Four-Way Wilderness Descriptions

David McGrogan recently requests:

People may already have done this, but providing DMs with handy, accessible and beautiful three-line descriptors of what the players can see as they traverse one hex or another, or go from one point to another on a pointcrawl, would I think be a very useful addition to wilderness campaigning. 

Without overdoing things, my suggestion for improvising these in play or writing would be: when breaking new ground, describe three aspects of background (down, sides, up), one of atmosphere (around), and add in "figures" where appropriate.

A 19th century Transcendentalist landscape by Jasper Francis Cropsey

The narrative should tell you what you see and hear from below (the ground on which you walk), to the side (the sightline or blockage of the vista), and above (the condition of the sky). The atmosphere covers the motion, feeling, and scent of the air immediately around you. Figures, then, are any specific landmarks, ships, throngs, or creatures that may be glimpsed among these backing elements, and it's wise to use them sparingly and only double up on special occasions.

One or two things from each of these lists with appropriate detail and maybe a bit of prose imagery should give a rich and narratable description to go on for any given stretch of travel. Then, part of the art is narrating change in the conditions when the terrain or weather themselves change.

Below. Is the ground ...? rising, falling, or level; flat, rolling, uneven, humped, jagged; solid, treacherous, shaky, slippery; muddy (deep, sticky, malodorous, water-washed); earthy (red clay, black loam, dry earth, silt); sandy (packed, drifting, red, pale); rocky (pebbles, shingle, boulders, fissures; slate, chalk, limestone, granite, volcanic); snowy (thin, drifting, deep, ice-crusted, melting); grassy (dry. lush, tall, grazed-down, sparse, weedy); brushy (thorns, berries, holly, chaparral); forest floor (dry leaves, dry needles, moist mulch, ivy). Is the path straight, curving, meandering, winding? If on water, is it salt or fresh, clear or clouded, fast or sluggish, smooth, wavy, or turbulent, strangely dead or teeming with plant and insect life?

To the sides. Is the view clear and unobstructed? On a curved Earth, the horizon stands at 5 km (3 miles) at ground level, but climbing just 300 meters (1000 feet) lets you see ten times that. If anything obstructs your view, what is it? Hills, cliffs, mountains, canyon walls, tall trees, fog, haze, dust. If nothing is in the way, what do you see?

Above. How much light in the sky - sun, moon, stars? How many clouds, what shape, how do they filter or reflect the light? Is it sunrise, sunset, high noon, dusk, night? If the sky is visible, is it clear or hazy? Does the moon show at day? Are there birds, sun dogs, a rainbow?

Atmosphere. Is the temperature bone-freezing cold, breath-clouding cold, chilly, warm, hot, dangerously hot? Is the air crisp, humid, misty, thin, oppressive? Is the air moving, is the wind steady or fitful, the direction constant or changeable? Are there mineral smells - sulfur, mineral oil, chalk dust - or vegetable smells - pine needles, moldering leaves, wild flowers, tree pollen - or, rarely, the scent of a passing animal, a corpse or some dung? Are there intangibles that can be summed up in a word - brilliant, harsh, eerie, serene?

A couple of examples that might have been applied in my current campaign, with an example "figure" in red:

1. The party, on horseback, is proceeding through a valley in an area of scrub and wooded hills, then mounting the end of the valley and descending to where there's a river and a ferry. It's late October.

"Dry fallen leaves and needles crunch under the horses' hooves as you make your way through the valley. The trail winds through low bushes, holly and others with a few quivering leaves in the wind, and to either side the ground rises, pine trees and yellow-leaved birches on the slopes and heights. The sky is deep blue and crisp with a few scudding clouds high up. A chilly wind blows from the west and sets the fallen leaves to dancing and flying with a dusty, papery scent."

2. The party, on a commercial boat, is traveling up-river between the wooded hills and a less covered highland, toward a town near a mountain lake. The season is similar, but the weather is still and overcast.

"The river is dotted with fallen leaves, yellow and brown against the dark water. The oarsmen move confidently against the weak and sluggish current with heaving, steady strokes. To your right, the rising land is masked by pine trees that emerge from a curtain of river willows with strings of sparse yellowing leaves. To your left, the hills are bare, sheer faces of dark granite with grassy shelves. The clouds above are stony and gray, at times letting distant shafts of light down into the still, ominous air. In the gaps ahead, when the river runs straight, rise the black snow-capped peaks of a tall mountain range."

No great poetic imagination is needed to follow this template more or less freely. Like all narrative devices it has to be applied with tact and moderation -- you don't need to lavish such description when going over the same ground a second time, for instance. However, much like the procedure of considering all five senses when describing a dungeon room, I think this down- sides - up - around procedure has good potentional to add weight and color to your outdoor description.

Hex Crawl 23 #197: When Can You Split the Party?

Five hexes northwest, three southwest of Alakran.

 

Another vacant hex, another opportunity to slip in a more or less normal opinionated blog post.

"Don't split the party" is a traditional refrain in adventure roleplaying, and the rare adage that applies both in-character -- as tactical advice -- and out-of-character -- as table advice. When some characters go off to do their thing, there is only one gamemaster, and the others are left spinning their wheels, so it's an issue of enjoyment. It's also an issue of table logistics, as the two sub-parties need to have information kept from each other until they reunite. Easier to solve online, but harder in-person, with awkward moves to separate rooms and the GM running back and forth between the two.

And yet ... for every rule there is an exception. When you have a player who wants to take their character off-scene and do something separately, there is an opening for a healthy party split through one-on-one play. Some people might tut-tut, thinking that humoring the player just creates a diva syndrome and envy in the others. I haven't experienced this, though. All the split-offs met these conditions:

1. They involve one player.

2. They are resolved outside the party's joint time.

3. They involve a player with different playstyle from the rest of the group. 

I've maintained that diversity of play approaches in a group is a strength, not a weakness, of games, and has to be mechanically accommodated. Solo play is one way to do this. Let's go to the case studies.

Case 1 is an "impulsive" player-type in a party that got swept up in a local conflict between a free city and a neighboring kingdom, and wanted to do some scouting of one of the kingdom's bases. The stealthy mission was accomplished in online play (pre-roll20).

Case 2 is a story-driven player who wanted to explore their romantic relationship with an NPC merchant and do some world-discovery along the way. As part of downtime, the pair went on the NPC's northern mercantile run, a trip lasting about a week and exposing much of the map in that area. The romance suffered from the trip -- such are the ways of dice, or indeed, of long trips with someone with whom you're used to shorter interludes -- but the solo play was highly satisfying.

Cases 3 and 4 involve the same super-impulsive player who never met a dimensional portal they didn't jump through. The first jump, into Jennell Jaquays' deathtrap room from the Tomb of Borshak, was resolved through online play. This player survived but the other players were in the dark, until their further investigations of the tomb found the roon in question. The reunion was fairly smoothly done.

The second jump was into the portal of a teleportation device operated by a group of goblins. 4th level bard/warlock in 5th edition vs. a room full of 25 goblins, the goblin leader and two bodyguards. How that went ... has been resolved, but has yet to be known to the rest of the party. Suffice it to say that in order to keep the impulsive player in the game, their "B" character will be joining the party.

So, splitting the party can be fun under a few specific conditions that don't interrput normal group party play. Keep this in mind -- all rules can and should be broken if you understand their underlying principles!

Alignment I: It's A Relationship

A decade ago I dedicated a number of posts to thrashing through alignment in the D&D family of games. A few complicated half-baked systems emerged in these pages. But in the actual play of games I've run since then, I've never had players write down their alignment. Let me show you how it works instead, from my online game this year.

The atmospheric "burning bridge" from Dragon Age -- looks well burnt!

The adventurers, seeking a prophecy at a Dervish shrine, had to cross a magic bridge. The span gave protection from fire through black ashes that floated up from the chasm below and stuck to the person on the bridge. The amount of ashes was in proportion to the virtue of the person. This was relevant to the next magic bridge, which roasted its passengers with flames.

Judging this strange place was uncontroversial. Everyone remembered the characteristics that had emerged over by then six months of weekly play. Some characters had shown benevolence and moral prudence, attracting a full coating. Others had shown the deficient magnetism of their moral compass by constantly urging mayhem, torture, and murder. Sparse were their ashes indeed! 

And this discrepancy set up one of the more touching moments of the campaign. A virtuous lizardman sun-priest embraced a questionable armadillo-folk* entertainer, and this act of compassion transferred half of his protection to the sinner, allowing both to pass scorched but alive.

Indirectly, my example illustrates the first and most useful point about alignment. It is not a rule, but a relationship.  I treated the rewards of virtue as judgement from an implied spirit of the bridge. The spirit had total access to past deeds, and its own concept of sin and virtue. Would a different spirit have decided differently? Possibly!

Do you, the GM or designer, sometimes need to make benefits or malisons depend upon player behavior? You can avoid the many pitfalls of a universal rule by stepping into the role of a supernatural judge with its own agenda. For example, if you feel the powers of a paladin need a limitation on behavior, you can make level advancement conditional on a "performance review" with an angelic tutor. Play it out as you would for any other non-player character in a mentor role.

Alignment in the environment is another story. You can have spells that detect, defend, and attack the forces of good, evil, law, and chaos. But only by becoming a lich or a saint can a player-character register in this world of essences.

This brings me to two ideas from my earlier musings on alignment. They have endured in my game-running, not as rules, but as principles, lurking in the background. I'll cover them in the next two posts.

Alignment is inconsistent - but so is morality

Neutrality is everyday morality