There’s a lot of stuff I like about D&D 5^th Edition, but there are some pretty deep systemic issues with how the game is designed. Yesterday, for example, I was looking at the Ranger’s Natural Explorer class ability from D&D 2014:

NATURAL EXPLORER

You are particularly familiar with one type of natural environment and are adept at traveling and surviving in such regions. Choose one type of favored terrain: arctic, coast, desert, forest, grassland, mountain, swamp, or the Underdark. When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you’re proficient in.

While traveling for an hour or more in your favored terrain, you gain the following benefits:

• Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel.
• Your group can’t become lost except by magical means.
• Even when you are engaged in another activity while traveling (such as foraging, navigating, or tracking), you remain alert to danger.
• If you are traveling alone, you can move stealthily at a normal pace.
• When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would.
• While tracking other creatures, you also learn their exact number, their sizes, and how long ago they passed through the area.

You choose additional favored terrain types at 6th and 10th level.

This is an example of how D&D 5^th Edition often models specialization by trivializing the associated actions: If you’re interested in X, you design a character who’s good at X. But the result isn’t doing more of X or doing X in interesting ways, it’s that X becomes automatic and is no longer part of the game.

In Tomb of Annihilation, for example, a big chunk of the campaign is mounting a wilderness exploration into the heart of darkness! If that sounds exciting to you, you’d likely pick a character class like a ranger or a druid that can really contribute to that part of the campaign.

Tomb of Annihilation, however, models the challenges of the expedition through travel speed, a Navigation check, and Dehydration. The Ranger’s Natural Explorer ability, however, eliminates travel speed variation and auto-succeeds on the Navigation check. The Druid, meanwhile, has a 1^st-level spell to create water. So if you make characters specialized in wilderness exploration, you take the entire structure presented for wilderness exploration and basically just throw it out.

It’s as if the Fighter had an Auto-Win the Fight ability at 1^st level: You choose to be a Fighter because you’re really interested in the combat portion of the game, but the mechanics instead just remove the entire combat system. So rather than creating cool new gameplay, the game just sets up these boring, auto-play interactions.

D&D 2024 replaces Natural Explorer with a new class ability called Deft Explorer:

DEFT EXPLORER

Thanks to your travels, you gain the following benefits.

Expertise. Choose one of your skill proficiencies with which you lack Expertise. You gain Expertise in that skill.

Langauges. You know two languages of your choice from the language tables.

This avoids trivializing wilderness exploration, but instead drifts pretty heavily into what I refer to as mechanical pablum, which is another problem D&D 5^th Edition (and particularly the 2024 edition of the rules) frequently suffers from: These are mechanics which purport to be one thing (e.g., how you’re a deft explorer), but are actually just some random bonuses.

These are two very different problems, but I think they both have the same root cause: Both versions of D&D 5^th Edition were designed backwards.

DESIGNING BACKWARDS

I know from a variety of public interviews and private conversations with designers that the development of both D&D 2014 and D&D 2024 followed a roughly similar path: They developed material, playtested it, finished (or nearly finished) the Player’s Handbook, and then started work on the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

This resulted in the 2014 DMG, in particular, being a rushed product, with very little time for iterative development and with whole new mechanical systems being plugged into the text at literally the last minute.

But I’ve come to believe that the problem here is more fundamental than mere slapdashery.

Imagine that you were part of a team designing Monopoly. Somebody says to you, “Hey, can you design the property cards?”

“Sure,” you say. “What should be on them?”

“Umm… We’re not sure.”

“Well, what are the game mechanics?”

“Good question,” the designer says. “We know there’ll be a board. We’ll put the properties on the board. The players will probably move around the board, landing on the properties and doing stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Haven’t worked that out yet.”

“But what should go on the card?”

“Like… property stuff. The stuff you’d need when doing real estate stuff.”

“What sort of real estate stuff?”

“We’ll figure it out later!” they say with a big grin. “You’ve got this!”

Well, I’m sure this will be fine, you think to yourself. I guess I can put some placeholder stuff on the property cards and we can revise it as the rest of the game is developed.

Then you find out all the property cards will be getting sent to the printer before the rulebook is written.

This obviously sucks for you. It probably sucks even more for the guy who has to figure out how to make something at least technically playable using whatever arbitrary stuff you end up putting on the property cards. It’s certainly not going to result in a great game.

The situation with D&D 5^th Edition is a little less clear-cut, but broadly speaking, it has the same problem.

When it comes to RPG design, there will usually be some form of core mechanic (e.g., roll 1d20 + ability score modifier vs. difficulty), but of far more importance to the game design is the collection of scene and scenario structures that create the core gameplay experience. In D&D 2024, for example, you have combat, journeys, bastions, etc. Other games might put the primary focus on solving mysteries, executing heists, or organizing a planetary defense force. The game designer both makes a decision of which game structures the game will be focused on and designs the details of how those structures will actually work mechanically and procedurally.

The other aspects of the game – character classes, monster stat blocks, etc. – are ideally designed to interface with these game structures. A particularly simple example would be, if your combat system requires attack bonuses, then your monster stat blocks should include attack bonuses. But, similarly, if your scenario structures include random encounter checks, you might want to include a default # Appearing stat for each creature type and/or difficulty level. If your procedures for wilderness exploration include the possibility of bad guys tracking the PCs, then you’ll want to makes sure those stat blocks also include their tracking proficiency.

And now you can see the problem D&D has: The Player’s Handbook includes the combat system, and so, as the designers work on the PHB, the character classes, skills, spells, and other character options in the game can all be properly playtested and iteratively designed in tandem with the combat system.

But all the other structures and procedures of play — dungeons, bastions, journeys, chases, etc. — are over in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Unlike combat, none of these systems are being developed in tandem with the rules for creating and playing characters. In some cases, work on these systems hadn’t even started when the PHB was finalized. It was literally the Monopoly property cards being sent to print before the rules were written.

Even in cases where there was playtesting happening before the PHB was locked down, I think you can still see the same effect, albeit blunted somewhat, in the final product: On the one hand, character stats have a sort of vibe-based design, where the designer knows, for example, that wilderness travel is going to be part of the game, so they should include abilities (e.g., Natural Explorer or Deft Explorer) that hypothetically plug into it, but with little or no idea what they’re actually plugging into. On the other hand, the final system design is trying to design an outlet that can fit the semi-random assortment of plugs blindly designed for the PHB, resulting in incomplete, awkward, and unsatisfying structures of play.

Does any of this really matter, though? If you’ve read Whither the Dungeon?, then you know that, for many years now, the D&D core rulebooks have not, for example, actually taught new DMs how to design or run dungeons. If they don’t include a structure for dungeon play at all, then there was never going to be opportunity for the game designers to properly link the rules of the game into that procedure.

In reality, of course, this just makes the problem worse. And, to at least some extent, these missing structures of play are another symptom of designing the game backwards. (Although I don’t think it’s the only reason for this systemic failure by Wizards of the Coast.)

The backward legacy of PHB first/DMG later design is driven, in part, by the deep-seated belief that the core rules of D&D should be a 900-page trilogy of rulebooks and the production realities that stem from that decision. It’s also a legacy that dates back to the earliest days of the hobby.

Back in 1979, though, the DMG being released a full year after the PHB was less of an issue because the PHB and DMG were both being developed in the context of the original 1974 edition of the game, which had been holistically designed and honed through actual play. (This is also why the Monster Manual could be released in 1977 before either of the AD&D rulebooks had been written.)

D&D has long relied on legacy design elements and the oral traditions which pass them forward. As those ties are increasingly broken, however, more and more cracks have begun to appear in D&D’s fundamental gameplay, and the price of designing the game backwards is demanding to be paid.

Each Troll Lord release improves significantly upon the last. The Malady of Kings is a noteworthy, high-level D20 adventure.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Malady of Kings. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

A thousand years ago, as the Catalyst Wars which would signal the beginning of the Dark Age fell upon the world, Luther Pendegrantz – guided by visions – set sail from his throne in Kayomar. His wife, Vivienne, guided by visions of her own, knew that she would never see her husband again. Luther found his way upon the Sea of Dreaming, and spent a millennium upon those fabled waters before returning to rejoin his old comrades in overthrowing fell Unklar and ending the long Winter Dark which had rested upon the world in his absence.

Unknown to Luther, however, Vivienne – his long-lost wife – had not found a peaceful death. Pining for her absent husband, she became one of the undead, haunting the royal sepulcher in which she had been quietly inurned. She remains there still, while her husband – having saved the world and been sainted as St. Luther – retired to the Isle of Blight upon the Sea of Dreaming, from which his order of paladins stands guard over the world. St. Luther has recently fallen under the foul curse of ancient enemies, and has been trapped in a sleep of deep dreams within his castle upon the Isle of Blight.

Enter the PCs: Following ancient clues discovered within the legendary Books of Jaran they track down Frieden Anhohe and the Shrine of the Gallant, the ancient crypt of the Pendegrantz family. There they discover – and disturb – the long-forgotten Vivienne. This sudden psychic disturbance summons the arch-mage Aristobolus – now half-mad, but once Luther’s companion and Vivienne’s dear friend. This in turn, brings forth Daladon Half-elf, another of Luther’s famous companions. Both Aristobolus and Daladon mourn for Vivienne’s current plight, and ask the PCs to aid them in relieving her sorrow by summoning Luther from the Isle of Blight to make peace with his wife.

From here the PCs will sail upon the mystic Dream Horn (provided by Daladon) upon the Sea of Dreaming, finding their way – at last – to the Isle of Blight. Here they will converse with a demi-god exiled from his homeland, and – at last – free Luther from his slumber.

GREAT GAMING ENVIRONMENTS

I’ve said this about every single Troll Lord product I’ve reviewed, and I’ll say it again here: They have really incredible settings. For example, in The Malady of Kings you’ve got:

The Eldwood, a subtly fantastic environment, and utterly memorable. The Eldwood is the oldest forest in the world, and its mysteries are both ancient and well-protected. What separates the Eldwood from every other “ancient forest” of generic fantasy, however, is its unique geography: Its outermost reaches are known as the Rimwald, where travel is easy, the trees are far apart, and a small number of human settlements are sprinkled throughout. As one pushes beyond the Rimwald, however, they come to the Festungwald (“festung being an old dwarf word, literally translated as ‘fortress’”) – a tangle of underbrush, younger trees, and wild animals nearly fifteen miles deep in places serving as an effective natural barrier of protection for the Eldwald, the deep woodland of the forest, with oaks which stand like “monumental buildings”. You know, its a subtle thing – but its small touches like these which distinguish the worlds and settings which are truly memorable.

The Sea of Dreaming, also known as the Dreaming Sea, is – in fact – another plane of existence which lies in coexistence with our own (and, possibly, all others). “The sea is a watery plane of chaos, each drop a physical manifestation of a dream. These droplets of the dreams and nightmares of the living creatures of past, present, and future have accumulated over the millennia to form this great ocean. They are infinite in number, and the Dreaming Sea has no bottom.”

The Isle of Wintery Dreams, built by the foul demon who ruled over the world during the Dark Age as a way of corrupting the world of dreams, the Isle of Wintery Dreams remains – inhabited by fiercesome Dream Warriors.

And, finally, the mystical Isle of Blight, where St. Luther rests and rules.

PROBLEM AREAS

When I first started reading The Malady of Kings I was somewhat concerned by the fact that this adventure – unlike Troll Lord’s others – depended very heavily upon the idiosyncratic elements of the After Winter Dark setting. I felt there was a very real possibility that the only way this adventure would be playable was if you were playing it on the World of Erde.

Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how easily this module could be adapted. St. Luther, for example, can be replaced with any ancient hero of your campaign world that might still be alive (and trapped in a magical sleep) – or he could even be a minor noble of some sort. The settings themselves can be transferred fairly easily – swapping villain for villain and hero for hero. The adventure as it stands is of epic proportions – building upon the central mythology of the After Winter Dark campaign setting – and you can certainly maintain that by bending the mythology of your own world. But nothing stops you from toning down the epic elements to a more manageable degree (with little more than some simple name changes).

The only element which could pose serious problems is the Sea of Dreaming. Truthfully, this can be added to any campaign world (and would, in my opinion, be a worthy addition). But it may, of course, have no position in your person cosmology. Again, this is easily worked around: Simply place the Isle of Blight somewhere on a normal ocean in your campaign world. (You only lose one small, and relatively unimportant, scene this way.)

Other than that, I only found a handful of minor problems: Chenault describes one encounter as being of EL 19. While technically accurate (the wizard in the encounter is, in fact, 19th level), it should not actually be described as such (if you were to reward the PCs for defeating the wizard, as the EL rating implies, you would do horrible things to game balance). In some places the boxed text (generally very evocative) trips over the line into poor melodrama and amateur histrionics, which is unfortunate.

The setup and adventure hooks for the adventure are also, in my opinion, underdeveloped. I would have liked a little more detail on why, specifically, the PCs should get interested enough in the passages regarding the Shrine of the Gallant in order to go looking for it. As it stands you have little to no sense for how the PCs get involved in the plot.

There are also a couple of points where you can tell this is an adventure which saw its inception as something which the author ran for his own play group (preserved, most noticeably, in areas where the plot briefly seems to follow the logic his players took, rather than the possibilities which other DMs may face).

These are minor problems, however, and do not noticeably detract from the overall quality of the adventure, or – more importantly – its usefulness.

CONCLUSION

Each new release from Troll Lord Games improves upon the last: Content, lay-out, boxed text, art, maps – the whole nine yards. If they continue along this course, it shouldn’t be long before they’re turning out material rivalling the quality of Penumbra, Green Ronin, and Necromancer.

The Malady of Kings, specifically, is an excellent adventure for 10th level characters. This is a point in a campaign where truly epic themes typically begin to creep into the game, and The Malady of Kings addresses this need perfectly.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Authors: Stephen Chenault
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: D20
Price: $7.00
ISBN: 0-931275-01-7
Production Code: TLG1601
Pages: 40

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Table of Contents

BUSINESS OF THE VLADAAM SLAVE WAREHOUSE

This collection of posted bills records recent sales and transfers of inventory through the lower warehouse. A sampling of entries include items such as:

• Elven maid, 78 years of age, permanently dominated to any compliance
• Four dwarf workers, dim-witted but strong in thew
• Female child, of island stock
• Boy of sixteen, tongue removed, docile

Most of these slaves are being shipped to an “Ennin slave market” which is apparently located in the Undercity “beneath Delver’s Square” (the slaves are being transported via the sewers). Slaves are also being shipped to three “curse dens” located around the city:

• Curse Den – Guildsman District – Nethar Street
• Curse Den – Oldtown – Yarrow Street
• Curse Den – Rivergate – Outer Ring Row

In addition to slaves, large shipments of something referred to as “liquid pain” are also being shipped to the curse dens from here.

One particular reference of note identifies a batch of slaves as being “held at the behest of the Pactlords”.  Another says that a slave is to be sent “directly to Tridam Island by command of the Pactlord”.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE APPARATUS OF LIQUID PAIN

Detailed anatomical diagrams and accompanying texts explicate the points on the human body to which various tubes, syringes, and metallic attachments are to be placed (while others are stimulated through the use of acupuncture needles, including several needles placed into the optic nerves). The goal is to create “overlapping resonances of agony”, serving as the raw catalyst for withdrawing a substance referred to as “liquid pain” or “agony”.

The full process requires the use of a complicated apparatus capable of generating a “sympathetic resonance” which can be contained within glass cylinders crafted with exact precision.

In addition, the properties of the resulting “liquid pain” are detailed, along with alchemical instructions for how it can be purified and “stabilized”.

AGONY: Also known as “liquid pain”, this thick, reddish liquid is the distilled essence of pain, captured using special spells or items. It is highly sought after by outsiders. Through an alchemical law of antagonism it creates a feeling of intense pleasure in addition to its other effects. Recreational users use small, ceremonial knives to cut themselves and deliver the drug.

A MISSIVE REGARDING SLAVES

Guildmaster Arzan tells me you have a sharp eye. I expect you to practice it now. We are conducting crucial experiments in the apartments on Crossing Street and are in need of experimental stock. We are particularly in need of those with an affinity for metamorphic compounds while also possessing the physical endurance to withstand the experimental techniques. If you observe any such during your service, flag them to my attention immediately.

LETTER TO GUILDMASTER ARZAN

To Arzan, the most illustrious Guildmaster of the Red Company of Magi—

I have recently had an item of most potent power pass into my possession.

While slipping through the Teeth of Light after sailing north towards Trollone, we were blown off course by a strange tempest of silver and black which first seemed to roil the waters beneath us before emerging – or, perhaps more accurately, whipping forth – in what could only be described as a violent evaporation.

I was not certain that the Sarathyn’s Sail would survive the strange gales which ensued, nor the strange manifestations which occurred therein. As for those of my crew who simply vanished during the storm… I pray that they were merely swept into the sea and met their fates in a watery grave, for the alternative is too disturbing to contemplate.

When the storm finally released us from its grasp, we were in ill condition. Fortunately, we found ourselves near a small island with a hospitable cove. We were able to limp our way into this and begin effecting repairs.

While these efforts were under way, I led a small band of men into the island’s interior in search of a fresh water well or spring from which we could resupply. Instead, we stumbled upon a set of cyclopean ruins. These were marked by a great number of carvings, bas reliefs, and statues depicting serpents and, within the deeper recesses of the complex, serpent-headed men.

With dusk closing about us, we returned to the ship, but I vowed to return the next day and continue our explorations. It was at this juncture that the first of my men disappeared. At the time we thought it simply misadventure, but subsequent events would prove this not to be the case.

Returning to the ruins the next day, however, we pushed further into the lower chambers. Within one of these chambers I discovered, among other treasures, a curious ring in the the shape of twin serpents, one of mithril and other of taurum, swallowing each others’ tails. We have been able to ascertain that not only is the ring itself magical, but that it has been constructed to contain some even greater magical enchantment. It is for this reason that I am sending it into your care, in the hopes that perhaps your Red Magi might be able to unlock its secrets.

As for the ruins themselves, it emerged that the serpent-men who had constructed them had not entirely abandoned them. Instead, they appear to have withdrawn into caverns even deeper beneath the island. I suspect that they return to the upper caverns only as a kind of holy pilgrimage. As for what other secrets or lost lore they might be concealing, or what cataclysm precipitated their withdrawal from the sunlit world, I can only speculate.

Yours sincerely,

Captain Crotika

LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER’S GUILD TO CAPTAIN MORSUL

Captain Morsul—

Please accept this hellsbreath rifle, so recently liberated from the Shuul, as a token of good faith from the Founder’s Guild.

You will find it to be a powerful and potent weapon, but extremely dangerous if carelessly used. When priming the gunpowder pump, great care must be taken not to over-pressurize the reservoir of alchemist’s fire. If the reservoir becomes over-pressurized there is a great risk of a back-blast being triggered which can destroy the weapon entirely (and cause great harm to the one wielding it).

Similar caution should also be used when refilling the reservoir, as there can be great risk in the moments during which the alchemist’s fire is exposed to raw air.

Master Astrek
Red Company of Founders
Brass Street

Go to Part 17: Undead Shipping Warehouse

Stephen Chenault designs a solid D20 module, Troll Lord’s first. Although possessed of great strengths, A Lion in the Ropes is held back by a central weakness in its design.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for A Lion in the Ropes. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

At first glance, A Lion in the Ropes is a fairly typical D&D module: PCs enter a village, the village is besieged by “something evil,” and the PCs take the necessary steps to rid the village of evil. But there are a couple of things which set it apart from its familiar brethren:

First, as with Troll Lord’s other products, A Lion in the Ropes is distinguished by its distinctive and developed setting. The village which the PCs enter is not just Generic Village #117, it is Capendu – a place given a specific history, context, and character. Some of this is accomplished through little details which make all the difference (for example, the fact that the roofs in Capendu are made of a distinctive green tile which comes from a nearby town). In other cases, it is accomplished through elements more integral to the adventure. For example, a central element in the adventure is the Church of the Four Saints. The church was built upon the ruins of a prison. In most adventures such a prison would simply be “ruined” – in the case of A Lion in the Ropes, however, the prison was specifically torn apart by the citizens in order to build the town… which is why Capendu’s structures are built of stone (unlike the other towns in the region).

Although designed for Troll Lord’s After Winter Dark campaign setting, I find that the setting elements they include in their adventures are of a quality which not only allow them to be easily incorporated into any generic fantasy world, but will enhance the world into which they are so included.

Stephen Chenault (the author) also does a nice job of interweaving multiple actions into his narrative: A lion who is mistaken for a demon, a group of undead who are actually responsible for terrorizing the town, and a band of bandits who attempts to take advantage of the chaos surrounding the murders committed by the undead. By interweaving this three-tiered dynamic into the complex supporting cast established in Capendu, Chenault manages to create a fairly compelling low level adventure.

Chenault also does a nice job of making sure that, if the PCs have an deficiencies in their skills or resources while tackling the task he’s set them, that there are ways of filling those deficiencies within the course of the adventure. At the same time, however, Chenault makes sure that there are contingencies which will allow the DM to take away the PCs’ new toys if he feels they will be overly powerful beyond the scope of the adventure.

Another point of commendation in the module’s favor is the boxed text. Although, at times, the text makes decisions for the PCs (a common mistake by module writers, but one which drives me right up the wall because it means I absolutely cannot trust the boxed text while running the adventure), it is also written very strongly – and, therefore, worth salvaging.

WEAKNESSES

Unfortunately, not everything about A Lion in the Ropes is equally commendable. The most significant, and perhaps crippling, problem is actually hinted at in Chenault’s own words:

“This mystery revolves around three separate actors. The Orinsu, the escaped lion, and the bandit, Orange-Hair. To track the movements of all three, the Referee should create a time line and allow the characters to weave in and out of it in a chaotic, albeit, realistic manner.”

Wait a minute. The referee should create a time line? If Chenault feels that the successful running of this adventure requires a time line to be established, why doesn’t he provide one?

And that pretty much sums up the source of most of my problems with this adventure: At many points it reads less like it has been designed, and more as if it had been merely outlined. To a certain extent, I feel as if Chenault became trapped by the standard concept of what “a module must be like” – and couldn’t get his ideas to function sufficiently within those constraints. A Lion in the Ropes might have risen above being merely good to something truly memorable if Chenault had followed his instincts and designed the adventure primarily around a time line of events – preferably a branching one which showed some responsiveness to multiple courses of action taken by the PCs, with specific events along each branch of the time line detailed.

CONCLUSION

That being said, A Lion in the Ropes is a solid module. If you’re looking for a memorable locale, a mystery, and undead for your low level party (the module is designed for levels 2-4), this is probably a good place to look.

Style: 3
Substance: 3

Author: Stephen Chenault
Company: Troll Lord Games
Line: D20
Price: $6.00
ISBN: 0-9702397-5-0
Production Code: TLG1401
Pages: 24

There was an ineffable quality to Troll Lord’s first modules that I really struggled to communicate in my reviews. There was, for lack of a better word, a texture to them that made them feel woven into a deeper reality. There was something magical about them that I desperately wanted to bottle up and bring to the table. But they also, as this review alludes, often had some deep issues that would have required some significant labor to polish them up and actually run them to best effect.

As a result, very few of these modules ever made it to my table. I sometimes wish that I’d run more of them. Perhaps some day I shall.

Many of these modules, including A Lion in the Ropes, have been updated several times to new editions. I haven’t checked out any of these revisions, so I can’t really comment on whether any significant changes have been made to their content or presentation. This review is strictly of the original D20 System edition.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 48A: A Night in the Necropolis

Standing outside the door were a young man with his brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a lithe woman with black hair down past her shoulders. The young man stretched out his hand, “My name’s Marcus Hunter. We’re looking for Tithenmamiwen. We have business from the Delver’s Guild.”

Agnarr slammed the door in their face and went back to polishing his sword.

I love a good prop.

They’re immersive, riveting, persistent, and just plain fun for the players.

There are all kinds of props, of course, but among the best are interactive ones. There’s just something deeply powerful about the players physically interacting with something that their characters are also physically interacting with.

For similar reasons, although props are great as a vector of information (and that’s certainly the primary function for most of the props I create), it’s fantastic when a prop is something that the characters can actually use. Something they can get proactive with, not just react to.

And this is why I love writing up legal contracts as props.

First, getting them to sign the contract as their characters gives you that awesome immersive hit. (One of my players has the signed copy of the Hunter contract safely stowed amongst their notes.)

But the contract is also a legal instrument. It’s more likely than not that the PCs will be able to use that contract to further their agenda: Protecting themselves from someone trying to take advantage of them, or leveraging the terms of the contract to force the outcome they want.

(Or, alternatively, an NPC using the contract against them. Which is almost as good.)

There’s a really cool supplement for Mothership called Breach of Contract, which is just a full book of tear-out form contracts that you and your players can fill out. For obvious reasons, I’m looking forward to figuring out how to integrate these into my Mothership open table.

If you’re looking to create your own contract handouts, I recommend googling real world contracts — particularly seeking out historical examples if that’s your milieu — and then stripping them down to the bare essentials. Borrow overall structure and key turns of phrase for flavor, but I don’t think it’s necessary to waste a lot of time customizing a 30-page pseudo-legal document, even if that’s technically what should be signed. (Think of producing something closer to a memorandum of understanding, if this bugs you. But, generally speaking, anything longer than a page is probably overkill.)

Don’t be afraid of letting the PCs renegotiate the terms of the contract. That might involve just crossing out and rewriting terms on the physical handout, or you may need to make some digital revisions and print up a new copy. Whatever works.

Campaign Journal: Session 48B – Running the Campaign: Laying Groundwork
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index