Gangs of Sanctuary

I am preparing for a new campaign that will take place on the planet Abbith, a setting we created in our last big D&D game. It will be play test of the Damsels and Demons rules, with the players beginning the game trying to survive the streets of a seedy free port on the edge of civilization. This is the player facing introduction.

Introduction

You were raised in the Vat Guild School for Special Children, an orphanage funded by Pasha Belgratore and administered by Senior Guildsman Dr. Mephisto. You were isolated in the clean white facility and your needs were attended to by rubbery skinned Guild Scientist. You were well fed and had the company of other orphans of your own age. At night you slept in a cold metal pod and you never had any dreams. One day after you had reached pubescence the Guildsmen told your class that there would be test while you slept. You have no memory of the test, but when you emerged the next morning the liquefied remains of most of your classmates were being drained from their pods. Dr. Mephisto took precise measurements of your “body and soul” while the Guild med-bots inserted a device into your brain. Something had definitely changed, you felt more experienced, confident and skillful. With teary eyes and love in his voice Dr. Mephisto thanked you for your time in the School for Special Children and released you to the streets of Sanctuary.

You share a deep bond with the other survivors of the Vat Guild orphanage, a bond that kept you alive through the first few days in the dangerous alleys of the city. With nothing more to your names than a talent for violence your misfit band quickly seized a shack belonging to a petty criminal gang and set about making a mark on the city of Sanctuary.  

https://www.artstation.com/artist/tianhuaxu

The Alleys of Error

The local neighborhood sits just to the west of the Ziggurat of Bishma, formally the Temple of Erroneous. It was once the home of merchants and citizens of middling means. During the reign of Jabba the area was overtaken by Deep Ones who found its proximity to the cities underground sewer network to be conducive to their semi-aquatic lifestyle. The area was further degraded during the Battle of Sanctuary when an errant laser blast from the giant robot Cerebus demolished many of the buildings. Since the liberation of the city, the neighborhood has never really recovered, becoming a haven for refugees and the dispossessed. Its location just north of the Bazaar has made it a favorite haunt of criminal gangs who ply their trade at the market and docks and can flee to the Alleys for refuge.

Known Local Gangs

The Alleys of Error are home to several criminal gangs, most of whom are engaged in vicious turf wars.

The Mistaken Men: A gang led by the disposed priests of Erroneous, they claim the rights to all gambling operations in the Alleys of Error.

The Crosses and The Naught’s: Two gangs of urchin thieves distinguishable by “X” or “O” tattoos.  

The Dead Crakes: Formed from a load of Yarapolkan slaves that did not sell at the bazaar, The Dead Crakes are thugs who specialize in armed robbery and murder for hire. They use a dead crake on a pike as a banner. Their leader is a mighty warrior known as The Spatchcocker.

The True Bloods: Former Thugee troops of the last Pasha and their descendants. The True Bloods are arrogant nativists who believe that the enterprise of any gang that didn’t exist before the rise of Jabba is illegitimate. They have a particularly vicious feud with the Dead Crakes.

The Shoggoth Mob: A band of extremely territorial native Shulimites. These colored men often graft protoplasmic tentacles to their bodies and are rumored to actually possess a Shoggoth. They run prostitution rings, and deal in lotus powders.

The Ghouls: A Yebish gang who control the disposal of the dead. They are sometimes hard to distinguish from actual undead. Their leader Lord Touchwick is widely suspected to be a Lich.

Beam Boys: A cultish group who fetishize the Pasha’s Thunder Bot’s. They claim the rights to any ancient technology in the Alley and sometimes carry lasers. They specialize in protection rackets and blackmail.

The Murgatroyds: Beneath Sanctuary is a maze of sewers and tunnels, many of the buildings in the Alleys of Error are connected to this underground. The Murgatroyds are Sea bloods and Deep Ones who live in this dank world and charge tolls for anyone trying to pass.

https://www.artstation.com/artist/imdependent

Other Criminal Forces of the City

The Welts: A mercenary band turned bodyguards; the Welts are loyal to Nantoo the Rakka Man and provide security in the Bazaar.

The Cats: Five fierce she warriors and their pet cats. They ostensibly serve Mistress Jangaiva and provide protection at the brothel known as the Jade House but the cats tend to pursue their own agendas

The Black Fingers: An organization of highly skilled assassins led by a charming killer named Toadvine. The Blackfingers have a global reach and their base is in the city of Sanctuary.

Belit the Pirate Queen: Master of the largest pirate fleet to sail the Western Sea. Belit and her captains mostly pay their dues to the Pasha in exchange for the use of Sanctuary’s harbor and the protection of the Thunder Bots.

Azax the Flayed: A Mad wizard who lives in the Pasha’s palace. Azax controls the trade in alchemical products and employs invisible familiars to spy on rivals. It is common for mothers in Sanctuary to warn their children to behave by telling them that “The Flayed Wizard is watching you!”

The Pasha: The true crime lord of the city. Pasha Belgrator’s power comes from 20 foot tall war machines called the Thunderbots, and the loyalty of a highly skilled band of dinosaur mounted cavalry called The Red Lancers. The Pasha levies a 1/10 tax on all goods sold for over 1 GP, and takes 1/10 of all booty brought back by the pirates. Protection contracts are also offered on an individual basis.  It is not unknown for the Pasha to use the gangs of the city to encourage the purchase of protection contracts.

The games alright

“The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren’t in charge. You’re the DM, and you are in charge of the game.”

-Dungeons and Dragons 5e Dungeon Masters Guide (Mike Mearls maybe?)

I’ve finally decided that 5e just ain’t my bag. It’s a fine game, and I am extremely glad that many people seem to be digging it. It seems to have brought a lot of new blood into the hobby (or old blood back). WOTC opening the garden with the SRD is super cool and I look forward to a lot of sweet hacks and homebrews.  I am not going to judge someone else for their idea of fun, especially within the small world of RPG-dom but the system just doesn’t do it for me. It’s fine for a lark, (and as my group hits session 13 of 5e we have perhaps surpassed a lark) but I have realized 5e is not something I want to do for the long term.

A map I drew for the hex crawl part of our 5e campaign. 

My experience with D&D 5 has caused me to recoil in horror at the prospect of combat. Well maybe not recoil, but I have grown bored watching the multitudinous powers and abilities play out in ever longer combat sessions. Even with the adoption of initiative by side and simplified movement and positioning the game is just too much for me. Too many mechanical bits, too many moving parts, too many hit points! The game seems bloated with rules and modifiers. By providing long detailed list of powers and effects the system seems to present options but what it tends to bring to my table is a slog. Perhaps it’s just me but even a list of a thousand different skills and powers doesn’t compare to the possibilities of you know, just using the imagination to come up with something novel?  In addition, when your characters have a list of things they can do what happens in combat? When it’s their turn they take several minutes trying to decide what is the optimal skill to use, rather than mentally inhabiting the scene and quickly acting in a way that intuitively makes sense in the fiction, or just doing something because it’s cool.

A piece of a puzzle from our game. 

The best combat actions of our 5e campaign have been the actions that were improvised. Nobody remembers the rangers numerous multi-attacks, the warlocks umpteenth eldritch blast, or the hundredth smite from the paladin, but we all recall when the bard jumped onto a shambling mounds head, or when the gnome plucked a cursed arrow from the Boar Dukes flank.

Unless it is some kind of mass battle with armies facing off, I want a combat encounter to be decided and over with in ten minutes or less. I want to be able to explore an entire dungeon level in an evening. I want time to pass in a game, for characters to grow and make their mark in the world in some way other than gaining narrowly defined superpowers.

I want to play D&D where every combat encounter is quick and always offers the very real possibility of death. Where a player must use their imagination rather than be presented with a heap of mechanics that tell them what they can do. 0e and b/x do a very good job of both of these things, and I should probably just run either of them. Alas, I must tinker.

My take on Tolbert the Paladin 

In an effort to make 5e more what I want,  I cooked up an old school-5e hybrid that basically just reduced all hit dice and damage dice to d6’s and made the death save a do or die rather than the 5e threes strikes you’re out business. I also, simplified class powers, backgrounds, races, and spell list. It’s not bad, but I feel like it could but cut more. I want to get down to the essential salts of D&D, Simplify! Simplify! I got to thinking about what makes D&D the game it is, what can you take away and still have D&D? I came up with the following list of things:

1. A character that is mechanically defined by six ability scores, a class archetype, hit points, experience level, and equipment.

2. Task resolution (combat, skill checks, and saving throws) resolved by generating a random number on a d20, modifying it by the abilities of the character making the roll and comparing the result to a target number to determine success or failure.

With this as the core, I will try and build an adventure game. The idea is to meet three goals:  

1. Simple and quick resolution of all tasks (including combat)

2. Simple classes that allow room for characters to improvise and the DM to make rulings rather than master a system.

3. A system that is still recognizably D&D, and easily convertible with older editions.

I'm probably headed down the hole of fantasy heartbreaker... wish me luck.