Ravaging the Countryside

Credit:  lafemmedart218

Hello and welcome to my world building blog!

Today, I will be referring to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Design Kit by Harold Johnson and Aaron Allston, published in 1988 by TSR, Inc.

Last entry, I discussed the horror theme of the adventure and deduced that the religious cult within the Ruins of Azamar is one that worships a creature called Ithaqua.  Today, we will be taking a look at the goal and story hook of the adventure.

The book lists example goals, such as Clear Name, Escape, and Explore a New Area.  My random generator chose "Thwart Monstrous Plan."  Here is the description from the book:

"This is a classic fantasy-adventure plot; The characters learn of some horrible plan made by a monstrous enemy, and must thwart it before the kingdom is lost or the world is destroyed. This is an epic goal, and usually requires that the characters go to all sorts of places, rounding up allies and artifacts, before being strong enough to face their enemy."

There are many places one could go to find resources on Ithaqua, but that's not going to be the focus of this entry.  In this entry, we are going to focus on the goal of the adventure.  In this case, the goal for adventurers is to thwart the plans of the cult within the Ruins.  Since they are a cult and worship the creature, they are trying to spawn it by some alien, arcane ritual.  The goal of this adventure is to reach the cult performing the ritual, even face the leader of the cult (a powerful wizard or warlock?), and make certain the creature does not appear, otherwise all is lost.

Built outside of the kingdom of Azamar, there is an established route to the ruins.  And if the adventurers start at the capitol, they would have to travel there.  Many villages and towns lie on this route, and can be good settings for side adventures, "rounding up allies and artifacts" along the way.

Now that we have established a goal, we will need a story hook, something you could use as a plot device to get your characters motivated to go on this adventure.  The book lists hooks such as Dying Delivery, Grim Necessity, and Hero Offended.  My generator chose "Old Friend."

"Another classic story hook is the Old Friend, the childhood friend of our hero, who shows up in one of several ways to drag the hero into the story.  Some of the ways include:

"(1) He Asks for Help.  The Friend shows up to ask the hero for help.  He or his family is being menaced by some side effect of the villain's plan.  (The Old Friend could actually now be a traitor, leading the hero straight to his enemies, if you prefer.)

"(2) He Is Killed.  The Friend dies on the hero's doorstep; the hero is obligated to investigate.  There will be enough clues found on the Friend's body to lead the hero into the plot.  (As an interesting variant, the Old Friend can have become a villain and been killed by an NPC hero, leading to some confusion on the PCs' part.)"

For this story hook to work, you would have to pay close attention to the characters' backstories.  This story hook is a little tricky because the player's starting character has no real attachment to this fantasy world.  For the most part, they won't care if a friend (who in reality, they met) shows up half dead.  Pay attention to which player's character might have friends you could use.

Or even better, use their family.  What if the "Friend" was actually a brother or sister?  Better yet, the hero's father shows up on the hero's doorstep.  He's on the brink of dying, and has word that strange and unusual creatures destroyed their farm.  They also devoured his wife and children (the hero's family!) in front of him before he could escape.  He heard rumors the monstrous creatures came from the Ruins.  That should be enough to get the characters motivated to investigate the cult.

And then, when the heroes get on the road, they encounter destroyed farms, aberrations of all sorts ravaging the countryside, and survivors who might want to help in ridding this Cult of Ithaqua.

I'm getting super excited with the Ruins of Azamar, and I can't wait to explore more of the elements that will go into this adventure.

Next week, we'll explore the settings that will make up our adventure grounds.

I hope you enjoyed the read, and until next time, thanks for reading.

The Ruins of Azamar

Credit: Alexander Dudar

Hello and welcome to my world building blog!

Today, I will be opening up the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Design Kit by Harold Johnson and Aaron Allston, published in 1988 by TSR, Inc. More specifically, Book III: Adventure Cookbook. The Dungeon Master's Design Kit is broken into three parts or books. Book I is the Adventure Design rulebook and covers more or less how to use the Design Kit, and the sheets and forms included in Book II. Book II is known as the Forms Book because it includes all the forms one can use to organize campaigns.

Book III: Adventure Cookbook, however, is the one I'm interested in because it includes all the elements on creating adventures. The book is set up with tables, and I love using tables. I can input the information into our random generator and hopefully come out with an interesting adventure.

The Adventure Cookbook deals with themes, goals, story hooks, settings, allies... a whole multitude of elements! All of these elements, and much, much more, I'll cover in the next few weeks to create an interesting adventure.

Of course, I haven't forgotten our campaign setting of Azamar. We'll be placing this adventure within the bounds of the setting we developed in previous weeks.

First, the book discusses themes. It lists seven different themes for one to choose from: action, comedy, espionage, and others. Rolling on my random generator, the theme it chose for us is horror. Here is the book's description on the horror theme:

"This type of adventure is designed to scare both the characters and the players. Just having a monster attack is not enough for a horror theme; the monster must first frighten the characters."

I've run horror games before, and the one element you could use to convey horror, or a horror atmosphere is music. The Internet has a plethora of ambient music and sounds you could use while running a horror theme adventure.

I also realized that this is the perfect theme for the religious cult occupying the ancient ruins of Azamar. One of my favorite authors is HP Lovecraft, and any of the Cthulhu mythos creatures is perfect for the cult's deity. Considering this is near the arctic circle, one of the Cthulhu mythos creatures we could use is Ithaqua. Also known as the Death-Walker, according the Lovecraft Wiki, "he has been reported from as far north as the Arctic to the Sub-Artic." Great horror element!

So, with the theme, the book suggests a characteristic: "Dark, musty, old settings, things creeping around in the dark, terrified NPCs, violent weather, inexplicable monsters."

All of these elements we could use in the Ruins of Azamar (believe it or not, this is the perfect, and most natural, name for this adventure: The Ruins of Azamar).

There are also some ground rules the book suggests. "Use psychology to frighten the characters (keep creeping or shambling things at the very edges of their perception, tell them they have the feeling of something watching them, etc.); don't use any monster exactly as written (give it strange abilities and behavior the characters can't predict)."

One of the things I love about running a game is using abnormal or modified creatures. I deal with very experienced players and they know most of the cookie-cutter monsters available with a lot of RPGs. If you modify a monster, "give it strange abilities and behavior the characters can't predict," the players won't know what hit them. An example I can provide; in one of my games, I mixed a unicorn with a nightmare. The creature had the abilities of both creatures, and had the appearance of a black unicorn. The Cthulhu mythos has a multitude of aberrations you can use to scare the crap out of your players.

I don't want to make this entry too long, so I think I'll leave it here. And next week, we'll discuss the goal of the Ruins of Azamar.

I hope you enjoyed the read, and until next time, thanks for reading.

The History of Azamar

Credit: OER Project Blog

Hello and welcome to my world building blog!

Today, I will be discussing the history of Azamar, based on Richard Baker's companion sourcebook to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: World Builder's Guidebook, published by TSR Ltd in 1996.

We found early on in our design that the kingdom of Azamar is a fairly new kingdom, which settled in the sub-arctic region of a world with a planetary temperature is much colder than Earth.  It settled there because of ancient ruins that promised "fantastic wealth, magic, and hidden danger."  We gone through the steps of building its government, they way people live and survive, and even their beliefs.

This week I want to focus on Azamar's history.  And, since they are a fairly new kingdom, I would imagine they hadn't had a rich ancient history.  The World Builder's Guidebook references that any given kingdom in a fantasy campaign setting would have 2 to 12 ancient periods.  It seems that twelve periods for a fairly new kingdom is too much, so I rolled on my random generator stopping on a result of three ancient periods.  Each ancient age is 500-1,000 years.  I've listed the results below:

Ancient Ages
1000 years, Natural Cataclysm
1000 years, Man-made Cataclysm
500 years, Natural Cataclysm

Wow... a few cataclysms hit Azamar pretty hard more than three thousand years ago.  It could be the somewhat normal world was turning cold, and the sorceresses thought they could help by casting their spells and rituals.  Something happened that went sideways, which led to a man-made disaster, one which not even the gods could help.  And then Azamar endured another 500 years of the growing cold.

Fascinating!

Imagine the settlers of Azamar building their civilization in a temperate region just before the world turned cold.  The ever growing arctic circle shrinking the tropical regions until they disappeared, becoming temperate zones.  Sorceresses united and priestesses pleaded with the gods to reverse this trend of cold without success.  The magic got away from them, worsening the temperatures and bringing even more blizzards and ice.

Moving on, the Guidebook tells us to use 4-16 middle periods of 50-100 years each.  Listed below is a sequence of twelve events over a period of 910 years.

Middle Periods
80 years, Succession War
60 years, Conquest War
50 years, Plague
90 years, Kingdom decline/fall
60 years, Rebellion
90 years, Revolution
90 years, Exploration/colonization
70 years, Revolution
70 years, Invasion
90 years, Invasion
60 years, Crusade War
100 years,  Religion, cult activity

At a look, Azamar has had a turbulent past with wars, revolutions, and invasions, among other events.  The one that is interesting to me, though, is the last 100 years: cult activity.  We had already established the ancient ruins near Azamar is occupied by a religious cult.  According to our generator, the occupation has been happening for the last 100 years.  It's amazing how things fall into place even though we're using a random generator.

The final phase of history are Recent Events, which there are 2 to 12 events of note, each about 1 to 6 years apart.  The events for Azamar are listed below:

Recent Events
6 years, Intrigue/scandal

Ten years ago, scandal rocked Azamar.  What kind of a scandal?  Was there a conspiracy within the Council of the Storm?  Perhaps one to dethrone Chieftess Yngvild Skoptidottir?  Maybe the Chieftess wasn't acting herself.  After all, this did happen 10 years ago, she was a lot younger then.

4 years, Feud/rivalry

Four years ago, a feud or rivalry took place.  Perhaps two noble families were almost on the brink of war, stopped by the Chieftess and her Council before it escalated.  What if wealthy merchant houses took to battle over rights on plundering the ruins?  It could be any reason.

Now that we have a board sense of history for Azamar, we could set adventures anywhere on the timeline.  We have almost 3,500 years to play with.  If we really wanted to, we could even run a time travel adventure covering some of the setting's more interesting time periods.

However, there is so much more we could cover in this blog using the World Builder's Guidebook by Richard Baker.  I've left so much information from the book behind.  We didn't cover the size and shape of the world, the amount of water covering the world, seismology and tectonics, landforms, terrain types, rivers, lakes, seas, the population, monsters, ecology, and so much more!  I think I'll let you discover those aspects on your own.

I did, however, have fun building the cold kingdom of Azamar, and I want to delve deeper into the ancient ruins, and perhaps come up with a campaign for our setting.

Next week, we'll get into Azamar's many adventures, both within the kingdom and the nearby ancient ruins.

I hope you enjoyed the read, and until next time, thanks for reading.

Deity Portfolios

Credit: dezygn on DeviantArt

Hello and welcome to my world building blog!

Today, I will be discussing Deity Portfolios and what they mean for the people of Azamar.  The sourcebook is Richard Baker's companion book to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: World Builder's Guidebook, published by TSR Ltd in 1996.

Last week we covered the size and organization of Azamar's pantheon, letting our generator decide it is a meddlesome, medium-sized, familial type of pantheon.  It has 3 Greater Powers, 4 Intermediate Powers, 5 Lesser Powers, and 5 Demi-Powers.

Now, the World Builder's Guidebook has notes on how many portfolios each category of power may have, and that a few of the portfolios can be broken down into further specialties.  The book mentions there are way too many portfolios to cover, but it does have a surprisingly large list in a table, of course.  It also states:

"...specific portfolios are represented by the deities involved, and the alignment of each particular deity.  By combining a portfolio with an alignment, you can create an excellent picture of a power.  For instance, love might seem like a naturally good portfolio...but imagine a chaotic evil power of love might be a goddess of jealousy or debauchery, while a lawful good goddess of love is probably concerned with marriage, the home, or even chaste love.  However, feel free to discard combinations that don't make sense to you."

We, of course, are not going to discard anything and keep it all.  We're also going to add whether the deity is male, female, or something else.

We will build the first two powers, one at a time, so that you understand the process.  The notes the Guidebook gives is Greater and intermediate powers have 1d3 portfolios; lesser powers have 1d2 portfolios; and demi-powers have only a single portfolio.

First up are the Greater Powers, and we have three of them.

Our first Greater Power only has one portfolio:  Fertility, has an alignment of chaotic neutral, and is something other than male or female.  We will give them a gender neutral name like Aznas.  This power of fertility values their own freedom above all else.  Aznas will not let any good or evil influence them and prefers to make their own way.  I feel like this deity is responsible for the emergence of the different races in Azamar.

Our second Greater Power has three portfolios:  Animals, which could be broken down to a specific animal; Messengers, and Marriage.  This god or goddess has an alignment of neutral good, and is male.  Atnos does what he can to help within the alignments of law or chaos, but ultimately prefers to make his own decisions on what to do.

I believe you get the gist of how the process works, so for the next powers, I'll list the portfolios and alignments of each.

Greater Power # 3:  has one portfolio:  Ades, Power of Earth, has an alignment of chaotic evil, and has a gender of other.

Intermediate Power # 1:  has one portfolio:  Nohotl, Power of War, true neutral, and other.

Intermediate Power # 2:  has one portfolio:  Dhimlios, God of the Sun, chaotic neutral, and male.

Intermediate Power # 3:  has two portfolios:  Dessin, Power of Messengers and Death, lawful good, and other.

Intermediate Power # 4:  has one portfolio:  Kularis, Goddess of Death, chaotic evil, and female.

Lesser Power # 1:  has one portfolio:  Vohris, Power of Seasons*, neutral good,  and other.

* May refer to specialties, such as one particular animal, season, etc.

Lesser Power # 2:  has one portfolio:  Nodsyn, Power of Justice, neutral good, and other.

Lesser Power # 3:  has one portfolio:  Zeses, Power of Weather, lawful evil, and other.

Lesser Power # 4:  has one portfolio:  Xokdia, Goddess of Thunder, chaotic good, and female.

Lesser Power # 5:  has one portfolio:  Thalir, Power of Strength, lawful neutral, and other.

And each of our five demi-powers only have one portfolio each.

Demi-Power # 1:  Rhamther, God of War, lawful good, and male.

Demi-Power # 2:  Bephine, Goddess of Prosperity, lawful good, and female.

Demi-Power # 3:  Cyndon, God of the Wind, lawful good, and male.

Demi-Power # 4:  Drontrix, Goddess of War, lawful evil, and female.

Demi-Power # 5:  Qheara, Goddess of Wisdom, lawful evil, and female.

Azamar has seventeen deities total, all in a family, all fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, and others, representing different aspects of the kingdom's beliefs.

It's interesting to see there are three powers of War:  Nohotl, Rhamther, and Drontrix.  Considering Nohotl is something other than male or female, it is easy to see that this deity magically spawned the male and female of War as demi-powers.

Now that we know Azamar's territory, subsistence systems, and religions, what about it's history?  What happened in Azamar's past that made it what it is today?

Next week, we'll cover Azamar's history and the events that shaped the frozen kingdom.

I hope you enjoyed the read, and until next time, thanks for reading.