At the Sign of the Green Man

Parsantium Design Diary No.14: Viking Bodyguards, Platinum Knights & Master Brewers

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:40:56 GMT

This week I’ve been writing more about the important organisations and power groups in Parsantium. In my last diary, I talked about the Hidden Quarter gangs and the Cult of the Black Mother. Since then, my attention has turned to knightly orders and fighting brotherhoods, including the Axe-Bearing Guard and the Platinum Knights, as well as the less than honourable Crusading Brothers of the Sword who have turned to piracy to keep their coffers full.

The Axe-Bearing Guard are based on the historical Varangian Guard, mercenaries from Scandanavia who formed an elite bodyguard for the ruler of Byzantium. Unswerving in their loyalty to the Basileus, these Northerners fight with reckless ferocity, not seeming to notice their wounds in battle. These days, being in the Axe-Bearing Guard is pretty dull – mostly they guard doors in the Great Palace and escort the Basileus and the Royal Family to and from services at the Holy Basilica – prompting some of them to leave and become adventurers.

The Platinum Knights are paladins of Themecia, goddess of justice, protection, nobility & honour, sworn to protect the god’s clerics and followers from harm and to mete out justice to evildoers. From their chapter house in Parsantium, the Celestial Bastion, the Knights support the Parsantine army in fighting back raiding humanoids. Some choose instead to become Platinum Knights-Errant. These knights are free to wander the lands, taking up honourable and chivalric quests to fight evil. All of the Knights follow a chivalric code:

The Code of Themicia

Protect the weak and the vulnerable

Live and die with honour

Fight for justice and welfare for all

Punish the evildoer

Respect and obey your superiors

Guard the honour of your brethren and sistren

Do battle bravely and fairly, eschewing trickery and deceit

Always speak the truth

Never leave a quest unfinished

I’ve also written a fair bit about Parsantium’s powerful guilds. These organisations are often at each other’s throats over goods and services where their spheres of influence overlap, leading to street fighting, arson and sabotage. Rival guilds sometimes call on the gangs of the Hidden Quarter to do their fighting for them, complicating the situation further. Other guilds are corrupt or have something to hide; some, like the Entertainers and the Vintners, just want to get on with making as much gold as possible. The idea with the guilds, as with the rest of the book, is to provide plenty of cool adventure hooks for DMs and players, as well as adding some verisimilitude.

Next up, I’m going to detail the noble families of Parsantium. Then, it’s on to the gods, the last chapter of the book. The current word count is 76,500 so my latest estimate on the final total is 81,000.

Parsantium Design Diary No.13 Nasty Gnomes, Hidden Quarter Gangs & Kali Cults

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:31:11 GMT

This week I’ve been working on the Organizations chapter of the Parsantium sourcebook. This section includes a number of power groups, noble families, city guilds and other organizations that have a big impact on the city. Some are downright evil, some are goodly and well-intentioned, but most sit somewhere in between the two extremes. Many of these will be familiar to those of you who have played in the Parsantium campaign – the Platinum Knights of Bahamut, the Esoteric Order of the Blue Lotus, the Golden Scimitars and the Dockside Crew – but some are new like the Brotherhood of Spite, a cabal of gnomes who compete against each other to see who can inflict the deadliest pranks on the big folk, and the Fellowship of Venturers Bold, an adventurer’s guild. In theory, PCs could join any of these groups, although some might be a better idea than others!

The gangs of the Hidden Quarter were fun to write about. I had a lot of material on the Golden Scimitars and Orloch Scragmane’s Mangy Curs already but virtually nothing on Avishandu, the Dock Ward Bosses and the Lamplighters, and I’ve added in a guild of master thieves called the Felonious Larcenists, as well as a Tiangaon tong called the Eight Scorpion who run lotus dens in the Temple Ward. And, of course, the evil Heinsoo is in this section too.

Today I’ve been writing about the Cult of the Black Mother – the secret religious sect that worships the dark Sahasran goddess, Kali. I won’t deny the influences of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom here – you can’t have a Kali cult without thuggee – but things aren’t as straight forward as they first seem. Next, I’ve got the fighting orders like the Platinum Knights and Axe-Bearing Guard to do, plus the guilds and the noble families. And then some rakshasas.

The book is now over 72,000 words so my revised estimate of 75,000 words might need looking at again – I’ll probably hit this word count before I finish the rest of the organisations and I’ll need 2,000 words at least for the gods. On that subject, I am thinking of taking a leaf out of Saladin Ahmed’s book – he wrote the excellent Throne of the Crescent Moon – and going with one god for the Akhrani, rather than coming up with yet another pantheon. I reckon this could provide an interesting contrast to the many gods of Sahasra and fits well with the Arabian flavour. Let me know what you think.

Parsantium Design Diary No.12 Into the Hidden Quarter

Fri, 03 May 2013 17:36:55 GMT

This week I finished off the last few locations in the Old Quarter, including several places in the Poor Ward which have appeared in both campaigns such as the Winking Vixen brothel and the Floating Palace gambling hall. It’s been interesting going back to revise these descriptions as they were some of the first things I wrote for Parsantium, way back in 2008!

With the city wards all done, I moved on to the Hidden or Fourth Quarter – the ruins of the older city of Dhak Janjua buried under the modern day one, the sewers, ghoul tunnels and other underground locations. This was a lot of fun to write about and the section includes the infamous Orloch Scragmane’s underground slave market (from the second ever Parsantium adventure and seen again recently at #UKT4), the headquarters of the Golden Scimitars criminal gang and a cool cave temple to the Black Mother, Kali. The idea behind the Hidden Quarter is to give DMs and players who like to have plenty of dungeons in their D&D a means of doing this. The locations are all connected to the city above and the organisations I’m going to be writing about next, hopefully making it easy for the DM to come up with exciting adventures that combine intrigue and roleplaying with some entertaining dungeon bashing.

I’ve also written a short section about the places just outside the city walls, including another old favourite, the Forest of the Dead, the city’s cemetery where the priests of Soranus, god of the dead, stand guard against any who would disturb the resting places of the deceased. I’ll be writing about the Feyshore Forest as well as it’s just too cool not to include in the book.

The picture below is a postcard I bought in Istanbul of the Mosque of Suleyman and its graveyard. I think this style of interior art would work well – just need to find someone who can draw like this....

The word count stands at 65,600 so I reckon I have about 10,000 more to write on the organisations and the gods before the first draft is done. Then Kate will give it all a good read through and I’ll start the process of revising everything prior to editing and the initial layout.

Parsantium Design Diary No.11

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:53:31 GMT

Since my last design diary, I’ve almost – but not quite – finished writing about the eleven wards of the city. I’ve got a few more locations in the Poor Ward to write about and then that’s it. I’m also very pleased that the first draft now stands at over 60,000 words!

Once the city wards are done, I’ve still got the Hidden Quarter beneath the city to write about – home to the Golden Scimitars, ghouls, derro necromancers, underground slave markets and more cool stuff. I need to write a short section about places just outside the city too like the Feyshore Forest. Then, it’s on to organizations (criminal gangs, fighting orders, guilds, nobles etc) and the gods. The gods need a lot of work – I already talked about needing to sort the Batiaran pantheon out here but I also need to revise the gods of Akhran (borrowed from Al-Qadim in the original campaign) and Tiangao (borrowed from Dragon Fist) as well as tidying up the Vedic gods I’m using for Sahasra. Talking of which, I still need to come up with new names for Sahasra and Batiara too – something to tackle in the revised draft, I reckon!

The stuff I’ve been writing about recently has been the Artisans (formerly Makers) Ward, the Temple (formerly Faiths) Ward and the Garden Ward. The Garden Ward was fun to do as I got to write up Parsantine versions of a couple of cool places we visited on our trip to India in 2007. That’s how long some of this stuff has been kicking around in my head before it finally gets committed to text in a computer file. The Observatory is one of these locations, based on the very cool Jantar Mantars in Jaipur and Delhi:

The Observatory was built by the great sultan Hulieman as part of the many public works that took place during his thirty year reign. Hulieman was very interested in astronomy and astrology, and wanting to use the movement of the stars and planets to predict important events in the future that would affect the city, including wars, earthquakes, political upheaval and famines. The construction of the Observatory was overseen by a vanaran mantrika (sorcerer) named Vipinbehari and carried out by numerous human and dwarven masons.

The Observatory consists of sixteen huge astronomical instruments for measuring time, predicting eclipses and monitoring the positions of stars and other celestial bodies. Each instrument is a large stone structure bearing an astronomical scale; the tallest, the Samrat Yantra or Supreme Instrument is a 90 feet high sundial which can tell the time with pinpoint accuracy and is also used to predict crop forecasts. The other instruments include the Jai Prakash Yantra, two sunken hemispheres which map out the heavens, the Unnatansha Yantra, used to determine the position of the stars and planets, and the Rashivalaya Yantra, composed of twelve pieces, each of which represent a different sign of the zodiac, and are used to draw up horoscopes.

The instruments are located in a walled compound amid trees and grass, allowing visitors to walk amongst them. Admission is normally restricted to students from the Scholasticia (who take some of their lessons here) and members of the Esoteric Order of the Blue Lotus. The current Royal Astronomer is a male gnome called Barreus Pogor who dresses in black robes and hat embroidered with stars and moons in silver thread. Barreus is a scholarly wizard of some renown who specialises in divination magic. His recent observations of the alignment of the stars and planets indicate that a terrible evil is soon to return to Parsantium. Are the stars right for Vrishabha to be freed from his icy prison? Barreus has tried to warn the Basileus but has yet to be taken seriously.

As you can imagine, coming up with new locations, changing names and moving things if I’ve realised they don’t make sense where they are has played havoc with the city map. So far I’ve been scribbling over a printed out version of the most recent campaign map (see below). Once the first draft is done, things should be firmed up a bit more and I’ll be able to revise the map properly, making sure I have a complete list of places to include before I brief the cartographer.

Parsantium Design Diary No.10

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:22:12 GMT

Since my last design diary, I’ve completed the Mercantile Quarter and two wards of the Old Quarter, so the Gazetteer chapter is about two thirds done and the whole book is over 52,000 words! A noted game designer – it might have been Ray Winniger in his awesome Dungeoncraft articles for Dragon – once wrote that you should only design the stuff you need for your game. I followed this advice when I was only running Parsantium for my game groups and it’s a top tip if that’s what you’re doing. However, if you’re writing a city sourcebook for others to use, you need to provide at least some information on all the areas of the city. As I’ve been writing about the Mercantile Quarter and the Caravans Ward in particular, I’ve had to write nearly everything from scratch as only one location, the Curio Cabinet in Tinker’s Alley, had actually appeared in my campaign.

I’m now on to the familiar streets of the rest of the Old Quarter which have seen a lot of action for both the Juma Gang and the Luminous Heroes of the Ironcrags. This has meant revisiting and rewriting stuff I first wrote back in 2008, including the boat town of Flotsam, the Black Dolphin’s Wake and the slums where Orloch Scragmane rules his criminal empire. It’s been a lot of fun. Here’s the section on the Dock Ward slums from the first draft:

The Slums
This is a dirty place in the worst part of the city, best avoided by anyone who isn’t desperate enough to call the slums home. Most of the dark and dank buildings are either completely derelict or half-way there. The streets and alleys are close together and very narrow, with the top storeys of the blocks on opposite sides of the street leaning in and nearly touching, making walking below feel claustrophobic and oppressive. Disease is common, and the streets are full of flea-ridden cats and troops of mangy blue-bottomed monkeys hunting for something to eat. The whole district is smoky due to the fires people use to cook on, but the smells of food (usually lentils or rice with some scraps of meat, fish or vegetables and a pinch of spice) does little to mask the stench of unwashed bodies and waste. The residents of the slums are the dregs of society and hate the world for it.

The decrepit apartment buildings are owned by a series of ruthless “slumlords” who charge cheap rents to the tenants but do nothing to maintain the property. Roofs leak, mould grows on the walls, stairways are unsafe, and all types of vermin from rats to giant centipedes and spiders are rife. Many of these slumlords are wealthy nobles and merchants living in the Imperial Quarter or elsewhere in the Old Quarter, but some are also Bosses, crime lords based in the ward.

The most notorious of these Bosses is the gnoll slaver, Orloch Scragmane, nicknamed the Undisputed King of the Slums. The gnoll gangster has his headquarters in a tenement building on Snail Street, protected by a barbed iron gate and guarded by his gnoll pack mates, known as the Mangy Curs. As well as exploiting the poor tenants living in his apartments, Orloch is involved in extortion, kidnapping and murder, and runs an underground slave market based in the Hidden Quarter where he sells human, dwarf, elf and halfling slaves to ruthless brothel keepers from the Poor Ward’s red-light district, evil necromancers and various other dodgy characters. Orloch buys his slaves from pirates like the notorious bugbear swashbuckler Captain Ferrukk and from land-based gangs like the Dockside Crew who aren’t above knocking a few dockworkers out with a blow to the head as they wander drunkenly home from the pub. He is over seven feet tall with a flame red mane and dozens of tattoos. He wields an execution axe in combat and there is nothing he likes more than inflicting terrible pain on his enemies.

Next door to Orloch’s HQ, is a chapel dedicated to Pelor called St Carinus’ Redemption. The kindly cleric, Brother Jerome, an elderly silver-haired, softly spoken man, wanting to do some good for the desperate souls in the slums, runs a soup kitchen for the needy out of the church hall. Some of the Dock Ward’s most accomplished thieves and scoundrels are regulars here; Brother Jerome hope that they will step out of the darkness and into the light at some point in the future.

I also have a question to ask. Since I want Parsantium to work with any edition of D&D including 4e, Pathfinder and D&D Next, what is the best way to indicate the level and/or class of NPCs, if at all? I haven’t included this information at all so far which is how Menzoberranzan, City of Intrigue does it but I could describe each NPC as an apprentice, journeyman or master (as per The Pirate’s Guide to Freeport) or even list a level & class. The drawback with the latter approach is that 4e NPCs don’t really have classes and 4e is on a 1-30 level spectrum compared to 1-20 for Pathfinder and D&D Next. My inclination is to leave this information out entirely but I do see how it could be useful to know roughly what spells a cleric can cast for example. Any thoughts or suggestions greatly appreciated!

Midgard Bonus Bestiary 4e #dnd now available

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:09:47 GMT

When we did the Kickstarter campaign for the Midgard Bestiary for 4th Edition, Brian Liberge and I needed to provide some extras for the higher level backers. The obvious answer was to provide some extra 4e monsters so we looked through the long list of Midgard monsters that we just didn’t have the room for in the original bestiary and picked our 12 favourites to go in a “bonus bestiary”.

We had to turn things round very quickly so we enlisted the help of Paul Baalham and picked four each. I can’t remember how we divided them up between ourselves, but I was very happy with the ones I got to work on: the pig-faced infernal deal-making chort devil (a level 22 skirmisher), the hideous oculo swarm (a level 6 skirmisher capable of removing the eyes of its victims) and the goat-horned stuhac (a level 18 solo brute that wears the woven ligaments and tendons of its victims as garments). Best of all is the kikimora, a kind of “reverse brownie” that persecutes the owners of the house it lives in, smashing stuff and making the place filthy, rather than tidying up and polishing their shoes. As well as these four, the book contains another eight awesome monsters, including the multiplying doppelrat, the freaky looking strangling watcher and the witchlight, a glowing orb familiar.

The Bonus Bestiary is now available at drivethrurpg.com for just $2.99 (or £1.95) and has already had a five star review!

The Ongoing Adventures of the Juma Gang, Session #48: The Fomorian Outpost

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:02:40 GMT

Here’s what happened in last night’s game. Each PC gets 1,600 xp, bringing you all up to 14th level.

2nd Sextilis (contd.)

After some discussion, Hrothgar sneaks up to the outpost guarding the road to the Fortress of Mross-Kagg. The gnoll peers inside but the ruined keep seems to be deserted. He signals the others to approach and the PCs enter the room, noting the dragon-headed columns that appear to be dripping with green, viscous fluid. When the party go in, a huge female fomorian giant appears, wielding a gnarled wooden staff which she uses to blast the party with black flames. The PCs rush in to attack but the fomorian is a tough opponent, capable of casting two spells at once and using her evil eye to hide from her enemies. When they hit her, the witch teleports Hrothgar and Juma next to the dragon columns, then ignites the flammable oil dripping from them to catch the PCs in a cloud of toxic smoke. As she fights, she invokes Skalmad’s name and his eye.

Once the PCs bloody her, the fomorian teleports next to Gil and becomes invisible. The eladrin has been practising with his longsword, however, and manages to land a decent strike. The other PCs rush to the mage’s defence and Hrothgar delivers the killing blow. After looting her body, the PCs try and figure out the mysterious magic portal set into the wall in the side chamber to the east. When Gil declares that fomorian magic is needed to activate it, Hrothgar gouges out the dead giant’s evil eye and presents it to the portal. Unfortunately nothing happens.

Having used most of their spells and powers in the battle, the PCs decide to rest on the outpost’s roof, taking it in turns to keep watch.

3rd Sextilis

At dawn, the PCs head off from the outpost to the fortress itself. Ahead, they can see the path ahead has been flooded where water cascades down from the cliff above. Hrothgar spots two feymire crocodiles lurking in the wide pond and eagle-eyed Gil also notices a pair of quicklings hiding in the trees.

The two quicklings attack first, running past Hrothgar at the front and stabbing him with their short swords. Gil casts ice storm in the middle of the pond, immobilising the crocodiles, while Sora kills the first quickling and Juma goes to look behind the waterfall (and finds only a cliff wall). The crocodiles advance – one grabs Ulthar in its jaws; the other snatches Juma, but the swordmage escapes by teleporting away. The Urskovian tries to escape from the reptile’s vise-like grip but can’t get out before he is swallowed. Meanwhile, Juma slays the second quickling, and the other crocodile grabs hold of Sora. The genasi casts seeds of fire, pushing the crocodile that has Sora in its mouth towards the other one, setting it on fire and killing it. The surviving croc then swallows Sora but the mighty Juma is able to kill that one too, and both PCs are able to clamber out of their stomachs to freedom.

Parsantium Design Diary No.9

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:58:21 GMT

Since my last design diary I’ve made some good progress and the manuscript now stands at over 45,000 words. If I had to guess, it looks like the whole book could be around 70,000 words – as long as the Midgard Bestiary for 4th Edition. Today I finished writing the first draft of the Imperial Quarter – this is the northern, Batiaran half of the city and includes locations such as the Great Palace, the Hippodrome, the Curia, the University and the homes of the great and the good. It’s been a lot of fun to write and, as I said in my last diary, most of it is new as neither group of PCs in my two Parsantium campaigns has spent much time there. I’ve also started coming up with some new gods for the Batiarans – the Batiaran gods in my own campaign were a mixture of the official D&D gods (Bahamut, Pelor) and the pantheon in Aaron Loeb’s superb Book of the Righteous. I’ve a lot more to do but I have at least nailed down Voltan, God of Fire and Smiths and his consort Dorna the Fire Keeper, Goddess of Hearth and Home – both much revered by dwarves – and Amphetia, Queen of the Sea. Overall, the Imperial Quarter has come in at over 11,000 words, with each ward covered in about 2,200 words. The Mercantile Quarter is much smaller – it’s only one ward – but I would imagine the Old Quarter will be a similar length so it’s probably going to make sense to divide the Gazetteer into three separate chapters.

Anyway, here’s one of the introductions to a ward, in this case the renamed Jewel Ward, now the Harbour Ward. Does this do enough give you an idea of what it’s like to wander around this part of the city? What else could be added?

Harbour Ward

Situated in the southern half of the Imperial Quarter, the busy Harbour Ward borders on the Emerald Ward to the north, the Grand Ward to the West, the Civic Ward to the east and the Dolphin Strait to the south. On the eastern side of the Conqueror’s Road is Parsantium’s dwarven neighbourhood, full of sturdily constructed stone homes, often built over or behind workshops, and replete with taverns and breweries. Many of the dwarves living here are craftsmen of one sort or another, but a sizeable percentage work in the Civic Ward’s financial district as bankers or bureaucrats, and some are employed as guards. Most of the city’s best beers are brewed in the dwarven district (see page XX) and celebrated in the popular Festival of Flagons every September (see page XX).

The Dwarven Forum is situated where Silver Street crosses the Conqueror’s Road. Here, fine dwarven goods can be purchased from the many stalls including weapons, armour, drinking horns and jewellery. There is no column in the centre of the square; instead a squat stone plinth holds an impressive marble statue of the forge god Voltan shaping a battle axe on his anvil. The food on sale includes rock hard dwarven bread, only really edible when washed down with a pint of Stalagmite Stout.

The western side of the ward is predominantly a middle class residential district – mostly insulae with shops on the ground floor and apartments above. The nicer blocks are north of Silver Street; to the south as you get near the waterfront and the Royal Docks, the building and streets are not in such good repair, and the atmosphere can feel somewhat edgy after dark. Most of the shipping arriving in Parsantium comes to these docks so the neighbouring streets are always busy with goods being moved to and from warehouses or loaded onto bullock carts to be taken to the forums and markets. This part of the ward is popular with halflings who fill whole insulae near the waterfront.

First Impressions

Home to hard-working folk, dwarven, halfling and human, this ward is filled with the sounds and smells of things being made or moved from place to place. An armorer noisily hammers out dents in a damaged breastplate in his workshop, as a loud argument starts up when a cartwheel breaks, causing a traffic jam on a packed Silver Street. Down at the docks, shouts from sailors and longshoremen peppered with colourful language and insults compete with the screeched cries of the seagulls as a large merchant ship is unloaded.

Passers By

Wergrim Barrelmeister is a short, rotund and jowly male dwarf brewer wearing a braided pony-tail and a grubby apron. He has been working on his latest beer for the past nine months and is convinced he is line to win this September’s Beer of the Year contest.

Rafiqi Quddus is a well-dressed merchant, just arrived by ship from the Caliphate of Akhran, and he is very angry. One of the crates of valuable spices he has just had unloaded from his vessel has gone missing from the dockside.

Barihild Ironshoulder is a female dwarf warrior in immaculate plate armour who works as a bodyguard for hire. Currently between jobs, she is touting for business in the Dwarven Forum. Her luxuriant beard makes it hard to determine her true gender.

Parsantium Design Diary No.8

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:38:11 GMT

I haven’t written a design diary for a while, but that’s partly because I’ve been busy writing the actual book! As some of you know I’ve left my job at Waterstones, so I have a unique opportunity to write full time for a while and get the book finished much quicker than originally planned. In the last three weeks I’ve completed the third chapter, entitled Running a Campaign, and have moved on to the Gazetteer in which I get to write about all the cool locations the PCs can visit in the city.

Running a Campaign includes the PC backgrounds I wrote about last time. I gave these to the players at UKT4 when I ran my playtest game there and everyone seemed to find one that fitted their character without too much trouble. Seeing as there were a couple of left field PCs including a gnome bard and a pixie warlord called Appleblossom, this was a good sign! The players also enjoyed the setting, and got their heads around it pretty quickly – another big positive – and it was great to get feedback from people who haven’t played in Parsantium before.

I also wrote some of the key themes for a Parsantium campaign in this chapter, such as going up against the gangs of the Hidden Quarter or delving into the city’s ancient past. A Parsantium campaign doesn’t need to have a recurring theme – it can be a series of unconnected adventures – but one or two themes can help give the campaign a bit of focus. The other sections in these chapter are Facilities & Services, Getting Around and Random Events. I had a lot of fun with the latter – I loved the events section in the back of 1st Edition Oriental Adventures and I’ve tried to do something similar for Parsantium so the city feels like a living, breathing place where stuff happens even when the PCs aren’t up to much. This chapter is just over 7,000 words, again coming in longer than I expected. I’m not worrying about this though – I’m going to keep writing and trim later if I need to.

With the first three chapters finished, my attention has turned to the massive Gazetteer chapter which will take up a large part of the final book. I’ve started off with the Imperial Quarter which is interesting for me to work on – players in my Parsantium campaigns will know the vast majority of the action has taken place in the Old Quarter – so my notes on the Imperial Quarter are pretty sketchy in places. It’s coming along nicely though – I finished the Civic Ward and started on the Emerald Ward today. As a sneak preview, here’s the first draft entry for the university district – some proper names (like Tinel) will be changing. Comments welcome!

University District, Civic Ward

The Scholasticia, Parsantium’s university, is situated in the northern part of the Civic Ward and is renowned as the foremost centre of mundane learning in the former Batiaran Empire. Consisting of several grandiose buildings set in attractive grounds with neat lawns and ornamental trees, the biggest, an impressive marble edifice known as the Ivory Towers (it has several, of different heights), houses the 300-seater Auditorium where lectures take place, classrooms, and the offices of the tutors and academic staff. The Great Library and the Imperial Museum of Antiquities, as well as halls of residence and for the students and academic staff, kitchens and a large dining hall make up the rest of the buildings. Standing in the centre of the campus is a 15 ft high complex mechanical clock, with a crescent moon-shaped pointer which causes small doors to open in the side of the structure every hour, each revealing a different music-playing automaton.

The surrounding streets are full of businesses catering to those teaching or studying at the Scholasticia: booksellers and binders, map-makers, scribes and stationers, and makers of musical instruments, as well as numerous taverns and pubs and street food stands. The rowdy Rambunctious Ferret is the current favourite of most students, offering free drinks all night to anyone who can beat the record for drinking its yard of ale the fastest. The university professors prefer the fusty, smoke-filled Three Tomes where they can enjoy a half pint of Stonyfist Pale Ale in peace and quiet and have a grumble about how students today don’t want to learn anything with their colleagues.

Only the wealthy can afford to send their offspring to study at the Scholasticia – the tuition fees are not cheap, and scholars are also required to buy their own books, paper, pens and ink. For those rich enough, though, the standard of education provided is first rate, and many important government officials and judges studied in the Ivory Towers, as did the city’s finest poets and dramatists. Subjects taught include history, law, mathematics, philosophy, poetry, music, languages and literature. Many of the academics teaching at the Scholasticia are the foremost expert in their field in the city, and often the known world, although getting them to part with this knowledge to non-students is usually an expensive undertaking.

The Chancellor of the Scholasticia is a female Akhrani poet and literature professor named Latifa bint Abbas. Now close to retirement, the tiny, thin-lipped Latifa is regarded as one of the world’s finest living poets. She rules the Ivory Towers with an iron hand in a velvet glove, making sure the often eccentric and absent-minded staff remember to turn up to their lectures and give their students the finest education money can buy.

The Ivory Towers are also home to the enigmatic Vashnawi, a female guardian naga who came to Parsantium after being drawn there from her home in a ruined temple in the remote jungles of Sahasra following a strange dream. Vashnawi has shimmering rainbow-coloured scales, a cobra-like hood and the face of a beautiful dark-skinned elf; her body is 12 feet long from head to tail. She wears a pair of platinum earrings, as well as several gold bangles on the end of her tail. The naga divides her time between the Towers and the Great Library, and is an expert on the history of Sahasra, the Geomancers of Kadar and the founding of Dhak Janjua. Recently, Vashnawi has been troubled by her dreams again, some of which have featured Vrishabha in his icy prison in the Pillars of Heaven Mountains, and also the PCs! Fearing that there is a plot afoot to free the rajah that the adventurers are mixed up in, the naga is likely to summon them into her presence and send them on a mission to investigate.

The Great Library

This large white marble building, built in the classic Batiaran style, is the most complete and inclusive library in the former Batiaran Empire, housing many literary, artistic and scholarly works of the people of the Empire and beyond. This huge collection has grown over the centuries of Parsantium's existence, although many valuable works were destroyed or lost when the city fell into the hands of the humanoids prior to the Great Crusade. The Great Library also serves as the centre of worship for the God of Knowledge, Tinel – a large marble statue of the deity stands in the atrium and there is a chapel to the goddess within the building. From the entrance, a visitor can head into one of the numerous galleries on the ground floor or upstairs; each is devoted to a different subject area and full from floor to ceiling with books and scrolls.

The Great Library is run by the Custodian, an ancient Batiaran high priest of Tinel named Zenodotus. Bald and with a grey beard trailing almost to the floor, Zenodotus invented the current cataloguing system for the library and undertook a wholesale reorganization of the collection in the decades following the Great Crusade. He is assisted by several dozen priests of Tinel, each an expert in a particular field of study. In addition, the Great Library employs several minotaurs from the island of Phokris as librarians; these humanoids are able to navigate the confusing layout of the building with ease, and act as doughty protectors of the valuable manuscripts and volumes.

Zenodotus is keen to make sure that the library’s body of knowledge is as complete as possible and to that end the priests regularly hire adventurers to travel to remote locations (including the planes of existence beyond this one) and document their journeys. Sometimes, they are asked to find out the truth of a particular legend or to verify a rumour or tale that has come to the priests’ attention. The adventurers are instructed to keep a journal of their travels and discoveries; these journals are then purchased by the Great Library on their return to Parsantium, assuming they have met the minimum standards of record-keeping expected by the priests.

The library is open to researchers and visiting scholars at a cost of 20 gp per day which includes assistance from the priests in finding what you are looking for. Although everything in the library has been meticulously catalogued, the system used by the staff is not easily grasped by outsiders. Knowledge checks at the library can be made with a +5 bonus after a full day’s research.

The Imperial Museum of Antiquities

This museum houses an impressive collection of artifacts from the former lands of the Batiaran Empire, the deserts of Khemit, and beyond. It was even more impressive at one time but the museum was one of the first things to be looted by the hobgoblins led by Kalgroth Ironheart and many of its treasures have been lost for good. Since the Great Crusade, the museum has been trying to reassemble the original collection, hiring adventurers to track down missing antiquities whenever they get a lead on the whereabouts of an artifact. It is rumoured that the hidden vaults beneath the building were never found by the humanoids – these chambers are said to contain a vast collection of objects that need cataloguing and a handful that are either too valuable or too dangerous for public viewing.

Parsantium at #ukt4

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 17:09:42 GMT

Had an awesome time running my first game at a Tweetup today. Thanks to Adam for organizing and to a great group of players - Theo, Matt, Michael, Webbo, Shane & Wayne!

Fighting the Thuggee in the Dock Ward market

Arriving at Orloch's slave auction

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

The Ongoing Adventures of the Juma Gang, Session #47: Battle in the Throne Cavern

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 10:02:34 GMT

Here’s what happened in last night’s game, in which Skalmad escaped to the Feywild. Each PC gets 1,800 xp.

2nd Sextilis

Well rested, the PCs return to the cavern with the skeleton cages and search the hags’ lair to the east, finding ritual components, a magical torc and other treasure, as well as a few over-ripe bog pheasants. Hrothgar stuffs one of the birds into his backpack in case he fancies a snack later on.

Next, Hrothgar and Juma open the door to Skalmad’s throne cavern. Gil casts burning transformation and everyone stays close to Sora to wait for her to cast wrath of the gods as the trolls and drow in the room advance on the party. The drow shroud themselves in clouds of darkness, making it hard to fight them, and both Juma and Hrothgar in the front rank need to be healed early in the battle by Ulthar and his flashing armour. Once Sora has cast her spell, the PCs are able to move further into the room. They concentrate their attacks on the front two trolls, bringing them down, but are unable to keep them from regenerating until Gil finishes them off with a fire shroud. Juma transforms into his fiery manifestation, Jod, and kills the male drow, as Sora and Hrothgar attack Skalmad. The troll king burns the PCs with his smouldering eye, then starts heading back to his throne, pursued by the gnoll. Hrothgar can’t get there in time though, and Skalmad uses the throne to shift into the Feywild. Ulthar kills the last troll and the PCs rush over to investigate the king’s disappearance.

It takes them some time to figure out how the throne works but Jod is able to activate it by casting hellish rebuke (a fire spell) at Gil while sitting on the throne and concentrating on opening the portal as the other PCs hold onto the crystal seat. The surroundings change and the PCs find themselves back in the Feywild in an area open to the sky that nevertheless resembles the throne cavern.

Heading north across the stream to the equivalent of the skeleton cage cavern, the PCs spot three suits of plate armour standing with great swords held up in salute. To the east is an archway blocked with a stone slab carved with glowing yellow runes in Rellenic. When Hrothgar moves to go down the steps, one of the suits of armour animates. The PCs attack the helmed horror while Gil uses his float spell to drift down to the stone arch and study the runes.

Realising that eladrin blood is needed to open the portal and that living blood is more potent than that of the dead eladrin lying in front of the door, the wizard cuts himself and starts tracing patterns in his blood on the slab. Meanwhile, the rest of the party drops the helmed horror, only for it to reanimate and resume attacking, along with its two companions. The PCs are taking a fair bit of damage from the horror’s elemental greatswords, but eventually Gil opens the portal with help from Hrothgar and the constructs stop attacking.

The PCs pass through the cliff and arrive at the ruined Fortress of Mross-Kagg. To the north is an outpost which guards the road leading to the fortress, to the south there is a great rift in the ground, and straight ahead (east), there is a smashed statue of a fomorian. Investigating this, the PCs find an enormous gemstone which served as its larger eye. They discuss what to do next.

Six Things You Need to Know About Parsantium

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 12:02:28 GMT

Here are Six Things You Need to Know About Parsantium from the first draft of the introductory chapter of the Parsantium city sourcebook. Parsantium is a complex city, but the following points encapsulate the main features of this campaign setting. For an update on progress with the book, please click here to read my design diaries.

1. A Melting Pot
Parsantium is a city where trade routes meet and where several cultures collide. It is a cosmopolitan setting, inspired by the real-world city of Byzantium which also sits astride two continents, and allows the DM to incorporate characters, monsters and magic from the tales of the Arabian Nights, ancient India, and the Far East into his game alongside the more traditional European fantasy elements.

2. A Divided City
The layout of the city and the fact that the Batiaran rich tend to live on the north west side of the strait while the poor (many of Sahasran or Akhrani origin) live on the south east side makes Parsantium a divided city, both physically and culturally. This is made worse by restrictions on commoners from the Old Quarter visiting the Imperial Quarter – they need a pass which is only issued for those on “special business”. Unsurprisingly, there is a thriving black market dealing in stolen or forged passes, and many would-be burglars disguise themselves as nobility to sneak into the Imperial Quarter. However, since many of the residents of the Old Quarter are Sahasran in ancestry and therefore darker-skinned than the Batiarans of the Imperial Quarter, some of the guards are known to make racist assumptions about who is a commoner and needs to show a pass.

3. Intrigue Abounds
The rich and powerful inhabitants of Parsantium are always scheming, and the presence of rakshasas in the city makes it difficult to know who to trust. As the player characters gain levels and grow in influence, they are sure to attract the attentions of those who seek to manipulate and use them for their own ends.

4. A Dark Past
Parsantium is built on the ancient ruins of Dhak Janjua, ruled long ago by the rakshasa rajah and ruthless tyrant Vrishabha. Slain by a great hero, his reincarnated form is encased in ice atop the Pillars of Heaven Mountains far to the south east. Perhaps one day his disciples will find a way to free him from his prison so he might reclaim his throne.

5. The Fourth Quarter
The cellars, cisterns and twisting tunnels and passages of the Hidden Quarter are supposedly ruled by the “Fourth Tribune”, a sinister crime lord and the “Boss of All Bosses”. Certainly, criminal gangs such as the Golden Scimitars, slavers and necromancers use the catacombs to conduct their evil business and make their way around beneath the city streets without detection by the City Watch. Monsters live here too, and in the deep places forgotten since the heyday of Dhak Janjua, dark things slither.

6. Dozens of Adventuring Possibilities
The city (and this book) contain enough adventure hooks and potential patrons and adversaries to keep most adventuring groups busy throughout their careers, without them having to leave the city.

Note that some names are placeholders and need to change (e.g. Batiara, Sahasara).

Let me know what you think!

Parsantium Design Diary No.7

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:45:10 GMT

Since my last design diary, I’ve written two more sections of the Parsantium city sourcebook – one on trade and currency, and one on PC backgrounds.

Getting the Trade and Currency section done meant I’d finished the massive Life in the City chapter – an important milestone as this chapter is over 9,000 words and also covers Government & Politics, the army, Law & Order, Culture & Customs. For the Trade section, I wrote about the overland and maritime trade routes in and out of Parsantium, what goods Parsantium imports from where, duties and smuggling, and the city’s currency. It would be great to include a map showing where Parsantium is situated in the wider world in the book, like the original campaign map here, although I’m not sure I’ll have the budget. Also, since many DMs will probably use the city in their own campaigns, this may not be necessary. Let me know if you think this kind of map would be useful in the comments.

Chapter 3, Running a Parsantium Campaign, kicks off with a selection of PC backgrounds, designed to help players root their characters in the setting at the start of a game. My outline had a target for this section of 750 words but it ended up being over 2,700! I’ve included 16 backgrounds, including Arcane Apprentice, Feytouched, Gladiator and Merchant. Each has a description and includes one or two mechanical benefits, designed to work with either 4e and Pathfinder, and roughly equivalent to a 4e background benefit or a Pathfinder trait. Here’s a couple of examples:

Old Quarter Commoner

You come from a poor family struggling to make ends meet in the Dock Ward or Poor Ward of the Old Quarter. You might be a Sahasran, belonging to the shudra caste, or a half-orc. Either way, you work as a labourer of some sort, although if you’re a half-orc you might do an “unclean” job such as tanning leather, slaughtering animals or undertaking. Alternatively, you could be a street orphan, running errands for local merchants and acting as a tout or unofficial guide. Whatever you do, it’s an honest living, and you are part of a community of folk in the same situation, meaning that you all look out for each other. Life is hard, though, and you earn a pittance. If someone offered you a way to climb up the social ladder, you’d probably grab it with both hands.

Benefits: You gain a +2 bonus to Diplomacy and Insight/Sense Motive checks when dealing with other commoners

Platinum Knight-Errant

You belong to a fighting order of clerics, knights and paladins acting as the “sword and shield” of the Church of Bahamut, sworn to protect the god’s clergy and followers from harm. You were trained in the art of battle, and in the chivalric code of your order at the Celestial Bastion, the Platinum Knight’s chapterhouse in Parsantium’s Grand Ward. Your organisation helped Corandias the Stubborn recapture the city from the hobgoblins in the Great Crusade 100 years ago, and continues to defend Parsantium from her enemies when called upon to do so by the Basileus to this day. While most Platinum Knights are required to remain on duty in the chapterhouse, as a Knight-Errant you are free to wander the city and beyond in search of honourable adventures and quests in which you are expected to prove your chivalric values, protect the innocent and mete out justice.

Benefits: You gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls against hobgoblins and orcs, and a +1 bonus to Religion knowledge checks.

I’m going to be testing these out at UKT4. Players in the Parsantium game I am running there will be able to add one of these backgrounds to the 4th level PCs they bring along to the tweetup or to the pregens I’ve built. It will be interesting to see what people make of them and if any key archetypes or character types are missing.

Next up: Facilities and Services in the city. I want to keep this edition neutral so I’ll need to think about how I reference temples where clerical healing/raise dead is available and other NPC spellcasting. After this, I’ll be writing about campaign arcs and themes. Although I have a lot of ideas for this, I reckon this could be a section I’ll be coming back to again and again as I write more of the book.

Oh yeah, and the manuscript has gone over 30,000 words! I think 40,000 words for the whole book is looking on the low side ;)

Parsantium Design Diary No.6

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 11:51:58 GMT

I didn’t write a design diary last weekend for the simple reason that lots of stuff going on in real life got in the way of me writing much of the book. In the last week, though, I’ve written about 2,500 words, bringing the total word count for the book up to 26,000 of the 40,000 I’ve set myself as a target. This is a bit misleading because a fairly large proportion of those 26,000 words are unedited write-ups of city locations from my campaign notes that I’ve pasted into the manuscript. These will need a lot of work, and some of these entries may not even make the final sourcebook.

The 2,500 words I’ve written this week have been on Festivals and Entertainment – both fun sections to write. I’ve written about eight important festivals in the Parsantine calendar including the Victory Games (which players in my Black Horse campaign will know well since their PCs took part in them) and the Festival of Starlings, inspired by a Chinese legend that features in a novel I keep trying to track down, David Hughart’s Bridge of Birds. Researching this section led me to an article online about the crazy Turkish sport of camel wrestling which I knew I needed to include as soon as I read it! I have 900 words written on the festivals but I think I could do with adding two or three more so will keep thinking about this subject as I continue onwards.

The Entertainment section includes an overview of the all the stuff Parsantines like to do for fun. There’s a section on chariot racing – the city is obsessed with the races and the rivalry between the factions has triggered fights and rioting in the past – as well as gladiators and the theatre. I’ve also written about inns and taverns, bathhouses (another Parsantine institution), gambling, prostitution and drugs.

Next up, hopefully today, I’ll finish off the Life in the City chapter with the last section on Trade & Currency. I don’t think there’s room in the book to cover the world around Parsantium so I’ll write about the various trade routes – to and from the Sunset Lands, the Caliphate of Akhran, Sahasra and Tiangao – in this section to show how important the city is as a trading centre and write a bit about these distant lands. The whole chapter will be around 9,000 words so it’s an important one and will be great to have the first draft done on this.

Hopefully my wife kb98, a talented professional editor, will be able to start looking at the first two chapters in the next week or two as I start working on chapter 3, Running a Parsantium Campaign. This chapter will include stuff like PC backgrounds to make a regular D&D PC fit better into Parsantium, campaign story arcs and themes, random city events and so on. My plan is to get the backgrounds done for the UK D&D Tweetup 4 on 16th March so I can use them for the PCs in the adventure I’m running. I’m also thinking about including information on facilities and services in this chapter – how much it costs to live in each ward, where to sell loot and NPC spellcasting. Any suggestions on what you’d like to see here as a DM would be appreciated!

Think I’ve rambled on enough for now. I’d better get back to writing the actual book…..

The Ongoing Adventures of the Juma Gang, Session #46: In Search of Skalmad

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 17:25:56 GMT

Here’s what happened in last night’s game. Each PC gets 1,600 xp.

1st Sextilis (contd.)

Juma is keen to push on to Skalmad’s throne room so the PCs approach the double doors leading to the foundry. Hrothgar listens at the doors and can hear metal being hammered and voices talking in Giant which gives the Juma Gang pause. Instead of going straight ahead, they decide to wade up the underground stream to see if they can work their way round to attack Skalmad by surprise from the rear – an approach Juma naturally favours. Gil creates a Tenser’s Floating Disc to carry his scrolls, spell books and him above the water and Ulthar uses his cloak of shadowform to fly; the others get wet. They arrive in the dragon’s cavern but there is no sign of the beast so they continue east along the stream.

Spotting stone steps leading out of the water to a lit area above, Hrothgar tries to sneak up the stairs but isn’t quiet enough. A nothic gazer and a boulder-shaped galeb duhr attack the gnoll first, as three trolls and another nothic join the battle shortly afterwards. Sora bravely charges two of the trolls but soon goes unconscious despite Gil’s phantasmal killer working better than it has ever done before to strike fear into one of the warty green giants. Meanwhile the other three PCs have got rid of one nothic and are battling the third troll and the galeb duhr which is turning as much of the cavern floor into uneven rocky ground as it can. Ulthar breaks off to heal Sora as the galeb duhr shoves Hrothgar into a pool of pitch. The earth creature is badly wounded and tries to surrender but the barbarian can’t understand a word it’s saying and splits it in two with its axe. The PCs finish off the trolls using Gil’s fire magic to stop them regenerating and then slay the last nothic.

From this cavern, Hrothgar scouts ahead, crossing a log bridge over the stream and coming into a large cavern divided into makeshift rooms by crude stone walls. He signals the others to join him and they search around, finding evidence that drow from the same clan they ran into in the Trollhaunt are also living here.

Heading southwest, the PCs come into a spacious chamber illuminated by glowing green fungi. Five large iron cages hang from the ceiling, each containing a troll skeleton, and an old woman can be seen pottering about among the mushrooms. Hrothgar is pretty sure the sweet old lady is a hag so Sora casts wrath of the gods and the PCs attack. The briar hag, Geala, is quickest off the mark, though, and traps the Juma Gang in a thorny briar patch which Hrothgar in particular struggles to get out of. Of course, the skeletons in the cages animate and leap down to attack too! Ulthar is in a weird situation for most of this battle as several of the party are down to their last surge and don’t want to be healed. He doesn’t get long to ponder this – a second hag, Morsha, appears and pulls a lever to drop an iron cage on his head, snapping him out of his thoughts. The skeletons shower anyone nearby with boneshards when bloodied or killed, and Sora who has flown down among them ends up very low on hit points with just one surge left. Eventually the skeletons are all destroyed and Geala is killed. Hrothgar pulls himself out of the briar patch and leaps onto a hanging cage to get to Morsha as quickly as possible. Juma joins him, having finally learned how to charge after 13 levels of adventuring. The PCs kill the odious crone and breathe a heavy sigh of relief. Leaving the two doors out of here closed for now, they head back to the stone houses to take a well-earned extended rest.

Parsantium Design Diary No.5

Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:49:10 GMT

Nearly 3,500 words written in the last seven days which I am really pleased with. This was helped by moving offices at work, meaning I only worked a half day yesterday, and was able to get a fair bit done in the afternoon.

I started off with Law and Order, defining the workings of the justice system, and coming up with typical punishments for various crimes. In keeping with Byzantium’s past, executions are by impalement, a slow and painful way to go, so best to avoid committing mass murder, necromancy, treason or demon summoning! I’ve also written more on the City Watch, including Sgt Saurish, a fun character who has played an important role in the two Parsantium campaigns.

The next section is a big one currently called Culture and Customs, and covers things like food and drink, clothing, festivals and entertainment. This is fun stuff to write, and adding details on what kind of food is available at the tavern or how the chariot races at the Hippodrome work really helps to immerse the players in the setting. I’m still working on this stuff but have finished first drafts on food and drink, clothing, superstitions and communication. As a little taster, here’s the entry on the “Evil Eye”

Many Parsantines have a fear of the “Evil Eye” which dates back to earliest days of Dhak Janjua and the basilisks that lived in the area where the city was founded. These terrible beasts preyed on the refugees as they built their new homes. Villagers would disappear, only for a statue of the missing person to be found nearby, often with a look of horror on its face, causing widespread fear and panic that some kind of terrible curse had befallen the fledgling settlement. Even after the basilisks had been tracked down and killed by a hunting party (including Vrishabha himself), stories of the Evil Eye persisted through the generations. It is common for Parsantines to wear an eye-shaped blue glass amulet touching their bare skin under their clothes to protect them from its influence. Sometimes these amulets have magical powers of protection but most are just mundane trinkets. Although magic is accepted as part of everyday life, those most scared of the Evil Eye may well freak out if they spot someone with blue eyes casting a spell in case it’s a curse.

I’ve got festivals and entertainment to do next – this will include the famous Victory Games that take place every October on the anniversary of Corandias XVI the Stubborn's successful Great Crusade which liberated Parsantium from the tyrannical rule of the hobgoblin “king” Kalgroth Ironheart, as well as gambling, drugs and prostitution. If I get time, I’ll also cover off the trade routes in and out of the city, what goods go where and so on.

I’m also starting to think about the adventure Adam Page has asked me to run at the 4th UK D&D Tweet Up. It’s for 4th level characters, using the 4e rules, and I’m looking at something set in the Old Quarter and involving one or two criminal gangs. I’ve already found a couple of cool poster maps I want to use for two of the key encounters and there should be a fair bit of investigation, role-play and exploration too. Running something for people I don’t normally game with should be a lot of fun and will hopefully give me some useful feedback that will help make the final book even better.

Parsantium Design Diary No.4

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 09:52:30 GMT

This week I’ve been writing about the government and politics of Parsantium and describing the key NPCs, including the Basileus, Corandias the Lion-Blooded, his scheming wife Thecia, and Bardas, the seemingly passionless Prefect who runs the city on a day to day basis.

I’ve also spent some time working out who looks after each aspect of running the city state, and who reports into who. There has always been a tribune in each quarter, but I have now added the office of the Royal Exchequer (controls the finances), the Strategos (commands the army and looks after Parsantium’s defences), and the Praetor (heads up the judicial system). The Prefect, Royal Exchequer and Strategos form a Triumvirate of senior officials reporting into the Basileus; then, the Praetor and three tribunes report to the Prefect. Beneath all these senior officials is a vast, bloated bureaucracy of civil servants (many of them eunuchs) pushing paper around to make sure the city runs properly (if not that efficiently). These bureaucrats often have absurd job titles and wear special hats denoting their position. Of course, there are quite a few intrigues and plots going on among the various NPCs, and I’ll be adding more as I work my way through the first draft of the book to give DMs some fun adventure seeds.

I’ve also written about the Parsantine armed forces with some helpful advice from Gavin (one of my players and a keen wargamer). In keeping with Parsantium’s multicultural feel, the army includes heavily armed knights, Akhrani horse archers, halfling slingers and gnoll mercenaries.

The government section came to around 1,700 words. These early sections are taking longer than the city locations will (I hope!) as I am writing almost from scratch. In most cases, I have only a handful of bullet points to go on compared to the more detailed notes I’ve written for, say, the Winking Vixen brothel. Hopefully I will be able to cover more ground faster later on.

Next up is the Law & Order section, including the courts, crime and punishment and the City Watch. If you have any fun ideas for crimes or punishments to go into the Codex of Imperial Law, let me know in the comments! I might cover some of the criminal bosses and gangs of the Old Quarter under this section too. Not sure yet, though – there’s an Organizations section and they might sit better there. After that, I’ll be moving on to customs & superstitions, including the calendar, festivals and entertainment, food and drink and so on.

New 5 Star Review for So What's The Tavern Like, Anyway? II

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 11:42:24 GMT

Top reviewer Thilo Graf (aka Endzeitgeist) has just posted a very complimentary review for So What's The Tavern Like, Anyway? II on drivethrurpg.com.

Check it out here.

Parsantium Design Diary No.3

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 11:28:17 GMT

This week, I finished off the first draft of chapter 1 of the book, which is currently coming in at 5,500 words, 1,000 words above my initial target. Having already written the overview and the history sections for this chapter, I’ve been working on the People section which describes the five main human cultural groups (still called Batiarans, Akhrani, Sahasrans, Tiangaons and Urskovians for now) as well as the various non-human races, including dwarves, elves and eladrin, halflings, half-elves and half-orcs.

For the “regular” D&D races, I’ve tried to explain how they fit in to the city so that anyone making a character has a good starting point for their PC. I deliberated about whether to include gnomes as I’ve never been that keen on them, but one of my design goals is to include the core races from D&D and Pathfinder, so they’ve made it in. I’ve divided them into two groups – goodly folk who’ve lived in the city for a while who make toys and clockworks and nasty little recent arrivals from the Feywild, complete with blood-soaked red caps, who like to cause trouble.

If you’ve played in either of my two Parsantium campaigns or follow any of the campaign write-ups, you’ll know that dragonborn, gnolls and genasi all live in the city as well as the more traditional races – if I remember correctly, there have been one gnoll, two dragonborn and four genasi PCs in the two games. Centaurs, minotaurs, tieflings and vanara (the monkey-like humanoids from Indian myth that appeared in the 3e Oriental Adventures book) round out the racial mix. Parsantium is a melting pot after all, so a wide variety of races makes sense.

Next up is the Life in the City chapter which covers Government, the Army, Law and Order, Customs and Superstitions, and Trade. It’s a meaty section, about 5,000 words, and should be a lot of fun to write.

New Midgard 4e reviews

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 19:31:08 GMT

Really pleased to have got a couple of great new reviews for the Midgard Bestiary for 4th Edition and Defenders of Midgard this week!

Middleaged DM reviews the Midgard 4e Bestiary

Gameknightreviews.com reviews Defenders of Midgard

Parsantium Design Diary No.2

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:03:02 GMT

For one reason or another I haven’t got as much written this week as I wanted to, but I have finished the History section for now. This took me a bit longer than I thought it was going to but I’m pleased with how it’s turned out.

As I started writing it, I realised I had a cool origin story for the ancient city of Dhak Janjua which became Parsantium, but only a few lines about the next 2,000 years! I didn’t want to write pages and pages of history but I did need to fill in a few important blanks to explain how the city of today is the way it is. These key events, often several hundreds of years apart, include the arrival of the Akhrani, the change of name to Parsantium, the conquest of the city by Corandias the Magnificent and its subsequent fall to the hobgoblin army of Kalgroth Ironheart, and the Great Crusade which allowed it to become a powerful Free City and trading centre again. I’ve fleshed out all of these, explained who Hulieman was at long last, and changed a few things in the process as I attempted to pull together a coherent flow of events. Advice from ulthar01 on how the Batiarans were most likely to have taken the city in war was much appreciated!

While I was writing all this, John Pope wrote an interesting post on Daily Encounter about campaign histories and timelines. His view is that a fluid narrative is better for the reader and more flexible for the DM than a timeline. I’ve done both, but am still deliberating whether or not to include a short timeline in a sidebar. It seems to me this could help the reader get a good overview of the key events at a glance. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.

Next up is the third and final part of the first “overview” chapter. This is on the inhabitants of the city, covering the major human cultural groups (Batiarans, Sahasrans, Akhrani, Tiangaons and Urskovians) and the various non-human races. At some point I’m going to have to replace the names I stole from Guy Gavriel Kay, Margaret Weis and others with my own but the original names will do as placeholders for now. After this, I will be moving on to Life in the City, starting with the government and the army.

Midgard Legends Out Now

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:16:31 GMT

Several months ago, I wrote about Titus Patrascu, fallen paladin of Hecate and "Midgard legend" as part of the Midgard Tales Open Design patron project. Titus and 22 other legendary heroes, villains and monsters from the Midgard setting appear in the latest book from Kobold Press, Midgard Legends, available now from drivethrurpg.com. Titus will, I think, also appear in Christina Stiles forthcoming high level adventure, Freeing Nethus.

The book also contains new spells and magic items (for Pathfinder) and more. And it has an awesome cover by Kieran Yanner. Check it out!

The Ongoing Adventures of the Juma Gang, Session #45: Return to the Great Warren

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 09:30:12 GMT

Here’s what happened in last night’s game. Each PC gets 1,320 xp.

1st Sextilis (contd.)

The Juma Gang decide to head south from the entrance, through the troglodyte lair to the door they’d left unopened the first time round. The lair seems to have been stripped of weapons and supplies and abandoned, with the troglodyte bodies left there to rot. Juma Ji’ad opens the door and the PCs sneak down the corridor, surprising the Marrowmaw troglodytes in the large cavern ahead. Ulthar is less forthcoming with his tactical instructions than usual and the party spread out to attack different reptilian humanoids, rather than concentrating on one or two opponents at a time. Hrothgar ends up surrounded by the chieftain Ssark and two of his warriors and only avoids falling unconscious due to Sora’s knightly intercession where she puts herself in the line of fire (actually a nasty bite). After a few rounds, first Ulthar, and then Sora and Juma, have disposed of their opponents and are able to help Hrothgar out. The PCs surround Ssark and Gil finishes him off with a magic missile. A search of his chamber turns up some gold and gems, and a beautifully-made magical greatsword which Sora claims.

The party return back the way they came to explore a side cavern up a flight of stone steps to the west. This turns out to be the troglodyte hatchery with leathery eggs buried in the soft sandy earth in here. Deciding troglodytes are inherently evil creatures, they destroy the eggs.

Crossing the stream via the log bridge, the PCs head east to a large cavern filled with giant puffball fungi; troglodyte bodies rot in here too, covered in mushrooms. Hrothgar points out the poisonous deathcaps growing amongst the edible puffballs. Ulthar bravely decides to go into the room first. Unfortunately, he passes too close to a deathcap which releases its deadly spores as he crosses the room. Sora flies across the chamber, avoiding the fungi, but the others all end up poisoned as they attempt to get to the other side. Hrothgar is convinced there must be some treasure in the cavern and spends a few rounds looking without success, exposing himself to dozens of spores in the process. Eventually he gives up and the PCs go north towards the prison cavern.

Here, four warren trolls stand guard. The PCs are quickest to act and Hrothgar slays the first troll with a critical hit almost immediately. Two others engage the party in melee while a third throws boulders (ineptly) at Gil from atop an escarpment. The eladrin uses his fire magic to keep the trolls from regenerating, although at one point a troll he has set on fire scorches Sora badly. Juma goes after the rock-thrower, while Ulthar grabs the Scourge of Vardar from Gil and uses it to finish off the stop the two unconscious trolls from getting up again. The battle over, the PCs head towards the great doors leading to Skalmad’s throne room.

Parsantium Design Diary

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 08:49:31 GMT

Well, I said at the end of 2012 my plan is to self-publish Parsantium as a city campaign sourcebook this year. So, what have I managed so far?

The first thing I had to do was to get all the material I had written for my two 4e campaigns over the last five years into Scrivener, the excellent writing software I am using for the book. Scrivener allows me to have the actual manuscript, as well as notes, research materials and so on, all in one place, and has a built in outlining function, using a virtual corkboard. It is very cool. Once I’d done this, I organised everything I had into a rough outline for the book – you can make each section a separate document and have the program compile it all at the end. This makes juggling stuff around really easy.

Then, I sat down with my collection of D&D city supplements, including Ptolus, the Zobeck Gazetteer, Waterdeep, Sharn, Freeport and Bluffside, to see how other writers and publishers had structured their urban sourcebooks, and what they had covered. I found this really useful and interesting, and it helped me tighten up the outline, coming up with ways to amalgamate sections, as well as prompting me to add some topics I hadn’t thought about. Some things I’m not sure about yet. For example, is it better to have all the NPCs in one chapter, or attach them to the locations where they might be found? Most of the books I looked at went for a combination of both approaches, with the more important characters in a separate section and the minor ones described with their place of work.

Once I’d done this, I did some rough word count targets for each section. At the moment, I am planning the whole book to be 40,000 words but this could end up being way too few or too many. I’m not sure yet!

That’s it for preparation for now. My aim is to complete the first draft in 15 weeks, writing around 2,500-3,000 words per week. Since I already have a fair bit of material to work with for some sections, certain chapters will go quicker than others. I’ve completed an initial overview of the city setting, including Six Things You Need to Know, and have starting working on the History section. I need to get this bit pinned down as this will help inform many of the details of each quarter of the city.

I’m really enjoying this so far!

Obligatory 2012 Retrospective Post

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 22:00:46 GMT

We’ve been busy again this year – I seem to say this every time I write one of these New Year posts, but that’s got to be better than having a year where nothing happens, right?

Kate has a brand new job at DK Travel, working full time in the office again as list manager, and my job in bookselling continues to be both eventful and challenging. We went on holiday early in the year to Bath, visiting a freezing cold Stonehenge on the way home, and in September returned to the States for the fifth consecutive year, this time going to the Black Hills of South Dakota, Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons before visiting Sally, Tillman and little Xander in Idaho Falls. We saw lots of wildlife and stunning scenery, and had a great time. Back home, Palace have been playing some fantastic football and there is still a decent chance we’ll get promoted this season despite a few recent setbacks. Losing Dougie Freedman was sad but I think we’ve got a great manager in Ian Holloway.

After the D&D Next announcement, it looked like the Midgard Bestiary for 4th Edition might not come out after all, but following a successful Kickstarter which raised over $10k, the book was published in both pdf and print, and I am very, very proud of how it has turned out. The companion player’s book, Defenders of Midgard, which I contributed to, has just been released too. I also started writing for Creighton Broadhurst at Raging Swan Press, and had five books published in the So What… series, covering treasure, weapons, armour and taverns. I’ve enjoyed writing these immensely and I am really pleased at how they have been received.

In total, I had eight RPG books published in 2012 – not something I was expecting at the start of the year but very satisfying nonetheless! This has made me think that it’s about time I did something with Parsantium. My city setting is five years old this January and I’ve run 134 game sessions set there. I have 16,000 words of setting material written, as well as several adventures that take place in the city. It all needs tons of work and revision, but my plan is to self-publish Parsantium as a city sourcebook for D&D in 2013. Because the D&D community has become so fragmented, my current thinking is to keep it edition-neutral so it can be used with D&D Next, 4e, Pathfinder, AD&D or 13th Age. Any comments or suggestions from readers of this LJ on the project would be much appreciated!

As well as the professional stuff, I also contributed to the Classics Return and Winter is Coming II blog carnivals and organized the If I Ruled the Multiverse blog carnival to discuss what kind of cosmology gamers wanted to see for D&D Next. My talented pal Symatt did some amazing drawings for all of these.

Obviously, I continued to play and run a lot of RPGs as well as writing things for them. The Black Horse Parsantium campaign went on hiatus after reaching its 90th session in which we finished Courts of the Shadow Fey, but the Juma Gang are still going strong as they explore the Trollhaunt Warrens. On Monday nights, z45tu7 has started running the epic Pathfinder campaign, Rise of the Runelords, and we are having a lot of fun running around Sandpoint and failing to agree on a team name. We also played a couple of sessions of ninthcouncil’s 4e game set in the Wilderlands setting.

Gavin’s excellent Trail of Cthulhu/Gaslight campaign continues, and Mignola’s Marauders have been back in action, racing across the city of Jorvik (Step in Time!) before sailing over the stormy North Sea to the Dragon Lands. I ran a session of Halls of Undermountain for Kate and we finally played The Slaying Stone again just this week after a 15 month gap!

I've also been playtesting D&D Next – I first played it back in February at the 3rd #ukdndtweetup organized by @adampageuk. Since then we’ve been playing online via G+ with the excellent @greywulf as DM and have had a lot of fun, largely down to the awesome people I am playing with rather than the rules. D&D Next shows a lot of promise but I must admit I am having trouble keeping up with the constantly changing rules which sometimes seem to unfix things that were working just fine. Hopefully the core classes and rules will be pinned down soon. I am also interested to see how 13th Age turns out – we’re using the Escalation Die in our 4e games as an experiment at the moment and it's working well.

As well as going to the tweet-up and Drowathon in Nottingham, I had a great time at this year's Dragonmeet. Maybe this summer I will finally make it to GenCon!

I read 34 books this year, but didn’t really stick to Joe Hill’s “shelf of ten”principles as new stuff always came along to tempt me. Here’s the list:

Heroes of the Feywild (D&D 4e)
Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik
Red Eye of Azathoth (Call of Cthulhu/Open Design)
Crystal Palace 1990-2011: More Biased Commentary by Chris Winter
Snuff by Terry Pratchett
Crystal Palace 1969-1990: A Biased Commentary by Chris Winter
Neverwinter Campaign Setting (D&D 4e)
Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands by Creighton Broadhurst (Pathfinder)
Iron Council by China Mieville
The Snowman by Jo Nesbo
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Book of Vile Darkness (D&D 4e)
Guide to the Known Keys by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
Clockworks by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
Halls of Undermountain (D&D 4e)
Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick
I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan by Alan Partridge
Never Unprepared by Phil Vecchione
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol.1 by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay
A Wanted Man by Lee Child
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook (D&D 4e)
Madness at Gardmore Abbey (D&D 4e adventure)
Servants of the Shard by R A Salvatore
Northlanders Book 1: Sven the Returned by Brian Wood & Davide Gianfelice
Heroes of the Elemental Chaos (D&D 4e)
Witch: The Road to Lindisfarne by Kevin Barthaud & Richard Lacy
The Lazy Dungeon Master by Mike Shea
Kicking It by Monte Cook & Shanna Germain
The Mongoliad by Neal Stephenson et al
Ed Greenwood Presents Elminster’s Forgotten Realms
Grandville Bete Noire by Bryan Talbot
Dead in the Eye by Jobe Bittman (D&D 4e adventure)

My favourite album is The Lion’s Roar by First Aid Kit – Kate and I saw them live at Shepherd’s Bush and they were great, but I also really like Shallow Bed by Dry the River, and Streets in the Sky by The Enemy. We saw both of these bands too and they were excellent. My favourite film has to be the amazing Avengers Assemble but I also really liked Drive and Skyfall.

Have a great 2013!