Just as economic actions help to bind PCs to the material world of the campaign, social activites connect them to its NPCs and organisations. By developing relationships they can build a growing network of allies, friends, contacts, lovers and frenemies; retainer rules allow them to take some of these along on adventures. In my game, in the course of the story it just made sense that certain NPCs would become close to the party and even tag along on adventures - it made sense to give the PCs ...| Valinard's Tower
These activities present ways to directly improve your character in some way. The original rules for Martial Training provided an alternative to the Feats and options of modern D&D - instead of locking them away behind levels, experience and complex prerequisites, the kind of abilities normally covered by feats are things you can simply spend time studying - if you can find a master to teach you. Now this overlaps with the Fighter Techniques system a bit, but techniques are primarily a way fo...| Valinard's Tower
If there are potions, scrolls and spells in the world, Wizards are going to want to make them. Magical item creation rules are often a grueling mess of gold and XP costs, often not showing up until mid-high level. The downtime system gives us a simple framework to put these options in the game from the start. These rules focus on magical consumables (durable items are covered by the Splendid Item concept, covered under Personal Development.) To avoid PCs stockpiling limitless amounts of scrol...| Valinard's Tower
In my game: One player hollowed out everything he killed and wore it as a Splendid Item and raised an army to retake his homeland; anothe...| Valinard's Tower
These actions give players a way to tease information out of the game world, uncovering answers to pressing questions and leads on new adventures or avenues of research. Often as a player I’ve been faced with something in the game world - say, a mysterious magical barrier, or a conspiracy afoot - and just felt stumped. I’d try trial-and-error, but soon begin to feel that there was not experimental way to get through the barrier, that it was a matter of waiting for the story to spit out th...| Valinard's Tower
A key part of downtime is giving players somewhere to sink their ill-gotten gains into. PCs can develop extensive Holdings, find more expensive and luxurious places to live, and trade in obscure treasures. Action: Invest in a Holding To upgrade a holding or create a new Trivial holding, the PC must spend a downtime and the listed upgrade cost. | Tier | | Upgrade Cost | Description | | ---- | ----------- | ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | 0 | - | ...| Valinard's Tower
One thing I liked about Ben Laurence’s rules for Building an Institution is how far apart the two ends of the scale are. An Institution could be a fantasy Library of Alexandria (70,000+ gp invested), or it could be a small study full of carefully selected tomes in the back of a PC’s townhouse (250gp.) The range further was merely a suggestion, with some institutions having no potential to reach international significance, and others having even longer and more expensive tracks. It provide...| Valinard's Tower
Taking another shot at the wilderness travel rules. I want alarming, pulp adventure-style travel events like exotic diseases and quicksan...| Valinard's Tower
One problem with the ‘roll to improve your attributes each level’ mechanic we inherited from the Black Hack is that it makes the expected attributes of higher level characters murky. Since starting attributes are random the DM is free to create established characters with whatever attributes are desired, and rolling up the advances level by level is simply enough, but time-consuming. Elric by John Picacio I’ve come up with a simple points-buy system: | Current Attribute | Cost to Raise ...| Valinard's Tower
Usually experience is gained at the end of an activity, but it doesn’t have to be. Take the following experience triggers: Entered a new dungeon, level, region or adventure site. Agreed to a quest or contract. Faced a terrible foe. Compared to: Cleared a dungeon level. Completed a quest. Vanquished a terrible foe. XP for entering the dungeon could be abused in theory - you could just stick your head inside and then go home, but I’ve never seen a player try that, and if they did you could ...| Valinard's Tower