Month: June 2023

The Eternal War against the Serpents

The defeat of the Naga and conquest of the South by the God-King marked the beginning of mortal civilization and the rise of the first kingdom. But though the serpents were driven back beyond the great river, their threat to the mortal realms was never completely broken. It is by the might of the God-King and his royal guard that the southern realms are being kept safe and their people are protected from being enslaved or devoured.

With the divine power of the God-King, no serpent armies have crossed the river in living memory, but in the jungles beyond the eternal war has never ceased. The sacred duty of protecting the realms of mortals from the snakes is given to the royal guard, masked soldiers of the greatest skill and might who hail exclusively from an ancient caste of warriors fanatically devoted to the service to the God-King. Regular soldiers are given the dreaded assignment of guarding the river and prevent the crossing of raiding parties that managed to slip by the royal guard engaging the main armies of the serpents in battle. Typically these consists of barbarian warriors from deeper within the jungles who have become thralls enslaved by the insidious magic of the snakes, but all people have heard stories of patrols that were ambushed by naga warriors and sorcerers and slain or devoured to the last man.

Soldiers of the God-King patrol the northern bank of the great river to prevent anyone but the royal guard from crossing, to prevent any snake cultists from revealing information about their enemies to their terrible masters. And no lone wanderers or stragglers are allowed to return, as the serpents use their dark magic to enslave the minds of prisoners and send them back as spies and agents to spread false rumors and trick the watchful guardians to become complacent and underestimate the threat of another naga army crossing the river to retake their ancient lands.

Since the day the God-King ascended to his reign over the people of the southern realms, he has led them into battle against the serpents and to victory.  And it is by his might alone and the valiant struggle of the eternal war that the lands of mortals are kept safe, and for the people of the south, this alone is proof enough of his divinity.

Rewarding Play Reports in Dragonbane

I am once again planning to start a new campaign as a kind of open table sandbox since sandboxes are really the only way to go and setting things up to work with an open table makes scheduling so much easier. No need to keep delaying the next game until there’s finally a day where all players think they are available and don’t have to cancel on short notice. Just play with whatever players happen to be ready to play that day.

But with some players playing irregularly, keeping everyone on track on what’s been happening in the game recently become a challenge, and play reports really seem like the way to go to deal with that issue. I could of course write the play reports myself, but that would be extra GM work and when running a weekly game while I’m working full time I’ll probably have enough game stuff on my hands already. It also would mean that I am giving the players my perspective on what actually happened and what the important moments and developments of the last game were, and I think it would be much more fun to have the players perpetuate their own narratives of what’s going on. Having some of the players write the play reports seems a much better idea.

But of course you have to incentivize the players to do additional homework between games. I once had the idea to give characters +10% XP for the last game if the player writes and shares a play report for a D&D game, though never actually applied it. Dragonbane does not have XP like that but instead has Advancement Marks for every skill that is being used in play. At the end of the game, the player makes an inverse skill check for each of these skills, and if the roll comes out higher than the current skill rank, the skill advances by one rank. Each character also gets one free mark that can be assigned to any skill that didn’t get used during the game, plus additional ones if the characters did certain things that are encouraged by the GM for being appropriate to the genre and style of the campaign.

My idea for an incentive to write play reports is to give the players’ characters one Advancement Mark in either the Awareness, Myths & Legends, or Spot Hidden skills at the end of each game if they shared a report for the previous game. Awareness and Spot Hidden are a bit of a stretch for being improved by characters chronicling their adventures, but this gives the players alternatives if they already got a mark for Myths & Legends for using it during the game. I guess alternatively I could just give them a free mark that they can apply to any skill. But I quite like the idea of treating the players writing the report being something that their characters are doing as part of playing the game.