Something that I touched on only briefly in my Hexcrawl series was the subject of tracks: The system I use for encounter generation features the ability to create random encounters, lairs, and tracks. Random encounters provide immediate obstacles and interludes while traveling; lairs spontaneously generate new locations in the hexcrawl (organically building up material along well-traveled routes as the campaign develops); and tracks are a trail that can be followed to a point of interest.

What I didn’t really extrapolate on is the fact that the concept of “tracks” isn’t necessarily limited to hoof prints in the sod. In the wilderness exploration of the hexcrawl that sort of physical spoor is most likely very common, but the concept of “tracks” really generalizes to “clue”. For example, if I generated a result of “tracks” for bandits that might include a merchant caravan in panicked disarray due to their latest highway robbery; the dead body of a bandit that was critically wounded and abandoned; a bolt-hole containing documents implicating the mayor of a local village in collusion with the bandits; and so forth.

Roger the GS recently posted “Almost Encounters: Sights, Sounds, and Leavings” which breaks this sort of thing down into some useful categories:

• Sights (“a pair of griffins flying across the sunset, many miles away”; “a brief red glow, sighted across a far-away ridge line”)
• Sounds (“snatches of shouting and song down in the valley”)
• Body Parts
• Victims
• Tracks
• Smells and Vapors
• Environment Damage
• Intentional Markings

Check it out. There are a lot of great examples over there.

It includes all three original rulebooks and all four supplements. Each booklet has new cover art, but is “otherwise a faithful reproduction of the original, including original cover art”.

As you can see, the mock-up promotional picture shows eight booklets. I’m guessing that’s an error. OTOH, if WotC had somehow convinced Rob Kuntz to finish Supplement V: Kalibruhn (the original unfinished manuscript of which Noble Knight auctioned off a few years back) so that it could be included in this thread, I’d be spending the next nine months drooling. (Or maybe they’ll include either Chainmail or the Swords & Spells supplement, although neither is listed among the current contents.)

Lone Wolf Development (who previously brought you Hero Lab) is currently running a Kickstarter for their new Realm Works campaign management software.

Personally, I’ve usually been pretty skeptical of campaign management software. I find that it usually only offers marginal advantage over just using a word processor, while usually featuring a less intuitive interface and all the liabilities inherent in a closed format that becomes obsolete as soon as the developer disappears.

But much to my surprise, I think Realm Works is winning over my skepticism:

There are three key features which have really captured my imagination.

First, the ability to share specific points of information with my players. I wish that the software also included the ability for my players to add their own information to a node in the database (so that it would completely replace the functionality of the campaign wiki I currently maintain). But I think it may be a literal game-changer, “Okay, they’ve interacted with Character X. So I’ll unlock his description.” Or to unlock locations on the map of Ptolus that they’ve visited so that there’s a consistent, pervasive, and evolving understanding of the city.

Second, the explicitly node-based method of content organization:

This is self-evidently well-suited to the kind of node-based scenario design that I use in my campaigns. It would be nice to be able to specifically associate content with the connections (i.e., you could click on one of the arrows and see what clue/clues that line is representing). (I’ll also be interested to see if I can “nest” these story networks.)

Third, and the thing most likely to make a backer out of me, is the way they handle maps:

The ability to selectively reveal a map to players is potentially interesting, but appears to be fairly limited at the moment. (It really requires the integration of virtual tabletop features.) But what’s really captured my imagination is the “pin” system. Just a few days ago I mentioned that I prep my dungeons using a Monster Roster that’s independent of the map key. This allows me to dynamically run groups of monsters through the dungeon complex (reinforcing, fleeing, barricading, setting traps, ambushing, etc.).

While the roster helps, this sort of dynamic dungeon complex can still be something of a juggling act. But if I could prep the dungeon in Realms Works so that one set of pins contain the key for each room, another set of pins contain each encounter group in the dungeon, and I can move the second set of pins dynamically during the game?

I never thought I’d want to run a game from my laptop or tablet. (The screen is simply too small compared to the visual real estate I can leverage at the gaming table by laying out multiple pieces of paper and reference books simultaneously.) But if the interface for this stuff in Realm Works is clean, fast, and easy?

It might completely change the way that I run games.

So, yes. This is me recommending that you become a backer of what looks to be a potentially awesome piece of software.

If you get less than eight hours of sleep in a night, you must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 20 – the number of hours you slept) or become fatigued.

If you get less than four hours of sleep in a night, you are automatically fatigued and must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 20 – the number of hours you slept) or become exhausted.

Elves only require four hours of meditation in a night. If they get less than four hours of meditation, they must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 20 – twice the number of hours they meditated) or become fatigued. If they get less than two hours of meditation, they are automatically fatigued and must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 20 – twice the number of hours they meditated) or become exhausted.

If a character’s rest is interrupted by movement, combat, spellcasting, skill use, conversation, or any other fairly demanding physical or mental task, subtract 1 hour for each period of interruption from the amount of rest that they received.

JET LAG

If a character rapidly shifts to a different time zone (or the equivalent thereof) due to teleportation, dimensional travel, flying carpet, or jumbo jet, they must make a Fortitude saving throw for sleep deprivation even if they get 8 hours of sleep. In addition, they suffer a -1 penalty to their saving throw per time zone they’ve shifted. Once a character succeeds at two consecutive sleep deprivation saves, their circadian rhythm has acclimated to the new time zone and they are no longer affected by the jet lag.

Characters using magical or pharmacological aids — like a sleep spell — to force a rest period that’s properly synched with the local time zone gain a +5 bonus to a sleep deprivation saving throw caused by jet lag.

Taking your shoes off and scrunching them into the carpet grants a +2 circumstance bonus to sleep deprivation saving throws caused by jet lag. This bonus rises to +4 if you happen to do it during a terrorist attack.

CIRCADIAN EFFECTOR
Enchantment (Compulsion) [Mind-Affecting]
Level: Cleric 1, Sorcerer/Wizard 1
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Targets: 1 creature
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

When cast on a character suffering from jet lag, circadian effector immediately removes the effects of jet lag. (It has no effect on other forms of fatigue or exhaustion.) The spell can also be used to induce the effects of jet lag on a character not currently suffering from it.

If cast on a sleeping character, circadian effector has the immediate effect of cancelling their jet lag. If used in this fashion, the effect is instantaneous (which means that it does not wear off and cannot be dispelled, although a character can be subjected to fresh jet lag if they move to yet another time zone).

This isn’t really an “advanced” rule. But I’ve got a whole series under that title.

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

Had a quick thought for handling bribes last night as I was slipping off into sleep:

1. Set a “bribe value” for the NPC.

You could put together a set of charts based on income, wealth, sense of duty, and/or potential consequences. But mostly you can just make a judgment call on “that sounds like about the level where this gal might be influenced by the offer of money”.

2. If a bribe equal to the NPC’s bribe value is given, grant a +1 circumstance bonus on associated checks.

Keep this in mind when setting the “bribe value”. It’s not the value at which the NPC immediately buckles like a well-worn belt. It’s the value at which they think, “OK. That’s slightly tempting.”

3. For each doubling of the bribe value, grant an additional +1 circumstance bonus.

So if the bribe value of the NPC is 1 gp, then a bribe of 2 gp gives you a +2 bonus; 4 gp gives you +3; 8 gp gives you +4; and so forth.

There’s no functional limit to the size of the bribe the PCs can offer, but obviously this exponential system does provide a practical limit. Start with a bribe value of 10 gp and you’d need a bribe of 10 billion gold pieces to get a +10 bonus. (Again: This is another reason to keep the initial bribe value at the “slightly tempting” level and not the “likely to accept this bribe” level.)

Note: The system assumes that you don’t tell the players what the bribe value of the NPC is. (Although maybe they can find that out through Gather Information or Sense Motive checks.) With that in mind, use some common sense and rounding while adjudicating the system. For example, pure math might say that you need to bribe 256 gp to get a +9 bonus and 512 gp to get a +10 bonus. If a PC bribes 250 gp, though, they should get the +9 bonus and if they bribe 500 gp they should get the +10 bonus. This is all meant to be an easy-to-use mental guideline for your benefit, not a binding contract written in blood.

Keep in mind that offering a bribe is risky: If the resulting Diplomacy check is blown even with the bribe in play, the target may become insulted or angry in response.