Not as dangerous as a full-blown worg rider, goblin wolfriders are still very effective scouts, infiltrators (thanks to their pass without trace spell) or light cavalry. Wolves are also less likely to get annoyed at their goblin riders, turn on them, and eat them in the middle of combat.

Not that it doesn’t happen. Just not as often.

NOTE: Golarion goblins may (and usually do) take Goblin Dogs in place of wolves as animal companions. The statblock here is for my own game, in which the gobbies stick with wolves.

Goblin Wolfrider (CR 1/2)

Male Goblin Druid 1/Warrior 1 NE Small Humanoid (Goblinoid)
Init +1; Senses Darkvision (60 feet); Perception +6

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AC 17, touch 12, flat-footed 16 (+4 armor, +1 shield, +1 Dex, +1 size)
hp 16 (1d10+1d8+2)
Fort +5, Ref +1, Will +4

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Spd 20 ft. (on foot); 50 ft. (mounted)
Melee Lance +3 (1d6+1/20/x3)
Ranged Shortspear +3 (1d4+1/20/x2)
Druid Spells Known (CL 1, 3 melee touch, 3 ranged touch):
1 (2/day) Pass without Trace (DC 13), Jump (DC 13)
0 (at will) Resistance (DC 12), Know Direction (DC 12), Spark (DC 12)

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Str 13/+1, Dex 13/+1, Con 12/+1, Int 10, Wis 14/+2, Cha 8/-1
Base Atk +1; CMB +1; CMD 12
Feats Druid Weapon Proficiencies, Mounted Combat
Skills Handle Animal +3, Intimidate +3, Perception +6, Ride +5, Stealth +9, Survival +8
Languages Common, Druidic, Goblin
SQ Animal Companion Link (Ex), Nature Sense (Ex), Share Spells with Companion (Ex), Spontaneous Casting, Wild Empathy +0 (Ex)

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Mounted Combat Once per round you can attempt to negate a hit to your mount in combat.
Share Spells with Companion (Ex) Spells cast on you can also affect your Companion, if it’s within 5 feet.
Spontaneous Casting The Druid can convert stored spells into Summon Nature’s Ally spells.

Wolf Goblin Mount (Animal Companion) (CR –)

Male Wolf N Medium Animal
Init +2; Senses Low-Light Vision, Scent; Perception +5

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AC 14, touch 12, flat-footed 12 (+2 Dex, +2 natural)
hp 13 (+4)
Fort +5, Ref +5, Will +1

---

Spd 50 ft.
Melee Bite +3 (1d6+1/20/x2) plus Trip

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Str 13/+1, Dex 15/+2, Con 15/+2, Int 2/-4, Wis 12/+1, Cha 6/-2
Base Atk +1; CMB +2; CMD 14 (18 vs. Trip)
Feats Weapon Focus: Bite
Tricks Attack, Combat Riding, Come, Defend, Down, Guard, Heel, Track
Skills Perception +5, Stealth +6
SQ Combat Riding, Track

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Scent (Ex) Detect opponents within 15+ feet by sense of smell.
Track The animal will track a scent. +4 to Survival when tracking by Scent.
Trip (Ex) You can make a trip attempt on a successful attack.

-The Gneech

The text is open content using the OGL. “Goblin Wolfrider” was created by John “The Gneech” Robey. The illustration is from Paizo Publishing’s Rise of the Runelords and belongs to them. Stat blocks created by Hero Lab®.

Well it looks like my new campaign is going to start this weekend. I spent most of last weekend working up the first scenario (hanging out at the in-laws’ place with no internet to speak of makes for lots of focused time with a notebook and pen), and having received the campaign “handbook” the players are tossing character ideas around (so far 2/4 on halflings, which is strangely appropriate).

I mentioned before that this game isn’t like the others I’ve done recently, but is a “dig in, make lots of lore and background, go heavy on plot” type of game. This is fine and dandy as a mental exercise when putting the background together, but at some point it all has to become “real” and the character party has to inhabit the world. When the dice hit the mat, will all that pre-work make it awesome, or will the whole thing just go thud?

By a peculiar coincidence, Gnome Stew once again posts a blog entry that meshes up with the issues at hand nicely, this time about “Campaign Greatness.”

Some campaigns are not that good, some are fine, and some are ones we never forget. In my last article I talked about my Elhal campaign, and how it was one of the great ones. In a discussion on G+ (btw, Circle +Gnome Stew), some Plussers asked me what made Elhal so great. So I did some soul searching, as well as asked some of my players and we came up with some factors that not only made Elhal great, but could make any game achieve greatness.

…

Why Did It Work?

On the surface there is nothing about Elhal that was different from a hundred other fantasy stories. What then made it stand out? Here are some of the conclusions my players and I came up with:

Clear Sense of Purpose – From the initial pitch for the campaign, it was clear that the goal of the campaign was to de-throne the Demon King. Other things would happen along the way, but everyone knew where the game was going. This purpose was a beacon for the players. No matter what was going on, they knew what they were working towards.

Epic Feel – Elhal was an epic story, and thus it was clear that the fate of humanity was at stake. Likewise, it was clear that the characters were not just adventurers but people of purpose. That was conveyed through the tone of the game especially in the way NPC’s regarded the players.

Characters Tied To the Setting – The players did a great job of making characters who were tied directly into the setting. There were no Weirdos and no lone wolves. One character was the son of one of the Kings who fell to the Demon King, the other was the grandson of the King’s assassin. The third initially had a mysterious background with hints of the divine, but I would add some elements to that and fully embed him into the core of the game.

Say “Yes, And…” – There was a lot of saying Yes on my part. I worked very hard not to stifle any of the players enthusiasm, so when a player asked for something, I tried very hard to make that happen within the game, and the characters would have to earn the thing they wanted. When the players said that they would need a base of operations to mount their rebellion, I worked up an arc that would lead them to liberating a city under a terrible curse.

…

Outside Communication – The players were so excited that discussions of the game would spill into email between sessions. These discussions were almost always in first person and often represented in depth discussions about the situations the characters faced. Those metagame moments reinforced the game and added great depth to the campaign, and growth to the characters.

These are all elements that I’ve looked at with this game. Not all of them directly apply yet– there isn’t a single obvious “Demon King” for the players to rally against at this stage for instance, aside from an obvious Sauron-esque[1] Lord of Darkness too remote and powerful to be confronted directly any time soon.

The “Weirdos” points vs. “Say ‘Yes And…’” is an interesting balance that needs to be juggled. (And the linked article about the Weirdo Card is a very interesting one as well.) The players need to be able to create characters and situations that will interest them in order to get (and stay) invested in the game, but those things have to be woven into the setting and campaign in a way that works. Figuring out what to do when you are trying for a string quartet and half the players bring kazoos is part of the Gamemaster gig.

One thing I’m thinking of doing on that score is implementing a “Goals” and “Wishlists” system once the campaign has a good start. The “Goals” part (lifted from the old WEG Ghostbusters RPG) would be fairly simple: each character has a broad goal they wish to accomplish, and each session they get an XP bonus if they achieve it. Using the Lord of the Rings characters as examples, Aragorn might have a goal of “Lead Well,” Pippin would have a goal of “Get Into Trouble” or something similar, and Sam Gamgee would have a goal of “Serve Frodo.”

The “Wishlists” is even more straightforward: the players get together periodically and give me a list of things they’d like in upcoming sessions, both as a group and individually. Party wishes might be things like “a party mentor” or “to fight a dragon,” whereas individual wishes could be anything from “a magic spear” to “an NPC romance.”

Since the character creation process has been a bit more curtailed for this game than it usually is for my games, and there are limited options for things like buying gear upgrades over time, the idea is that these things will give players some extra control over the long-term story to compensate.

-The Gneech

[1] Strictly speaking, more Morgoth-esque, actually. Point is: definitely not an immediate concern.

The last member of our wicked covey of hags, the Keening Crone is that most horrible of things, a bard. It’s highly recommended that you use her with several minions she can buff and heal (or with at least one of the other hags). Her ability is to make other monsters stronger, rather than to be a major foe on her own.

The Keening Crone (CR 9)

Female Green Hag Bard 4
CE Medium Monstrous Humanoid
Init +7; Senses Darkvision (90 feet); Perception +19

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AC 27, touch 14, flat-footed 23 (+3 Dex, +13 natural, +1 dodge)
hp 109 (9d10+4d8+39)
Fort +7, Ref +15, Will +13
SR 16

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Spd 30 ft., Swimming (30 feet)
Melee Sickle +18/+13/+8 (1d6+6/20/x2) or
Melee Claw x2 +13 (1d4+3/20/x2)
Special Attacks Bardic Performance (standard action) (14 rounds/da, Bardic Performance: Countersong, Bardic Performance: Distraction, Bardic Performance: Fascinate (DC 16), Bardic Performance: Inspire Competence +2, Bardic Performance: Inspire Courage +1
Spell-Like Abilities Alter Self (At will), Dancing Lights (At will), Ghost Sound (At will), Invisibility (At will), Pass without Trace (Constant), Pyrotechnics (At will), Tongues (Constant), Tree Shape (At will), Water Breathing (Constant), Whispering Wind (At will)
Bard Spells Known (CL 4, +18 melee touch, +15 ranged touch):
2 (2/day) Cure Moderate Wounds (DC 16), Hold Person (DC 16)
1 (4/day) Expeditious Retreat (DC 15), Disguise Self (DC 15), Hideous Laughter (DC 15), Cure Light Wounds (DC 15)
0 (at will) Open/Close (DC 14), Read Magic (DC 14), Mage Hand, Light, Prestidigitation (DC 14), Ghost Sound (DC 14)

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Abilities Str 22, Dex 16, Con 16, Int 18, Wis 16, Cha 19
Base Atk +12; CMB +18; CMD 32
Feats Bard Weapon Proficiencies, Combat Casting, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Improved Natural Armor (x3), Lightning Reflexes
Skills Acrobatics +13, Appraise +8, Bluff +20, Climb +15, Diplomacy +15, Intimidate +17, Knowledge (Arcana) +22, Linguistics +10, Perception +19, Perform (Sing) +20, Sense Motive +20, Spellcraft +20, Stealth +19, Swim +14, Use Magic Device +20
Languages Abyssal, Common, Draconic, Giant, Infernal
SQ Bardic Knowledge +2 (Ex), Mimicry (Ex), Versatile Singing +20 (Ex), Weakness (DC 20) (Su), Well Versed (Ex)
Combat Gear Sickle; Other Gear Boots of the Winterlands

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Mimicry (Ex) A green hag can imitate the sounds of almost any animal found near its lair.
Weakness (DC 20) (Su) A green hag’s claws sap strength from those she strikes. Each time a green hag hits a foe with her claw attack, the victim takes 2 points of Strength damage unless he resists the weakness with a DC 20 Fortitude save.
Well Versed (Ex) +4 save vs. bardic performance, sonic, and language-dependent effects.

That’s it for Mother, Maiden, and Crone! Have some creepy fun with them.

-The Gneech

The text is open content using the OGL. “The Keening Crone” was created by John “The Gneech” Robey. Stat blocks created by Hero Lab®.

I gave my regular group the “Player’s Handbook” for my new campaign yesterday, and it’s a whopper: 24 pages of house rules, cultural and linguistic notes, carefully-selected full-color illustrations, lovingly-rendered photoshop maps, and an appendix that goes all Silmarallion. In short, this is not a beer-and-pretzels game, this is a heavy-duty RP campaign.

Alas, the first thing I had to do, was nix a player’s character concept, which is something I really dislike doing, but in this case had to be done. This particular player loves to play outliers, but is an excellent player and usually makes them work, so I try to accommodate him when I can. For a regular dungeon-crawling game I would have allowed the character without blinking an eye. But this time the concept in question was kind of a “three strikes” problem: I just couldn’t reconcile it with the “facts” of the setting, the underlying philosophy of the game, or the themes of the campaign.

This game, with its detailed background and carefully-crafted world, is in some ways a return to my gaming roots. Once upon a time, the only kind of games I ran were set in detailed homebrew worlds usually used The HERO System, so characters were carefully built with custom abilities and hard-wired disadvantages (“Psychological Limitation” was always one of my big favorites). And really, that’s the kind of game I love best… but it’s been a long time since I was able to pull one off. It takes a lot of prep work, and a lot of concentrated mental energy, but when it works it really works well.

I have for the past several years been working in more or less the opposite mode of that, trying to minimize my prep time and do as much “off the shelf” as possible, and the results have sometimes been just fine, but have tended to leave me unsatisfied, which led to my decision last year to drop gaming. So when the itch to do a really immersive, Big Damn Campaign, I was initially resistant… but the idea wouldn’t leave me alone. So I finally decided that if I was going to do it, I was gonna go the Full Monty, as they say. There’s no point in putting in the amount of work required to do half the campaign I want, and not putting in the amount of work required to do the whole thing.

I found it very interesting, therefore, when Gnome Stew this past week posted a piece called No More Average Campaigns, which echoed my own thoughts very closely.

I think that if you looked at the table play alone, you would have agreed the campaign was average. There was laughing, there was action and drama, and people were paying attention. At the same time, there were no raised voices in excitement, no long term character plans, no in depth role playing. It was quite average.

I realized that I was putting a lot of effort into this game, and getting very little return in terms of increased player engagement and excitement. It was frustrating, and after one of our hangouts one of my players asked me, “Why do you want to run an average game, when the next game could be great?”

He was right. If I was going to invest my time to run something, why not run something great? Run a campaign that everyone is going to be excited to play. A campaign that has everyone talking between games, and dying to get back to the table to play the next session. So the next morning I killed my All For One game and announced that I was running Corporation (again).

Of course, there’s a big risk here; I might be the only one in the group who’s excited by this idea. Or the group might just not gel. Or having to come up with histories and lineages and proper elvish terms for things all the time might wear me down. There’s any number of things that could kill this new game.

On the other hand, it could be awesome… and that’s my target. We’ll see if I can hit it.

-The Gneech

Second in our covey of hags, the Cold Woman. In my campaign, she also had some non-combat ritualistic abilities to bring about an unnaturally early, long, and cold winter over a large region that are not reflected in the statblock, as they were purely story-related. She also had a white dragon as her animal companion, but this was treated as another creature in the XP budget (and was an NPC in its own right).

As before, this writeup was done before there was an official “Annis hag” for Pathfinder, so it’s my own version. It’s probably pretty close, but I haven’t compared it. Either one should work.

The Cold Woman (CR 10)

Female Annis Hag Druid 5
NE Large Monstrous Humanoid
Init +1; Senses Darkvision (60 feet); Perception +16

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AC 20, touch 10, flat-footed 19 (+1 Dex, -1 size, +10 natural)
hp 121 (7d10+5d8+60)
Fort +13, Ref +7, Will +13
DR 5/bludgeoning; SR 17

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Spd 40 ft.
Melee +1 Unholy Sickle +16/+11 (1d8+7/20/x2) or
Melee Bite +10 (1d6+3/20/x2) and
Claw x2 +10 (1d6+3/20/x2)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks Grab, Storm Burst (7/day)
Spell-Like Abilities Alter Self (3/day), Fog Cloud (3/day), Storm Burst (7/day)
Druid Spells Known (CL 5, 15 melee touch, 10 ranged touch):
3 (2/day) Summon Nature’s Ally III, Call Lightning (DC 17), Sleet Storm
2 (3/day) Barkskin, Resist Energy (DC 16), Heat Metal (DC 16), Fog Cloud
1 (4/day) Hide from Animals (DC 15), Obscuring Mist, Cure Light Wounds (DC 15), Cure Light Wounds (DC 15), Cure Light Wounds (DC 15)
0 (at will) Resistance (DC 14), Read Magic (DC 14), Create Water, Detect Magic

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Abilities Str 23, Dex 12, Con 20, Int 16, Wis 19, Cha 14
Base Atk +10; CMB +17 (+21 Grappling); CMD 28
Feats Alertness, Blind-Fight, Combat Casting, Druid Weapon Proficiencies, Great Fortitude, Intimidating Prowess, Natural Spell
Skills Appraise +8, Bluff +9, Climb +10, Diplomacy +10, Fly +10, Handle Animal +10, Heal +10, Intimidate +18, Knowledge (Arcana) +12, Knowledge (Geography) +10, Knowledge (Nature) +12, Perception +16, Ride +8, Sense Motive +6, Spellcraft +12, Stealth +10, Survival +10
Languages Common, Draconic, Druidic, Giant, Sylvan
SQ Druid Domain: Weather, Nature Sense (Ex), Resist Nature’s Lure (Ex), Spontaneous Casting, Trackless Step (Ex), Wild Empathy +7 (Ex), Wild Shape (1/day) (Su), Wild Shape (Beast Shape I: Small – Medium animal), Woodland Stride (Ex)
Combat Gear +1 Unholy Sickle, +2 Cold Resistance Hide; Other Gear Staff of Healing

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Natural Spell You can cast spells while in Wild Shape.
Resist Nature’s Lure (Ex) +4 save vs. effects from Fey and effects using plants.
Spontaneous Casting The Druid can convert stored spells into Summon Nature’s Ally spells.
Storm Burst (1d6+2) (7/day) (Sp) 30′ Ranged touch attack deals 1d6+2 nonlethal damage and inflicts a -2 to hit penalty for 1r.

Next week: The Keening Crone.

-The Gneech

The text is open content using the OGL. “The Cold Woman” was created by John “The Gneech” Robey. Stat blocks created by Hero Lab®.

(Apologies to my long-suffering beta readers, who’ve probably seen more than they care to on this subject already!)

With some linguistic foundations in place, and using the materials I’d already prepared for the game before my detour into Elvish, I’m ready to start actually populating this setting with stories.

The first thing that comes to mind is reviving my “homecoming hobbit” story, and in fact the character (“Not-Dead” Darby Sandalthorn) features prominently in the background material of the setting-as-campaign-backdrop. I fully intend to start writing stories about this character in the upcoming months, possibly to post here, definitely with the intention of gathering into a book of “Jack the Giant-Killer”-style tales. (The one big sticker there is: do I use the premises for RPG scenarios first and then write the stories, or just write ‘em, knowing that my players will read them and that I therefore can’t use them for RPG scenarios? That remains to be seen.)

However, I’ve also been making an effort to look at the setting as more than just a backdrop for my displaced halfling and a weekly D&D game. I’ve tried to make this a setting that would support both big stories and small ones, depending on the kind of story I want to tell. I have at least one very, very epic tale in mind that makes poor little Darby look like a pebble on the beach of time, which could also fit nicely in this setting, but that requires a lot more meat to be put on the setting’s bones.

To that end, as I’ve worked I’ve tried to keep one eye on the big picture, while sketching in all the little details about where Darby lives. And I also cannot ignore certain realities of both the culture we live in, and the fantasy market, and keep these things in my mind as well.

First of all, there’s a lot of fantasy out there. And not just that, there’s a lot of what for lack of a better term I’ll call “Tolkienian” fantasy, and as I’ve mentioned before, this is something I’m going to just have to get comfortable worth to make the story work. Darby Sandalthorn’s world has elves and dwarves and hobbits and goblins in it. It just does. Without those things, it would be a different world. There are some surface differences… my version of Elvish instead of Quenya or Sindarin, dwarves who have dark skin instead of pale, etc., but as settings go, at least on the surface, it’s pretty generic.

I thought about trying to come up with ways to address this, but in the end they all came down to what I call the “My dwarves are different!” problem. A lot of fantasy settings—gaming settings in particular, but fiction settings as well— take the standard tropes of fantasy and tweak them around a bit, then sit back and seem very proud of how “fresh and original” their setting is.

“My dwarves are different! They have blue skin and long noses!” “You call that different? My dwarves are really different! They’re lithophages who subsist on rocks and have diamonds for eyes!” “Oh yeah? Well my dwarves are even more different: they are all genetically-identical close who reproduce by mitosis!” etc., ad nauseam.

I… don’t want to mess with that. First of all, it’s the fantasy equivalent of giving every planet a different forehead and calling them aliens. Second, the only reason to use a literary trope is to take advantage of the tools that trope provides for you. If you don’t have any real use for the trope, don’t bother with it at all. So where I’ve diverged from the “generic,” so to speak, I’ve done so for specific purposes.

Does this mean my setting will be on the plain side? Possibly. But it’s also important to remember that the setting is not the story. I could come up with the most elaborate, finely-detailed byzantine clockwork of a setting, but nobody would give a damn if there wasn’t something interesting happening there. The setting is like the backdrop of a stage: it’s there to provide a context for the play, and can add all kinds of depth and beauty if done well, but it is not the play itself.

The one major exception, and admittedly an ironic one, is the !hobbits. Hobbits and the Shire (or an approximation thereof) are part of the core conception of this setting, and yet they’re the specific creation of Professor Tolkien’s and the one thing I can’t simply lift and use without lawsuit-proofing them first. Elves, dwarves, heck even powerful-but-cursed magic rings all have classical antecedents. And while folklore is chock-o-block with “little people” from gnomes to puckwudgies to the Tuatha dé Danann, none of them are hobbits and hobbits are not them, if only by virtue of not being faerie.

Of course, “halflings” have been somewhat genericized, thanks to RPGs, Willow, and the like. So I can (and will) use them without too much fear, but I have to find a way to make them mine first. This leads to the tricky task of figuring out how to adopt/adapt/assimilate them into my work without losing the core aspects that made me want to use them in the first place.

My halflings are different! They’re lithophages who subsist on rocks and have diamonds for eyes!

Hmm… no.

For now, as least for a working model, I’m sticking with fairly generic halflings. The main ideas I’m playing with at the moment are that their own word for themselves may be “hauflin” (a Scots word that roughly translates to “young adult” or possibly “that weird period when one is neither a child nor an adult”), which gets mangled into “halfling” by the big folk; and that they may also refer to themselves culturally as “dhíbir” (an Irish word which means “banished”), but this gets colloquially munged into “dibbs.” I’ve not completely settled on either of these, and I realize that it’s a sort of “theme park” approach to linguistics, but keep in mind this is just intended to be something good enough to get on with. Hopefully something better will come to me as I go.

-The Gneech