Back to the Past

Musings on Flashbacks in the Gaming Narrative

Lately, I’ve been thinking about narratives that work in books which could be used in RPGs. Most games tend to be pretty straightforward with play being in the moment. Things like cutscenes, flashbacks, and dream sequences can often seem more like the GM talking to himself, or like one player getting the spotlight for a longer period of time than anyone else. And you certainly don’t a want to use cutscenes to shift to the villain’s point in the plot like you might in a book or a movie, because you don’t want to give things away to your players. For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about flashbacks and the ways they can be used in games to strengthen the narrative.

One of the things I like about flashbacks is it allows character growth for players who may not be the best at writing backstories. Not everyone is like me and has a five-page character background, and although some GMs might not like that, I understand that not everyone is a writer. Flashbacks can help draw out portions of a character’s past during play which can give the player a deeper connection to the game and the GM some things for the player to use as hooks later.

There’s a game I played once that had an awesome mechanic to draw out these narratives from the players; I played it at a one-day gaming event and it left a lasting impression on me. 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars is basically Starship Troopers the game, but what got me was the flashback mechanic. You could use a flashback twice each session; once to have a critical success and once to flee and not take damage.

This mechanic worked by telling the GM that you wanted to cash in on the ability to do either of these things during the battle. I think there were poker chips or another token that represented each use. Once you did this you had to narrate a brief flashback that explained why you’d be good at doing the thing that you were about to do. For my critical success, I narrated being a standout basketball player in high school known for my jump shot, and that was why throwing my grenade directly into the mouth of the bug-alien would succeed.

I’m not sure how this method could transfer over to games like my current game of choice, Pathfinder, but having players narrate their critical hits or critical failures in terms of a flashback could work. The difficulty then becomes monopolizing time. The problem with flashbacks is they often only include one person’s character. This can leave other players out in the cold if they aren’t short narratives like in 3:16. So how do we bring the whole party into that moment?

One way requires quite a bit of work on behalf of the GM. The flashback must be prepared ahead of time. NPCs that represent people that the player having the flashback might meet need to be premade so they can be handed out to the other players. This should allow the GM to include the entire group in the cutscene, but as mentioned it is far more work.

You could attempt a more fluid version of this, and as the player mentions people he interacts with during the flashback hand those sheets out to the other players. This requires some trust in the person telling their character’s history. They need to be able to come up with enough peripheral characters to allow the whole group to play along. And both methods require the player flashing-back to trust the other players won’t mess with their “moment.”

I haven’t personally used a lot of flashbacks in my games. Pathfinder isn’t really geared toward the way more narrative games are. It is something I’m looking to incorporate more into my play, though, and I hope my thoughts on it might allow you to do so as well.

In what ways have you used flashbacks or other cutscenes in your games? How have you incorporated these narratives into games that aren’t specifically designed with them in mind? In what ways do you keep all your players engrossed when one person’s character currently has the spotlight?

Your past informs your future. If today’s article has helped you expand your narrative tools, please consider becoming a supporter. Monthly donations of as little as one dollar can be made to my Patreon. A one-time donation can easily be made to my Paypal. Every bit helps me keep the lights on so I can concentrate on bringing you the content you deserve.

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Just Horsing Around

The Jaroths (A Founding Family)

Every other week we’ve been working on adding to the small town of Nestletop as an exercise in world building. The first three installments have been the tavern, the smithy, and the trading post. Each of these have also had a some discussion about the research I had done on the topic at hand. In some of the past entries I have mentioned five founding families, and these week I’m going to start by outlining one of those five.

Before we get into the five families I think we first need a little bit of history on this town. This whole thing started as a basic idea that I was going to use as the starting point for an adventure. I worked with my players to make their character and those characters added to the town as a whole. One player was an elven shaman, which is why I added the elven community living side by side with the humans.  Another player was a dwarf barbarian trying to find his heritage as a berserker, and so I added the one dwarven family to represent his disconnect from his ancestral heritage.

The idea of the small town in the middle of nowhere was the perfect opportunity to have characters who didn’t know much about the outside world. This way the players could explore the world through the eyes of their characters. Everything that was a first for their characters would also be a first for them.

Although the players influenced the town I still had some ideas of my own and one of those was that Nestletop was settled by five families who had money and some status but would never be power players where they were. So instead of being small fish in a big pond they set out to make their own pond where they would be the big fish. Of course others went with them looking for a new beginning, but we’ll get to those as we move forward. Right now we will learn about Nestletop and how each founder affects the town, one family at a time. And we will start with the family mentioned in the blacksmith’s write-up, the Jaroths.

The Jaroths

Of the five families that travelled to the farthest reaches of the wilds, the Jaroths were by far the richest and most powerful. Whereas the other families were still making their money through industry the Jaroths watched their wealth grow through investment. For the most part the family spent their time indulging in their other hobbies, chiefly the breeding and rearing of horses.

The Jaroth family are the ones who put forth the idea of leaving the greater civilization and heading out into the wider world. The then-head of the family, a man by the name of Kendrick, was known for his silver tongue. He managed to convince the other families that it would be in their best interest to sign on for his little excursion. And so the Jaroths led the other families to settle in what would become Nestletop.

When they stopped on the other side of the pass through the Earthspine mountains and decided to settle just there, the Jaroths, who had funded the largest part of the relocation, choose their plot of land first. They had brought with them a number of different breeding pairs of horses and need enough land for their equines to run. They originally lived in makeshift housing, much to the chagrin of younger family members used to the comforts of the city, but it was also the Jaroth’s manor which was built first.

The Llewellyns, who had made their money in lumber, had brought with them the tools and personnel to construct a lumber mill swiftly upon arriving. It was when they went to cut down their first tree that they encountered the elves of the region. The shamanic forestfolk had inhabited the area for many generations and although they weren’t openly hostile they took umbrage to the attempt at deforestation. Again it was eloquent Kendrick who stepped forward to negotiate, and a deal was struck.

The town settled and as they did the Joraths retained the unspoken title of the leaders of Nestletop. There was a council and part of the deal with the elves included a seat so that they could be a part of any decision making process that might affect them. But even on the council the voice of the Jaroths carried weight beyond anyone else’s.

The fourth generation of Jaroth leaders is now on the council. Kendrick Jaroth – named after his great-grandfather – is the head of the family. They live a comfortable life on their estate with the pastures for their horses. A number of the local farmers share their hay directly to the Jaroths, keeping the community thriving. Some of the youngsters of the local families looking to get away from the farming life are employed by this founding family as hostlers.

In recent times the family has had a bit of a contentious relationship with the Merrick mining family. When the new Redrun smithy opened the Jaroths starting using Abelton, not only for their smithing needs but also to sell their horses when the trading caravans came through. There are no outright hostilities but the Merricks have been voting against the interests of the Jaroths in council meetings.

And there you have it, adding a little bit of history to our growing town. We’ll add more as the weeks go on but for now I pose to you a few questions. Who founded the town you players characters are from? Why was the town founded in the first place? How do the leaders of your city interact with each other? And who doesn’t love horses?

Founding a town is no small feat, and neither is producing weekly content. If the CRB has give you thing to think about please consider becoming a contributor. Monthly donations of as little as one dollar can be made to my Patreon. A one-time donation can easily be made to my Paypal. Every bit helps me keep the lights on so I can concentrate on bringing you the content you deserve.

The CRB has been growing as a community on social media. Please join us on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter. My inbox is open on all forums for questions, comments, and discussion. If you don’t want to miss a beat make sure you sign up to have the CRB pushed directly to your e-reading device with Kindle Subscriptions through Amazon.

Random Roll 89 - The Randomness

This week we have a child of the wind who became a criminal early. A sylph exiled for arson and a killer of scoundrels, even if he feels regret for it. What do we do with this criminal wind touched man? A decent dexterity, constitution, intelligence, and charisma leave us a lot of options. Stay tuned Friday to see what becomes of our young sylph in the land of the winter witches.

Gender: Male

Race:Slyph

Nationality:Irrisen

Human Parent Ethnicity: Kellid

Age:  80

Height: 5’ 9”

Weight: 154lbs

Alignment:Lawful Evil

Str: 8

Dex: 15

Con:  14

Int: 14

Wis: 12

Cha: 14

Homeland: Frontier

Parents: Both of your parents are alive.

Siblings: You have 4 biological siblings.

- biological younger sister

- biological younger brother

- biological younger brother

- biological younger brother

Circumstance of Birth: [Middle-Class Birth] You were born to the middle class, which includes merchants, artisans, and tradespeople. You likely grew up in a good-sized settlement, and one of your parents is likely associated with a guild or other trade organization. As a free person, you don't experience the bondage of serfdom or peasantry, but you also lack the privilege of the nobility.

Parent's Profession: Artisans

Major Childhood Event: [Imprisoned] Your criminal record began when you were young. You were imprisoned, punished, and possibly displayed in public as a criminal. Whether or not you committed the crime, the experience has stayed with you.

Crime: Arson

Punishment: Exile

Influential Associate:[The Mystic] You were especially close to a holy person in your community who fundamentally changed your life by opening your eyes to the incredible powers that exist beyond the natural world. Regardless of whether you follow a faith, certain religious artifacts, rituals, and texts played a large part in making you the person you are.

Conflict: [Mass Murder] You killed several sentient beings.

Conflict Subject: Scoundrel.

Conflict Motivation: Pressured or Manipulated.

Conflict Resolution: [Regret and Penance] Not only do you regret your action, but you have publicly admitted to it and did your best to make amends for the wrongdoing. Most know of the conflict’s details and those who don’t can easily find them out if they know where to look or whom to ask.

Deity/Religious Philosophy:Crocell

Romantic Relationship(s):[One Significant Relationship] You had a true love once, but that time has passed.

Drawback:[Youth] You reflect upon your youth as a golden time, one ever present in your mind and that refuses to fade into the background. Every day, you feel yourself growing older and closer to your inevitable end. You seek ways to make yourself look and feel young in attempt to rekindle that fire of your adolescence, but despite your attempts, you realize that your time still draws ever nearer.

(Trait) Artisan

(Trait) Child of the Temple

(Trait) Criminal

(Trait) Frontier-Forged

(Trait) Kin Guardian

(Trait) Merchant

(Story Feat) Liberator

(Drawback) Vain

In the comments give us your ideas for how to make this into a fully realized character? What class would this character take up? What frontier in Irrsen was his home? Why did he commit arson? Who was his mystic influence? And don’t forget to stay tuned Friday when my background hits the CRB.

The CRB not only brings you the creative content you desire but makes you look inside for your own creativity. If you feel both inspired and pushed to created please consider supporting your favorite content provider – that’s me right – by pledging as little as $1 on my Patreon or making a direct donation to my Paypal.

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Knowing is Half the Battle

Learning About Your Enemy

As if I haven’t said it often enough, I love playing skill monkeys. One of my favorite parts of playing a skilled character is getting all of the knowledge skills I can get my hands on. A few recent threads brought up the question of what you learn about your enemies with knowledge skill checks. So today we’re gonna look at that particular use for knowledges.

The basics of knowledge skills seem simple enough. Make a roll get some information, if the roll is good enough get even more information. But even with this seeming simplicity there was a difference of opinion on what a particular sentence meant in terms of what one knows with just the base roll. In the rules for knowledge it says “A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster.” The question that came up was does “a bit” mean literally one single bit of information or does it fit the other meaning of bit, a small quantity of something, in this case information.

I personally take the ‘small quantity’ approach on this. For me that small quantity is everything available under the type of creatures type, humanoid, monstrous humanoid, undead, outsider, etc. Since every type of creature has the exact same general abilities, it stands to reason that these pieces of information would be common among scholars of these creatures. For some creatures like humanoids this isn’t a lot of information, for others like undead it gives quite a bit more.

Whether you subscribe to my definition of “a bit” of information or the one piece of information – most likely name – you need to figure out what the players can learn if they gain extra successes. For me, much like type, subtype holds a lot of information that is common to all creatures of that subtype. Therefore, I allow my players to ask about subtypes. If a creature has more than one subtype then each subtype is a different question.

Beyond that, what other types of information should you give your players? Mine like to ask things like “what are their best saves”.  Special defenses, special attacks, spell-like abilities, and special qualities are also very common. But how much of this do you give to your players? If the creature they’re facing has two special qualities do you give both or just one? If it has a handful of spell-like abilities do you give all or just a single one? That’s really a personal decision. For special qualities I usually just give one, for spell like abilities I will often give them all.

The last bit comes when making the roll in the first place. At its core the DC for figuring out information is 10+ the CR of the creature. But for incredibly rare creatures it could be DC 15 + the CR of the creature, and for incredibly common creatures it could be DC 5 + the CR of the creature. The second part is handy because it means that the common citizen could know about a goblin because the DC would only be 6, which means even someone untrained could make a roll.

This leads me to my last point. What counts as common? Some things are pretty obvious: goblins, skeletons, orcs, zombies are all things that people will know something about. Even if it just stems from common folklore, these are things people will have some bits of information on. But it could also be a regional thing. In Cheliax minor devils roam the streets bound to their masters so things like imps may be considered common there. Other locations might have other common creatures, so that’s something to think about.

As both a player and a GM I love knowledge skills, but knowing how much information to give out and when to do so is hard. Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to use them in your game, even if it’s not exactly the way I do it. How do you apply knowledge skills in your game? How much information do you give out to your players? How do you present that information to your players?

You’ve made your roll and the CRB has provided you with your knowledge check. If you’ve found this useful please consider becoming a contributor. Monthly donations of as little as one dollar can be made to my Patreon. A one-time donation can easily be made to my Paypal. Every bit helps me keep the lights on so I can concentrate on bringing you the content you deserve.

The CRB has been growing as a community on social media. Please join us on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter. My inbox is open on all forums for questions, comments, and discussion. If you don’t want to miss a beat make sure you sign up to have the CRB pushed directly to your e-reading device with Kindle Subscriptions through Amazon.

On a Day Like Today

Creating Your Calendar

So you’ve begun to create your world; You’ve laid out your basic geography, the major nations have been chosen, the individual races – or ethnicities if you only have one race – have found their homes. But it’s the little things that really make a world a reality, and one of those things is how your people record the passage of time.

First let’s start with the most basic units of time: seconds, minutes, and hours. Regardless of what these things are called in our world our people will almost definitely come up with measurements of small amounts of time. It seems to me that most world builders try to make their lives and the lives of the people who will explore their world easier by just leaving these measurements the same. Personally I am ok with this even if you only name them something different.

But since we’re talking about small units of time, what about races for whom small units of time might mean very little? An elf can live for hundreds, even upwards of a thousand, years. What is a second to them when even a year is but a blink of an eye? Do they even think about these small units of time, or do they disregard anything that isn’t the equivalent to an hour as meaningless? Probably not, but it’s something to think about.

Days become something different. Seeing as the number of hours in a day is based on the rotation of the Earth, your planet may have a different number of hours in their day. What happens if you have a world where the sun does revolve around the planet? and what if it revolves at a weird angle so one day is 24 hours and the next day is only twenty? It would make for some odd time keeping but could be an interesting twist on time telling.

Then we get right into it the big parts of the calendar: weeks, months, and years. Years are determined by the revolution of the earth around the sun but months and weeks are kind of arbitrary pieces of time sliced up into that year. But that’s where the fun part comes in.

Both months and days are often named after gods. The month January was named after Janus, and June after Juno. The Romans inherited the seven days in a week idea from the Babylonians but instead named the days after their own gods and the planets that represented them. In case you were wondering, before using the Babylonian system the Romans had an eight day a week “nundial cycle” that they took from the Etruscans. It was called a market cycle because the eighth day country folk would come to market to buy groceries.

So naming your months and days can be good fun. But how does a whole planet – which in many places has people who have hardly ever seen an outsider – agree to use one system?  This is further muddled in fantasy worlds with many races. Do elves tell time the same way as dwarves, or the same way as humans?

Although it would be interesting to see a few calendars on the world say one with ten months, five weeks a month and eight days a week,  and another more standard calendar. This could get very confusing. I personally recommend having one agreed upon calendar which has different day and month names. Maybe the humans and elves both name them after their own gods, meanwhile the dwarves name their days after the different stages of forging.

Lastly we look at the big ticket item, keeping track of the years. Now you may have a few calendars that keep track of the years differently. Earth has the Jewish, Gregorian, Chinese, and a few other which are no longer in use but are still monitored, like the Mayan. One of the things I always thought was interesting about Faerun’s calendars is that even though there are five different ones, each year has a name that everyone knows it by. So 1353 Dale Reckoning and 321 North Reckoning are still both the Year of the Arch.

Something else to think about is what people called years before the first when those years obviously existed. AD and BC didn’t actually exist until the 5th century, so how did people number years before then? The Romans Ab urbe conditia or AUC which meant from the founding of the city, making their year one the birth of the city of Rome. So on Pathfinder’s Golarion when did people start numbering the years before they had Absalom Reckoning or AR, and what did they call those years?

Those are some interesting things to think about when coming up with your world’s methods of delineating time. How do your people tell time? Does your whole world use the same calendar? What are your days and months named after?

Time is not always on our side. Creating content takes a lot of time and is effectively a second full time job. Your support helps keep the lights on so I can concentrate on producing the articles you enjoy Please consider becoming a contributor on my Patreon for as little as one dollar a month.  Or if a one-time donation is more your speed, you can help out on my PayPal.

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Never Stop Learning

Character Advancement and Time

A topic of conversation that comes up often when talking about Pathfinder – although I’m sure it can apply to any level based system – is how characters learn new skills and abilities. With level based systems you just reach a certain point and then all of a sudden you know all this new stuff at once. For some GMs this is jarring. Tack onto that the fact that, by the book in Pathfinder, you can basically take any skill or feat you qualify for regardless of anything. Although this doesn’t bother me so much, it does stray very far from any realistic way of learning anything.

A portion of GMs try to address this in what I personally think is too extreme a manner and dictate that you can only really level, or at least learn anything, if you have time to train after you’ve hit the level mark. I understand the sentiment but I don’t think this really works in Pathfinder. Many times we find our party in a dungeon and they’re down there for two or even three levels before getting back to a town to “train.” Sometimes the party is just on the road and the only people they have to interact with are each other. Forcing players to return to town at every level to train up becomes very limiting in a system like Pathfinder.

So how do we work within the system we have but also keep things a bit closer to a realistic way of attaining new skills? My usual answer is that I always consider the players to be practicing in downtime. Characters don’t just set up camp and sleep eight hours. They make food, take some time to relax, read, whittle, or whatever other activities they choose. Even when in town there may be hours or days that are unaccounted for, in this time they could be doing other stuff that will advance their abilities.

A lot of times a GM will just let a class ability be. But sometimes when an ability has a choice – like say a ranger’s favored enemy – a GM may limit the enemies to creature types the party has already fought. This is fair enough, but what happens when the player has an idea for another creature type? Personally I’m ok with it, but I try and help the player reason it out. Why would he choose this creature type? Maybe it’s a racial enemy and we can reason that he’s had some training. The character’s end goal could be that he wants to be a famous dragon hunter, but he’s never met a dragon. So possibly he’s been reading every book he could find on dragon lore, I’ll even go so far to retroactively let him spend a few gold to have some tomes on dragon fighting.

You can use basically the same tactic with skills. Some skills are easily explained if you already have them or if another member of the party has the one you want to learn. Any skill that you’ve used between levels can quite easily be explained away as learning through doing. But what of skills that no one has and you don’t already know?

Personally, as a player I try tons of skills that I don’t have. Some players forget to use skills they aren’t trained in, but if I want to try something I will try it regardless of how bad I am at the skill at hand. Failure is a great way to learn. So getting that first rank in a skill can happen through use of even untrained skills.

Skills that require some training to use and no one has is a bit more of a difficult prospect. My investigator travels around with books on many subjects; I just spent some gold on unnamed books. When I want to raise a rank in a knowledge skill I don’t have I just make up a fun title and say I’ve been reading it when we rest. For a skill like disable device I would say I was carrying a small lock around with me and practicing whenever I got a chance. As a GM, again, I’d let a player retroactively buy an item they would need to help train in what they wanted.

And there’s one skill that I want to single out that is understandably one of the most commonly argued about in terms of how a player learns. Linguistics. Using my investigator as an example he gets two languages for every rank in linguistics, he started out with a good half dozen languages. One of the main character quirks is that he’s an excellent linguist, so much so that he can amazingly speak whatever language he learns with a perfect accent. But some GMs would have a problem with him just picking up a language.

My GM and I work together. I ask him if there is anyone in town who speaks the language I want. If there isn’t and it’s reasonable to he’ll just make someone up. I learned Osiriani by having lunch at a café run by a Osirian family every day. Now this isn’t something I did before choosing the language, this is something when I leveled my GM and I hammered out retroactively. By the way they’re a nice family but I think their youngest daughter has a crush on me.

What happens when there’s no one in your party to teach you and there’s no one in town? Learning a language on your own is difficult but not impossible. Many languages have similar roots. Most Inner Sea languages have Phonemes from ancient Azlanti. Skald, Taldane, and Varisian have numerous letters from the Jistka alphabet, and the Jistka numerals are still used by scholars and royalty. With common threads it wouldn’t be hard to have a character make connections to languages he knows to learn a new one. Couple that with, say, carrying around a book of poetry in whatever language to learn from, and there you have it.

So the next time the party levels, players and GMs can take this to heart and work together to find a way to both allow for player choice and a GM’s need for a bit more realism. You never know when that new skill can come in handy.

How do you usually handle player learning? Is there just one “aha” moment and they know everything? Do you talk about how a character may come to learn something new? Do you force them to only be able to level if trained?

There’s always something new to learn and if the CRB has helped you level up please consider becoming a contributor. You can sign up for my Patreon and contribute as little as one dollar a month; or a one time donation to my paypal will certainly help keep the lights so I can concentrate on bringing you the content you deserve. Creating content is a second full time job and every little bit helps.

If you’d like to become a member of the ever growing CRB community, you can find me all over social media. Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter all have a CRB presence. And if you’d like to get the CRB pushed straight to your e-reader, Amazon offers a kindle subscription to do just that.

Random Roll 67 - The Randomness

Gnolls generally tend to be chaotic and their society breeds pure evil, but this week’s random rolls is a Lawful Neutral Gnoll who follows the god of rulership. A nice spread of stats except for a low intelligence gives us quite an array of classes to choose from so we’ll need to really look at his background to choose which class and why. So let’s see what we can do with these rolls.

Gender:Male

Race:Gnoll

Nationality: Mana Wastes

Age:  15
Height: 6’ 2”
Weight: 262 lbs

Alignment:Lawful Neutral

Str: 12

Dex: 15

Con:  14

Int: 9

Wis: 12

Cha: 16

Homeland:Gnoll Settlement

Parents: Only your mother is alive.

Siblings: You have 5 siblings.

- younger brother

- older brother

- older sister

- older sister

- younger brother

Circumstance of Birth: [Middle-Class Birth] You were born to the middle class, which includes merchants, artisans, and tradespeople. You likely grew up in a good-sized settlement, and one of your parents is likely associated with a guild or other trade organization. As a free person, you don't experience the bondage of serfdom or peasantry, but you also lack the privilege of the nobility.

Parent's Profession: Artisans

Major Childhood Event: [Betrayal] A friend or family member whom you trusted more than anyone else betrayed you. You have never fully trusted anyone since and prefer to rely on your own abilities rather than place your trust in others.

Influential Associate:[The Fiend] In your adolescent years, you dealt with or were possessed by a fiend who lent you raw power at a time of great need. This experience tainted your body and mind and changed your life. Some part of the demon remains inside you like an old friend, influencing you toward destructive ends.

Conflict: [Humiliation] You publicly humiliated or scandalized someone with either true or slanderous information.

Conflict Subject: Noble.

Conflict Motivation: Pleasure.

Conflict Resolution: [No Guilt] Either guilt is for the weak, or you know you made the right decision. You might not openly brag about your part in the conflict, but you don’t deny it when confronted either.

Deity/Religious Philosophy: Horus

Romantic Relationship(s): [Several Inconsequential Relationships] You have had many lovers but no long-lasting, meaningful relationships.

Drawback: [Pride] You present an image to the world that can’t be tarnished. When someone questions your motives, criticizes your actions, or insults your honor or pride, you question his friendship or count him among your enemies until he makes amends.

(Trait) Artisan

(Trait) Kin Guardian

(Trait) Merchant

(Trait) Possessed

(Trait) Scrapper

(Trait) Suspicious

(Story Feat) Damned

(Drawback) Pride

In the comments please tell us what character you would make with these disparate pieces information? What class would this Gnoll naturally gravitate towards? What Did his father diel? What kind of fiend possessed him? Why has he chosen Horus to worship? And don’t forget to stay tuned Friday when my background hits the CRB.

The CRB not only brings you the creative content you desire but makes you look inside for your own creativity. If you feel both inspired and pushed to created please consider supporting your favorite content provider – that’s me right – by pledging as little as $1 on my Patreon or making a direct donation to my Paypal.

If you don’t want to miss a beat make sure you sign up to get the CRB pushed directly to your e-reading device with Kindle Subscriptions through Amazon. And to keep up with my other musings and thoughts you can follow the CRB on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter.

The Path To Hell

When Good Falls

Illustration by Luis Perez

There are many stories that we like to see over and over again. They may get retold in different fashion but the same basic principles of archetypal stories have been enjoyed for years. Fitting into one of those many archetypes includes the fall of good, their rise as evil, and usually their ultimate redemption. This makes for some great storytelling, although it can sometimes be iffy in gaming and I’ll get to that as well.

The fall story works best the when the character is near the pinnacle of what it means to be good. When it’s a shock that the person who becomes evil does so, the whole story keeps your interest longer. In star wars I didn’t care so much that Anakin fell — and not because I knew it was coming — when the entire second and third movies he was kind of an over confident jerk. The fall didn’t see that big of a deal.

Reasons for falling are very important to the story. Characters who fall because they see so much atrocity that in fighting against it they become the evil they once sought to destroy is one great way to have a character fall. Characters who fall to protect the ones they love make the evil character more relatable. The necromancer who went to the dark arts because his family was savagely murdered and he just wants to find a way to bring them back can be an excellent foil to your protagonists.

There are even epic falls on a cosmic level. Lucifer’s fall from the kingdom of heaven is an excellent example. Depending on who is telling the story, the devil isn’t such a bad guy. In Pathfinder Asmodeus, the king of hell who saw the destruction that chaos — specifically mortal’s free will — wrought and so he tried to impose order and in doing so became totalitarian, and thus his slide into being evil.

So a character has fallen, the rise is the time to really get into the meat of the tale. How do his former friends or family members bring him around? How many vile acts does he perform in the meantime? What is the catalyst for his eventual eye-opening to what he’s done? Maybe the necromancer finally retrieves the souls of his family but they don't wish to come back. They confront him with the evil he’s done and he cracks. You can always be very cliche and have him yell, “what have I done,” but it's up to you.

As much as I love these stories — and so do many others, as we retell it so often — they do not always work in a gaming setting. Some of the worst games I was ever a part of were when a GM literally went out of his way to put the paladin in situations where he would have to fall no matter how he tried to get out of a situation. Some players don’t want the fall from grace story. It also doesn’t work very well in a game with a group dynamic because now what does the good aligned party do with their villainous member?

Unless it's an agreed upon part of the story, a fall should probably happen to NPCs. The childhood friend who rose to greatness with the party members who has now turned to evil is an excellent adventure. How do they both stop and hopefully redeem their long time friend? Can he be redeemed in the first place? This allows you to tell the tale while not driving one of the PCs away from the party. Unless, of course, the whole party falls.

Have you used the fall from grace story in your campaign? Have you additionally added the redemption story? Have you worked it in with a PC? And if so how? Tell us your experiences in the comments.

Stories are the central crux of any good RPG. If the CRB sparks ideas for the tales you are going to tell please consider contributing to my Patreon. or donating directly to my Paypal. Your support of content providers allows us to focus on providing you the content you love without dealing with life’s little difficulties, in this case replacing the cracked monitor on my laptop. If you don’t want to miss a beat make sure you sign up to get the CRB pushed directly to your e-reading device with Kindle Subscriptions.

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The opening illustration was created by the fine artist Luis Perez. You can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and on Instagram at luisperezart. 

Water Water Everywhere

The Sea Is More Than Pirates

Illustration by Luis Perez

People love a good campaign based around pirates. Paizo has made not one but two Adventure Paths - Skulls and Shackles and Serpent’s Skull - as well as at least one module with pirates as the theme. Chris Jackson has contributed their splat book on ships as well as written three book series about the crew of the Stargazer. Seafaring seems to be pretty popular in Pathfinder, and with the new 7th Sea book which came out last year I think it's pretty popular across game platforms.

Pirates, however, aren't the only people sailing the seas of the world. There are plenty of other types of ships to ply the waters that your players might enjoy playing, or to feature as enemies. Using Golarion as an example Andoran, Cheliax, Qadira, and Taldor all have massive navies. Games set around being a crewman on any one of these seagoing vessels could be quite interesting. It is a slightly more structured lifestyle than being on a pirate ship but you're far less likely to get a knife in the back for your share of plunder.

If you'd like a mix of pirates and legitimate naval fleets maybe it’s time to live the life of a privateer. Letters of Marque given to buccaneers allowed them to prey on ships of enemy countries. Taldor relies on these legal pirates to patrol the river that runs between the empire and Qadira. Even Andoran uses privateers to attack the slaver ships of Okeno, and occasionally vessels from Cheliax. Even though Cheliax is considered an evil nation they are all about order and they despise both pirates and privateers.

In the northern waters you have the Ulfen raiders. Not as active as they once were, still some clans of the Ulfen from both the Land of the Linnorm Kings and the Ironbound Archipelago continue the tradition of raiding coastal villages and towns. Different from pirates who usually attack other ships, these raiders are also usually a family or clan, which has a different dynamic than the 'every man for himself' rule of a pirate ship.

Slavers are feared across the inner sea region. The yellow-sailed ships of the slavers of the Katapeshi island of Okeno strike terror even into the hearts of hardened pirates. Using these foul folk as a foil to your sea bound players could lead to many interesting games. Be careful though, slavery is a tough subject for some so choose your use of slavers judiciously.

No matter what kind of seafaring game you end up playing, a lot of folk who end up on boats for a living grew up around them. We need to consider where characters learned to sail in the first place. Fisherfolk, merchant vessels, and transport ships are all perfect places for sea bound characters to have gotten their start. Children of people who make a living off the sea often find a way out onto the waters themselves.

One need not have ever been on a boat to know a lot about them. There is a lot of support that goes into the seafaring. Harbors and docks are filled with shipwrights, sailmakers, and cordonniers. If your parents were dockworkers, harbormasters, or even a barkeep in a dockside tavern there is a good chance you'll have some knowledge of seafaring.

On Golarion you also have deities that deal with waters and seafaring; Gozreh in her female aspect of goddess of the sea, Besmara the goddess of pirates,  Hei Feng the Tian god of the seas. Other than these major and minor deities there are a few Demon Lords, Infernal Dukes, and Empyreal Lords that deal with aspects of life at sea or on the coasts. Deciding which deity a character pays homage to gives a good idea of how they feel about the sea.

So, there’s more to just sailing the seas than being a pirate. Whether you’re playing in or running a game based on a ship there’s a lot to consider, and not just what you do on the boat. How did you learn to sail? What do you do on land? What job do you have onboard? Which deity do you pray to to keep you safe?

The open waters have been a source of wonder for ages, and hopefully the CRB brings you that same sense of excitement and adventure. Contributing to my Patreon is a great way to help support the CRB, giving me the time write the content you enjoy and do things like replace the cracked screen on my laptop. If a onetime donation is more your speed consider contributing a donation via my paypal.

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The opening illustration was created by the fine artist Luis Perez. You can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and on Instagram at luisperezart.

Random Roll 59 - The Randomness

Kitsune are mostly known for being from the Dragon Empire of Tian Xia, but our randomly rolled character this week is from Taldor. This isn’t the first Kitsune we’ve done. Our character this week is slightly above average in almost all his stats, except intelligence. Book learning may never has been his thing. His parents were clergy and he was touched by divine energy at birth. Even though he fell in with a bad crowd in his formative years but eventually turned his life around and took to keeping the Empyreal Lord Damerrich as his patron. Was this change due to someone smarter than he being his mentor, or were there other reasons? Tune in Friday and we’ll find out.

Gender: Male

Race: Kitsune

Nationality: Taldor

Age:  18
Height: 5’ 0”
Weight: 163 lbs

Alignment: Lawful Good

Str: 14

Dex: 14

Con:  12

Int: 8

Wis: 15

Cha: 13

Homeland: Human Settlement

Parents: Only your father is alive.

Siblings: You have 4 biological siblings.

- biological younger sister

- biological older sister

- biological older brother

- biological older brother

Circumstance of Birth: [Energy Infused] During your birth you were exposed to potent source of divine energy.

Parent's Profession: Clergy or Cultists

Major Childhood Event: [Fell in with a Bad Crowd] In your youth, you ran with a brutal, evil, or sadistic crowd. You might have belonged to a gang, a thieves' guild, or some other nefarious organization. It was easy to cave in to pressure and do whatever they told you to do, and your outlook is colored by moral ambiguity.

Influential Associate: [The Academic] One of your associates had such a lust for knowledge that she could never be satisfied with simple answers or obvious solutions. This desire for knowledge frequently exceeded her need for companionship, but you were the single exception. Through this association you developed a keen appreciation for numbers, geometry, logic, hard study, and problem solving.

Conflict: [Broke a Promise] You swore an oath or vow that was important to someone else, but you did not keep your promise.

Conflict Subject: Adventurer.

Conflict Motivation: Religion.

Conflict Resolution: [Regret and Penance] Not only do you regret your action, but you have publicly admitted to it and did your best to make amends for the wrongdoing. Most know of the conflict’s details and those who don’t can easily find them out if they know where to look or whom to ask.

Deity/Religious Philosophy: Damerrich

Romantic Relationship(s): [Several Inconsequential Relationships] You have had many lovers but no long-lasting, meaningful relationships.

Drawback: [Loyalty] You value loyalty over all things. You treasure the friends, associates, and lovers you have earned throughout the years, and when someone breaks your trust or betrays you in some way, you become utterly unhinged.

(Trait) Child of the Streets

(Trait) Child of the Temple

(Trait) Guardian of the Forge

(Trait) Kin Guardian

(Trait) Mathematical Prodigy

(Trait) Sacred Conduit

(Trait) Sacred Touch

(Trait) Well-Informed

(Drawback) Pride

In the comments please tell us what character you would make with these disparate pieces information? What class would this Kitsune naturally gravitate towards? Who was the bad crowd she fell in with? Why was she touched with divine energy at birth? And don’t forget to stay tuned Friday when my background hits the CRB.

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