DMs: What's a bit of world building on the micro-scale you're proud of?

[The Cats]

Our session this Saturday had been delayed for five weeks giving me way too much time to come up with the specific whys and hows of a group of primitive drow living in a small cave system directly below a lost temple to a dark god. Very little of what I came up with will be at all relevant to the adventure but it's satisfying to see my players' light bulbs turn on sometimes: "Ohhhh Their ancestors escaped from an Illithid colony and they breed troglodytes to sacrifice to the shrine's undead guardian because they think it's stopping the mindflayers from coming back! Cool, now where's that magic sword we're looking for."

They might not even learn about a tenth of what I came up with but it was fun to do all the same. What are some bits of world building you've come up with for small locations or communities that maybe didn't matter at all but you're proud of?

[Anxe]

I had an adventure set on Lemnos around 400BCE. I researched the Classical economy of Lemnos at that time to figure out what industries they would have for export. I looked into local mythology about the Kabiri. I even came up with a little family drama between the local vineyards.

The Kabiri bit made it into my campaign, but the rest got ignored in favor of the world ending vampire threat that had taken residence on the island. Can't fault my players for focusing on the important parts for this one.

I had another campaign where it ended a few sessions in. I'd made a physical prop, a journal that the BBEG was keeping. It detailed two years of his life as he descended into evil. It also gave clues for defeating him, with updates as the PCs chased him through 300CE Germany. The campaign died before they could get the journal from him though. The long term plan was that the BBEG had a magic quill that was unknowingly linked to the journal. After the theft, he'd get a new journal, but his quill would also still write to the old journal in the PCs possession. They could then use it to track him.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

World building? This may qualify as introducing life saving spells into the local economy.

The party I am DMing for recovered the body of a female elf NPC they were sent to rescue. They were low level and they heroically spent 500GP from their loot to have her Reincarnated since that was the only resurrection type spell available in the town.

In 5e Reincarnate restores you to life but you have to roll to see what species you come back as.

Oops. She came back as a 1/2 Orc. In the background of the next campaign I mentioned the former elf woman's mother was spending the family's fortune ons to k diamonds and Reincarnate spells until the rescued daughter came back as an elf.

Well a dozen sessions later the party met up with the woman who was once again an elf. Turned out it broke her family and took 13 tries. Unknown to the party the NPC made a pact with a Devil during the 13th try.

[CombatBunny]

I have a setting (anthropomorphic animals of several species) where babies aren't born, rather cloned in laboratories controlled by the Church. Locals don't know about the laboratories, rather they are taught that is the city’s goddess (Bisbishna or Bishna for short) who directly blesses them with the gift of a newborn.

Nobody is given a baby unwillingly, rather families make a request to the church and is the goddess who decides if it’s appropriate to answer that request.

As babies are perceived as a favor from the goddess, there is practically no family that doesn’t wants to have one for their own, so is rare that the Church has problems assigning them. When it happens that there is a species with low population and no family is requesting for babies (for example Lions), then the Church clones them anyway and recruit them as monks, nuns, militia or whatever the city needs.

[sktarq]

Have two:
One I built a civilization built on ancient Egypt...but set in a swamp. Very much like the Nile delta but near mountains instead of desert (bit like bangladesh). Same flood cycle etc. Same focus on preservation (now as way to contrast the swamp instead of similar to desert). Egyptian Blue dye became green. Animal headed deities? Check. Replace pyramids with domes and helix shapes over obelisks. Used Egyptian style food and medicine. And replace ancient Egyptian/coptic with phoentian/carthage/hittite similar names. But the moment that made it all? The look on the face of a couple players with ancient history/archeology (one each) when they put it together and realized what I done and that they had missed it for two/three months.

Actually my other favorite worldbuilding moment was as a player. In ravenloft I rolled up a stupid-lucky character (and so made him a Paladin to knock him down a bit)...but my DM asked me to write up my family and hometown. So I did. All 600 locals were given a basic mapping (only 60 in the village itself-it was a farming region) and the breakdown of the family with tons of take it or leave it hooks for the DM. He ended up using the town twice more (with me) in other campaigns as a major setting. And from what i heard still was ten years later when I lost track of him.

[Lord Torath]

I have a setting (anthropomorphic animals of several species) where babies aren't born, rather cloned in laboratories controlled by the Church. Locals don't know about the laboratories, rather they are taught that is the city’s goddess (Bisbishna or Bishna for short) who directly blesses them with the gift of a newborn.

Nobody is given a baby unwillingly, rather families make a request to the church and is the goddess who decides if it’s appropriate to answer that request.

As babies are perceived as a favor from the goddess, there is practically no family that doesn’t wants to have one for their own, so is rare that the Church has problems assigning them. When it happens that there is a species with low population and no family is requesting for babies (for example Lions), then the Church clones them anyway and recruit them as monks, nuns, militia or whatever the city needs.I assume these clones are infertile, so that if a couple of kids get carried away, they can't discover the secret of making babies?

[CombatBunny]

I assume these clones are infertile, so that if a couple of kids get carried away, they can't discover the secret of making babies?

Exactly, they are infertile =)

[MesiDoomstalker]

I have an Empire nestled in a far off corner of the world. It abutts the largest mountain range in the setting, cutting it off to one side. The next major humanoid popuplation is half a continent away on the other side. And since the setting is a giant cylinder, that makes them pretty isolated and self-contained. It sits between two great rivers, fed by snowmelt from the mountain range. And because of the distance between the two rivers, they exist in separate hemispheres and thus are in different seasons. So one of the two rivers is always in its seasonal flooding. The land between the rivers is at a slight downward incline, so the flooding feeds into seasonal rivers and streams that eventually feed into a massive lake, where the primary foodstuff of the empire grows along its banks. And since one of the rivers is always flooding, at least one side of the empire is in its flood plain and thus growing food.

The two rivers also are color code. The one to the west runs through an iron-rich desert, similar to the American southwest. When it floods, it picks up iron-rich clay making the river run ruddy red and the eastern bank (towards the empire) is rich in iron, silver, gold and other precious metals. The eastern river runs through marshlands and when it floods, the river overflows its banks and the entire area is one giant marsh. When this happens, the nutrient rich snowmelt causes algae blooms which are photo luminescent. So while its flooding, the marsh is constantly in a hazy blue glow giving it an ethereal and magical quality. Due to these algae blooms, the farmlands to the west (towards the empire) are especially fertile, so while farms exist on both sides, the eastern side is big on cash crops, like grapes (for wine) or pipeweed (tobacco).

[The Cats]

I have a setting (anthropomorphic animals of several species) where babies aren't born, rather cloned in laboratories controlled by the Church. Locals don't know about the laboratories, rather they are taught that is the city’s goddess (Bisbishna or Bishna for short) who directly blesses them with the gift of a newborn.

Nobody is given a baby unwillingly, rather families make a request to the church and is the goddess who decides if it’s appropriate to answer that request.

As babies are perceived as a favor from the goddess, there is practically no family that doesn’t wants to have one for their own, so is rare that the Church has problems assigning them. When it happens that there is a species with low population and no family is requesting for babies (for example Lions), then the Church clones them anyway and recruit them as monks, nuns, militia or whatever the city needs.

Sounds like a great hook for a horror/intrigue campaign.

Doomstalker's detailed explanation of how the twin-rivers affect the ecology and economy of the empire is the kind of stuff I love.

[Samwich]

Ultra microscale worldbuilding here, but it's one of my favorite details of my campaign setting.

The village the players start in has a strong gnomish influence, because honestly, gnomes are best race. One of the features the original gnomes built is a fountain set atop a geyser, so that every day at a specific time, the geyser erupts and water shoots out of various orifices in the fountain. To make it a bit more interesting, on one end of the fountain is a small box nobody has managed to open for decades. If the players can solve a few puzzles, they can open the box and access the control panel for the fountain. They can use the control panel to inject all sorts of chemicals into the fountain water, altering it's properties to do all sorts of wacky stuff.

Like I said, it's the tiniest of minor details, but I had a lot of fun making it up.

[Kaptin Keen]

East of the great city of Madripore are great open plain with little human settlement. There's a complicated relationship between the races that dwell there, tribes and nomads and micro-kingdoms. I'm proud of that. It .. may not qualify, tho. The plains are enormous, midwest size, and perhaps not really micro-scale? But the tribal interactions, how the wild centaur are feared by everyone, the gnolls rule the area around the mesas, the harn (homebrew) are peaceful but powerful nomads - and so on - and everyone is subtly manipulated by druids, so that the 'forces of nature' are strong enough, collectively, to hold civilisation at bay ... that's kinda micro, and I think it's an elegant solution to what I wanted to create: A world where wild nature actively resists the march of civilisation.

[MesiDoomstalker]

Sounds like a great hook for a horror/intrigue campaign.

Doomstalker's detailed explanation of how the twin-rivers affect the ecology and economy of the empire is the kind of stuff I love.

Thank you. I like to make sure, at least at a surface level, that my setting makes sense.

[Lord Torath]

Thank you. I like to make sure, at least at a surface level, that my setting makes sense. You say your world is a cylinder? I presume it spins along the axis of the cylinder? If that's the case, and it gets seasons for the same reason Earth does (axial tilt relative to the plane of its orbit) then the entirety of the curved surface of your cylinder will have the same seasons at the same time. It will be warmest around the equinoxes and coldest near the solstices (you'll have 8 "seasons" per year). The flat regions at the top and bottom of the cylinder will have warm and cold seasons at the "normal" times (winter solstice is colder, summer solstice is warmer, with 4 seasons per year, although the 'flat' summer will probably be colder than the 'curved' winter unless you have an axial tilt of close to 45 degrees - Earth's is 22.3o).

The reason for this is not because part of the earth is closer to the sun, but because of the angle the sunlight makes with the surface of the planet. I mean, yes, the summer part of earth is closer than the winter part, but that's a difference of about 4000 km or so compared to an overall distance on the order of 150 million km. Heck when it's winter in the northern hemisphere, the Earth is actually about 4.5 million km closer (3% if I did my math right) to the sun than it is when it's summer in the northern hemisphere. That's also why it's colder near the poles on Earth. On your world it will be slightly colder near the ends of the cylinder, but only because the flat ends will get less sunlight than the curved regions, and so will be colder - again, depending on the amount of axial tilt your world has.

If your planet has seasons for a different reason, though, please ignore all the stuff above.

[CombatBunny]

Ultra microscale worldbuilding here, but it's one of my favorite details of my campaign setting.

The village the players start in has a strong gnomish influence, because honestly, gnomes are best race. One of the features the original gnomes built is a fountain set atop a geyser, so that every day at a specific time, the geyser erupts and water shoots out of various orifices in the fountain. To make it a bit more interesting, on one end of the fountain is a small box nobody has managed to open for decades. If the players can solve a few puzzles, they can open the box and access the control panel for the fountain. They can use the control panel to inject all sorts of chemicals into the fountain water, altering it's properties to do all sorts of wacky stuff.

Like I said, it's the tiniest of minor details, but I had a lot of fun making it up.

Dawww, so cute, in a good way. The concept of that fountain already triggers a lot of ideas that could be explored and who knows, maybe it is just the tip of something bigger.

[jjordan]

I like the little details that fit together and feel right. Like the logging town that celebrates a midsummer festival by leaving jewelry in the forest to propitiate the spirits of the forest and sends their Winter Champion to spend the night as an offering that is sometimes accepted and never seen again. The way that nymphs and dryads will leave male offspring to be found at the edge of fields and the farmers take them in and raise them. If they fail to raise the children their fields are cursed and if they do a good job their fields are blessed.

[MesiDoomstalker]

You say your world is a cylinder? I presume it spins along the axis of the cylinder? If that's the case, and it gets seasons for the same reason Earth does (axial tilt relative to the plane of its orbit) then the entirety of the curved surface of your cylinder will have the same seasons at the same time. It will be warmest around the equinoxes and coldest near the solstices (you'll have 8 "seasons" per year). The flat regions at the top and bottom of the cylinder will have warm and cold seasons at the "normal" times (winter solstice is colder, summer solstice is warmer, with 4 seasons per year, although the 'flat' summer will probably be colder than the 'curved' winter unless you have an axial tilt of close to 45 degrees - Earth's is 22.3o).

The reason for this is not because part of the earth is closer to the sun, but because of the angle the sunlight makes with the surface of the planet. I mean, yes, the summer part of earth is closer than the winter part, but that's a difference of about 4000 km or so compared to an overall distance on the order of 150 million km. Heck when it's winter in the northern hemisphere, the Earth is actually about 4.5 million km closer (3% if I did my math right) to the sun than it is when it's summer in the northern hemisphere. That's also why it's colder near the poles on Earth. On your world it will be slightly colder near the ends of the cylinder, but only because the flat ends will get less sunlight than the curved regions, and so will be colder - again, depending on the amount of axial tilt your world has.

If your planet has seasons for a different reason, though, please ignore all the stuff above.

The cylinder rotates about an axis that runs through the flat planes, like a soda can rolling on a table. This same axis of rotation is the tangent line of orbit around its star-equivalent (it isn't a star but functions like one for most purposes). Or rather, its almost a tangent line. It wobbles, so the curved surface (which is the only habitable surface; the flat planes on either end can't support life as gravity is not "center of mass" but "center of rotation") is always at an angle to the light of the 'sun'. This is the source of seasons. Much like how Earth's axis is tilted relative to the plane of orbit.

At least, I think that would work to create seasonal differences on opposite ends of the cylinder.

[Lord Torath]

The cylinder rotates about an axis that runs through the flat planes, like a soda can rolling on a table. So like if you took a mercator projection map of the earth and rolled it and taped the edges together. The North and South poles are centered in the flat faces, and the axis of rotation runs through them.
This same axis of rotation is the tangent line of orbit around its star-equivalent (it isn't a star but functions like one for most purposes). Or rather, its almost a tangent line. It wobbles, so the curved surface (which is the only habitable surface; the flat planes on either end can't support life as gravity is not "center of mass" but "center of rotation") is always at an angle to the light of the 'sun'. This is the source of seasons. Much like how Earth's axis is tilted relative to the plane of orbit.

At least, I think that would work to create seasonal differences on opposite ends of the cylinder.Well, the entire face of the cylinder will have the same angle to the "sun", so it will have the same "season" across the entire length.

The reason the part of the Earth closest to the sun gets the most heat is not because it is closer to the sun (though it is), but because the sunlight at local noon is coming in perpendicular to the surface. That means each square foot of earth gets one square foot of sunlight (assuming we can treat the sun's rays as coming in parallel to each other, which we mostly can because the sun is so far away) at noon. 45 degrees away, half-way to the poles, each "square foot" of sunlight gets spread over 1.4 square feet of earth. So each square foot of earth gets only 0.7 "square feet" of sunlight at noon.

Because the Earth has a 22.3o tilt to its axis, that "1 square-foot of sunlight per square foot of earth at noon" point moves from north to south and back again as the planet orbits the sun.

With your cylinder world, though, the entire curved face has the same angle to the "sun". The square foot of land next to the south flat face of the cylinder has the same angle to the "sun" as the square foot of land next to the north flat face.

You will go through all four seasons twice each year. The solstices, when one of your flat ends is closest to the sun, will be the times when your "square foot of sunlight" is spread over the most square feet of planet, so those will be the starts of winter. The equinoxes will be when you get the 1 "square foot" of sunlight per square foot of surface, so those will be the starts of summer.

The flat ends, on the other hand, will have the normal four seasons per year, with the end closet to the sun having summer when the end farthest from the sun is having winter. These end seasons will have a slight effect on the curved-surface seasons, with a greater effect the closer you get to the flat face. But note that it will always be winter on the living space when it's summer/winter on the flat faces.

So the seasons on the cylinder will be Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall - Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall - Winter. Closer to the flat faces it will go: Severe Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall - Mild Winter - Spring - Summer - Fall - Severe Winter. The region of the livable surface close to the sun-side face will be in Mild Winter while the region close to the far-side face will be in Severe Winter. But the entire livable surface will always be in the same season at the same time.

[CombatBunny]

So like if you took a mercator ...

Oh please, don't thread crap this enjoyable thread. If MesiDoomstalker tell us that his world has four seasons, then that's it, even if it's shaped as a cone. Better give us more world building examples.

[Lord Torath]

Oh please, don't thread crap this enjoyable thread. If MesiDoomstalker tell us that his world has four seasons, then that's it, even if it's shaped as a cone. Better give us more world building examples.
<snip a bunch of technical crap>

If your planet has seasons for a different reason, though, please ignore all the stuff above.

I think the bit I'm most proud of is the stuff I did to the Isle of Dread. The module has at the center of the island the last remnants of a once-great empire of the Kopru. Rather than have it on its last legs, I had it just starting to recover. The Kopru had managed to charm a young red dragon, and used that to help catch and charm most of the locals, and to start rebuilding the empire. The surviving locals had abandoned their village on the shore of the volcanic lake and build a new stockade up against the caldera wall. This way the party was ending an emerging threat, rather than striking the last blow to a threat that would have been gone in a decade or so even if he party did nothing.

I also had a zombie uprising in the village the party first arrives at, and had a dungeon under the village that was shaped like a four-armed skeleton raising a two-handed sword over its head. The tip of the "blade" chamber was directly under the pyramid the natives used as the focus of their totemic worship up on the surface, and found the animated skeleton of one of the village elder's pet sabre-toothed tiger as well as a bunch of other undead down there.

I turned the rakasta camp into a nomadic village, with the tribe moving their camp every week or so to avoid over-hunting any particular area, and gave them a competing tribe of hyena-like gnolls. The PCs were also confronted by ogres who were hunting mammoths. The ogres ordered the party to move around in a different direction to avoid ruining their ambush.

I had a lot of fun with that module.
Another thing I'm rather proud of is the "warhorse" dream I made for the party paladin. It starts out with a view from near the ground through tall grass of a herd of elk, with a particularly fine specimen as the focus (definitely suitable for a paladin's mount). I created about 5-6 different "versions" of the dream, each one the same as the previous one, but with a few more seconds of action tacked on to the end. The view creeps closer through the grass until the stag catches a scent on the wind. It trumpets the alarm, and the herd scatters, with your view following the stag. The last dream ends with the stag almost close enough to reach out and touch as the paladin wakes up. The party reaches the appointed location, passes through a copse of trees, and discovers said stag with its neck broken and a giant tiger (his actual "warhorse") perched on its back.

[The Cats]

Another thing I'm rather proud of is the "warhorse" dream I made for the party paladin. It starts out with a view from near the ground through tall grass of a herd of elk, with a particularly fine specimen as the focus (definitely suitable for a paladin's mount). I created about 5-6 different "versions" of the dream, each one the same as the previous one, but with a few more seconds of action tacked on to the end. The view creeps closer through the grass until the stag catches a scent on the wind. It trumpets the alarm, and the herd scatters, with your view following the stag. The last dream ends with the stag almost close enough to reach out and touch as the paladin wakes up. The party reaches the appointed location, passes through a copse of trees, and discovers said stag with its neck broken and a giant tiger (his actual "warhorse") perched on its back.

OK that made me crack up. Good job.

When my party's cleric was being revived from death he saw a vision of him leading an army of storm giants. Few sessions later he found out about the chamber with an army of giants held in stasis that the rest of the party had found way back near session 1 (He had joined the campaign about halfway through). That was fun to watch. And now I get to prep a few nostalgia sessions back in the place they had their first adventure.

[Gnoman]

This is larger scale than most, but small scale in the context of the campaign.

I'm running a Prime Directive game (set fairly early, around the time Pike has the Enterprise) at the moment, and I've decided to delete some of the nations (Right now, only the Klingons, Romulans, Kzinti, and Federation are confirmed to exist) and add others to keep an air of mystery.

One of the new nations is a time-displaced accidental Vulcan-Human-Klingon colony that is essentially a typical D&D setting with Star Trek technology - the Vulcans and Klingons are even called Elves and Orcs. Not the nost original of ideas, but I'm pretty pelased.that I made it work.

[LibraryOgre]

Lesbian halfling religious communes. They had special outbuildings for men to stay at.

Oh, and what homosexuality MEANT in goblin society, structured, as it is, with socially dominant males controlling access to goblin females, and males in a strict heirarchy.

[martixy]

Hm... I'm not sure how to interpret "micro-scale".

In general my favourite bits are the little details (though on big scale) that no one thinks about that add verisimilitude to the setting(3.5e). I have a ton of these.

For example a functional planar geometry. Or Teleport wards that prevent the setting turning into a Tippyverse. Or the unreliability of teleport preventing the obviation of overland travel.

And taken as a whole it's those little details that create a unique setting.

[Vegan Squirrel]

Gnomish teas. In my first campaign, I had a gnomish tea and pastry shop in a building shaped like a boot (big folk were served in the leg part of the boot). A sampling of the Gnomish teas: Glitter Tea, which has the effect of giving you little fireworks in your vision (like seeing stars but way better), and Bubble Tea, which allows you to blow bubbles out of your mouth. Both are pleasant magical effects which last for about an hour, and the goliath PC really took to Gnomish Bubble Tea, always keeping some on hand to entertain himself and the children they encountered.

[The Glyphstone]

One of the cultures in my world actively farms and cultivates a fantasy-equivalent of silphium, with comparative effects on humans. For one of the demihuman species, though, it functions as a mild narcotic and intoxicant somewhere between chewing tobacco and marijuana. They end up buying most of what is available for export and only the surplus/leftovers make it into the hands of outside cultures. This is one of the contributing factors to the origin culture being heavily matriarchal in nature while allowing for other cultures to develop differently.

[Draconi Redfir]

Gnomes are magical in my low-magic world not because they come from another plane, but because magic ages like a fine wine, and grows stronger over time. And it just so happens that thousands of years ago, a battle between cavemen-era humanoids (i'm thinking like, ten individuals at most) occurred inside a valley that the ancestors of Gnomes would eventually call home. During this battle, one of the combatants was able to (either in death or life, not sure). Enchant a primitive stone weapon into a basic +1 weapon. This weapon was used to kill an enemy on top of a rock, embedding the weapon into the stone while also cracking the weapon itself. This did nothing at first, but as the years went by and the weapon went untended, it's magic slowly grew more and more powerful, leaking out of the crack and slowly filling the valley.

In the present day, the Valley is known as the "feywild", and is filled with wild, primal magic. Anything that moved in there thousands of years ago has evolved into wild fey-like creatures such as the Gnomes. And anything that tries to get in today, is torn apart by the wild magic unless wearing a specialized suit. Gnomes and other Fey can leave the valley, but may require certain accommodations, such as regular inhalation of magic-laced air, and it may take training to get to that point. As a result of all of this, nothing moves into the feywild permanently, and very few ever leave it.


Not sure how strong that old stone weapon would be in the modern day. probably not even half as strong as it would have been if it hadn't been cracked.

[King of Nowhere]

I'm going to throw in the bunch of lore i made about the whole church of hextor, god of tyranny.

at that point in the campaign, the high cleric of vecna was openly trying to conquer the world, and he was seeking the alliance of hextor. the players had recently defeated the forces of hextor, leaving them much weakened. they were reluctant to join vecna, as they feared, being so weakened, that they would be disposed of once they outlived their usefulness. on the other hand, they also had plenty of reasons to ally with the forces of vecna to get back at the players and their allies.

so i engineered a scene where the party (who had come to persuade hextor's state to ally with them, or conquer it) just came upon the high priest of vecna trying to persuade the high priest of hextor to join him.
and the hpoVecna (brilliant, knowledgeable, and a great diplomancer) was quoting hextor's own gospel at the hpoHextor to persuade her; he was specifically mentioning the conversion of saint Otaro

"and I was working on my field, when lo! a stranger on a big black horse with a shiny black armor and a wicked-looking sword appeared
and he told me "now i am your master, and all this is mine"
and i bowed and replied "excellency (with the big black horse and armor and sword he certainly was someone i wanted to treat respectfully), far be it from me to question one such as yours
but i already have a master, and he may disagree"
so the big dude on the horse spoke "perhaps we should ask your former master himself"
and from a sack he pulleth out the severed head of my old master, and he asketh him if he had anything against the overtaking of his serfs, that he may speak now or forever be silent
as i saw this, I prostrated on the ground and intoned
my lord,
i am your humble servant,
my land is your land,
the produce of my labor is yours in tribute,
my home is your home,
my wife is your wife
and when the mighty conqueror passeth forth with his mighty army[needless to say, those were the armies of hextor], my field was not pillaged, my home was not torched, my family was not hurt, and my wife was not abused"
[actually, that last part only happened because the wife was really ugly. there is even a fresco in the great cathedral of hextor depicting the scene, based on accurate contemporary depictions. about his wife, saint Otaro declared "when you are at the bottom of the hierarchy of power, you've got to take everyone else's leftover". yes, there is some sexism into that; the whole religion of hextor is mildly sexist, as befitting a god of tiranny. but they respect achievement enough that their current high priest is a woman, because they are not so dumb that they would waste good talent]
the whole life of saint Otaro (extremely servile, spent most of his non-working effort to posture with his neighboors for greater social standing) is meant as an example of how the lower classes should behave, and hpoVecna was quoting it to tell hpoHextor "i am strong and you are weak, so you must obey me; even your god says so".

the players, though, had a chance to make a dc 35 knowledge religion check, that would have revealed another obscure piece of hextor's scripture, about the people of Banzanei.
the Banzanei were one of many people that the newborn state of hextor invaded early on. when the rulers tried to mobilize their people to resist the aggression, the people revolted; no matter who won the war, they'd still have to work the fields, pay taxes. they didn't care who their master was, and saw no reason to spill their blood to pick one over another.
however, the church of hextor was much, much more oppressive than their former rulers. eventually they revolted, and were wiped out as a result.
quoting that piece of scripture would have persuaded the hpoHextor that actually the weaker party can still make a difference, and sometimes there's reasons to pick one master over the other. the players had offered several guarantees of basic integrity to the forces of hextor, while it was suspected that vecna's endgame was to exterminate the worshippers of every other god, and remain the only god. this would have instantly ensured the alliance of hextor, without further checks.

unfortunately, the players failed the knowledge (religion). but they rolled high enough in diplomacy that they convinced the hpoHextor that, like saint Otaro, she should let her two wannabe masters battle among themselves, and serve the winner. they defeated the hpoVecna in battle (being a weakened form of demilich, he only suffered a temporary inconvenience), and the hpoHextor submitted to them using an adapted version of the original formula
"my lords,
I am your humble servant
my nation is your nation
my gross domestic product is yours in tribute
my cathedral is your cathedral
my sadomaso slaves are your sadomaso slaves" [yes, she is a dominatrix. being the high priest of the god of tiranny, it would be scandalous for her otherwise :smallsmile:. No, i didn't give detailed description, nor derailed the session to deal with the issue. it was simply one more small piece of background. do also notice that hpoHextor was in her sixties, and was doing the whole dominatrix thing because it was socially expected from her; so there was nothing particularly salacious about it, nor was it ever intended to be]

I also wrote other pieces of scripture for the cult of hextor. And i'm quite proud that it got the whole religion feel alive, and I also managed to hit the right blend of dark humor and consistency, so that even if the whole concept look ridiculous, one can see how a population may become enticed into following it, and then it would become too stuck in their little feuds and rivalries to ever mount an effective rebellion.

[jjordan]

Gnomish teas. In my first campaign, I had a gnomish tea and pastry shop in a building shaped like a boot (big folk were served in the leg part of the boot). A sampling of the Gnomish teas: Glitter Tea, which has the effect of giving you little fireworks in your vision (like seeing stars but way better), and Bubble Tea, which allows you to blow bubbles out of your mouth. Both are pleasant magical effects which last for about an hour, and the goliath PC really took to Gnomish Bubble Tea, always keeping some on hand to entertain himself and the children they encountered.

Goblin sauce. In my world goblins have a very poor sense of taste and smell. They really like spicy sauces and will go out of their way to try a new one. Adventurous, non-goblin, idiots will often give goblin sauce a try. Goblins find this hilarious. Twice.

[martixy]

We've left the "micro" part of this thread behind now...

[raygun goth]

I always make it a point to determine what trash a community generates and what they do with it.

I know it's a weird sticking point but I've had archaeological training and the most exciting and informative digs are always in a settlement's garbage piles, middens, and... erm... "nightsoil treatment"

[PairO'Dice Lost]

A new player just joined my group, and a friend of his already in the group informed me that he has a tendency to make "quirky" characters when joining a new group to sort of test the boundaries on roleplaying dynamics (in a funny way, not a disruptive one, usually). For this game, he decided to make a paladin who, personality-wise, was essentially a stereotypical attendee of Burning Man (https://burningman.org) (complete with funky hairstyle, an inability to shower regularly, etc.) and made it clear during character creation that he was going to be making lots of Burning Man jokes and references in-character, which could threaten to get anachronistic/metagamey after a while.

Well, he hadn't chosen a patron deity yet, and one of the religions in the setting worships a minor pantheon of fire-related demigods: a god of crafting symbolized by a forge-fire, a god of knowledge symbolized by a candle, and so on...including a god of death symbolized by a funeral pyre. So I wrote up a little wiki article on the Festival of the Flames, a multi-day religious rite where worshipers of the pantheon assemble at a holy site to make contacts among the faithful and honor the gods with their activities.

On the first day, they lead workshops on smithing and crafting techniques, and build shelters, sculptures, and other things out of metal to be given out freely to the other participants as a sacrifice to the forge-god; on the second day, they tell stories, discuss religious philosophy, and so forth, and freely share spell scrolls, personal research, and other valuable knowledge as a sacrifice to the candle-god. This continues until the last day, where an assortment of sculptures from the first day, transcriptions from the second day, and so on are gathered around a wooden sculpture of a man, all of which is then burned as a sacrifice to the pyre-god.

So I managed to turn a potentially-irritating character quirk into a roleplaying hook while adding depth to a religious institution. When I showed him the article, his reaction was basically. "...huh. I guess you win this one." :smallcool:

[a_flemish_guy]

not yet sprung this but looking forward to it (this is inspired by planescape:torment)
1) have a minor joke antagonist rat king (wizard)
2) have him get away each time or resurrect depending on the outcome
3) have him invent cranium rats
4) as players aproach high level either have him lich or go "worm-that-walks" (except with rats) if the players disrupt the ritual too early
5) cranium rats join together to form one-of-many (or form rat kings conciousness as "worm that walks") (ideal scenario is that players kill the lich and thus the plan is all from the cranium rats)
6) cranium rats try to make a one-of-many in every city and then unleash a plague of were-rats (which they control)
7) players break into rat king's laboratory (it's the same lab every time for comedic value, only to find lich corps exactly where they left it)

[vasilidor]

I changed Kobold society and warfare a bit. made them (mostly) non evil traders of metals and edible fungus, and the approach to warfare was that if they actually had to face their enemies, something had gone fundamentally wrong. also they had a valley of there own, along with the sides of the mountains there of, that no one had ever managed to take from them. they used scrying magic and traps immensely.
I did this because the behavioral description given by wizards of the coast made no sense to me.
Never chase a kobold down its hole.

[Luccan]

There's a small community out on the frontier border of one the kingdoms that herds Gray Renders. They're mostly known for exporting labor in the form of worker/overseer pairs of a Gray Render bonded to a humanoid "shepherd". Also, Gray Renders can produce multiple offspring in their lifetime because each creature only reproducing once would be unsustainable for any species.

[LibraryOgre]

not yet sprung this but looking forward to it (this is inspired by planescape:torment)
1) have a minor joke antagonist rat king (wizard)
2) have him get away each time or resurrect depending on the outcome
3) have him invent cranium rats
4) as players aproach high level either have him lich or go "worm-that-walks" (except with rats) if the players disrupt the ritual too early
5) cranium rats join together to form one-of-many (or form rat kings conciousness as "worm that walks") (ideal scenario is that players kill the lich and thus the plan is all from the cranium rats)
6) cranium rats try to make a one-of-many in every city and then unleash a plague of were-rats (which they control)
7) players break into rat king's laboratory (it's the same lab every time for comedic value, only to find lich corps exactly where they left it)

Have you heard of Falvic, the King of Rats? (https://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/2017/05/falvic-king-of-rats.html)

[False God]

A minor change to Flesh to Stone (and similar spells) used to explain certain hauntings and spontaneously sentient magical items.

Those spells now trap your soul, instead of killing you. Even if the materials are worked or broken down, your soul stays attached to a piece of it. Over time, those materials are worn down till they're indistinguishable from raw materials. Sometimes they end up mixed into the materials used to make a sword, or even to build a house!

[Cluedrew]

Gnomish teas. [...] the goliath PC really took to Gnomish Bubble Tea, always keeping some on hand to entertain himself and the children they encountered.This one might be my favorite, although others, like the fire pantheon, are also pretty good.

I think my favorite bit of micro-scale world building would be for a caste-system society. The detail about this people seemed to really enjoy was that each had there own set of hairstyles to draw from and the warriors (those that fight) didn't have military cuts at all. Instead they had the longest flowing hair out of any of the castes. As part of gearing up they would fold their hair into elaborate patterns which they pinned under their helmets. As an extension of this a warrior tying there hair up while off duty was considered a threatening gesture or a pretty unsubtle warning.

[King of Nowhere]

the warriors (those that fight) didn't have military cuts at all. Instead they had the longest flowing hair out of any of the castes. As part of gearing up they would fold their hair into elaborate patterns which they pinned under their helmets.

that's a very neat way to save money on helmet paddings :smallbiggrin:

[Cluedrew]

I'm not sure why people focus on the hair as padding thing, but both times I have brought it up on this forum someone has. I wonder why.

[King of Nowhere]

I'm not sure why people focus on the hair as padding thing, but both times I have brought it up on this forum someone has. I wonder why.

oh, i don't think a bunch of hair would be all that effective as padding. human hair is designed as heat insulator, not armor. they can be mildly effective against slashing, but have very little against bludgeoning, which is what passes through the helmet. so, those helmets still need padding.
i was just making a joke.

[Cozzer]

After a series of misunderstandings that would be difficult to translate in English (due to the fact that "bull", as in "Bull's Strength", is "toro" in Italian, as in a "toroidal shape"), the party's barbarian gave a random shopkeeper the idea of creating the "doughnuts of Bull's Strength", instead of the usual potions.

During the rest of the campaign, in the background, this random shopkeeper made it big and an ever-increasing percentage of magic potions was substituted by magic doughnuts, in the whole kingdom.

[HeraldOfExius]

A significant number of dragons think that once humans have lived for about a century, their ears become pointy and they call themselves "elves." This is the result of most dragons having extremely limited interaction with non-dragons. Those that have interacted with other species noticed that those with round ears were less than 100 years old, and those with pointy ears were over 100 years old. Given that "humans" and "elves" looked almost the same apart from their ears, the dragons just assumed that the humanoids' ears grew larger and pointier with age, mirroring their own horns. Thinking that this must be incredibly obvious to the humanoids, the dragons didn't bother to explain this assumption to them until it had already become common knowledge, and they were confused by the fact that humans didn't expect to eventually become elves.

[LibraryOgre]

Literally, micro-scale.

Respirator slime molds in deep caverns, which keeps the air breathable. Fireballs in caves can deplete the slime molds, making it harder for air to recover in the area.

[Son of A Lich!]

My Gnolls are not Fiendish in nature.

They're carnivores and incapable of speaking common tongue (A tonal based language, where the chirps and giggles of their "Laughter" is all a highly complicated linguistic system that has no human analog). Even spells like Tongues and Comprehend Languages makes huge mistakes from time to time.

They also practice ritualistic cannibalism, believing that leaving a dead warrior on the battlefield or burying it in the dirt (Or worse, lighting it on fire!) is a huge insult, basically saying that they were not worthy of passing on through the tribe. A foe who takes the life of one of their own is deemed worthy of consumption and prized to warlords and the ilk.

Necromancy (Raising skeletal and zombies) is seen as a punishment for cowardice or insubordination/laziness. They were deemed unworthy by the tribe to be consumed and are left to suffer and contribute to the tribe beyond death.

Evil, yes, but not Fiends. Simply misunderstood and a deep culture that recognizes death as an important part of the life cycle.

[Maelynn]

- I wondered what D&D life would be like if more people had access to (simple) magic, just to make life a bit more convenient the way we use technology/gadgets. I ended up with writing a whole set of legislations, rules on how to get permits and enroll for courses, what people are eligible, consequences for breaking these laws, etc. The party has a document they can access if they want to, but they just accepted it as fact and it only comes up every now and then. For example, necromancy is heavily regulated and forbidden unless being specifically exempted: "wait, we can have him resurrected at the temple? Isn't that illegal?"

- since I love holidays and festivals, I made a list of all important dates in a year stating what the celebration is for and what customs/rituals/activities are held. I grabbed some existing ones, tweaked some others, and invented some new ones including 2 exclusively for my city-state. When one of these days comes up I mention it, but leave it entirely up to them whether or not they want to do something with it

- I made a list of all NPCs the players have encountered and give some of them a bit of background story. Sometimes the party sees them only once and then never again, but I want to make these NPCs feel as if they have their own lives and personalities. For example, one desk clerk they encounter often (at the 'quest job agency' I introduced) is a young bloke in his early twenties, who walks with a limp due to childhood illness. He would've loved to become a great adventuring hero, but it'll never happen. So he started working at the quest job agency to live his dream through the people he meets and whose stories he hears when they come to report a job well done. It's a hopeless situation for him to be in, and he sometimes struggles to keep his optimistic mask on, but he's already thankful he has a job at all...... all that the party knows, is that he's a young man who is very enthusiastic and loves the stories they tell him.

- one of my WiP is the city-state's government system. I have a ruling Council, made up of 8 key figures from various important factions of the city. I gave them all a background, personality, and goals - what I'm working on is to flesh out the history and founding of the city: how did the Council come into existence, who were the founding members, what happened to them, how did they shape the city to be the thriving harbour city it is today?

[Jay R]

The players have been told that the dwarves no longer exist. They were wiped out 200 years ago in the great dwarf/Frost Giant war. The whole world knows this. IThe truth, however, is that the last remaining dwarves have been enslaved by the Frost Giants. When the PCs get high enough level, they will bump into a few Frost Giants wielding new dwarf-made weapons. This should show them that dwarves are still around. The dwarves can be freed – by somebody powerful enough to invade a giant underground city.

-----

By the way – dwarf tunnels are never more than four feet high in my worlds. It’s really hard for humans, elves, or orcs to fight in dwarven mines.

-----

There is also one more tribe of dwarves nobody knows about. They live in an isolated valley, and the PCs will first find out about them from carved friezes in an abandoned area that show humans who are smaller than dwarves.

But it's not really short humans. If they choose to follow the clues, they will find a tribe of 8-foot-tall dwarves. Yes, they are real dwarves, just like hill giants and frost giants are the same race. These dwarves, not being short, don’t have the advantage most dwarves do for tunnel mining, so they have large open-air mines. I have made a bunch of minis by taking some of Steve Jackson Games’ Cardboard Heroes and printing them at a larger size.

[The friezes show ordinary human-sized humans, but I’m hoping the players never think of that until they meet the large dwarves.]

[Telok]

A multi-setting thing I do is to have Elvis, an electric axe, (new) a donkey.

Elvis does exist or has existed in all settings. In D&D games he's is/was a bard. In SF settings he's normal Elvis (dead, famous, etc.) or an alien. In my current DtD40k7e game he's the patron saint of ork culture.

The electric axe is... well, everything you'd expect from a magic or super-science item called "electric axe". The PCs may never find it, may never use it, but it's there.

The donkey is just a donkey. Ok so it has off-screen, fade-to-black, author-fiat style immortality. But other than that it's just a donkey.

[MrZJunior]

An important city in a world I'm fiddling around with sits on a peninsula which sticks out into a great bay. It is the capital of a long decaying empire. The entrance to the bay is protected by two ancient castles.

While looking through the magic spell list I happened upon a spell that allows a magic user to form walls and other such objects out of stone. So I decided that the walls of these two castles look like they were grown out of living rock. This should show how much more magically rich The Empire was at one time.

[jjordan]

Zoink. Stealing this. That's a good piece of lore.

My Gnolls are not Fiendish in nature.

They're carnivores and incapable of speaking common tongue (A tonal based language, where the chirps and giggles of their "Laughter" is all a highly complicated linguistic system that has no human analog). Even spells like Tongues and Comprehend Languages makes huge mistakes from time to time.

They also practice ritualistic cannibalism, believing that leaving a dead warrior on the battlefield or burying it in the dirt (Or worse, lighting it on fire!) is a huge insult, basically saying that they were not worthy of passing on through the tribe. A foe who takes the life of one of their own is deemed worthy of consumption and prized to warlords and the ilk.

Necromancy (Raising skeletal and zombies) is seen as a punishment for cowardice or insubordination/laziness. They were deemed unworthy by the tribe to be consumed and are left to suffer and contribute to the tribe beyond death.

Evil, yes, but not Fiends. Simply misunderstood and a deep culture that recognizes death as an important part of the life cycle.

[Lord Torath]

Zoink. Stealing this. That's a good piece of lore.When did gnolls become fiendish in nature? I always thought they were just hyena-inspired humanoids. I mean, yes, their god is a demon, but in 2E at least, they are purely natural beings.

I gave them hyenadon mounts/pets when I placed them on the Isle of Dread, a matriarchal society (same as real-world hyenas, as I understand it), and made them rivals to the Rakasta tribes.

[prabe]

When did gnolls become fiendish in nature? I always thought they were just hyena-inspired humanoids. I mean, yes, their god is a demon, but in 2E at least, they are purely natural beings.

I gave them hyenadon mounts/pets when I placed them on the Isle of Dread, a matriarchal society (same as real-world hyenas, as I understand it), and made them rivals to the Rakasta tribes.

They turned into the literal spawn of Yeenoghu in 5E, if not 4E (never played 4E, not session-warring, just saying I don't know if they changed for that).

OTOH, that sounds like a cool take on them, if you want them not to be fiend-spawn (I ... kinda wanted fiend-spawn, so I used 5E lore).

[Son of A Lich!]

They turned into the literal spawn of Yeenoghu in 5E, if not 4E (never played 4E, not session-warring, just saying I don't know if they changed for that).

OTOH, that sounds like a cool take on them, if you want them not to be fiend-spawn (I ... kinda wanted fiend-spawn, so I used 5E lore).

Pretty sure that's a AD&D thing at least, no? I've had this lore set up back in high school and always hated the infernal back drop. I'll check out the 3e book when I get it unpacked, but I'm fairly confident they've always been tied to Yeenoghu in some sense.

My uncle is a cultural anthropologist, so whenever discussions of Orcs or always evil creatures come up in D&D, I have been warned time and time again about primitivism. Evil doesn't do society very well and tyrants are always doomed to unpleasant graves - a society that is intrinsically evil doesn't work very well for very long.

That's also why I'm always annoyed with Comprehend Languages as a spell. Translation is a very tricky thing and I can only imagine what happens when we encounter a species that doesn't "Speak" vocally or in a structure we don't really have a way to comprehend. But that is a whole different topic.

[Mongobear]

Planning out a kingdom's royal family tree, including brothers, sisters, and the full extended family of approximately 100 generations, back to the original King who unified the area ~2500 years before the current timeline. Most of it was generic "Husband/Wife + d3 Kids" stuff, but I randomly determined a bunch of weird traits, like deaths, marriages, injuries/handicaps, and even Royal Scandals, like adultery or others taboo things, that the family kinda never talks about.

I even went as far as creating a naming convention, like, a pattern used to name the sons/daughters so that you'd end up with guys like "Henry VIII, Charles II, etc" but also gave them informal middle names, until they were crowned as Prince/King/Queen/Princess/etc.

It almost never came into relevance though, I only ever needed a detail back about 3 generations, and the original guy, for historical facts about him. It was quite to document, as near the end, I needed multiple pages for a Single relative.

[Luccan]

Pretty sure that's a AD&D thing at least, no? I've had this lore set up back in high school and always hated the infernal back drop. I'll check out the 3e book when I get it unpacked, but I'm fairly confident they've always been tied to Yeenoghu in some sense.

Always tied to it, perhaps, but at least in 3rd they weren't created by the fiend, just worshipped it. Nowadays they're literally its spawn, with no capacity to change or evolve into something other than cannibalistic monsters. They're created in Yeenoghu's wake, I believe, rather than being natural creatures. Given their long history with DnD (and their popularity as being more playable in Ebberon), it's a bit disappointing Wizards has pushed so hard for the fiendish servant aspect that it seems unlikely they'll be playable again. The one upside is it does sidestep the problem of orcs and goblins: these things are now completely evil and can never not be evil and will absolutely wipe out everything in their path if given half a chance. Guilt-free hack and slash!

[Telok]

While some gnolls always worshipped the Yreglebergle demon it was only in 4e and 5e that they became literal demon-spawn. I think it's because the developments in late 3.5e with orcs and goblins moving away from being monsters and kobolds being turned into miniature dragon people. Just a replacement for the "always OK to kill, no questions asked" humanoid monster.

To me gnolls always read as something akin to less advanced surface drow. A similar overall shape to their society, less cool equipment, demon worship, different rubber mask on the actors.

[Wildstag]

In a 5e game I run, my players were clearing out this abandoned temple in a foothills region. I tend to use support staff in raiding camps, so as to provide for moments of heart. For this reason they had earlier spared a hobgoblin warrior so he could guard a hired hobgoblin shaman to her home after the chief that hired her had been defeated.

Made accustomed to this possibility, when they encountered an Orc raid cook in the abandoned temple, they spared him, and asked for his name, which the orc said was Tim.

He has since evolved into the party’s steward. They turned the temple into a hideout, and since the Paladin became a baron, Tim has also become a captain of the militia, which occupies the hideout and patrols the small barony when they are away on missions from their king.

This simple spared life has given me a much easier time of getting the players to engage with social rewards. I’m not sure they would if it was a brand-spanking new nameless npc they had tending to their things.

It’s a simple npc thing, but they engage with Tim more than other npcs.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

That's also why I'm always annoyed with Comprehend Languages as a spell. Translation is a very tricky thing and I can only imagine what happens when we encounter a species that doesn't "Speak" vocally or in a structure we don't really have a way to comprehend. But that is a whole different topic.

This came up in a prior campaign of mine, when the party ran into a race of subterranean critters that communicated with bioluminescence patterns and pheromones instead of speech or gestures. I ruled that comprehend languages' "understand the spoken words of creatures" clause worked on that form of communication because it doesn't literally translate anything but rather parses the conceptual and emotional content of a creature's communication and dumps that into the user's brain so that the user "hears" it appropriately; if another creature is speaking verbally they'll get the Universal Translator effect like normal, but non-verbal communications result in the user hearing a mental voice overlaying what it senses.

Speech or other in-person communication is picked up from the creature's mind and aura with a low-grade psychic effect similar to detect thoughts plus empathy, while understanding writing and other recorded communication works by picking up psychic imprints left by the creator, similar to those detected by object reading or sensitivity to psychic impressions. Tongues does the same thing for understanding languages, and lets the user "speak" with a combination of low-grade telepathy and telempathic projection layered under actual speech similar to how a bard layers magic into his words and music.

[LibraryOgre]

My uncle is a cultural anthropologist, so whenever discussions of Orcs or always evil creatures come up in D&D, I have been warned time and time again about primitivism. Evil doesn't do society very well and tyrants are always doomed to unpleasant graves - a society that is intrinsically evil doesn't work very well for very long.


One of my recent books (just formally proposed to Kenzer!) deals a lot with goblin society, and figuring out HOW goblin society worked was a big part of it, especially when you start getting big. Smaller societies, like you see most often with gnolls, can survive it a bit better than anything big.

[King of Nowhere]

One of my recent books (just formally proposed to Kenzer!) deals a lot with goblin society, and figuring out HOW goblin society worked was a big part of it, especially when you start getting big. Smaller societies, like you see most often with gnolls, can survive it a bit better than anything big.

in my campaign i made goblins into a sort of nazis: very xenophobic, but also very nationalistic, willing and eager to lay down their lives for the goblin nation against their enemies (which amounts to everyone else). this kind of society can actually exhist and be a pretty dangerous foe.

orcs don't have a real society. their only organization is a bit of religious respect for their clerics, but aside from that, the only right is that of strength. the only thing that keeps them from killing themselves is that they consider women as cattle, so they are spared from all the violence. even if 90% of male orcs die before reaching maturity, those who survive can start an harem and perpetuate the species. but orcs aren't really dangerous as a whole, and any seriously organized military can easily wipe them.

[BioCharge]

In my setting, the Orc lexicon lacks pronouns. Thus, an Orc speaking in a different language talks similar to a slightly more intelligent Grimlock from G1 Transformers, using both the translated language's pronouns and the objects actual term. E.g. "I, Krunk, will hold them, demons, back!"

My players instantly got endeared with an Orc technomancer after I introduced this speech pattern.

[Ken Murikumo]

I'm running a future fantasy pathfinder game with a bunch of setting appropriate homebrew equipment. Recently the party got in contact with a shadow broker agent (think Mass Effect) to get info on their current enemy. The broker was paid for the info, but in this setting for extremely sensitive info, the broker usually needs the info buyer to prove they are worth selling to. The logic is that the info loses all value if sold to someone incompetent.

Anyways, the mission is to go to a nearby, uncolonized planet and look for a macguffin, Lytherium aka God's Blood. This stuff whole bag of feral cats on its own. Its super rare (naturally occuring), super weaponizable, & super dangerous. While planet side, the players run into a bad news merc group. A quick knowledge check tells them that this merc group is one of the scummiest know; human trafficking, mob hits, drug smuggling, the works. The party tracks them down by following a literal trail of blood and bodies only to find the team leader is torturing and killing natives to extract Agony (liquid pain from BoVD) because she's a sadist, masochist, & addict. The party gets ambushed despite stealthily tracking the mercs, fight ensues, one player tries to crash a drop ship onto the merc leader, the ship gets shot down by a distant sniper but still hits 2 mercs, players eventually come out on top by starting a forest fire with breath weapons and grenades, and other high collateral tactics... you know, the usual. Afterwards, the PC's get the macguffin and return to the broker to find the sniper there finishing his contract with the broker. He's clearly dressed like the other mercs, there were plenty of clues to indicate another merc they didn't encounter (tracking 6 people but the tent had 7 cots, they fought 6 people but never figured out it was an anti-material round that took out the drop ship). There was a brief exchange of veiled threats because now the PC's hate everything to do with that merc group, and they let him leave.

What the players didn't know and didn't realize, despite the endless amounts of context clues, was that the broker also hired the mercs to find the macguffin. The idea being that either way, the broker will end up with the material and if it's the PC's that retrieve it, they also get the info. More-so, the sniper was one of the bad mercs, but had a separate contract with the broker to watch and report on the PC's activity. The Merc leader had also told the sniper to watch the PC's and report to her (which is why they ambushed the PC's). The sniper would have fired at the players during that battle but didn't have any clear shots. I designated squares on the battle-mat that he could target, but they just happened to never step onto those specific squares (go figure); only until one came over with a drop ship, which was promptly shot down. The sniper didn't really like working for such a disreputable group, but money is money during hard times. His side contract with the broker was to get info about his missing daughter. If the players had questioned him, he would have reluctantly revealed this info, giving some insight into why some of the people are in the group. If they outright killed him, they would have found info about his daughter with the rest of his loot (and you BET i would have guilt tripped the PC's).

I'm a bit bummed that they missed on some bit of fluff and world building. I didn't agonize over the details but was kind of proud with how interwoven i had made everything. But in the end, players do what players do: everything you don't want them to... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[King of Nowhere]

I'm running a future fantasy pathfinder game with a bunch of setting appropriate homebrew equipment. Recently the party got in contact with a shadow broker agent (think Mass Effect) to get info on their current enemy. The broker was paid for the info, but in this setting for extremely sensitive info, the broker usually needs the info buyer to prove they are worth selling to. The logic is that the info loses all value if sold to someone incompetent.

Anyways, the mission is to go to a nearby, uncolonized planet and look for a macguffin, Lytherium aka God's Blood. This stuff whole bag of feral cats on its own. Its super rare (naturally occuring), super weaponizable, & super dangerous. While planet side, the players run into a bad news merc group. A quick knowledge check tells them that this merc group is one of the scummiest know; human trafficking, mob hits, drug smuggling, the works. The party tracks them down by following a literal trail of blood and bodies only to find the team leader is torturing and killing natives to extract Agony (liquid pain from BoVD) because she's a sadist, masochist, & addict. The party gets ambushed despite stealthily tracking the mercs, fight ensues, one player tries to crash a drop ship onto the merc leader, the ship gets shot down by a distant sniper but still hits 2 mercs, players eventually come out on top by starting a forest fire with breath weapons and grenades, and other high collateral tactics... you know, the usual. Afterwards, the PC's get the macguffin and return to the broker to find the sniper there finishing his contract with the broker. He's clearly dressed like the other mercs, there were plenty of clues to indicate another merc they didn't encounter (tracking 6 people but the tent had 7 cots, they fought 6 people but never figured out it was an anti-material round that took out the drop ship). There was a brief exchange of veiled threats because now the PC's hate everything to do with that merc group, and they let him leave.

What the players didn't know and didn't realize, despite the endless amounts of context clues, was that the broker also hired the mercs to find the macguffin. The idea being that either way, the broker will end up with the material and if it's the PC's that retrieve it, they also get the info. More-so, the sniper was one of the bad mercs, but had a separate contract with the broker to watch and report on the PC's activity. The Merc leader had also told the sniper to watch the PC's and report to her (which is why they ambushed the PC's). The sniper would have fired at the players during that battle but didn't have any clear shots. I designated squares on the battle-mat that he could target, but they just happened to never step onto those specific squares (go figure); only until one came over with a drop ship, which was promptly shot down. The sniper didn't really like working for such a disreputable group, but money is money during hard times. His side contract with the broker was to get info about his missing daughter. If the players had questioned him, he would have reluctantly revealed this info, giving some insight into why some of the people are in the group. If they outright killed him, they would have found info about his daughter with the rest of his loot (and you BET i would have guilt tripped the PC's).

I'm a bit bummed that they missed on some bit of fluff and world building. I didn't agonize over the details but was kind of proud with how interwoven i had made everything. But in the end, players do what players do: everything you don't want them to... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

if you have some cool background you want to show off with the player, make sure you have a reliable way to drop the information. i always make sure to have an npc doing exposition if i need to. while i make sure that no npc knows the information if i want to keep it hidden.

[Pleh]

Speaking of Gnolls, I don't mind them being demon spawn, though I treat that status as being like what most people believe Tieflings to be and that the apple doesn't fall far from the nine planes. This is to say I don't rule them as necessarily evil, just that they actually DO experience an external, cosmic force pushing their minds and hearts towards evil. Enduring this influence when it afflicts you throughout your impressionable childhood yields some 99% corruption rate.

The fun thing for me is that this means any "good gnoll" essentially has to undergo a paladin level Atonement and probably a Break Curse spell to restore their mind to a state free from demonic influence like other races. I see it like how Barbarians in 3.5 had illiteracy. It can be fun to make backstories about how and why your demon spawn character chose to reject their heritage and rebel against the darkness consuming their whole race.

Addressing anthropological issues of primitivism, for one thing, this is fantasy. I wouldn't call fiendish Gnolls a culture or society as much as a symptom of the nine hells being part of your cosmic structure. Their culture definitively isn't stable and if they were just hyena people, they would have to adapt or collapse. But since we have demons eternally spewing hell energy into the material plane any time they can, Gnolls are sustained even as they are constantly collapsing whenever they lack hell's support. In essence, they're actually monsters, not people, which makes anthropology irrelevent.

Finally, one of my favorite twists on Gnolls is to make them seafaring pirates. The ocean is the world's largest desert (if your world is anything like Earth) and a Gnoll raid on a ship leaves the victims with nowhere to run.

In fact, last time I did this was in 5e. I noticed that at low level, these common humanoid raider type monsters had relatively similar stats and one or two special abilities that made them stand out as a special kind of threat. Goblins, for example, could more easily attack heroes then move to hide to avoid counter attacks. Gnolls in 5e basically get cleave, where if they take someone down, they get a free attack.

I asked myself how to demonstrate this terrifying ability to my players without snowball TPKing my party. The answer was obvious. Escort mission. They are passengers on a ship that is raided by pirates at night. The Gnolls know they are outnumbered, so their strategy is blitz. They carefully time their attack so as many of them as possible reach the deck simultaneously, sneaking up in rowboats under the cover of darkness. Once on deck, they ignore the heroes unless attacked.

I statted the ship's crew as Commoners. The Gnolls easily deal enough damage on average to drop a commoner in a single strike if they hit. This speeds up combat as each gnoll only needs to roll to see if they hit and every time they do, that's another character I don't need to roll for. Gnolls will seek out large groups of sailors, hoping to quickly capitalize on their bonus attacks. Heroes get ranked based on how many sailors they manage to save. If too many sailors die, the journey takes longer as there is no longer enough crew to man the ship. If they do really well and few to no sailors die, the captain pays them well to compensate them.

[Ken Murikumo]

if you have some cool background you want to show off with the player, make sure you have a reliable way to drop the information. i always make sure to have an npc doing exposition if i need to. while i make sure that no npc knows the information if i want to keep it hidden.


Well that goes without saying, but my players are generally pretty sharp and pick up on the clues i leave. This happened to be an errant case, but it does happen. I personally don't like having NPCs dump exposition and prefer to use a lot of show-don't-tell in my story telling. I will have NPCs give needed exposition if i feel it's critically important or cannot/should not be done otherwise, though. My earlier (primitive) games/story telling used tons of NPC exposition & monologue; so much so, that i had one player shout, "no talk time; FIGHT TIME!!", then proceed to have his barbarian attack the BBEG. I get now that there is a balance for when it's appropriate and how much.

But what's done is done. There's no point in forcing the info on the players; It was not plot critical and contributes almost nothing to the greater plot, so i'll just let it go. Maybe i'll have a random encounter where they see the sniper in civilian clothing at a restaurant or something, having lunch with his daughter just to see if they make good on their threat to kill him next time they see him.

[Grek]

In my Urban Fantasy/Magic School setting, Dean Koschei takes a one week vacation every year around the time that the engineering students are scheduled to cover equidimensional equations.

(Equidimensional Equations are an actual math thing, more commonly known as 'Cauchy-Euler Equations'. Which is unexpectedly pronounced 'Koschei Oiler' because the French have a tremendous gift for vowels. The Dean is of the firm belief that he is already sufficiently lubricated and does not require assistance from student punsters.)

[Pleh]

the French have a tremendous gift for vowels.

Minor correction. Cauchy was french, but Euler was actually swiss.

I mention it because I thought he was german, but google reminded me it was the Eigen functions/values/etc that were german.

[LibraryOgre]

In my Urban Fantasy/Magic School setting, Dean Koschei takes a one week vacation every year around the time that the engineering students are scheduled to cover equidimensional equations.

(Equidimensional Equations are an actual math thing, more commonly known as 'Cauchy-Euler Equations'. Which is unexpectedly pronounced 'Koschei Oiler' because the French have a tremendous gift for vowels. The Dean is of the firm belief that he is already sufficiently lubricated and does not require assistance from student punsters.)


Minor correction. Cauchy was french, but Euler was actually swiss.

I mention it because I thought he was german, but google reminded me it was the Eigen functions/values/etc that were german.

Related: I had a DM who named all evil wizards after Mathematicians, and all good wizards after Engineers.