Procgen in RPGs

Procgen is a hot new term for procedurally generated content.  It's used by computers to create a large number of varying experiences, such as the guns in Borderlands, radial quests in Skyrim, or the worlds of Minecraft. 

It can get repetitive:  With a large enough sample size, the end user can see the way the procgen content was created.  Skyrim's radial quests become repetitive after two or three.  Borderlands players quickly learn how to assess the guns they find, and while it takes hundreds of hours, you will eventually get used to the ways Minecraft worlds work.  But in tabletop RPGs, there's a human at the helm, customizing everything, so with good procgen in an RPG, there's literally infinite variety.

I wrote a procgen Fate quickstart for a light urban fantasy campaign that I will probably share on this blog eventually.  With just a few rolls on tables, I was able to generate some urban fantasy plots with subtle twists sufficient to drive an 18-month campaign.

Wandering Monsters

RPGs have always done procgen.  Take a look a the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide for procgen NPCs, plots, dungeons, and encounters.  Take a look at any D&D content, going back to the 1970s.  I recently ran the original, 1980s-era Ravenloft module in 4e D&D, and enjoyed its procgen -- it has random encounters with various monsters. 

But good procgen isn't just a wandering monster table.

The OSR and storygames communities have expanded on procgen content in exciting ways.  Forbidden Lands tells GMs not to prep anything for their first session, except perhaps to pre-roll a settlement or keep or legend, or choose a pre-made adventure site or artifact and use its legend. 

Blades in the Dark also urges GMs not to prep for their campaign.  It has nine pages of tables that let you procgen NPCs, a score, locations, and even demons.  Because a Blades in the Dark campaign starts in the pre-made setting of Doskvol and is meant to be driven by how the PCs interact with that setting, the GM really shouldn't prep anything ahead of the first session. 

Example of New Procgen

Here's an example of the new kind of procgen I'm talking about, from Blades in the Dark.  The setting built into the game is integral to the game -- a common feature of good procgen:  Mix a detailed setting rife with conflict  with procgen tables to create exciting conflicts, characters, and locations.  The type of details in the setting matter.  The details of trade routes and food production, long lists of noble houses, etc. aren't as important as conflict.  The setting has trade routes, but only the ones that push conflicts.  The setting has nobles, but only the ones involved in conflicts.  Et centera.

Because of that, I'm using the book heavily here.  It takes a lot of work to make Blades work for another setting -- to the point where, if you do that work, you should publish it. 

Blades also relies on the PCs' decisions to drive story, so we're going to make a few statements about our hypothetical PCs' actions.  Let's say our PCs already decided they're broke and need to pull a score.  They're skilled at heists, being Shadows, so they reach out to a contact from their crew sheet to set one up.  All the sheet says is "Fitz, a collector" -- the sort of person who might know of something valuable to steal, and might pay the crew to steal it. 

All I know at the start is that they're going to meet with their contact, "Fitz, a collector," and ask about opportunities to pull a heist.

So we procgen Fitz using the NPC chart. 

She's Akorosi, likely from Doskvol. She's a woman. She's old.  That's her look.  So we imagine an Akorosi woman with short-cropped grey hair and a wrinkled face. Her drive is Achievement.  That makes sense for a collector!  Her preferred method is subterfuge.  The sort of person who prefers to hire deniable assets and ask them not to make a lot of noise.  Perfect.  If I had rolled "Teamwork" she might want to come along on the job. 

Her profession is either Tanner (common) or Composer (rare).  She has to have enough Coin to pay crews to help her collect rare items, so I'd jump to Composer, except that Tanners can be successful, too, and our Crew is Tier 1, so they're not exactly hobnobbing with the rich and famous.  But they could be.  Hmm...  What would a tanner collect?  Probably not leather or chemicals -- they have access to that stuff all the time.  Maybe fine wines made with real fruits - a rare thing in the Dusk.  What would a composer collect?  Possibly rare music or instruments.  Maybe the imprisoned ghosts of skilled performers. 

Given those options, I get to decide what themes I want to push.  If Fitz wants the imprisoned ghost of a dead performer, I'm pushing the occult themes of Blades in the Dark -- the dead become ghosts unless their spirits are destroyed.  It's grim and bleak and spooky.  If Fitz wants fine wine, I'm highlighting the "punk" part of steampunk, with poor criminal scum (the PCs) helping a middle class person aspire to the trappings of the wealthy that are denied to poor people like them.  I like that better. 

I decide Fitz is a well-off tanner.  She's old and rich, so she owns and operates an established company known for quality work.  She employs many people in the PCs' neighborhood, and they get along because she's a relatively ethical employer. 

Fitz is brash.  Though she prefers Subterfuge, she isn't a coward.  She takes what she wants, and doesn't like to wait.  Her interests are architecture and furnishings.  She's proud of her well-furnished office and probably talks about the history of the Skovlander architecture of the old brick building she has her office in.  She probably snaps at people who get her cushions dirty or write on her desk without a blotter.  She's a drug or alcohol abuser, often impaired by her vice.  OK, her interest in fine wine isn't purely aesthetic.  She can get drunk on cheap swill, but now that she runs a powerful company, she wants to get drunk on the good stuff.  She probably drinks like Mallory Archer.

OK!  Now we know a lot about Fitz.  Let's roll up the score. 

The target... I have to decide between civilian, criminal, political, or strange.  I'll go with a civilian.  I get a doctor or alchemist.  A doctor has some fine wine.  So does an alchemist.  Let's figure out what that means as we go.

And the work?  I have to decide between skullduggery, violence, underworld, or unnatural.  Skullduggery for sure.  It seems obviously a burglary, but I roll anyway I get "sabotage or arson." 

Interesting!  I could just override that, but it offers a chance to take me away from the obvious.  So how does arson or sabotage get us a bottle of wine?  Procgen tables often lead us to these challenges. 

I brainstormed two ideas:  Sabotage a train so it breaks down, then sneak into a boxcar and steal a case of wine (and anything else you can carry!).  Or set fire to a poisonous night-tree in spooky-beautiful Jayan park (pulled from the book setting writeups) and steal the wine of picnicking rich people as they flee the toxic smoke.  I'm a sucker for a train job, but the deathlands are deadly for a Tier 1 group.  And we've established that this score's theme is all about economic disparities, so let's spoil the rich people's picnic!

Now for a twist or complication: The job furthers a city official's secret agenda. 

I remember seeing that the Ministry of Preservation wants to Seize Control of the Leviathan Hunters (a 12-tick project clock that I can use if I want).  To do that, they would benefit if a Leviathan Hunter died in a criminal arson at the park, right?  I think the Ministry of Preservation has an NPC following a wealthy Leviathan Hunter.  I choose Lady Clave (captain, daring, cruel, accomplished) from the Leviathan Hunters faction description and Captain Lannock (mercenary commander, shrewd, ruthless) from the Ministry of Preservation faction's description. 

The Ministry meddling will also involve the Leviathan Hunters' clocks: Discover New Hunting Grounds and Surplus Runs Dry, both 12-tick clocks.  I think I'll tick the Seize Control of the Leviathan Hunters three times if Lady Clave dies and once if she doesn't.  I'll tick Surplus Runs Dry once no matter what.  Once I start using that clock, I'll commit to ticking it at the start of every score.

Sometimes a procgen table sends you off to other stuff in the system or setting that brings in a lot of story, like this.  That one "job furthers a city official's secret agenda" result really colored in implications for this score. 

The next table tells me that the job is connected to a PC rival.  Every Blades PC has six NPCs they know, one of whom is a friend, another of whom is a rival.  The crew Lurk has pissed off Roslyn Kellis, a noble.  Roslyn Kellis will also be at the park and recognize the Lurk if any roll introduces a complication.

The last procgen table is what factions the score is connected to, but since I already have two factions involved, I'm cautious.  I have dice left that let me choose between Sparkwrights (26) or Sailors or Dockers (62). 

I think our Tier 1 crew setting off chaos between two Tier 5 factions is great, but it's going to need a lower-tier faction for them to deal with until for the time being, so I like Sailors or Dockers.  The Dockers support the Leviathan Hunters, according to their faction description; so they're going to be mad if a Leviathan Hunter gets killed.  I notice that the Ministry of Preservation has the Billhooks -- a Tier 2 faction -- as an ally.  So let's drag those in on their side on top of everything else.  Now the Tier 1 PCs can get involved in a proxy war between the Leviathan Hunters (via the Tier 3 Dockers) and Ministry of Preservation (via the Tier 2 Billhooks). 

OK, so here's what we've got! 

Fitz, a brash, wealthy, elderly woman invites them in and offers them some wine.  Nothing too valuable, but a rare treat for our Tier 1 crew.  She starts off with small talk about the history of the old building and fine furniture in her office.  Then she explains that she's a wine collector, and wants to get her hands on the fine wines that the rich and powerful drink.  At the end of each month, on the Moontide holiday (pulling this monthly holiday from the setting info in the book), wealthy folks congregate in Jayan park (also pulled from the book) to picnic and drink copious amounts of wine.  The most wealthy compete to show off the wines they drink, using it as a proxy for their wealth and power.  There will be cases and cases of wine.

Now, Jayan park is beautiful, but its trees are poison to touch -- and just as bad to inhale.  Burning just one tree will send the picnicking rich people scampering, and cases of wine are too heavy to carry off when fleeing toxic smoke.

"I don't want anyone dead," Fitz will say.  "That will bring too much heat.  They should run at the first whiff of smoke.  If you bring gas masks, you can walk right through the smoke, grab all the unopened wine you can, and conceal your faces all at once.  Don't put the masks on until the last minute, or you'll tip your hand."

She'll buy any wine from them that they bring back.

The engagement roll (how Blades cuts to the chase) will tell me how well it goes when the PCs start the fire.  It could go as easy as starting with them standing in the smoke, wearing masks, with the sounds of alarm bells in the distance... or as bad as Bluecoats catching them as they douse a tree with oil.  After that, we want to introduce:

• Lady Clave, who the PCs will discover unconscious and dying of the toxic smoke.  Captain Lannock hit her on the head with a wine bottle and dazed her so she couldn't get away in the chaos.  This is an opportunity for the PCs to intervene.  If they save her, she'll owe them a favor!  But they'll make powerful enemies, too.  Procgen details:  I rolled that she's a Dagger Islander, but they approach Leviathans in a unique way.  So I just went with Akorosi.  She's a woman, since the book calls her Lady Clave.  She has to wear glasses.  Her goal is revenge (or will be if she survives!).  She prefers brave methods (no roll -- this is what we know from her super brief NPC description from the book).  She's moody, she likes fine wine (lucky coincidence), and is fanatically loyal to a group, ideal, or tradition.  I think she's loyal to the ideal of free trade.  She's a fanatic libertarian.  Since she's technically the person who has wine to steal, we'll make her the doctor or alchemist we rolled earlier.  I think she's an alchemist, educated in the process of refining Leviathan blood.
• Captain Lannock, just at the edge of the smoke, tossing a cracked and bloody wine bottle into a fountain and looking back to wave a cruel-eyed "thank you" to the masked PCs.  He'll notice if the PCs rush to save Lady Clave, but without a gas mask, there's nothing he can do about it except try to track them down later.  His procgen details:  He's Akorosi and male.  He's disfigured or maimed.  I think he's a one-armed man.  His goal is wealth.  Mercenary captains tend to have that goal.  His preferred method is study, which makes sense since he's shrewd. He's suspicious. His interest is hunting and shooting. He's shooting pistols, since he has one arm.  Maybe he has a steampunk cyberarm?  That's badass.  I write that down.  He's also surrounded by toadies.  
• Roslyn Kellis, who I'm keeping in our back pocket for the first time the PCs get a complication while not wearing their masks.  I rolled "ambiguous or concealed" for gender.  I think she's mostly nonbinary, but she uses she/her pronouns given that she goes by Roslyn, a traditionally femme name.  She's a Skovlander.  Being a noble, she probably keeps that secret.  She's stooped.  Her goal is pleasure.  Like Lannock, her preferred method is study.  This is dangerous, as she's going to meddle if she catches on to what the Lurk is up to.  Her profession is noble, obviously.  She's dishonest.  That includes concealing her origins, pretending to be Akorosi when she's a Skovlander.  She's interested in antiques, artifacts, and curios. And she's a celebrity, popularized in print / song / theater.  That means the other PCs will know who she is.  I think she's beautiful and single, and the papers love gossip about who is courting her and who she's courting.  If this was more than hypothetical, I'd email my Lurk play about this and ask if maybe their rivalry is a bitter break-up or jilted lover.

I also want to think up a few conflicts, obstacles, or dangers that fit our procgen content.  You have to make it all fit together. 

I want to ask the PCs how they find the best wines to take.  Finding better wines might earn them more profit from the score, but it comes with risk -- I'll call for an action roll. 

I want to ask them if they'll sacrifice carrying wine for stealing other stuff.  I want to ask them if they're looking for other stuff, use Fortune rolls to see if it's around, and call for some other action roll for them to hunt it down without getting in trouble.  The fortune roll will be just one die, unless it's the kind of thing you'd bring on a picnic and easily leave behind.  Military equipment or dangerous / illegal items won't be available.

I need to look up bluecoats, since there's ample opportunity for bluecoats to catch them.  I'm also interested in Captain Lannock's mercenaries.  I decide they're not Tier 5 like the Ministry.  I'll make them Tier 3 -- still well above the PCs' tier, but low enough to drag them into any ongoing conflict that could brew. 

I want them to have to roll an action to save Lady Clave, but I decide ahead of time that if they roll a 1-3, I'll use a fail forward approach -- they can save her, but there will be a nasty complication. 

I also figure out how to reward them for the score:  They can make 10 Coin, but carrying Lady Clave instead of cases of wine will cost them 4 Coin worth of wine.  Stealing other stuff of any significant weight will cost them 1-2 Coin as well.  If they try to bring a cart, it will raise their take by 4 Coin, but raise their Heat by 2 as well, since the cart can't be hidden on the way in and out of the park, even though the gas masks can.  If they don't bring back at least 3 Coin worth of wine, Fitz will be annoyed.

Depending on what happens, the PCs could be blamed for killing Lady Clave or Captain Lannock could be mad at them for saving her.  Dockers or Billhooks or Lannock's mercenaries could be coming for them in Entanglements, later.  If Lady Clave dies, Fitz will be mad at them, too; in addition to the increased heat from a death during a score.  Fitz didn't want any deaths.  This may mean she withholds 2-3 Coin, paying them less for the wine than she might have.

Instead of drawing a map and deciding a lot of what the space is like, I'm going to lean on procgen tables as well.  I need to procgen the street upwind of the picnic -- where the PCs will escape to.  It's bright and lively (for now). lit with lots of spark lamps. It has crackling electricity, wires and mechanisms (for those spark lamps!). Sounds of laughter, song, and music (at first anyway).  Smells of the ocean carried in on the winds today.  Good thing there are winds!  The street's use is shops.  That's probably cafes and consumer goods.  It's a narrow lane.  There's an ancient ruin here - the columns of an enormous acropolis-style building, around which cafes and shops are built, their patrons and tables spilling into the cluttered, narrow lane.

When to Procgen

Could I do all this during a game session?  Yes, in a pinch, but not all at once. 

It took me an hour, including refining it and writing it up for a blog.  I'd say it would take 15-30 minutes to do all at once, which is too much time to make the players wait if you do it in the middle of a game session.  It would be really easy to do as prep for a session, though.

I could do it during a game session, but only if I didn't do it all at once.  I'd generate Fitz and the score when they went to meet her.  That would take 5-10 minutes, but that's an acceptable amount of time for a break.  This is also a good reason to learn the setting details for a game like Blades in the Dark or Forbidden Lands:  These games make procgen work by packing a lot of conflict into the setting, so if you learn the setting, you get a lot more out of these sorts of tables.  Because I studied the setting, I could remember details like "there's a park somewhere - let me look that up" and "there's this cool conflict between the Leviathan Hunters and Ministry of Preservation.  Let me go pull those details." 

I wouldn't generate my details for Lady Clave, Captain Lannock, and Roslyn Kellis until the first time the PCs met each of them, taking about 1-2 minutes each.  And I'd generate the street when they came to scope out the area.  That would take about 1-2 minutes, too.  So it's doable.

But it would be better to generate it all before the session.  Doing this much prep before a session, especially in a game like Blades in the Dark, can be dangerous.  But here again, procedural generation comes to our rescue:  Because this is all just junk I rolled on random tables, if the PCs hare off in an unexpected direction, I'm happy to toss it and roll up some new stuff.  It just makes me pause the game for 5-10 minutes to roll a new score or new details.

Let's say the PCs decide not to set fire to the trees, but instead disguise themselves as bluecoats and seize some of the wine in a fake raid.  That's fine!  I just have to think up if and how that action "furthers a city official's secret agenda."  Maybe nobody attempts murder here, but instead Captain Lannock drops a murder weapon into Lady Clave's wine case, framing her for a murder his men did.  Only, the PCs aren't actual bluecoats, so the twist is that they find a bloody knife in one of the boxes of wine!  It's a mystery they can follow up on or not.  If they don't, I don't mind dropping all that story potential, because, again, I didn't spend hours on it.  It's just random die rolls!

Benefits of Procgen

• Less Predictable:  It forces you to make choices you wouldn't normally make, pulling you away from patterns you may not even know you have.  When I had to make the score about arson or sabotage instead of my first instinct of burglary, it took me out of the obvious and in an exciting direction.
• Inspiring:  Table results jump-start your creativity by giving you neat prompts to expand on.
• Use Setting:  It hooks you into setting details, especially for games where the setting is ripe with conflicts to hook the PCs into
• Flexible:  It's easy to throw out procedurally generated prep, because you can just generate all new stuff in a few minutes if the PCs do something unexpected.
• Efficient:  The biggest benefit of this stuff is how time-efficient it is.  There's an initial investment of time to learn the setting and all its conflicts.  Once you have that, the tables are quick to use, and bring in a lot of content with a single die roll.
• Improv, without Having to Improv so Much:  Procgen has many of the benefits of fully improvised GMing (flexible, efficient, leans on setting) without forcing you to come up with everything on your own, without prompts or aid.  Improv GMing also tends to lean on disclaiming decision making, but some groups of players aren't very comfortable being asked to improvise setting details, just like some GMs aren't.  Procgen helps there, too:  You can still ask the players to contribute, but it's easier for a player to answer, "Fitz is an old and runs a successful tannery.  What does an old, wealthy tanner look like?" than "What does Fitz look like and what is her profession?"

Happy Halloween - Here come the Undead

Happy Halloween!  Boo!  

You've played a ton of fantasy RPGs, and you've battled undead numerous times, but have you put much thought into the undead?  Are they just a spooky monster or is there a story there?

In my quest to inject as much story and plot into everything I do as a GM, today I'm going to talk about the stories behind the undead.  I'll take a list of the most well-known undead, break them down into five categories, and talk about the plot that's out there for each category and each variant.  The five categories are:

• Incorporeal Ghosts
• Corporeal Ghosts
• Death Demons
• Animated Corpses
• The Infected

Art by Zeke Nelsons

Incorporeal Ghosts
In general, ghosts are awesome.  A single ghost or small group of ghosts makes for a unique story about an event in the past that has an echo in the present.  The connection between the past and present is great for A-plot/B-plot dungeon design, and can serve as either the A plot (the reason the PCs are here) or the B plot (something interesting that they can explore while they're here).

• Allip:  The allip is the mad ghost of a person driven to suicide by madness.  This can be congenital mental illness, extreme traumatic stress, grief, or burning guilt and shame.  Mad ghosts are terrifying.
• Banshee:  When an elf woman dies after being betrayed by or betraying those she loves, she becomes a wailing banshee.  The general idea of the "ghost of a traitor consumed by hatred" is a great story.
• Ghost:  When someone dies with unresolved earthly business they just can't let go of, they linger on this plane as a ghost.  There are countless ghost stories out there.  Ghosts shouldn't always be evil, though the kind of obsession that keeps a person from passing on to the afterlife is indicative of a dangerous person regardless.
• Specter:  These are the mad ghosts of people who died a sudden, violent death.  They're a reflection of the horror and violence of their death.  I like thinking of them as people who died in a horrible and sudden tragedy, like a shipwreck, mine collapse, terrible battle, or an orc slaughter.  Instead of reflecting the personality the deceased had in life, the spirit reflects the violence and horror they experienced at the moment of their death.  They're tragic, crazed, psychotic killers.  Specters have varied in difficulty over the years, and in 5e, they're pretty easy foes.  That's good, because unlike most ghosts, you'll probably want to use specters in groups to represent the haunt left over by mass tragedies.  Specters also make good poltergeists, as the 5th edition designers recognized.

Corporeal Ghosts

You don't have to be translucent and insubstantial to be a ghost.  D&D has a bunch of traditional flavors of corporeal ghosts - living humans who have passed on but not left this world.  Like other ghosts, each corporeal ghost is its own unique story.

• Bodak:  This ghost is the remains of a humanoid destroyed by the touch of absolute evil.  This has cool implications.  See the "basically demons" undead below for examples of absolute evil (Nightshades!) that might be good Bodak-spawners.  Bodaks are people who aren't killed but instantly corrupted, so they're a sad, twisted, hate-filled version of their former self.  In 5e D&D, there are no stats for the Bodak yet.
• Death Knight:  The Death Knight is an awesome image:  A powerful loyal warrior who served a dark god dies, and is preserved in death by the god's power.  It's the fighter's version of a Lich (see below).  Death knights are not really plots in and of themselves, like other ghosts (corporeal or not) are; instead, they're part of a greater plot about the servants of an evil god.
• Lich:  Imagine if you were so afraid of death that you wouldn't leave your body even after it died.  A lich is a wizard who figured out how to do just that.  They're corporeal ghosts of wizards who used a profane ritual to bind their soul to this world forever, through a phylactery.  The phylactery is an excellent plot device, because a lich cannot be killed without also destroying its phylactery.
• Mohrg:  The corpses of truly awful villains who died "without atonement" rise again as mohrgs.  It makes more sense to say they "died without justice" -- the villain slain by heroes to stop their evil scheme is not going to become a mohrg.  The villain who lives to a ripe old age and dies of a heart attack might be brought back as a mohrg, though.  A mass murder who dies in an accident might come back as a mohrg.  A villain killed by another villain could come back as a mohrg (but see also Revenant!).  There are no mohrgs in 5e yet, but you could re-skin the Revenant.
• Revenant:  The body of a murder victim whose spirit won't leave the corpse until their murder is avenged is called a Revenant.  They're not out for justice for the sake of justice.  They're out for bloody revenge.  So they're pretty awful monsters.  They're full of hate and resentment and insane self loathing.

Death Demons

Some creatures in D&D are traditionally (or currently) associated with the undead, but are more demons associated with death and the dead than the risen bodies or souls of dead people.  Death demons should be connected to stories about thinning boundaries between life and death, foolish necromancers talking to demigods in the shadow world of the dead, or ancient death deities awoken from slumber to consume the souls of the living.

• Devourer:  A devourer was never a human to begin with.  It's an undead extraplanar demigod who eats souls.  Because it's associated with death and the land of the dead, and it's powered by human souls, it's often categorized as undead in D&D.  Devourers are spooky mid to high level villains.  There isn't a devourer in 5th edition D&D yet, so consider using the stats for a Vampire, but re-skinning it as a soul devourer and removing the folklore references.
• Nightshade:  Half darkness, half absolute evil made manifest, a nightshade is a curse-demon that comes from Shadow.  D&D created a meta-mythology of "shadow" as the energy of entropy, death, decay, and darkness, and it began infesting every setting from Dark Sun to Dragonlance.  The Nightshade is one of the creatures made of pure shadow.  There's no Nightshade in 5e yet.  The Shadow Demon is similar to the Nightshade in theme, but not in power.  You can use a Shadow Demon's stats for a Nightshade -- just amp up its power level with more HP, higher Proficiency bonus, more attacks, and some magic resistance to make it scarier.
• Will o' Wisp: In folklore, the will o'wisp is a bad faerie.  In other editions of D&D, it's an extraplanar spirit.  In 5e D&D, it's undead.  It's not the soul of a dead person, but instead a faerie (or demon) that lures people into the swamp to kill them.  

Animated Corpses

There are a few ways corpses get animated in the D&D mythology.  First, necromancers can animate the dead to serve them.  These monsters are basically constructs, but with a corpse theme.  A necromancer plot is a story of a magical mad scientist, basically.  The undead aren't the story - they're just minor antagonists in a story about a human villain.  Second, when tombs or graveyards are violated (by tomb raiding adventurers, villagers who don't know they're there, evil cults, bandits on the run from the law, etc.), the gods of good or death will animate the dead to protect the sanctity of the tomb, get revenge on the violators, and prevent further violations.  The undead could be the villains, but the source of the problem is human intrusion into the domain of the dead.  Third, a powerful curse or celestial event could animate the dead.  The story here would be similar to the profaned tomb, but isn't necessarily linked to a graveyard.  The bloody murder of a village priest by the town's alderman could cause the dead whose funerals the priest presided over to rise every night until the priest's body is found and their murderer is punished.   The horror novel Pet Sematary is an "animated corpses" myth.

• Flameskull:  This is an animated burning skull with animal intelligence, and it's almost always the creation of a necromancer.  The gods don't like to break corpses up to make them into fire-weapons.
• Flesh Golem:  Technically a flesh golem is not an undead monster in D&D, but it is a corpse re-animated by a magic-user to serve them, so it's not really too different from a zombie.  There's a "Frankenstein's Monster" aspect to the flesh golem, though.  It's created with alchemy and naturalism gone awry, while the zombie is created by channeling necromantic energy with arcane spells.
• Mummy:  This is a catchall category of tomb guardians that protect the resting places of the dead.  Mummies are returned to unlife for this purpose by mysterious "desert gods" in D&D folklore.  But there are mummy myths in other Earth cultures.  The draugr is a norse mummy protecting a tomb, returned to unlife for this purpose by norse gods, for instance. A mummy doesn't have to be a bandage-wrapped corpse.  It can be a dried out husk of a corpse or a skeleton draped in its funerary shroud
• Skeleton:  The D&D skeleton is a set of walking bones held together by magic.  A skeleton is basically a medieval robot.  In a departure from previous editions, in 5th edition D&D, they're semi-intelligent and not mindless.  A distinction between skeletons and zombies is that skeletons are often the corpses of people who died many years ago, while zombies are the corpses of the fairly recently dead.
• Zombie:  We all know about zombies.  The D&D zombie is a shambling corpse.  It's not infectious, so it's a lot more like a voodoo zombie than a 28 Days Later zombie.  It's also like a medieval robot, but a lot stinkier than a skeleton, you'd imagine.

The Infected

Another common undead story is the idea of undeath as a contagion.  Because of the threat to D&D player characters, the game features several versions of infectious undead.  In addition to classic story hooks, infected undead are defined by their epidemiology.

Note that 5th edition seriously modified the traditional D&D epidemiology of infectious undead!  So the descriptions below are a bit longer, but they discuss those changes and give advice for DMs on how to make infected undead contagious once again.  Mwa-ha-ha!

• Ghouls:  Like the typical zombie apocalypse, Ghouls can spread fast.  They're hungry, so they're motivated to go eat.  These are your "fast, infectious zombies."  Traditionally, in D&D, when they touch you, you can be paralyzed (like people in horror movies who become paralyzed in fear).  In 5th edition D&D, ghouls aren't specifically infectious.  So where do they come from?  Well you can use the ghoul as a death demon, based on the arabic myth they originate from:  The ghul is a spirit that lives in graveyards and eats the corpses of the dead.  You could also use them as curse-spawned or god-spawned animated corpse undead (see above).  But I think it was a mistake to remove their infectious property.  Their bite should transmit Ghoul Fever.
• Ghoul Fever (house rule):  A character who dies with Ghoul Fever rises again as a ghoul.  At the end of each short or long rest, a character with Ghoul Fever must make a Death Save (regardless of their current hit point total).  On a success, the character fights off Ghoul Fever.  A failed Death Save works like normal:  The character marks off one Death Save.  After three failed Death Saves, the character dies and becomes a ghoul, even if their hit point total is positive.  
• Wraiths:  Wraiths spread incredibly fast, basically turning a village into a literal ghost town overnight, but unlike ghouls, they can't travel far because they cook in even a little sunlight.  They can't just sleep in a ditch during the day like a ghoul.  Probably a lot of wraiths created in this manner get destroyed by sunlight because the area gets a little overpopulated, and I bet they squabble with each other over daytime resting places.  So ultimately there would be a small number of wraiths haunting a vast, deserted dead area with absolutely no life:  No animals.  Maybe not even plants and insects.  In 5e, a wraith creates specters instead of other wraiths, which fits with a specter's origin story (see above) but doesn't have the infectious quality wraiths had in past editions.  Feel free to change it back to wraiths begetting other wraiths.
• Vampires:  These leeches need blood, have some serious Achilles heels, and look totally normal.  So they spread slowly and keep a lot of living humans around to feed on.  Once they become powerful enough to openly dominate a whole region, like Count Strahd von Zarovich, they stop caring as much about secrecy.  Vampires are conspiracies (dare I say... camaraillas?) hidden within human society like parasites infesting a host.  Vampires are also a darkly romantic image, with the sexual metaphor of blood drinking and relationship violence metaphor of mental enslavement.  Note that the 5th edition designers made vampires create vampire spawn, not other vampires.  You can change this:  Vampires can make other vampires, but it's a conscious decision.
• Wights:  Wights are super ghouls.  Traditionally in D&D, when they kill someone, they come back as a Wight under the killer's control.  In 5e D&D, the victim comes back as a zombie under the Wight's control.  Basically they're the zombie plague if it was smart.  And they're smart.  So they keep their spread secret, maybe form into armies or other spooky Deadite / Army of Darkness scenarios.  Maybe they rule a valley as god-kings and keep a tribe of humans as their cattle.  If you want to keep the 5e Wight epidemiology, that's fine - one Wight forms the villain at the head of a deadite army!  But you could go back to previous editions and have a feudalism of Wights, with a "patient zero" Wight controlling a second tier, some of whom have their own sub-Wights.

Social Scene Improvisation Framework

I like to run investigative RPGs, and one thing that happens a lot is that the players go talk to an NPC about secrets that they know, or get an unfriendly or hesitant NPC to help them.

How do I make those encounters interesting, rather than boring infodumps or procedural rubber stamps?  I could just call for a die roll.  But like you, I much prefer to role play over skill checks.  I still call for skill checks, but I think the role play shouldn't be skipped over.

So how do I make a social scene more fun?  Let's review the fun formula:

Story -> Problems -> Tension -> Excitement -> Fun

There needs to be a problem that creates tension in the scene.  So I need the NPC to resist the PCs, but I don't want to waste time being a stubborn mule just for the heck of it.  There has to be some lever the PCs can discover that will move the NPC.  That creates a small story (the protagonists figured out what makes the NPC tick) and a small game (solve the puzzle of what makes the NPC tick).  It's also emulates fiction well.  Authors and directors skip scenes with secondary characters who are boring and stubborn, but focus on scenes with secondary characters with flaws that the protagonists can use to push, trick, or persuade them.

Levers

I've been using a table I made for myself to identify levers NPCs might have.  It's loosely based on the "deadly sins" - everyone has a flaw, and that flaw can be used against them.  When I create a random NPC, I randomly decide what will make them fold.  Then I try to telegraph that as I roleplay the NPC.  If the players don't catch on, there are usually skills (Empathy, Insight, etc.) they can roll to learn what the NPC's lever is.

I've used it to some great effect.  It really helps me structure an unplanned NPC interaction.  It's a great improvisational tool.  And the players quickly realize that they can look for ways to manipulate NPCs, instead of pleading their case and throwing a Persuasion check every time.

Then the PCs have to apply the lever.  A careless person could be persuaded to help by threatening to make their life harder, or by just waiting for them to let sensitive information slip.  An envious person can be persuaded to help by implying it will help keep them ahead of their rival.

If the PCs push on the NPC's lever, you should roleplay the NPC caving to their request without resorting to dice.

Sometimes the PCs can't figure out how to use the lever, or they do a poor job of it, or they skip the roleplay and just resort to dice, or they don't want to use the lever and want to try some other means of persuasion.  That's when you call for a die roll.

You can base the die roll difficulty on the relationship between the PCs' approach and the NPC's lever.  It might be DC 10 to Intimidate a Cowardly person (or just automatic success); DC 20 to Intimidate a Greedy person; and maybe DC 20 with Disadvantage to Intimidate a Wrathful person.  On the other hand, using Intimidate to goad a Wrathful person should be easy (DC 10 or automatic), but goading a Slothful or Cowardly person should be hard (DC 20 at least!).

Lever Table

Result	Vice	Description
1	Sloth	Careless people are likely to leave clues lying around or give up information accidentally.  They also tend to choose the path of least resistance, considering only the short term consequences of doing so.
2	Greed	They want something badly enough to betray their organization – money usually, but sometimes power or luxury
3	Lust	They’re a sucker for a pretty face, an exciting experience is likely to impress them, and luxuries and indulgences clearly appeal to them
4	Wrath	Angry people are the easiest to manipulate – just get them to be angry on your behalf, or goad them into opposing their own self-interest in ways you want them to.
5	Envy	Internal strife is really convenient.  This person has a rival you can play them off of.
6	Cowardice	Apply some pressure in the right place, and they’ll fold.  There’s usually something that really triggers their fear (loved ones, physical pain, humiliation, etc.)
7	Gluttony	Overindulgent, surely this person has a dark secret and can be blackmailed.  Gluttons have usually gone too far in the past, or can be lured into doing it again.
8	Pride	This person is a sucker for flattery.  You can build yourself up as a [false] friend and sycophant to get access and favors

CC0 Public Domain image from https://pixabay.com/en/co-workers-argument-argue-worker-294266/

Virtues

If you want your NPC to be a sympathetic character with virtues instead of vices, I made an alternate table for you.  Instead of telling you how to make the NPC cave, this table tells you why the NPC is being resistant.  I just made this one up, so I'm not sure if it works as well as the lever table, above.

Unlike levers, virtues require the PCs to change their plans somewhat before the NPC will help them.  The PCs want something, but the NPC believes it would be wrong to help the PCs.  The PCs have to convince the NPC that their request is virtuous within the NPC's ethical framework.  Convincing a diligent person that they should help you means making them believe you've considered all the consequences and made sure there won't be any collateral damage.  Convincing an honest person to help you means giving up on the element of surprise and making sure they're not doing anything behind anyone's back.

It's probably better to use Levers for hostile NPCs and throw-away encounters.  Use Virtues for the PCs' allies.  I've written an article on making friendly NPCs into story challenges before.  This gives you a quick and dirty "lazy GM" way to do it.

Result	Virtue	Description
1	Honesty	Honest people wouldn’t go behind someone’s back, reveal someone’s secret, or act as someone else’s cutout.  They’ll betray them to their face, but not in secret.
2	Fairness	Fair people see the PCs as cheating.  If they want to know, they have to put in the work to learn it themselves.  If they want something done, they should do it themselves.
3	Self-Sacrifice	Self-sacrificing people believe in the greater good, and believe that revealing the secret or serving the PCs would do more harm than good.  Maybe they don’t trust the PCs to be willing or able to do what needs to be done.
4	Diligence	Diligent people have all the details taken care of.  They won’t let a secret slip or go circumvent the way things ought to be done because that would be sloppy, and they won’t just do anything without knowing all the details.
5	Patience	Patient people do not react to threats or hostility, and they forgive even their superiors’ worst mistakes.  They won’t jump to do things for others without some reason for urgency.  They have faith it’s not as bad as it seems.
6	Loyalty	Loyal people care about someone who would be hurt if the secret was shared or if they took the action the PCs want.  They value their loyalty for its own sake.
7	Bravery	Brave people value their own stubborn resistance to the investigators and manipulators.  They resist for the sake of resistance, they don’t care if you’re disappointed, and they don’t need you to like them.
8	Honor	Honorable people value their own integrity.  They won’t betray a trust or act as a cutout because it would damage their self-image as a trustworthy person.  They have to be seen as doing the honorable thing.

Virtues require more work from the PCs -- instead of just persuading the NPC, they actually have to make a concession to the NPC if they want the NPC's help.  The players will certainly have to talk among themselves about it, or at least hem and haw a bit more.  So using virtues instead of levers might take up more table time.  Keep that in mind.

They can always trick the NPC into thinking they've made a concession, then go behind the NPC's back and do it their way anyway.  That sort of sneaky behavior should have consequences for their relationship with the NPC and the NPC's friends.

Tip for LARP GMs  

When you assign players to cast NPCs for you (you are doing this, right?) you can use Levers and Virtues in your cast sheet for the NPCs (you are giving your cast players good instructions, right?).  This gives the cast player some ideas of how to make their NPC interesting to the PCs, how to make their NPC a challenge and a story moment, instead of just a boring information dump.

Death Omens

Today's post is the second part of Reinhart's guest post on character death.  See part 1 here.  Also, take a look at his blog, Chaos Engineering.

Last time, I explained the appeal of both random character death and dramatic character death, and how to handle both. Before you read this, you owe it to yourself to read that if you haven’t already. I mentioned then that this isn’t a zero-sum game. In fact, you can actually have both random character death and dramatic character death in the same game if your players are willing to make some interesting compromises.

For that purpose, I’m going to give you a system-agnostic mechanic that I use in many of my own roleplaying games: Death Omens. Death Omens help you mitigate the senselessness of random character death while still giving the dice the power to decide some of the when and how of a character’s death. Plus, they’re also really easy to port into most systems.

All you really need are some index cards and a writing utensil. (What good GM doesn’t have have those?) The idea is to directly telegraph when you’re introducing deadly stakes. You see this sort of game mechanic lately in video games like Destiny.

Adapting a mechanic from a video game doesn’t make your RPG into a video game any more than adapting a character from Game of Thrones makes your RPG into an HBO T&A drama.

A Death Omen is a game-world event that signals to the players that their characters might die here.  It’s a note on an index card labeled DEATH OMEN that describes why the scene is potentially deadly.  It makes it clear in black-and-white that death is on the line.

Now and then the dice might create a situation that would permanently remove a player character from the game. When that happens, if no Death Omen is in play for that player, then the consequences are assigned instead to the stakes for that scene.

You’re presenting clear stakes for your conflict scenes, right?  

Stakes and Deadly Stakes

Every time there’s a conflict, both parties want something, and the two goals are in opposition to some degree.  

• The ghouls want to eat, and the PCs want to explore the tomb.  Being eaten would certainly stop them from exploring the tomb!  
• The forest fire wants to burn everything, and the PCs want to escape the forest alive.  Being burned alive would certainly stop them from escaping!
• The orcs want to protect their camp, and the PCs want to sneak in to rescue some captives.  If the PCs get in, the orcs have failed to protect the camp.
• The Duke wants to preserve his power, and the PCs want him to arrest the nobleman who killed their mentor.  If the Duke arrests the nobleman at the request of some common adventurers, he undermines his power base.

“Stakes” is a common term in all kinds of games.  In essence, it means “the thing that happens if you screw up.”  In a dramatic conflict between PCs and the opposition in a tabletop RPG, stakes always means something that happens when the PCs fail to achieve their goal, or fail to prevent the opposition from achieving theirs.

Sometimes the stakes are deadly:  The ghouls’ hunger and the forest fire are imminent threats to life.  But the orcs might not want to kill intruders so much as keep them away.  They might be content with a blustery show of force, or a cruel and savage beating that drives intruders off.  Sure, orcs are big strong monsters with huge swords.  They’re deadly; but then so are Dukes.  If the PCs screw up with the Duke, he could just have them hanged for trumped up charges.  The scene’s stakes are only “life or death” when the opposition wants to kill the PCs, first and foremost -- if killing the PCs is the opposition’s goal.

Of the two deadly stakes examples, one is necessarily deadly, and the other is possibly deadly.  In both, the opposition wants to kill the PCs; but in the ghoul scene, there are more ways for the PCs to fail than just getting killed.

Ghouls

• PC Goal: Get into the tomb
• Opposition Goal: Eat living flesh

Forest Fire

• PC Goal: Not get burned to ashes
• Opposition Goal: Burn everything to ashes

In the ghoul scene, there are three possible “failure” conditions:

1. Opposition goal succeeds:  The ghouls eat the one or more of the PCs
2. Opposition goal succeeds:  The ghouls eat some innocent villager or some innocent villager’s cattle
3. PC goal fails:  The PCs are driven off by the ghouls and cannot get into the tomb

In the forest fire scene, there is only one possible failure condition:

1. Opposition goal succeeds; PC goal fails:  One or more PCs are burned to ashes

Death Omens that Communicate Stakes

When we talk about Death Omens, we’re talking about something that signals to the PCs that the stakes of the scene have become necessarily deadly.

The forest fire scene will start with a Death Omen.  It will say “You could be burned to death in this fire.”

While that card is in play, PC death can happen any time.  It’s a sword of Damocles.

So... were you, like, born with that?

The ghoul scene might not start with a Death Omen.  But once the PCs get closer to the ghouls than any other edible flesh, the GM will probably hand out a card that says “These ghouls want to kill you and eat your flesh.”  If the PCs try luring them into a pit trap with some cattle, or sacrificing an annoying villager to them, the Death Omen might not come out.

Are Death Omens “plot armor”?  No.  They’re a descriptive tool, not a proscriptive tool.  A scene where the GM didn’t want to use character death as stakes anyway doesn’t get a Death Omen.  There’s a social contract that says “nobody’s PC dies unless there’s a Death Omen on the table.”  But as soon as the GM sees death in the offing, out comes an Omen.

This is the most basic application of Death Omens.  They communicate what the stakes of the scene are in the most basic sense.  In theory, you could use an index card to describe the stakes of every scene, but character death as stakes is unique.  In most tabletop RPGs, a player’s ability to play the game at all ceases if his or her character dies.  That’s a big deal.  That’s worth a special omen.

But there is another way to use Death Omens.  It helps make the game more cinematic, and gives the players more control over their characters’ story arcs.

Shape of Your Doom:  Author Stance Death Omens

If you’re a very narrative group, you might want to use Death Omens in an entirely different way.  This is a distinct variation of the above system.  

During Session Zero (or Character Creation for those who don’t know that term), the GM announces the campaign is going to use Death Omens, and the player gets to choose the conditions in which their character may die.  It lets a player choose something thematic about their character, a type of situation that will always spotlight their character, and how rare life-threatening scenes will be.

They have to pick something as their Death Omen, and whatever that thing is, they can’t be killed unless the scene involves that Omen.  They can even choose something rare or seemingly harmless.  

SEEMINGLY harmless.

Each player writes their character name on a card along with their Death Omen and hands it to the GM.  Whatever it is, the GM will serve up life threatening scenes for the party with this characteristic.  When those scenes happen, the GM will place the appropriate Death Omen card(s) on the table.

For example, if you choose “Fire” as your Death Omen, then you can’t die except in scenes where the GM takes out your “Fire” Death Omen card and puts it on the table.  And the GM will not do that unless fire plays a major role in that scene.  You might be crossing a bridge over lava, fighting a red dragon, fleeing a forest fire, battling a mutant pyrokineticist, or running into a burning building to save a loved one.  

Make sure to foreshadow your Death Omen by having your character talk about his or her fears/enemies/weakness all the time.  Make it a shtick.

If your card isn’t out, you’re not in danger of dying.  But you can still suffer major losses.  Here’s where the challenge comes in.  The GM will need to think of alternative stakes for every scene, other than death.  If just one PC has Fire as a Death Omen, a burning building can’t kill most of the PCs.  But they can be injured, disfigured, poisoned with toxic gasses, knocked unconscious, rescued by and indebted to questionable people, have valuable equipment destroyed, etc.

That should be plenty of food for thought. I appreciate feedback, so please give Death Omens a shot in your games, and tell me how they worked for you.