Redbeard's Ravings

"What would Cugel do?" is the one of the better questions to ask if you're wondering what your players will do on any given session. If you haven't read Jack Vance's Dying Earth , then go do so because it's better than anything you'll read on the internet today. This blog will still be here, unless I sign up with google+ or something. So, imagine if Cugel the irredeemable rogue was somehow able to cast the 2nd or 3rd level spell, Continual Light. In Dying Earth, no doubt he'd still find a way to hang himself. Conversely, "what would happen to Cugel" is not a bad question to ask if you're the DM facing some Cugel-minded players (the best kind.) As I understand the standard old school frame that I use in the games I run, the player characters are a sieve through which gold flows. The PCs risk life, limb and soul for wealth and power only to lose it trying to gain more or via training, carousing, and a insatiable need to upgrade or re...

Yes, I do indeed have a blog and have content to post! I spend more time running games and playing them than I do blogging and commenting, though I have wasted time on that recently. To make amends, I offer something constructive to the blogosphere: a blatant rip of Zak's NPC connection diagram from his excellent Vornheim the Complete City Kit . It's a common trope that the population of megadungeons are divided into factions involved in a byzantine web of interconnected rivalries and alliances. This is necessary since otherwise the megadungeon inhabitants would react to the external threat of the PCs with united force, and there would be no rational for open by-ways allowing freedom of movement necessary for player choice. The PCs explore the megadungeon and are primed to take advantage of the splits to divide and conquer. Giving these relations substance allows for roleplaying and negotiation as a player choice. The tribes in Caverns of Thracia, the factions w...