Where the Shadow lies

Hey! I know, long time. Life, right?

Anyway - a quick hit:

Mordor and Mirkwood got the way they were because of the presence of Sauron.

Presume for the moment that an Sauron-like entity - or whatever, honestly - produces a 'sinkhole of evil' effect that extends for miles, probably based on its HD or whatever apparent power level you assign.

That effect is a negative modifier to the d12 encounter table roll.

You then extend your d12 encounter table for the region into the negatives - however far you need to go - so that you can resolve rolls like "-3" to, say, orcs. Or evil spiders. And that's what the party encounters more often until such time as the Shadow is resolved/eliminated/depowered.

This has two excellent consequences:

- Modifying the encounter tables also modifies the monster settlement patterns, as that also gives you lairs when generating an area, or Wandering Into War results.

- The Abstract Dungeon adventuring rules use a "d8+d12" roll for resolution - the same roll as a wandering encounter - and therefore using that same negative modifier makes dungeons within reach of the Shadow more dangerous.

So, if I were to flesh this out in the future, I'd do something like:

- Evil presence "pushes" a negative modifier out to a distance based on its HD and a distance comparable to what a PC of equivalent HD might rule - so Sauron can cover the land of Mordor based on the fact that a ??HD PC could rule an empire.

- That presence pushes out over a time period based off the mercenary recruitment charts, maybe.

- The negatives increase closer to the source, again based on something derived from domain control.

- Abstract dungeons/lairs in the area inherit the negative modifier.

- When defeated, the modifiers reverse themselves on the same schedule, though any existing lairs remain. I expect I'd want to figure out how to reduce the negative modifiers on dungeons/lairs at a slower rate.

I'd have to cogitate more on how to manage the encounter rolls while lairs/dungeons that remain shadowed still exist in the area.

John Howe LOTR is best LOTR.

Campaign End

Freshly back from the wilds of Minnesota, I realized I even missed my useless summer post this year!

In other news, my campaign ended.

It ended ...probably as well as it could have. The overboisterous fighter finally talked himself into a showdown with local, more established powers and earned a siege.

The fighter had an ill-advised scheme to pretend to surrender, buying time for the undercautious voudon witch to execute on a summoning he ought not have. He didn't have enough troops to oppose the siege. The opposing ceremonialist and the leadership of the brigand crew besieging the joint whipped their troops into a charge around the daemon (the witch having a bit of a tactical breakdown trying to stop all this, as he was the only force on the battlefield at this point) to hit the witch and his pile of assistants to break concentration and retreat.

That succeeded. Due to positioning, the witch and three of his assistants were able to flee with the remaining forces in the fortress (the fort-temple from N1: Reptile God) and hide out in the sub-sub-basement while the daemon rampaged around for a bit and finally disappeared.

Those villagers and militia were...unimpressed with the effort the witch put into their defense, and he and his assistants were forced to take a little boat into the underground river and head into the unknown darkness. His fourth assistant had previously fled the battle while everyone was above-ground - probably off to the underground complex once owned by the necromancer Nuromen to do who-knows-what.

The druidic witch, her wolves, and giant hawk quit the field once the summoning was done and the extent of the desperation revealed itself. The assassin and his two followers also escaped.

The fighter died on the battlefield, overplaying his hand.

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So what happened?

One thing, mainly: my desire to introduce a bit of domain play early - with the party inheriting nominal control of the little town at about 2nd level via the resolution of the N1: Reptile God hook - took a few of them off-task.

By off-task, I mean doing what parties of 1st-5th should be doing - putzing around their local area, completing achievable dungeon plunders, getting gold.

Rather, the little fledgling domain took focus - and that's not sitting around administering it - they spent a good deal of time traveling the region and recruiting peasants to live in their little corner of the world, with only a few random encounters to provide character advancement.

Worse, the fighter, in a fit of espirit de corps, let them all be their own landowners, which basically eliminated any domain income.

The final part was looking for threats to the domain specifically, finding those threats, and in this particular case, pissing off those threats.

Without the income from adventuring, they couldn't counter a lot of this.

I didn't really provide anything more than cursory advice; so, I was no help - nor should I have been, really. Gotta have bite for your bark, and there were enough things to do that weren't what they did.

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Anyway. Gaming continues, this time as a player - one of my players was one of our group's usual DMs, and he's taking over for a spell.

Here, eventually, I'll get back to blogging with largely pointless expositions and poorly pasted tables of mechanics what-don't-need-fixin', which will be nice, for me at least.

You, maybe not so much. :P