Green Downs Hex Map

Another month of the Year of the Gazetteer is behind us, and you know what that means. This is a smaller map than the last few; I missed being able to key one of these in a single afternoon. But there's still plenty of adventure to be found in the Green Downs - or if you'd rather use this for an unusually Amish-flavored session of Under Hill, By Water, be my guest.

Note that, due to halfling settlement patterns, the population of the Green Downs is sparse and decentralized. Every farmland hex (light green) can thus be assumed to contain multiple homesteads even if not detailed in the key.

Click here to enlarge

Each hex equals three miles.

Friday Encounter: Poaching in the Lord's Forest

Here's another encounter from the infinite font of difficult moral dilemmas to present your players with. It is best suited to a settled area, ideally in a feudal society; some things may need to be tweaked to fit other settings.

The local lord (for maximum player engagement, this should be a noble the PCs have worked with before, and one they have a positive rapport with) has had a problem dealing with poachers in the woods on his estate. Like many nobles, he owns a tract of wilderness that he uses for his hunts, but as of late, guards have reported seeing figures flitting between the trees and bushes, and spent arrows have been found scattered among the ground and in the tree trunks. What brought things to a head was when a deer was found dead, with arrows sticking out of its flank - apparently, it was wounded, but got away, only to succumb to its injuries, proving that poachers were afoot. This is, of course, a gross violation of the lord's noble privileges, and he intends to see this devious act punished.

Depending on your party's relationship with the lord, they may be personally invited to deal with the poachers, or they may hear of the problem secondhand, either through wanted posters set up in the area or rumors from NPCs. Whatever the case, they should find out that the lord has promised to reward such service handsomely. Anyone who manages to apprehend the poachers will be knighted, with all the privileges that entails - in addition to receiving more social clout, the PCs will be granted a manor house, which may prove useful as a base of operations for further adventures.

However, if the PCs enter the lord's woods and track down the poachers, they will be able to do so easily - a DC 10 Survival check is all that is needed to find tracks from boots and trace them to their source (you can also add additional encounters in the woods while the PCs are following the trail, if you want to throw in more complications). But there, they will discover the truth.

The poacher, as it turns out, is a poor, starving peasant - again, this encounter will work best if this is a preestablished NPC the party has a good relationship with, so they have good reasons for aiding either side. He explains that this has been a bad harvest for him, and he barely has enough food to support his family. But a holiday feast is coming up, and his relatives are visiting. He knew that he wouldn't have enough to feed all of them, and sought to poach game from the lord's woods to fill his larder. The poacher admits to his crime, but begs the PCs not to turn him in, stating that it was desperation that drove him to such lengths.

Now the party has a choice. They could turn the poacher in to the lord and seek the reward, or they could heed his pleas and let him go free. Both options have consequences that will impact the PCs' relationships with the world around them. If they let the poacher go free, the lord will spurn them as ineffectual, and will not seek their aid in the future, potentially costing the PCs their access to a powerful patron; he may even spread the word of their failures, making it harder for them to ingratiate themselves with other nobles. But, on the flip side, if the poacher is turned in, he will decry the PCs as cruel and greedy, and place a curse upon their estate, causing bad luck to fall on the manor and those who inhabit it - accidents will keep happening around the fief, things will go missing, crops will fail, and servants will be afflicted with malaise and disease.

The optimal solution may be to try and convince the lord to show mercy on his people, and to deal with whatever famine caused such acts in the first place. But that might not be so easy, either...

Law in the Green Downs

The Green Downs has little in the way of centralized authority or a code of law. It has no real need for it - the halflings mostly keep to themselves and mind their own business, and the fertile soil and the agrarian livelihoods of most Hinnisch folk means that life is generally sustainable, so individual people have little reason to turn to crime. So too, there is no real governing body to make or enforce laws. While some halfling families may be wealthier than others, any real authority this comes from is mostly in name, and halflings consider it gauche to brag of such things. Generally, legal matters in the Green Downs are an ad hoc affair. If there is truly an issue that needs to be addressed, the community will decide on how to handle it in a community meeting.

The closest thing to a legal system among the Hinnisch people is not in the form of official edicts, but cultural practices. The halflings have held onto their own peculiar traditions through the years, some even being practiced in halfling communities far from the Green Downs - traditions that stem from philosophy, practicality, and folk wisdom, in many cases, but sometimes from more spiritual principles.

One of these beliefs is that a halfling may never take up arms against his neighbor, no matter the circumstances. Most halflings interpret this to mean that a halfling should never cause another halfling harm or inflict injury upon them. To this end, only a few villages in the Green Downs have anything resembling a militia, and those that do are strictly tasked with defending the village from outside threats; halflings will never war among themselves. Most of these are on the frontiers of the region, but in the case of the village of Breetschtaab, which sits in a valley that was once menaced by goblins, the threat has long since abated, and the militia is only kept as a matter of formality. The village has never faced an attack in years, and mostly all the militia does is train in weaponry as a hobby - which has won Breetschtaab many victories at harvest festival archery contests.

This rule also means that halflings do not believe in corporal or capital punishment. In the Hinnisch mindset, to sentence a murderer to execution would carry the same moral burden as the murder itself. Instead, the gravest punishment in Hinnisch society is that of exile. This is a serious sentence indeed, and is not one to be taken lightly. When a halfling is exiled from their community, their family holds a funeral for them even though they are alive, and all in the village are to ignore their presence, treating them as though they were dead. They do not speak to them, nor do business with them, and refer to them in the past tense. To deal with an exile invites bad luck, much as being haunted would.

Art by Campaign Command

This almost always leads to the exile leaving their village and striking it out on their own. In some cases, exiled halflings have been able to find a new life in other villages, and sometimes even settle down in new families there, but word travels quickly at markets, and to be exiled carries a great stigma even outside of one's immediate circle. In other cases, exiles leave the Green Downs entirely, sometimes settling among humans or establishing new steadings of their own. The spread of halflings throughout the known world can be attributed just as much to this practice as it can to the tradition of tolerating the youth's tendency to wander.

Friday Encounter: Dragon Sickness

I'm no fan of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies, but - at the risk of being excommunicated from all circles of Tolkien fandom - I find the concept of dragon sickness to be a very fun plot device that adds an extra complication to stealing from a dragon's hoard. And, as a bonus, it's very much in keeping with the metaphysics of my setting, where magic permeates any strong feeling or action and can contaminate the physical world. Here's an encounter to tempt your PCs with treasure that carries some significant strings attached. It can be used on the road, in the wilderness, or in a dungeon, with the right tweaking. While this encounter is intended to introduce the concept of dragon sickness to your players, you can also use the rules after the party comes into possession of a dragon's treasure by other means.

Some way or another, the party should come upon two dead bodies. On the road, they might be in an abandoned carriage stuck in a ditch, or in a dungeon they might be in a corridor somewhere. Along with the bodies are a heavy oaken chest and numerous sacks and bags carried and worn by the two dead men, which contain in total 33,500 GP's worth of gold and jewels.

One of the men has a journal carried in one of his bags - reading it reveals that the two of them are would-be thieves who looted a dragon's hoard, and are looking to return to town with their fabulous wealth. However, it can be discerned from the man's notes that he has been growing increasingly suspicious of his partner over the last three days, suspecting that he intends to make off with the loot for himself instead of splitting it. In fact, a close examination of the body (DC 20 Investigation check) will reveal that both men have daggers buried in them facing each other, apparently having stabbed one another to death about the same time.

In fact, the two thieves were overcome by dragon sickness. When a dragon has sat upon its hoard for long enough, its very essence begins to permeate the gold, and the gold carries with it the creature's greed. In large quantities, the treasure of a dragon's hoard can carry a spiritual affliction that causes one to become covetous and paranoid - sometimes, to monstrous extremes! In the proximity of so much dragon's treasure, the two men began to suspect one another of plotting against them, and, wanting all the money for themselves, killed each other, leaving the loot where they fell.

The treasure still carries the dragon's curse - if anything, the bloodshed has only made it stronger. Any PC who takes a part of the dragon's hoard must make a DC 5 Wisdom save each morning they are in possession of the treasure. The DC increases by 5 each consecutive day they possess the treasure, and by 2 for every 100 GP's worth of treasure they carry. On a failed save, the PC becomes stricken with dragon sickness. They become possessive of their treasure and will begin to suspect everyone around them - including their allies - intends to take it from them.

For maximum fun, inform the afflicted player in private so that the rest of the players don't know what's going on. The player should be encouraged to play their character as unusually greedy, and the DM may veto any actions by a PC afflicted by dragon sickness that they feel are too selfless or altruistic and force the player to pick an alternate course of action.

Even after a PC becomes stricken with dragon sickness, they will continue to make saves every morning if the treasure remains in their possession. Keep track of the results of all saves. If a PC fails three consecutive saves against dragon sickness, they will become violent against their companions. They become an NPC under the DM's control - or, if the table would rather, the player retains control of their character, but must attempt to kill their allies by whatever means are necessary!

An addendum proposed by some of my players: If your table isn't keen on intra-party conflict, an alternative expression for terminal dragon sickness would be to have the affected PC develop a single-minded obsession on the treasure (or perhaps a single item therein), to the point of not wanting to do anything other than marvel at it. Or they might show a suicidal desire to gain wealth, to the point of ignoring danger - for example, walking into an obvious trap if lured by gold.

Dragon sickness can only be cured with a remove curse or similar spell, or by being separated from all objects of any value greater than 1 SP for three consecutive days (a creature with dragon sickness will, of course, never part with their treasure willingly!). However, if they do get rid of the treasure, it may still pass its curse on to others. And even if the party manages to deal with dragon sickness, there is still the possibility the dragon is out there, and looking for where its treasure has gone - after all, these creatures are keenly aware of every coin in their hoards, and will track it to the ends of the earth!

Lunar Lands Appendix N

Whether you want to call it "6e" or "5.5e" or "One D&D" or "D&D 2024" or "the spawn of Satan," the core books for the most recent iteration of D&D's ruleset have hit shelves. I've had a chance to look at them (and what people online are saying about them), and while I would overall call it a mixed bag I don't have much in the way of strong feelings on, there is one decision I find truly concerning. The venerable Appendix N, of inspirational reading and influences on the game, is gone from the Dungeon Masters' Guide, replaced by a "lore glossary" of terms and characters from existing D&D fiction.

I'm sure you already knew I was going to hate this. It's just another nail in the coffin of what I've been arguing since the very beginning of this blog - that in becoming a brand, D&D has become a corporatized, proprietary Human Centipede constantly consuming, excreting, and regurgitating its own lore, and that the rejection of outside influences will just lead to more homogenized cinematic-universe-friendly slop targeted more at investors than gamers.

But rather than focus on how the sky is falling, I would like to use this as an opportunity to do something positive - to discuss the sources that influenced my approach to DMing and worldbuilding, both in content and in philosophy. I've seen other blogs do something similar, and I suppose that with the death of the official Appendix N, it's time to keep that spirit alive through exploring what an Appendix N for the Lunar Lands might look like. So, in no particular order, here are ten things that shaped both myself as a DM and the Lunar Lands as a setting. I might return to these with more detail at a later date, but for now, here's what I have.

National Geographic

1. World culture and history

Ever since I was young, I've had a fascination with how people live and lived their lives, both around the world and in different eras. I'm of the opinion that no fictional universe can ever be quite as deep or as interesting as the real world - even today, there are thousands of societies with their own practices and cultural norms all around the globe, and I find delving into the subject to be just as rich and compelling as any fictional universe bible. I love learning about how people live or lived on the other side of the world, or in a different age. My approaches to worldbuilding take after that interest, both from a superficial perspective and a more in-depth one.

Obviously, the Lunar Lands is very much a History's Greatest Hits setting, with various regions based heavily on different cultures and eras. Even with the Year of the Gazetteer, I've drawn from subjects as diverse as colonial Mexico, the Saami people of Scandinavia, the Holy Roman Empire, and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In rejecting Flintstonism, I make an effort to portray these cultures as people raised in them would have thought and felt, rather than to use them as dressing for contemporary stories - I enjoy doing the research, and I strive to give the worlds I portray a greater level of immersion and verisimilitude through referencing real-world practices, social norms, systems of governance, and other phenomena.

But on a broader scale, I also take inspiration from the diversity of real-world society to make every part of my setting feel distinct from one another, with all the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of real cultures. The Lunar Lands has ethnic minorities, diasporas, and stateless peoples - real life isn't so clean that you'll get a society where everyone wears hats, and that's it. That's one thing I like so much about this planet, and I want the same for my setting.

2. Mythology and Folklore

Long before I was into anything we'd call "fantasy literature," I was enamored by the various myths and legends of the world from throughout history. As a child, my image of stories of magic, monsters, and the supernatural was more colored by fairy tales and ancient myths than pulp speculative fiction. The iconic fantasy heroes, to me, were Odysseus and Beowulf, not Gandalf and Conan. Of particular interest were the Usborne and Kingfisher books that presented a glossary of gods, heroes, and stories from around the world, with beautiful illustrations that brought these tales to life. When I began running campaigns, I didn't have ready access to modules or setting guides, so these were the sourcebooks I used instead to get inspiration for my next game.

One of my players has described the tone of the Lunar Lands as "more fairy tale than fantasy novel," and that's a description that's stuck with me. I draw inspiration from real-life folklore whenever possible. If a creature in the Monster Manual has abilities that are at odds with what ancient people believed about its namesake, nine times out of ten, the ancient people are going to win out. My gods take human form, meddle in mortal affairs, and are fond of cursing people for arbitrary reasons, rather than passively sitting around rewarding prayer with spells. Add in my Catholic upbringing introducing me to the various saints, miracles, and folk rituals of Europe and beyond, and you have a setting where the fantastic has a more grounded, mythical feel - even if there's room for beholders and displacer beasts too.

I'm pretty sure either
I had this cover,
or my teacher did.

3. The Hobbit

That isn't to say that modern fantasy literature hasn't influenced my setting. Far from it. When I was raised on a diet of myths and legends, it was only natural that I would move on to the works of Tolkien when I was older, and that I would be enamored with it from the beginning. My first exposure to Tolkien's work was The Hobbit, a book that one of my teachers decided to read to us over lunch period, and it didn't take long for me to be hooked.

I've always preferred The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings - the first of the movie adaptations of which came out just after we had finished The Hobbit, in a stroke of good timing - and while I suspect nostalgia plays a part here, I also find the tone, scale, and scope of the story resonates more with me. The world of The Hobbit has a more folkloric character than what would come later. A big part of it, I feel, is that Tolkien is content to just let things happen, without needing to justify it through worldbuilding. Animals talk. Bags talk. People just have magic items lying around. Elves are bothersome tricksters, not wise mentors. There are encounters with strange creatures that Tolkien never attempts to fit into a greater and more cohesive world. I always hate when fans try to explain away the giants playing catch in the mountains as a metaphor, citing that giants aren't mentioned in any other Middle-Earth stories - maybe there are just giants in this world, and that's okay. My setting strives to work in much the same way.

The Hobbit, compared to its sequel, is more concerned with a singular adventure, making it feel more intimate and relatable than a grand sweeping epic where the fate of the world lies in the balance. That's a tone I try to capture with my setting, but I'm also influenced by the structure of The Hobbit. The story is an episodic one, told through a number of incidents along the journey that are largely self-contained. When my players are seeking out a destination, I always make sure to have plenty of interesting locations along the way - whether they be dangers or potential allies and resources. And, just as Bilbo and the dwarves rarely overcome their obstacles through force of arms, I like to encourage players to use clever tricks and exploit their environments to get out of a bind.

4. Swashbucklers and Historical Adventure Fiction

Think Ivanhoe, the various Robin Hood stories, The Three Musketeers, Prince Valiant and similar comics, and their legions of adaptations and derivative works on the big screen. This genre is a bit of a lost art - the latest example I can think of is 1991's Prince of Thieves, unless Pirates of the Caribbean counts - and that's really a shame, because they provide a great font of material for interesting plot points and adventure sites.

The Lunar Lands is a low-magic setting, and I think that a big part of that comes from how stories like these have shown me that you can have compelling and dramatic stories in a pre-industrial setting without needing to throw a wizard in there. My games are full of corrupt nobles, daring escapes, and honorable duels; while there are plenty of conventional D&D dungeons, just as many are literal dungeons, where one will have to fight their way out of a scheming baron's castle, braving guards and traps and navigating passages hidden by clever stonework. Of course, doing all of that and throwing a wizard in anyway is fun too!

A lot of swashbucklers are comparable in tone and character to old-school sword and sorcery tales - something I think a lot of people don't realize, especially given Robert E. Howard considered himself a writer of historical fiction - but without the influence of turn-of-the-century weird fiction, they mesh more easily with a setting that's more grounded in myths than Lovecraftian themes. I suspect my lifelong interest in history made these historical adventures more appealing to me, but there's plenty of material there to be mined by any DM.

5. Wilderlands of High Fantasy

Is this one cheating? In the interests of slaying the self-referential ouroboros of modern-day pop culture, I've tried to avoid sources that came from D&D itself. But I'm going to list Wilderlands here. Not only is it a third-party product so I think I can get away with it, it was a profound influence on my approach to worldbuilding and running games. One of the most important moments of my development as a young DM was when I received the 3.5e Wilderlands boxed set as a birthday present. At the time, I had no idea it was a setting that was almost as old as D&D itself. What I was fascinated by was the nature of the product.

The Wilderlands boxed set - apparently something of a collector's item today - is essentially a big collection of hex maps, altogether covering an area about the size of the Mediterranean Sea, with two books detailing every region described therein, and the various points of interest contained within each hex. There's plot hooks, but no overarching narrative. It's meant to be a sandbox you can drop a party into and have them make their own fun. This was a game-changer, for me. It made me realize the virtues of sandbox campaigns, and how you could seed an area with enough interesting encounters to let a party explore it as they pleased. They might save the world. They might become wanted criminals. They might even carve out kingdoms - all of this was anticipated and expected.

That was the kind of campaign I decided I wanted to run. It also got me thinking of how I could design a setting that was just as open-ended, detailed, and diverse. The Wilderlands has a reputation as somewhat of a gonzo setting, with lost technology and alien races, but I never got that impression from the boxed set, and none of that really found its way into my work. What I saw was that I could do something similar in terms of presentation and game philosophy, and I've never looked back.

6. British old school gaming

I've spoken on this subject in the past. As far as I'm aware, I was one of the first people to posit the existence of a distinct tradition of British old school fantasy gaming on the OSR subreddit, and it got some discussion going in its day. I need to revisit that at some point. But I'm of the opinion that there is a distinct pantheon of British RPGs and related material - the tentpoles of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and Dragon Warriors, plus related works and also-rans like Blood Sword, Maelstrom, and the material in old White Dwarf articles and TSR UK's books (yes, that includes the Fiend Folio, so the Flumph and the Space Marine are cladistical cousins!). These works have a distinct feel and their own tropes and conventions, and while I am both American and a 90s kid, they've always appealed to me in a way that American games of the era never did quite as well.

While American games took inspiration from pulp fiction, British games had more of a grounding in history and folklore. Flintstonism was downplayed in favor of accurately depicting medieval culture and society, and often there was a greater influence from fairy tales, Arthurian romance, and other more traditional sources. Things were more grounded in mundanity, providing a contrast to the overtly fantastic, and there was a slant toward low fantasy rather than high fantasy, with PCs being desperate rat-catchers and adventures entailing bogus haunted houses set up to scare locals away from smuggling operations. A lot of this paralleled and overlapped with other areas of interest to me, so I consider the Lunar Lands a British old school fantasy setting, in spirit if not by birth. Since discovering Fighting Fantasy, I've also incorporated much of the series' philosophy into my approach to game design. In those books, a clever player can get out of danger or evade a tough fight by taking an alternate route around or using the right item, and I strive to do the same with my campaigns.

7. Dragon Quest

I've spoken on the subject before, but as a child, I played the Game Boy port of Dragon Quest III extensively, and read the strategy guide even more extensively. The game dates back to an era where Japanese RPGs were only starting to meaningfully diverge from their western counterparts, and III wears its D&D influence on its sleeve, with a party of customizable characters, thieves with utility abilities to be used outside of battle, clerics who can wear armor and use weapons (have you ever seen a white mage do that?), and cursed items that can only be removed by seeking a blessing at a temple. Discovering the game at the same time I was discovering D&D was well-timed. Even if I did recognize the box art was done by the guy I knew from watching Dragon Ball Z on Toonami, I could also recognize the two games as being part of the same canon, and they seemed to complement each other. I always just assumed DQ3 was of the same genre as Might and Magic VII on my family's computer, just designed differently due to technical limitations. In my early days of gaming, I tried to remake my D&D characters in DQ3 (poorly), and I ran several dungeons out of the DQ3 Prima strategy guide at the table.

While the Lunar Lands doesn't have cutesy ooze mascots, I do draw inspiration from how DQ3 - and the greater series, now that I've gotten back into it - presents its world. A big aspect of the games that I think gets left out of the conversation is how open-ended they are. While there are some entries that are more story-driven, the stories tend to be simpler and the worlds more open to exploration than a typical Final Fantasy title. Often times, story arcs are self-contained to a single town or dungeon, hitting on the same episodic nature of a hexcrawl, of Bilbo's journey to the Lonely Mountain, or indeed, of the campaigns I run. Furthermore, the settings tend to play things more traditionally than most JRPGs, and despite Toriyama's art, they feel closer to classic fantasy or folklore than to modern-day anime.

I do, alas, regret to inform anyone who's interested in seeking Dragon Quest out nowadays that the series' English releases changed translators partway through its run, and more modern games have rejected faithful translations in favor of just adding in whatever dumb jokes the translators wanted to tell, regardless of if they fit the intended tone. If you want something with the tone my games aim for, avoid anything with Dragon Quest on the cover and look for Dragon Warrior instead. While I use the official title for clarity's sake, earlier English releases, including those of my youth, were released under Dragon Warrior because TSR owned the trademark to Dragon Quest at the time. Which is ironic, because...

8. Dragon Warriors

Yep, there actually was a TRPG out there called Dragon Warriors, and no one bothered to care. This one falls under the umbrella of British old-school gaming I talked about earlier, but I wanted to devote its own section because its influence is just that strong.

Dragon Warriors takes place in Dave Morris's Land of Legend, a setting based heavily on medieval folklore and culture. It's a setting where people invoke the names of saints so that the fair folk won't cause their milk to curdle and their grain to spoil so they'll be able to pay their tithes to the local lord. When I discovered Dragon Warriors for the first time, my immediate thought was somewhere between "Yes! This is exactly what I've always wanted!" and "Oh no, someone beat me to it." It hits the nail on the head perfectly for what I want out of fantasy grounded in history, myths, and legends, and a lot of Legend content would fit into the Lunar Lands with minimal changes. In fact, I've done exactly that.

Dave Morris is still putting out content today - he's working on a new edition of the rules, titled Jewelspider, and his blog Fabled Lands still releases material for the setting in the form of semi-regular zines and adventures, all of which have that deeply folkloric feel that I can't get enough of, and many of which have made it into the Lunar Lands practically unchanged. I'm only somewhat joking when I call the guy my spiritual liege.

9. The Elder Scrolls

You may have noticed that one of the bigger recurring themes in this list is that I like open-world games that encourage and reward player-driven exploration. It shouldn't come as any surprise that I'm a big fan of The Elder Scrolls, a series that makes this sort of thing its wheelhouse. In turn, it's influenced how I think about campaign design. Most of my campaigns have been set up similarly to a typical Elder Scrolls game, where I might have an overarching plotline, but also seed the world with plenty of locations, sidequests, factions, and NPCs that the players are free to explore as they wish, pursuing different leads and affiliating themselves with different parties. If they want to ignore the main quest entirely and just focus on doing missions for the local guild, or clearing out dungeons, or collecting roots, that's perfectly fine, and they can do that as long as I have interesting material to throw at them.

But more importantly, Elder Scrolls was a heavy influence on me for how it approached its world. Before I played Oblivion, my introduction to the series, I had never seen a video game that felt like a living, breathing world - one that I could see people actually living in, with lives and stories that unfold beyond what's necessary for gameplay. A big part of this is how Elder Scrolls handles its lore. There's much more canon information about the setting than is ever encountered in any of the games, with the world possessing hundreds of books you can read - everything from novels to encyclopedias to biographies, and all expanding on the world of Nirn and making it feel like something greater. That was a big inspiration for me to develop the world of my setting to match. The Lunar Lands doesn't have the weirder metaphysical qualities of Mundus - there's no room for a magical space station (yes, that's canon!) in a world of myths and legends - but the philosophy of creating a setting for a game that's rich and detailed enough to stand on its own drove me to the sorts of thinking that led me to make this blog. Even if some of this stuff never comes up in gameplay, I know it's there, and that's enough for me.

10. Touhou Project

Come on, it wouldn't be a Lunar Lands article without something completely out of left field. Out of all the things I've listed today, this is probably the one most unfamiliar to much of my readerbase, so allow me to explain.

Touhou Project is a long-running series of independently published video games, produced almost entirely by a single Japanese man who goes by the online handle of ZUN. They're arcade-style shooters about poorly-drawn anime girls in funny hats firing excessive amounts of lasers at each other. I haven't played a single one of them. My exposure to Touhou instead comes from its large and devoted fanbase. ZUN has encouraged players to produce fanart and fanfiction of his characters - there are over 100 poorly-drawn anime girls in funny hats that have appeared over the course of the series, each of whom has their own distinct personality and unique quirks, and the fans have been so compelled by them that the majority of Touhou-related content on the internet comes from fans. These range from memes to music videos to professionally-produced manga to an entire animated film. There are entire characters who have no dialogue at all, but the personalities and traits fan works have given them have been so influential they've set the model for how they're portrayed in other productions.

But what on earth, you might ask, does this have anything to do with the Lunar Lands? Well, Touhou is heavily inspired by Japanese folklore. The characters and their abilities are all based on mythical beings, Shinto and Buddhist traditions, and urban legends, and much of the series's appeal comes from seeing how these entities are reimagined and how they interact with one another. Very rarely is something created completely out of whole cloth. Though the cultural backgrounds I draw from are different, it's a philosophy I apply in my worldbuilding as well, creating cosmologies and magic systems out of real folkloric traditions and basing characters on precedents found in myths. Another one of my players compared my setting to a European Touhou, and while the anime influences are not nearly as overt, it is something I've leaned into.

Also, tying back to my first point, I do have to credit Touhou with introducing me to the principles of Shinto, and I find the religion's animist traditions fascinating. The concept of regional shrines, local deities, and items that can gain sentience with time have found them into my setting, and I don't think I would've used the term "shrine maiden" in my setting if not for Touhou. Plus, I almost called this blog "Lunar Land Story," so that should count for something.

With that retrospective on the material behind my setting, I would like to open the floor. Let's not mourn Appendix N. Let's celebrate the rich tapestries of influences behind our games and our settings! If you haven't written anything on the Appendices N for your games, I encourage you to do so. I'm not the first DM to blog about this subject, and I'm sure I won't be the last. I'm interested in hearing from you!

Halfling Magic

Strictly speaking, the halflings of the Green Downs are not ones for magic. Mastery of the mystic arts involves hours upon hours of careful study, hours that most halflings would rather devote to honest farm work. So too, in such an insular society, halflings are reluctant to entertain the scholarly traditions of magic from outside the Green Downs.

However, it cannot be denied that the Hinnisch folk often encounter situations in which magic is useful. They too suffer ailments and need protection against robbers and the elements. They too lose tools that no one can find, and they too may be bedeviled by spirits. To that extent, the halflings have their own traditions of spellcraft that exist within their own communities.

In the Hinnisch tongue, magic is known as braucherei, and a practitioner is dubbed a braucher (pl. braucheri). There are only a select few families in the Green Downs that practice braucherei; it is a gift passed down through generations, and most halflings do not bother to study the mystic arts unless they are born into them. The braucher families keep meticulous records of their traditions, sharing their knowledge with their children from a young age to carry on their craft. All braucherei consider themselves members of the same extended family, united by craft if not by blood; as such, they do not intermarry, though any child with at least one braucher parent may have the gift. When a child is born to a braucher family, all braucheri in the nearby villages gather to celebrate the occasion. At these meetings, a ritual is performed to confirm whether or not the child has an innate skill for magic - if they do, they are taught the craft, trained from childhood to carry on the family business.

Braucheri deal strictly in white magic - that is, protective and healing spells. They consider offensive magic and curses - black magic - to be dangerous and unholy, and fear it. In game terms, they are best represented by clerics of the Life or Peace domains. Halfling magic, like the traditions of the cunning folk in human lands, is influenced heavily by religion, and incorporates prayers and the invocation of deities and saints, but braucheri are not ordained members of the Pantheonist cults.

The braucheri collect their wisdom in grimoires - which, in halfling tradition, do not consist solely of spells; a typical Hinnisch grimoire will also contain prayers, mundane remedies, and even recipes for food and drink. These tomes can be considered a collection of all information the braucheri consider useful to have at hand, which, for halflings, includes the more victual pleasures of life. The most prized grimoires of all, however, are the missives of heaven - texts held to have been miraculously delivered from the gods themselves. These texts are magic in and of themselves, and protect anyone who carries them from harm, be it from demonic powers or the hands of men. However, in order for such protection to apply, the user must abide by a code of conduct outlined in the text. Failure to live by its tenets means the spells will be undone.

Braucheri enjoy a position of status within halfling communities, revered as healers, teachers, and religious leaders. Many villagers will turn to them for help that only they can work. However, though it is unusual for halflings in general to stray far from their burrows, and braucheri specifically even more so, there are some that may be found plying their craft in other lands, or along the roads.

Art by Caterina Capogrossi

Background: Braucher

Prerequisites: Must be a halfling. Optionally, a DM may allow PCs of other races to take this background if they have, for whatever reason, been raised among halflings, but this is rare.

Suggested Names: Pennsylvania Dutch names, or classically Tolkienian hobbit names.

Skill Proficiencies: Arcana, Religion

Tool Proficiencies: Herbalism kits, one set of artisan's tools or musical instrument of your choice.

Languages: Hinnisch, Celestial.

Equipment: A healer's kit or a herbalism kit, a grimoire, a set of common clothes, and a pouch containing 50 GP.

Feature: Hex Sign. You have been taught several apotropaic sigils, and can imbue them with power; halflings use these to decorate their barns and homes, and they are often of fine craftsmanship, featuring bold colors and artistic designs. You may spend an hour to paint a sign on a building no larger than a barn; all creatures within that building are under the effects of a protection from evil and good spell. This effect ends if the sign is damaged or the wall it is on is destroyed.

Friday Encounter: The Clever Stag

In the Lunar Lands, all living things - and some non-living things - are sapient. Every animal has thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, just like a person does; they just express them in their own ways, which make sense only to them. Each animal speaks its own language - they consist of certain sounds, gestures, and pheromones that are indecipherable to the uninitiated, but this is a true language, and one can learn to speak and understand it, though this is much harder than learning another humanoid language, and to speak it (rather than merely understanding it) may require the ability to vocalize subtle sounds humans cannot.

Here's an encounter that plays with that idea. It is best suited for a wilderness environment - ideally, it should be used if the PCs decide to hunt for game.

Background

Somewhere in this woodland lies an enchanted tree that has stood for untold millennia. If it is known, it is known only to the beasts of the wood, and any elves and druids in tune with its mysteries. This tree produces a sap that, if consumed, allows a creature to speak and understand any tongue - including those of the beasts and birds.

Also in this woodland there lives a stag named Barkbrowser (a literal translation from the cervid language, the subtleties of cannot be represented in text). Barkbrowser is a vain and conceited deer who is quite proud of his antlers. Although he, like all stags, sheds his antlers in the winter and grows back a new set in the spring, he is not content to let his old antlers be lost in the weeds, but would like to keep them at hand to marvel at his beauty. He regards his own antlers as a human would regard a work of fine art. Despite his vanity, Barkbrowser is a particularly clever stag, even by the standards of men. He fed upon the magic sap, and became fluent in all tongues - and quickly realized how he could use this ability to advance his own goals.

Barkbrowser's last set of antlers recently went missing from his stash. He learned from the birds and the squirrels that they were taken by Marielle Essert, an enchantress who dwells within a tower somewhere in the woods, who intends to turn them into powder for a potion. Barkbrowser knows that he, a mere deer, cannot hope to take on a powerful magician. However, he knows that the gift of speech can be quite useful for his purposes, and intends to use this to get his revenge.

The Encounter

The PCs should come upon Barkbrowser in the woods, perhaps while hunting, or by mere happenstance. Importantly, they should be led to believe that he is nothing more than an ordinary deer - up until they get close enough, in which he calls out to them in their own language!

He will claim that he is in fact a prince who was cursed by Marielle to take the form of a stag, and beseeches the party to help in lifting his affliction. He will not speak of his true name, or mention the magic tree - he wants the PCs to think that his ability to speak human speech is related to his "true" identity. He knows the location of Marielle's tower, though he has not gone inside of it and does not know its contents. What he does claim is that the PCs can find a set of antlers in Marielle's tower that, if touched to his skin, should lift the curse.

Should the party believe the "prince's" story and seek out Marielle, they will find that she mainly keeps to herself and has no outward hostilities to them - however, considering how she has set up her operations in the woods so that she is not bothered with meddlesome outsiders, she won't take kindly to intruders. She has a clay golem, inscribed with the orders to protect the tower, that she has constructed to ward off any strangers, and it will accost anyone who attempts to break into the tower. You can feel free to add other challenges you see fit to expand this encounter, or make the tower into a mini-dungeon, at your discretion.

Marielle keeps Barkbrowser's antlers in her workshop where she makes her potions. A skull is set in a niche over the door to the workshop and will scream if any unfamiliar creature attempts to enter the room (DC 10 Arcana check to identify this alarm). Marielle can hear this scream from anywhere in the tower and will come running if it is triggered.

If confronted, Marielle will have no knowledge of ever placing a curse on a prince and will be quite confused by the allegations. She will try to turn the PCs away, growing increasingly frustrated if they persist, but will not initiate violence unless she feels clearly threatened. She has the stats of a mage.

Further Developments

If the PCs return the antlers to Barkbrowser, they will of course do nothing - he just wanted to look at them. He doesn't care about any acts of theft or violence they may have had to perform to retrieve them - he's a deer, after all, and is hardly concerned with the notion of civilized morality. He's just happy to have his antlers back.

If the party was cheated into such deeds, there will of course be consequences. If Marielle is still alive, she will likely be displeased with the party for disrupting her research and interfering with her studies, and she may seek revenge. Alternatively, if she dies, her relatives or acquaintances may become enemies of the party. And the excuse that they were tricked by a talking deer likely won't hold up in the courts.

Of course, the PCs may wish to research why exactly there was a talking deer there in the first place, if he really wasn't a cursed prince. This pursuit may lead them to the enchanted tree, which could well be useful to them in their adventures. Barkbrowser himself might also become a recurring NPC, especially if the party decides to seek him out - a deer who can speak any language could prove the center of a useful spy network.

Wayward Halfling Youth

Art by Pajazet

As a rule, the halflings of the Green Downs are highly community-minded. They shun overt expressions of individuality as being arrogant and pretentious, preferring to focus on the practical matters of life. However, it is natural for the youth of any society to push back against its norms and values, and halflings are no exception.

In Hinnisch society, it is to be expected that young people will try to act out and rebel against society. The halflings have known this paradigm for generations. As such, they do not push back against it - they know it is natural for their sons and daughters to seek out independence when they reach a certain age, and as long as they are not disturbing the peace, they are allowed to do as they please. The wisdom of the elders holds that the wayward youth will return to the ways of their parents sooner or later; until then, it is best to allow them to live as they please. Fighting against their youthful whims will only encourage them more.

When life in the Green Downs is so heavily focused on the hearth and the fields, and it is considered gauche to be too concerned with matters outside of the home, teenage rebellion, in halflings, tends to take the form of leaving their burrows in search of more adventurous activities than they are used to. They may wish to see more of the world, and to deal with the ways of big folk, integrating into society more than is common in the isolated Green Downs. This period of wanderlust is so common and accepted, it has become something of an unwritten rite of passage in halfling society - in some communities, to leave the home and live among big people is a ritual anticipated by everyone in the village at the cusp of their adulthood.

Most commonly, halflings on this excursion will find work in a given trade in human lands, plying the skills they are familiar with from their time on the farm. They may serve as farmhands or shepherds, or they may ply their trade at woodcraft (the Hinnisch are known as great carpenters). However, it is not unheard of for them to find work in less honest trades. Their quick wits and their ability to fit into tight spaces are valued skills for burglars, and many a halfling has found lucrative work among thieves' guilds and roving bands of treasure hunters.

Typically, a halfling's excursion from their society lasts a few years, and ends with them returning to the Green Downs to marry and establish a burrow of their own (men also grow out their sideburns at this time, as a visual marker of their adulthood). The majority of halflings quickly realize that the farming life is a dependable one, and far less risky than one on the road. However, some of them do choose to stay in human society, which has led to many of them integrating into the settlements of big folk. In this way, they have spread far and wide beyond their homeland in the Green Downs, and can be found just about anywhere in the known world.

Worship in the Green Downs

The halflings of the Green Downs do not construct temples. In the Hinnisch philosophy, to build a specialized edifice for prayer, with all the statuary and ornamentation that entails, is too pretentious. The Hinnisch folk prefer things to be tasteful and practical, and there is no need to pray in gaudy building when one can do so at home.

Nor do the halflings have any priestly or monastic orders. Preferring to live for themselves and to be unbothered, they have little use for rigid hierarchies that arbitrarily allot power to some people over others. Instead, halfling religious traditions emphasize the value of community, and of communal life.

The practices of the Green Downs, though ostensibly part of the same traditions as the formal Pantheonist cults, have little oversight, and they have diverged in numerous ways. A key point is that the halflings believe that anyone can lead worship - if the prayers are written down, the sacrifices to the different divinities are understood, and the people know how to interpret signs that the gods are pleased or not, then there is no need to turn to an external authority for such matters. Holy symbols in the Green Downs are not the purview of clerics, and just about every family keeps a talisman or two to ward away evil spirits, just in case.

In lieu of temples, the halflings observe communal worship in their neighbor's homes. Every other Starday, and on holidays, a given community - usually about 20 to 30 families in the same general vicinity - gathers at the burrow of one of their number (the position rotates such that a different family hosts the service each time, usually hosting once every year), where the head of the household leads them in prayer.

This entails much more than simple worship, however. Much of the Green Downs consists of isolated homesteads, so these meetings present a rare opportunity for the community to come together and for people to catch up on local gossip, considering their only other opportunity to meet up with their neighbors might be on market days. Also, given the halfling propensity for gastronomy, these meetings always include a communal meal, which tends to take up much of the day. A portion of the food is set aside for the gods as a sacrifice, but for many this ritual is merely a formality and the real appeal is getting to share in the company of one's fellows - and to partake in the food, of course. It is no small undertaking to feed an entire clan of halflings, and every host family typically spends several days in advance preparing for the feast, which often includes delicacies seldom enjoyed on ordinary days. To cook a worthy feast and to impress one's guests is an important mark of good burrowkeeping.

Though they are intended to bring the community together, it is not unheard of for halflings to rope any travelers who might be passing through or staying nearby into their services - sometimes among the congregation, and sometimes to help prepare, if they are hosting. They have been known to insist on this, whether the travelers like it or not. Even still, there are plenty of reasons for travelers to look forward to a Starday in the Green Downs. For many, a Hinnisch Starday service is as good a place to hear rumors and local news as any tavern - not to mention to get a good meal and a pint or two of ale, and for free at that. Those unfamiliar with Hinnisch practice, however, should take note that, while ordained priests and monks of most Pantheonist orders study magic and can offer their services to worshipers, most halflings do not - if one is in need of healing, they may need to ask around for an herbalist.

Friday Encounter: Gold Rush

This encounter is probably best suited to a town, either one the PCs are currently staying at or one they encounter on the road.

While the PCs are at some public space (such as a town square, inn, or tavern), they hear a great commotion all around them as one of the villagers runs in, waving around a map. They explain the news - apparently, a group of treasure hunters were recently passing through this area, and they pinpointed the location of the burial mound of an ancient king somewhere nearby. As was typical in the area, the king is surely buried with a great treasure hoard.

Now, the whole town knows there's a untold riches buried nearby, just waiting to be discovered. This certainly isn't something the people are willing to keep to themselves. Now, it's a race to find the burial mound, and the treasure, before anyone else does - and the PCs are tied up in the middle of it all!

This encounter could easily kick off several sessions in the campaign. The idea is to throw the party into conflict with a number of different factions with a common interest. The town agrees that whoever can discover the treasure first rightfully gets to keep it, but everyone would like to get a hold of it for different reasons. If the PCs decide they want to get in on the hunt as well, they may end up butting heads against the other factions, or they might decide to ally with one or multiple parties - or even play them against each other!

A few rival parties are listed below, but feel free to add your own if you run this encounter. To give the PCs more of a hook to get involved, it's a good opportunity to bring in existing NPCs the party has met before - possibly enemies, but possibly even allies to stir up conflict.

• The Treasure Hunters: A band of itinerant adventurers looking to get rich quick by whatever means necessary. They aren't from around the town, and many of the townspeople distrust them, citing their nature as outsiders as a reason to cast doubt on what they say. Nevertheless, they boast of many accomplishments and heroic deeds, and have won some villagers to their side. Consists of Edmund von Schlosser, a stoic and dutiful but not very bright fighter; Trude Dreschner, a nervous mage; Ingiz Kibiteb, a canny, scheming, smooth-talking dwarf; and Hermann, a local with romantic ideals and delusions of grandeur swayed by the adventurers' tales and motivated to join their cause.
• The Nobles: Led by Dame Berit Hoekstra, a knight in service to the local lord; she feels that the wealth would strengthen her family's treasury, and has pressed her retinue into service in seeking out the hoard. She comes from a proud lineage of knights and looks down on the common people, but believes strongly in the ideals of chivalry and will not willingly lie or misrepresent her cause. In addition to Dame Berit, the party also includes her squire Erik, a mild-mannered boy who wishes to impress her but is afraid to speak up; and two men-at-arms named Sigmund Grosse and Natascha Sonnen.
• The Destitute: A band of beggars, farmers, and other poor sorts who have banded together under the leadership of Brenno Edernsert, a local who has appointed himself as a self-proclaimed champion of the people who wishes to stand up for the common folk against the oppression of the elite. They openly spurn the nobility, but insist that the treasure must go to those who could use it most and do not believe in hoarding wealth for personal gain. They insist on dividing the treasure up among each other, so if the PCs join in they may end up with a smaller piece of the pie. In addition to Brenno, the party also includes Hilda Dreier, the daughter of an ailing farmer who wishes to support her family through uncertain times; Arne Olson, a monk seeking alms to distribute to the poor, and Matthias, a runaway slave looking to buy back his freedom.
• The Outlaws: A gang of brigands hiding in the woods on the outskirts of town who have also gotten wind of the treasure, and would be happy to have it to line their purses. They have no interests in benefitting anyone other than themselves, and have no loyalties to the town or anyone in it, existing outside of society. They are not afraid to use lethal force against anyone who gets in their way. Consists of Hector the Red, a calm and cold-blooded swordsman; Leberecht von Baren, a boisterous, hot-tempered brawler with a taste for ale; Gustav Durr, a clever cutpurse who would rather hide in the shadows than engage threats directly; and Tanja Strobel, an expert markswoman who is keen on making ambushes.
• The Lone Wolf: Franz Sauter, a gruff old mostly-retired mercenary whose years of experience have made him grow cynical and weary of the world. Still, he thinks that he has one more brush with his glory days in him, and sees the treasure hunt as an opportunity to rekindle that spirit. He insists on working alone, arguing that he knows how to handle himself, and isn't interested in sharing - or in admitting that he would need to rely on help from anyone.

To give the PCs time to interact with the different parties, make alliances, or scout out the area, it's best to run this encounter over a period of several in-game days - perhaps a week, but you can adjust this period to be longer or shorter depending on what you're looking for in terms of pacing.

There are six possible locations for the treasure, shown on the diagram here. This information represents the treasure map shown to the party, so it's helpful to provide your players with a copy; their characters know where the treasure could be, but not where it actually is.

Each hex equals three miles, requiring an hour to traverse. Roll a d6 to determine which location the treasure is at. Once a creature is in a hex containing a possible treasure location, they must make a DC 20 Investigation check to search the hex. On a success, they know whether or not the hex contains treasure; on a failure, they waste one hour looking, but can reattempt the roll at a DC of 5 less (this can stack multiple times).

The first night, none of the competing parties will attempt to search out the treasure, but the second night, one party will make a move; the third night, two parties will make a move, and so on. Determine which party will make a move randomly, then roll 1d6 to determine which location that party will attempt to search. The rules for searching a hex are the same for the competing parties as they are for the PCs.

The party can spend one hour meeting with any of the competing parties, though they may or may not share information with them depending on their relationship with the PCs. Keep track of which hexes each party has searched to determine what information they might be able to share with the PCs - though they may also try to mislead them, if they see them as opponents!

If the PCs manage to find the treasure before any of their rivals do, it contains 1000 GP's worth of gold and jewels per party member, plus one magic item that would be useful for each member of the party (DM's choice). Even if an NPC party gets to the treasure first, though, that doesn't preclude the PCs from trying to take it from them...

There are a number of ways to customize this encounter. In addition to adding more rivals, you can add monsters, hazards, or additional threats as you wish to add to the challenge - and interesting interactions could occur if the other parties run into them too. You could even run the burial mound as a dungeon with its own traps, puzzles, and guardians if you want to give the PCs an extra challenge in retrieving the treasure. An alternative way to trigger this encounter would be for the PCs themselves to find the treasure map, and for them to be a little too loose in talking about it while in public - if the locals learn of treasure nearby, it's only a matter of time before word spreads...

The Halfling Heartland

Halflings can be found in just about any corner of the known world. Of all the humanoid races, they are the most integrated into human society; although they have their own villages, many of them live alongside humans, and vice versa. Halflings - or Hinnisch, in their native tongue - migrated just as humans did, and although they tend to live comparatively sedentary lifestyles, they still found places to settle across the continent, wherever there was pleasing climates and arable land.

However, all halflings claim descent from their native land, the Green Downs - a fertile region in what is now central Vardessy, where the foothills of the rough Schaderbergen Mountains to the southwest give way to rolling highlands and lush valleys. This area boasted good soil, bountiful woodlands, and was a place of relative safety and peace, sheltered from the outside world. In a sense, it was the perfect place for halflings, and the ancestral culture of these people was shaped by the terrain in which they first settled; a culture that still holds strong to this day.

There are halfling villages across Vardessy and beyond, but the Green Downs boasts the highest halfling population in the Empire. A heavily agrarian region, it has no large cities; the vast majority of its populace live in either small villages or solitary homesteads. This is just as the halflings like it - away from the hustle and bustle of urban life, they prefer to focus on the simple things. As the Hinnisch proverb goes, as long as the sun is shining, there is food in the pantry, the livestock are healthy, and the crops are growing, there is no reason to be concerned about anything.

Of course, the halflings of the Green Downs are not without merriment in their lives. Some travelers hold their taverns to be among the finest in the land (if a bit cramped for big folk), and they gather at weekly communal meetings at each others' burrows, where there is much drinking, singing, and dancing to be had. Ostensibly, these meetings are for the reading of prayers and the offering of sacrifices to the gods (Eostre and Solenna being the most prominent in Hinnisch practice), but they also serve as opportunities for local communities and extended families to reunite, and for news and rumors to be shared.

The Green Downs are not a single province of Vardessy - several duchies and counties claim parts of the land under their jurisdiction. However, in practice, the halflings hardly know their feudal lieges' names. Their relationship with the rest of Vardessy is somewhat of a mutual agreement of isolation - the halflings stay out of Imperial business, and the nobility is content to let them govern themselves. Their lives are so mundane that conflicts rarely come up anyway, and when they do, it is usually a matter uncomplicated enough that the patriarchs of the affected families can come to some settlement. But of course, adventure can be found anywhere, for those who know where to look, and the Green Downs holds wonders of its own.

Crownlands Hex Map, Part 2

Once again, another two-part hex map. Fortunately, the remaining two regions should be more sparsely populated, so this is likely going to be the last of this size.

Click here to enlarge

Each hex equals six miles. See here for part 1.

Crownlands Hex Map, Part 1

Another month down, another hex map for the Year of the Gazetteer. Once again, this is going to be a two-parter; see here for the other half.

Click here to enlarge

Each hex equals six miles.

Friday Encounter: Rickety Bridge

Here's a simple environmental puzzle that forces players to rethink how they manage their inventory and how they approach obstacles with limited resources at their disposal. It could be used either in a dungeon, on the road, or in a wilderness environment.

The party will find their path is suddenly blocked by a deep chasm, with steep cliffs plunging 200 feet below. The only direct route across is via a rickety rope bridge - and it is obvious that it will not be able to accommodate a great weight. The PCs will likely have to leave heavier gear behind in order to get across.

It is best to tell the players the mechanics of this encounter so that they can make informed decisions about how they want to approach it. The bridge cannot bear weight greater than 300 pounds; if a load of 300 pounds or more crosses the bridge, it will automatically collapse, sending any creatures on the bridge plunging into the abyss. Furthermore, creatures bearing a load greater than 200 pounds will need to tread carefully in order to avoid putting undue stress on the ropes. For a creature bearing a load of 200 pounds to cross the bridge, they must make a DC 10 Dexterity check, or the bridge will break under their feet. For every additional 10 pounds they carry, increase the DC by 2. A creature bearing less than 200 pounds can cross the bridge without issue.

A "load" here should include the creature's weight and the weight of any equipment it is carrying or wearing - if you don't know exactly how much your character weighs, assume 150 pounds for a medium-sized creature, 75 pounds for a small-sized creature, 100 pounds for a dwarf, and 175 pounds for a goliath. A creature of large size or greater will automatically cause the bridge to break; a creature of tiny size or smaller can cross the bridge without incident.

There are a few ideas at play here. In order to make progress across the chasm, the PCs will likely have to abandon equipment, including heavy armor, treasure, and other useful things, as well as any horses or beasts of burden they may be traveling with. Whatever is on the other side, they'll have to deal with it without such assets. In a hostile environment, there may not be a guarantee that their equipment will still be where they left it if they return to the other side of the bridge to reclaim it, and the presence of such items piled up on the ground may tip enemies off to the PCs' presence nearby. Even if the PCs feel the risk of crossing the chasm is too great, such an obstacle can encourage them to seek out alternative routes, which might cause them to focus their exploration elsewhere. And if the bridge does break, now the remaining PCs will likely have to find another way around anyway!

By default, a fall from the bridge will almost certainly kill most PCs, unless they have access to feather fall or similar effects. However, you could also shorten the drop and have another area to explore below the bridge (or, conversely, change the fall to a drop into a spiked pit). Another option would be to replace the chasm with a rushing river, which could carry PCs - or their gear, if they attempt to ferry it across - downstream.