Tag: dungeons and dragons

Have Fun with Missions, Visions, and Values

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I just spent a lightweight week in Rome with fellow members of Automattic‘s Team Fire.

Among our goals for the week was an attempt to strengthen the definition of who are team are, what we work on, and how and why we do so. That’s basically a team-level identity, mission, vision, and values, right?

In front of the Colosseum in Rome, Dan - wearing a rainbow-striped bandana atop which his sunglasses are perched - takes a selfie. Behind him stand a man with dark hair and a closely-trimmed beard wearing a purple "woo" t-shirt, a woman with long brown hair wearing beads and a multicoloured dress, a man wearing spectacles and a dark t-shirt on which the number "23" can be made out, and a man in sunglasses with a ginger beard, wearing an open blue shirt.
We were missing two members of our team, but one was able to remote-in (the other’s on parental leave!).

Fellow Automattician Ben Dwyer recently wrote about his experience of using a deck of Dixit cards to help his team refine their values in a fun and engaging way. I own a Dixit set, so we decided to give it a go too.

A deck of Dixit cards, bound by a twisted elastic band, sits on a flight itinerary for the journey "LGW to FCO" taking place on May 21, 2023 and costing $367.60.
The cards sat on my ‘plane tickets for a fortnight because it was just about the only way I’d remember to pack them.

Normally when you play Dixit, you select a card from your hand – each shows a unique piece of artwork – and try to describe it in a way that’s precise enough that some of the other players will later be able to pick it out of a line-up, but ambiguous enough that not all the other players will. It’s a delicate balancing act. Even when our old Geek Night was in full swing we didn’t used to play it often because our well-established group’s cornucopia of  in-jokes and references  made it trivially easy to “target” your descriptions at specific players1, but it’s still a solid icebreaker activity.

A trio of Dixit cards within a grid of nine. From left to right, they show: a heart, on fire, beneath a glass jar; a cubbyhole containing childrens' toys; a fairy leaping from a book towards a small person atop a stack of books.
Can you see your team’s values symbolised in any Dixit cards?

Perhaps it was the fantasy artwork that inspired us or maybe it just says something about how my team sees themselves, but what we came up with had a certain… swords-and-sorcery… even Dungeons & Dragons… feel to it.

Partial screenshot from a document entitled "Team Fire". The visible part is titled "Who we are (identity)" and reads:We are a band of brave adventurers who bring light into the wild forests of Extend. We tame the monsters who lurk in the dungeons beneath the Castle of Vendor Experience. The beasts we keep at bay include: PBS, which helps ensure code quality and extension standards compliance; the Vendor Dashboard, haunt of third-party developers, as well as their documentation and analytics platforms; Integrations with Payments Admin, to ensure that treasure is shared, and other tools.
The projects my team are responsible for aren’t actually monsters, but they can be complex, multifaceted, and unintuitive. And have a high AC.

Ou team’s new identity isn’t finalised, but I love the fact that we’ve been able to inject a bit of fun and whimsy into it. At our last draft, my team looks to be defined as comprising:

  • Gareth, level 62 Pathfinder, leading the way through the wilds
  • Bero, Level 5 Battlesmith, currently lost in the void
  • Dan (me!), Level 5 Arcane Trickster, breaking locks and stealing treasure
  • Cem, Level 4 Dragonslayer, smashing doors and bugs alike
  • Lae, Level 7 Pirate, seabound rogue with eyes on the horizon
  • Kyle, Level 5 Apprentice Bard, master of words and magic
  • Simran, Level 6 Apprentice Code Witch, weaving spells from nature

I think that’s pretty awesome.

Footnotes

1 Also: I don’t own any of the expansion packs and playing with the same cards over and over again gets a bit samey.

2 The “levels” are simply the number of years each teammate has been an Automattician, plus one.

Nightmares & Noggins

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Last night I had a nightmare about Dungeons & Dragons. Specifically, about the group I DM for on alternate Fridays.

In their last session the party – somewhat uncharacteristically – latched onto a new primary plot hook rightaway. Instead of rushing off onto some random side quest threw themselves directly into this new mission.

Four humanoid silhouettes fling themselves off the side of a floating city, which is chained to a desert hellscape below.
They flung themselves not only figuratively but also literally into their new quest, leaping from the side of a floating city.

This effectively kicked off a new chapter of their story, so I’ve been doing some prep-work this last week or so. Y’know: making battlemaps, stocking treasure chests with mysterious and powerful magical artefacts, and inventing a plethora of characters for the party to either befriend or kill (or, knowing this party: both).

I also put together a “cut scene” video welcoming the party into this new chapter of their adventure.

Anyway: in the dream, I sat down to complete the prep-work I want to get done before this week’s play session. I re-checked my notes about what the adventurers had gotten up to last time around, and… panicked! I was wrong, they hadn’t thrown themselves off the side of a city floating above the first layer of Hell at all! I’d mis-remembered completely and they’d actually just ventured into a haunted dungeon. I’d been preparing all the wrong things and now there wasn’t time to correct my mistakes!

Screenshot from donjon's "5e Encounter Size Calculator", configured for a party of four 7th-level characters, with an "extra" checkbox (not found in the real application) for "Can the party Turn Undead?" highlighted.
Also in my dream – conveniently for my new “haunted dungeon” environment – my favourite encounter size calculator included a tool to compensate for a player character who can cast Turn Undead, when making an undead encounter.

This is, of course, an example of the “didn’t prepare for the test” trope of dreams. Clearly I’m still feeling underprepared for this week’s game! But probably a bigger reason for the dream, and remembering it, was that I’ve had a cold and kept waking up to cough.

Right, better do a little more prep work!

Bree-Yark!

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This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

JTA tweeted a brilliant thread about something he discovered while digging through old D&D texts, and it’s awesome so – as I imagine he wouldn’t mind – I’ve reproduced it in full here:

I don’t really Twitter so much these days because like most social media it makes me either gloomy or extremely grumpy with the state of the world, but since I also lack the time to bother blogging anywhere, here’s a ludicrously nerdy thread about a Dungeons & Dragons rumour.So, back in the days of AD&D 1st Edition your printed modules would often come with a table of Rumours. The idea was hearing rumours increased the depth of the world, so players didn’t feel like NPCs just winked into existence when they entered the Hydra’s Den tavern & said “hi”.

But sometimes the rumours would be false, or exaggerated. That also added depth and had the bonus of ensuring that players didn’t take it for granted. OK, this guy in the red robe *says* Kobolds are poisoning the iron ore, but is that at all plausible, or is it just a bad seam?

(Those of us without any friends, or at least without friends equally into D&D in the 80s & 90s, also got this experience because it was well-replicated in the TSR Gold Box series of games, either in-game, or more-commonly through supplementary material in the boxes.

The supplementary materials often came in a separate “Journal” supplied in the box, & were a sort of additional layer of copy-protection because if the Game says “read Entry 19”, your choice is either do so, or wait 25 years for the abandonware PDFs to hit archive.org.

e.g., here’s the Traveller’s Tales from ‘Curse of the Azure Bonds’: note the subtlety of entries 1 and 8, about the Princess, sounding corroborative – maybe encouraging the party to more deference around someone with purple in their clothes, though either or both might be false.)

A selection of Tavern Tales...

Anyway, this only really existed in the TSR/SSI games because it was in the standard modules.

I was reminded of the rumour system when I was digging back into AD&D Module B2: The Keep on the Borderlands to borrow a bunch of content for a campaign I’ve just inherited (as you do)

‘Keep on the Borderlands’ was by Gary Gygax himself, and suffers a bunch from the typical issues 1e had, none of which I’ll address here because I would please nobody. But the rumours table is a really good example of the type – it gives players depth but not unfair advantages.

The Rumour Table from the A...

Now Keep on the Borderlands was a pretty big deal of a module back in the day. It was module B2, of the Basic Set, & it did some stuff really well, especially for new players – sort of a 1980 equivalent of ‘Lost Mine of Phandelver’ today. Lots of players cut their teeth on it.

Rumour 10 – ‘”Bree-Yark” is goblin-language for “we surrender”!’ – is a false rumour, though the party doesn’t know that: whatever ‘Bree-yark’ means, it’s not “We Surrender”.

In fact, the module tells the DM it means “Hey, rube!!” and is used by goblins to sound the alarm.

(Spoilers here for the Goblin Lair in Location D of the Caves of Chaos, but when goblins on watch call out “Bree-yark!”, more goblins at #18 will bribe an ogre to come help attack the party. (1e often imposed dynamic worlds by fiat, back when the world was young, the DMs green)

The DM's description for Lo...

So lots of early DMs got to imagine the potential hilarity of the party arriving in the cave, hearing goblins apparently surrendering, & dropping their guard, never realising life just got harder!

(It isn’t much hilarity, but in the 80s, as now, there was limited scope for joy)

Still – it’s a decent joke. Everyone believes “Bree-yark” is Goblin for surrender, but it isn’t really, that’s just a false rumour, spread by boastful drunks who’ve never seen a goblin in real life anyway.

So much for 1st Edition AD&D, I guess.

…except:

It’s 2014. The wheel of time turns, ages come and pass, and Grapple rules don’t so much become legend as “remain completely incomprehensible”. Now every new adventurer carries a Field Marshall’s baton in their knapsack, ‘cos tracking encumbrance is for chumps, & D&D 5e launches.

(While I’m doing archaeology, take a moment in this fast-forward to enjoy the glorious madness of the Grimtooth’s Traps series, which popped up in ’81 & features brilliantly inventive nastiness to spring on players who aren’t too attached to their character sheets. Or friends.)

A page from 1981's Grimtoot...

So, 5e launches, to a lot of stick in some circles (I never knew a version of D&D that didn’t: probably some wazzock in 1971 ranted that the codified Fantasy Supplement rules in ‘Chainmail’ “beTraYs rEaL FaNs!” and sold out the hobby, but at least they couldn’t whinge on Reddit)

…but someone involved in 5e is has conjured the most obscurely brilliant bit of ultra-specific nerd humour I have seen in years.

Y’see, 5e modules don’t really do Rumour Tables or “If the party X, then Y, else Z” – DMs create dynamic worlds on the fly. (Hopefully).

So you’d think there’s no more chance of hilarious moments where the Goblins start yelling “Bree-Yark!” and Magnus Rushes In only to be shocked to find a well-bribed and high-Challenge Rating ogre running obediently up from Location E.22.

But you would think (slightly) wrong.

Because although 5e modules don’t do rumours the like 1e did, the Monster Manual does do flavour text – it’s usually a snippet of lore, or a word from a famous scholar, or advice from an adventurer who encountered the monster but lived to tell the tale. It provides fluffy depth.

A section of the D&D 5th Ed...

And, actually, I say “it’s usually” but I’ve just checked and every bit of flavourtext I can find in the Monster Manual is either By A Scholar, From a Book, An Adventurer’s Tale, or a Monster Describing Itself…

A section of the D&D 5th Ed...

…with one single exception: the flavourtext on the entry for Goblins, which isn’t attributed to anybody or anything, but is just the claim that “Bree-Yark!” means “we surrender!”

A section of the D&D 5th Ed...

This isn’t attributed to any source. Nobody in-lore has a citation for this. It’s just something “they say”. A genuine 1st Edition rumour just chilling out in the 5th edition Monster Manual three decades after B2 landed.

Glorious. Well played, @Wizards. Very well played.

Zoomed in view of the flavo...

Printing Maps from Dungeondraft

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I really love Dungeondraft, an RPG battle map generator. It’s got great compatibility with online platforms like Foundry VTT and Roll20, but if you’re looking to make maps for tabletop play, there’s a few tips I can share:

Screenshot showing Dungeondraft being used to edit a circular tower. The Export window is visible.
Tabletop players can’t zoom in and will appreciate you printing with good contrast.

Planning and designing

Dungeondraft has (or can be extended with) features to support light levels and shadow-casting obstructions, openable doors and windows, line-of sight etc… great to have when you’re building for Internet-enabled tabletops, but pointless when you’re planning to print out your map! Instead:

  • Think about scale: I’m printing to A4 sheets and using inch-size squares, so every 11 x 8 squares equates to one sheet of paper. Knowing this, I can multiply-up to a whole number of sheets of paper and this informs my decisions about how to best make use of the maps (and what will and won’t fit on my dining table!).
  • Focus on legibility: Your printer probably won’t have the same kind of resolution as your screen, and your players can’t “zoom in” to get details. Play with the grid styles (under Map Settings) to find what works best for you, and try not to clash with your floor patterns. If you’re printing in monochrome, use the “Printer-Friendly” camera filter (also under Map Settings, or in the Export Options dialog) to convert to gorgeous line-art. Make sure critical elements have sufficient contrast that they’ll stand out when printed or your players might walk right over that chest, campfire, or bookshelf.
  • Think about exposure: You don’t get digital “fog of war” on the tabletop! Think about how you’re going to reveal the map to your players: plan to print in multiple sections to put together, jigsaw style, or have card to “cover” bits of the map. Think about how the tool can help you here: e.g. if you’ve got multiple buildings the players can explore, use a higher “level” or roof layer to put roofs on your buildings, then print the relevant parts of that level separately: now you’ve got a thematic cover-up that you can remove to show the insides of the building. Go the other way around for secret doors: print the empty wall on your main map (so players can’t infer the location of the secret door by the inclusion of a cover-up) and the secret door/passage on the overlay, so you can stick it onto the map when they find it.
Monochrome map showing a crane tower and attached dwelling.
If you’re printing in black and white, line art can be a gorgeous look.

Printing it out

There’s no “print” option in Dungeondraft, so – especially if your map spans multiple “pages” – you’ll need a multi-step process to printing it out. With a little practice, it’s not too hard or time-consuming, though:

Screenshot showing a cavern map in Gimp, with the Export Image dialog open and PDF selected as the output format.
Gimp makes light work of converting a PNG into a PDF.

Export your map (level by level) from Dungeondraft as PNG files. The default settings are fine, but pay attention to the “Overlay level” setting if you’re using smart or complex cover-ups as described above.

To easily spread your map across multiple pages, you’ll need to convert it to a PDF. I’m using Gimp to do this. Simply open the PNG in Gimp, make any post-processing/last minute changes that you couldn’t manage in Dungeondraft, then click File > Export As… and change the filename to have a .pdf extension. You could print directly from Gimp, but in my experience PDF reader software does a much better job at multi-page printing.

Foxit print dialog showing a preview of a map printed across 6 sheets of A4 paper.
Check the print preview before you click the button!

Open your PDF in an appropriate reader application with good print management. I’m using Foxit, which is… okay? Print it, selecting “tile large pages” to tell it to print across multiple sheets. Assuming you’ve produced a map an appropriate size for your printer’s margins, your preview should be perfect. If not, you can get away with reducing the zoom level by up to a percent or two without causing trouble for your miniatures. If you’d like the page breaks to occur at specific places (for exposure/reveal reasons), go back to Gimp and pad one side of the image by increasing the canvas size.

Check the level of “overlap” specified: I like to keep mine low and use the print margins as the overlapping part of my maps when I tape them together, but you’ll want to see how your printer behaves and adapt accordingly.

Multiple sheets of A4 paper joined with a slight overlap by long strips of sticky tape.
The overlap provides stability, rigidity, and an explanation as to exactly what that character tripped over when they rolled a critical fail on a DEX check.

If you’re sticking together multiple pages to make a single large map, trim off the bottom and right margins of each page: if you printed with cut marks, this is easy enough even without a guillotine. Then tape them together on the underside, taking care to line-up the features on the map (it’s not just your players who’ll appreciate a good, visible grid: it’s useful when lining-up your printouts to stick, too!).

I keep my maps rolled-up in a box. If you do this too, just be ready with some paperweights to keep the edges from curling when you unfurl them across your gaming table. Or cut into separate rooms and mount to stiff card for that “jigsaw” effect! Whatever works best for you!

Miniatures on a cave map, with the D&D Player's Handbook acting as a paperweight.
Any hefty tome, e.g. the 5e Player’s Handbook, can act as a paperweight.

DNDle (Wordle, but with D&D monster stats)

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Don’t have time to read? Just start playing:

Play DNDle

There’s a Wordle clone for everybody

Am I too late to get onto the “making Wordle clones” bandwagon? Probably; there are quite a few now, including:

Screenshot showing a WhatsApp conversation. Somebody shares a Wordle-like "solution" board but it's got six columns, not five. A second person comments "Hang on a minute... that's not Wordle!"
I’m sure that by now all your social feeds are full of people playing Wordle. But the cool nerds are playing something new…

Now, a Wordle clone for D&D players!

But you know what hasn’t been seen before today? A Wordle clone where you have to guess a creature from the Dungeons & Dragons (5e) Monster Manual by putting numeric values into a character sheet (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA):

Screenshot of DNDle, showing two guesses made already.
Just because nobody’s asking for a game doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make it anyway.

What are you waiting for: go give DNDle a try (I pronounce it “dindle”, but you can pronounce it however you like). A new monster appears at 10:00 UTC each day.

And because it’s me, of course it’s open source and works offline.

The boring techy bit

  • Like Wordle, everything happens in your browser: this is a “backendless” web application.
  • I’ve used ReefJS for state management, because I wanted something I could throw together quickly but I didn’t want to drown myself (or my players) in a heavyweight monster library. If you’ve not used Reef before, you should give it a go: it’s basically like React but a tenth of the footprint.
  • A cache-first/background-updating service worker means that it can run completely offline: you can install it to your homescreen in the same way as Wordle, but once you’ve visited it once it can work indefinitely even if you never go online again.
  • I don’t like to use a buildchain that’s any more-complicated than is absolutely necessary, so the only development dependency is rollup. It resolves my import statements and bundles a single JS file for the browser.

Which D&D Character Are You?

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I Am A: Chaotic Neutral Elf Mage Druid

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral characters are unstable, and frequently insane. They believe in disorder first and foremost, and will thus strive for that disorder in everything they do. This means that they will do whatever seems ‘fun’ or ‘novel’ at any given time.
Race: Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.
Primary Class: Mages harness the magical energies for their own use. Spells, spell books, and long hours in the library are their loves. While often not physically strong, their mental talents can make up for this.
Secondary Class: Druids are a special variety of Cleric who serves the Earth, and can call upon the power in the earth to accomplish their goals. They tend to be somewhat fanatical about defending natural settings. (could equally be secondary class: Bard)
Deity: Azuth is the Lawful Neutral god of wizards and mages. He is also known as the High One, and is the Patron of Wizards. His followers believe that a systematic approach to magic is the best, and they strive for calm and caution in order to avoid accidents. They wear shimmering robes, and are well-versed in magic, as well as typical priest spells. Azuth’s symbol is a hand with a raised, glowing index finger.

Which D&D Character Are You?

I still loathe D&D.