Getting Around Barovia

When characters are traveling Barovia, they are supposed to roll for an encounter for every 30 minutes of travel. An encounter happens on an 18-20 on a road, or a 15-20 elsewhere. Once they hit 2 encounters in a 24 hour period, you stop checking.

To simplify the process, such that I remember to periodically do so, I have recorded the time it takes to travel on foot at normal pace between various locations by road, by river, and by wandering through the brush. I specify river travel, because buying a row boat and riding it up and down the rivers might actually be a good idea in some situations.

Personally, I do the hour-by-hour approach for travel, so I upped that rate to 1 check per hour. Still, if you want to do it RAW, there's nothing stopping you from just rolling twice as much.

To use this information, simply ask the players their destination and pace, then find each of the encounter sites between them and their destination by their travel route, and finally add together the times between those destinations to find the total time. This will tell you how many times to roll for an encounter.

For even higher precision, simply add up the travel time between sites as the party goes. Each time they hit 1 hour in the process of travelling, roll for an encounter. For example, if the party travels on foot at a normal pace by road from Barovia to Villaki, their route would look like this:

E-D 0h15m
D-F 1h0m (1 ENCOUNTER)
F-H 2h50m (1 ENCOUNTER)
H-I 3h20m (1 ENCOUNTER)
I-O 4h20m (1 ENCOUNTER)
O-N 6h10m (2 ENCOUNTERS)

To find the slow pace, increase the time by 30%. (A 45m walk becomes a 58m walk)

To find the fast pace, reduce the time by 30%. (A 45m walk becomes a 31m walk)

On horseback, cut the time in half. If they are riding at a non-standard pace, apply the 30% deviation AFTER halving the travel time by horseback.

In addition, if the players wander the empty spaces of the map, use the following time per hex:

Normal Pace: 5m
Fast Pace: 3m
Slow Pace: 6m
Horseback Normal Pace: 2m
Horseback Fast Pace: 1m
Horseback Slow Pace: 2m

Those numbers are based on each hex being equal to a quarter mile, and standard pace being 3 miles to an hour. That's 12 hexes in an hour, which divvies into 5 minutes per hex. The adjustments for special travel pace are then applied to the time per hex, rather than the speed that generates it.

Finally, the distances are broken into chunks named with the assumption that characters begin in Barovia at site E and move outward from that location by foot. The river directions are given in the direction it appears the rivers are flowing; beginning upstream and ending downstream. (Keep in mind that the water flows down hill away from the mountains into pools/lakes or off the map.) The named sections are still the same in reverse. D-E could just as easily be E-D.

BY ROAD

The roads are probably the most dangerous way to travel, frankly. They are winding time wasters that give enemies ample time to attack and kill you.

E - D 15m

D - F 45m

F - G 30m

G - H 30m

F - H 1h50m

H - I 30m

I - J 1h45m

J - K 5m

I - B 5m

I - O 1h

O - N 1h50m

N - L 10m

N - P 15m

P - U 1h5m

P - V 55m

V - R Crossroad 15m

PQR Crossroad - P 35m

PQR Crossroad - Q 40m

PQR Crossroad - R Crossroad 25m

R Crossroad - T 2h40m

T - X 1h35m

R - W 1h

R - Y 1h45m

R - S 55m

BY RIVER

This is probably the safest way to travel, but also the most limited. The rivers of Barovia are disconnected and divide the land rather than uniting it. Additionally, moving rowboats from one river to another requires hauling large heavy objects along the winding roads that do connect settlements.

D - G 55m

G - H 25m

N - P 25m

P - U 75m

U - T 45m

S - R 40m

R - V 15m

WANDERING

This is the middle ground for travel. It is faster to simply plow through the wilderness, rather than take the roads. As a consequence, you are going to run into fewer encounters on average. Many places do have a straight shot along a road or river, but these are usually intermediary locations leading to major locations. As such, it is usually better to travel straight from major site to major site. That being said, the dividing rivers are a major barrier to this type of travel unless you carry a boat with you.

E - G 45m (BOAT)

E - K 45m

E - N 2h20m

G - K 35m (BOAT)

H - K 35m

O - N 35m

S - Z 35m

S - W m5m (BOAT)

P - Q 30m

Q - U 30m

T - X 40m

W - Y 45m

How to Create Yourself in D&D

This is a basic guide on how to convert your real-life capabilities into D&D stats.

Before we begin, let me warn you: You will probably not like what you see when you do this. We are a bunch of lazy, good-for-nothing, privileged, opportunistic slugs. We are not superheroes, we're cashiers and truck drivers. We live in a safe, simple, easy, technologically advanced, modernized society, with widespread literacy. The fact that you are reading this at all is evidence that you are not the typical D&D commoner. You do not spend your days working the land under the blazing sun with wooden hand tools. You do not spend your nights cowering in a barricaded house hoping a 10-ton monster doesn't try to eat you while you sleep. You do not spend your winters chopping fire wood multiple times a day just to avoid a freezing death. Face it: Compared to the people we tell stories about, we are talking jell-o cups.

Unless you're a professional tough guy. Actual soldiers and stuff will probably get some pretty fantastic scores here.

You have been forewarned.

Initial Scores

The first step is to generate some raw numbers for each of the 6 abilities. These will require a combination of actual experimental testing and generic guesswork. As you're going, keep in mind that these will not be your final numbers.

STRENGTH

This is the easiest one. Lifting strength is 30lb. per 1 point of strength score. Go lift weights from the floor to over your head. Start with the smallest and work your way up in intervals of 30lb. The last one you're able to lift is your STR score.
Chances are, almost all people will be sorely disappointed and confused. Here's the deal:

You are a modern human who does not use their body in the extreme just to survive the day. D&D commoners live a hard, rough life- they live in a medievalesque age with limited technology and rare access to magic. They will obviously be tougher than us- we have grown soft due to technological comfort.

The exceptions to this are people who have actually trained their body for strength, such as fire fighters, soldiers, police officers, martial artists, and people who just like exercising a lot.

I can lift 90lb.. I can't lift 120lb.. With a score of 4, my light encumbrance threshold is 20lb. I can't imagine walking around with 20lb. of stuff on my back all day. But I think I could probably do it for a while.

DEXTERITY

Buy a dart board. Throw 20 darts at it. Try your hardest to hit the center red dot. Average out your results to determine where you hit mostly. Compare to the following chart.

Center 18
Center Ring 16
Middle Pie 14
Middle Ring 12
Outer Pie 10
Outer Ring 9
Score Ring 7
Wall 5
Floor 4
Foot 3

Additionally, if you can do any of the following, adjust your score as denoted. (Limit of 20)

Juggle +1
Card Tricks +1
Hand Stand +1
Back Flip +1
Splits +1
Balance On A Rope +1
Spin A Basketball On Your Finger +1

I hit all over the place, including the wall. The median appears to be the outer pie and inner pie area.

CONSTITUTION

Maybe I was wrong. This is the easiest one. Hold your breath as long as you can. The number of minutes you can go before losing consciousness is your CON bonus. (Add 1 minute to the end of where you gave up and started breathing again.) Chances are, you won't make it past 30 seconds. Your score is almost certainly 10.

In addition to your estimation, consider how often you get sick and how severe it is when you do. For example, I get sick pretty regularly, generally once every fall and once every spring. It starts as a sinus infection and over the course of a month and a half it works its way down my throat into my lungs, leaving me coughing for weeks after the infection itself has actually ended. My constitution is poor.

Another means of measuring constitution is your resistance to the effects of alcohol. Alcohol is a form of poison. Each time you drink alcohol, you are essentially making a save against the poison condition. The DC increases for each beer you have. So, how many beers can you drink before you can feel that you are drunk? Just a few? Probably a poor CON score. You can black out without feeling drunk? Probably a fairly high one.

I can go about 3 shots of whiskey before I feel it. Depending on the whiskey.

INTELLIGENCE

This is a difficult thing to gauge. We're going to go with the strictest interpretation of intelligence though: academic information retention and regurgitation. Go look at your grades from high school and average them together. Compare to the following chart.

A+ 20
A 19
A-18
B+ 16
B 14
B- 12
C+ 10
C 9
C- 8
D+ 7
D 6
D- 5
F 4

I'll be honest: I was a shit student. I did the bare minimum to pass and get by. I aimed for over 50%. Between my best grades and my worst, I average about 60%.

WISDOM

The only tangible thing this ability score represents is how perceptive you are. This is a massive abstraction. You're going to have to wing it on this one.

Here's a thing though: If you are constantly forgetting stuff, are easily spooked, often mistake tall objects for people, can never find important things you just had in your hand a second ago, and in general stumble through life as though you're on your way to developing Alzheimer disease... your score is probably 10 or less.

If you could actually do those wacky "magic eye" things and notice slight of hand in magic tricks, it's probably pretty high.

I am the jumpiest, most addled person you will ever meet.

CHARISMA

Charisma does not represent anything measurable at all. Again, you're going to have to guess at how charismatic you are! Here are some tips though:

If you are a musician or performer of any sort, you almost certainly have a score over 10. If you actually make money performing, you definitely have a bonus. If you successfully make your entire living off of your performance, your score should provide a +3 modifier or higher.

If you can actually haggle prices in our modern age, you definitely have a positive modifier.

Count up your friends. Your real friends. The close ones who would come to your aid even if it was inconvenient for them. Charisma is associated with being extroverted and influential. The more friends you have, the more charismatic you probably are. Likewise, count up the number of people you think of as enemies. Even if they don't think that way about you, the fact that such an idea/attitude is in your head indicates that your charisma may be lower than you think.

Consider how many relationships you've been in, and also how long they generally last. Consider how your relationships tend to end as well.

Consider how hard it is for you to get work. Do you get job offers on the first interview for multiple locations? Do you go for months without even getting a call?

Consider how involved in society you are. Do you volunteer? Are you part of any social clubs or groups? Are you part of a sports team? Do you participate in town hall meetings? Do you go to public events? Do you vote? Do you pay attention to the local news? Do you make charitable donations? Do you just sit at home watching entertainment television while the world passes you by?

How culturally aware are you? How many friends of differing ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, faith, economic condition, education level, political affiliation, etc. do you have? How often do you travel? What is the most distant place you have traveled? Do you speak multiple languages? Do you watch foreign media or enjoy foreign food? Do you say your country is the greatest in the world even though you've never even left your home city in your life?

I used to have a lot more friends than I do now. I didn't bother to maintain those bridges. I have traveled, but very little. I am not involved in my community at all. I've been in few relationships, and the ones that ended, ended fast. I am an artist, but I don't make money off it. I really struggle to find work when unemployed.

Refining the Scores

For this part, you're going to need a group of players who are engaging in this exercise together. Each player will estimate what they think each other player's stat array should look like based on their opinions of that person's capabilities. Next, each player averages the results of the different estimates together. Finally, you average the combined estimate with your initial stats. The final array is your character.

People are too nice.

This step exists so that your character "feels right" to the other players at the table, such that what your character can do seems like something the other players think you might be able to do, even if it's technically not true. In essence, this is to achieve believability rather than actuality.

My Stats

STR 4 (-4)

DEX 8 (-1)

CON 8 (-1)

INT 15 (+3)

WIS 11 (+0)

CHA 6 (-2)

Telling Time in Faerun

So, remember way back when I wrote a whole bunch of tips on overland travel? Well, it seems I made some assumptions about a lot of DMs that are apparently not true. Specifically:

1. Most DMs do not know what the weather in their campaign setting is like.
2. Most DMs do not know how time passes in their campaign setting.
3. Most DMs do not know what kind of weather they should have happening in their setting.

Hm. Oops. Most people run their games in a perpetual-daylight, early-summer, euro-medievalist middle-america sort of place and otherwise don't think about it. Many people, in fact, run years worth of events in a single in-game day as though night never happens and time never truly passes in the sense that we would understand it in reality.

I think this is, to a certain extent, a consequence of our modern lifestyles. More and more, people live their lives in patterns that are not based on nature's cycles, and as our technology improves, the less those cycles impact us. As a consequence, we don't notice them as much as people once did. There was once a time where the exact position of the stars at night and whether you could see the moon made drastic changes in what you could/should do on a daily basis.

So, to try and help things out, I'm freely sharing the materials I use to run my campaigns!

Now, keep in mind, this is all directed toward campaigning in the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms setting during the 5th edition timeline, which begins in 1487 DR.

To start, let's share my combined weather system and calendar!

The last page of the calendar explains how to get exact temperatures and weather conditions for each day of the year from the modifiers listed on each individual day. The calendar has room enough for you to make notes to remind yourself of important events that will happen on certain dates. That way, as you progress, you will be prompted on what events have already passed and what changes need to be made to the world due to the passage of time.

Next up, here's The Roll of Years. That is to say, the prophetic names of the years as predicted in acnient Faerunian history, beginning in -700 and ending in 1600. This was taken from the official calendar of harptos tool by WotC. This system of naming the years is referred to as Dalereckoning. Now, keep in mind that the Second Sundering is the event which transitioned the novels over to 5th edition narrative, and happened in 1487 DR, The Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant, so that is the start of 5th edition published adventures. I have created a chronology for the published adventures to try and get things sorted out. 1489-1491 are all officially dated, but outside of that range, WotC has switched to an agnostic attitude, allowing most adventures to happen when the DM wants them to. I have, however, used hints in the other books to place them roughly in relation to each other. I specifically placed LMoP one year before ToD so that it can be used as an introduction to the game, with it being close enough to ToD that you can move a former character over to it, and far enough away that players who want to make new characters are justified in doing so. ToA is placed based on the fact that its major apocalyptic event is not present in any of the surrounding books, and DH and DotMM are clearly later than teh adventures that preceded it. CoS and TftYP are abstract enough that their events could literally happen at any time you wish. Also of note, the history account given in the SCAG ends in 1489. As such, my chronology is as follows:

1488, The Year of Dwarvenkind Reborn (Shieldmeet): Lost Mine of Phandelver (Also the novels Spellstorm and Timeless)

1489, The Year of the Warrior Princess: Tyranny of Dragons (Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat)

1490, The Year of the Star Walker's Return: Out of the Abyss

1491, The Year of the Scarlet Witch: Princes of the Apocalypse and Storm King's Thunder (Also the novel Death Masks)

1492, The Year of Three Ships Sailing (Shieldmeet): Tomb of Annihilation

1493, The Year of the Purple Dragons: Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Also of interest to you might be information regarding the astrology of the setting. Here is a decent guide to it. In addition, it has a link to a device called the Orrery of Handreth. It is a homebrew masterpiece, giving detailed astrological information for pretty much any date of Dalereckoning. It misses a few key points however:

The Double Daggers are a pair of stars which somehow always mark true West.
The Arrows of the Gods are a constellation which somehow always marks true East.
Faeraula is a star which marks true South.

There is also a more detailed guide to the stars and constellations here.

OK, so now that we have weather and date handled, let's talk about the hours of the day!

In general, it is agreed that Toril experiences 24 hour days, but only scholars and religious fanatics bother with recording the hour accurately. Most people divide the day into several periods, as such:

Dawn

Morning

Noon

Afternoon

Dusk

Evening

Midnight

Twilight

If you were to give those time chunks even hours, each would be 3 hours long. It is also important to note that universally, people seem to start counting the hours of the day with dawn, not midnight, so a day generally begins at sunrise, not the passage of night's midpoint. That being said, most sources also specify that people in different places use different ways of describing time, and that there is no consistency between these systems of identification, and that it is confusing for travelers.

I encourage you to follow that advice.

That being said, we can use the above 3-hour divisions ourselves to describe and track the passage of time over the course of a day, OOC. For example, if you're doing travel by the hourly approach, you can describe how the light and weatehr changes every third hour that passes, as a prompt to periodically give aesthetic information to the players.

To aide in this, I have created a printable clock that one can move a "sun token" around to show the current phase of the day.

You can find the full-sized image here.

To track the passage of time, remember the following:

A combat turn is 6 seconds. 10 combat turns make a minute. 600 combat turns make an hour.

A non-combat turn is 1 minute. Players theoretically have 10 times the action economy resources and movement speed during non combat turns; and the party generally shares a single non-combat turn.

Overland travel is typically handled by the hour. A group of creatures moves a distance equal to their speed divided by 10. The speed of a group is equal to that of its slowest member. As such, parties typically move about 2.5-3.5 miles (hexes) per hour. This speed is increased by 30% if travelling a fast pace, and reduced by 30% if travelling a slow pace. Also keep in mind the impact of encumbrance limits on speed.

For the purposes of tracking downtime, any day in which players experience a long rest and do not adventure (spend character resources) counts as a downtime day. Expenses only apply if the party is in a settled place and opts to survive off of services rather than self-sustenance, (hunting, eating rations, camping in tents, etc.) The downtime activities available are based on the services available at the time a player chooses to spend their accumulated downtime days.

If you would like to know historic and religious holiday information associated with specific dates in the past, use this device here.

And that about wraps it up!

Some day I might make a guide on how to build all of this kind of stuff from scratch. Keep your ears open.

The Flaws With the Big Model

The Big Model attempts to contextualize the many different aspects of the role-playing game hobby in a set of meaningful, hierarchical relationships by organising these phenomena into four nested 'boxes'. The contents of each inner box are considered to be within the aegis of the outer box. A "skewer" that thrusts through the set of boxes identifies creative agenda.

The smallest box contains Ephemera, the actual events and statements made at the table; these are instances of Techniques, which are governing practices of behavior. Techniques are how players perform Exploration, the basic act of roleplaying, and Exploration is itself an expression of the Social Contract. The Creative Agenda is a pervasive concept that pierces through all four boxes, 'fixing' the mode of play in place.

Or to put it in simpler terms, a group of friends gets together (Social Contract) and decides to play a roleplaying game about a subject they find interesting (Exploration). They use a set of rules (Techniques) to do things in the game (Ephemera). The decisions that they make in terms of what things to explore and how to explore them compose their Creative Agenda.

Now that you have a bare-bones basic understanding of what we're talking about, let's talk criticism.

Agenda is Personality Profiling.

The big model absorbed previous RPG philosophies, and is descended from the Threefold model and GNS theory, which describes the primary objectives of players as being easily identified into 3 categories. Although threefold and its descendents always try to make a point that this isn't about typing players...

...it's completely and totally about typing players.

The giveaway is mutual exclusivity. In threefold and its descendants, there is a persisting axiom, which declares that the different player agendas, (the player types) are mutually exclusive, and that conflicts at the table are ultimately due to incompatibilities between the player agendas at the table. In effect, they are saying gamists do not get along with narrativists, and neither of them get along with simulationists, and vice-versa.

At least Ron Edwards gives the opinion that a person's agenda is at least flexible and can change over time, even within a single game session. In this regard, he is more open-minded than those who preceded him.

The problem is that the player agendas are NOT mutually exclusive. 

Contemporary practices of game-mastering have revealed that almost all problems that manifest at the table are due to immaturity, irresponsibility, poor social skills, and inappropriate behavior. Agenda has nothing to do with it! Furthermore, most people who read the agendas immediately react with the attitude that they value all three agendas, and some can't even prioritize any one as being more important than any other.

In essence, this is yet more of the same type of thinking as the Bartle player typology, or the Myers Briggs test. It's personality profiling. It has no place in modern philosophy.

The biggest downfall here, however, is the elitism that is inherent in the definitions of the agendas. The original threefold model idealized simulationism as being the purpose of roleplaying games, and characterized the other two types as people who are looking for something unrelated to the roleplay experience. Meanwhile, the big model redefines the agendas slightly to emphasize narrativism as the purpose of roleplay, redefining simulationism as a form of irresponsible escapism, and gamism as the activity of aggressive, selfish jerks. The fact that the definitions of the agenda ascribe personality traits in addition to their gameplay implications reveals their true nature:

Player agendas are gamer snobbery; a form of bullying.

To really drive that point home, in 2000 WOTC put together a market research survey. They reverse-engineered the results of that survey to identify actual groupings of people based on their interests, statistically speaking. Their results do not match the three-fold model.

Here is the results of their research, and here is some commentary on it.

Now, even that form of profiling is prone to problems. (Mistaking a pattern for having a meaning, and also categorizes one group as "thinking" which implies that the rest do not think.) ...but at least it's based on something more tangible than some dude's opinions.

Disconnected from Game Design Theory

My personal primary complaint against the big model, however, its that it is isolated and inbred. It is the back-waters hillbilly of game design theory. See, The Big Model was built almost entirely by Ron Edwards, based on him bouncing ideas off of a forum of people he manipulated into social captivity for several years in the early 2000s. Once he was done designing his opus magnum, he shut down the forum.

Ron Edwards is not a game designer. Aside from his work on the big model, he has no experience in the game design industry. As such, he has an audience's perspective, which has lead to the big model lacking something important: practicality.

Compare this to the work of actual game designers who engage in game design theory, such as the folks at Extra Credits, who make genuine contributions to philosophical examination of game design as a whole. They have built formulae that can be used to calculate the consequences of randomness on player engagement. They discuss how design philosophies in engineering and the arts may apply to game design. They say things that can be used.

The big model is devoid of any of this. It has no engagement with the larger field of game design theory, and evolved largely in isolation of it. What the big model DOES provide us with is a large lexicon of specific terminology that can enable us to discuss the subject of formal RPG design in technical terms. I believe game design theory as a whole could benefit greatly by incorporating this terminology and examining the RPG sphere with the same scrutiny that they treat the other game media.

Loaded Technical Jargon

While I praise the big model for expanding our game design lexicon, there is one problem...

The terminology is often inappropriate.

In order to insult design elements he felt were inferior, Ron used arbitrarily loaded language as his technical terms, giving them specific definitions well outside of their colloquial usage. This enabled him to say some pretty impolite things about certain games and certain communities within the hobby, and defend it by saying he's speaking on a theoretical level.

For a perfect example, he defined "incoherent" as any game with split agenda focus. His recurrent negative example is Dungeons & Dragons. Let me lay down some facts for you.

1. To this day, D&D is the single most popular RPG for sale.
2. D&D is also the longest running RPG franchise in the industry.
3. D&D, and peoples reaction to it, is the primary driving force in the RPG industry.

The only thing "incoherent" is that Ron Edwards doesn't understand why an RPG would focus on anything other than the story. In other words, it is only incoherent to him.

D&D 5e Houserule: Minigame: Darts!

The following is a simple little minigame I invented that allows player characters to play darts at the various taverns and bars throughout the D&D world.

How to play darts in D&D:

Each character gets 3 darts to play with for the round.

Each character takes turns throwing a dart at the board. Throwing a dart is a dexterity check, except that 2d10 is used rather than 1d20. Any character with proficiency with darts as a weapon may add their proficiency bonus to this check.

Players score points equal to the result of this check.

At the end of the round, the players add together the scores from all three turns they took.

Players score wins equal to the number of players they bested in a round.

A short game is 1 round, an average game is 3 rounds, and a long game is 5 rounds.

The winner of the game is whoever scored the most wins across all rounds.