is that the interpreted thought received will match the thought inadvertently transmitted.

Extraordinary Circumstances?

Everything that you’ve read so far was part of that initial wave of inspiration – well, actually, there were three waves following almost instantly, one after the other. Now, it starts to get a little more fuzzy, because now we’re getting into things that are the result of ruminating on the above – something I tried not to do too much of, because that dilutes the clarity of the original thought, and I wanted to focus on documenting that thought before digging into it too deeply.

There’s been little or nothing said about the circumstances that permit / force the transmission of thought from one reality to another. But, since it doesn’t happen frequently, it’s reasonable to assume that these circumstances might have to be fairly extraordinary. Random chance in which everything aligns would be a possible answer, but how often would that occur? Unknowable. I’ll pursue that further in a moment. Perhaps an unexpected end of life? That’s a more dramatic circumstance, one that relies on the concept that when fighting for survival, we’re capable of extra-ordinary things – and that’s something for which there are reams of anecdotal evidence. Maybe you have to be in a deeply meditative state, or in a religious extasy, or just thinking – very – hard. Who knows? But the circumstances have to be pretty improbable, don’t they? Or maybe not. Maybe it’s not the transmission that’s so extraordinary, but the reception and translation into something meaningful. We all have random thoughts that aren’t worth the paper it would take to document them, noticed momentarily and then abandoned. Picking up a thought despite a lack of compatible resonance would probably look very much like having such a random thought or impulse. Whatever the original thought, the interpreted content would derived from existing personality profile, habits, patterns of thought, and prior experiences, so there would be no reason not to consider it your own random thought.

The more discriminating the resonance has to be, the more ubiquitous the process of transmission can be.

But this receptivity threshold doesn’t actually have to relate directly to the degree of Resonance – there can be two different functions involved. A lower-resonance individual could, perhaps, receive such a thought in exactly the right extraordinary circumstances. The more resonant the individual, the less improbable such reception might be, but improbable doesn’t mean impossible. It’s possible (however unlikely) that every individual is transmitting almost every thought that they have across the dimensional gulfs, but only specific individuals whose circumstances happen to match up precisely in the right configuration receive the thought, and only a few of them make anything significant out of it.

Perhaps the most probable configuration of realities, assuming that all this is possible at all – a quite fantastic assumption – is that everything has to be almost-exactly right at both ends. That’s certainly the most plausible.

Robert A Heinlein once speculated on the concept of a “Ficton” as the ‘basic unit” of imagination. The term is applied most frequently to speculative fiction in implying self-consistency within a fictional universe, which becomes important when crossovers occur. One of the more interesting conclusions that can be reached from the specific many-timelines / many-worlds speculation defined earlier in this article is that any fictional reality (or some internally-consistent variation on the premise, where the originator of the fictional reality has not been able to maintain internal consistency for whatever reason) must exist as a reality, somewhere.

An example: Known Space by Larry Niven

Some of the early stories by Larry Niven were standalone science fiction short stories regarding the exploration of the solar system. These were later folded into the broader “Known Space” fictional universe as historic events, and collected into the “Tales Of Known Space” compilation with editorial notes by Niven.

In one such editorial note, he raises the question of what to do when physics makes a new discovery that contradicts what a writer has created. For example, it was assumed for a long time that Mercury was tidally locked to the Sun, always presenting the one face to it; it was on this basis that he wrote his story of exploration of that world by the first humans to visit there. Science then discovered that Mercury does, in fact, rotate, completely and catastrophically undermining that fundamental premise of the short story in question.

An author, in this circumstance, has four options:

He can revise his story to remove the resulting error – but if he starts down this road, before too long, he will be spending all his time revising prior work, and not creating anything new.
He can insert something into a new story to explain the discontinuity – but this is only worth doing if the problem is vastly more important than is usually the case, because it’s self-referential and often boring except to the most puritan of purists.
He can determine that the established story over-rules subsequent discoveries by science, maintaining an existing continuity of concept and internal consistency. This elevates the purity of that consistency over consistency with the known reality of the reader, and can cause the fiction to date, but it leaves the author free to get on with writing more stories set in this universe.
Or, fourthly, he can ignore the problem and just write something new. This is Isaac Asimov’s preferred solution, citing Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds”. Asimov was far from alone in adopting this stance, it is by far the most common approach to the problem.

An author can even prevaricate between answers 3 and 4, refusing to even acknowledge the problem until forced to decide, one way or another, by a new story that runs headlong into the contradiction. And, under the many-worlds paradigm described, there is a fifth option:

The author’s entire fictional universe is contained within one reality until an internal contradiction assets itself, at which point his narrative shifts from one universe to a parallel version in which the old story is not what happened, and reality is consistent with the new version of events. There is no contradiction, no paradox, that results because any contradictions get exiled from the primary reality described.

Application to RPGs

All that means that somewhere, there is a universe which mirrors the events in your RPG campaign. And innumerable variations which cover the roads not taken by the PCs. Which means that whenever conditions – as defined (or not) by the GM – permit, a thought can pop into the mind of a PC or NPC, either from the player, or from some other variation of the character.

We’ve all seen players make incomprehensible decisions on behalf of their PCs, ones that the PC in question should know better than to follow, because they know the experienced reality around themselves far better than the player does. A good GM will have warned the player or at least hinted that the decision in question is not a good one, and that the player should probably rethink it, but sometimes such advice falls on deaf or paranoid ears. Suddenly, acting on such stupid ideas has some sort of explanation from the perspective of the affected character – a ficton has been communicated from the player to the character and the character has made a mistake in interpreting it that has caused him to do something stupid – and to have to ‘live’ with the consequences.

We’ve all seen NPCs who appear – rightly or wrongly – to have ‘plot armor’. This can now be explained as consequences of the GM communicating a ficton to one of the participating characters, with any dubious or otherwise inexplicable decisions put down to misinterpretation of the thoughts running unbidden through their minds.

But it can also be used as a plot device to help everyone out of a jam.

The character has a problem. The GM is aware of a solution. The player can’t find that solution. Play has ground to a halt, and this halt has gone on long enough that everyone is getting frustrated and bored. A random thought from an alternate-world version of the character then manifests in the mind of the character. Because he is focused on the problem at hand, his interpretation of that thought focuses on the solution. Either he gets a hint, seemingly from nowhere, or a whole solution suddenly manifests in his imagination – depending on how direct the GM thinks he needs to be.

Sometimes, it’s enough for the GM to point out the flaw in the assumptions of the player that are blocking the discovery of a viable solution. This premise explains how that would manifest in the game world. Sometimes, the GM needs to be more explicit in his instructions, effectively going around the player to interact directly with the character.

Opening Plot Sequences

When a character participates in an adventure for the first time within that adventure, it is generally incumbent on the GM to describe where the character is and what he is doing. This provides a baseline from which the player can roleplay and make decisions on behalf of the character than then further the adventure. There are all sorts of nuances that can be discussed about such “establishing shots”, but the bottom line is this – in order for the character to be where they are, doing what they are doing, the GM must have created circumstances in which the current situation, as described, is what would have resulted.

I have seen some discussions of such practices in which this was described as a “plot train” but I don’t think that’s the case. It’s a beginning point, not a pathway to a defined endpoint. Most GMs will incorporate any indications from the player of what the character wants to do next that were offered in prior game sessions IF such were offered – so this is not a violation of player agency, it’s a manifestation of it, or of the lack of it being applied.

It’s inevitable, though, that some decisions on the part of the character will have to have been made on the player’s behalf by the GM, in order for the character to find themselves in that situation. It’s incumbent on the GM to ensure that these decisions are reasonable ones in terms of the characterization; the better the GM knows the player and the character, the more “in character” such decisions become.

The bottom line is that this cuts out the tedium of getting the character to that point in the adventure, letting the player take over just when things start to get interesting. This keeps the game moving forward and creates dramatic situations that are of interest to the players instead of burying the game in the minutia of the characters’ daily life. Since the GM has (presumably) envisaged a pathway leading from these opening sequences into the actual adventure, this is – by definition – metagaming, but it’s another example of when that is NOT a bad thing.

All this is, of course, a fictional conceit for a mode of interaction between the observed reality around us all and the fictional world inhabited by our characters. It might not be the only such approach. But it’s one that works, and that possesses a certain level of utility for both players and GM that can be used for the betterment of the game as a form of entertainment. And that makes all this thinking about thinking anything but a wasted exercise.

When you give a character an INT check to think of something that the player is overlooking, when you give them a skill check to become aware of something that you can’t mention to the player without giving the game away on a silver platter, where does the thought in the character’s head come from? Now, there is an answer.

Tags: Advice/Tools, At-The-Table, Behind-The-Screen, Campaigns, PCs, Play, Player-Goals, Players, Running-Encounters, D&D, NPCs, Opinion, Sci-Fi, Metagaming

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A quick explanatory note

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Blog Admin on Sep.09, 2025

I was a bit perturbed when last night’s post notification got flagged as SPAM when it lobbed into my inbox. Investigation of the headers suggested that this is due to the length of the caption in the middle of the article. There was also a suggestion that I had received this notification because I’m the site administrator, and that subscribers hadn’t actually been notified.

I just wanted to reassure readers that the post, Topologia: A Strange Campaign Setting, Part 4a is NOT spam and is safe to read.

In the course of investigating this, another problem was discovered that indicates the subscription technology is broken somehow. I didn’t set this up, so I have a lot of learning to do before I can diagnose, let alone resolve, the issue. In the interim, I will disable visibility on the failed tech.

*** UPDATE *** … except that I can’t find where the code for the Feedburner subscription is located, it doesn’t seem to be amongst everything else in the RHS Nav. Maybe it’s in the header files somewhere that I’m not seeing. All I can find is some code configuring how it is displayed, not whether or not it is displayed. I tried disabling that anyway, but it didn’t help, so I’ve restored it/

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Topologia: A Strange Campaign Setting, Part 4a

Written by Mike Bourke

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series The Topologia Game Setting

Today, Part 4a of the Topologia campaign explores the wonders – and terrors – of the Ironbarb Crags (part 1 of 2).

This landscape image is by Enrique from Pixabay.

Having bought myself an extra week to get it finished, I’ve decided that I really need to split this in two so that I’ve got the second part in my pocket. Why? Because this buys time for me to work on the next part in the Trade In Fantasy series – and I expect that not even this will be enough for the next in that collection of articles!

The Ironbarb Crags (Volcanic Wasteland)

The Ironbarb Crags are place of great natural beauty, desolation, and danger. Essentially a rocky desert but with some remarkable features including the mesas that give the region its name, crystal spires, a mud-flat, a cave where time stands still, the Skygorge which is an almost-perfect mirror, Mount Vertigo, a desolate region called the Directionless Void in which shadows, reflected light, and mirages make it impossible to discern true direction, Mount Optica (a dormant volcano with a lake of hot water that picks up minerals that color the water as it spills out a broken face into the Rainbow Falls) and the Dome Of Frozen Fire, an area where erosion has carved the red-and-gold rock into something that looks like flames but which is cool to the touch.

This remarkable landscape is a place called Bryce Canyon in Utah, a US National Park..Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Environmental conditions include Noxious Fumes, Acidic Rain, Flensing Dust-storms, Acid flash-floods, Lava Geysers, and Pools of hot mud.

Surprisingly. life flourishes in this desolation, if one knows where to look for it. In fact, many of its most beautiful features would not exist without that life, and the life would not exist without the harshness of the unwelcoming environment.

The experience of exploring it has been summed up as “Mud can be beautiful too”. The beauty stems from below the hostile surface, and it’s doubly-appropriate because anyone who spends too much time here becomes visibly scarred and ugly – on the surface – but most are poetic of soul and spirit. Of course, there are always a few whose exterior is a true reflection of an inner darkness necessary to their survival and prosperity in this environment.

Geographic Features of the Ironbarb

In addition to some spot extracts showing the relationships between key features of the geography, I’ve produced an overall map.

Unfortunately, that’s incredibly hard to read when it’s made small enough to fit the Campaign Mastery page. So I’ve also split into three slices:

You can also get the whole, fullsized map (1280 x 1164) by clicking on any of the four maps above.

There’s lots of information here, but I’ll get into most of it when I discuss the specific geographic features. For now, I want to cover off a couple of general items.

The Crags are divided into 11, 12, or 14 regions (depending on how you count them), plus some specific areas like the Mudflats. Each of these regions is slightly different from the others, so I’ve also given them their own feature spots below. However, while the map gives nice near dividing lines between (for example) the Northern Crags and the Border Crags, in reality there is more of a smooth transition.

Second, you may note that there’s no scale. That’s because opinions vary widely on how wide the Crags are – some say that you can reach the Everflow in a week of overland travel from Splinter, others say that it takes months. The truth of the matter is that it’s so hard to proceed in straight lines that judging the true scale is all but impossible. There’s a popular saying that the Crags are twice the size you want them to be, plus a little more just to be spiteful.

Third, Splinter is NOT where it appears to be on the map. But somehow, it is. I’ll dig into all that in more detail in the “Shadow Of Splinter” section below, which has been included even though Splinter is not shown as being a part of the Crags. You can get a foretaste of things to come by noting that Splinter is NOT in the Forest, it is to the East of the Shadowfen – which is hard right on this map. But it’s also just north of the indicated part of the Crags. And, for that matter, from Splinter, the Everflow passes through the Farms of Gardenia and the Gilded Glassdust Desert in order to enter this map on its western side!

Finally, note the mountain ranges at the top and bottom of the map. These are the same mountain range – it’s southern parts are to the North of the Crags and the Forest (which is its own Domain within Topologia) and it’s northern parts are to the South of the Crags.

This might make sense if the world were cylindrical or round – but it isn’t. And it’s daytime at the same time (more or less) throughout Topologia – there are a few hours difference, but that’s all. As usual with this place, everything makes sense until you look too closely at it – in this case, the geometry only works if there’s some sort of discontinuity at the top and/or bottom of the map, one so subtle that no-one has ever observed it.

Got your walking boots on? Let’s explore! I’m going to start west and move slowly east until I get to the end of the map..

The Sandy Line

We start with the Sandy Line, which marks the boundary between the Glassdust Desert and the Crags. At this line, there is suddenly more rock than sand, passing west to East.

But the Desert breathes like a living thing. If the winds blow from the West, the line moves somewhat East, possibly completely encompassing Lake Bottomless. If the wind blows from the East, the desert sands retreat to the west, possibly even completely off the edge of the map.

And even at the best of times, the division is somewhat subjective anyway. It’s usually the best any two or more can do to agree that past a certain point (different on any given day), you have definitely passed the Sandy Line into the Crags.

The Crags

Geologically, the region mostly consists of three things: Earth, Lava (mostly solidified), and Ferrovine deposits.

The Earth and Lava are constantly eroded by many of the climatic events that beset the region. Some events replenish the lava, and a few non-climatic processes replenish the soil every now and then, but it’s the Ferrovine that creates the numerous sharp-edged mesas and spires of rock that are literally the ‘crags’ for which the region is named.

Ferrovine is a metallic crystal. It forms veins and spires and tree-like mineral deposits. The vines and tree-like structures protect the encrusted lava and earth to some extent, creating the mesas.

Chemically, Ferrovine is a natural alloy composed of iron and chromium with trace amounts of nickel and other elements.

Unlike the lustrous sheen of noble metals, Ferrovine has a dark, almost charcoal-gray appearance, with streaks of a deep crimson or rust color (due to the iron content). When light hits it from certain angles, it can possess a faint, purplish metallic sheen.

The compound is extremely acid-resistant, which is key to the survival of the Mesas and Spires in this harsh environment (see the section on Environmental Conditions). Ferrovine is a natural alloy that can form when the right minerals in the right quantities are exposed to tremendous heat. Because of its resistance to the constant chemical assault, it has built up over time into the structures seen today.

What’s more, Ferrovine is an excellent conductor of heat, which it transfers to the magma chambers that lie beneath the surface, occasionally tipping one over the edge into ‘activity’ – to use a polite term. The depth and shape of these magma chambers varies, but all of them are comparatively shallow – enough to make digging a very risky activity. Their temperatures also vary slightly, especially where there is some natural mechanism to draw away the excess heat – so the area occupied by the Everflow is (geologically-speaking) comparatively stable, for example.

While it is incredibly strong, Ferrovine is prone to shattering rather than bending or deforming under extreme stress, contributing to the “sharp, jagged barbs” that describe the natural geology common to most of the area. Constant heating and cooling also cause stress, leading to the jagged cracks that make the crags so dangerous.

The Crags are subdivided into a number of regions, each of which has crags of a slightly different nature, as mentioned earlier. These regions (with exceptions) are labeled in red on the map to make them stand out. (For the record, a dark blue is used for water-related features and black for everything else except where white was more legible).

The Northern Crags

The Northern Crags are located north and east of Lake Bottomless, and adjacent to the Gilded Glassdust Desert. When winds blow from the west, they are polished by the sand. The presence of any non-core ingredient provides a point of vulnerability within the Ferrovine in this region, so the Crags here look like pitted glass from a distance. When you get closer, it can be discerned that more Ferrovine is exposed here than in other parts of the Crags..

The Western Crags

South of the Everflow, the area is more volcanicly active and the magma chambers are closer to the surface and hotter. The Ferrovine is exposed here, the same way that it is in the Northern Crags, but this Ferrovine is sometimes hot enough to melt the sand that strikes it. Some of that sand is then blown away (see Flensing Sandstorms in the Environmental Conditions section), but some of it clings, forming glassy trails streaming to the east from the spires and vines of Ferrovine, a frozen glass sculpture of streaming rain. The Western Crags contains Skygorge and the Dome Of Frozen Fire.

The Distant Crags

At the extreme south of the Western Crags is a region known as the Distant Crags. These are taller and more spindly, less mesa-like – javelins of Ferrovine stabbing into the air 50m (160+ feet) into the air, and typically less than a meter in diameter. The oldest and most extreme examples are located around Mount Vertigo, which also contains the Cave Of Eternity. From that cave flows the Vertigo River, which heads northeast from the edge of the Mountains, eventually draining into the Everflow. This waterway marks a natural dividing line between Crag Regions, even though the areas just east of the river still closely resemble those to its west; but this is where the crags begin to change in nature.

The Border Crags

Running along the northern bank of the Everflow on the western side of the region are the “Border Crags”. They get their name by forming a natural wall along this bank of the river. The Ferrovines here are shorter than those to the west, more squat, and broader, with considerable ‘vines’ knotted between them. With the Everflow draining heat from them, this area forms a natural heat-sink that reduces the geologic activity of the area. North and east of the Border Crags are the Mud Flats and their Crystal Spires, and north of them are the Fields of Glass Coral.

The Central Crags

South of the Everflow and East of the Vertigo River are the central Crags. For some unknown reason – perhaps mere chance – the crags here are less regular and more twisted and maze-like. For the most part, these are just inconvenient, but there is a large area in their south where these structures are so bad that it has become known as the Directionless Void. The eastern boundary of the Central Crags is Mount Optica, the Rainbow Falls, Rainbow Lake, and the Optica River.

The Southern Crags

Beyond the Optica River can be found the Southern Crags, so named because they are South of the the Everflow which bends northeast as it passed the Central Crags. These crags are the most mesa-like, based around the ‘treelike’ structure of Ferrovine. North of Mount Optica, there is a region of the Southern Crags known as the Lava Uprisings, and north of that is the “City” of Mekkaresh. East of Mekkaresh, the Everflow turns sharply to the south, forming the Eastern boundary of the Southern Crags. A further boundary runs northwest from Mount Optica; the Eastern Crags are the only region located on both sides of the Everflow.

The Eastern Crags

East of Mount Optica and South of Mount Redtop are the Southern Crags, which contain the three Glass Deltas. While still hot, these areas are noticeably cooler than the other Crags, and from time to time the Shadowfen to the east floods and inundates these crags. When these floodwaters recede, they leave vast deposits of mud which quickly dries from the volcanic heat – the Eastern Crags may be “noticeably cooler” but this can be the difference between white hot and just short of red hot!

As a result, the ‘mesas’ of this region are the flattest of all, and surrounded by built-up gentle slopes of earth; mapped from above, they have the shape of teardrops with the tails pointing toward the Everflow or the Shadowfen, whichever is nearer.

The other characteristic shared by the Eastern Crags is that for a very long time, when Mount Optica erupted, its natural flow was to the East until it hit the Shadowfen, where the cooling effect of the waters there created natural walls of congealed lava, pushing the rest of the flow north. Who knows how long ago the last such eruption took place? But whenever it was, Mount Optica rebuilt that side of it’s cone to such an extent that the most recent eruption instead blew out the northwestern side of the volcano before it again became quiescent, creating the rainbow falls as the volcanic crater filled with water.

The Glass Delta – lower

In the middle of the Eastern Crags, the Everflow divides into two channels around what used to be an island. This terrain was once probably part of the Shadowfen, but the heat from repeated eruptions of Mount Optica dried the soil of the Shadowfen and fused it into a glassy surface now known as the Glass Delta. When the surface cooled, great cracks opened up in the surface, which now form a myriad of lesser watercourses for the Everflow to pass through.

The Glass Delta is subdivided into the Lower region, the Upper region, and the Greenish Region.

The “Lower” Glass Delta is what was once an island, as explained – it gets its name for being at a lower altitude than the rest. There are thus more water channels through here than either of the other regions.

The Glass Delta – upper

The part of the Glass Delta that lies south and west of the current course of the Everflow is known as the Upper Glass Delta, so named because it abuts the mountains to the south. This region was once rolling hills protruding above the waters of the Shadowfen, but these two were covered in lava by Mount Optica, so now they are black domes of solidified lava rising above the glassy surface of the Glass Delta. The cracks in the surface thus run to but not through or over these domes, further creating the impression of large black islands on glass.

The lava domes are slowly eroding, exposing the Ferrovines in their heart, which forms a tangled knot of razor-sharp metal vines on their crests. It is safe to say that the geology of this part of the Crags is still evolving!

The Glass Delta – greenish

The final sub-region of the crags is the Greenish Glass Delta. It comes from its name in two ways – first, the glass surfaces reflect and refract the dark greens of the Shadowfen, and secondly, the glass itself here has a natural greenish tint, the result of crystallization of a vanadium-rich alloy.

One could surmise that the heat and acidic rain acted as a catalyst, changing the oxidation state of the vanadium deposits that remained. Vanadium assumes many different colors depending on its oxidation state and the configuration of the resulting crystals. Normally, many such hues are present, but the catalyzing reaction in the presence of the Ferrovine transformed the others, leaving only the +3 oxidation state, creating a distinctive green tint in the glassy surface.

The Lesser Wastes

There are two regions labeled “wastes” because they are largely devoid of Ferrovine deposits to create Crags. The first of these lies northwest of the Everflow, between the river and both the Mudflats and Fields of Glass Coral.

What Ferrovine there is present forms spires no more than 10m in height – practically dwarfs compared to the great features of other regions – and they are comparatively far apart. There are no indications as to what caused this region to be different; it’s simply an observed fact.

This is called the “Lesser” Wastes because it’s a comparatively small area, and because it’s far more crag-like and less extreme than the “Greater”:Wastes.

The Greater Wastes

North of Mekkaresh, beyond the Everflow, and between the Fields Of Glass Coral and Mount Redtop are the Greater Wastes. Despite the presence of the dormant great super-volcano to the East, the Greater Wastes – which technically should be said to include Mount Redtop – is now the least geologically-active area within the entire Crags. But this was not always the case – long ago, Mount Redtop erupted with magma far hotter than elsewhere in the Crags, sufficient for the lava flow to melt and carry away virtually all the Ferrovine in the area. This is also why none remains in the Mudflats and Fields Of Glass Coral, which some would also consider part of the Greater Wastes.

No Ferrovine, no Crags. The result in this area is a part of the crags most like a typical Rocky Desert, something which many North Americans will find familiar.

Somewhere in the Greater Wastes – possibly of no fixed location – is the Orcish power-center of Zasleen. Exactly where to find it is not known, only surmised.

With the broader geography covered, it’s time to look at the specific features that make the Crags so breathtaking – if you know where to look. The inhabitants of Topologia mostly don’t, I should add!

Again proceeding from west to east, and (generally) north to south.

Lake Bottomless

Once, this was the mouth of an active volcano, an eruption from which created the Border Crags. But it went dormant long ago, and wind/sandblast erosion from the west and being undercut by the Everflow created this unique feature. The solidified black lava of the mouth eventually subsided as the ground beneath it was cut away, eventually dropping below the surface level of the Everflow, at which point the bowl-shaped crater filled with water to become Lake Bottomless.

The lake-bed is black scoria and Basalt and virtually invisible past depths of only a foot or two. Most people assume that this is the source of the name, but the crust of the lake-bed varies considerably in thickness – in some places it is only an inch or two thick, and the unwary can find the rock beneath their feet giving way beneath them. From time to time, an opening big enough to pass through is formed or discovered, and one or two good swimmers equipped with Light spells have ventured below, discovering that the Everflow has carved out an entire additional chamber, and the apparent Lake-bed is not the bottom, after all.

Diving to the bottom of this second chamber tests the endurance of the fittest swimmers and reveals a second lava ‘floor’ just like the first – and beneath it, a third water-filled void. Few have ventured deeper, but there are reports of a third chamber below that. To all intents and purposes, this seems to be an infinitely deep series of such watery voids, and that is the true discovery for which the Lake is named..

Irregularities in the underside of the lava ‘crowns’ have left occasional pockets of air that have been unbreathed for hundreds or thousands of years. Many explorers perished attempting to replenish their breath in one of these, but they seem filled with an air that is no longer capable of sustaining life, a trap for the overly-brave.

The Dome Of Frozen Fire

There is more iron and chromium in this area that was not quite in the right proportions to form Ferrovine. These have given the Crags here a distinct reddish hue, tinged in places with yellow sand carried by the Desert winds. Erosion has carved the 20m (66 feet) tall shapes into irregular columns that twist this way and that, looking for all the world like flames that have somehow solidified.

The Pillar Of Fire

Near the southern edge of the Dome Of Frozen Fire is a pillar of flame created by a leaking combustible gas from the ground beneath which has somehow ignited. The pillar seems to be supported by an inexhaustible supply of fuel, and is a perpetual feature of the Crags. Should you step into the flame and survive, you will find yourself to be somewhere in the Desert far to the west of where you were.

Skygorge

Once a natural valley, a rent in the ground, this filled with sand from the desert – sand that was fused into a perfect mirror of glass by an eruption from Mount Vertigo long ago. Initially covered by igneous rock, but this was less resistant to the erosive forces of the Crags and over time, this incredible feature was revealed. Running in a general north-south orientation, there is little sign now that Mount Vertigo was ever a volcano, leaving the creation of this natural wonder a mystery. But this is the only explanation that has been put forward to explain the creation of this phenomenon.

Mount Vertigo

Mount Vertigo was once a volcano whose lava tapped into a vast reservoir of molten Ferrovine stretching vertically to the mouth of the volcano in an almost perfectly-straight column. And then the volcano became dormant, and the basalt around it (mostly) eroded away, leaving nothing but this enormous spire jutting skyward more than 500m (1640 feet). The sides appear perfectly smooth. Only near the base do the sides flute outward because of the main lava chamber (also frozen into crystalline eternity).

It is possible to get within a handful of meters (10 feet) of the base of the needle-shaped pillar. Those who do so are often overcome by vertigo if they look up at the top of the spire, hence its name.

Impurities within the crystals give the mountain a vibrant multicolored appearance that instantly draws the eye.

The multi-hued vibrancy of Mount Vertigo, with two of its Guardians.

An observer once stated, “It was as though I was being ordered to follow the spire from base to tip by the Mountain itself. Of course, when I did so, I became dizzy and disoriented and almost fell onto the shards underfoot – yet I could not look away.”

The Guardians Of Mount Vertigo

Lesser only to the colossus of Mount Vertigo itself, these nine spires surround the mountain and frame it. Visually similar to Mount Vertigo itself, which makes them stand out in comparison to the normal crags.

The Shards

Once, the sides of Mount Vertigo and its Guardians had branches twisting this way and that, but these could not support their own weight and fell, shattering into uncounted millions of shards from an inch to 10 inches in length. These crunch underfoot as one walks in the vicinity, your feet sinking up to a foot deep as they compress under the load. Their points and edges are razor-sharp and can cut footwear – and feet – to ribbons. Falling onto them is a really bad idea.

The King and Queen of Dragons

It is rumored that Draconic colors represent a hierarchy within Dragon-kind: Gold, Silver, Blue, Black, Bronze, Red, White, Brass, Green, Brown. As one gets promoted through the hierarchy, one sheds its skin to emerge with a new coloration and a new mental state. But it’s just a rumor. It is also rumored that the King and Queen of dragons make their home at the top of Mount Vertigo. No-one knows whether or not it’s true.

The Cave Of Eternity

Almost as fantastic as the spires that tower above it is the Cave Of Eternity, located on the Eastern face of Mount Vertigo. Inside, time seems to stop – when you emerge, what seemed like moments turn out to be hours, what you thought were minutes were the passing of days. The tinkling of water, accompanied by the occasional deeper-noted drip, are a naturally-occurring music that can be mesmerizing, and for many years it was thought that this accounted for the effect – until someone stuffed their ears with cloth to muffle these sounds and found it to be undiminished.

Some now think that there is a monster who dwells within, feasting on the thoughts of those who enter, creating the impression of time passing you by, but this is contradicted by the facts – first, no such monster has ever been found, and second, physical processes – the need for food, water, sleep, etc – seem to be slowed as much as awareness of time. If this were purely a psychological phenomenon, that would not be the case.

So it’s just a strange and magical place with no explanation.

The Vertigo River

The Vertigo River (named for the Mountain) carries water from the mountains through underground aquifers to emerge above ground from the Cave Of Eternity. Trace minerals encountered during its passage through the crags makes it increasingly acidic as it flows toward the Everflow, becoming most concentrated at the point where it juts northward before turning more easterly once again.

The Directionless Void

Glass can bend and reflect light, and in this region, reflections, distortions, and mirages make it impossible to discern east from west, north from south. Adding to this effect are the maze-like gaps between the outcroppings of Ferrovine that are a feature of the surrounding Central Crags. Once entered, only chance can permit egress from this region of captivating and deadly beauty.

The Mudflats

A vast lake of mud, constantly heated from below – more intense in some places than others – this region contains some of the most complex biology anywhere in Topologia, completely hidden from view. The mud – or, more accurately, the liquid that makes it mud – is both acidic and toxic to humans, humanoids, and most other species, though Black Dragons have been known to bathe in it.

While these will occasionally accost those traveling on the nearby Everflow, for the most part they are too arrogant to bother interacting with lesser creatures unless provoked. Some scholars content that the acidic breath weapon of this variety of dragon-kind is a purification of the liquid within the Mudflats and not a completely natural ability inherent to the species.

Rising above the mudflats are the towering Crystal Spires. Floating, partially submerged in the mud, are Mire-Blooms surrounded by Spectral Shards. Mire-Blooms are dome-shaped fungi up to a foot in diameter. Sometimes, there is only enough room in a mud pool for one of these plants, sometimes there may be several clustered together.

Spectral shards are flat panels of crystal that float on the surface of the mud. Their size is proportionate to the size of the mud pool and the individual Mire-Blooms of that pool, and it was long recognized that this implied some connection between them; the fact that the blooms are always surrounded by a ring of these floating panels deepened the suspicion. Relatively recently, it was deduced that they are a byproduct of the Mire-Blooms. I’ll talk a lot more about all of this when I discuss the Mire-blooms in the section on Plant Life.

The Crystal Spires

Emerging from the mud-pools are quartz-like crystalline spires with a structure that reminds most of overlapping scales. For the most part, these are translucent, almost glass-like, but through their center runs a multi-hued spine that forms when the spire grows thick enough. It was obvious from the moment these were discovered that they are constructed from, and somehow related to, the Spectral Shards, one of which forms an individual “scale”, but the processes involved took a long time to be deduced. See “Sun-eater Moss” in the section on Plant Life for more on the Spires and their characteristics.

The Fields Of Glass Coral

At the base of the Crystal Spires, buried beneath the mud, are another plant species, or maybe they are an animal species – opinions vary – called Glass Coral. When the mud dries out, it recedes to beneath the surface of the Glass Coral, and any thin coating that remains is quickly eroded away, a process that can take only days or weeks (depending on the season and the conditions). This exposes the Glass Coral and destroys the Crystal Spires save for the roots of the spires that lie beneath the tops of the Glass Coral.

Picture a beautiful coral reef, resplendid in multicolored perfection, a myriad of forms and shapes. The montage below should assist:

Image #1, reef-tank-3624193.jpg, by agkaimal;
Image #2, coral-567688.jpg, by Jan Mallander;
Image #3, coral-560552.jpg, by toshiyuki tajima;
Image #4, underwater-3171445.jpg, by LO-DESIGN;
Image #5, iridigorgia-79929.jpg – no photo credit provided;
Image #6, firecracker-flower-1885699.jpg, I suspect, is not an underwater plant at all – but it looks so much like many of the (copyrighted) images OF underwater plants that I saw in assembling this montage that I had to choose it. Image by juemi.
All images from Pixabay, some contrast, color, and saturation tweaks by Mike.

Now, picture it out in the open air where anyone can see it.

Finally, picture it made of died glass. Faceted cglass, at that.

Now you’re imagining what the Fields of Glass Coral look like.

Shadow Of Splinter

As I said earlier, Splinter is not where it is shown on the map. But if you walk South from the town, you find yourself entering the Fields of Glass Coral on its northern side – and if you head North from the town, you find yourself entering the Forests of Asthar. Of course, if you walk West alongside the Everflow, you reach a cliff overlooking the Shadowfen, which lies to the East of the Ironbarb Crags, and if you head East, you reach the Farms of Gardenia – which are on the far side of the Glassdust Desert, some distance West of here.

Nobody understands this, but they shrug their shoulders and accept it. So that they can converse about it rationally, some have labeled the apparent position of Splinter as it’s “Shadow” and posited that walking into the Shadow takes you from where the physical reality is to where the Shadow lies.

Others just treat it as an objective reality that doesn’t have to make sense.

Mekkaresh

Mekkaresh is a city, trading post, and holy site to the Lizardfolk who reside in the Southern Crags. They dislike Humans, tolerate Elves, and hate Dwarves and Orcs. They worship Dragons, and consider Dromedyn to be a delicacy. Most people think that they once resided in the Shadowfen but migrated here long ago. Largely tribal in nature, different tribes congregate here at random times for worship and trade.

Each tribe has its own totem, a particular Dragon to whom they bind themselves spiritually, and a tribe’s social standing reflects that Dragon’s current place within the Hierarchy of Dragon-kind. The current attitude and mind-set of that Dragon, a function of its color (according to Lizardfolk beliefs), informs the attitudes, ambitions, personalities, and internal politics of the tribe – sometimes venal (silver), sometimes arrogant (blue), sometimes greedy (red), sometimes angry, aggressive, and prone to violence (black), sometimes shy and withdrawn (brown), sometimes defensive (brass), sometimes protective of others (bronze), and sometimes noble and with a view to benefit all Tribes (gold).

From natural deposits that they have found – and they do not share where – the Lizardfolk acquire various gemstones and trade them for food, clothing, and other items, both necessary and luxury. The price charged depends on the race with whom they are bartering and the general attitude of the tribe.

No tribe has yet been encountered that looks to a Green Dragon, but it is surmised that these are the most religious, the most spiritual, the most artistic, and the most scholarly – and that they spend all their time seeking a deeper appreciation of the natural wonders around them. But that’s all guesswork.

The Lava Uprisings

In the heart of the Southern Crags lie the Lava Uprisings. This is an area where the crust between crags is especially thin and prone to break open, since the lava beneath is under pressure because of the great heat, it breaks out through these openings and erupts into a geyser of lava – until the next rainfall, which cools it enough that the eruption cools and desists, at least for a time.

The region’s reputation is, actually, somewhat exaggerated. In reality, most of the time, a little lava oozes to the surface and traverses ten or twenty feet before congealing. That’s because pressure makes it ooze to the surface, but expansion once it’s up there induces cooling. But every now and then, when the mood takes whoever’s in charge down there, the uprisings come to life and lava geysers erupt like flowers on a spring hillside – for a little while.

Zasleen

Zasleen is a ‘city’ of tents and grass huts thought to be somewhere in the Greater Wastes, occupied by Orcs. It’s the closest thing they have to a Capital, in the eyes of the Civilized races of Topologia.

The reality is a bit more complicated – “Zasleen” is an Orcish ‘state of mind’ more than anything else, meaning ‘minded to gather or moot’. “Traveling to Zasleen” and “Coming from Zasleen” thus acquire slightly different meanings to their superficial interpretations, and – technically – Zasleen can be anywhere an Orc Tribe wants it to be.

But it’s hard to reach Zasleen as a solo act – it generally takes two like-minded groups to tango.

There is also another interpretation of Zasleen – to an Orc, it can mean “of a mind to raid” since stealing something owned by another is considered the same thing as trading for it – it’s just a better bargain that way (from the Orcish perspective). Because the Elves of Asthar are fairly strongly emplaced and protected, it takes more than one tribe to successfully raid into the forests – so Zasleen is also a prelude to doing so. This explains the relationship between the two meanings and shows how the one mind-set can be common to both.

Possession is 11/10ths of the Law to an Orc.

There is a surprising amount of food available to anyone with the constitution and sensibilities (or lack thereof) of an Orc, so they raid Asthar for what they consider luxuries like deer and timber, and across the Everflow for decorative items. Sometimes a tribe will make the difficult journey through the Lesser Wastes and Central Crags along the Optica River, passing through a narrow gap separating the Directionless Void and Mount Optica to raid the Dwarves for Gold and Silver with which to make their decorative Jewelry.

Mount Redtop

The largest mountain in the Crags, it is now thought to be a long-dormant volcano because that best explains the Greater and Lesser wastes. Some think that this is where the Gemstones traded by the Lizardfolk actually come from, but this is nothing more than speculation.

What is not speculation is that the mountain gets its name from reddish mineral deposits at it’s crown. The mountain – and the entire Crags in general – are far too hot for snow to ever fall here, even at great altitude, so this crown of fiery red is visible all year round (unless hidden by storm-clouds).

Mount Optica and the Rainbow Falls

South of The Lava Uprisings lies Mount Optica. This is the volcano that most looks like a stereotypical volcano, at least from ground level. Mostly, it erupted from it’s eastern side, but the last time it became active – and it was quite a while back – it blew a massive crack in the crater rim to the northwest instead. The volcano then became quiescent, and the crater slowly filled with rain to become Lake Optica – not that it’s ever really referred to by that or any other name. That’s because the rainwater trickles out that crack, dispersing into a fine mist as it plunges through a series of cascading waterfalls almost 600m (2000 feet). Along the way, it generates a series of rainbows, one for each descent of the cascade.

When it’s been dry for a while, these can be a little hard to see, but after a few days of rain, different drainage channels in what remains of the volcanic rim on that side are reached by the rising waters and the trickle becomes a roar. Every day of rain generates 2-4 days of spectacular waterfall rainbows before the again slowing to a trickle.

Since some seasons generate more rainy weather events than others, this is at its best (in terms of viewing) exactly when the surrounding areas are at their most inhospitable.

Rainbow Lake and the Optica River

When the waterfall cascades to the ground, it reaches a hollow that has been eroded by the water, forming another lake. This lake is either water-filled or mostly dry (depending on recent weather) but either way, it splashes, and creates one more incredible rainbow, so close to the ground that it feels like you can reach out and touch it.

You can’t, though many have been sufficiently captivated to try without thinking.

Rainbow lake then drains to the Everflow along the Optica River – which, most times, is little more than a small creek. It’s actually pretty unremarkable – and that in itself is unusual in this area.

Environmental Conditions in the Ironbarb

Some of these are broad and general, while others are localized to a specific location because of the nature of the location. Some of the latter have already been described, without much to add, but I’m going to list them all even if there’s no additional text to add to them.

But we start with something broader about which there’s a lot to discuss, the climate.

Climate

The Ironbarb Crags experience four distinct seasons – two wet ones and two dryer ones. Dominant weather patterns change from one to another, largely because of the impact of winds.

Four Seasons

The four seasons aren’t named because while each is distinguished by trends, there’s enough variability in the environment that any given day can be completely outside the trends. While 45°C (113°F) days are unusual in the fourth month, and rain of some sort can be expected almost two days in three (or so it seems), random chance and the geothermal heating of the air can elevate the temperature over 50°C (122°F), and if there is an unseasonal Eastwind, the desert air can add another 8°C (14°F) to that – or take 8° (14°) off it (which is not an improvement, for reasons that will become obvious!)

These charts show the ‘typical weather’ that trends in each of the seasons and months of the year. I’ll discuss everything in more detail as we proceed, but I’ll be referring back to this constantly.

Wet Seasons

My original draft had the dry, hot seasons in the middle of the year, bracketed by the two wet seasons, but many of the patterns that I identified were not clear in that formulation; in particular, much of what happens in what was shown as the first wet season (and is now shown as the second) was predicated on what happened in the second (which is now shown as the first).

There may be some temptation to try to map these seasons against the traditional four of Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Resist this temptation, it will lead you astray. For one thing, such a methodology would have ‘winter’ starting halfway through Month 2 and persisting through to half-way through Month 5. ‘Spring’ would be 1 1/2 months of the second wet season and 1 1/2 months of the first dry season, and so on.

It just doesn’t work well and can be highly confusing.

So the year kicks off with the first Wet Season. (Another point: this ‘year’ bears no resemblance to that used by the Civilized Races.) In this season, Northwinds and Eastwinds dominate, with the first of these increasing in potency and the second declining. The most interesting aspect of this month is the incidence of Southwinds, i.e. Winds to the South. These start low and dip to virtually zero by the end of month 2 only to rise sharply in month 3, setting up an increasing dominance in the second rainy season.

Each of these winds carries different climatic phenomena. “Which way is the wind blowing?” can be a life-or-death issue in the Crags!

Three months after the first rainy season began, the climate transitions to the second. Northwind rains initially dominate, but fall off in intensity and frequency through the season, while Southwinds rise in intensity (but not in frequency), peaking throughout month 5, before beginning to taper off.

The wet seasons have the coldest maximum temperatures, but take a close look at the Minimum temperatures – these start out off the chart! The nights at the start of the first wet season are hot, hot, hot! These fall progressively throughout both seasons, even while the maximums are beginning to rise, presaging the beginning of the dry seasons. The end of the wet season marks the point at which the typical minimum temperature begins to rise once again. Finally, note that there’s a discontinuity in the minimum temperatures experienced at the end of the dry seasons and the start of the wet seasons – the first of those hot-hot-hot nights is taken as a signal by the inhabitants that the season has turned, or is about to turn. It’s one of the clearest signals in the climate!

Dry Seasons

The term ‘dry season’ is a little misleading, though in relative terms, it’s accurate.

Throughout the first of these seasons, there is a rising frequency of Eastwinds, though these tend to be relatively mild until month 9, when they also begin increasing in intensity. Incidents of Northwinds start as infrequent and become even more-so by the season’s end, reaching virtually zero. Southwinds continue to taper off in the first half of the season and plateau at a frequency barely higher than zero – a frequency they sustain through both dry seasons once it is achieved. Rising to dominance over the climate throughout the season are the Westwinds; these start fairly low in frequency and intensity and grow more extreme throughout the first dry season.

The second ‘dry’ season is markedly different. The frequency of Westwinds declines through to the middle of the season, though the intensity continues to increase, reaching a peak near the end of Month 11. It then begins rapidly reducing in intensity even while the frequency is again increasing. The second dry season is dominated by the Eastwinds, which reach a peak in both frequency and intensity at the end of Month 10. Southwinds persist throughout at their low-but-not-unheard-of plateau, and there is a slow rise in the presence of Northwinds throughout.

The end of the first dry season and start of the second sees a peak in the ‘usual’ maximum temperatures, while minimums rise to equal but not exceed their highest levels outside of the beginning-of-year discontinuity. Throughout the second season, these are again slowly declining.

It should probably be mentioned before I dig into the significance of these winds that the areas in the direction nominated by the name of the wind are the areas most strongly affected by them in north-south terms, while the opposite is true of East/West winds. So if there is a Southwind, it will be experienced most strongly in the southern half of the map and less severely in the North, and so on. That matters a great deal and is partially responsible for the differences observed in the different regions of the Crags.

Northwinds

When the wind blows to the north, it flows over the forests (but not the town of Splinter, it should be noted) and eventually reaches the mountains, which thrust it upwards. While quite warm from the heat of the crags at first, it rapidly cools, becoming clouds, which bank up over the mountains and slowly spread south, The rain that they carry tends to be light and intermittent. In central areas, it can be somewhat acidic, but nothing like what occurs at other times. Of greater significance is the cloud cover, which reduces temperatures by day by 4-6°C (7-11°F). If the cloud cover cools the day, it will also cool the night; but if the cloud reaches an area at or after sunset, it will have no effect on the daytime temperatures, and will trap what heat is there at night, turning the decrease into an increase.

A hot night in Northwind conditions also gives temperatures the next day a ‘kick-start’ and are enough to cause a measurable increase in geothermal activity, especially in the north. A cool day or night, in contrast, is enough to diminish geothermal activity, making the Crags about as safe as they get.

There is a slim chance that Northwind rain at its most extreme – the end of the first wet season and beginning of the second – will be heavy enough to cause flash-flooding in the northern parts of the Crags, revitalizing and growing the mud flats (normal rainfall levels are only enough to sustain them).

Southwinds

The southern edge of the Crags abuts directly the mountains, and that’s enough for a Southwind to melt / evaporate snow in the wet months on those peaks. This can cause serious flash-flooding in the southern third of the map, declining as one continues north – but even ‘moderate’ flash flooding is something to be concerned about in the Crags!

But the now-moist air gets pushed high up into the atmosphere where it forms storm-clouds, producing thunder and lightning – and sometimes (not always) intense rain for short periods. These storms tend to be fast-moving at first, slowing as they reach the central areas, only to speed up again as they traverse the north and the Forests.

I’ve put this diagram together fairly quickly to explain what’s happening. See below for the key that goes with it.

1. Medium winds to the south carry slightly-moist air over geothermally-heated ground.

2. Blocked my mountains, and already rising, they get pushed up.

3. Passing snow, they capture more water content.

4. Strong winds in the other direction – because the winds of (1) have to come from somewhere.

5. Storm-clouds result.

6. Cooling and heavy with water, these descend into a region where the winds to the north are not as strong.

7. Rainfall, the clouds zipping by in the medium winds, and continuing to cool.

8. A region of very light winds.

9. The more the clouds cool, and the more they cool the ground below, the lower into the light-winds region the clouds sink. Rain is at it’s heaviest.

10. As moisture leaves the cloud, it lifts, speeding up as it gets driven by the stronger winds.

11. By the time the rainfall gets past the forest, there’s not a lot left, and the clouds are likely already dissipating. But there might be a light snowfall, effectively migrating some snow cover from the mountains to the south to those in the north.

12. The ground is still hot. A lot of the rain will evaporate before striking it, siphoning off additional heat, becoming water vapor, and getting driven by (1) back to repeat the cycle.

Storms, by their nature, tend to be more intense but short-lived phenomena. They also tend to occur in middle or late afternoon. As a result, storms generally invoke the ‘late arrival trapping heat’ pattern – but they also do cool the ground significantly, and a good thing, too – humidity is often much higher afterwards, and the combination of high heat and humidity is a proven killer.

Westwinds

Westwinds carry lots of moisture from the Shadowfen from the East to the West. The major unusual characteristic of these winds is the dip in months 10 and 11, and that’s because they have often dumped most of their rainfall on the Shadowfen before they even get to the Crags in those months. Well, some of the time at least. The eastern half of the map tends to receive the bulk of what rainfall remains, but there is so much that the entire crags can be blanketed.

The quantities of rain frequently cause flash flooding. This is especially true in the first Dry season. It should be noted that while these are far more intense rain events than those from the other direction, and often persist for several days, they are less frequent at the best of times than the other rain events. But they can blanket the eastern half of the map in cloud cover, with consequences as already described, even if they no longer have any rain to give.

Eastwinds

Most terrifying of all are the Eastwinds. These are already hot and dry from passing over the Desert to the west. When they are light, they only add a few degrees to the temperature, and they tend to push the moisture of the Shadowfen further away, delaying the next Westwind event.

When they are moderate, they can carry sand-storms to the western third of the region, and add up to 8°C to the temperature, as stated earlier.

But, when they are strong, the sand-storms become Flensing – see The Wastes | Forgotten Realms Helps, the section on Sand and Wind is a little more than 1/3 of the way down the page.

“Flensing” is used to mean a scouring, flesh-stripping effect from the wind-driven sand – in effect, sand-blasting flesh away. This also cuts off much of the natural sunlight, causing temperatures to drop – but that’s of little comfort to anyone caught out in the open.

These sandstorms rarely penetrate further than 1/3 of the map to the east, but the further beyond this point they go, the worse they become – there are parts of the Crags that are hot enough to melt the sand in the air when they are ‘excited’ by the arid winds. Essentially, a horizontal rain of molten glass.

Two areas in particular should be noted – the Dome Of Frozen Fire and the Lava Uprisings. In any sandstorm, the last place you want to be is East of either of these!

Maximum Temperatures

The lowest ‘expected’ maximum temperature occurs at the start of the second wet season, and is typically about 30°C (86°F). The highest is typically at the end of the first dry season and start of the second, and is typically around 45°C (113°F). Cloud/sand cover and rain can affect these, as described earlier. There is also natural variation in the geothermal heating of the ground and hence the air, which can add or subtract another 5°C (10°F) on top of the effects already described.

There is a lot less variation in the maximum temperatures than in most places because much of it derives from Geothermal sources.

Minimum Temperatures

There is rather more variability in the night-time temperatures. Any sort of significant wind can have a significant cooling effect, while cloud cover can trap the heat of the day while increasing the humidity. Nevertheless, the proximity to the surface of geothermal sources of heat means that the climate is poised on a knife-edge and normal temperature variations from climatic events can be amplified as a result.

The lowest minimum comes at the end of the second wet season and can be as low as 20°C – which can be quite chilly when effects such as wind cooling, rain, and altitude are factored in. An early-evening thunderstorm from the South can carry rain at something close to the frigid temperatures of snow, and even though some of this will evaporate before reaching the ground, it can cause up to a 12°C drop in night-time temperatures (22°F).

The highest minimums outside of the start-of-year discontinuity are around 25°C, but cloud cover can add or subtract 8°C to this, and random variation another &plusminus;10°C. So 43°C (109°F) is not out of the question – and geothermal sources that have been excited by a hot day can compound with these effects in some areas as well.

Noxious Fumes

Some days, the wind doesn’t blow much at all, and these can be some of the most uncomfortable, because the air in the Crags is naturally noxious. It’s relatively rare for this to reach dangerous levels, but ‘uncomfortable’ is frequent.

Some areas, especially the Lava Uprisings, release additional fumes from time to time, low clouds of invisible and unbreathable air. If one of these is encountered, the only hope is to hold one’s breath and climb as high as you can as fast as you can, hoping to rise above the level of these gasses.

Acidic Rain

Any rain that has been carried over a significant portion of the Crags has some degree of acidity. The best in this respect are the Southern winds, because they discharge their water content quickly. The worst are the Northern winds unless in the extreme east or west of the map; in the East, it’s the Westwind that’s most prone to this, and in the West, it’s the Eastwind – though the latter generally brings sandstorms, not rain.

Flensing Dust-storms

Already described.

Flash Flooding (acidic waters)

Mentioned but not described – some of the minerals in the ground (a lot of it doesn’t qualify as ‘soil’) and create acidic waters. That’s bad enough when you’re talking a watercourse like the River Vertigo, but when you’re talking a flash flood, it’s a hundred times worse.

Lava Uprisings

Mentioned, not described in detail, but what’s been stated should be enough – geysers of lava! Erupting without warning!! How much more do you really need to know? No matter how short-lived the eruption – and they are typically measured in seconds, a handful of minutes at the most – it’s bad news for it to be right next to you, and worse for it to be upwind.

Hot Mud

At several places in the Crags, the source of geothermal heat is closer to the surface than might be expected, but it’s also a little cooler – enough that surface climatic conditions can tip balances one way or another.

When there is no rain on a hot day, these mud pools can reach temperatures between 70°-90°C (158°-194°F). Exposure to mud at such temperatures causes immediate 3rd degree burns, destroying the skin and some of the layers of tissue beneath, withering the affected body parts. This, of course, is extremely painful, and can cause people to collapse into the mud, increasing the exposure. Skin around the destroyed areas will form large blisters and this skin will also be lost over the course of the next few hours. At the same time, steam from the mud will attack the respiratory system including the mouth, throat, and lungs. These usually swell, and this can be enough to cut off all airflow into the body. Finally, there is a very high risk of infection from the burns.

Over the next few days, secondary effects will occur. System shock will reduce the blood flow to vital organs. Dehydration can occur from fluid loss from the burned regions of the body, which weep continuously. Affected limbs become permanently useless and may need amputation to protect the life of the burn victim.

Even without considering infection, such burns will generally be fatal if over 25% of the body is affected – that’s both legs up to the knees or one leg to the knees and an arm to the elbow. With infection taken into account, this threshold falls to as little as 9-10% – one hand and wrist are enough.

Amputation of damaged limbs and magical healing lift the threshold considerably – up to perhaps 96%. Without amputation, 70-80% would still be possible, though there would be considerable permanent scarring and the limbs would still be somewhere between weak and completely unusable. Fortunately, a Reset will eventually put things right!

Rainy days not only block the heat from the sun, they bring cooling rain. That this is a necessity for replenishing the liquid in the mud pools doesn’t diminish the impact on the temperatures. On such days, the temperature of the mud can fall to as little as 40°C (104°F), though this lower limit would only be reached on extreme days with Southwind thunderstorms. On the very coolest days, the mud is almost cool enough for bathing – though this is not something to be risked casually!

And yet, the mud pools are central to one of the most complex ecosystems imaginable, a three-way – some would say four-way – symbiosis. I’ll get into that in the “Plant Life” section, below. But one of the byproducts of this are the Crystal Towers described earlier.

Reflections Of Deception

You’re in a maze of mirrors, in which every surface is curved in extreme and unnatural ways. If the sun is not directly overhead, it reflects off these surfaces so that there might appear to be five – or twenty-five – suns, all in different directions. It’s impossible to discern east from west, north from south. The lack of straight lines confuses the eye, and forces continual twisting and turning this way and that – so no sense of direction can be trusted, either.

Adding to all of this can be extreme heat haze and a sort of ‘hot fog’ that results from rain evaporating at high temperatures, up to 120°C in the worst places, where the steam becomes superheated.

For the more technologically-literate, iron deposits within the columns make compasses useless – they simply point toward the nearest large pile of rock.

Worst of all, when a flensing sandstorm reaches this far into the interior, it gets compressed into the narrow passages, often only half a meter wide (1.5 feet), doubling or tripling the already-deadly event.

Things get even worse at night, when what meager light is naturally available gets refracted and reflected into nothingness, dissipated and dispersed. Even torchlight and magical light sources only illuminate a few feet around you, 5′ maximum.

Thankfully, there’s only one place in the Crags where these conditions obtain, though it’s a significantly large one – the Directionless Void.

Heat-haze & Mirages

Even outside the Void, there are parts of the Crags where heat haze and mirages are a significant problem, because they aren’t just the result of natural environmental heat but also heat from geothermal sources. This means that they can be a lot stronger, and a lot closer to the viewer, than most people would ever expect. On the hottest days, effective visibility can be reduced to as little as 50m (165′). That’s a problem when there are hostile life-forms around – who may not be subject to the same limitations you are.

Dragons and Lizardfolk, in particular, seem more tolerant of this effect than Humans, Dwarves, and Dromedyn. Elves seem to be even more susceptible, their normally-keen sight betraying them.

Orcs and other species with enhanced olfactory capabilities also suffer less from this problem, being able to supplement their sight with a second sense. However, any sort of tremorsense is largely worthless for it’s usual purposes in this environment, there is too much geothermal activity producing false impressions. Such senses are far from worthless, however; they can provide a vital few extra minutes or seconds of warning before a geologic event.

This isn’t the only danger posed in the Crags from this source, however. Thermal stratification of the air can arise when there are light breezes and broken cloud conditions, and these can cause horizontal mirages, either above the perceiver or below their eye-line. This is a fairly rare phenomenon but it can be deadly when you’re trying to skirt mud-pools and can no longer see the ground beneath your feet, just a blurring, shimmering, dancing shadow.

Seismic events and Volcanic Eruptions

These are rare; many of the surface phenomena of the Crags dissipate tensions that might otherwise build to pose a more extreme danger. Nevertheless, they have happened in the past, and so can happen again – without a whole lot of warning.

The hotter the day, the more likely these events become, but the pressures that cause them are also more likely to be vented away on such days. A hot day after a sustained period of relatively cold weather is when these pose the greatest risk of occurring. Early-to-mid-morning are the times of greatest hazard on any given day.

….and that takes me to about half-way through this subject. That’s right, I think there will be as much again still to come on the Ironbarb Crags – I really was on creative fire while working on it! But most of the above was already written by the time I decided to delay it and threw together last week’s ‘best of 2016, part 1’ – so I’ll get next week’s part 2 of this post done in the time I would normally spend writing a new CM post, and then have two weeks up my sleeve to focus on Trade In Fantasy Chapter 5 Part 5 – I’ve already done 552 words of that, outlining the content to follow as it’s intended to be, and it’s already clear that it’s going to be another big one – and that’s even if I don’t strike problems the way I did with the fortifications section!

But I’ve also got parts 2 and 3 of “the best of 2016” up my sleeve as fill-ins if I need even more time, so I’ll take as long as I have to in order to get it right.

Last-minute Update:
Splitting this post in two meant that I needed a new feature image to go with the second part. I knew exactly what I wanted to depict, and exactly how to do it, so I allowed a day for this. So far, it involves more than 1000 layers of composite, has taken a day-and-a-half more than scheduled, and still isn’t finished. At the current rate of progress, one more day’s effort, and a bit, should see it done. So, in the end, I’m not sure that I’ve actually gained any time by doing so. But the end result will be worth the effort, yielding a much better article.

Tags: Campaign-Setting, Encounter-Design, Inspiration, Monster-Design, PCs, Races, D&D, Cultures-&-Societies, NPCs, Pathfinder, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Resources, The Topologia Game Setting

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The Best Of 2016 Part 1

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Blog Admin, Mike on Sep.02, 2025

Listing the best posts offered at Campaign Mastery in the first third of 2016.

It was my intention to offer up the next post in Topologia but it’s not quite going to be ready in time. I’ve already written about 2/3 as much as was in the most recent post in that series and I’m only about half-way through. To say that my creativity has been in overdrive on the Ironbarb Flats would be a massive understatement! But that’s for next week, all going well. In the meantime, here’s a hit parade from 2016!

The Very Best Of 2016 Pt 1: Jan-Apr

There’s some good stuff here, if I do say so myself. But, as usual, some of it hasn’t all aged as well as the rest, and there were some quite dated reviews that contributed nothing, and even one or two posts that I consider comparative duds. What there isn’t is a lot of middle ground – things are either really good or not.

Some of these received accolades at the time, while others have flown underneath the radar – I’ll signal those as I go.

As usual, production of this post has rubbed some broken s in my face, the consequence of the update to https a while back. While s on their own and images on their own survived the process, what wasn’t initially obvious was that images with s failed in conversion and were stripped away, leaving only the naked captions. I’ve been fixing these as I found them, so the site has been steadily improving – a side benefit, but extra work.

The 10/10 list

Creating A Building: A Metaphor and Illustration – a 6-step process for conceptualizing buildings for an RPG, simple enough that it can be done on the fly if you have to.
Pieces of Creation: Énorme Force – a villain from the Zenith-3 superhero campaign. Should be readily adaptable to everything from D&D to Cyberpunk to Horror. Some obvious questions have been deliberately left unanswered so that each GM can integrate the concepts into their campaigns.
The Rolling Retcon: how much campaign history is fixed? – When a retcon is appropriate, how to do it, and how it integrates with the broader concepts of continuity in RPGs, with a fourth option to consider somewhere in between episodic and strict continuity and the campaign arcs that are my primary approach.
Ask The GMs: Building on opportunity – Resource management in RPGs. One of the PCs has come into possession of a small base and wants to expand it. What are the best ways of integrating this into a campaign and using it as an opportunity / springboard?
Pieces of Creation: Mictlan-tecuhtli – Another villain from the Zenith-3 campaign, with a supporting cult. Easily adaptable to Sci-Fi or Cyberpunk, doing so for D&D / Pathfinder would be more difficult but potentially more rewarding. With their own cult for added menace.
Ask The GMs: Iceberg Plotlines: Massive Plot Arcs in RPGs – Slow-building storylines that develop over time and how to make them successful in an RPG is something that I’ve discussed in many posts at Campaign Mastery, but this explores some variations and pitfalls not covered elsewhere. With a comprehensive example from the Zenith-3 campaign.
TCCT and N: Excessive Wealth in D&D – PCs having too much money is a perennial problem in RPGs. TCCT&N is my checklist of solutions. This article explores the consequences and ramifications of each.
A Hole In Your Past: Character Connections With Yesterday – Having a minor figure from a PCs past encountered in-game by chance can be a trigger for all sorts of things beyond simply exploring the background of the character. This post offers a technique and a 9 different ways to use the encounter as more than a casual contact – some of them significantly transformative. Also useful for inserting a characterization twist into a significant NPC.
Support Your Local Hero – Breaks “Heroism” into five tiers and examines each for the impact on plots and tone. Includes the concept of characters who do the ‘right thing’ for personal gain – read this if your PCs are murder hobos.
Character Capabilities: An often-forgotten source of plots – How to generate adventures and encounters from what PCs can do. A simple 6-step process, most of the article is taken up by creating an example.
Character Incapability: The distant side of the coin – The other side of the coin, basing an adventure or encounter on a having to do something he doesn’t know how to do has some pitfalls to trap the unwary. This article navigates through the problems and offers solutions to them. Along the way, there’s good material on the distribution of the spotlight and scene length. Readers might want to actually start by scrolling to the end of the article and reading the Wrap-up first to get an idea of what the article doesn’t include and why – it frames the rest of it rather well.
Boogie to the tune of the hidden Mastermind in your ranks – I’ve never been a huge fan of the title I came up with for this article, but the advice it contains on how to create a Mastermind’s Grand Plan is rock-solid.
Pickin’ and Choosin’: Cherry-picking RPG Elements – Cherry-picking game mechanics from other sources for house rules is a time-honored tradition, but how many have applied the technique to adventure structures? It’s a surprisingly powerful and useful approach. With a substantial example from the Adventurer’s Club campaign.
Choosing A Name: A “Good Names” Extra (Revised & Extended) – describes the process that my co-GM and I have developed for the naming of NPCs in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, and how we use the name to tell the players something about the character, often without them even noticing.
The Perils Of Players Knowing Too Much – When a PC is an expert in a field that the player knows well, several traps and pitfalls come out of the woodwork that few GMs expect. This not only explores these and solutions to them, it looks at the benefits that can result and how the GM can harness them.
Small Motives and Personal Activities – Methods for bringing minor NPCs to life (with minimal effort) and how to keep their personalities consistent over multiple appearances.
The Beginnings Of Plot – When translating a plot idea or seed into a playable adventure, a critical decision is how the adventure will start. This article offers 7 alternatives and considers the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Who Owns Your Campaign? – The more input into the evolution of a game setting PCs have, the greater the investment in the campaign the players will have. The more input into the evolution of PCs a GM has, the greater the investment they will have in the success and prosperity of those PCs. Looking closely at the consequences results in some advice that runs strongly counter to “normal practices” in most campaigns.
An Amazing Ancestry – I analyze 3 repeating / persistent patterns in ancestry discovered through “Who Do You Think You Are” and applies these to the concept of a character’s ancestry.

The 9/10 List

Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima – Villains from the Zenith-3 campaign, designed as an expression of the concept of a “Force Multiplier”. Only a 9 out 10 because they are not as readily adaptable to other genres, but the principles on which they are built definitely do travel well.
Bidding For Characters (and related metagame alternatives) – I look at the process and alternatives for constructing a coherent adventuring party, adding the titular method as a new option for GMs to consider. I’ve never seen this actually tried, and that lack of real-world proof-of-concept is the handicap that relegates this article.
Definitions and the Quest For Meaning in Structure – I often use multiple different terms for the same concept in different articles, for a number of different reasons. This confused one reader enough that she compiled a glossary. This article expands and annotates that glossary to get everyone on the same page. Understanding these concepts is critical to going from an experienced (or inexperienced) GM to being an expert. A little self-referential to be a 10/10 article.
Use The Force, Fluke: Who’s On First This Time? – Takes an accidental house rule from Star Wars: Edge Of The Empire and discovers that it offers a way to make an adventuring party a small tactical unit instead of a collection of disparate individuals in almost any RPG. Largely overlooked by readers at the time, this is one that deserves more attention. The fact that it derives from a more obscure game system is what holds this article back a bit.
Finding Your Way: Unlocking the secrets of Google Image Search – Google have changed their interface and some of the options, and don’t have a way to filter out AI results, but most of this article is still relevant, all these years after it was written. But the changes are enough to cost it a mark out of 10.
The Incremental Art Of Escalation – A plotting technique / tool for planning escalation in an adventure or encounter. But these days I think it’s a little too much effort for casual use. Great if you’ve got some planning time to spare or struggle with this aspect of your planning.
The Gilligan Tools for better characterization – Uses a fan theory about Gilligan’s Island to explore the creation of Flawed Heroes – a tool equally useful for players and GMs, PCs and NPCs. Not as fully fleshed out in process as most of my articles, but still useful.

The next post in this series will cover the middle of 2016.

Tags: News, Site-Admin

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Auto-update and the RPG

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Management, D&D / Pathfinder, D&D 3.x, D&D 4e, Game Mastering, Mike, The Adventurer's Club (Hero System 5th Ed), Warcry (Original system based on Hero System 4th Ed), Zenith-3 (Original system based on Hero System 4th Ed), NPCs & Villains & Monsters, Planning & Preparation, Tools & Techniques, Fumanor/One Faith (D&D 3.5), Fumanor/Seeds Of Empire (D&D 3.5), House-Rules, Opinion, All Genres, D&D 5e, D&D 2e, AD&D on Aug.26, 2025

A rant about Auto-updating software leads into a discussion about how updates to source material and game systems impacts RPGs at various levels.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay, text added by Mike – and yes, I know it’s mispelt!

I hate Auto-update

I hate auto-update.

There, I’ve said it. The reasons are many, and I’ll look into them individually below, but for me, it’s a colossal pain in the backside with few redeeming benefits that aren’t worth the costs.

The other day, I went to update my budget, as I do at least once a fortnight. My position is not the most financially secure you could find, and I have to keep tight control over my expenditure. I use a spreadsheet for the purpose, one that I have built up over many years with layers of complexity and a focus that rarely leaves me financially flat-footed.

And as soon as I opened the office suite that contains the spreadsheet software, it began to download and install the latest update, leaving me to twiddle my thumbs for several long minutes while it did it’s thing. That, compounded with another headache that I’ll get into a little further down the track, inspired this post.

So let’s get into the reasons for this hatred – I promise you, they are gaming-relevant, or will be by the time I’m finished!

Delay

The first reason should be obvious from what I’ve already written. I may not be a professional game designer, but I’m a publisher and work hard at meeting deadlines. If you look back over the history of Campaign Mastery, the number of times I’ve missed a deadline are few and far between, with the exception of when I had to move, a couple of years back.

Auto-updates are an unexpected interruption that impairs my ability to publish on time, on my capacity for professionalism in what I do. And that’s assuming the update doesn’t then get in the way.

Learning Curve

Updates generally do three things: they patch security holes (that’s good), they extend functionality (that can be good), and they change the way the functions you are already familiar with work (usually to integrate and accommodate the functionality enhancements) – and that can be very bad, because (without warning) that adds a learning curve to the current workflow, further impacting my efficiency and again threatening my ability to make deadlines.

Here, it’s not the update itself that’s at fault, it’s installing it when your time is already fully committed – the “auto” part of “auto-update”.

Inefficiency

Until you get through that learning curve, and adjust to the new workflows involved, you are (by definition) more inefficient. And that’s a problem when there is a deadline that’s already tight.

But, worse still, while the new functionality may be more flexible and able to do things that the old couldn’t, it can be inherently less efficient. That’s okay if you actually find the enhanced functionality to be useful – but nine times out of ten, it’s a side-show to the core functionality that’s already present. And sometimes, it’s an active hindrance.

I’ve been building a website as an in-game resource for the PCs for an Adventurer’s Club adventure. So far it consists of 84 pages of hand-coded HTML (about 9 more to go) and 461 separate images, many of which had to be generated in multiple sizes.

Here’s a small section of the front page:

And here’s what just one of those pages looks like:

You might just be able to notice that I have used a slightly different font for the body text, for the image captions (okay, that might be hard to see), the Headings, and the subheadings. I was coding this to look right in Chrome, because that was the browser that I normally use and that the intended recipient also has access to. A little over half-way through, a Chrome update took away rendering websites in anything but one of the two default fonts that you specify – a serif or a sans-serif. Oh, you can still control the weight, size, and color of the text – but the font? Noooo way!

I can understand why they did so. There have been some truly horrendous web pages constructed by people who don’t know what they are doing with fonts over the years – but at least as many have committed crimes using color (yellow on white… navy blue on black…. orange on green….) as with font crimes. Now, those of us who knew what we were doing found our designs compromised by the need to hand-hold amateurs.

It completely changed the word flow, wrecked the alignment, wrecked the column spacing… it made the site look amateur, and not a particularly skilled amateur at that.

After playing around a bit, I discovered that Edge had also made this change, but that IE, the legacy browser included in Windows, had not – but it had other subtle differences, in particular Unicode display was hit-and-miss. A lot of characters had to be re-coded, every page revised.

About 3/4 of the way through the project, Microsoft finally did away with IE. Users were not given a choice – the browser software was still on their computer, but attempting to open it, or a page using it, loaded edge instead.

Now, I don’t like Edge. I found it to be a LOT slower than either Chrome or IE, more cumbersome, and harder to work with. And, what’s more, all the work that I had just redone was seemingly thrown out the window.

Then I discovered compatibility mode in Edge, which turned on the legacy ability to display different fonts as specified by the website. So that’s what the site is now coded to use. But automatic updates at least doubled the length and difficulty of this project, because the software developers presume to know what’s best for me..

Unintended Consequences

An assumption that we, as users, are forced to make is that the changes have been adequately tested and that the automatic update won’t break something we rely on that’s more important than just font rendering.

Probably nineteen times out of twenty, this is a not unreasonable assumption. But the twentieth time can trigger a full-blown emergency.

Another Chrome update resulted in a lot of text being displayed in a corrupt manner in Tweets. I wasn’t the only one affected, but no-one could figure out what was happening, mostly because Chrome updates itself without telling you its’ doing so. Eventually, it was discovered that hardware acceleration was the culprit, and disabling that meant that you could actually read what people were saying. And the next update fixed the problem – again, without telling you.

In the cowboy days of the late 90s and early 2000s, it often felt like end users were being used as guinea pigs by software developers. So this event brought back a lot of bad memories.

But even when an update does exactly what it promises, there can be unintended consequences. We all develop our own styles of working based on our needs, our skills, and our circumstances. No-one else has exactly the same operational needs and means of satisfying them that I do – that’s a conceit, but closer to the truth than people realize. That used to manifest in a users having a million different hardware and software configurations; it used to be said that no two systems were alike unless designed deliberately to be so.

Forcing a measure of conformity onto people would have made support a lot easier to perform – but at the price of flexibility and efficiency and customization. But those days are not quite so removed from the modern reality as many people seem to think – there are still thousands of different software packages out there, a hundred different ways of approaching the same task, and each of them – of necessity, because they keep changing the operating system – only partially integrated into the whole. And sometimes, that breaks things.

At one point, my Laptop – the same one I’m using now – died. Instead of booting up, I got a Windows error message. Some piece of critical software had been broken by an update – I never found out which one. The solution: a complete reinstall of Windows. Except that this froze solid and wouldn’t complete. The reason: it ran using Windows Update and this laptop didn’t have the RAM needed to permit the function to execute. Instead, it got locked into an endless cycle of trying, failing, and trying again.

Fortunately, for Christmas, one of my friends had given me a RAM upgrade that took this machine as far (in that respect) as it could go, and that was enough to break the logjam (once it was installed).

Auto-update means that your system’s reliability is compromised without warning – and, sometimes, with no way back.

Confusion

Does anyone remember when Word introduced the Ribbon? I certainly do. I was working for CLAN, a charitable organization, at the time, and the first thing anyone knew about it was when the person in charge (not sure of their formal job title and that doesn’t particularly matter anyway) went to write a letter – and discovered that the entire user-interface was changed, she didn’t know where any of the functions were any more and several of them no longer worked the same way, anyway. All productivity in the office stopped for the day as we rallied around to try and work out how to complete what should have been a five minute task – writing and emailing a letter.

I said at the start that I hate auto-update; well, I also hate and mistrust cloud computing, because it leaves the end user hostage to the latest brain-wave of the developers. But it’s all part and parcel of the same thing, manifesting in two different ways – all auto-update does is bring all the inherent disadvantages of cloud computing right to the user’s doorstep.

Even if everything works as it’s supposed to, if you no longer know how it’s supposed to work, so far as you’re concerned, it doesn’t work any more. Productivity and confidence and acquired skill all vanish into a cloud of confusion, and you have to start learning how to use a piece of possibly-critical infrastructure all over again.

It’s bad enough when this is because of your own mistake, but at least you should be aware of the risks and able to take measures to mitigate them. It’s something that you can be forced to tolerate when it’s the result of changes to legal requirements and legislation – we all have to live in the real world, and interface with the systems put in place by outsiders within that real world. But when its being forced on you, not because of some legal requirement but because some software engineer decides something should be done differently to maximize their employers profits, tolerance wears thin.

Lack Of Control

I’ve touched on this already, but it’s worth spelling out explicitly – in the modern era, users are not in control of their own systems and infrastructure. It used to be that if what you had was good enough for you to be productive, you could choose whether or not to replace a piece of functional software.

At the very least, you could defer installation until you had time to properly assess what the update offered and what benefits it could bring, and get a little ahead of that learning curve.

Not any more. Your systems’ functionality is now under someone else’s control – in fact, several ‘someones’, most of whom aren’t even talking to each other.

When I was a systems analyst, there was a term for it – Production Environment. Changes that impacted the Production Environment were very carefully managed, with lots of options to back out of a change at the first indication of unexpected problems. This was necessary so that software could be designed to meet the operational needs of the business in a stable operating environment, where problems could generally be assumed to be a flaw in your code, something that could be controlled and tested for and corrected, if necessary.

If the Production Environment was unstable, you could never be sure if your software bugs were your code’s fault (and correctable) or if the environment itself was misinterpreting what it was being told to do – not without five to ten times as much testing and expense. It was the difference between bespoke software development being economically viable and not.

Home users are no longer in control of their Production Environment and are not even consulted on changes to it, and sometimes, not even notified that its changing.

System Interaction

One more example and I’ll end this rant and move on to why this is relevant to RPGs, which is what most readers will care about.

The art software that I use is Krita, in its 3.3.3 mode. When I had to update Windows (as described earlier), I had to reinstall all my software, and in many cases, that meant downloading fresh copies. And that meant getting Krita 5.2.6, the latest version.

I’ve explained before that one of the reasons I liked Krita 3.3 is that I find its functionality to be intuitive to my way of working. I knew immediately what 95% of its functionality did, and its limitations, and what I could do with it, and so was instantly productive with it; I’ve used any number of other art programs and found them to be not so instinctive.

Somewhere along the developmental path between 3.3 and 5.2.6, Krita lost that intuitive connection with my workflow. Not only did unexpected things happen when I tried to do something I was familiar with, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it to do the things that I needed it to do. So I backtracked. I tried the highest iteration of Krita 4 (I don’t remember what the version sub-number was) – same problem. It just didn’t make sense to me, and I soon used up what limited time I had to expend on the learning curve.

So I retreated again, back to Krita 3.3.3 – I had been using 3.3.1. And hey presto, the magic was back! The changes between 3.3.1 and 3.3.3 were small enough that I could absorb them and keep right on working.

And all was fine – until the most recent Windows Update. And now, suddenly, the workspace won’t pan left. If I’m drawing a box or a selection window, or a straight line, if I’m going from left to right, or up to down, or down to up, and I move beyond the bounds of the currently displayed area, the image being worked on pans in the required direction, permitting control and accuracy. But if I’m going from right to left – nothing. The part of the image displayed stays frozen in place, making it impossible to be accurate or controlled in that direction.

Who do I blame for this? It’s hardly Krita’s fault – the operating system is what’s changed. But how can Microsoft have anticipated this particular consequence? It doesn’t seem entirely fair to blame them, either. I can only try to work around it (being aware of the problem) and hope that the next update from Microsoft fixes the problem – which it will only do if others are encountering problems stemming from the same change, which may or may not be happening.

I could try rolling back the change – but I’m not sure that would fix anything. It’s not like I was given any choice in the update other than when it would be applied, so at best it might just be buying me time.

I could try updating to the Krita 4 branch again. It might not be affected. I could try reinstalling Krita 3.3.3 – there’s a reason why I keep all these downloads archived! That’s probably the least damaging alternative. But the bottom line is that, one way or another, I’m going to have to spend a lot of time on this, with no certainty of a successful or even positive outcome. And that’s just to get back to the position I was in before this problem manifested! In other words, it’s not time spent getting better at what I do, or being productive – it’s time that I’m being compelled to waste because of someone else’s (botched?) decision.

Why do they do it?

I guess it’s only fair to give the other side of the argument. Why are updates forced upon us?

Reason number one is security, and when it comes to Windows, that’s always been a big thing. I wouldn’t dream of going online without Antivirus and a Firewall and having other anti-nasty software up my sleeve. But those are not enough – all sorts of vulnerabilities are discovered all the time and it’s only a matter of (a very short) time before someone tries to exploit those vulnerabilities in the wild.

I’m fairly competent when it comes to my computer, and in particular, getting it to enable me to do what I want it to do. I used to be even more of a hotshot in this department back in the Windows 98 days, when I knew how to tweak all sorts of settings that vastly extended and improved its functionality and efficiency for dong what I wanted to do. I’ve even been able to recognize, block, and eliminate malware that got past the defenses that I had in place at the time before it was able to do any damage.

But that’s a last line of defense – it’s far better to fix those windows of vulnerability (pun intended) before they manifest. So I tolerate browser updates, no matter how infuriating they might be, and keep my other defenses up to date, too.

The second reason is that occasionally, there is a functionality enhancement that is worth the effort of learning to use it. On “paper,” Krita 5.2.6 sounded really promising, able to perform all sorts of tricks that I couldn’t even dream of performing with 3.3.1. If it had been as good an intuitive fit, I would not have hesitated to make the upgrade. Software creators need to enhance their products to stay competitive – if they don’t, they will be lost in the myriad of other out-of-date software that’s fallen by the wayside.

What’s more, a more cohesive user-base makes it easier to develop new functionality, because everyone is starting from a common foundation. This also enhances the speed and reliability of the software.

The third reason is that enforced conformity at least makes support a little bit easier. And that’s a big thing. In 2023, it was estimated that software support cost between USD $500 – $600 Billion dollars. It’s routinely estimated to be 15-20% of the total costs of ongoing software development, and is a constant spur to that development. The percentage only goes up if quality assurance is considered part of that budget – to 35-40%!

Auto-updates might only reduce the costs of support 1% (it’s probably more) – but that’s 50-60 BILLION dollars a year (spread amongst many companies, of course).

And the fourth reason is security, again. The more consistent the platform, the fewer ‘gaps’ there can be for malware to crawl in. The current existential environment for computers is more hostile than it has ever been. Campaign Mastery has, for example, withstood, to date, more than 124.9 Thousand attempts to breach its security, over 1068 of them in the last month alone. The time was when these were rare events, now there are more than 35 a day. Worldwide, yesterday, there were more than 356,000,000 attacks on just the websites using the same protection that I am – and the trend is upward.

And, finally, there can be regulatory requirements that have to be met. These tend to only matter in certain industries and not be a factor for home use – until home users start getting into investment and cryptocurrency and the like. Well, a lot of home users are doing so – whether or not that’s wise is a whole different subject.

So there are good reasons for software vendors to LIKE auto-update, and even – in some cases – for it to be essential to the home user. I’m not a fool, and when this is the case – browser updates for example, and anti-virus / anti-malware – you do have to bow before (and acknowledge) the necessity.

Here’s another way to look at things: Windows used to differentiate between critical updates and non-critical updates. Auto-update revokes the necessity for doing so – by making all updates “critical”. That there are advantages to all sides for doing so is just a happy accident.

The RPG Equivalents

An RPG can be subdivided, through successive layers, into Rules, Campaigns, Adventures, Encounters, Tools, and Style. I’m leaving Story off this list because it doesn’t generally change as a result of outside forces – it can and does change with moments of GM inspiration, change of setting (a sub-part of Campaigns), and in response to player choices and actions, but those are all expected and appropriate. Of course, they can go wrong, but that’s beyond the remit of this article.

1 Rules, Part 1

Arguably, the aspect of an RPG that is most analogous to everything that I’ve described are changes to the rules, so I’ll be spending quite a bit of time focusing on that. So much so that I’m dividing the subject into two, mostly to group the examples into recognizable categories and patterns.

Rules changes can shake the very foundations of an RPG campaign. They not only can alter the way established actions are interpreted within the game framework, but add or subtract from what actions are possible / permissible, and often wrap new frameworks and contexts around those actions. The very concept of what a Wizard is, or a Rogue, can change completely from one rules edition to another.

These relatively broad strokes are comparatively easy to excise and replace with established canon when applying a new game system to an established campaign, so they are not a huge issue, at the end of the day. But many of the changes are more subtle, and these can escape attention until it’s too late.

Like the software auto-update, these changes can fundamentally alter the methods to be used to achieve something or to simulate something within the rules structure. The results can be confusion and delay, unintended consequences can be crippling (especially if the systems are inadequately playtested), and a GM can find that he has just ceded large parts of the control of his campaign to the system authors. Sometimes this is beneficial, but most of the time, the changes just get in the way.

It’s arguable that the story in an RPG derives from the tug of war between the plot direction created by the GM through NPCs and the intentions, purposes and choices of the players through their characters, all shaped through the game system and the parameters that it establishes. If a key PC ability gets changed fundamentally midway through the campaign, that’s a big impact. If a GM loses the ability to steer the campaign because of changes to concept or canon, it leaves the PCs free to wish-fulfill, and that can doom a campaign just as surely.

But the most dangerous changes are even more subtle than that – social concepts and underpinnings that the GM never perceived the need to articulate can be completely upended. That’s a lot of what lies behind the game community reaction to the softening of Orcs in the most recent iteration, for example. Now, I don’t intend to buy into that argument one way or another in this article; instead I want to focus on the fact of the change, rather than the substance of that specific change. And, while there might be objections or dissonance when applying the new rules to a new campaign, these changes can be catastrophic when applied to an existing campaign.

I think that each iteration of a game system carries with it a certain stylistic expectation that is forced on those who employ that iteration for their games. If the changes from one iteration to the next support the content that the GM intends and desires for the campaign, the game system can be said to support the campaign, and all is well; if there is a dissonance or conflict, the game system is fighting the campaign, and the results will be less than satisfactory all round.

For any given campaign, then, the totality of what is specified by the game mechanics and what is left open for the GM to interpret / create means that some game systems suit that specific campaign better than others, and that a change of game system inevitably creates a ripple of change in the unspoken undercurrents and assumptions upon which the campaign is based.

It’s for this reason that I rarely run RAW in my campaigns; there are always tweaks that are designed to make the game system conform to and support the context, backstory and concept of the campaign. This is exactly the same as adapting the way you perform a task after a new software version is released, with the big difference being that the software change is forced on you by auto-update; a rules change can be refused (especially since they don’t come ‘free’ but have to be purchased, perhaps at great expense).

I have two suites of RPG game systems where multiple iterations impacted ongoing campaigns, hence the division of this part of the subject into two parts. I’ve talked about both of them before – I’ll try not to repeat myself too much – but I’m not sure that I’ve ever looked at their histories in this exact context, so there will necessarily be some repetition of things I’ve written in the past.

1.1 Fumanor – AD&D to 2nd Ed

Fumanor: The Last Deity was written over a ten year period of playing non-Fantasy games, accumulating and polishing ideas. At the time, other GMs were soaking up all the interest in Fantasy with long-running campaigns, and no-one was interested in another one that had to run at the same time as the one they were already in.

Imagine you’ve learned to use a computer on someone else’s Windows 98 machine, and you finally save up enough to buy your own – only to find, when you bring it home, that it has been ‘upgraded’ to Windows Me. Superficially, the operating system looks much like what you know, enough that you think nothing more of it and dive straight in to doing things. Every now and then, it does something a little flaky, but you put that down to your unfamiliarity with the OS and just clean up the mess. Now imagine that you’re only using the computer once or twice a month.

For anyone familiar with the history of the Windows operating system, the above says entirely too much, it’s like being trapped in a Stephen King novel until some metaphysical reader finishes reading the story – and he only reads a page or two at a time.

That’s very much akin to the situation with the Last Deity campaign, where – when I finally found some players who were interested in what ten years of effort might look like – those players wanted me to run it using D&D 2nd Ed.

Now, I’m not trying to equate 2nd Ed with Windows Me – I can’t and won’t definitively label 2e as a Lemon, which Windows Me definitely was. But, as I described recently in my article here on Michael Schumacher’s achievements, there were some behind-the-hood differences that just didn’t mesh with my expectations and planning. It took a fair while to figure this out, and by the time I did, the campaign was in drastic trouble – the PCs hit level 5 when I expected them to reach level 3, they hit level 9 when I had designed for level 5, and were at level 12 or 13 when I expected level 7 or 8. On those trends, by the time the campaign came to a close, the PCs would be level 40-50 instead of the anticipated level 20.

1.2 Fumanor: D&D 2nd Ed to 3.0

As recounted in the article linked to above, the immediate “solution” was a Frankenstein’s monster – core Rolemaster with the D&D 2e Magic system bolted on. It didn’t work, and it was almost immediately apparent that it wasn’t working. I think we played something like 3 or 4 game sessions – once a month – and half of that time was spent debating what to do next.

My preference at the time was to go back to the original intent of an AD&D campaign, but again I bowed to the wishes of my players and migrated lock, stock, and barrel, to D&D 3.0, supported by the players collectively giving me copies of the core rulebooks for Christmas that year. This was moving from Windows Me to Windows XP – more things had changed, and many more things were slightly different under the hood, but it was far more stable and cohesive.

And it – and I – ‘clicked’ immediately. I didn’t take the unexpected levels off my players, in fact (as I recall) I let the entire Rolemaster Fiasco count as a character level – but I was able to match challenges to PC capabilities while slowing their progress enough that it more-or-less matched my original intent. Those extra levels gave them an edge that meant they were usually successful in the end, but getting to that end was hard enough that everyone had fun despite one or two false starts (see The Woes Of Piety & Magic from the “My greatest mistakes” series).

1.3 Fumanor: D&D 3.0 to 3.5

In contrast, the upgrade to D&D 3.5 went through without a hitch, without even causing much of a ripple. Of far greater concern at the time was that there were mutual incompatibilities between the Epic Levels sourcebook and Deities & Demigods – both relevant because of the additional levels the PCs had earned. They still had about eleven levels of advancement planned in terms of overall plot within the campaign when it switched to 3.0, and were at about level 13-14 at the time – so I was looking at an end-point of Level 25 or thereabouts.

In actual fact, they were closer to level 30 by the end of the second phase of the Last Deity campaign – but the system, and I, were able to cope with that.

“Auto-update” doesn’t have to end in disaster, in fact it can be a positive experience. But it’s a risk – as Forest Gump phrased it, “Life” (or in this case, D&D system updates) “is like a box of chocolates, you never know just what you’re going to get”.

1.4 Refusing the 4th Ed Update

Fumanor: The Last Deity II was followed by a brief mini-campaign using the same characters as a prelude to two new sequel campaigns which are usually considered either “The Last Deity: Aftermath” or an add-on to “The Last Deity II” (and not a wholly separate campaign). The purpose of this interim was (1) to look at what became of the PCs after the Last Deity campaign, (2) to show that the game world’s problems hadn’t been magically cured by the results of the campaign, and (3) to establish the preamble for the true sequel campaign, “Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire”.

By this time, 4th Ed was out, and the Edition Wars were in full bloom. The Wikipedia Article on D&D editions soft-pedals the fury with which 4th Edition was met by many fans – and things that have been learned since, like actively ignoring feedback during development and playtesting underscore the reasons for much of that fury. If any edition of the game system deserves comparison with the Windows Me fiasco, it’s probably 4e. Personally, my ire was centered on the changes to the OGL, which (in my view) was one of the great advances that had made 3e such a success.

The absence of certain character classes from the Core Rules, classes which were going to be at the heart of the planned sequel campaign, made the decision not to upgrade to 4th Ed a no-brainer. “Fumanor Seeds Of Empire” would stay D&D 3.5.

One of my key players then threw a curve-ball into plans, accepting a job in Canberra, the national capital, 275 km (171 miles) away. While he would be able to return to Sydney every 2-3 months for the day, the 4-hour trip was not something he could do more often. He didn’t want to leave the campaign completely, though, and asked me to try to find a way to “make it work”.

What I came up with was an entirely separate spin-off sequel campaign using ideas that I had been building up for a possible sequel to “Seeds Of Empire”. This became “Fumanor: One Faith”, and it was to take place concurrently with “Seeds Of Empire” in game time – whenever this player happened to be available, we’d play “One Faith”, and whenever he wasn’t, “Seeds Of Empire” would take the spotlight. Other players would be the same (with different characters) in both, though all would have the choice of opting out of one of the campaigns if they wanted, and new players could choose to join either or both.

After only one or two sessions of both campaigns, circumstances had changed, and the player in question was fully available, so it turned out not to have been necessary – but the set-up had been revealed and the characters were hip-deep in dramatic developments, Lolth having conquered the Elves at the cost of losing the worship of the Drow, who felt abandoned and betrayed, and had reconverted to worship of Corallon. Such social upheaval doesn’t come easily, and pockets of resistance to the “new ways” of doing things were stirring up all kinds of trouble. There were also time bubbles and cybernetic Druids (with mechanized Giant Dobermen) and all sorts of other strangeness – the PCs never knew quite what to expect, only that it would all make sense in the end.

The impetus went out of both campaigns when I took a year off to write the Orcs & Elves series, which filled in key parts of the background – once one group of PCs reached a position of learning these hidden secrets. This primarily impacted the Seeds Of Empire campaign (and took a lot longer than I initially expected), but at the same time, the One Faith campaign was knocked for a loop by the death of one of the players – both campaigns entered a hiatus from which they have never resumed. They are still officially ‘ongoing’ but it’s been 12 years since either were actually played.

1.5 The ‘D&D Next’ experience

Learning from the lessons of the 4th Ed debacle, WOTC started off doing things right when it came to D&D Next. All my players and myself were part of the playtesting, myself as GM, and I created the Tree Of Life campaign as a test-bed, using the game system the way I would if it were ‘complete’ – as an ongoing campaign whose background facilitated the anticipated changes in ‘reality’ caused by ongoing revisions to the rules system.

We were all diligent in submitting our feedback, but over time, noticed a trend – every iteration was taking the game system closer to the 4th ed model and further away from suitability for an ongoing campaign. Problems to which we had offered solutions were not resolved, in fact were ignored completely. Our feedback appeared to be falling on deaf ears, and we quietly despaired and dropped out. Again, the death of Stephen Tunnicliff had a major impact, ending our participation in the playtesting, but it was already on shaky ground with us by that point. If the campaign had been explicitly designed to suit what became 5th ed, it might have worked, but as things stood, we were never tempted to start a genuine 5e campaign, and there was absolutely no question that Seeds Of Empire or One Faith were ever going to migrate to the new game system iteration..

1.6 Pathfinder, 1st Ed

By that time, of course, Pathfinder had emerged and established itself as the true spiritual successor to what is often generically referred to as “3.x”. Migrating to Pathfinder was an option seriously considered, but we had just made substantial commitments in purchasing 3.5, money was tight, and Pathfinder was a bridge too far at the time. On top of that, there was a general sense of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ amongst all participants in the ongoing campaigns. I had other D&D campaigns at the time, and if I had copies of the rules (since acquired), I would have switched one of them over to the new system as a test before committing to what I regarded as the centerpieces of my D&D ‘universe’. But they didn’t survive the death of Stephen either, so there was never an opportunity.

1.7 Pathfinder, 2nd Ed

I also picked up copies of Pathfinder 2nd Ed through a deal done with the Game Store where we were regularly meeting to play. At one point, I tried to interest my players in a new campaign to try them out, but there was no serious interest on anyone’s part. So this was another ‘auto-update’ that didn’t happen.

But, when reading through the rules, with a view to possibly upgrading the theoretically still-ongoing Fumanor campaigns to the new system, I was overcome with a strong sense that something was subtly different in terms of the flavor that the game system carried. I couldn’t put my finger on it – still can’t, to be honest – but it felt “too different”. So, were the Fumanor campaigns to restart tomorrow, they would continue to be 3.x campaigns.

But, were I to undertake a new D&D campaign, both Pathfinder editions would be given serious consideration. And it’s that ‘underlying flavor’ that would determine which game system would ultimately be chosen.

Because in gaming, ‘auto-update’ is a voluntary thing. And that’s to its benefit, in my opinion.

2 Rules, Part 2

The other tranch of game systems that I want to look at in this context is what is now known as the Hero System. But this is already a long article, so I’ll try to be brief!

I’ve run multiple campaigns oriented around the Hero System, starting with a campaign rooted in the original “Champions” (with a superhero team that decided, with a total lack of originality, to name themselves “The Champions”).

Again, I’ve talked about these campaigns before, so I’ll try not to simply repeat myself, but some echoes of the past will be inevitable.

2.1 Champions

As a long-time reader and fan of superhero comic books, when i was given a photocopy of the Champions rules, I devoured them in one night and immediately created a campaign to try them out. This was a solo campaign in which I was both player and GM, and immediately I found that the game system wasn’t quite what I wanted. It was fine for low-level characters, but I wanted the Cosmic Scope of the Fantastic Four and Doctor Strange, the Epic Capabilities of Thor and Superman, and a game system that let characters of all points in between to come together to solve problems too big for any one of them, a-la the Avengers.

2.2 My Homebrew System ver 1

My first character was a superman-analogue, Ullar, going up against an immortal Wizard / Necromancer inspired by, and named for, Marvel’s Mandarin (not the fake-out that appeared in the Iron Man 2 movie).

The day after I started, I was invited to actually run a one-off campaign for a mixture of experienced players and novices at a private home. Since I could envisage the rules changes that I wanted to make quite clearly, I agreed . The next 6 days were spent writing and testing rules and developing background – without sleep, a measure of my excitement.

The changes that were made were fairly minor in and of themselves – more options for disadvantages and advantages and limitations, mostly, and a relative power structure that permitted multiple power-level characters to co-exist without treading on each other’s toes too much. Cumulatively, though, these had exactly the impact that I wanted.

At the end of the week, I travelled to the home of Robbie and Trish and they and their neighbor generated characters and played through an epic one-off game which brought their super-group together and pitted them against the same villain, who had again found a way to resurrect himself, a back-door escape from his defeat in the solo campaign (which formed the background of the new adventure).After GMing for 20 hours straight on the back of a week without sleep, I was dead on my feet but “The Ultras” had become an occasional ongoing campaign) – and I was invited to move in, permanently, but that’s a whole other soap opera

2.3 The Champions Campaign

A week after that, an entirely separate group of players enthusiastically signed up for what became “The Champions” campaign, which used both the Ullar and Ultras campaigns as background. It was late August, 1981 – and that campaign and its descendants continue to this day, 44 years later. In fact, the Saturday just passed would have been the ‘official’ 44th anniversary.

2.4 My Homebrew System ver 2

Twelve pages of hand-written notes are all well and good, but one of the players persuaded his sister to type them up, and this became the game system for the next year or so.

2.5 Champions II

In that time, Champions II came out, but these weren’t revisions, they were additional supplements. In some cases, they added options that I had already integrated into the system, on others they added options that I hadn’t considered, but a single page of ‘conversion notes’ were enough to integrate them into my homebrewed variation. These were painless auto-upgrades, in other words.

We were playing two 6-8 hour game sessions a fortnight – I was alternating with my original AD&D campaign at the time – and the occasional extra session at someone’s home. At the end of the first year of this, the PCs finally defeated my “Mandarin” for the third time, by discovering a world in which his rule was the lesser of two evils (the fascists had won WW2) and, essentially, handing it over to him.

At about the same time, I moved away from Sydney but every couple of months I saved up enough money to visit and for a week or so, we would play multiple game sessions a day for a week – overall, the net average stayed about 1 session a week even though I was living 540 km (336 miles) – a nine hour train trip – away. It was a bit like living in Albuquerque and traveling to Denver to play, or commuting from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

After a year or so, I returned to Sydney, and started three spin-off campaigns.

2.6 The Project Vanguard Campaign

The project Vanguard Campaign were superheros in training – the next generation, inspired by The New Mutants. It used the same homebrew rules.

2.7 The Project Vigilant Campaign

The Project Vigilant campaign was to focus on protecting the PCs, who were of primary school age, inspired by Power Pack. In theory, these characters weren’t supposed to have adventures. Hah! Tell that to the PCs…

This campaign also used the same homebrew rules.

2.8 The Team Neon Phi Campaign

This was a James Bond / super-agent campaign, and it actually prompted a small expansion of the homebrew rules. It would run for about 5 years.

So now I had four campaigns, two game sessions a week, plus my AD&D campaign (2 sessions a month), and one weekend off – a monthly cycle. When the AD&D campaign wound down, for a short time, we went to a fortnightly schedule, but people started to burn out and wanted to go back to having time to do other things. So the monthly schedule became fixed. I spread the four campaigns (with double-sessions of the core Champions campaign) over the 6 game sessions for the first three weekends of the month (with one spare, occasionally used when one of the non-core adventures needed some extra playing time) and all was well.

2.9 GURPS

I think it was around 1987 that I was first exposed to GURPS supers, and stole a few ideas that were also integrated into the homebrew.

2.10 Champions 4th Ed

In 1989, Champions 4th Edition was released. This was a comprehensive and cohesive update, and it triggered a full rewrite and expansion of the homebrew, one which referred extensively to the official rules but which fully integrated the changes that I had made, and added in still more. There were lots of extra skills, for example, and several new powers.

2.11 My Homebrew System ver 3

Five volumes of the revised Homebrew system were produced, running to an average page count of about 75 pages each. They were 80% complete at this point, but that didn’t stop their wholesale adoption through all of my Champions campaigns. I even wrote a new printer driver to enable more complex production of the rules. Ultimately, it was the printing that spelled the end of work on this iteration of the rules – printer-ribbon hardcopy was just too pale and hard to read, and the formatting into double-column justified text was a pain at the time. It was in a playable but incomplete state, and that was where it stayed.

This iteration of the rules – and only a single hardcopy was ever produced – remained in effect right up to the end of the spin-off campaigns and two years of “miniseries” – one for each PC (and fictionalized ones for some of the key NPCs). This also coincided with the Graduation Exercises for the members of Project Vanguard, forcing players to choose one of their characters to retire.

The 10th anniversary of the original campaign kicked off the early stages of something that had been brewing in the background for quite some time – Ragnarok. Unfortunately, I mishandled the early stages, and player frustration and discontent over the pacing that resulted eventually caused the campaign to shut down, at least temporarily. I set about writing up the events as a fictionalized work that encompassed the entire history of the campaign with a view to restarting it five years “post-Ragnarok”, but at the same time, got distracted by my new TORG campaign, and early attempts at getting Fumanor up and running.

2.12 The Zenith 3 Campaign

Eventually, the history was complete and new players came onboard, attracted by the richness of the History and the sprawling expansiveness of the setting. This became the Zenith-3 campaign.

2.13 My Homebrew System ver 4

Initially, it was run using the same homebrew rules, but these were now about 10 years old – I had a new computer and a new laser printer and the limitations that had impacted and curtailed the previous version were no longer in effect.

One of my players, realizing that there was only one hardcopy of the rules, then made the fatal mistake of offering to write up a new version of the core mechanics, were were still contained in about 12 typed pages from the early 1980s. He thought it would only take a week or two.

Hah! First, he had queries – some of the house rules weren’t even written down, or interpretations of them. Then he had suggestions, some of which were accepted, some debated, and some rejected after discussion about why. In the meantime, I had been collecting notes about changes to the rules, some of which he liked and some of which he found faults in.

This became version 4 of the homebrew rules – a version that never saw play. It was based on the concept of the rules being homebrewed revisions of the official 4th edition game system, and referenced it as much as possible. But copies of it were old and hard to come by, so the decision was made to commit to creating a standalone set of rules. A complete game system, in other words.

Version 5.

2.14 My Homebrew System ver 5

I have a binder with over 500 pages of 5-point type. At the time, it was legible. These days, it’s legible with a magnifying glass!

That’s because it’s been printed half-sized, with 2 pages on each physical sheet of paper. The totality – still unfinished – is over 1000 pages long.

As soon as enough of it was finished, the campaign switched to it.

This was deliberately designed to be a system upgrade, and it necessitated complete revision of the characters.

2.15 The Warcry Campaign

Also using this new set of rules was a new spin-off campaign, which resulted when that players’ PC became too powerful to be compatible with the adventures being produced for the main campaign. This was also conceived as a test-bed – proposed rules changes could be implemented and playtested before being incorporated into the “official” rules.

2.16 Champions 5th Ed

While we were working on Version 5, Hero Games released Champions 5th Ed. Initially, financial constraints meant that it wasn’t even considered for integration with Version 5, though some ideas were lifted out and some reference pointers in our notes pointed to it.

2.17 The Adventurer’s Club Campaign

Then along came the Adventurer’s Club campaign. This was originally set up using the official Champions 5e, but slowly diverged from it a little as house rules were added and accumulated.

2.18 Refusing the Champions 6th Ed Update

When the news broke of Champions 6th Edition, we were all excited. This was billed as a top-to-bottom rewrite, with the avowed goals of doing a lot of what was being done in the Version 5 homebrew, so work on Version 5 was shelved until its actual release.

I and the other GMs here with which I have discussed the issue agree that this was the most disappointing game release, like, ever. It kept bits of the system that we had discarded. It didn’t look all that different from the 5th edition, in fact – just split into two volumes – with some added inserts.

The price alone made us hesitant to upgrade any of the campaigns to use this new rules iteration. The issues with the supposed “rewrite” confirmed that hesitation. While a few of us have copies for reference, none of us would migrate an existing campaign to the new version – too much risk for too little gain at too high a price.

So those are my primary experiences with rules system updates, and quite a mixed bunch, they are, too. There’s everything from positive improvements to virtually no change worth noting to catastrophic failures and outright rejections. Each one is akin to an adventure in and of itself. Sometimes, you eat the monster, and sometimes, the monster eats you. And, occasionally, neither of you are hungry enough to bother.

But, seriously, as with computer technology, decisions regarding upgrades to game systems are all about risks, risk management, and rewards. If the potential reward is high enough, it’s worth taking a chance – but leave yourself a back door and a commit/reject deadline. If the are some potential rewards and the risk seems minimal, go for it. But under any other circumstance, back away, very slowly – because not all the risks are quantifiable. Some of them lurk unnoticed in the high grass.

Campaigns

This advice is doubly appropriate when it comes to auto-updating Campaigns. This is all about game settings, really – have you ever run a game setting designed for one iteration of the rules while using a different set of rules? It’s not as hard as it sounds.

When a new campaign sourcebook is released, you have to decide whether or not it’s compatible with the campaign that you are actually running. If not, then shelve it – use it as the starting point of another campaign, but don’t try and shoehorn it into your existing game world.

That requires careful reading with an eye toward the implications and consequences of bringing the content into your campaign. No-one can explicitly guarantee compatibility with any certainty.

The same goes, in fact, for any non-core game supplement. Parts of it may be compatible, and even useful or inspiring. Parts of it may not be.

It’s also always worth remembering that this form of upgrade is not an all-or-nothing; you can integrate parts of a resource while refusing or rewriting other parts.

Adventures

Few adventures stand in isolation. As soon as any customization of the game world or game system takes place, compatibility with adventures that you haven’t written yourself is placed at risk.

That doesn’t mean that you have to write every adventure yourself – you can take a published adventure module and adapt it as necessary. I used Danger At Dunwater, which I set at Loch Ness, for part of the discovery of the Atlanteans in my Champions campaign. I also used The Ghost Tower Of Inverness as part of that campaign’s pre-Ragnarok Buildup (I forget where I placed it).

It’s your job as GM to make whatever material you introduce to your campaign compatible with whatever’s already there. Sometimes, that’s easy – and sometimes, it’s not. In the Warcry campaign, I’ve gotten great mileage from some adventures written for the Star Frontiers and Space Master game systems. It all needed adaption, but the conceptual foundations of the adventure fitted the campaign at the time.

Encounters

The smaller you get, the smaller the risks. Creatures and encounters can evolve considerably from one iteration of a game system to another, or from one sourcebook to another – but if one particular version of a “Troll” happened to fit what I wanted in terms of the action, I’ll incorporate it, regardless of the game with which the source material is supposed to be compatible.

In particular, roleplay-oriented encounters dance on the edge of a blade, I’ve found – they are either more readily compatible or require a lot more adaption than straight combat encounters. That’s because a lot of sociology and in-game circumstances can be taken as read within the encounter as written, and that can be directly contradictory to their equivalents in the established campaign.

Straight Combat encounters will always need adaption because the game mechanics are going to be different, but this is usually similar in degree of effort required. Non-combat encounters are either easier or significantly more work – there isn’t a lot of in-between.

Core Tools

Heading toward the conclusion of this article brings me closer to where it began, looking at the impact of the core tools that a GM uses to prepare for a game session. These are either pen and paper (unlikely to be affected) or software, and that’s where things can get sticky.

A long time ago, I was using a particular office suite as a word processor. I wrote an adventure, saved it, and thought all was well. Auto-update was still in relative infancy, but this particular software occasionally invoked it for what the makers deemed critical updates – usually fixing things that made the software crash, so – in principle – a good thing. Again, there was a distinction made between critical updates and functionality upgrades, a distinction that is less prevalent today.

Came game day, and when I opened the file with the adventure to print it out – usually left until the last minute so that tweaks and refinements were possible right up to the 11th hour – all I got, instead of my text, was a complaint about a corrupted file. Fortunately, I remembered most of it – as adventures go, this one was pretty straightforward – and play was able to get underway.

Afterwards, I discovered that an error was inadvertently propagated through the update that meant that all text saved in that particular file format could not longer be read by the the software, and that an urgent patch was being pushed to fix the problem.

There’s all sorts of software that we rely on for all sorts of things, these days. I have one piece of software that I use for writing plain-text files – like this article. I have another that I use for formatted text and PDF production and spell-checking these articles. I have another piece of software that I use for editing images, and one that I use for displaying them in-game. I have two internet browsers (in case one lets me down or gives unexpected results), and one of those has at least 10 additional add-ons for various functions. I no longer have a separate email client, my ISP providing a cloud-based alternative. I have font display and character display software, I have two calculator apps (one of which does nothing but convert units), and – of course – there are the usual system tools, including the windows browser.

That’s a lot of things that can go wrong in unexpected ways. And, sometimes, they do. Because I save in common file formats for the most part, there’s usually a way around most of them (but occasionally, the file itself becomes corrupted by a software gremlin, and there’s not much can be done about that). But I also maintain a regular backup regime – I might lose a week or two of work, but not much more than that, and that’s a worst case scenario.

So I’m insulated against these problems as best I can be. On rare occasions it isn’t enough – especially if the whole operating system goes down a rabbit hole – but for the most part, I have defenses that protect me. And those practices and defenses are present because I’ve been bitten so many times in the past that I’ve learned to consider these necessary best practice, in fact, the only practice that makes any sense.

But it’s still inconvenient at best, and catastrophic at worst.

Style

My final category is Style. Everyone has their own, and in part, it depends on the tools that they employ to enhance their storytelling and interactions with players, with rules, and so on. Change the software and you can inadvertently impact your style.

The problem is that style can be an extremely delicate thing, far more sensitive than most people think. It can also be a far more robust attribute than most people realize. That’s a contradiction of course, but it’s also a reflection of reality.

A GM’s style impacts how he or she wants to use the tools that they have, and the way that they plan to use those tools in furtherance of the gaming experience. A GM’s style is impacted by changes to those tools, what they can and can’t do, and how efficiently they do it.

When I display a large piece of text, the editing software that I am using scrolls not in lines but in whole paragraphs. If a paragraph is too long, the end of it never becomes visible – you need to widen the screen and shorten the paragraph in order the see it all. That causes me problems from time to time with these articles, especially when there’s an image with a long caption, because the HTML code also counts as part of the paragraph.

But I know it’s an issue, and my style has adapted to accommodate it – shorter, punchier paragraphs being 90% of that adaption.

The tools you use impact your style – subtly, in the event of a small change, or massively, in the circumstance of a change of greater substance. And those changes can be thrust upon you without warning through auto-update.

Which brings me back to where I started in this article: I hate Auto-update.

But I have to live with it, and so do you.

Tags: 3.x, 4e, Adventure-Prep, Campaigns, DM-Advice, Hero-System, House-Rules, D&D, AD&D, 2e AD&D, Opinion, All Genres

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Trade In Fantasy Ch. 5: Land Transport, Pt 4

Written by Mike Bourke

Filed in Campaign Creation, Campaign Management, D&D / Pathfinder, Game Mastering, Mapping & Maps & Minis, Mike, Fantasy Games, Planning & Preparation, Rules & Mechanics, The End Of The Rainbow, Tools & Techniques, World Design, House-Rules, Metagaming & Metagame Theory, All Genres on Aug.19, 2025

This entry is part 17 of 17 in the series Trade In Fantasy

With the economic foundations sorted, this part gets back to the distribution of fortifications, defensive networks, and Inns.

Image by Simon Berger from Pixabay – heavily cropped by Mike

Table Of Contents

In part 1:

Chapter 5: Land Transport

5.1 Distance, Time, & Detriments

5.1.1 Time Vs Distance
5.1.2 Defining a terrain / region / locality

     5.1.2.1 Road Quality: An introductory mention

5.2 Terrain

5.2.0 Terrain Factor
5.2.1 % Distance
5.2.2 Good Roads
5.2.3 Bad Roads
5.2.4 Even Ground
5.2.5 Broken Ground
5.2.5 Marshlands
5.2.7 Swamplands
5.2.8 Woodlands
5.2.9 Forests
5.2.10 Rolling Hills
5.2.11 Mountain Slopes
5.2.12 Mountain Passes
5.2.13 Deserts
5.2.14 Exotic Terrain
5.2.15 Road Quality
     5.2.15.1 The four-tier system
     5.2.15.2 The five-tier system
     5.2.15.3 The eight-tier system
     5.2.15.4 The ten-tier system

5.2.16 Rivers & Other Waterways
     5.2.16.1 Fords
     5.2.16.2 Bridges
     5.2.16.3 Tolls
     5.2.16.4 Ferries
     5.2.16.5 Portage & Other Solutions

In Part 2:

5.3 Weather

5.3.1 Seasonal Trend
5.3.2 Broad Variations
5.3.3 Narrow Variations
     5.3.3.1 Every 2nd month?
     5.3.3.2 Transition Months
     5.3.3.3 Adding a little randomness: 1/2 length variations
     5.3.3.4 Adding a little randomness: 1 1./2-, 2-, and 2 1/2-length variations

5.3.4 Maintaining The Average
     5.3.4.1 Correction Timing
          5.3.4.1.1 Off-cycle corrections
          5.3.4.1.2 Oppositional Corrections
          5.3.4.1.3 Adjacent corrections
          5.3.4.1.4 Hangover corrections

     5.3.4.2 Correction Duration
          5.3.4.2.1 Distributed corrections: 12 months
               5.3.4.2.1.1 Even Distribution
               5.3.4.2.1.2 Random Distribution
               5.3.4.2.1.3 Weighted Random Distribution

          5.3.4.2.2 Distributed corrections: 6 months
          5.3.4.2.3 Distributed corrections: 3 months
          5.3.4.2.4 Slow Corrections (2 months)
          5.3.4.2.5 Normal corrections: 1 month
          5.3.4.2.6 Fast corrections: 1/2 month (2 weeks)
          5.3.4.2.7 Catastrophic corrections 1/4 month (1 week)

     5.4.4.3 Maintaining Synchronization
     5.4.4.4 Multiple Correction Layers

5.4 Losses & Hazards
5.5 Expenses – as Terrain Factors
5.6 Expenses – as aspects of Politics

Last time, in Part 3:

5.7 Inns, Castles, & Strongholds

5.7.1 Strongholds
     5.7.1.1 Overall Military Strength
          5.7.1.1.1 Naval Strength
          5.7.1.1.2 Exotic Strength
          5.7.1.1.3 Adjusted Military Strength

     5.7.1.2 Mobility
          5.7.1.2.1 Roads
          5.7.1.2.2 Cross-country

     5.7.1.3 Kingdom Size and Capital Location
     5.7.1.4 Borders
     5.7.1.5 Terrain
     5.7.1.6 Internal Threat
     5.7.1.7 Priority
     5.7.1.8 Threat Level
     5.7.1.9 Zones
          5.7.1.9.1 Abstract Zones
          5.7.1.9.2 Applied Considerations
               5.7.1.9.2.1 Sidebar: Why do it this way?

          5.7.1.9.3 Preliminary Zones, Zomania

     5.7.1.10 Kingdom Wealth
          5.7.1.10.1 Legacy Defenses
          5.7.1.10.2 Military Training
          5.7.1.10.3 Disaster Relief
          5.7.1.10.4 Religion
          5.7.1.10.5 Magic
          5.7.1.10.6 Tools
          5.7.1.10.7 Entertainment
          5.7.1.10.8 Resource Development
          5.7.1.10.9 A Hypothetical Disaster
          5.7.1.10.10 Housing & Funding Boosts
          5.7.1.10.11 Food
          5.7.1.10.12 Diplomacy
          5.7.1.10.13 Trade
          5.7.1.10.14 Education
          5.7.1.10.15 Transport (Road Maintenance)
          5.7.1.10.16 The Impact On Population

     5.7.1.11 Military Need: Theoretical Scenario 2

Today:

     5.7.1.12 Stronghold Density
     5.7.1.13 Zone Size
     5.7.1.14 Base Area Protected per Stronghold
          5.7.1.14.1 The Distance between defensive centers
          5.7.1.14.2 The relationship between defensive patterns
          5.7.1.14.3 The shape of the defensive pattern
          5.7.1.14.4 What is 100% coverage, anyway?          5.7.1.14.5 Calculating Area Protected
               5.7.14.5.1 Three Satellite
               5.7.14.5.2 Four-Satellite

          5.7.1.14.6 Configuration Choice(s)
          5.7.1.14.7 The Impact On Roads
          The Impact on populations

     5.7.1.15 Economic Adjustments
     5.7.1.16 Border Adjustments
     5.7.1.17 Historical vs Contemporary Structures
     5.7.1.18 Zone and Kingdom Totals
     5.7.1.19 Reserves

5.7.2 Castles, Fortresses, and the like
     5.7.2.1 Distance to a satellite fortification using 2d6
     5.7.2.2 Distance to a neighboring hub
     5.7.2.3 Combining the two: the nearest neighbor

5.7.3 Inns

In future parts of this chapter

5.8 Villages, Towns, & Cities

5.8.1 Villages
     5.8.1.1 Village Frequency
     5.8.1.2 Village Initial Size
     5.8.1.3 The Generic Village

5.8.2 Towns
     5.8.2.1 Towns Frequency
     5.8.2.2 Town Initial Size
     5.8.2.3 The Generic Town

5.8.3 Cities
     5.8.2.2 Small City Frequency
     5.8.2.3 Small City Size
     5.8.2.4 Size Of The Capital
     5.8.2.5 Large City Frequency
     5.8.2.6 Large City Size

5.8.4 Economic Factors, Simplified
     5.8.4.1 Trade Routes & Connections
     5.8.4.2 Local Industry
     5.8.4.3 Military Significance
     5.8.4.4 Scenery & History
     5.8.4.5 Other Economic Modifiers
     5.8.4.6 Up-scaled Villages
     5.8.4.7 Up-scaled Towns
     5.8.4.8 Up-scaled Small Cities
     5.8.4.9 Upscaling The Capital & Large Cities

5.8.5 Overall Population
     5.8.5.1 Realm Size
     5.8.5.2 % Wilderness
     5.8.5.3 % Fertile
     5.8.5.4 % Good
     5.8.5.5 % Mediocre
     5.8.5.6 % Poor
     5.8.5.7 % Dire
     5.8.5.8 % Wasteland
     5.8.5.9 Net Agricultural Capacity

     5.8.5.10 Misadventures, Disasters, and Calamities
     5.8.5.11 Birth Rate per year
     5.8.5.12 Mortality
          5.8.5.12.1 Infant Mortality
          5.8.5.12.2 Child Mortality
          5.8.5.12.3 Teen Mortality
          5.8.5.12.4 Youth Mortality
          5.8.5.12.5 Adult Mortality
          5.8.5.12.6 Senior Mortality
          5.8.5.12.7 Elderly Mortality
          5.8.5.12.8 Venerable Mortality
          5.8.5.12.9 Net Mortality

     5.8.5.13 Net Population

5.8.6 Population Distribution
     5.8.6.1 The Roaming Population
     5.8.6.2 The Capital
     5.8.6.3 The Cities
     5.8.6.4 Number of Towns
     5.8.6.5 Number of Villages
     5.8.6.6 Hypothetical Population
     5.8.6.7 The Realm Factor
     5.8.6.8 True Village Size
     5.8.6.9 True Town Size
     5.8.6.10 Adjusted City Size
     5.8.6.11 Adjusted Capital Size

5.8.7 Population Centers On The Fly
     5.8.7.1 Total Population Centers
     5.8.7.2 The Distribution Table
     5.8.7.3 The Cities
     5.8.7.4 Village or Town?
     5.8.7.5 Size Bias
          5.8.7.5.1 Economic Bias
          5.8.7.5.2 Fertility Bias
          5.8.7.5.3 Military Personnel
          5.8.7.5.4 The Net Bias

     5.8.7.6 The Die Roll
     5.8.7.7 Applying Net Bias
     5.8.7.8 Applying The Realm Factor
     5.8.7.9 The True Size
          5.8.7.9.1 Justifying The Size
          5.8.7.9.2 The Implications

5.9 Compiled Trade Routes

5.9.1 National Legs
5.9.2 Sub-Legs
5.9.3 Compounding Terrain Factors
5.9.4 Compounding Weather Factors
5.9.5 Compounding Expenses
5.9.6 Compounding Losses
5.9.7 Compounding Profits
5.9.8 Other Expenses
5.9.9 Net Profit

5.10 Time
5.11 Exotic Transport

And, In future chapters:

Waterborne Transport

Spoilage

Key Personnel

The Journey

Arrival

Journey’s End

Adventures En Route

5.7.1.12 Stronghold Density

This subsection is where everything was supposed to start coming together.

The principle, as outlined in my notes, is incredibly simple – divide the area of each zone (adjusted for terrain) by the size of a structural units, adjusted for the military financing both contemporary and historical, to determine the density of strongholds and castles. Tweak for hostile / friendly borders. Each of these defensive structures has an entirely independent reason to exist, and becomes a nexus around which a community can and will aggregate. The more hostile the surrounding territory, the stronger this effect; the more subdued and pacified, the more these structures will stand in isolated, near but not at the heart of, settlements.

The content of this entire chapter, so far, has been aimed at generating and documenting the facts upon which the above process rests. The worldbuilding that resulted from the economic considerations was entirely a bonus.

Unfortunately, while the concept is simple and direct, the implementation, it turns out, is anything but.

▪ Base Area of a zone – easily calculated.

▪ Adjustment for terrain – easily done. Terrains that provide a source of hostile forces effectively increase the area, so that there are more protective structures; terrain that is easily farmed increases the number of people needing to be protected, so this also increases the effective area, and also increases the threat posed by those hostile forces. This can be reflected by first multiplying the area by a threat levels factor and then multiplying the result by a “benign factor”. 5.7.1.13 handles all of this.

▪ Divide by the area protected by a set of defensive structures – I thought this would be simple, too, but it isn’t. The complication is in overlaps, which can’t be counted twice. And that is further complicated by variations on the basic pattern of related structures. And it’s complicated a third time by the compounding of historical and contemporary values. I had thought that the discussion of the practicalities of the projection of power had solved these issues – it hasn’t, it’s just a starting point. 5.7.1.14 is going to have to delve into this a lot deeper. I’m simplifying it a bit by separating out that last consideration and handling it in 5.7.1.17.

Actually, there is a simple solution – I just hadn’t thought of it when I encountered the difficulties described above. But I have, now!

▪ Adjusting the result for military expenditure, which can (and almost certainly will) cause unnecessary structures to be abandoned and left to fall into ruin, was more complicated than I thought it would be, but the hard work has already been done, and a lot of solid world-building resulted along the way. 5.7.1.15 handles this.

▪ Tweaking for hostile / friendly borders: This is going to be quite simple – it simply adds or subtracts from the structures emplaced along the border. If it adds, that decreases the density elsewhere; effectively increasing the area that each structure has to protect; if it subtracts, that either frees up structures for deployment along a hostile border or acts to increase the density in the region overall. 5.7.1.16 addresses this.

The end goal: to be able to state how far apart these defensive structures are and how many men and women they contain in military service. 5.7.1.18 does this for fixed infantry, 5.7.1.19 handles mobile forces (including naval and cavalry), 5.7.1.20 adds reserves, and 5.7.1.21 aggregates everything.

This is, ultimately all about demographics – how many people there are in a zone and how they are distributed. Because the military have to be there, have limits to how much and how many they can protect, and spend money (acting as a basis of local economy), this is the starting point for defining the answers to those demographic issues.

The intent for this section wasn’t to spell out how it was all supposed to come together, it was to briefly discuss the differences in defensive structures. If you’re going to supply a ‘road map’ to the content, the place to put that is normally in the top level of the relevant section – 5.7.1 in this case. But, while going through and making sure that I had all my ducks in a row, I noticed the problems.

There are two solutions: go back and expand the prior discussion, or revisit the subject, taking it further when necessary. I am choosing the latter, given the natural flow that exists in what has already been written.

Side-note: actually, the original plan was to do terrain factors for the entire Kingdom and then zoom in – so going from generalities to a sandboxed zone. But compound error magnitudes meant that it didn’t work.

5.7.1.13 Zone Size

The easiest way to determine zone size is to use the same technique that was described for Kingdom size – but there’s a small catch.

If there’s an error in the process, it gets magnified by the number of zones. You can’t rely on the unmagnified error being small enough not to cause problems. The only solution is to use smaller units. For simplicity, these should not only be whole numbers, but should also be a simple fraction of the units that you used for the Kingdom calculation.

▪ 5 miles / 5 km – divide by 5 to get 1-mile / km units.
▪ 6 miles / 6 km – divide by 2 to get 3-mile / km units.
▪ 8 miles / km – divide by 2 to get 4-mile / km units or divide by 4 to get 2-mile / km units. The latter are preferable.
▪ 10 miles / km – divide by 2 to get 5-mile / km units.
▪ 12 miles / km – divide by 4 to get 3-mile / km units
▪ 15 miles / km – divide by 3 to get 5-mile / km units.
▪ 16 miles / km – divide by 4 to get 4-mile / km units.
▪ 18 miles / km – divide by 6 to get 3-mile / km units.
▪ 20 miles / km – divide by 4 to get 5-mile / km units or by 5 to get 4-mile / km units. The first is probably good enough.
… and so on.

For this map, I’ve zoomed in on zones 1, 2, and 3 of the Zomania map. (I’ve redrawn the borders, roads, coast, etc by tracing over the existing lines because they were far too thick at this scale).

This, from memory, is about where the 20-whatever divisions were from the whole-of-Kingdom area measurement that I made earlier. I’ve divided the distance into 4, so divisions of 5-whatevers (yes, the time is coming where I’ll have to commit to miles or kilometers, but I’m going to keep things generic for as long as possible).

Drawing in the additional strips gives me this:

I started at the bottom of Zone 1, and drew in my boxes until I had it fully defined. I then changed color from blue to green and did zone 2, and then to purple and did zone 3. I also faded the horizontal divisions quite a bit so that the boxes stood out a little more strongly – and then added a drop shadow to them to make them even more obvious.

Note that this methodology supports complete sandboxing – you need only detail the zones that you actually need, and can use a broader estimate for the rest. As more zones get detailed, the rough estimate will be replaced with precise totals.

A couple of specific notes to point out before I get into the results.

★ At the bottom of Zone 1, I drew an extra line to determine how much of the 5-unit vertical division lay outside the zone, then used that to set the width of the box. Only the top part counts, in other words.

★ At the top of Zone 1, things get a little funky. I did the left-hand box first, aligned on the right to the bend in the coast. I then did the box to the right of it to contain the main part of the strip/zone overlap, and then the smallest box to deal with the remainder of the strip. That left a tiny little box for the strip above it.

★ I deliberately tried to keep these same sub-divisions for the bottom of Zone 2, on the premise that the half-way point in each strip and sub-strip would be the same – either it was part of Zone 1 or Zone 2, there was no alternative to this either-or.

★ Also at the bottom of Zone 2, note the tiny little box which introduced a new subdivision within that strip.

★ Although the scale marker shows only 5-unit division marks, I actually was able to estimate by eye down to 1/4 of a unit. I’m good at that. If you are not, indicate subdivisions or use a ruler instead of doing it by eye.

Okay, so here are the results – starting, always, from the bottom strip and working up.

Zone 1:
     ▪ 16.5 × 5 – (2/5 × 5 × 16.5) = 82.5 – 33 = 49.5
     ▪ 17 × 5 = 85
     ▪ 16.5 × 5 = 82.5
     ▪ 14.5 × 5 = 72.5
     ▪ 5.75 × 2.25 + 4 × 8 + 1 × 4 = 12.9375 + 32 + 4 = 48.9375
     ▪ 2 × 4 = 8

▪ Total = 346.4375, round to 346.44

Zone 2:
     ▪ 0.75 × 0.5 + 6 × 1 = 0.375 + 6 = 6.375
     ▪ 12 × 5 = 60
     ▪ 14 × 5 = 70
     ▪ 11 × 5 = 55
     ▪ 8 × 5 = 40
     ▪ 9 × 1.5 + 15.5 × 3.5 = 13.5 + 54.25 = 67.75
     ▪ 6 × 5 = 30

▪ Total = 329.125, round to 329.13

Zone 3:
     ▪ 4.25 × 2.75 + 19 × 2.25 = 11.6875 + 42.75 = 54.4375
     ▪ 18 × 5 = 90
     ▪ 19 × 5 = 95
     ▪ 19 × 3.5 + 17 × 1 + 14 × 1.5 = 66.5 + 17 + 21 = 104.5
     ▪ 8 × 5 = 40
     ▪ 0.75 × 1 = 0.75

▪ Total = 384.6875, round to 384.69

Next, we have to adjust these areas for terrain. We start with the Threat Level Factor:

▪ Mining 1.5
▪ Volcanoes: 1.4, + 0.01 for each active
▪ Mountains: 1.4, -0.1 if small or constantly snow-capped
▪ Forest 1.25, + 0.1 if especially dense
▪ Woods 1.2, + 0.05 if especially dense
▪ Hills 1.2
▪ Scrub 1.1 (includes groves & orchards)
▪ Coast 1.1
▪ Pasture 0.9 (includes savannah)
▪ Farmland 0.9 (includes plantations & vineyards)
▪ Desert 1.2
▪ Rocky 1.3
▪ Bog 1.3
▪ Swamp 1.5

If two terrain types apply, use the average.

▪ Town: -0.1 (only if no cities)
▪ City: -0.2
▪ Foreign Town within 5 miles: + 0.1
▪ Foreign City within 25 miles: + 0.2
▪ River: + 0.2
▪ Coast: + 0.25
▪ With cliffs &/or Caves: + 0.05
▪ With beaches: -0.05
▪ Ruin: + 0.4
▪ Civilized: -0.1
▪ “Wild”: + 0.1
▪ Known Hostile Forces: + 0.3

The adjustments are cumulative. You may not have decided certain factors, like towns and ruins – either commit to one being there right now, or halve the adjustment.

We’re obviously going to need the terrain breakdowns prepared earlier. Except that I didn’t actually give you any specifics for the example kingdom.

Zone 1:
Farmland 55%
     ▪ Base Value 0.9
     ▪ City -0.2
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.2
     ▪ Coast + 0.25
     ▪ Cliffs + 0.05
     ▪ Beaches -0.05
     ▪ Civilized -0.1
     ▪ Total: 1.05
     ▪ Base Area: 346.44
     ▪ 55% × 346.44 = 190.542
     ▪ 190.542 × 1.05 = 200.0691
     ▪ Round to 200.07
Hills & Farmland: 15%
     ▪ Base Value (1.2 + 0.9)/2 = 1.05
     ▪ Modifiers as above total + 0.15
     ▪ Total: 1.2
     ▪ Base Area: 346.44
     ▪ 15% × 346.44 = 51.966
     ▪ 51.966 × 1.2 = 62.3592
     ▪ Round to 62.36
Orchards 30%
     ▪ Base Value 1.1
     ▪ City -0.2
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.2
     ▪ Civilized -0.1
     ▪ Total: 1.0
     ▪ Base Area: 346.44
     ▪ 30% × 346.44 = 103.932
     ▪ 103.932 × 1 = 103.932
     ▪ Round to 103.93
Effective Area: 200.07 + 62.36 + 103.93 = 366.36

Zone 2:
Farmland 85%
     ▪ Base Value 0.9
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) (-0.1 + -0.2)/2 = -0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.2
     ▪ Coast + 0.25
     ▪ Beaches -0.05
     ▪ Civilized -0.1
     ▪ Total: 1.05
     ▪ Base Area: 329.13
     ▪ 85% × 329.13 × 1.05 = 293.74825
     ▪ Round to 293.75
Hills (with Farms) 15%
     ▪ Base Value (1.2 + 0.9)/2 = 1.05
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) (-0.1 + -0.2)/2 = -0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.2
     ▪ Coast + 0.25
     ▪ Beaches -0.05
     ▪ Civilized -0.1
     ▪ Total: 1.2
     ▪ Base Area: 329.13
     ▪ 15% × 329.13 × 1.2 = 59.2434
     ▪ Round to 59.24
Effective Area = 293.75 + 59.24 = 352.99

Zone 3:
Farms 75%
Base Value 0.9
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) (-0.1 + -0.2)/2 = -0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.2
     ▪ Civilized -0.1
     ▪ Total: 0.85
     ▪ Base Area: 384.69
     ▪ 75% × 384.69 × 0.85 = 245.239875
     ▪ Round to 245.24
Hills with Farms 15%
     ▪ Base Value (1.2 + 0.9)/2 = 1.05
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) (-0.1 + -0.2)/2 = -0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.2
     ▪ Civilized -0.1
     ▪ Total: 1
     ▪ Base Area: 384.69
     ▪ 15% × 384.69 × 1 = 57.7035
     ▪ Round to 57.70
Hills with Orchards 10%
     ▪ Base Value (1.2 + 1.1)/2 = 1.15
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) (-0.1 + -0.2)/2 = -0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.2
     ▪ Civilized -0.1
     ▪ Total: 1.1
     ▪ 10% × 384.69 × 1.1 = 42.3159
     ▪ Round to 42.32
Effective Area = 245.24 + 57.70 + 42.32 = 345.26

Finally, we have to adjust these results for the “Benign Factor”. These use the same base values as the “Threat Load” above, but the modifiers are different:

▪ Town: + 0.1 (only if no cities)
▪ City: + 0.2
▪ Foreign Town within 5 miles: -0.1
▪ Foreign City within 25 miles: -0.3
▪ River: + 0.1
▪ Coast: + 0.15
▪ With cliffs &/or Caves: + 0.05
▪ With beaches: + 0.15
▪ Ruin: + 0.4
▪ Major Road: + 0.2
▪ Civilized: + 0.2
▪ Known Hostile Forces: -0.2
▪ “Wild”: Average the subtotal with 1
▪ Get the square root of the subtotal

Zone 1:
Farmland 55%
     ▪ Base Value 0.9
     ▪ City + 0.2
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.1
     ▪ Coast + 0.15
     ▪ Cliffs + 0.05
     ▪ Beaches + 0.15
     ▪ Civilized + 0.2
     ▪ Subtotal: 1.75
     ▪ Sqr Root (1.75) = 1.323
     ▪ Adjusted Base Area: 200.07 (includes %)
     ▪ 200.07 × 1.323 = 264.69261
     ▪ Round to 264.69
Hills & Farmland: 15%
     ▪ Base Value (1.2 + 0.9)/2 = 1.05
     ▪ Modifiers as above subtotal + 0.85
     ▪ Subtotal: 1.9
     ▪ Sqr Root (1.9) = 1.378
     ▪ Adjusted Base Area (includes %): 62.32
     ▪ 62.36 × 1.378 = 85.93208
     ▪ Round to 85.93
Orchards 30%
     ▪ Base Value 1.1
     ▪ City + 0.2
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.1
     ▪ Civilized + 0.2
     ▪ Subtotal: 1.6
     ▪ Sqr Root (1.6) = 1.265
     ▪ Adjusted Base Area (includes %): 103.93
     ▪ 103.93 × 1.265 = 131.47145
     ▪ Round to 131.47
Effective Area: 264.69 + 85.93 + 131.47 = 482.09

Zone 2:
Farmland 85%
     ▪ Base Value 0.9
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) + (0.1 + 0.2)/2 = + 0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.1
     ▪ Coast + 0.15
     ▪ Beaches + 0.15
     ▪ Civilized + 0.2
     ▪ Subtotal: 1.65
     ▪ Sqr Root (1.65) = 1.2845
     ▪ Adjusted Base Area (includes %): 293.75
     ▪ 293.75 × 1.2845 = 377.321875
     ▪ Round to 377.32
Hills (with Farms) 15%
     ▪ Base Value (1.2 + 0.9)/2 = 1.05
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) + (0.1 + 0.2)/2 = + 0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.1
     ▪ Coast + 0.15
     ▪ Beaches + 0.15
     ▪ Civilized + 0.2
     ▪ Subtotal: 1.8
     ▪ Sqr Root (1.8) = 1.3416
     ▪ Adjusted Base Area (includes %): 59.24
     ▪ 59.24 × 1.3416 = 79.476384
     ▪ Round to 79.48
Effective Area = 377.32 + 79.48 = 456.8

Zone 3:
Farms 75%
     ▪ Base Value 0.9
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) + (0.1 + 0.2)/2 = + 0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.1
     ▪ Civilized + 0.2
     ▪ Subtotal: 1.35
     ▪ Sqr Root (1.35) = 1.1619
     ▪ Adjusted Base Area (includes %): 245.24
     ▪ 245.24 × 1.1619 = 284.944356
     ▪ Round to 284.94
Hills with Farms 15%
     ▪ Base Value (1.2 + 0.9)/2 = 1.05
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) + (0.1 + 0.2)/2 = + 0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.1
     ▪ Civilized + 0.2
     ▪ Subtotal: 1.5
     ▪ Sqr Root (1.5) = 1.225
     ▪ Adjusted Base Area (includes %): 57.70
     ▪ 57.70 × 1.225 = 70.6825
     ▪ Round to 70.68
Hills with Orchards 10%
     ▪ Base Value (1.2 + 1.1)/2 = 1.15
     ▪ Town or City (not sure at this point) + (0.1 + 0.2)/2 = + 0.15
     ▪ River (assumed) + 0.1
     ▪ Civilized + 0.2
     ▪ Subtotal: 1.5
     ▪ Sqr Root (1.5) = 1.225
     ▪ Adjusted Base Area (includes %): 42.32      ▪ 42.32 × 1.225 = 51.842
     ▪ Round to 51.84
Effective Area = 284.94 + 70.68 + 51.84 = 407.46

I thought about applying a separate factor for any tactical considerations but realized that these two already encompassed just about everything I could think of. I’m mentioning it here so that no-one thinks that there’s been something left out – as I initially would have done.

It’s also useful for the future to calculate the ratio between these adjusted sizes and the actual size, called the “Net Population Density Factor” because that tells us how much closer together Strongholds have to be.

     ▪ Zone 1: 482.09 / 346.44 = 1.391554, round to 1.39
     ▪ Zone 2: 456.8 / 329.13 = 1.38790, round to 1.39
     ▪ Zone 3: 407.46 / 384.69 = 1.0591905, round to 1.06

5.7.1.14 Base Area Protected per Stronghold

This sounds like such a simple factor; it’s anything but.

The problem starts with circular areas partially overlapping; you can’t count any area twice.

There’s a way to calculate that but it’s nowhere near as simple as I’d like:

But the complications don’t stop there. If that was all there was to it, I would probably have lived with it, breaking the calculation down into stages.

There are three-and-a-half factors that define the problem.

▪ The distance between defensive centers, which defines the size of the overlap within a structural defensive pattern;
▪ The shape of the overall defensive pattern;
▪ The distance and spacial relationship between structural defensive pattern (that’s the half-factor);
▪ The overlap between defensive pattern that results – again, each pattern can only count once.

Oh, and one more, that might not seem like such a big issue:

▪ Exactly how do we define 100% coverage, anyway?

I need to look at each of these separately, because the GM has decisions to make. I thought that I had already given some of them adequate coverage in earlier sections, but the reality has proven different, so I have to go back to ground zero.

5.7.1.14.1 The Distance between defensive centers

The image to the side of this text is a slightly more detailed analysis of a simple four-pointed structure. As before, there is a central Stronghold which houses both infantry and cavalry units, and a ‘ring’ of lesser strongholds that house infantry only (including archers).

Each diagram increases the separation between the central Stronghold and its satellites, measured in half time-period marches by the infantry. So for the first diagram, they are half a time unit away, in the second they are 1 time unit away, and so on. To avoid cluttering the diagram, the notations of these distances are the only labels.

Each stronghold is surrounded by a pair of rings showing how far the infantry project power full-strength (the darker colors) and the distance one strength-level down (pale colors). The exception is the central Stronghold – while the infantry here would be expected to defend the central stronghold and project power in the immediate area, they would not go further. That, and reinforcing the satellite strongholds, is the responsibility of the cavalry.

Cavalry was defined as being able to travel 3 1/2 times the distance in a day as infantry could march, but on the presumption that this would exhaust their mounts, I have drawn the zone of projected power that they provide as only 2 1/2 times that distance, which leaves them fit to engage in combat (which is potentially necessary, given that they are reinforcing the fixed infantry). The presumption made earlier, that infantry had to be able to reinforce infantry, doesn’t actually have to apply.

Okay, so that’s what you’re looking at: Let’s analyze the results.

▪ The 1/2 time unit overlap at the top is so centralized that it’s almost perfectly circular, and Cavalry would have so much range in hand that you may as well consider it to be that shape. These really are too close together to be practical – but this option definitely presents the strongest defensive structure.

▪ The 1 time-unit diagram is the ‘refined’ version of the diagram originally presented. There are more pronounced lobes surrounding the satellite strongholds, the infantry-protected area is definitely NOT a pure circle or even close to it.

▪ The 1 1/2 time-unit diagram is where things start to get interesting. There is now a separation between the satellites and the central stronghold, so they could only reinforce it (at need) with a forced march, or by more than a day of standard marching. But they project power further away from the central stronghold.

▪ The 2 time-unit diagram shows that the reach of the infantry in the satellite strongholds extends as far as the effective range of the cavalry from the central stronghold if they force-march or take two days to reach the combat front. That means that they can reinforce the quick-response cavalry in the event of trouble. At the same time, Infantry from the central stronghold can reinforce the satellites by proceeding at the same pace – either one time-unit’s forced march or two days’ regular march. This is arguably the optimum configuration from the point of view of strength – if you only have four satellite strongholds. But that’s getting ahead of myself.

▪ Finally, at 2 1/2 time units march, the forced march / 2-day’s march range of the satellites now projects beyond the optimum distance for the Cavalry, and the satellites are beyond the reach of central Infantry even at a forced march. But this, quite obviously, projects power over the greatest area of the five options presented.

▪ Not shown is a 3 time-unit distance. Requiring units to march for an extra time unit before they can reinforce one of the satellites or vice-versa doesn’t just increase the difficulty of doing so by the proportionate amount, it doubles it or worse. It really isn’t practical. That means that you are relying on cavalry for your reinforcement. The part of the satellite power projection that extends beyond the practical range of that cavalry is effectively wasted, and this would be a significant loss. Every effect and consequence that is visible in the 2 1/2 unit version is amplified, both positive, and especially, negative. It really is too far – for this particular structure.

The GM has to decide what the configuration is, within the Kingdom being constructed. But it’s too soon to make that decision.

.5.7.1.14.2 The relationship between defensive patterns

The relationship between defensive patterns can be expressed as the distance between the central points of those patterns.

This can be a little hard to see at this scale, but click on the image above to open a version 1024 × 1571!

Which brings me to the above set of diagrams. Once again, let me start by explaining what you are looking at, and then I can get down to analyzing the results.

To start with, notice the nomenclature used to label each diagram. The first number, before the comma, is the separation between satellites and central point, the same as in the previous diagram. The second number, after the comma, is the distance between these central points vertically and horizontally (the actual separation will be 1.4142 times the number shown, obviously).

I learned when doing the first examples of this sort of analysis that the use of color complicated everything to the point of near-incomprehensibility. So for these diagrams, I have reduced the base pattern to black, and then replicated it in white to show how they overlap at different separations. Hopefully, that eliminates clutter and makes them more comprehensible.

First observation: If you use a pattern of 4 satellites to a hub, then you also need to use a structure of 4 overlapping patterns. I tried alternatives (fearing another complicating factor) and nothing else actually works.

I have also removed the Cavalry circle; it wasn’t really adding anything to the understanding of what was being shown.

Finally, although the assumption is that there are four patterns overlapping the central, black pattern, I’ve only shown the upper two. Without that, you couldn’t really see the shape of the main pattern. I needed to show two overlaps so that you could also see the interactions between them.

What do these show?

▪ 1/2, 2 1/2: the edges of the overlapping lobes are in contact, and meet at the edge of the primary pattern. There is nowhere that can’t be reached by Infantry within 2 days. This is as strong a configuration as you get; in fact, it’s arguably overkill. 2.5 × 1.4142 = 3.5355 – close enough to 3.5 – so the central commands are just within 1 day’s reinforcement range of each other using Cavalry. But their horses would be exhausted by the time they got there.

▪ 1/2, 3: moving the structures further apart makes it explicit that cavalry cannot travel from one hub to another in a single day. That means that whatever fixed units are in place have to hold out for that much longer before help cam arrive. There’s now a visible gap between the two overlapping structures, so there will be a small zone reachable only by Cavalry. So the difference in configuration may be small but the implications are significant.

▪ 1/2, 3 1/2: separating the overlapping patterns just half-a-day’s march more means that there are no longer any infantry overlaps. Every pattern has to stand alone save for cavalry reinforcements. The area that can only be protected by Cavalry is also significantly greater – roughly nine times what it was in the previous configuration. So far as infantry strength is concerned, we have gone from vastly more than 100% coverage to considerably less.

▪ 1, 2: Larger patterns brought closer together. At this distance, the central point of each pattern is reinforced by each other pattern, and – if all four of the overlaps where shown – there would be virtually nothing of the reference pattern visible. 2 × 1.4142 = 2.8, which is less than 3.5, so each of the central points of each pattern are reinforcable by cavalry from its neighboring patterns. Again, this is far more than 100% force projection.

▪ 1,3: the increase in the size of each pattern means that this is the equivalent of the initial 1/2, 2 1/2 structure. There are some areas where the power projected is only 100% (50% each from 2 patterns), but for the most part, it’s higher than that.

▪ 1, 4: Gaps in infantry protection have started to appear, in which defense will rely on Cavalry. These are 4-6 times the size of the gaps in the 1/2, 3 structure (I’m assuming that the gaps between the primary pattern and each of the reinforcing patterns add up to 1x that size, each, in making that estimate). What’s more, at a minimum distance of 4 day’s march, not even Cavalry can reach those gaps in a day. 4 × 1.4142 = 5.6558 so reinforcement of one pattern by another also takes more than 1 day for Cavalry units.

▪ 1 1/2, 2 1/2: The 1-day circles of the overlapping satellites are in contact. Those satellites are reinforcable by Infantry in two days. Force Projection is substantially more than 100%. This is an effective all-infantry structure with no need for Cavalry reinforcements.

▪ 1 1/2, 3 1/2: moving the overlapping patterns a day’s march further apart still yields 100% infantry projection over a 2-day period. The area being protected is visibly larger, but there’s nowhere reliant on Cavalry.

▪ 1 1/2, 4: A small gap has now opened up in between the protected areas, so Cavalry is necessary. There isn’t as visible an increase in the area protected, but that’s not surprising given that the separation increase is half the size.

▪ 2, 3: The 1-day lobes of adjacent patterns are touching, and overlap the 1-day lobe of the primary pattern. Once again, there is a visible increase in the area protected 100%, with no cavalry necessary.

▪ 2, 4: Now it’s the 2-day lobes that are touching, and there is the slightest of overlaps with the 1-day lobes of the primary pattern’s satellites. Still 100% or better over 99% of the area protected – and that’s without Cavalry.

▪ 2, 4 1/2: Tiny cavalry-only gaps appear at the vertices of the primary pattern. Since they are 4 1/2 day’s march from the reinforcing point, they are also more than 1 day’s distance for Cavalry. While some of the area is 100% protected or better, there are areas that are not. But the area protected has visibly increased even over the 2,4 structure.

▪ 2 1/2, 4: Two day’s march from an overlapping satellite gets you to the edge of a neighboring pattern’s 1-day area. So infantry reinforcement is no longer possible. There are no areas that are not protected 100% within the two-day march, and only very small areas that are not 100% protected at the 1-day level (usually from overlaps from other defensive structures or patterns). Okay, there might be the tiniest areas at the 45-degree angles relative to the primary structure that need cavalry – but those are on the fringes of four two-day infantry marches, so even that is doubtful, and well within the margin of error of these quickly-constructed diagrams. And the area protected is absolutely enormous.

▪ 2 1/2, 5: Gaps have now opened clearly at the vertices and at the 45-degree angles. 5 units distance or less puts them well within the 2-day range for cavalry. There is obviously going to be a great deal more autonomy in the defensive patterns, with such small overlaps. Rapid reinforcement is not really possible from outside a pattern, again emphasizing self-reliance. I would describe this structure as ‘porous’. But the area covered is enormous.

And it’s the area covered per defensive structure that lets us turn an (adjusted) area into a number of strongholds within that area.

But we still aren’t ready for a GM to decide on the patterns and structures of the Kingdom he’s creating. These have all been created using the four-satellite (simplest) patterns – those are not the only options.

5.7.1.14.3 The shape of the defensive pattern

You could have three, or five, or six, or eight satellites to a pattern. And each of these options interacts slightly differently with the differences in separation.

As a general rule, the more satellites you have, the greater the projection of power and the more overlap there will be between defensive patterns. There is less reliance on the central stronghold and more on your neighboring satellite strongholds. The military strength is more dispersed and more uniformly present at the same time.

Again, this can be a little hard to see at this scale, but click on the image above to open a version 1024 × 1290!

Okay, I got ambitious in generating the diagram above – perhaps a little too ambitious, as I needed to drop in another diagram to explain what the one above was showing. I’ll get to that in a moment.

The nomenclature has been extended, as you can see – there are now “#x” before the first number, and occasionally, ” + #” after the second. “#x” refers to the number of satellites. So technically, all the diagrams presented earlier should have “4x” in front of them – but I’ve considered them to be the default, because they are the easiest to grasp. When you place overlapping patterns, sometimes there are gaps that are the exact size to hold another satellite; the count of those gaps are the # in ” + #”.

There’s also a “/#” – specifically, a “/4” – that I’ll explain when I come to it.

All that should become clearer as I go through the individual results.

The diagram above contains both kinds of diagram from earlier – there is one or more showing the structure of a pattern, and then two or more showing how those patterns combine. For the structure-of-a-pattern, the cavalry 1-day radius and 2-day radius is also shown.

Let’s step through these, one by one:

▪ 3 × 1 1/2, 4: These little bundles of three represent a very strong infantry configuration within each structure, and overlaps in the reinforcement capabilities of Cavalry based in the central hubs. Unfortunately, those hubs didn’t show up very clearly – you can see them in some of the diagrams but not others, and this is one of those cases where they are almost invisible. The first thing that you notice are the huge gaps that appear when you overlap these structures by the indicated difference. They may appear alarming, but they aren’t, and here’s why:

As you can see in the explanatory excerpt beside of this text, the projected overlapping structure, if offset correctly, plugs perfectly into the gap, completely filling it. So this is actually a solid greater-than-100% infantry Force Projection configuration.

▪ 3 × 1 1/2, 4 1/2: Even increasing the separation between patterns by a half-day’s march doesn’t change this. The coverage is solid, and the combined total is so close to a perfectly round circle that you may as well use that as the shape – just make the radius a little smaller than the outer limits of the merged pattern. Notice, too, that the Cavalry Zone is completely overwhelmed by the infantry zone. So this is all standing army with no need for Cavalry.

▪ 3 × 1 1/2, 6: Pushing things a LOT further, and gaps will start to emerge. You could conceivable plug those gaps with an extra satellite, producing a 3 × 1 1/2, 6 + 6 structure, but that became visually confusing when I tried diagramming it. Or you could upgrade those extras to full Central status, providing additional cavalry reinforcement of the satellites above and below it.

Neither should actually be necessary – if you consider the Cavalry radius shown in the first diagram, you will see that these gaps are completely covered by them.

It’s also worth noting that I worked hard to preserve the scale between these non-four configurations and the 4-satellite configurations shown earlier – so you can visually see that this protects a LOT more area, but it contains a lot more defensive structures, as well, and a higher proportion of them are the more expensive central structures.

▪ 5 × 2 and 5 × 3 and 5 × 4: These three diagrams illustrate three different 5-satellite configurations. The first shows massive infantry overlap and hence reinforcement. The second puts such reinforcement 3 days away, but there is still 100% within the two-day infantry march. At 5 × 4, there are no overlaps and gaps have started to appear; those gaps, as shown by the overlaid texture, are within 1/2 a day’s ride by the Cavalry, or just a little beyond; they would be very well covered by cavalry.

▪ 5 × 2, 6: My initial thought was to position the overlaps such that two of the satellites were the same installations, adding a ring of 15 satellites and 5 additional hubs to the larger configuration, but it became immediately apparent that there was nothing gained from doing so. So, instead, I offer this configuration for consideration.

This shows 5 hubs and satellites overlapping a 6th pattern. The area covered is larger again, visually so, but gaps have seemingly started to appear. But take a look at the satellites around the gap at the bottom of the diagram – notice anything?

To the side, there’s an excerpt of the space of talking about. But maybe you still can’t see it – so let me draw lines connecting them, quick-and-dirty, as shown to the side. It’s a mirror image of the satellite pattern of the primary structure. And that means that having the correct amount of overlap between this structure and an identical one below it would completely cover the gap.

▪ 5 × 3, 8: It’s only when you push things out to this level that you start getting genuine gaps that need to be covered by Cavalry. But, as the base 5 × 3 pattern shows, they have ample capability to do so. While this structure no longer has 100% infantry cover, it still achieves 100% Force Projection as a result. And, for the same reason described above, those ‘gaps’ are actually covered by the next group of structures.

▪ 6 × 2 and 6 × 3 and 6 × 4: Gamers tend to think in hexagons (though perhaps not so much as they used to), so the 6 × patterns look elegant and practical to us. As usual, the 6 × 2 is all about maximum defensive strength for a limited area of protection. Everything is within a 2-day march of everything else, and there are massive overlaps within the structure.

Things become a bit looser at the × 3 – and reinforcement is now 3 days away, except by horseback. The 6 × 4 pattern is the clearest, with no infantry overlap and gaps that have to be covered by Cavalry.

▪ 6 × 5 / 4: Everything that I’ve shown you so far has been a pretty solid defensive infrastructure. It’s been about rapid responses to imminent threats – appropriate for places with wild monsters running around that could crop up at any time, but most of the time, things aren’t like that. This diagram shows a 6 × 5 pattern, which means infantry isolation and gaps. But it also shows where each fortification’s infantry can get to in four day’s march.

Imagine the sequence of events – an Orc army shows up within the responsibility of one of the satellites. They immediately send alerts to their neighbors and call for reinforcements. Assuming the messages are sent by rider (and they probably would be), it’s a day-and-a-half before word reaches anyone. Even a rapid response would take a little time to organize – count that as another half-day. So, two days after the enemy were spotted, reinforcements march. Cavalry will get to the trouble spot less than 2 days later – so the defenders have to hold out for about 3 1/2 days on their own. Those reinforcements will do little but replace some of the lost men; they can only stave off the inevitable – and they will have to fight their way through enemy ranks to even do that much. But there should be enough aid that they can hold out another day-and-a-half – and that’s when the infantry reinforcements show up. Assume it takes a day for these to fight their way through to the protection of the fortification – that means that effective reinforcement is a full week away.

You might be able to say the same about a 6 × 5 1/2 / 4 configuration, which allows less organizational time and gives the reinforcements only half-a-day to get through the enemy army, but that’s getting chancy. It’s certainly not true of a 6 × 6 / 4 structure; help for that structure is an extra day away.

Eight days to respond effectively to a military threat. Is that quick enough? The answer – conditionally – is yes; the condition is that the fortification has scouts around that give some advance warning of the oncoming horde. Every day of advance warning is one day sooner that reinforcements arrive. So that would be the most porous state of military preparedness that would be considered acceptable.

Beyond this limit, it becomes necessary to delay the enemy, giving up territory for time, before a counteroffensive can begin. And that’s an entirely reasonable military paradigm in an area that’s not under constant military threat.

We’re still groping our way toward determining how many fortified positions a Kingdom has, backed by how many men. So this configuration demonstrates exactly how to appraise the key question of what the Kingdom expects those fortifications to be able to accomplish.

▪ The final configuration I have diagrammed is the 6 × 4, 12 + 12 pattern. Every fortification is 4 days infantry march away from another, so rapid response is not on the menu – but response in force very much is. There’s a very uniform density to the result. But, critically, there are gaps – six of them around the central pattern, and six more along the periphery of the greater structure. These gaps, as you can see, are exactly the right size to be filled by ‘extra’ satellite fortifications. And seamless military distribution can be achieved if the 5 satellites along one side of the resulting larger structure are also the five emplacements on the opposite side of the next such grouping.

The area protected is immense. It’s a hex whose sides are 5 × 2 × 2 = 20 day’s march to a side. The area of a hex is 3 × (sqr root 3) / 2 × side length squared – or about 2.6 × side length squared. In this case, 1039.23 × d^2, where d is the distance your troops can march in a day on ideal terrain.

     If d=10 miles (low), that’s 103,923 square miles.
     If d=20 miles (still low), that’s 415,692 square miles.
     If d=25 miles (reasonable), that’s 649, 519 square miles.
     If d=30 miles (doable), 935,307 square miles.
     If d=40 miles (close to max), 1.66 million square miles.
     If d=50 miles (max), 2.6 million square miles.

Remember, you need time each day to camp, set out defenses, cook food and feed your army, rest, and unpack your camp – and that has to happen in daylight because the alternative replaces one task with another (foraging for additional firewood). With anything the size of an army, 4-8 hours of daylight get burned in this fashion. If you have 10 hours of light a day, that eats significantly into it. In summer, you might be blessed with 14 hours of effective light; in winter, it might be 8 or even only 6, depending on how far north (or south) you are!

The smaller the number of men, the smaller the time that has to be sacrificed in this way – when you get down to the squad level (or an adventuring band), it might only take an hour to set up camp. So they will travel a lot faster.

But there’s one more, much simpler, configuration that I want to throw out there for consideration. It is based on the statement, “just because you can do something it is not necessary that you be required to do that thing.”

One error: the riding scale reads “days” when it should say “1/2 days”. Discovered too late to correct it.

This cuts the edges off the projection of power circles to create neat rectangular shapes that can stack in brick-like fashion, tiling an area with protection. The example above again uses a four-satellite structure to form it’s pattern, with the satellites at a distance just over 1 day’s march from the hub (1.414 day’s march if you want to get technical).

Increasing the separation to two day’s march gives this:

Note that I fixed the error mentioned above in time for this one. Observe that visibly the central pattern appears roughly the same size – it’s only when you realize that the “Cavalry Circles” are the same size in both that you appreciate how much greater the area protected is. This is a consequence of scaling to fit the available screen space.

At three day’s march, a new phenomena emerges: the corners of the satellite zones are no longer reinforcable by Cavalry with 2 days hard riding. As with the earlier examples, this means that the satellites will need to hold out for longer on their own if they come under attack, and that means increasing the military presence in them – and there’s only one place for them to come from, the central stronghold. In effect, pre-reinforcing all of them. It doesn’t take too much of that before you defeat the purpose of the configuration, i.e. having the satellites as weakly manned as possible to permit a large mobile reinforcement force to be deployed as needed.

Looking closely, the fact that these were generated as quick-and-dirty as possible becomes very apparent. Sorry.

I have one more “brick” configuration to offer. It is based on three day’s march from the satellites, and increases the distance between satellites and central hub to a full 4 day’s infantry march. Because of the trends described above, I think this is just about the limit of viability for this configuration.

Because this was getting a little hard to see clearly at CM-publishing scale, I’ve also provided a 1024 × 944 – sized version – just click on the image above. Unfortunately, the ‘quick and dirty’ becomes even more apparent at this scale, but I’ve never been one to hide my workings behind a curtain, anyway.

Each pattern of this configuration is 10 days’ march across, and square. Let’s apply the values given earlier to interpret that:

     If d=10 miles (low), that’s 100 × 100 = 10,000 square miles.
     If d=20 miles (still low), that’s 200 × 200 = 40,000 square miles.
     If d=25 miles (reasonable), that’s 250 × 250 = 62,500 square miles.
     If d=30 miles (doable), 300 × 300 = 90,000 square miles.
     If d=40 miles (close to max), 400 × 400 = 160,000 square miles.
     If d=50 miles (max), 500 × 500 = 250,000 square miles.

But the illustration shows 7 of these patterns in a brick-like relationship.

     If d=10 miles (low), that’s 7 × 10,000 = 70,000 square miles.
     If d=20 miles (still low), that’s 7 × 40,000 = 280,000 square miles.
     If d=25 miles (reasonable), that’s 7 × 62,500 = 437,500 square miles.
     If d=30 miles (doable), 7 × 90,000 = 560,000 square miles.
     If d=40 miles (close to max), 7 × 160,000 = 1,120,000 square miles.
     If d=50 miles (max), 7 × 250,000 = 1,750,000 square miles.

1.75 million square miles is admittedly less than the 2.6 million square miles of the more complex configurations – a little over 2/3 of it – but it’s still plenty big enough.

With the possible configurations all described and analyzed, only one factor remains before it’s time to make some important decisions.

5.7.1.14.4 What is 100% strength, anyway?

The final factor to be taken into account is a more philosophical one. It’s pure form is as stated in the sub-section title, but the practical one is this: How do we count the area protected? Anything with a force projection at maximum (1 day’s infantry march) is obviously 100% – but what about the area beyond that?

Earlier in this chapter, I laid out guidelines for how much force could be projected at a distance by a body of men:

An infantry unit projects it’s full power for 1 day’s travel outwards, then 1/2 at 2 days, 1/3 at 3 days, 1/4 at 4 days, and so on.

It’s maximum ‘range’ is set to 7 days, giving total effectiveness of 2.593 when you add up the fractions.

A cavalry unit projects it’s full power for 3 day’s travel outwards, then 1/2 at 5 days, 1/4 at 7 days, and 1/8 at 10 days. At 14 days travel, the strength is 1/16th.

It’s maximum practical effectiveness is also capped at 7 days, giving a total force projection of 4.5.

Let’s simplify a bit. Ignore cavalry for a moment; in terms of infantry, there are two ways of interpreting 100% projection of force:

▪ The area protected is defined as the area of possible force projection within which 100% strength or more can be brought to bear by the pattern;

▪ Each sub-zone is calculated as area × force projection and the total protected then determined. This total must equal 100%.

Clearly, the second is a LOT more complicated. It only gets worse when we factor in Cavalry.

▪ Under model 1, any shortfall in 100% force projection is to be made up using cavalry. Divide the infantry shortfall by the cavalry force projection at the outermost limit of the protected area to determine the strength in cavalry required for this function. The infantry strength of the central hub can then be reduced by the cavalry strength.

▪ Under model 2, infantry sub-areas are further subdivided by cavalry force projection and the two are subtotaled to determine the total projection of power within the protected zone. This sounds like it makes a complicated situation a lot worse, but because cavalry project 100% power at a radius of three days’ ride and cavalry move 3 1/2 times faster than infantry, that’s 3.5 × 3 = 10.5 days infantry march – and NONE of the patterns shown have infantry-based areas of protection anywhere near that large. So cavalry contribute 1:1, which effectively eradicates this added complication.

Let’s go back to the simple 4-lobe configuration and look at the combinations. I’ve added a third & 4th day’s march to the central hub, a 3rd day’s march to the satellites, and numbered each of the resulting sub-zones in the diagram.

Insanely complicated, isn’t it? So, let’s simplify with the concept of zones of responsibility, the divisions for which run at 45 degree angles outward from the central hub. Reinforcement of the satellites is only the responsibility of the central hub except for areas that are less than 2 day’s march from a satellite. No satellite has any actions greater than 2 day’s march except for reinforcing the central hub, which has sole jurisdiction within 1 day’s march. When I apply all of those restrictions, I get this much simpler diagram:

While it’s still more complicated than I would like with 37 sub-zones, it is a lot more manageable than the previous version’s 121!

So let’s look at a couple of these (I’m not going to do them all):

▪ Sub-zone 1: 2 days infantry from satellite b, >1 day cavalry from hub A, so 60% B Infantry and Cavalry A to make up the difference to 100%.
▪ Sub-zones 18, 28, 37 – the same with respect to satellites c, d, and e

▪ Sub-zone 2: >2 days march from satellite b so it’s not responsible. Cavalry from A – and possibly from the next pattern’s hub, F or G – have responsibility. 4 Day’s march for infantry from A and F/G.
▪ Sub-zone 5, 9, 29: The same with respect to satellites c, d, and e and pattern hubs H and I. 4 Day’s march for infantry from A and H/I.

▪ Sub-zone 3: Infantry: 2 days from b, so 50%B infantry strength. 4 days from A, so 25% A Infantry. Cavalry from A to make up the difference to 100% – but this requirement is going to be less than the difference from sub-zone 1.
▪ Sub-zones 10, 17, 35: The same with respect to satellites c, d, and e.

▪ Sub-zone 7: Infantry 2 days from b, so 50%B infantry strength. 3 days from A, so 33% A Infantry. Cavalry from A to make up the difference to 100% – but this requirement is going to be less than the difference from sub-zone 3.
▪ Sub-zones 11, 15, 32: The same with respect to satellites c, d, and e.

▪ Sub-zone 14: Infantry 2 days from b, so 50%B infantry strength. 2 days from A, so 50% A Infantry. Cavalry from A to make up any difference.
▪ Sub-zones 22, 24, 31: The same with respect to satellites c, d, and e.

▪ Sub-zone 8: 100% B Infantry, 33% A infantry, A cavalry to make up the difference, but as usual this will be less than the sub-zone 1 cavalry requirement.

….and so on. Regularity of the pattern makes for regularity of the sub-zone strengths.

So the penultimate consideration is this: just how much is A expected to be able to do at once? This needs to be considered separately with respect to infantry and cavalry.

In a peaceful area, the capacity to do one is probably enough – i.e. enough cavalry to reinforce 1 or 18 or 28 or 37, and enough infantry to hold A.

In a more troubled area, you might need twice as many Cavalry (2 things at once) and maybe enough infantry for 14 or 22 or 24 or 31 in addition to the standing force for A. Which means that by compromising A slightly, you could also do 2 infantry reinforcements at the same time.

In a frontline area facing a hostile force, you might want 3 Cavalry and weakening A is no longer acceptable, so A needs double or even triple the infantry (1 or 2) tasks in addition to protecting the area around A).

One more complication remains, and it’s one that’s already been highlighted:

This has, in fact, already been touched on in looking at the zones – it’s our old ‘friend’, the degree of overlap between patterns and consideration of what force projection adjustments are needed when contributions from neighboring patterns are taken into account.

The 2 1/2, 4 structure is the simplest, because it means that sub-zones 2, 5, 9, and 29 form part of the responsibility of another pattern. The 2 1/2, 5 structure has genuine gaps that has to be protected with Cavalry – half from A and half from the neighboring pattern.

So the more complex approach – with a little simplification – is more doable than it first appears. But I’m going to take the simpler approach, and assume that the military force present under ideal circumstances is exactly what’s needed to achieve 100% force projection at the weakest point in a pattern.

5.7.1.14.5 Calculating Area Protected

Having completed the overview of the many different considerations that lead to a defined configuration, it’s worth reminding ourselves of what we’re trying to get out of all this.

▪ Total Zone Area / Protected Area of 1 pattern = number of patterns for 100% force projection

▪ Number of satellites in a pattern × number of patterns = total number of satellites

▪ Number of hubs in a pattern × number of patterns = total number of hubs

Once this is known, we can determine how many men of each type are present in satellites and hubs, but that’s further down the track.

Key to all of this is determining the area protected by a single pattern of satellites and hubs, and that depends on (1) the number of satellites to a hub, (2) the distance between satellites and hubs, (3) the distance between hubs which determines overlaps, and (4) how we have defined the level of protection i.e. the Force Projection of a pattern.

At this point, my original intention was to present a table listing the various configurations and the ‘area protected’. I intended to use a spreadsheet to perform the calculations necessary to give precise values, and then move on to how a GM decided on which configuration was present in a particular zone.

The complications and complexities revealed have pretty much forced the abandonment of that approach to some extent. Instead, I’m going to give the simple solution to how to get the area protected by a pattern and then cherry-pick selected examples; leaving the actual values of chosen patterns to the GM to determine.

One simple principle makes all this work, and it comes from (4) – if a pattern is providing 50% of the force projection in an area, it counts as protecting 1/2 of that area. If it’s providing 1/3 of the force projection, it counts as protecting 1/3 of that area.

5.7.1.14.5.1 Three-Satellite

This shows me measuring the area protected by a 3-pattern. The first thing to notice is that the need to project infantry power to the 100% level in the range 2 day’s march from a satellite is definitive of the infantry strength needed; because of this, the overlaps with adjacent patterns don’t matter in this configuration. This also means that the same area gets protected even if the satellites are moved another half-day apart, or even another full day. This won’t always be the case.

Second, notice that there is symmetry along one axis – this permits one side of the boxes to (mostly) share a common alignment, making measurement that much simpler. I just have to remember to double the end result – or, better yet, since my vertical divisions are 1/2 day’s marches, I can double as I go and simplify the math.

With those notes out of the way, what’s the area protected per pattern in the 3 × 1 1/2, 4 and, 5 structures? Bottom to top (because that’s the order that I did the boxes in):

     2 × 1/2 × 1/2 × 1.25 = 0.625
     2 × 1/2 × 2.5 = 2.5
     2 × 1/2 × 2.9 = 2.9
     2 × 1/2 × 3.1 = 3.1
     2 × 1/2 × 3.25 = 3.25
     2 × 1/2 × 3.1 = 3.1
     2 × 1/2 × 2.95 = 2.95
     2 × 1/2 × 2.5 = 2.5
     2 × 1/2 × 2.1 = 2.1
     2 × 1/2 × 1.9 = 1.9
     2 × 1/2 × 1.8 = 1.8
     2 × 1/2 × 1.5 = 1.5
     2 × 1/2 × 1 = 1
     Total: 29.225 d^2

     If d=10 miles (low), that’s 29.225 × 100 = 2922.5 square miles.
     If d=20 miles (still low), that’s 29.225 × 400 = 11,690 square miles.
     If d=25 miles (reasonable), that’s 29.225 × 625 = 18,265.625 square miles.
     If d=30 miles (doable), 29.225 × 900 = 26,302.5 square miles.
     If d=40 miles (close to max), 29.225 × 1600 = 46,760 square miles.
     If d=50 miles (max), 29.225 × 2500 = 73,062.5 square miles.

If I were applying this to Zomania Zone 1, we got an area earlier of 482.09 square ‘units’ – but I carefully avoided defining the units concerned, anticipating this moment.

If the units are miles, then 482.09 × 5^2 = 12052.25 square miles; if they are km, then I have to convert 12052.25 sqr miles into sqr km = 4653.38 square miles; but if they are in day’s marching, not only do I not need to convert, I can actually throw away the entire indented second paragraph above, and the answer is 482.09 d^2.

And 482.09 / 29.225 = 16.4958 patterns. Call it 16 1/2.

Lose 1 1/2 and consider that to be the location of the capital – something that can’t be done in other zones, but I’ll take advantage of it while I can – which leaves 15 patterns. So that’s 1 palace, 15 hubs, and 16 × 3 = 48 satellites.

5.7.1.14.5.2 Four-Satellite

This shows our familiar 4-satellite hub. The simplification offered by the 3-satellite structure is no longer valid, because of the amount of overlap – technically, this is a 4 × 4, 6 structure.

The first thing you should notice when examining the above image is that there is, again, symmetry, this time around 2 axes – I’ve again used the vertical one, but you don’t have to if it doesn’t work for you. I again have vertical divisions of 1/2 a day’s march (except for one spot in the middle where I had to use quarters). That’s the easy stuff.

Overlaps here do matter, and there are two ways of handling them – which is why there are two different area measurements shown. The first is based on the principle of not counting the overlap area closest to the capital. But that actually bites into the 1-day’s march areas at the top and sides. So, option 2 relieves the overlapping pattern of responsibility for those (but not for the 2-day’s march).

Let’s do the math, as usual, from the bottom up:

Method 1:
     2 × 1/2 × 1 = 1
     2 × 1/2 × 1.6 = 1.6
     2 × 1/2 × 1.9 = 1.9
     2 × 1/2 × 2 = 2
     2 × 1/2 × 2.95 = 2.95
     2 × 1/2 × 3.6 = 3.6
     2 × 1/4 × 3.45 = 1.725
     2 × 1/4 × 2.9 = 1.45
     2 × 1/2 × 2.5 = 2.5
     2 × 1/2 × 2.2 = 2.2
     2 × 1/2 × 2.05 = 2.05
     2 × 1/2 × 1.1 = 1.1
     2 × 1/2 × 0.4 = 0.4
     2 × 1/2 × 0.15 = 0.15
     2 × 1/2 × 0 = 0
     2 × 1/2 × 0 = 0
     2 × 1/2 × 0.15 = 0.15
     Total: 24.775

     Zomania Zone 1: 482.09 / 24.775 = 19.458 – call it 19.5;
     lose the 1.5 again = 1 capital;
     18 patterns = 18 hubs and 18 × 4 = 72 satellites.

Notice that this is less than the three-satellite area!

Method 2:
     (2 × 1/2 × 1 = 1)
     (2 × 1/2 × 1.6 = 1.6)
     (2 × 1/2 × 1.9 = 1.9)
     (2 × 1/2 × 2 = 2)
     (2 × 1/2 × 2.95 = 2.95)
     (2 × 1/2 × 3.6 = 3.6)
     2 × 1/4 × 3.5 = 1.75
     (2 × 1/4 × 2.9 = 1.45)
     2 × 1/2 × 2.8 = 2.8
     2 × 1/2 × 2.85 = 2.85
     2 × 1/2 × 2.5 = 2.5
     2 × 1/2 × 1 = 1
     2 × 1/2 × 0.8 = 0.8
     2 × 1/2 × 0.8 = 0.8
     2 × 1/2 × 0.45 = 0.45
     (2 × 1/2 × 0 = 0)
     (2 × 1/2 × 0.15 = 0.15)
     Total: 27.6

     Zomania Zone 1: 482.09 / 27.6 = 17.467 – call it 17.5;
     lose the 1.5 again = 1 capital;
     16 patterns = 16 hubs and 16 × 4 = 64 satellites.

The calculations in brackets are the same for both methods. The 7th measurement should also be the same but it looked slightly closer to 3.5 across on the right and not close enough to 3.5 (but more than 3.4) on the left – an actual example of the margin of error coming into play!

This calculation, too, is smaller than the area protected by the 3-satellite version, and it’s worth taking a moment to see what that means.

The three-lobe pattern is protecting a larger area with fewer fortifications; the balance has to be made up with more men, so the fortifications themselves have to be larger (and probably stronger). The four-lobed pattern has a lot of overlap with its neighboring patterns, and this reduces the area of responsibility of any one fortification, so these are smaller but more numerous. The first is manpower- and money-critical; the second is a little less so. The first is closer to putting all of your eggs in one basket (but making it a good one), the second leaves things a little looser.

The large degree of overlap also means that should something happen to one of the fortifications, it can be reinforced from several sources fairly quickly. That’s not quite as true of the 3–lobed pattern.

5.7.1.14.5.3 Six (Twelve)r-Satellite

One more example, because it’s illustrative, and I’ll move on.

This is the 6 × 4,12 pattern without the +12 and with parts of the adjacent patterns redacted (but outlined) to show the gaps that have to be covered really clearly.

The question is, how to cover those gaps. There are multiple options and this really is where things can get complicated.

With Cavalry, 1 & 2 day’s ride

Option 1 is to rely purely on Cavalry. The problem here is that even at 2 day’s ride – with the mounts exhausted at the end of it – there are still tiny little gaps. That permits engagement at the start of the third day, giving the mounts time to rest. Or you could bow to the inevitable and slow your pace to get there in, say, 2 1/2 days, without exhausting the mounts at all. Either way, cavalry can support a solution, but they are not the solution – not if a timely response is called for.

3 day’s march

Option 2 is to have the infantry march an extra day – but this is not enough to completely cover the gaps.

4 day’s march

Option 3, four day’s march, does completely fill the gaps. But it’s hardly a timely response. Still, if cavalry engage the enemy after 2-and-a-bit days and can pin them down for a day-and-a-half fighting defensively, this is a viable solution. If that seems a bit much for the cavalry to handle, they can simply delay responding for a half-day or whatever, narrowing the demands placed upon them until the tactical situation becomes practical. Under this scenario, the cavalry are no longer a support mechanism, they are a tactical resource that simply have to hold until the infantry get there; you don’t care if none of them survive longer than that.

The big problem with this solution is that infantry projection of power is severely diminished at this distance. The formula is 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and so on. There are six satellites equidistant from the most vulnerable point, in the center of the gaps; and 6 × 1/4 = 1.5. Stripping those satellites of infantry gives a 50% reserve over the 100% force projection standard – or you could leave the satellites with 1/3 their infantry. 2/3 × 1.5 = 1, so that achieves 100% force projection – but at the very least, it leaves those satellites vulnerable. The reality is, then, that this involves boosting the infantry manpower in each satellite to 166%, leaving them fully defended while being able to project power all the way into the gap.

6 satellites × 1.6667 = 10 × the infantry, spread amongst the 6 satellites – to protect 1 gap.

Protecting a second gap at the same time isn’t quite as bad, because two of the satellites is already at boosted infantry levels – unless you want them able to do both at the same time, which you probably do. So that increases that satellite’s infantry by another 2/3, so 2 1/3 normal levels. It also adds another 4 satellites at boosted infantry to the 1.66 level.

By now, you should be able to observe that what this all means is that the central hub is, in fact, the most weakly-held of all the positions in the pattern, because it doesn’t have to plug any gaps.

But there is a fourth way, as explained earlier.

2 additional satellites per hub

It only takes two additional satellites per hub to perfectly plug the holes. The diagram above shows, in dark purple, the two that are part of this hub. I have ghosted the matching additions for two of the adjacent patterns – a pair in yellow and a par in red. If the same thing had been done for the adjacent patterns below this pair, the gaps in the top half of the area shown would be fully protected. Add in another pair for the adjacent pattern at the bottom and it’s almost complete – there are still two gaps at the bottom, that will be filled by the extras from the next set of patterns.

The weakest points in this structure are 2 days march from 3 satellites. 2 days’ march is 50% force projection. To get that back up to 100%, we need to increase the force stationed in those satellites by 2/3 – sound familiar?

6+2=8 satellites, 8 × 2/3 = 5 1/3. That’s the additional manpower required, minimum. Compare that with the 4-day-march solution, where we had 12 satellites at + 1 1/3 and 12 at + 2/3 out of 7 × 6=42. 12 × 1 1/3 + 12 × 2/3 = 16 + 8 = 24; to compare like with like, × 8/42 = 4.5714. So the 4-day-march requires slightly less manpower overall – but does so by throwing the lives of cavalry away and sacrificing timely responsiveness to threats. In the long run, the extra satellites are likely to be both cheaper and more cost-effective.

All this matters because it changes the area under the protection of the pattern, and that’s what we’re trying to calculate.

Under the 4-day march situation, the gaps are ‘shared’ by two adjacent patterns and the main pattern. There are 6 gaps, so the main pattern is responsible for 1/3 × 6 = 2 ‘gaps’. Either way, then, we end up with an area measurement like this:

So, to measure it up, I add boxes like this (note that we again have symmetry around the vertical axis, making it easy to use 1/2 day units for most of it – there are a couple of spots where I had to go to 1/4 units and even 1/8 units, though):

     2 × 1/2 × 1.08 = 1.08
     2 × 1/2 × 1.95 = 1.95
     2 × 1/2 × 2.4 = 2.4
     2 × 1/2 × 2.675 = 2.675
     2 × 1/4 × 4.26 = 2.13
     2 × 1/4 × 4.35 = 2.175
     2 × 1/2 × 5.3 = 5.3
     2 × 1/2 × 5.7 = 5.7
     2 × 1/2 × 6.025 = 6.025
     2 × 1/2 × 6.2 = 6.2
     2 × 1/2 × 6.3 = 6.3
     2 × 1/2 × 6.3 = 6.3
     2 × 1/2 × 6.225 = 6.225
     2 × 1/2 × 6.025 = 6.025
     2 × 1/2 × 5.875 = 5.875
     2 × 1/2 × 5.95 = 5.95
     2 × 1/2 × 6.225 = 6.225
     2 × 1/2 × 6.385 = 6.385
     2 × 1/2 × 6.5 = 6.5
     2 × 1/2 × 6.5 = 6.5
     2 × 1/2 × 6.35 = 6.35
     2 × 1/2 × 6.2 = 6.2
     2 × 1/2 × 5.86 = 5.86
     2 × 1/4 × 5.575 = 2.7875
     2 × 1/4 × 5.225 = 2.6125
     2 × 1/2 × 5.2 = 5.2
     2 × 1/2 × 5.55 = 5.55
     2 × 1/4 × 5.9 = 2.95
     2 × 1/4 × 6.5 = 3.25
     2 × 1/2 × 5.8 = 5.8
     2 × 1/2 × 5.3
          – 2 × 1/4 × 1.1
          – 2 × 1/8 × 0.2
          = 5.3 – 0.55 – 0.05 = 4.7
     2 × 1/2 × 3.225 = 3.225
     2 × 1/2 × 2.975 = 2.975
     2 × 1/2 × 0.55
          + 2 × 1/2 × 0.8
          + 2 × 1/8 × 1.725
          = 0.55 + 0.8 + 0.43125 = 1.78125
     2 × 1/2 × 0.325
          + 2 × 1/4 × 0.2
          = 0.325 + 0.1 = 0.425
     0.8 × 2 × 1/4 × 0.1 = 0.04
     Total = 157.62655

     Zomania Zone 1: 482.09 / 157.62655 = 3.058. Call it 3, dead on.
     So that’s 3 hubs and 3 × 8=24 satellites.
     Lose one hub and call it a capital.
     Total: 1 capital, 2 hubs, 24 satellites.

5.7.1.14.6 Configuration Choice(s)

You now have everything I can give you to assist in choosing a configuration for your defensive patterns, except for some advice.

Look at the zones that you have specified, and in particular, the threat levels. The higher these are, the more satellites and tighter the pattern configuration should be. The more secure, the fewer satellites are needed, and the looser the configuration needs to be. The capital, by virtue of its importance, should always count for more than a single pattern’s worth. Anything from 1.5 – 2.5 is reasonable – the latter possibly drawing down the strength in other patterns by a small amount that cumulatively makes a significant whole.

I encourage you to have two, three, or even four different choices based on the Zone’s threat level and proximity to the capital. You don’t just want it able to resist whatever gets thrown at it (to whatever extent that is possible), you want to defeat threats before they even get close to threatening it.

But a Kingdom is also more than the capital – if all your fields are captured and the livestock slaughtered, a besieged capital can get very hungry very quickly.

Things are not as bad in that respect in most fantasy environments because they are more medieval in social and economic infrastructure. In modern times, transportation efficiency and cost minimization means that food is warehoused for as little time as possible. That means that food reserves within a large, modern, urban environment are measured (generally) in days. In times past, this was months, with a peak just before Winter – because there was little or no food coming into the city during that season, with the possible exception of seafood.

The modern expectation is that supermarket shelves will begin to empty in 24-48 hours, but people can get by through choosing alternatives. Disaster planners estimate that this would permit the city to continue for 5-8 days. More extremist planners use a ‘worst case’ scenario of 3 days.

In the 1930s, this would have been 1-3 weeks. In the 1830s, 1-3 months. In medieval times, 6-12 months – because being besieged was always a possible threat.

The number has actually been stable at the 3 or 5 – to 8 days mark for quite some time – I remember that number being mentioned when there was a transport strike a few years back, and again last year when there was a similar event.

Basically, it won’t change until one of two things changes: the efficiency with which produce can be processed through the wholesale / retail system, for example with pre-purchasing produce (bypassing the supermarket shelves entirely), or the speed with which produce can be gathered and distributed (better roads, or some faster alternative). Larger transports can convey produce more efficiently, but take longer to load and unload and induce more wear-and-tear on the road system – natural evolution of process has more or less optimized what we’ve got in terms of efficiency.

If there is a 100% gain in efficiency, that will more or less halve the reserves – but 100% gains in efficiency are hard to come by. 10% or 25% is far more likely.

The implication is that the worse the infrastructure, the greater the reserves that will be kept on hand, and the local society would adapt accordingly. There are areas in the US, for example, where it would not be surprising for regional cities to have an extra day or two in reserve, and for towns to have three or four days in reserve.

Two other considerations that were raised earlier: (1) A good road network enables greater mobility which increases the separation possible between both satellites and patterns. In fact, it can double both values, and therefore, the area protected per pattern. (2) Difficult terrain works in the other direction, reducing mobility, though it may offset some of this loss by providing natural defenses. Even so, in difficult terrain the number of satellites and proximity of patterns should increase.

Also, remember the history – most of these fortifications would not have been constructed with ‘modern’ considerations in mind; they would have been built in accordance with the conditions extant at the time. There was a time when Zone 1 was presumably the totality of Zomania; then it expanded this way and that, creating a ring of Zones around Zone 1. And then a further ring of Zones around those, following another series of expansions. And then a few more expansions in the areas not blocked by mountains or other nations followed, notably to the north and southwest.

It’s for reasons of reflecting this sort of thing that I actually favor the hexagonal configurations – because you can shut down every second satellite to revert to a 3-lobe structure when the infrastructure is in place.

Finally, don’t fall into the trap of excessive homogeneity. There will be areas where fortifications are closer together than average and areas where they are further apart. This is actually – in part – addressed by the principle of taking internal fortifications away to raise capacity along hostile borders, as discussed earlier.

5.7.1.14.7 The Impact On Roads

The best roads possible will almost always be found connecting hubs to satellites, and to neighboring satellites. Again, mobility is a force amplifier and a massive tactical advantage, and one that no military would ignore.

Perhaps paradoxically, this ultimately means that the best roads lead from the central hub of the entire Kingdom (usually the capital) to the locations under greatest threat.

5.7.1.14.8 The impact on populations / societies

People like to be protected from harm. Villages and towns will almost always spring up around a fortification, in part to service the men stationed there, and in part because of the protection those men provide. These aren’t the only considerations, but they are significant inducements. I’ll get into this side of things more strongly in a future part of this chapter.

5.7.1.15 Economic Adjustments

Take a quick look back at 5.7.1 and 5.7.1.1 – 5.7.1.2, because it’s been a while.

In those sections, we calculated in tenths of a percent of the population, the force needed to protect an area to the military effectiveness that we set for the Kingdom. This is only the standing army, mind.

     AMS3I (I for infantry) = 2.9 / 2.593 = 1.1184
     AMS3C (C for cavalry) = 2.9 / 4.5 = 0.6444
     AMS3T (T for total) = 1.1184 + 0.6444 = 1.7628.

This protects an area to a net strength of 2.9, which was the Adjusted Military Strength 2 calculated in 5.7.1.1.3.

The configuration of the fortifications may alter these numbers. Infantry are only 50% effective more than a day’s march from their stronghold / base – cavalry can take up some of the slack, but as a general rule, half as strong means twice as many men, which means increasing the AMSI.

1.7628 × 2 = 3.5256; subtract the cavalry contribution 0.6444 = 2.8812; divide by the original 1.7628 to get the adjustment needed = 1.623444; and multiply the AMSI by the result = 1.8157.

So 100% force projection requires 0.18157% of the population to be infantry, and 3 cavalry for every 7 × 1.623444 = 11.364108 infantry. In addition, we need 1 wizard and 1 cleric for that many infantry.

We might not be able to pay for all that. I was able to balance Zomania’s budget without cutting into the military strength, but not all Kingdoms are going to be so lucky, which was the point of 5.7.1.11.

In that hypothetical scenario, the budget for Zone 1 was reduced from 6 to 3, i.e. cut in half. So the military strength in Zone 1 strongholds will also therefore be cut in half – from a strength of 1.8157 to just 0.90785.

Using the budget – and any cuts made – you can now determine exactly what the percentage of the population in each zone is who are in the Infantry – and from that, how many cavalry, wizards, and clerics are also in the military. And how big the navy is, as well.

5.7.1.16 Border Adjustments

This simply means subtracting from the number of satellites in most of a zone to get extras to emplace along the border. Even if the border is now purely internal, if at any point it was the barrier between the Kingdom and a hostile world out there, it should get this treatment.

This would not have been done after the fact – you can’t generally move a Fort or a Tower or whatever. It would have been done in the planning stages. This is the real limitation of the 3-lobe configuration – you can’t really drop it any lower. But anything else? Sure,.

4-satellites: reduce to 3. Gives + 1 satellite each along the border.
5-satellites: reduce to 4. Gives + 1 satellite each along the border.
     Or, reduce to 3, giving + 2 satellites each along the border.
6-satellites: reduce to 5. Gives + 1 satellites each.
     Or, reduce to 4, giving + 2 satellites each.
     Or, reduce to 3, giving + 3 satellites each.
8-satellites: reduce to 6, giving + 2 satellites each.
     Or reduce to 4, giving + 4 satellites each.

Remember to look at how convenient or otherwise it is going to be to configure patterns with the extras as well.

4-satellites: + 1 = 5. No problem. + 2 = 6: No problem.
5-satellites: + 1 = 6: No problem. + 2 = 7 – awkward.
6-satellites: + 1 = 7: awkward. + 2 = 8 – No problem.
8-satellites: + 1 = 9. No problem, actually. + 2 = 10, no problem.

I haven’t shown them before, so here’s an 8, a 9, and a 10, just to round out the family.:

Observation #1: Note the apparent pattern of increase in the distance between hubs and satellites needed to fit that many satellites around the hub. I suspect that’s just a coincidence but didn’t take the time to study it further. DON’T rely on it.

Observation #2: With the 8 pattern, 2 day’s ride from the hub is the same as 3 day’s march from a satellite.

Observation #3: I’ve indicated the relationship between adjacent hubs as simply as possible. With the 8 pattern, this is VERY simple, with the two hubs sharing two satellites. Assuming that pattern persists, each pattern only effectively contains 4 hubs! So this is a quite dense defensive pattern, suitable for danger-zone deployment.

Observation 4: I used math to calculate the distance between hubs:

This is for the 8, but the same basic technique was used for all four: construct a parallelogram, divide along long axis, divide across short axis, h is known, so distance is calculated as 2 × h × cos (1/2 × acute angle).

Observation 5: The relationship between 9-patterns and 10-patterns is more complicated, with 9-patterns being the worse of the two. Hopefully, these simplified diagrams made it clear.

Observation 6: Note that the Cavalry distance shown does not change from one diagram to another – so it should give an instinctive awareness of scale.

Observation 7: In the 9-pattern, there us a gap between the 2-day march limits of hub and satellite. Those gaps either have to be protected by Cavalry alone, or by Cavalry plus third-day-march infantry (1/3 force projection). A third option would be a lesser standard of fortification \expected only to project force within 1 day’s march; 9 of these would be required, positioned at angles midway between the major satellites. I haven’t calculated it, but I suspect this is the less efficient solution in this case.

Observation 8: The gaps are about the same size in the 10-pattern as in the nine. However, 5 additional fortifications at a 2-day force-projection is a further option to consider. I suspect this would be a more efficient solution than 10 lesser fortifications.

5.7.1.17 Historical vs Contemporary Structures

Growth in a Kingdom is, generally speaking, a good thing, but it can create some military headaches. Fortifications meant to protect a border are a lot more expensive and substantial and frequent than those needed to protect an interior – and manning them takes a lot of manpower, which is therefore not where the Kingdom really needs them to be.

As if that weren’t bad enough, they can be quite expensive to maintain, and there’s almost always something better to do with the money.

But it’s not as expensive to maintain these older structures as it is to build new ones in the new optimum places – so there is often a need for a defensive compromise. Troops being out of optimum position only matters if they are insufficiently mobile to make up for the shortcoming.

There are three ways of doing this: Roads, Rivers, and Cavalry.

▪ Improving the roads automatically makes everything more mobile. There are limits to how much you can gain, though.

▪ Using rivers can be a great supplement to roads – but the river has to go where you want it to in order for this to work. Fortunately, communities have other reasons to settle along riverbanks, so at least some of the burden can be met in this way.

Both of these have a drawback – the enemy can use them, too. But there’s an advantage to compensate – the economy is stimulated; mobility of goods is just as powerful as mobility of troops, and troops move only when they have to – goods are transported and trafficked all the time. So the downside is a short-term problem, but the upside is a continuous benefit – more than making up for it.

▪ Cavalry offers neither the drawbacks nor the advantages of either of the earlier solutions. What the offer instead is flexibility. Once a road is situated, it’s permanent and not easily changed – it only goes where it goes. Rivers are automatically permanent, requiring even more resources and effort to divert – and it’s not something that can be done in response to a dynamic military emergency.

Your optimum choice in strategic terms is to combine Roads and Cavalry. But that’s also the most expensive, and kingdoms have to be selective about what roadworks they spend up on.

So the theoretical pretty picture developed in previous sections is all well and good but the reality is likely to look quite a bit different. While it might be theoretically possible for infantry to reach a historical fortification that has fallen into disuse, in practice the distance traveled might be too great due to the unevenness of distribution.

If a road or river happens to connect a contemporary fortification with the historical one, then infantry might still be the answer. While both roads and old fortifications are probably connected, whether or not it passes close to current fortifications is the unknown factor. When there’s no convenient way to extend your reach, additional cavalry are called for.

5.7.1.18 Zone and Kingdom Totals

Once you have the Zone or zones that you need most urgently detailed, it’s worth the effort to do a whole-of-kingdom approximation. Each time you detail a new zone, subtract it’s area from the overall Kingdom and recalculate; then add the specifics of the newly-detailed zone. Keep this up long enough, and eventually, you will have completely eliminated the approximation and replaced it with a contemporary total.

In particular, the size of the infantry (fixed forces) and cavalry (mobile forces) in each stronghold is critically important, because that determines how much they can protect and how much of an impact they have on the local economy..

It can be even more useful, when the PCs do something unexpected, to have divided the approximation by the number of undetailed Zones, because that at least gives you something to work with when improvising.

5.7.1.19 Reserves

Basing the number of men and women answering to the military on the mission they are expected to be able to carry out has an additional benefit – it automatically includes reserves to the minimum number required.

To increase security, all you have to do is increase the military budget and wait. As you add additional reserves, the ratio of new budget to old will tell you how to adjust the military strength, and that will in turn describe the optimum distribution of these additional forces.

But a lot of Kingdoms won’t leave their reserves on stand-by-for-rapid-deployment status – they will train them, then pay them an additional pittance to keep the military command advised of where they are located and let them return to the general workforce. That mitigates the expense by boosting the economy, but still leaves you able to call up any men in a given vicinity at need – it will only take a little while.

What none of these calculations provide for, however, is a standing army for offensive activities. It’s all been about defense so far. When a ruler starts beating his chest and issuing Declarations, he generally has to gather his army from his reserves, for the most part. Anything else is betting the farm on a long-shot (often literally).

So having some notion of the number of reserves in a given zone or sub-zone is a useful fact to have up your sleeve.

5.7.2 Castles, Fortresses, and the like

So far, I’ve been able to dance around the need for definitions by using generic terms like “hub”, “satellite”, and “fortification”, while similarly generic terms like “pattern” and “structure” were used to describe their relationship with each other, but that has carried me about as far as it can go. Time to actually define what these things are,

Satellites are fortifications based around infantry forces only. The following would qualify:

Village Wall – A wall around the perimeter of a settlement. If erected in haste, they are typically made of wood, earth, or a combination of both. Areas under slightly greater threat may add a second palisade or a moat. Those areas under greatest threat may commit to a stone wall, but this is rare. Walls are constructed to protect a settlement from small-scale raids or wildlife. Their primary purpose is to provide a basic deterrent and a first line of defense rather than to withstand a sustained siege. See Defensive Wall | Wikipedia and Walled Village | Wikipedia.
Lookout / Observation Post – A small, elevated structure – which could be a simple platform in a tree, a small stone hut on a hill, or a temporary wooden structure – used to watch for approaching enemies. It is not designed for defense but for early warning, often manned by a small number of sentries. However, when coupled with a small fort, the lookout can trigger a defensive action. Often coupled with signal towers (essentially more of the same, some distance apart, each with line of sight to the next) which can notify distant fortifications of impending attack. See Watchtower | Wikipedia.
Guardpost – A small building or fortified position, usually along a road or river. Its purpose is to control access, check travelers, and serve as a base for a small group of guards. It is generally a point of control, not a self-sufficient fortification. Most larger fortifications have one or more guard posts to control access to the fortification. See Guardhouse | Wikipedia.
Tower – A tall, slender structure. In real life, usually attached to a wall or part of a larger complex; in Fantasy gaming, however, they are also commonly found in isolation, and are sufficiently popular as Wizardly domiciles that it’s pretty much a cliche. The problem with that is that the isolation possible in a tower is tailor-made for wizards, so the cliche isn’t going away any time soon. A tower can be a lookout, a point from which to fire projectiles at attackers, a key part of a wall’s defensive network, or a self-contained defensive stronghold. However, towers tend to have very limited capacity for manpower – so they are suitable as a small satellite, but not (in isolation) as a hub. See: Tower | Wikipedia and
Fortified Tower | Wikipedia
Camp – A camp is a temporary or semi-permanent settlement, often for a military force on the move – but in this context, it’s a semi-permanent installation that has been upgraded and made permanent while retaining the title originally bequeathed to it. While a camp may have defensive features like a palisade or a ditch, its primary purpose is to provide a place for soldiers to rest and organize, not to be a long-term defensive structure. That makes it suitable as a satellite but not as a hub. See Military Camp | Wikipedia and Training Camp | Wikipedia.
Fort (small) – A fortified military installation (from which the name derives, obviously). Small forts are outposts, typically designed to house a garrison and serve as a base of operations. A fort is built specifically for military purposes and often lacks the residential comforts of a castle. They are typically positioned strategically to control a key location like a river crossing, bridge, mountain pass, or trade route. See Fortification | Wikipedia.
Keep – Outside of Fantasy games and fiction, a keep is the most fortified and often central tower within a castle, the last line of defense, a fortified residence for the lord and his family, and often a secure storage location. It forms a core part of a castle, but is not a standalone structure in its own right in most cases. In Fantasy games, all that goes out the window – a keep can be the surviving remnant of an overrun castle, surrounded by ruins, or it can exist completely independently of any larger structure. It is often not a tower when used in that sense, but a reinforced building (usually of stone) and the base of operations of a garrison. The shift comes about because the term is a romantic one to attach to a location of significance, and has been ever since D&D’s “Keep On The Borderlands”. See Keep | Wikipedia.
Castle (tiny) – A number of defensive structures nested in series, usually with a fortified outer wall and a dwelling with stone walls several feet thick. Towers attached to one or both are common, as are moats. Positioned on the highest ground available, which can be artificially increased in height if necessary, castles usually serve as a residence for the ruling Local Noble and their family. The differences between a small castle and a typical one are simple but profound; a small castle might have a single curtain wall and a simple keep, only a small bailey (the courtyard inside the walls), and a garrison of limited size. It might house a minor noble or none at all. One of the military functions of a castle is to withstand sieges for long periods of time; the smaller the castle, the shorter this expectation. The smallest might only be able to hold out for a month or three – but that’s still enough to pin an enemy down, whittling away at its numbers. Defeating one castle only to find another a little deeper into the territory being attacked is generally enough to hold off an army until the season turns – and Winter always favors the defenders. A large castle dials all this up to 11, as you’ll see below. See Castle | Wikipedia.
Fortress (small) – A significant and permanent military fort, and designed to be just that from day one – no compromises. The very term implies a significance of scale and fortification, designed to withstand a long and determined siege – six months to a year, minimum. Fortresses are often a key part of a kingdom’s strategic defense, controlling a large region and serving as a hub – but if a threat is now or ever has been dire enough, fortresses may well be constructed as forward satellites, although reduced in scale compared to their larger namesakes. Again, compare with the “hub” entry below.

There aren’t as many choices for hubs, which are fortifications housing a mixture of unit types.

Stronghold – A general term for a heavily fortified place, which can be a castle, a fort, or a natural feature like a mountain pass that has been fortified. The term emphasizes its strength and the difficulty of capturing it rather than a specific architectural style. The name implies that it’s a stronger-than-usual exemplar of it’s actual structure type. Instead of walls three feet thick, maybe they are ten feet thick – but note that there aren’t more of them than would be usual. If a castle, a stronghold often foregoes many of the outbuildings associated with a relatively comfortable lifestyle for the inhabitants, and rarely has a resident noble other than as military commander.
Fort – Large forts are designed for a specific military purpose, be it training of new recruits or garrisoning a wide area. A large fort will often have 5-10 times the manpower as a small one.
Fortress – A fortress is a step up from Fort again; the term implies implies a significant scale and a high level of fortification, designed to withstand a long and determined siege. It is often a key part of a kingdom’s strategic defense, controlling a large region. As with the smaller variety, the term implies significance of both scale and defenses. A fortress can probably hold out for 1-2 years if under siege – and even then, it’s a shortage of supplies, not a shortage of manpower, that would be the limiting factor.
Castle – A proper castle has several layers of defense. There might be a stone or wooden wall around the entire community; there is another around the castle and bailey, possible with a couple of towers thrown in; there may well be a moat; there are then the castle walls, with more towers. There may even be a second wall around the inner core of the community, designed to be a place to which the defenders can fall back when the outer wall is breached. Ideally, the gap between walls is greater than the range of siege engines, so that they can’t hang around outside one wall, lobbing missiles at the one inside. They can be hard to find, but aerial views of reconstructed castles can be extremely enlightening – it’s one of the side-benefits I get from watching the Tour De France every year! In general, if you think a castle and its surrounds are adequately defended – add another layer of defense! It might be elevation, or an outer wall, or an outer moat (not a good idea because it limits growth within the protected area), or adding additional towers to the outer wall. Castles almost always serve as the residence of a noble family, and that also adds their bodyguards to the manpower. A castle’s first job is defense (2-5 years of siege, more of there’s a way of replenishing supplies even partially); it’s second job is protecting the residents; it’s third is projecting power (ie threats and intimidation) with its very presence; and it’s fourth job is attacking any enemy foolish enough to stick their head in the lion’s maw. Side-note: One mistake that is often made when designing complex defensive structures is placing the entrances that lead from one protected area to another in line. You want them substantially offset so that if one is forced, the attacker has to turn and travel a fair distance under heavy bow-fire to reach the next. If inner walls are shorter than outer ones, then they can be closer to them, making the passage between narrow – perhaps too narrow for siege engines. If they are elevated, so that the enemy have to climb uphill to reach the next entrance, that only slows them down and makes your archers more effective. Always ask yourself, ‘what else can I do to make this place a death trap for an attacker’. A large castle will have multiple concentric walls, multiple towers, a more extensive series of baileys and outbuildings, and would typically house a larger garrison and a more elaborate household.
Citadel – A citadel is the strongest of the lot, a fortress or fortified area within a city, whose primary purpose is to defend the city – and, if the walls are breached, to serve as a last refuge for the defenders. Think of it as a stronghold within a stronghold. A citadel may be attached to a castle, but it’s more likely that it will be a separate structure – think of a rough oval with castle at one focus and citadel at the other. One of the major differences is that a citadel is not designed to resist a siege, it’s designed to enable the force within to break up a siege. A castle is a political and administrative venue as much as it is a defensive fortification; a citadel is all military purpose and no niceties or compromises.

Of course, if there are naval forces based somewhere, there are some additional choices like “Port”.

Four other terms could use some definition while I’m about it:

Palisade – A fence of sharpened wooden stakes, typically used as a quick and simple defensive perimeter for a camp or a small settlement. It is an older, simpler form of a defensive wall.
Bailey – The open area or courtyard within the walls of a castle. It is the enclosed living and working space, often containing stables, barracks, and other structures. The bailey is a key part of the castle complex but not a defensive structure itself. A castle often has an inner and an outer bailey.
Donjon – An alternative name for the keep, especially in Norman castles. The term is French in origin and describes the central, most fortified part of the castle.
Moat – A flooded channel which can only easily be crossed via a drawbridge. Traditionally filled with water, and sometimes with sharpened spikes – though these won’t survive being immersed for very long, so either there’s a regular program of replacements or they are only put in place at the last minute – and not at all in the event of a surprise attack. RPGs open up new possibilities, though few GMs seem to take advantage of them – a moat filled with lava, kept boiling hot by fire elementals, or a moat filled with Green Slime or Gelatinous Cubes – perhaps with a thin covering of water to disguise the fact. Another fun option is to breed a variety of rust monsters that can breathe underwater – then fill the moat only to a depth of about three feet, just deep enough to hide them.

So, at this point, you know more or less where the fortifications are located, and have selected a fortification type appropriate to the locations and defensive functions that they play. Now it’s time to compromise the pretty ideal picture with a dash of realism.

Decide – and document – why that particular location is preferable for that type of defensive structure. That often defines the terrain in which the fortification is situated, and that in turn should influence at the very least the area immediately around it.

If a structure is supposed to be one day’s march, it’s not likely to be less than half of that away, and not likely to be more than half more – which calls for a dumbbell curve.

If you map a 2d6 roll’s probability, you get a pyramid shape with the apex at the average result. It takes three dice before you get an actual curve to the probability. For the distance between satellite fortifications, 2d6 is probably good enough; for the distance between hubs, use 3 or even 4d6.

Here’s how:

5.7.2.1 Distance to a satellite fortification using 2d6

(2d6-2) × F + X –
– sets the minimum result to X
– sets the maximum result to X+10F
– sets the average result to X+5F

To get X, divide the theoretical separation by 2:
▪ if 1 day apart, X = 1/2 × 1 = 1/2.
▪ if 2 days apart, X = 1/2 × 2 = 1.
▪ if 3 days apart, X = 1/2 × 3 = 1 1/2.
… and so on.

If the theoretical average is going to be 2X (which it is, by definition), then having one X already accounted for leaves one to come from F × die roll. In other words, 5F=X and 10F=2X – so simply divide the theoretical separation by 10 to get F.

Which means that our rolls are:

▪ if 1 day apart, 0.1 × (2d6-2) + 0.5
▪ if 2 days apart, 0.2 × (2d6-2) + 1
▪ if 3 days apart, 0.3 × (2d6-2) + 1.5
▪ if 4 days apart, 0.4 × (2d6-2) + 2
…. and you can take it from there.

5.7.2.2 Distance to a neighboring hub

Things get a little more complicated with 3d6. Once again, the basic form is (3d6-3) × F + X.
– sets the minimum result to X
– sets the maximum result to X+15F
– sets the average result to X+7.5F or X + 15F/2.

To get X, divide the theoretical separation by 2, as before:
▪ if 2 days apart, X = 1/2 × 2 = 1.
▪ if 3 days apart, X = 1/2 × 3 = 1.5.
▪ if 4 days apart, X = 1/2 × 4 = 2
… and so on.

And, as before, to get the other end of the scale right, we need to calculate a range of 2X. But this time, we’re breaking it into divisions of 15/2 to get F.
▪ if 2 days apart, F = 2 × 2/15 = 4/15 = 0.26666666666666666666666666666667
▪ if 3 days apart, F = 3 × 2/15 = 6/15 = 0.4
▪ if 4 days apart, F = 4 × 2/15 = 8/15 = 0.53333333333333333333333333333333

… I don’t know about you, but this annoys the heck out of me. So I would round F off, and then recalculate X.
▪ if 2 days apart, F = 4/15 = 0.267 = 0.3
▪ if 2.5 days apart, F = 5/15 = 0.333333 = 0.3 again.
▪ if 3 days apart, F = 6/15 = 0.4
▪ if 3.5 days apart, F = 7/15 = 0.46666666666666666666666666667 = 0.5
▪ if 4 days apart, F = 8/15 = 0.5 again, legitimately this time.
▪ if 5 days apart, F = 10/15 = 0.666666666666666666666666666667 = 0.7
▪ if 6 days apart, F = 12/15 = 0.8
… and so on.

Adjusting X: X= D – 5F, where D is the total theoretical distance (which used to be 2X but isn’t any more):
▪ if 2 days apart, X= 2 – (5 × 0.3) = 2 – 1.5 = 0.5.
▪ if 2.5 days apart, X = 2.5 – (5 × 0.3) = 2.5 – 1.5 = 1.
▪ if 3 days apart, X = 3 – (5 × 0.4) = 3 – 2 = 1.
▪ if 3.5 days apart, X = 3.5 – (5 × 0.5) = 3.5 – 2.5 = 1.
▪ if 4 days apart, X = 4 – (5 × 0.5) = 4 – 2.5 = 1.5.
▪ if 5 days apart, X = 5 – (5 × 0.7) = 5 – 3.5 = 1.5.
▪ if 6 days apart, X = 6 – (5 × 0.8) = 6 – 4 = 2.
… and so on.

The results are (relatively) simple die rolls.
▪ if 2 days apart, d = 0.3 × (3d6-3) + 0.5
▪ if 2.5 days apart, d = 0.3 × (3d6-3) + 1
▪ if 3 days apart, d = 0.4 × (3d6-3) + 1
▪ if 3.5 days apart, d = 0.5 × (3f6-3) + 1
▪ if 4 days apart, d = 0.5 × (3d6-3) + 1.5
▪ if 5 days apart, d = 0.7 × (3d6-3) + 1.5
▪ if 6 days apart, d = 0.8 × (3d6-3) + 2
…. etc.

What these changes do is occasionally shorten or lengthen the variability to a convenient unit and lengthen or shorten the base value so that the average is always dead-on-target. The minimum and maximum may not be right, but with 3d6, that won’t matter very often – in fact, the error will occur just 0.46% of the time. I can live with that.

Things get a bit easier with 4d6, because the average is a whole number – but not a whole lot easier because that number is 14. But 4d8, with an average of 16, or 4d10, with an average of 20, would be acceptable choices. I’ve shown all the working so that if you want to choose one of those simpler alternatives, you have all the tools you need to do so.

5.7.2.3 Combining the two: the nearest neighbor

Consider the diagram above. d1 is the distance from hub 1 to its satellite; d2 is the distance from hub 2 to it’s satellite; and d3 is the distance between the two hubs. The top measure and positions shown are as rolled – the bottom are the theoretical. Note that there can be a completely different configuration of satellites, so theoretical d1 may not equal theoretical d2. Where this occurs, theoretical d3 should be the smaller of the two values from between the two chosen configurations.

So you’ve rolled d1 on 2d6, and d2 on 2d6, and d3 on 3d6 or whatever. The only distance you don’t know is the gap between the satellites You get this – if everything lines up in a straight line – with d3-d1-d2, using the rolled values for all three.

But things get a bit more complicated when they don’t line up.

Two diagrams for the price of one! The top shows the mess that frequently results from patterns of hubs and satellites, a mess that only grows worse if Hub/satellite 2 has a different geometry to Hub/satellite 1.

You can see – in dashed green – the straight-line distance rolled for the distance between hubs. The distances between hubs and their respective satellites – d1 and d2 – have also been rolled. The geometry of the situation makes the distance we want to know, c (as opposed to C) a difficult problem in geometry to calculate.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way – we can break the distance between hubs into A and B, do the same for d1 and d2 given their respective geometries, simply subtract A-ad1-ad2 and B-bd1-bd2 to get a and b – then it’s a^2+b^2=c^2.

Or, we could employ our old friend, vector sums. We already know the vector sum of d1 – it’s where satellite 1 is positioned. We still need to break d2 into ad2 and bd2, or the distance and the angle, which comes from the geometry of hub2 and its satellites, but which is harder to measure without a protractor. The result is a line from Hub 2 to the vector sum of d1 and d2 that is exactly parallel to c and of exactly the same length – so we can simply measure it.

But there’s a fourth way, and it’s the easiest of the lot. If we (theoretically) rotate the line between hub 1 and satellite 1 so that it aligns with the direct line between the hubs, and then do the same for hub 2 and satellite 2, you will find that c – the distance between the hubs – is exactly equal to the difference between d1+d2 and the actual hub separation, or close enough to it..

This only works if the lines are more or less pointed toward each other. If Hub 2 was higher up (further north) of satellite 2, so that the line between them was oriented into a different quadrant of relative position, it won’t work. I mean, you only have to look at the diagram above and intuitively, you know that d1+d2+c is going to be more than the straight-line distance between the two hubs; the more they separate from that straight line, the greater the extra distance to be travelled. But if the direction of travel is such that the hubs more or less line up, it’s a shortcut worth using. The rest of the time: draw a map and measure it – forget all the math and complication.

5.7.3 Inns

If there’s a road, there will be Inns stationed along it. How far apart is the interesting question.

In general, there will be an inn every day’s travel at typical speed. That’s NOT the same as an army’s marching speed, and loads and conveyances will have a big bearing on the question – but, as a rule of thumb, each day of walking brings you to an inn where – for a fee – you can spend the night in relative safety.

As a general rule, Soldiers march faster than people walk, but people walk for a longer period in a day – armies generally have to set up camp, while travelers can encamp far more quickly or stay in a cozy little inn.

And, of course, for travelers going the other way, every day’s walk also leads to an inn – so there may be more inns along the way.

At least, that’s the story in relatively civilized parts of the world.

On flat, even terrain, on a good road, in good weather, a walker who is not heavily loaded or slowed by a carriage or other conveyance can generally walk 3-5 km an hour – so in 9 hours, they can cover 27-45 km. That’s 16.8-28 miles.

Every condition that is not in favor of good traveling speed is either bad or very bad.

I know I’ve offered detailed mechanics for walking speed already, but here’s a quick-and-dirty alternative:

For every factor (amongst those listed) strongly in favor of speed, count a 2. For every factor that slows progress a bit, count a 1. For every factor that slows progress a lot, count a 1/2, and for anything that’s even worse, score a 0. Include:
▪ road condition
▪ terrain impact
▪ good, indifferent or bad weather (hot or cold makes no difference)
▪ load
▪ potential danger
▪ terrain suitable for an ambush or attack
▪ walking speed
▪ physical health

Add all these up and divide by 16, then multiply by 5 for kilometers an hour or 3.1 for mph.

It’s a lot less robust and accurate than earlier systems, but for a quick and easy estimate, it’s not bad.

So, what assumptions are built into the “one day’s travel” metric for inn separation? Generally, ‘typical weather” in the worst season, road condition at that time of year, no significant load, terrain impact, danger and dangerous terrain, medium walking speed, and good physical health.

That’s 0.5 + 1 + 2 + T + D + DT + 1 + 1 = T + D + DT + 5.5

No possibility of ambush, possibility of monster encounters? That’s 2 and 1 respectively, leaving terrain + 8.5 as the total.

▪ Terrain 2: 10.5 / 16 = 0.65625 = 3.28125 km/h = 2.034375 mph.
▪ Terrain 1: 9.5 / 16 = 0.59375 = 2.96875 km/h = 1.840625 mph
▪ Terrain 0.5: 9 / 16 = 0.5625 = 2.8125 km/h = 1.74375 mph
▪ Terrain 0: 8.5 / 16 = 0.53125 = 2.65625 km/h = 1.646875 mph.

All of these are slightly faster than the average pace, and over 9 or so hours in a day, the differences can add up.

Okay, with the assumptions out of the way, let’s talk Inns.

There’s a lot going on in this diagram, so take your time and look at it carefully. It outlines four different situations ranging from the simple to the complex.

Case 1 is the simplest. Hub, satellite at 1 day’s march (high danger levels indicated) – these are shown on the top of the illustration. Hub 2 is 5 days march away, and travelers pass through its satellite a little over 2 days march before reaching it – the theoretical distance was probably 2 days, but the roll indicates that just a little further took the army to an especially favorable location for a fortification. The increased distance indicates that you are heading into safer territory. Walking from one hub to the other takes a little more than 7 days, as shown on the bottom – the difference being an hour or two spent navigating Satellite 2. If I were to continue green inns past that point, they would be so close to the red inns that the pair would not be financially viable – so the green inns stop and the red inns take over.

Case 2 expands on all of the above. Satellite 2 is now 2 1/2 days march from Hub 2, and the distance between hubs has been extended to 6 1/2 days march or a smidgen more. Here, the red inns are about half-a-day different to the green, so the indication is that there are twice as many. In reality, this probably depends on road conditions; if the roads are good or very good, I would expect half of these inns to close. If the roads are bad, or the dangers high, there would be enough customers seeking lodgings that both are probably viable operations – at least for the segment between the two satellites. Security is always better in the area between Hubs and satellites.

Most roads are not dead straight lines, and most people don’t go in straight lines when they go cross-country, either; terrain, danger avoidance, and other factors can have a big influence. So Case 3 is a more realistic example. The Hubs are now 7 day’s march apart, and satellite 1 is just short of 1 1/2 days distance from Hub 1. Satellite 2 is a little short of 3 days march from its hub. As it happens, both are exactly situated at inn-distances – 2 and 4 days, respectively – with another 4 days walk in between the satellites. If this is a major trade route, the number of inns shown are likely; but from about half-way from Hub Yellow to Hub Red, if that’s not the case, then it might well be every second one, because camping by the roadside is not as dangerous.

Case 4 is the most realistic and the most complicated. The first thing to notice is that there is difficult terrain indicated when the road turns north-east, and that only the very first and very last legs are at full speed. The same factors influence marching distances, of course. Satellite 1 is back to being just 1 day’s march from Hub 1 and Satellite 2 is a little more than 3 days’ march from Hub 2 – you could probably make it in three days because you wouldn’t have to set up camp on the third day, and so could march for an extra hour or two. It’s the travel time between the two satellites that has ballooned out – almost 8 days’ march or 11 1/2 day’s walk. The straight-line distance without terrain factors is about 5 3/4 day’s walk, so the complications almost double the traveling time.

Everything is consistent with having to cross a mountain pass, steeper on its western slopes than to the East. The terrain is so difficult that this is unlikely to be a major trading route, and the weather is likely to have a deleterious effect on road conditions as well. That means that outside this trouble spot, and especially to the East of it, only one in every two inns is likely to actually exist. As soon as the road bends North (in either direction), that’s likely to change, a change that will persist until the road again bends north! In particular, there is a strong case for the southernmost inn on the Hub 1 side and the one inn north of the equivalent position on the Hub 2 side – both would probably also have a general store, but the big attraction would be getting updates on the weather expected and the road/danger conditions. Everyone would stop and check in for that information!

Even there, the lack of trade route would probably eliminate one in two or even one in three inns in favor of known campsites. Maybe the two specifically mentioned and the one at the very top of the ascent, where the road turns south would be real.

All that changes if you are in a more secure part of the Kingdom. While there is less danger and so less demand for an inn as protection, there would be greater economic activity and a greater expectation of a little “luxury” (a very relative term) which would encourage every potential inn site to be developed.

Whew! What an epic journey this post has been. Next week, it’s the regularly scheduled time out. Not quite sure what the topic will be at this point!

Tags: Advice/Tools, Campaign-Setting, Campaigns, House-Rules, Inspiration, Maps, PCs, Plausibility, Players, D&D, NPCs, Pathfinder, Fantasy, Metagaming, Game-Prep, Worldbuilding

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Traits of Exotic d20 Substitutes pt 2: The Slightly Strange

Exotic Choice #4: 2d6+d8 (vs 2d4+d12)

Min, Max, Ave

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

The 3% Threshold

The 5% Threshold

The 10% Threshold

The 15% Threshold

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

The Lower Core

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The Lofty Outcomes

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

Second Lowest 20%

The Middle 20%

Second-Highest 20%

Highest 20%

Peak Probability

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

Summary Of Results

When To Use This Substitute

Exotic Choice #5: d10 + d12 – 1

Min, Max, Ave

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

The 3% Threshold

The 5% Threshold

The 10% Threshold

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

The Lower Core

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The Lofty Outcomes

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

Second Lowest 20%

The Middle 20%

Second-Highest 20%

Highest 20%

Peak Probability

Matching Result: 1/3 Peak Probability

Matching Result: 2/3 Peak Probability

Summary Of Results

When To Use This Substitute

Exotic Choice #6: 2d8+d6-2

Min, Max, Ave

The Thresholds

The 1% Threshold

The 3% Threshold

The 5% Threshold

The 10% Threshold

Slices Of Range: Percentages Of Probability

Range Of Results

Ave – Min, Max – Ave

1/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

2/3 (Ave-Min) + Min

The Lower Core

The Upper Core: 1/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

2/3 (Max-Ave) + Ave

The Lofty Outcomes

Slices Of Probability: The Definitive Result Values

The Lowest 20%

Second Lowest 20%

The Middle 20%

Second-Highest 20%

Highest 20%