This may only be interesting to me, but somebody pointed me in the direction of a story on Reddit featuring one of my gilted fiends.

The title? Holy crap! Did I just let them resurrect an ancient dead elven king?

I think this may have particularly resonated with me because it coincidentally resembles an encounter I wrote for The Fifth Sepulcher. (Which I’ve realized I penned for Fantasy Flight Games more than a decade ago now. Ouch. Right in the age.) That encounter originally read:

Two sets of golden double doors face each other in this red-carpeted chamber. Six golden thrones — in two rows of three — face each other, and six figures sit upon the thrones.

These are six of the Seven Daughters of Lynmoor. The seventh, of course, is Queen Elisabet — who was interred in area 13. Each of the Daughters is under the effect of a permanent gentle repose and magic circle against evil enchantments (cast at 20th level). These spells have kept their bodies perfectly preserved, and protected them from the effects of the Necromancer’s Stone.

Note that the Daughters were prepared in this manner against the prophecy that they would rise again to save Lynmoor in her darkest hour. If the PCs take the proper actions (casting raise dead, for example) this could be that hour. (The Daughters are 8th to 12th level sorcerers.) However, if the enchantments are disrupted without returning the Daughters to life (through the use of a dispel magic spell, for example), the Stone will immediately transform the Daughters into liches.

If I recall correctly, when Alan D. Kohler reviewed the module he was not a fan of the fact that there was no particular compulsion forcing the PCs to raise the daughters. He also felt there was no way for the PCs to be aware of the prophecy or the magic preserving the daughters. The former is really just a Knowledge (history) check, of course, and the latter would seem to be a natural consequence of the PCs showing any interest at all in six perfectly preserved corpses in a dungeon and performing the logical investigations.

But I digress.

Unfortunately, if JCY2K ever posted a follow-up to let people know what happened at his next session, I haven’t found it. Still, it’s nice to know that I’ve been a major force for resurrecting long-dead royalty for more than a decade.

I’ve been saying for years that the RPG market has been suffering because it no longer has a gateway product: An affordable, complete product that looks like a game, doesn’t require a lot of invested time to play, is available in mainstream markets, and isn’t a paid preview for a different product.

A couple years ago, this prompted me to say that the D&D product line needed to feature “a single, consistent box that says ‘DUNGEONS & DRAGONS’ on the front cover.” (See the rest of my imaginary D&D Core Sets here.)

And earlier this month Mike Mearls wrote, “This brings us to the second big picture goal [for D&D Next]. We’re going to make an RPG product called Dungeons & Dragons. It will be the game, Dungeons & Dragons, not just a sampler or a game that guides you through making a character and playing a single adventure. You can buy D&D and play a full, tabletop RPG campaign. You will be able to start playing, regardless of experience, and will easily find other products to migrate to if you so desire.” (And it sounds like the “migrate” thing will be the result of other products offering modular additions, although we’ll have to wait and see.)

Holy shit.

Meanwhile, the ICv2 RPG bestseller lists for more than a year have consistently included Dragon Age as one of the Top 5 RPGs. (Summer 2012, Spring 2012, Q4 2011, Summer 2011, Q2 2011, Q1 2011) Although these Dragon Age players don’t seem to be present on traditional RPG forums, the game is clearly a quiet and persistent hit. (Which perhaps suggests, if we wanted to get really, really speculative, that the people buying Dragon Age aren’t traditional RPG fans.)

I mention this because Wil Wheaton just quietly announced that Dragon Age is going to feature in the two-part season finale of his Tabletop web-series. And according to multiple, reliable reports any game featured on Tabletop enjoys a huge boom in sales.

And Dragon Age already features the type of introductory product I’ve been arguing for and D&D appears to be returning to.

Meanwhile, hobby games in general have been enjoying three years of explosive growth. Board and card games have been leading that growth with RPGs only making up a small part of it, but it suggests that the market for games played face-to-face and around the table is ripe and ready.

So call me crazy if you’d like, but stitching all of this together I’m going to make a bold prediction: Over the next 12-24 months, RPGs are going to experience a boom in sales. And this boom has the potential to enjoy a critical chain reaction if the release of D&D Next is handled perfectly and if auxiliary factors like the Pathfinder MMO are successful at the right time and in the right way.

The basic function of a drug is similar to a poison: They have a type (contact, ingested, inhaled, injury), a Fortitude saving throw DC to resist their effect, an initial effect, and a secondary effect. However, drugs also have the following statistics:

Buzz: The length of time the buzz from the drug lasts. The initial and secondary effects of the drug end when the buzz comes to an end. (For example, a PCP might inflict a Wisdom penalty as its initial effect and grant temporary hit points as its secondary effect. After the PCP’s buzz of 2d6 hours comes to an end, both the buzz and the temporary hit points go away.)

Addiction Threshold: The number of doses that must inflict the secondary effect of the drug before the user risks addiction. Once the user reaches the addiction threshold, they must make an addiction save. If a user goes one day without using the drug, reduce the current tally of doses by 1 to a minimum of 0.

Addiction DC: The DC of the Fortitude save required to resist addiction. On a failed save, the user becomes addicted to the drug (see below).

Recovery Threshold: If a user makes a number of successful withdrawal saves equal to the drug’s recovery threshold, their addiction is broken. They no longer suffer the effects of addition, but a recovering addict suffers a -4 penalty to future addiction saves against the same drug.

Compulsion DC: If a character addicted to a drug has the opportunity to take the drug, they must make a Will save against the drug’s compulsion DC. On a failed save, they must take the drug. If a character is currently suffering withdrawal, they take a -10 penalty on this saving throw. If the character is currently buzzed on the drug, they gain a +2 circumstance bonus on this saving throw for every dose of the drug currently affecting them.

ADDICTION

If a character becomes addicted to a drug, they must stay buzzed on the drug. When the buzz comes to an end, withdrawal begins. Withdrawal acts just like a disease with an incubation time of 1 day. Once per day, the victim must make a new saving throw against the withdrawal or suffer the withdrawal damage of the drug.

SAMPLE DRUGS

ABYSS DUST: Abyss dust is alchemically distilled from snakeweed (see below), although few associate the innocuous effects of snakeweed with this powerful narcotic. Abyss dust looks like ashes, with a rich black and gray color. It is administered through inhalation or smoking. Some hardcore users like to mix their abyss dust with snakeweed, claiming the snakeweed “takes the edge off” of some of the more extreme hallucinations.

Price: 1 gp
Effects: Inhaled DC 13, buzz 3d4 hours, initial effect Hallucinations (-4 on all action checks), secondary effect -1d4 Wisdom
Addiction: Addiction DC 13, threshold 3 doses
Withdrawal: Withdrawal DC 13 (fatigued, 2 Str, 1d4 Wisdom), Compulsion DC 10

BARBARIAN’S BLOOD: A recreational drug also known as “the red burn” and “veinglory”. Users of the drug are marked by a deep reddening of the skin and a significant protrusion of the veins. They experience a psychotropic dissociation in which physical pleasure is heightened and pain is experienced as pleasure.

Price: 2 gp
Effects: Ingested DC 13, buzz 1 hour, initial effect -2 penalty to Wisdom, secondary effect 2d4 temporary hit points
Addiction: Addiction DC 8, threshold 1 dose
Withdrawal: Withdrawal DC 15 (2 Str and 2 Con), Compulsion DC 15

SHADEBANE: Shadebane comes in the form of a pale, silver-grey powder. Water is added to this powder and it is then smeared on the skin. The user experiences hallucinations which give the impression of gifting them with visions from beyond the grave. Regardless of the truth or fiction of these visions, users of shadebane are intensely unpleasant for undead to approach. Undead within 5 feet of a shadebane user must succeed on a Fortitude save (DC 12) or become sickened (even if they would normally be immune to the sickened effect). Long-term users of the drug, however, become obsessive with death. They often begin collecting memento mori and are drawn to graveyards and others places of death. With prolonged use, these morbid obsessions can lead to suicidal, homicidal, or necromantic inclinations.

Price: 15 gp
Effects: Contact DC 13, buzz 1 hour, initial effect Hallucinations (-1 penalty to all action checks), secondary effect sicken undead (see text)
Addiction: Addiction DC 12, threshold 4 doses
Withdrawal: Withdrawal DC 12 (1d6 Wis, 1d6 Con), Compulsion DC 12

SNAKEWEED: The sunburst flower is found growing in many ancient ruins throughout the Serpent Islands. The trances produced by smoking the dried leaves and flowers of the plant became a popular, casual intoxication among the pirates of Freeport and spread to ports throughout the Southern Sea. When dried, the stuff is simply called snakeweed by most, and while it can be psychologically addictive it is relatively harmless by itself. When smoked, snakeweed produces a feeling of serene calm, a deadening of pain, and slight euphoria. Heavy doses produce an incapacitating euphoric stupor, and sometimes inspire dreams of shadowy, serpentine forms and vast cities beneath the waves. In Freeport, it is commonly used by the poorer citizens and sailors as an escape from the drudgeries of everyday life.

Price: 2 sp
Effects: Inhaled DC 11, buzz 1d3 hours, initial effect +1 to Will saves, secondary effect -1 Wisdom
Addiction: Addiction DC 5, threshold 12 doses,
Withdrawal: Withdrawal DC 5 (insomnia, -1 penalty to action checks), recovery threshold 5, Compulsion DC 5

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

I generally eschew the “I’m so sorry I haven’t been posting!” sort of posts (since I believe that most people don’t actually care and would rather just see the next substantive post pop up in their RSS feed). But I’m making an exception here because I know there are some people waiting on specific updates.

The short version: There is a very nasty flu going around Minneapolis right now and everyone in my family got hit with it. My mother was hospitalized with it; my wife is on Day 12 of it (and she caught it after being sick with a sinus infection for 9 days); my brother and sister-in-law have caught it; and my stepmother-in-law also has it. Personally, I’ve spent most of the last nine days running 102-degree fevers and fading in-and-out of patchy coherence. I’m definitely on the mend, but today was the first time I’ve been able to to do anything resembling constructive activity… and that’s only been in a handful of 10 minute bursts of energy.

So, generally speaking, this has sucked.

Long story short: I’m going to be working to get things back on track, but I’m basically behind on everything now so we’ll see how it goes. Expect some L&L updates in the next few days as I continue to mend. Expect actual new content for the Alexandrian to be a bit further out.

For right now, though, I’m going back to bed.

Coming up with names for NPCs on the fly can be tough. It can be even tougher in a fantasy setting. About a decade ago, I started keeping a list of random names in my folder of generic GM tools: Pick up the list, pick a name, and you’re good to go.

I generated the list below a little over five years ago when I was working at a temp job doing a massive amount of data entry: I quickly realized that mixed into the hundreds of common entries like “Bob” and “Susan” there would occasionally be an unusual or flavorful name. So I started jotting those names down on a piece of paper. And they were great. Particularly because they were real names (which meant, among other things, that they were pronounceable).

So these have served me well for half a decade, now I offer ’em to you in the hope that they might serve you well.

Playtest Tip: The process of picking up this piece of paper and looking at it, if handled properly, is indistinguishable from looking at any of your other notes. It also buys you a valuable breath of time in which to brainstorm the unexpected NPC and then put your thoughts into order before opening your mouth. Take advantage of both the bluff and the moment of reflection to sustain the illusion of the world for your players.