SESSION 31A: KABEL IN HIDING

November 9th, 2008
The 17th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

After leaving the Banewarrens they went first to the Temple of Asche. There they had the wraiths’ malaise cleansed from their bodies. Then they crossed the Temple District to the Imperial Cathedral, hoping to claim Brother Heth Neferul’s promise of covering their expenses.

They were looking for healing resources – divine energy reservoired into wands or healing totems. Unfortunately, as Heth explain to them, such resources were not available in a limitless supply – not even from the Church. However, they were able to obtain three such wands for a minimal tithing.

From there they returned to the Ghostly Minstrel. Tee took a brief detour to the Delvers’ Guild offices in the Undermarket to see if “Laurea” had received any messages from the cultists, but she had not.

When Tee joined them in Elestra’s room, Tor once again raised the idea of having Dominic assassinate Rehobath.

“We shouldn’t be saying that in front of everyone,” Tee said.

“We shouldn’t be saying that in front of each other,” Dominic said with a worried look.

Tor nodded. “You never know who might be listening.”

“That’s true,” Shim said, slipping through the wall. He looked at Tor. “Are you okay with me talking in front of them?”

Tor nodded. “Go ahead. Anything you can say to me you can say to them.”

“All right,” Shim said. “My man found Kabel. He’s at a place called Nadar’s Pub in Rivergate. It was tough. He was well hidden. In fact, the only reason we knew he was there was because Sir Gemmell knows where he is. The Order of the Dawn is assembling a posse out of the Godskeep to arrest him.”

Tor’s heart sunk. The letter from Sir Kabel had been real. He’d unwittingly betrayed him.

“Kabel sent you answer: ‘I am glad that the eyes of Vehthyl see clearly. Such sight will be needed in the morning light.’”

No one said anything for a long moment.

“Do you want me to do something more?” Shim asked.

Tor shook his head slightly, deep in thought. “I shouldn’t go there.”

“No,” Tee agreed.

“I could go,” Elestra said. “I could transform into a bird and fly there with a message.”

Shim took his cue and bowed out. “I shouldn’t be hearing this.” He slipped back into the wall and disappeared.

(“How do we know he’s not still listening to us?” Dominic asked. “We don’t,” said Tee.)

They eventually agreed that Tor should write a letter and have Elestra deliver it.

This is a trap. Head to Pythoness House, a manor house overlooking the King’s River Gorge in Oldtown. I will contact you there. Go now. They are coming.

“Should we tell him about the evil ghost?” Elestra asked.

“He’ll figure it out,” Agnarr said.

Elestra called upon the Spirit of the City, allowing it to flow into her body and transform it into the shape of a crow. When the transformation was complete, they tied Tor’s message securely to her leg and opened the window.

ESCAPE FROM NADAR’S PUB

Elestra flew straight to Nadar’s Pub, covering the distance to the Rivergate District quickly through the air. She took a moment to circle above it and then landed on the ledge outside the front window.

Peering inside she saw the barkeep tending to two customers. Clearly the mid-afternoon trade was slow.

There was no sign of Sir Kabel, but that made sense. It was unlikely that a hunted man would be supping openly in a public tavern.

Elestra flew around to the back. She found the kitchen window open and peeked in: There were several shelves packed with various foodstuffs, a modest cast iron stove, a pump for water, and a large fireplace for roasting. There was also a pair or large cellar doors set at an angle into the floor.

Elestra cautiously flew into the kitchen, tapped lightly on the cellar doors, and then flew back up to her kitchen window perch. She waited several minutes. There was no answer.

Elestra was still thinking over her next course of action (should she turn back into human form? but if she did that how would she get out again?) when the barkeep came into the kitchen to fill a pitcher of water.

She waited until he left and then flew back down to the cellar doors again. She tapped louder this time and then hopped up onto a nearby shelf to wait.

A few moments later, Elestra heard the cellar doors being unbarred from the far side. One of the doors was eased open and an armed woman looked out. (Elestra didn’t recognize her, but Tor later identified her as Sera Nara.)

Not immediately seeing anyone, Nara emerged cautiously into the kitchen. Elestra seized her opportunity: Swooping past Nara she flew down into the cellar. There she found Sir Kabel and two other knights sitting around a small, well-worn table.

Elestra landed in the center of the table and cocked her head towards Sir Kabel, trying to look as innocent and harmless as possible. Sera Nara came rushing back down the stairs. One of the other knights turned to Kabel with a quizzical look on his face. “Why would Killraven be contacting you?”

“I don’t think it’s one of hers,” Kabel said. “It’s too small to be a raven.”

Kabel reached out and untied the note from Elestra’s claw. He unrolled it and read it, his face drawing immediately into lines of concern. He looked up sharply. “Gather your things now. We have to go.”

As the others grabbed their weapons and several large packs, Kabel looked at Elestra. “Thank you, whoever you may be.”

Kabel and his knights headed up the stairs and out the kitchen door. Elestra flew up and watched them head south towards Oldtown, following them long enough to be certain of where they were heading. Then she turned back and circled high above the pub for about fifteen minutes, waiting to see if there would be any sign of covert pursuit or the like.

She saw nothing. Turning east she flew towards the Temple District. As she was passing over the bluffs she spotted them: Sir Gemmell leading a war party of twelve mounted knights up the Wash Street ramp.

Veering aside, she followed them from above. She watched as they surrounded Nadar’s Pub. Sir Gemmell rode forward and called out in a loud voice, demanding that Kabel surrender.

A few moments later the door of the pub swung open. The barkeep yelled out that no one by that name was in the pub. Sir Gemmell gave a sharp gesture and two his knights dismounted and entered the pub. Several minutes later they emerged with no result.

Gemmell and several more knights dismounted. Angry words began to be exchanged… and that’s when the watchmen arrived. From her height, Elestra couldn’t hear what was being said, but a few moments later Gemmell – clearly furious – mounted his horse and rode off, heading back towards the Temple District.

Elestra followed the knights long enough to be fairly certain that they were heading back to the Cathedral and then winged it back to the Ghostly Minstrel.

Returning to her room, where the others had been anxiously awaiting her, Elestra let the Spirit of the City depart her. Her body resumed its natural form.

She quickly explained what she had done and what she had seen. Tor embraced her at the news that they had (just in the knick of time) averted disaster. A weight of guilt had been lifted from his conscience.

Running the Campaign: When Players Reincorporate  – Campaign Journal: Session 31B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Go to Part 1

SALTED LEGACY (Surena Marie) is set in the Dyn Singh Night Market, an “endlessly changing maze of stalls filled with incredible wares, enticing smells, and magical lights” that I mentioned earlier in the review. It’s an adventure for 1^st-level characters, and is designed for the PCs to level up twice (so that the next adventure in the book is for 3^rd-level characters).

There are two core concepts in “Salted Legacy.” First, the PCs will compete in a series of market games as part of a festival. Second, they’ll be asked to investigate a series of attacks aimed to sabotage local businesses. The scenario’s primary problem is that it’s structurally swapped the primacy of these two concepts.

Let’s start with the sabotage plot: Kasem Aroon and his twin borther Vi Aroon operate the Spice Brothers stall in the Night Market. Vi, however, is getting married and moving away. Kasem realizes he can’t run the stall by himself, so he concocts a “brilliant” plan! He’ll sabotage the other businesses in the Night Market so that one of them will sell their stall to him. That way he’ll own TWO businesses he can’t run by himself!

So, obviously, this entire premise doesn’t make any sense. (I’d suggest setting things up so that Vi getting married means that Kasem, as the younger son, will be pushed out of the Spice Brothers. Kasem’s plan to acquire another a business, therefore, would make sense. There’s even some evidence this may have been the original ending of the adventure, as the published conclusion includes the option for a happy ending in which Kasem gets adopted into another vendor’s family… which obviously only makes sense as a “solution” if Kasem was not, in fact, going to own the Spice Brothers stall.) But that’s not actually the primary problem.

Structurally, the PCs witness a feud between two of the oldest and most respected families in Night Market, which Kasem has enflamed by using wynlings, winged feys he’s bribing with persimmons, to frame each owner for sabotaging the others’ stall. Both stall owners hire the PCs to get proof that the other family is responsible for all the sabotage!

The double-hire is a clever twist on the hook, but then the PCs start investigating and the adventure says (paraphrasing): “Literally nothing they do works. Your job as the DM is to make sure they cannot solve this mystery. Investigation checks? Nothing. Questioning? Nope. Stake out? Absolutely not!”

The stonewalling is necessary because the ultimate goal is to force the PCs to participate in the Market Games: No one trusts outsiders (er… except the two highly respected families who hired the PCs), so the PCs need to earn their respect by competing in the games. The more respect they earn, the more information they can get.

The “need” to block all lines of investigation leads to all kinds of silliness. For example, the PCs may find persimmon peels at the sabotage sites (from the wynlings). Logically, they should be able to find out who’s selling persimmons and maybe learn that Kasem has suddenly started buying a lot more than usual.

But that’s not allowed, so: “A character who further investigates these fruit peels learns no stalls in the night market currently sell persimmons.”

Ironically, this will likely lead players to hyper-obsess on these persimmons: If they aren’t sold here and nobody eats them, where are they coming from?! (This is never actually answered.)

Anyway, the point here is that the adventure is framed to make the mystery the players’ primary goal, but the mystery is not actually the focus of the adventure: It’s the Market Games. The mystery is just the mechanism used to force the PCs to play the games.

It would make a lot more sense to just have an adventure premise that says “play in the Market Games,” rather than “do this other thing, but I’m going to arbitrarily stop you from doing it until you play in the Market Games.”

Partly because I hate mysteries designed to prevent eh PCs from solving them.

Mostly because it turns the Market Games into a chore that the PCs have to complete. And chores are not fun.

Which is a pity, because once we actually focus on the Market Games, they’re a lot of fun! My personal favorite is the cooking competition:

MC: Welcome to Iron Chef Dyn Singh!
PCs: Awesome!
MC: Your secret ingredient is… SHRIMP!
PCs: Cool, cool…
MC: Giant shrimp.
PCs: Hol’ up.
MC: You will need to kill it first.
PCs: oh shit

“Salted Legacy” is a delicious treat that has been wrapped in unnecessary frustration. But what I want to emphasize is that there’s a pretty solid core here that can make for a fun evening with your group: The Market Games are fun. The cast of characters in the mystery story is memorable and well-drawn.

All you really need to do to tease out these flavors is (a) refocus the hook on the Market Games, (b) have the investigation pop up as a B-plot, and (c) default to yes whenever the players investigate something.

For the scenario hook, you might do something like:

• The PCs have been selected as competition ambassadors, and have been sent to the Night Market specifically to compete; or
• There’s a prize for this year’s competition which [thing they want/need].

But since this is also likely the first adventure in your campaign, you could also just tell your players as part of character creation to explain why they’ve all decided to compete in the Market Games this year and use it as the This How You Met framing story for the group.

If you wanted to prepare a revelation list ahead of time, the two key revelations I’d focus on would be:

• Persimmons are associated with the mischief sites. (And you can then trace the persimmons to Kasem.)
• There’s some sort of invisible, flying blue monkeys. (And then you can catch and interrogate them or follow them to Kasem.)

Ironically, you can do this pretty easily by just reading through the adventure and, everywhere it says “if the PCs do X, they don’t find anything,” simply replace it with “if the PCs do X, they find [useful information].”

Run as written, I would give this adventure a C grade. Since such minimal effort would probably polish it up into a B or B+ at the actual table, I think I’ll reflect its true value with a C+.

Grade: C+

WRITTEN IN BLOOD (Erin Roberts) is an adventure so good I’d give my left arm to run it.

A local curse/haunting in the land of Godsbreath causes the hands of those who drown in the lake to come back as undead crawling claws. When enough of these horrors gather in one place, they form an amalgam entity called a soul shaker.

Like a rat-king, but much, much worse.

“Written in Blood” begins with the PCs heading to Godsbreath for a festival.

… wasn’t there a festival in the last adventure, too?

There was. And there will be in the next adventure and the adventure after that and several more. Honestly, your PCs are going to look back at Tier 1 and remember absolutely nothing, because they spent the whole time stoned out of their minds.

This particular festival is the Festival of Awakening. Its unique calling card is the Awakening Song, a huge oral tradition which records the entire history of Godsbreath. Proclaimers circle through the festival singing sections of the Song, with the crowd intermittently picking up favorite verses and singing along. Later, a Proclaimer will ask to accompany the PCs, believing they are caught up in important events and that their deeds should be woven into the Song’s ever-evolving form.

This is a great example of the rich texture Roberts weaves into the Godsbreath setting, and the quiet brilliance she displays in weaving that detail into the action of the adventure.

In fact, the only real drawback of “Written in Blood” is that it’s a prime example of limited word count hamstringing development. For example, “characters who spend an hour exploring the festival [listening to the Song] learn much about the history of the land.” But you can’t actually share that with the players.

If you really want to make this adventure sing (pun intended), then you’ll want to bear a wary eye for stuff that’s often literally begging you to flesh it out and seize the opportunity to do so before running this one.

And you’ll definitely want to run this one, because it’s a goddamn creepfest that will put your players on the edge of their seats and then rip their hearts out.

We begin with the land of Godsbreath itself, which is presented in a gazetteer which is simply exceptional (and probably the best one in the book).

The fertile lands of the region are deteriorating, forcing more and more farmers to migrate from the rich lands of the Ribbon into the Rattle, a fertile, but extremely dangerous region.

That, all by itself, is a brilliant premise for endless adventure.

And then Roberts drops this bomb:

Most people in Godsbreath worship one or more of the Covenant gods, who worked together to bring the first folk to this new land. Over long generations since, these deities have stood united as the guardians of Godsbreath. But of late, they have begun to work independently to recruit and reward their own followers.

Through recent prophecies known only to themselves, the members of the Covenant have learned the blood of a deity is needed to revitalize the soil of the Ribbon and stave off potential famine across Godsbreath. In response, the gods are becoming more active, shoring up their power to avoid becoming this necessary sacrifice.

The tension between the Ribbon and Rattle was already incredibly well done.

But to add this to it?

Competing plots of deicide. A religion dedicated to transmitting truth fracturing on its own secrets. A covenant of gods forced to betray one of their own.

It’s simply inspired. Adventure just boils out of it.

All right, so we have the cursed and dying Ribbon that’s forcing people into the strange and dangerous frontier of the Rattle. This is the essence of gothic horror, infused into both the darkest and most hopeful aspects of the modern Africa diaspora, then draped with the most disturbing visions of West African magical realism. It’s redolent with possibility.

And Roberts delivers. The adventure drips with the dry dust of the Ribbon and the eery edge of the Rattle.

Atmosphere is good, but the real meat of “Written in Blood” is the human story at its heart: Of a young girl who lost her friend to the crawling claws and the dark waters of the lake… and now her friend has come back.

When the PCs discover this truth — and the girl — crouching in the dark, everything comes together: The place. The imagery. The characters.

I don’t know what your players’ (or their characters’) reaction will be to this truth.

And that’s the beauty of it.

The terrible beauty.

Grade: A

THE FIEND OF HOLLOW MINE (Mario Ortegón) continues the transplanar pub crawl, with the PCs heading to the city of San Citlán to “enjoy the food, parades, and celebrations of the Night of the Remembered” festival.

I’ve seen some reactions and reviews to Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel express frustration that the specific cultural inspirations aren’t listed for each civilization/adventure. I understand this impulse, but I think it misses the point.

There are certainly cases where it might make it easier for me to, for example, do additional research on fashion so that I can make my NPC descriptions richer. But one of the things I really enjoy about Radiant Citadel is that it’s NOT “here’s fantasy Ethiopia with new labels that we can trademark,” which is a trap I’ve frequently seen projects like this fall into. Radiant Citadel’s authors are being truly inspired by their source material, using it to create something new and unique to their vision, and then blending it with the vast mythos of D&D.

So “Fiend of Hollow Mine,” for example, has clear Mexican inspirations. But there’s also a Mesopotamian-by-way-of-D&D demon lord. And Ortegón takes the Day of the Dead and interprets it through the metaphysics of D&D to create the Night of the Remembered, where the souls of the dead literally manifest.

And then he takes it one step further and asks, “But what would happen if a soul doesn’t cross over at its appointed time?”

The answer is: Simply persist.

And so San Citlán is studded with friendly undead. People who just… kept on “living” when death should have come instead. The olvidados are literally those “forgotten by death.” The result is such a cool and unique place that my only quibble is that, once again, I would have loved to see it fleshed out more.

(Pun intended.)

Okay, so the PCs are heading to San Citlán. They discover that there’s a deadly plague called sereno afflicting the region.

There are a couple of things I really love about sereno. First, it literally spreads via a “cursed wind” that blows at night. Germ theory is great, but in a fantastical land, I love diseases that are fantastical in nature.

Second, sunlight alleviates the illness. And, indeed, it can only be magically cured and only if the spell is cast in sunlight. This is mechanically simple, but gives a distinct and evocative flavor. It also makes the disease relevant to the PCs in a clever way: Although it doesn’t really factor into the adventure, you can imagine PCs contracting this disease deep in a dark dungeon or the Underdark and being unable to cure it (only triage it) until they can return to the surface.

The basic concept of the adventure is that, a generation ago, a warlock named Orencio was caught and executed. Before he died, however, he’d made a deal with the demon lord Pazuzu, trading the soul of his son for great power.

Orencio thought he’d pulled a fast one, but what he didn’t know is that his girlfriend (who was also the one who turned him into the authorities) was pregnant. Their son, Serapio, is approaching his twentieth birthday and, under Pazuzu’s influence, is turning into a tlacatecolo — an owl-demon which spreads pestilence. (In this case, sereno.)

The PCs are pointed in Serapio’s direction by a freedom fighter. Following his trail, they hopefully learn the truth of what’s happening to him and, eventually, bring him to bay.

The biggest problem with “The Fiend of Hollow Mine” is that it’s incredibly fragile. There is a very long sequence of hoops that the PCs need to jump through. Some of these hoops are surprisingly difficult to get through (although Ortegón usually provides some mechanism for the PCs to just keep making skill checks until they finally roll high enough). Other hoops are hidden, which is… fun.

There are a couple of saving graces, however.

First, the middle chunk of the adventure takes place in the small dungeon of Hollow Mine. The map design here is excellent:

For a small dungeon, this is deliciously xandered. And the key is equally good, with vivid imagery and meaty detail.

The second saving grace is the conclusion of the adventure. Ortegón does a great job framing it so that the PCs will have to decide whether to try to bring Serapio in quietly so that his curse can be removed, or simply kill the corrupted soul.

Grade: C+

Go to Part 4

SPOILERS FOR DRAGON HEIST

A.M. asks:

One of my players is going to be leaving my Dragon Heist remix campaign soon. It’s currently five days before Trollskull Manor’s grand opening and two days before the fireball. We have two more sessions with her, and I have another player lined up to replace her when she leaves, but I’m not sure if it’d be better to pad things out a bit so the new player is part of the group when the fireball goes off; or breeze through and have the fireball with the old player still there.

There are three things I would consider here:

1. Is there any way that I can give the departing player a satisfying send-off?
2. How am I going to hook the new player in?
3. Is there any reason the new player can’t join before the old player leaves? (Which immediately alleviates any sequencing woes that might interfere with the best answers for #1 and #2.)

For the send-off, I’m looking for some kind of conclusion. Some dramatic note that allows this specific player to feel like their experience in the campaign is “complete.” This is, of course, good for the player leaving, but I think it’s also important for the other players, because it provides a sense of closure.

Generally speaking, this is going to boil down to either a major milestone in the campaign or it’s going to be about resolving a personal goal. In either case, though, you want to focus on what you know about the specific player: What stuff do they seem to care most about in the campaign?

MILESTONES

In terms of a milestone, for example, you’re in a somewhat awkward point of the Dragon Heist campaign where one set of objectives has been completed, but the next phase of the campaign hasn’t really kicked off.

If there’s not a natural milestone sitting right there, however, then sometimes you can fast-track a milestone. For example, if you think the nimblewright investigation could get wrapped up in a couple sessions (including the Gralhund raid), then you might fast-track the fireball and have it go off immediately. Discovering the culprits (Gralhunds) and recovering the Stone (albeit not its Eyes) might be a nice, satisfying milestone.

Alternatively, maybe this player seems to be really invested in Trollskull Manor. If so, focusing on the grand opening as their big conclusion might be the milestone you need. This might actually mean slowing down the milestone (so it arrives at the right time), possibly by adding an additional complication in the form of a mini-scenario to put extra weight on it. In the case of Dragon Heist, the campaign conveniently provides the machinations of Frewn, a business competitor, to disrupt the opening of Trollskull Manor: Maybe you’ve already resolved that in your campaign, but if not you can compress that down into the next couple sessions and have Frewn (and his wererats) go in HARD on screwing up the opening. Thwarting Frewn and celebrating a big, glorious opening day might be a great final session for this player.

Random Tip: In my Dragon Heist run, the players actually put together a menu for Trollskull Manor by having each PC name one food. Then one of the players actually made that menu for dinner one night. You could do something similar, creating a real world feast and celebration to mirror the one in your game.)

PERSONAL GOALS

In terms of personal goals, of course, this depends entirely on the specific PC in question. But it largely boils down to identifying the most important personal goal and wrapping it up.

• Are they seeking revenge on their father’s killer? Oh, look! There’s the six-fingered man now!
• Are they trying to raise money to raise their dead wife from the dead? Insert a mini-scenario that gives them access to a magic item that lets them do that. (If you want to run hard, simultaneously frame things up so that they’re faced with a dilemma: Do they raise their dead wife? Or the orphan killed in the fireball?)
• They wanted to become a teacher at the House of Wonder? Renaer arranges for them to get a position.

You may also be able to combine personal goals and milestones. For example, Renaer surprises them with the position at the House of Wonder during the grand-opening of Trollskull. Or it turns out Lord Gralhund was their father’s killer.

If you’re scratching your head over this or uncertain about what you should do, you can always unleash your GMing superpower by turning to the player and asking, “Hey. Is there anything you really want to get done before leaving the campaign?”

HOOKING THE NEW PLAYER

When it comes to hooking the new player, I discuss this in more detail here.

In most cases, even if you screw this up completely, the metagame will paper over the gaping cracks: Everybody knows this is Peter’s new character, so they will just kind of “naturally” accept him as part of the group. But it is, in fact, this kind of “go with the flow” tendency which, for me, makes it even more important to not have it be that simple; to have the new addition to the group make sense in character.

In terms of the existing player’s send-off, this is mostly significant if sequencing is a problem – i.e., the original player needs to leave before the new player can join, but it would be better or easier to bring the new player in before the milestone that would provide a satisfactory conclusion to the original player.

In these cases, I would almost always tip things in favor of the original player. It’s much more important, in my opinion, to make sure they get a proper send-off; they’ll be plenty of time for the new player to have rewarding experiences in your game.

If possible, though, I’d try to overlap the players. It can, in my experience, make the transition feel much more natural. The only reasons to avoid that would be either interpersonal issues (maybe the original player would be angry playing with the new player for some reason) or if the time dedicated to bringing in the new PC would make it difficult to drive the campaign towards the original player’s big send-off.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #11

Go to Part 1

ADVENTURE OVERVIEW

Each adventure in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is built on a common template:

• Background
• Setting the Adventure
• Character Hooks
• Starting the Adventure

Followed by, of course, the adventure itself and then the accompanying setting gazetteer.

Setting the Adventure suggests three options where each adventure could be set. One is “Through the Radiant Citadel,” which, as noted, indicates where the Concord Jewel is located. Another suggests where this civilization could be slipped into the Forgotten Realms. And the third does the same for some other official D&D campaign setting, either Eberron, Greyhawk, or, in one case, Mystara.

Character Hooks are interesting. Each scenario ostensibly includes multiple hooks (usually three, sometimes only two). There’s some variation here, of course, across the many adventures, but these “hooks” are generally just reasons the characters might be visiting the region. For example:

• The characters are going to a local festival.
• The characters are visiting a friend.
• The characters are hired as guards by someone visiting the area.

In a few cases the “you’re in the area to do X’ can at least loosely qualify as a surprising scenario hook (because it has at least some proximity to the scenario premise), but mostly it’s just, “You’re traveling through Y, and then…”

So the “hooks” are then followed by Starting the Adventure, which is almost always a random encounter that informs the PCs of the scenario’s existence. This random encounter is what I, personally, would consider the actual scenario hook.

The intention of having multiple scenario hooks is great: It would theoretically make it easier for DMs to incorporate these adventures into their campaigns and/or make hooking the PCs into the scenario far more robust (because if one hook failed, there would be additional opportunities). But because the actual hook is the random encounter, this can, unfortunately, lead to very fragile hooks in actual practice. For example, in “The Fiend of Hollow Mine” the PCs need to:

• Not detect and decide to skip the bounty hunter ambush.
• Not chase the bounty hunters who are scripted to flee.
• Accept a random barkeep’s invitation to have a drink, rather than continuing on to their actual goal.
• Get approached by Paloma the Outlaw and decide NOT to capture her for the bounty they’ve just been informed she has on her head.
• Finally, accept the job offer from Paloma.

That sequence of events probably happens more often than not when running “Fiend,” but it’s A LOT of potential points of failure to navigate through before the adventure has technically even started.

One more decision I really don’t like in this book is that no clear credit is given to the writer of each adventure. This was done in both Tales from the Yawning Portal and Candlekeep Mysteries, and its absence from Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel feels particularly grody given how much of the marketing campaign for the book was, rightfully, focused on the phenomenal writing talent that made it possible. I should not have to use Google to figure out which author wrote which adventure, which is why I’ll be indicating authorship for each adventure below.

GAZETTEERS

Before we do that, however, let’s take a moment to consider the setting gazetteers that accompany each adventure. These include the usual list of locations (usually labeled on a map) and cultural information, but there are a few notable features I’d like to call special attention to.

Legends of X. This section presents a lovely blend of history and myth, while also typically grounding the setting into a unique fantasy metaphysic. It’s a nice way to neatly encapsulate the unique spin each setting gives to D&D.

Adventures in X, which gives four adventure seeds. These are pretty excellent throughout the entire book: They’re not generic ideas, instead being spiked with specific details that add value. Nor are they vague ideas. Too often I see seeds like this say stuff like, “There’s a weird glowing light, I wonder what it is?” In Radiant Citadel, the seeds reliably tell you exactly what that weird light is. Finally, the details provided generally give a clear direction for development.

Characters from X. If a player chooses to create a character from this civilization, this section includes three questions the DM can ask them to help ground the character into the specific context of the setting. For example, in Yeonido, these are:

• What is your social class and clan?
• Do you have a special role in the city’s hierarchy?
• How have gwishin [the ubiquitous ancestor spirits of the setting] affected you?

Each question is accompanied with a short guide and list of suggestions, perfect for guiding the conversation.

Names. Each gazetteer includes a list of sample names you can use for NPCs. I love having an NPC name list as a resource, and it’s particularly valuable here because the range of cultural inspiration drawn from for Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is so diverse that literally everyone using this book will almost certainly find that some majority of the cultures detailed are exotic to them (and, therefore, more difficult to improvise appropriate names off-the-cuff).

The only shortcoming here is that it would be great if the sample name list was longer. (Which is why I actually expanded the lists in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel: A List of Names.)

But this is actually the biggest shortcoming of the gazetteers in general: The practical realities of the book means that the really cool settings can only be sketched in with broad brush strokes. Sometimes this just means that you’re left hungry for more (a great problem to have), but in some cases the lack of detail can really cripple the settings and, in some cases, the adventures connected to them (a much less great problem to have).

For example, in the land of Godsbreath, the Proclaimers of the Covenant are charged by the gods to record the history of the Covenant’s chosen people.

Who are the Covenant?

They’re a pantheon which is “for you to define” (because I’ve hit my word count) “and might include gods appropriate to your campaign’s setting or deities unique to Godsbreath.”

… well, this is probably fine, because the gods are only <checks notes> the primary focus of the entire setting?

Oof.

The lack of detail also spills over and creates a lack of scale. For example, consider this excerpt of text describing Siabsungkoh:

Traders from Siabsungkoh’s scattered communities flock nightly to the Dyn Singh Night Market, an ever-changing, town-sized market…

The [Outer Edges] that border the wilderness … are overgrown with lush greenery and lau-pop flowers. Many of the scattered communities here and across the valley reject the bureaucracy and crowds of the market district, braving the dangers of the nearby wilderness to stay self-sufficient.

And now compare it to this map of the region:

There are no “scattered communities” and the “Outer Edges” are, in fact, only a half mile from the Night Market itself, so (a) you can probably see one from the other and (b) there’s no room for multiple communities, let alone communities in separate “districts.”

Plus, the whole “civilization” is just a half dozen miles wide. A pattern which repeats throughout the book: “empires” that consist of a couple of towns; bustling “metropolises” with only a couple dozen buildings; and so forth.

So what happened here?

Well, based on my experience, I think it’s almost certain that the cartographer accurately (and evocatively) presented everything that was likely on the design sketch they were given to work from. But because there’s only room to present the setting in the broadest strokes, there just wasn’t enough detail on the design sketch.

Even without the scale that locks it in on the final version, barrenness on a map is interpreted as tininess.

What I do love about the Siabsungkoh map is the inclusion of locations NOT described in the limited text, including Monkey Mask Farm, Silver Carp Farm, and so forth. I’m a big believer in RPG maps inviting the user — including the DM — to explore the world. To ask, “What’s this?”

Is Monkey Mask Farm run by awakened monkeys?

Does it literally grow monkey masks on magically enhanced teak trees?

Do the farms of Siabsungkoh hang masks above their gate, representing the patron animal who protects their crops? (Are some of these masks possessed/enchanted?)

Tabula rasa is the scraped tablet. The empty spaces on the map. Those spaces can be fun to fill. But rasa is the fundamental flavor or essence of creation, and offering just a hint of it can often by even more powerful than the blank spaces.

So my bottom line on the setting gazetteers is this: What’s here seems consistently good-to-great. But issues with limited word count seem to consistently choke out their potential.

As a final note, I will suggest that the book could have done itself a lot of favors by presenting the setting gazetteers before each adventure, instead of after.

First, because the adventure comes first, the writers feel obligated to include a whole bunch of explanatory detail in the adventure that more logically belongs in the gazetteer (i.e., cultural information).

And then, second, many of the writers fall prey to the trap of using the limited space in their gazetteer to repeat descriptions of locations that are already amply detailed in the adventure itself. Yes, it’s easy to think, “This list of ‘Noteworthy Sites’ is supposed to include all the locations in the setting, so it logically must include all the places we visited in the adventure.” But, particularly when you’re fighting word count, this can really hurt the utility of your work.

If the gazetteers came first, both the temptation and necessity of repeating information would’ve been drastically reduced, freeing and encouraging the writers to pack more value into the book.

Go to Part 3

In the Brief History of the Open Gaming License, we discussed how the Open Gaming License (OGL) works and how it has impacted the RPG industry and hobby since its introduction in 2000. If you’re unfamiliar with the OGL, you may want to check that essay out first.

One thing I didn’t touch on in that essay is a meme which has grown particularly more popular over the last few weeks as it’s become clear that Hasbro is, once again, planning to abandon the OGL. It goes something like this:

You can’t copyright game mechanics, therefore you don’t need to use the OGL to publish D&D-compatible supplements or games based on D&D.

In its most vituperative forms, this meme will even go so far as to claim the OGL offers absolutely nothing of value to creators and that the whole thing is just a huge scam cooked up by Wizards of the Coast.

Is this true?

First things first: I am not a lawyer and nothing in this essay should be construed as legal advice. But I do have a couple decades worth of experience working with the OGL, so take what I say here with however much value you put in that.

As for the claim, it is… somewhat true. (And we’ll talk about why it’s true.)

But most of the time when I see it online, I think it is usually misleading and, more often than not, completely wrong.

So, right up front, let me be clear: If you’re planning to dance this dance, get an IP lawyer to review literally everything you publish.

One last thing: I’m going to be discussing things primarily from the view point of U.S. copyright and trademark laws. If you’re not in the U.S., some of this might still apply. More likely it won’t. So, again: Get an IP lawyer.

WHAT YOU GIVE UP: CLAIMING COMPATIBILITY

Let’s start by talking about what legal rights you give up if you choose to publish a book with the OGL: The ability to claim compatibility with D&D.

It’s a long-established tenet of U.S. law, supported by Supreme Court decisions, that you have the right to indicate compatibility with a third-party product in your advertising and product labeling. (For example, if you produced a replacement carburetor compatible with Ford Mustangs, you could use Ford’s trademarks to indicate that.)

So, insofar as you have the right to publish D&D-compatible books (which is, of course, the question we’ll be looking at in more detail below), trademark law would allow you to say, “This book is compatible with Dungeons & Dragons®.”

If you use the OGL, however, you specifically agree to NOT do that:

7. Use of Product Identity: You agree not to Use any Product Identity, including as an indication of compatibility, except as expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of each element of Product Identity. You agree not to indicate compatibility or co-adaptability with any Trademark or Registered Trademark in conjunction with a work containing Open Game Content except as expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of such Trademark or Registered Trademark.

It’s also possible that if you use Open Game Content from other publishers, that their declarations of Product Identity could also prohibit you from using other material you would otherwise have a legal right to use.

A couple things to keep in mind, though.

First, claiming compatibility with third-party trademarks is more legally fraught than this simple summary might suggest. There are very specific and very nuanced legal guidelines about exactly what you are and are not allowed to do, and if you step over those lines… well, say hello to Hasbro’s lawyers, because they’re legally mandated to protect their trademarks at risk of losing those trademarks.

(Although that, too, is a pithy legal aphorism which is more complicated than the simple statement would suggest. Honestly, “more complicated than a simple statement would suggest” is just the way the law works.)

Second, the inability to use Hasbro’s trademarks to indicate compatibility has historically been largely irrelevant. D&D is such an insane juggernaut in the RPG industry that all I need to say is “5^th Edition” and you instantly know that I’m talking about the 5^th Edition of D&D — not Call of Cthulhu or Shadowrun or Vampire: The Masquerade.

This means that publishers can just stick “Compatible with 5^th Edition” or even just a big ol’ “5E” on their cover, and everyone knows exactly what they’re talking about. Hasbro can’t (or, at least, doesn’t) own a trademark on something so generic as “5^th Edition” or “5E,” so there’s absolutely no reason for anyone to dip their toes into the sticky legal morass of claiming compatibility.

Now, with that being said, there are also some signs that Hasbro is looking to make this more difficult. For example, some variety of “For Use with the Oldest/Most Popular/Greatest Roleplaying Game!” has also been frequently used on OGL books. But with the release of Spelljammer earlier this year, Wizards of the Coast claimed THE WORLD’S GREATEST ROLEPLAYING GAME™ as a trademark for the first time.

Is that similar enough to THE WORLD’S OLDEST ROLEPLAYING GAME that Hasbro’s lawyers could claim trademark confusion? Maybe. I have no idea. Get an IP lawyer.

The title of “OneD&D” itself is, most likely, a development title just like “D&D Next” was during the playtesting period for 5^th Edition. But, notably, “OneD&D” is also highly resistant to any kind of generic “Compatible with 3.5” or “5E” labels. Yes, it’s likely that people will still refer to the new game as “6^th Edition” regardless, but if Wizards were to push hard on an alternative label (whether that’s OneD&D or something else) it could very possibly affect the perception of the average D&D consumer (who doesn’t actually know anything about the OGL).

THE BASICS

Okay, let’s talk about some basics.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property that gives the creator of a work the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, or perform it. It’s very, very complicated. In terms of RPGs, you can mostly think of it in terms of the publisher owning the words and pictures in the book. Under modern law, copyright does NOT have to be claimed; a creator has copyright in their work as soon as it is “fixed” in a tangible medium (i.e., written down), but registration offers legal benefits.

Copyright is given legal protection because it encourages the creation and sharing of new works. (Without copyright, those who invest time and money into creating new things would be less capable of marketing them competitively compared to someone who just xeroxes them.)

Trademarks are a different form of intellectual property right. They are signs, designs, or expressions that uniquely identify products or services from a particular source. In terms of RPGs, you can mostly think in terms of logos, brand names, corporate names, and, in some cases, the title for a series of books. (But not the titles of individual books.)

Trademarks exist in order to legally protect consumers from fraudulent claims. Trademarks can be either unregistered, in which case they’re indicated with the ™ symbol, or registered, in which case they appear with the ® symbol. Registration offers a number of legal benefits and advantages, but despite what you may have heard from dubious sources, both registered and unregistered trademarks can be legally enforced.

Public domain refers to creative works which are not protected by intellectual property laws. For our purposes, you can mostly think of this as “stuff that could be copyrighted if it was created today, but was created so long ago that it’s no longer protected by copyright.” (This is vastly simplified, but, as I say, it will suffice for our discussion here.)

Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted. (They can be patented, but, thankfully, we can ignore that because Hasbro has never claimed any patents for D&D’s mechanics.) You CAN have copyright in:

• The specific expression of those mechanics (i.e., the specific words used to explain them).
• The artwork, visuals, layout, etc. of the rulebook.

To take a fairly uncontroversial example relatively unladen with complications, imagine that you created a brand new card game using a standard 52-card deck and wrote down the rules for it in a plain text document. If I simply copy-pasted your rules and then distributed them to other people (whether for money or not), it’s extremely likely that I would have violated your copyright of the specific expression of those rules (i.e., the words you used). But if I instead rewrote your explanation of the rules, even if I didn’t actually change anything about how the game was played, I would almost certainly be just fine.

(I say “extremely likely” and “almost certainly” because it would still depend on the specific words used in both cases. Get an IP lawyer.)

DERIVATIVE WORKS

Now, here’s where it gets tricky, particularly in combination with the laws regarding game mechanics:

Copyright is not limited to the specific words on the page.

It also covers the creation of derivative works.

The specifics here are vast, complicated, nuanced, and explicitly uncertain in the annals of the law. (Get an IP lawyer.) But if you want to try to grok this, I find a couple of court cases useful.

First, in Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp. (1930), Judge Learned Hand ruled that it’s “essential to any protection of literary property [that] the right cannot be limited literally to the text, else a plagiarist would escape by immaterial variations.” In other words, if you could just take The Lord of the Rings, change the name “Frodo” to “Grodo,” and legally publish it, then copyright would be meaningless.

Notably, in this specific case, the plaintiff still lost, because the elements taken from their work were not specific enough to be protected (they “went into the public domain”). But even Judge Hand was uncertain where the line might actually lie: “But we do not doubt that two plays may correspond in plot closely enough for infringement. How far that correspondence must go is another matter. Nor need we hold that the same may not be true as to the characters, quite independently of the ‘plot’ proper, though, as far as we know, such a case has never arisen.”

The second case is Anderson v. Stallone (1989), in which Timothy Anderson wrote a treatment describing the plot of a hypothetical Rocky IV and showed it to film executives and Stallone himself. Anderson was ultimately not paid for his work, even though he claimed that the final version of the film was substantially similar.

Judge William D. Keller, in his decision, determined that the similarities were irrelevant because Anderson’s work had not been authorized by the copyright holders. Therefore, it was an unauthorized derivative work, and not protected by copyright.

There’s a bunch of stuff going on in this case, but the key thing for our purposes is why the work was derivative: It wasn’t because Anderon copied the words or plot of previous Rocky films. It was because he used the characters from those films, and Judge Keller ruled that those characters were, in and of themselves, protected by copyright.

(This is half of the reason why, for example, you’ll see authors and publishers often saying, “Do not send me unsolicited stuff, particularly if it features my characters or worlds.” It gives them legal protection from someone saying, “Hey! You copied my fan fiction!”)

At this point, I do feel the need to point out that my relatively simple presentation of Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp. and Anderson v. Stallone may have created an overly simplistic understanding of the legal issues involved here. The determination that Rocky Balboa, for example, was a protected character involved applying multiple legal tests, which I have not even begun to describe here. (And am almost certainly incapable of doing so accurately.) And that’s just characters: Jabba the Hutt is probably protected, but why is Pizza the Hut okay? Is Tatooine protected, or is it actually derivative of Arrakis? Can you use a Rancor monster in your fantasy setting? What if you call it a Bangkor monster from the planet Rathomir in a science fantasy story?

My point is that (a) copyright can absolutely protect fictional creations independent of their specific expression and (b) the determination of whether a specific fictional creation has ANY protection and whether a specific work is or is not derivative are both extremely non-trivial.

THE JEDI TEST

So let’s bring this back to D&D.

If D&D were like a basic card game with rules written in plain text, then it would be simple. You can’t copyright mechanics, only the text describing those mechanics. Therefore, as long as you don’t copy-paste text from a D&D book, you can publish D&D-compatible adventures.

But, unfortunately, it’s not that simple. To quote the Copyright Office’s fact sheet on game design:

Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

Material prepared in connection with a game may be subject to copyright if it contains a sufficient amount of literary or pictorial expression. For example, the text matter describing the rules of the game or the pictorial matter appearing on the gameboard may be registrable.

If your game includes any written element, such as instructions or directions, the Copyright Office recommends that you apply to register it as a literary work. Doing so will allow you to register all copyrightable parts of the game, including any pictorial elements.

Here we arrive at the heart of the matter. The “literary expression” of a game is protected. And, as we’ve just seen, the literary expression isn’t just the specific words on the page: It can include plot, characters, and even fictious settings.

To wrap your head around this, I find it useful to think about what I call the Jedi Test:

• A large number of Star Wars board games have been published.
• Some of these board games include Jedi.
• Does this mean that Jedi aren’t protected by copyright and you could, at the very least, publish a board game featuring Jedi?

Obviously not, right?

D&D AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

Okay, so you can’t publish an RPG with Jedi in it just because “game mechanics can’t be copyrighted.” But D&D has elves and dwarves and fairies and wizards. Those are in the public domain, right?

Probably. Well… depending on what you mean, exactly.

Sure, elves have been in fairy tales for centuries, and that means they’re in the public domain. But there’s definitely a point at which specific elves are no longer in the public domain.

Even Tolkienesque elves have percolated through the culture so widely that it would be difficult to imagine anyone successfully claiming copyright on them (assuming that they ever could have, which is uncertain). But if you write a story with Tolkienesque elves living in Rivendell and Lothlorien, then it’s quite plausible that the Tolkien Estate will come knocking. If your elves are named Elrond and Galadriel and Celeborn and Legolas, then even I (who am, I must insist, not a lawyer) feel pretty confident in declaring that you’ll lose that court case.

Somewhere between “elf” and “Galadriel of Lothlorien,” a line was crossed.

Where was it crossed? I don’t know. Arguably, no one does. There’s a clearly safe zone around “generic elf” and an almost certainly NOT safe zone around “Galadriel of Lothlorien, wife of Celeborn, daughter of Finarfin, bearer of Nenya,” but the exact point where you transitioned into copyright infringement could probably only be hashed out in an actual court case.

And this is further complicated by the fact that the protection afforded to a fictitious setting is, by its very nature, dependent on a combination of elements. So even if it were okay to use “Galadriel of Lothlorien” (and I must emphasize that this is a purely hypothetical scenario), it might not be okay to do so if you also had dwarves from Moria.

What probably goes without saying, of course, is that D&D elves (and dwarves and centaurs and harpies) likely exist on a similar scale: They’re based on a public domain root, but at some point their specific implementation within the lore of D&D becomes protected by Hasbro’s copyright. And if you cross that line in your D&D-compatible book, then you’ll be creating a derivative work and you will be in violation of the law.

It’s even likely that all of this becomes even more complicated if you choose to actually invoke that compatibility (with or without a trademark). To return to our Jedi test, imagine publishing a game that says COMPATIBLE WITH STAR WARS on the cover. Even if everything within the book is generic enough to remain within the public domain (you don’t actually include “Jedi,” for example, just mystic space monks), does the fact that you put “STAR WARS” on the cover inherently make your literary expression derivative of Asmodee’s literary expression of the licensed Star Wars universe and IP?

Maybe.

As far as I know, there’s no court case that has decided anything remotely like that. So people can speculate, but there’s no way to actually know.

And the same logic could easily apply to saying COMPATIBLE WITH D&D, with the declaration pushing material that would otherwise not be derivative into a derivative status. Would it actually push the line? And, if so, how far would it push it? Again, nobody really knows. There’s no legal precedent.

MECHANICS DESCRIBING SETTING

It’s also quite possible that copyright around roleplaying games is even more complicated than that. Because unlike, say, Star Wars Monopoly, where labels from the Star Wars universe are hung over fairly generic mechanics (e.g., squares on a board or faux currency), the mechanics of a roleplaying game are explicitly designed to describe a fictitious setting.

Drizzt’s stat block, for example, is a set of mechanical elements that are designed to describe that specific character. (As opposed to a different set of mechanical elements which would describe a different dark elf character.)

The key question in terms of RPG copyright, which has never been answered, is the degree to which the mechanics actually describe the world and, therefore, ARE protected by copyright.

We know that they certainly are to at least some degree: You can’t make a game with a Jedi in it just because there are games that have mechanics labeled “Jedi.” Maybe you could just remove the word “Jedi” and put a different label on the mechanics? But the key word there is “maybe,” because even if we ignore the issue of game mechanics, there’s a point where your “generic Jedi” is generic enough (in film or book or RPG) to no longer be protected by copyright, but also a point where your not-Jedi definitely are NOT generic enough. Where on the scale do these specific game mechanics fall?

CONCLUSION

My point here is that this line between “protected” and “not protected” in D&D exists for every single race, every single class, every single stat block.

Take the Jedi test and repeat it for every single element in the game. And don’t get it wrong even once, because if you do, Hasbro wins the court case.

Which, ultimately, brings me full circle:

Yes, you can publish generic, D&D-compatible supplements without using the OGL.

But if you do: Get an IP lawyer to review literally everything you publish.

Now, it can certainly be argued that you should have an IP lawyer even if you’re relying on the OGL. But what the OGL does is largely sidestep most or all of the issues we’ve just been discussing: If it’s in the SRD, and has been declared open content by Wizards of the Coast, then you don’t have to guess where the line may or may not be. It’s very clearly defined, and the very existence of the license would likely give you a much broader benefit of the doubt in any court case.

Plus, there’s stuff in the SRD that you almost certainly couldn’t use without it. (Or, at the very least, would be taking a very large risk to do so.) Tieflings, for example.

So if someone tells you that you don’t need to use the OGL… well, maybe they’re right.

But if they’re telling you it’s simple, clear-cut, and settled law? Get a second opinion.

From an IP lawyer.