Why Read so Many RPG Magazines?

A few months back, I read Anatomy of an Adventure by M.T. Black. Then I also noticed Black’s highly viewed posts on EN World looking at old issues of Dragon Magazine. He practices what he preaches in terms of adventure and game design—read and copy the masters, and when you finish you’ll have discovered your own style. So though I was reading both old and new RPG magazines before this, it gave new impetus. 

In fact, based on what I’ve read about this hobby, the zine predates the game, and provided a common forum for discussion of ideas and concepts. Later descendants of the fanzine format were and are the official magazines of various publishers. 

These types of products play an important role in continuing to develop the hobby, I think even to this day. Take a look at the names in many of the magazines, old and new, for newer and more established publishers. Then take a look at the writers and designers in their books on your shelve or in your digital library. Magazines provide a place for new freelance writers and designers to cut their teeth in a more traditional publication space. Anyone can make a product and put it on DriveThruRPG (that’s not to diminish the self-publishing route, which is very hard on its own). But the process of working with editors and other designers fostered by magazines seems to fuel the larger TTRPG industry, and is the path towards authors credits in hardbacks from established publishers. 

Take a look at the early publishing credits of most of Wizards of the Coast’s design team if you don’t believe me. Experienced designers learned their craft writing then editing for Dungeon or Dragon magazines. More recent designers have some of their first publication credits in MCDM’s Arcadia. You’ll see En5ider authors in the author and designers credits sections of hardback titles from MCDM, Kobold Press, Ghostfire Gaming, and more.

So if you want to understand this hobby, find great ideas for your home games, or even start writing, take a look at EN Publishing’s En5ider, or Gate Pass Gazette. Learn from the work in Wildmage Press’ Horizons. Read the magazines from decades past and you’ll find things that inspire you, and you’ll drive your own creative energy.

Arcadia 7 Reactions

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The question is whether it’s a human skull surrounded by tiny fey, or a giant skull surrounded by large fey? It does remind me of the location of Giant’s Rest, which Matt Colville used in his Dusk campaign, and featured a giant skull. Regardless, the cover by Ian Ameling is very cool. Reminds me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

The editor’s note by James Introcaso focuses on the common theme of nature in this issue’s articles. 

The first is The Pickling Guild, by Sharang Biswas. In my previous glances at this issue I’ve skipped over this article due to the title, but this time I took a closer look—and I’m glad I did! I was missing out! While the guild masquerades as a group of food aficionados focused on pickling and fermentation, it really is a front for an inner circle that seeks to heal the sick and prevent terrible diseases and poisons from being unleashed on the world. The article offers plenty of adventure seeds to introduce the guild and a number of interesting NPCs with their own quest hooks to add to a campaign. Additionally, membership in the guild provides some fun benefits including privileged access to information, weapons, and facilities. I may introduce them in my Ptolus campaign. Finally, I was in error in my last observation on the Grim Accord—this article also provides an NPC domain for the Pickling Guild—meaning there is a little more support for domain play from Kingdoms & Warfare.

The next article is Wonders From the Wild, by Hannah Rose, which focuses on new nature themed magic items and spells. It’s noted that these are primarily intended for druids and rangers. This is a very mechanically dense article, with lots of interesting things to potentially add to your game. This includes no less than fifteen magic items, all of which are unique and very well suited to nature themed characters. One of my personal favorites is the Cloak of the Grove Guardian, a legendary item allowing a druid to animate two trees, giving them non-intelligent treant stats. This feels exactly like the type of thing a druid should be capable of at high levels. The various magic staffs are also great and very thematic, even including story hooks providing options of ways to inject them into your story, like the Staff of Granite Peaks being in its bridge form across a chasm (super cool, right?) and the command word appearing in the player who will gain its mind when they touch the handrail (the illustration of this is also a beautiful piece by Kent Davis Jr.). Other, less interesting items essentially remove the spell slot and preparation tax of taking speak with animals and other similar spells. These aren’t game breaking, and give druids and rangers more story opportunities to highlight their connections to nature and living creatures. 

The spells also seem well designed, and perhaps modeled on other spells with more appropriate flavoring for nature-based descriptions. They are primarily battlefield control spells from my read through, but I’m sure creative players could find interesting applications.

Aethelfaer, by Sara Thompson, is the final article of this issue. This is a unique article, detailing one specific NPC rather than a group, and providing an encounter (really a mini-adventure scenario) to introduce him. The titular character is Aethelfaer, which when broken into the component parts, aethel and faer, seems to mean "noble" or "princely" "traveler" according to the often incorrect internet. This meaning does seem to hit the character's traits on the nose though. Aethelfaer is characterized as a wood elf, who is a defender and respecter of nature. The intro paragraph of character fiction depicts him hunting a deer, which he kills quickly and cleanly with an arrow, then does a ritual to thank the creature for it's sacrifice to nourish him and confirm that he will not waste any part of it. Aethelfaer was also born with meromelia, a condition that causes the absence of limbs. He makes use of some very cool prosthetics (said to be made of "red elm and owlbear teeth" in place of a right arm and foot. I appreciate both a discussion of how Aethelfaer uses and views his prosthetics, which I think helps both accurately and sensitively portray these in gameplay. I also like the discussion of how players might also use prosthetics, from the standpoint of inclusion and providing an awesome opportunity to roleplay a different life experience.

The artwork of Aethelfaer is by Grace Cheung, MCDM's on-staff artist, and is an outstanding piece. In the article is also include a d12 table of plot hooks to include Aethelfaer, some of which are very fleshed out and detailed. The stat block isn't anything crazy, with Aethelfaer having ranger traits and abilities. The interesting details are tied to a vial of poison he hides in his prosthetic arm, along with a once per day Deflect feature, allowing him to reduce a ranged weapon's attack damage with his arm, or to catch the object and hurl it back if the damage is reduced to zero. The other cool inclusion is "Common Signs" as a language, which is presented in a sidebar as a universal language amongst disabled communities. A cool bit of inclusive worldbuilding that could be pulled into other scenarios and games (for instance, a cleric in my Empire of the Ghouls game spent a downtime attempting to learn sign language to be able to communicate silently with his teammates).

On to Arcadia 8!

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Arcadia 5 Reactions

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Another beautiful piece of cover art from Sean Andrew Murray depicting some sort of great siege engine. I love it.

Introcaso’s editor’s note focuses on asking logical questions about the fantastic details of our D&D worlds and carrying them to their conclusions. Certainly good advice for world building and reflected in this issue.

The first article is Long-Term Curses by Leon Barillaro. This provides six curses immune to the Remove Curse spell. These all seem to be less mechanical than narrative elements. The Curse of the Betrayed is interesting narratively, but seems like it would be difficult to do in practice. The Curse of Cassandra, paying homage to the Iliad, seems like it would be easier to roleplay. It’s harder to keep control of a group that is actively undermining one another and lying because it creates greater opportunities for problematic player behavior. While the prophecy curse provides an interesting narrative component that is easier to implement (the other characters simply need to act as though they don’t believe the prophecy, which is the curse, exactly as portrayed in the source material). 

The Curse of the Living Dead is distinct in not really being character focused. Instead it provides the idea of a town infected by necromatic energy that causes the dead to rise at midnight, meaning that their corpses are destroyed and removed from the immediate area before they arise as zombies. Instead this is an interesting narrative element that you can insert as a quest line in almost any campaign. I may use it to describe a town in Krakovar in my Midgard campaign, defiled by the magic of the ghouls and Blood Kingdom. The characters would need to break the curse as part of their work as rebels.

The last three curses are similarly interesting narrative devices, but my favorite is the Curse of the Watchers, which slowly adds to a folk of ravens who follow an adventurer who stole a seemingly mundane item of the GM’s choice from a dungeon until the swarm attacks. This would also be a great tie in to the Grove of Crows in the Path of the Planebreaker. The Grove is essentially a horror themed demiplane with similar vibes and esthetic. Just reskin the ravens as crows.

The next article is the Goldmonger Subclasses, by Carlos Cisco. I love these subclasses, like the unique and nuanced take on avarice as a divine domain. You don’t have to be evil to be greedy or a voracious collector of valuable magic items. The article is also very well written in my opinion. 

There’s a flavorful but brief description of Pta’u as a god of deals before launching into the cleric subclass. It has some powerful features, like the ability to duplicate a domain spell effect on yourself or an object you are touching after casting it on another creature or object. That means you can cast haste on your martial friend and yourself, or a number of other decent spells. Additionally there are other interesting abilities that add up to having a degree of battlefield control. Overall probably a middling subclass in terms of power, so it shouldn’t break your game.

The next is the Circle of the Gilded Druid, focusing on guarding natural resources of gold and gems from those who would take them. So I imagine they hate miners (not a subclass for Lost Mines of Phandelver perhaps). I’d need to test out the subclass to see how it performs, but largely it tries to boost the melee capabilities of the Druid with a ranged attack boost late at level ten. You’d still have the core controller and support spells of the Druid, but this certainly seems geared towards your character primarily relying on primal savagery for most of your attacks. A small boost to AC and resistance occurs at sixth level, meaning like most druids it would be advantageous to pick an ancestry that provides earlier buffs to AC if you plan to spells any significant amount of time in melee. So some cool abilities, but limited utility as far as their use. Probably another subclass that won’t break the game.

Next is the Paladin Oath of Acquisitions. The flavor on this one immediately makes me think about running an Acquisitions Incorporated game. It would definitely be a good addition thematically. It seems a little overtuned, with several abilities allowing you to impose disadvantage on enemy attacks. The aura allows this on any enemy within 10 feet, which seems like it could do a number on a boss encounter. 

The final article is Alabaster’s Almanac, by Sam Mannell. This article details nine new spells for arcane casters. They are all generally balanced, if sometimes a little too specific in their use cases. There is an odd ninth level spell that lets you turn illusions into real objects or creatures (but not magic items). Much like the other spell offerings, potentially useful to inject on a case-by-case basis, or give to an NPC or villain in your campaign.

That’s it for Arcadia 5!

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Arcadia Reactions 6

Strongholds & Followers Reaction

The product that started it all for MCDM in 2018. This product spawned as a personal project by popular D&D YouTuber Matt Colville. The project blew up on Kickstarter bigger than even he could imagine, amassing over one million in funding from 28,918 backers (according to Colville’s videos and the dedication in the book).

The book’s titular content makes up the first 90-odd pages of its 272 page count (I'm referencing the pdf as I write. The hardcover may be a few pages shorter). Pages eight to 67 detail a system of strongholds that is tantalizingly teased by some opaque references and cost tables in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide, but not fully fleshed out.

Thoughts

You can certainly see the differences between S&F and later MCDM products, but I don't mean that as a criticism, merely an observation. The design and writing styles changed as Colville brought on more outsider writers and designers for later projects. It still had some significant play testing (by 3,114 testers, again according to the dedication). 

This book also seems more grounded in the legacy and content of earlier editions of D&D. The influence of Matt’s studying the rules of prior editions, along with his own play experiences, particularly in AD&D and 2e are pretty evident. In a video that I don't recall the title of, he makes reference to the 2e Birthright setting, which you can see as a conceptual influence in both this and the sequel book Kingdoms & Warfare. Certainly, the idea of roleplaying a character from being a dirt-under-the-nails, torch-gripped-with-white-knuckles adventure all the way through their career which accrues them riches, titles, and land with strongholds (which might eventually become dungeons that future adventurers will pick through) seems deeply rooted in the history of a game whose initially premise was to zoom in on an individual soldier in a wargame and allow the player to experience that person's journey. 

It's certainly interesting to see this take on the subject matter. In the future I'd like to do an in depth comparison of S&F style of managing strongholds and compare it to the Bastion system that WOTC plans to include in the 2024 edition of D&D. There may be elements of each that a GM can cherry-pick and combine to create more simple or more complex systems for abstracting or managing strongholds. 

The stronghold mechanics in this title helpfully focus on providing cool new limited use abilities to player characters. Some of these are quite powerful. But I think if the GM is doing their job and drawing the players out of their strongholds in order to continue adventuring then these abilities will not be game breaking (they mostly only function within the geographic area of their stronghold, and their class-tied abilities require an extended rest (one week at their stronghold).

In addition to the core stronghold mechanics, the book contains 28 pages of followers, including NPCs that can be attracted to grow your stronghold and provide income, and retainers to act as lieutenants for your domain. While the MCDM design for retainers has changed (I think for the better), overall it’s not hard to covert these early stats for the later rules, and they still function well as simple stat blocks for followers. The sidekick rules from WOTC came out a couple years after this rule set, which are much more complex and similar to an actual character class. I think those are perhaps better for a one-on-one game where you want a more powerful partner for your player to keep them alive. The retainers are actually the most transferable rules from this book into the entirely new domain system created in Kingdoms & Warfare.

Next is the Siege of Castle Rend adventure, which provides the opportunity to implement the stronghold mechanics for a group of fifth level characters. I think it works as a good drop in adventure that features a village, and a ruined castle filled with a tribe of orcs. The artwork and maps for this adventure are beautiful.

There is an additional 75ish pages of new monsters, many of which are designed to provide fiends and celestial that fill in the gaps in CR that exist based on those available in vanilla 5e. These are also intended to support concordance rules (essentially an added way to include divine intervention for characters). There's also the interesting inclusion of gemstone dragons long prior to WOTC's own exploration of these monsters in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, and a rudimentary psionics system for them (at some point perhaps I'll take a side-by-side look at this system and compare it to where the psionics system went in the Talent supplement from MCDM). Of the creatures, my personal favorite groups are the Celestial Court, the Court of All Flesh, the Court of the Elements, and the Inexorables. The stat blocks are quite boring in most respects though (ironic considering MCDM's later kickstarter campaign for Flee Mortals! promising to "unboring" 5e monsters--spoiler; they succeeded with that later book, but hadn't quite cracked the code yet in this initial offering).

Finally the warfare system makes up the last portion of the book. Interestingly, I think this section is the only OGL content that I've found in any MCDM product. So if you want to make a Warfare supplement do it with this book, not Kingdoms & Warfare, which is most definitely not open game content. This time through the book marks the very first time I've sat down to focus and really read this section--previously I knew Kingdoms & Warfare was already out, so I've just ignored this earlier warfare system.

I will say, this system is much more replicable and easy to build units yourself than Kingdoms & Warfare, which needed to release the resource document (which still isn't open game content) to provide directions on how to build your own units. The basic system, other than positioning and the additional traits (of which there are many) is very similar to the one created in the later book. This book offers actual upkeep and recruitment costs, which is helpful, and the ability to abstract positioning isn't bad. Finally, the simple resolution capability is a quick way to take care of any warfare scenarios. Having looked at both systems, and considering how my players seem to interact with the additional complexity of intrigue and warfare, I think a blending of the two systems player focused things like organization titles, and simple warfare might be a good way to go for many tables (although I really like the idea of intrigue, it's difficult to explain, and simply resolving organization actions narratively seems more simple than making Operations and Lore tests. I'll need to think more about all of this.

Finally, there is an appendix section on new magic items, including the codices. I love theses books--they are flavorful magic items that provide narrative inspiration. And they're books, which I love personally. They each provide campaign altering powers. At some point I need to drop one of these or one of the additional codices detailed in Kingdoms & Warfare into my campaign.

There's lots of goodness in Strongholds & Followers. My Lost Mine of Phandelver players will complete construction on their establishment soon, so I'll actually get to see some of the stronghold powers, and attempt to implement one of the warfare systems. While the age of this title does show, especially compared to later MCDM products, I would still recommend the book for the creative influence and material it provides, along with the gorgeous artwork.

Arcadia 4 Reactions

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Arcadia 4! Another awesome and evocative cover from Grace Cheung. I feel like this guy would make a great campaign villain or faction leader. 

This issue’s editorial letter from James Introcaso confirms that the three issue trial period of Arcadia was successful and that the magazine would continue for the indefinite future (until it ceased production in July 2023 to focus development on the upcoming MCDM RPG). He also confirms, according to polling data from the MCDM patrons, something that rings true to me. That the more basic the content the greater utility for GMs to be able to apply it to their own games. I think that makes sense, and it’s the reason some adventures in anthologies are so good and others just aren’t and can’t be shoehorned into an adventure. 

The first article is Swimming Through Sand to Sea: More Mounted Adventuring by Willy Abeel, in a follow up to his previous article in Arcadia 1. This article provides more mounts, but more significantly provides new magic items that let you take your more exotic animal companions with you even if that makes them a fish out of water, or allows them to shrink to fit into a dungeon. One, the water wagon immediately conjured up an image of an aboleth villain to me, unwilling to give up its swim speed, so now confined to the water wagon to maintain full maneuverability on land. I do feel that omnimounts, large mounts able to cross continents, feel a little underdeveloped. The single page without fleshed out unique mechanics doesn’t seem quite complete to me. Cool concept, but not something I can apply easily to create my own content.

The next article is the Chained Library by Cat Evans. A drop in location that can be added to any campaign, the library is intended to be a location where hidden and dangerous knowledge is secreted away. The artwork of the front door by Faizal Fakri is evocative and stunning. It’s an interesting concept and can be applied as either an ally or adversary to characters. I don’t love the maps at the end, partly because they lack a grid or scale, and partly because I don’t find them very evocative.

The final article is On the Road Encounters, by Derek Ruiz. This article provides five unique encounters that characters can have while traveling. Most of these are brigand-type combat encounters. One is a duel between a knight and a peasant, which I quite like. They all are fleshed out with names and motivations for the NPCs, which makes them nice drop in content. But my favorite of these is a scenario called the Cartographer, who offers several quest hooks. I love this as a diegetic device to give the players a map of the region, or provide quests.

That’s it for Arcadia 4.

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Arcadia Five Reactions

How to Implement Kingdoms & Warfare in Dragonlance

 

Table of Contents

This post may include spoilers for the adventure Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen…

Adding the content and extra systems from Kingdoms & Warfare to this adventure may seem onerous at first, but after spending a few hours studying the rules and working on it today, I will tell you that it can be done. But first we need to understand how the new rules work.

Understanding Kingdoms & Warfare

Available in hardcover and PDF from MCDM, Kingdoms & Warfare provides two systems that are related but distinct. First it provides an overarching system for creating player and NPC domains or organizations that help model political interactions between groups (the political science student in me sings for joy!) The second system models war, which as Clausewitz taught us in On War is merely “a continuation of politics by other means.” The systems are intertwined in that intrigue allows the players to interfere with the villain through various means, and impact their capabilities in the final pitched battle that is the confrontation between them, and which uses the warfare rules to have a simplified and abstracted tabletop battle.

So we need to look at how to implement each of these systems for this adventure.

Intrigue

Intrigue involves organizations (in actual political science you might call these actors) sometimes they are a state (or country/kingdom) or sometimes they are non-governmental actors like thieves guilds, knightly orders, religious groups, or mystic circles of mages or druids. 

To understand intrigue, imagine your organization as having skills and features similar to a character sheet. There’s powers that characters can use in combat and titles that also given them powers, but those just act like extra character abilities and can essentially be ignored if you are looking specifically at what interacts with intrigue.

The skills are Diplomacy, Espionage, Lore, and Operations. Much like character skills they can be used to accomplish various tasks and are resolved through a d20 roll with a modifier added based on the score, then compared to a target difficulty class (DC). Now this is an important distinction; outside intrigue these skills can be used to conduct any number of imaginative activities thought of by your players. Inside intrigue, which can be compared to 5e combat, using a domain skill counts as a domain action. These actions function exactly like in combat. An organization only gets one domain action per turn, and if the organization has features that allow them it can also choose to take a domain bonus action and reaction. Domain skill tests can’t be made as domain bonus actions or reactions unless they are included in a feature that allows them.

Each domain also has defenses, which have both a set number that acts as a DC if a skill test is targeting one of them as a domain action. Separate from the number are defense levels, which start at zero at the beginning of each intrigue. There is a scale for each of these and they can be increased and decreased through domain actions on a range of up to +3 or down to -3 (the separate scales for this is a bit confusing in the text of the book as is buried in the middle of a paragraph). There is a section of Kingdoms & Warfare defining consequences that occurs during the final warfare battle between the two organizations at the end of intrigue based upon how these defense levels have changed over the course of the intrigue. So targeting these helps give you more advantageous circumstances in that battle. 

Other examples are provided for domain skill tests as domain actions that include Operations tests to muster additional units for your army, Espionage tests to determine statistics of the enemy domain or learn about their army composition, and diplomacy tests to petition NPC domains not involved in the intrigue to provide units for you to use with your army in the final battle (these units leave after the battle occurs). 

Player Organization 

So the first step of implementing the system is to have your players make their own heroic organization from those options available in the book. For a Dragonlance campaign the Martial Regiment, or the Mercenary Company specialization from the Adventuring Party organization type fit best for a warfare campaign and with the characters as essentially helping Kalaman, but if another organization type works for your group then try it out. 

Enemy Organization 

On the GM side, you need to build a villainous domain for the heroes to oppose. There is a section in Kingdoms & Warfare outlining the process, and it’s pretty clear and concise. 

For Shadow of the Dragon Queen, we’re dealing with only a portion of the Red Dragon Army led by Kansaldi Fire-Eyes. So that portion will have its own organization for now. One issue I’ve noticed with the enemies in the adventure is that the major leaders of this small portion of the Red Dragon Army are all CR 11 or 12, far too high for officers fighting even a group of 10 or 11th level characters at the end of the adventure as written…but the adventure as written uses some of these as bosses over it’s progression, so we’ll just use that attrition and have lower CR commanders fill out Kansaldi’s miniboss ranks when we get to the climax.

We’ll call this organization the Red Dragon Army Vanguard. Although we definitely could use the Draconic Imperium NPC domain as a base I think the Despotic Regime is a better fit for the capabilities and activities of this organization (all the details on these are found in Kingdoms & Warfare). It is a size 2 domain as compared to the characters’ size 1. Because of this we get 16 domain points to spend on the skills and defenses on top of the base stats for Despotic Regime.

Red Dragon Army Vanguard 

Type: Despotic Regime 

Size: 2

Domain Skills:

Diplomacy: -1

Espionage: +2

Lore: +2

Operations: +4

Domain Defenses:

Communications: 14

Resolve: 15

Resources: 13

NPC Domains 

The next step is adding some other domains for the players to interact with. As written there aren’t many options, but I think we can brainstorm a few.

• Kalaman military: This is an already aligned organization, but I want to represent it as something the characters can interact with and influence. I may even do a bit of a house rule and allow the enemy organization to be in intrigue with both the Kalaman and player domains so that the players have to choose between taking their own domain actions against the enemy or assisting their ally. They will get to command the military’s units in the final battle, but these might get some debuffs from the intrigue actions.
• Detachment of Solamnic knights: It’s Solamnia, right? I figure there’s a company or garrison of knights somewhere nearby that can be petitioned for aid. They might have their hands full with their own problems, but hey worth a shot, right?
• Estwilde Goblin Tribe: Though not strictly canon based on what I’ve read about Estwilde in a quick google search, I think it’d be good for Gringle to influence other people like him, and it makes sense that not all of the barbarian tribes of the region bow the knee willingly to the Dragon Armies.
• Silvanesti Exiles: These elves are in the Northern Wastes, and might be a good option to influence via diplomacy to get some magic ranged users help in the final battle. Zhelsuel is a named leader, and the characters can impact his attitude towards them directly, much like in the Baron of Bedegar adventure in Kingdoms & Warfare.
• Thoradin Bay Dimernesti Sea Elves: These elves are also set up to be assisted in the story and are against the Red Dragon Army for their own reasons.