Thieves guilds and assassins guilds are ubiquitous in AD&D cities and towns. Both assassins and thieves are found on the DMG's city/town encounters matrix:| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
Adventuring is dangerous business. Dungeons are filled with monsters, tricks, and traps. The wilderness is littered with small armies of orcs and bandits, and strongholds ruled by hostile high-level characters who demand jousts or tribute in the form of magic items, or send player characters on quests via geas to obtain such items.| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
Art by Zara Alfonso| Tales of the Lunar Lands
A few months ago in one of my anthology sessions I had an opportunity to use the flickers, a magical disease I homebrewed. I thought it went quite well. ...| Advantage on Arcana
From the AD&D 1e DMG, page 106:| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
An excerpt from the AD&D DMG, under MONSTER POPULATIONS AND PLACEMENT , page 91: I found this paragraph interesting for a few reasons. Firs...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
Apparently my special interest now is writing about the annoying mundanities of AD&D city/town life - taxes, tolls, intentionally misleading encounters, and irritating and expensive NPCs. To this end, I've been reading all about henchmen in the DMG. Boy, it is a lot more difficult to recruit these people than I gave it credit for!| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
Look at this guy's face: He's mad! Why? Probably because, per the AD&D DMG, dealing with NPCs "should be expensive and irritating": The exam...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
The use of hirelings isn’t nearly as common in D&D as it once was, but I think we should bring that back a bit. In addition to shoring up a party’s weakness and draining some cash out of their coffers, hirelings also provide someone who can die horribly to showcase a monster’s sick dance moves. Oh, and they make great backup characters for when a dragon eats the one guy in the party who can Raise Dead and you’re a week away from anyone else who could.| Brandes Stoddard
Since I wrote about indentured magic-users and clerics being encountered among the city guard/watch, I've been poring over the rest of AD&D's city/town encounters. Yes, yes, that's the part of the book with the infamous harlot table:| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
While working on my "" post, part of the "" RPG blog carnival at , I had an idea for a random table to generate magic trades that might be available in a cit...| Advantage on Arcana
This encounter is designed to challenge your players' expectations of morality and social expectations in a setting that may have different worldviews from their own. In that way, it's well-suited to a non-Flintstonist campaign, as a way to introduce players to the concept that people in a medieval fantasy world might see things differently than they see things today - especially with players who are new to the idea of leaving their preconceived notions at the door when approaching the camp...| Tales of the Lunar Lands
When I first read Jack Vance's Tales of the Dying Earth (and other Appendix N literature) and became familiar with Mazirian the Magician, C...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
This is not a Dragonlance post!| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
Here's one that came to me when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep. I've written before about my social in...| forlornencystment.blogspot.com
So I'm not going to retread old ground, here; if you're reading this blog you've probably heard of using Silver Standard or perhaps even Copper Standard currency in D&D. In case you haven't, the basic low-down is that using gold as the standard is not only historically inaccurate, but is bad game design; starting level 1 players with 3d6 x 10 GP is way too much, and creates a set of expectations where 40 GP in a chest is a rounding error instead of a reason for people to squabble, draw swords...| In The Land of Twilight, Under The Moon
Dan D. at Throne of Salt requests from the jackalope: d6 Chuckleheads you have to deal with from the local wizard mafia The Plan This sh...| benignbrownbeast.blogspot.com
There are a great many islands in the Tennurhaf, ranging from humble sea-stacks to realms in their own right. The largest of them all, howev...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
If the League of Three Crowns could be said to have a capital, that capital would be Hynden . Though nominally a part of Kvesland, and inde...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
In some ways, the League of Three Crowns can be called the preeminent naval power in the Sea of Bartel. The number of trade routes in the s...| tales-of-the-lunar-lands.blogspot.com
American Worshippers| Nagora's Corner
If it's not clear yet, I've been raiding some unfinished tables (and by 'tables' I mean the giant spreadsheets I start putting together like "oh I should make a wilderness travel table... okay so I'll need a table of human encounters and a table of creature encounters and a table for the scenery and a| Last Gasp
F requently, it might be useful to festoon an NPC with Fame or Infamy to create a more compelling Character. Whether it’s a Denizen’s Deed...| blog.d4caltrops.com
