The Lunar Lands Guide to Combat, Part 2

 As promised, here's the second half of my guide to making 5e combat more engaging and interesting. This part is focused on ways you can speed up combat encounters to prevent them from bogging down gameplay. For the first part, on making combat more varied, dynamic, and interesting, refer to this post.

Speeding Up Combat

Providing interesting options is just one side of the coin. In order to make combat feel less like a slog, it helps to spend as little time in combat as possible. Sounds pretty reasonable, right? Especially when you have large numbers of enemies, rounds can drag on, and it can take longer than you'd like to even thin the enemy ranks to a reasonable level. But there are ways to deal with this too.

System Shock/Massive Damage

Not everyone can keep on fighting this way.

A few games, and a few editions of D&D, have a mechanic usually called System Shock, Massive Damage, or something to that degree. Sometimes it's a core rule, sometimes it's an optional rule. By default, 5e doesn't have one - but there are plenty of house rules people have shared out there. They all work a little differently, but the general idea is that an attack that does damage above a given threshold will have consequences besides merely losing HP.

What I do is that if a combatant is dealt damage greater than half of their max HP in one attack, they must make a CON save. If they fail, you roll on a table that can produce various consequences, which range from leaving them stunned for a turn to dropping them outright. This can make dealing a heavy blow even more satisfying, and makes for a more realistic effect where combatants can't necessarily keep taking heavy hits and stay fighting the whole time through. And of course, it gets enemies killed faster.

Minions

These are minions.

No, not that kind. I'm talking about the feature famously introduced with 4e, and that, like many things in 4e, was quickly and unceremoniously dropped afterward with a tacit agreement to never speak of it again. While I understand the hate for 4th Edition in a lot of respects, let's not kid ourselves and say that it didn't have some ideas worth salvaging. And minions have definitely had some staying power with many DMs.

The most basic explanation of a minion is that it's a monster with one hit point. This doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as the monster being weak. It could still have attacks that deal a lot of damage, or it might have high AC. An ogre can be a minion, and its stat block would be completely unchanged in all respects but HP. They just die as soon as the PCs get a successful hit on them.

There are other traits to minions - to help counteract their low HP, they also don't take damage if they succeed on saves in the cases of effects where they'd ordinarily take half damage, and in 4e, they also dealt damage at fixed amounts rather than rolling. But it's up to you if you want to do these - the most important feature of minions is the single hit point.

So are these.

The idea behind minions is to simulate action sequences in movies in which the heroes mow down
hordes of enemies with ease. As such, they can lend a more cinematic feel to mass combat. They also cut down on the amount of bookkeeping you need to do to keep track of each enemy's HP, and can make battles against large numbers of enemies that would ordinarily take a long time go faster. If this is something you're after, it may be worth using. Some DMs prefer a more realistic, simulationist feel to their games, or they may feel like minions trivialize combat. I personally don't use minions, but they're certainly an option if you want to make combat flow faster.

Morale

Sometimes, running away is the only
Secret Technique you need.

But what if enemies don't need to die to begin with? In most official modules for 5e, pretty much every combat encounter includes a note to the effect of "the X fight to the death." Never do this. Unless you're fighting something mindless like zombies or constructs, or someone so blindly determined to take you down that only death can stop them, there's no reason this would be the case. Most living things are not video game enemies. They'll only fight if they feel confident they can win - if losing seems to look like a likely option, or even an option at all, survival instinct kicks in and they'll try to flee. If your enemies start withdrawing from combat more, not only will combat go faster if you don't have to kill everything not on your side to make it stop, your games will feel more realistic, and your PCs won't look quite as murderous.

Among the OSR community, you'll find many people advising DMs to make morale checks for enemies. Imagine my surprise to find out that 5e does, in fact, support this! No one talks about it, because no one actually uses it. But it is in the core rules! As written, a morale check is a DC 10 WIS save. If the enemy passes, it stays in combat. If not, it immediately goes to disengage and move as far away from the fighting as possible on future actions. Yep, it's that simple!

I suppose that part of the reason people don't use morale much any more - in addition to just being accustomed to the more simplistic behavior of enemies in video games - is because the rules may be too simple. There's no criteria given for when enemies should start making morale checks, or what circumstances would prompt them. Some other bloggers have proposed more intricate systems, but I just go with my judgment on this. Essentially, I make a morale check for any enemies I believe would reasonably feel outmatched. For instance, if a group of enemies drops to half strength, those that remain might all make a morale check - if Morglub the orc just watched five of his fellow warriors fall to the party, why should he expect he'll fare any better, especially without reinforcements to back him up? Other times, I'll roll it if a single enemy was taken out in a particularly decisive or shocking fashion (you could even tie this into System Shock), wowing its comrades into thinking their foes are not to be trifled with. If the enemies don't have magic at their disposal and they just witnessed a magic-user in the party pull out a spell they can't hope to defend against, that could also tip them off that this is trouble. Remember, you're the DM - don't be afraid to make the call!

Unique Traits

This...

This isn't something mechanical to make combat faster, but I do think it's worth discussing here if I'm going to teach you how I run combat. In battles against groups of enemies, especially enemies that use the same statblock, it can get confusing who's attacking who, especially if you (like me) use "theater of the mind" combat without maps. Sometimes it can even be confusing for the DM if they don't know which enemy to deduct HP from after a successful attack! If we want to streamline combat to prevent it from becoming a slog, one easy trick to avoid this is to describe each individual enemy with an identifying trait.

For instance, instead of "the bandit Steve attacked on his last turn" or "the skeleton on the left", players and DMs can refer to "the bandit with the patchy beard" or "the skeleton in the rusted chainmail". These traits can be as simple as describing an enemy's hair color, or what equipment they're using, or distinctive marks like scars or tattoos, but if each enemy has one, it's much easier to tell them apart. Obviously, this works easier for humanoid enemies, not only because they can wear and wield different gear but because we, as humans, are better at noticing differences in things that look like us. If the party is fighting a pack of wolves, for instance, it might be harder to come up with a unique detail for each, but there's still plenty of options - maybe one has a scar over the snout, one has a notch in its right ear, and so on.

...not this.

I'm aware that monster statblocks tend to specify weapons or armor that a given enemy uses, but just describe them differently while using the same stats. You can refer to "the goblin with the axe" and "the goblin with the shortsword," but it's probably easier to roll the same dice for attacks from both. I mean, you could look up the stats for an axe over a shortsword and track them separately for each goblin, but we're here to make combat less slow and granular.

If you use miniatures, this may be a little easier, as players are able to visually identify the unique traits of different enemies and tell which is which on the tabletop if they can be seen in physical space. The downside of this is that you might need a lot of miniatures to make sure each is distinct enough to easily be referenced - though if necessary, the same model could be differentiated with different paint jobs.

An added bonus of this method is that, in addition to making combat move faster at the table, it helps add more detail to your descriptions and can better set the scene for your players. Describing each enemy differently makes them feel less like nameless, faceless video game mooks and more like individuals. Some enemies might become especially memorable through your embellishments in ways a generic description wouldn't accomplish!

Ending Combat Early

It's probably best not to do this with
your final boss, though.

Finally, nothing speeds up combat quite like giving the players an option to bypass it or cut it short entirely. There are a number of ways to accomplish this - for instance, there could be some way to trigger a trap in the room that automatically takes out enemies, like dropping them into a pit (perhaps to make this happen, players would need to use alternate actions to operate machinery, as I discussed in our last installment). Or there might be a special item somewhere in a dungeon that could allow a fight to be avoided - perhaps an enemy is looking for something and will step down without a fight if it's offered, or a magic item could hold the key to instantly defeating a foe.

Some might find such battles anticlimactic, but there's a strong precedent behind this sort of thing. The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks often included tough fights that could be avoided if the player had a specific item or spell on hand, or else used an alternate route that got around them (if you aren't familiar with Fighting Fantasy, I can't give a big enough recommendation to Turn to 400, which will give you a good idea of what these books were like in addition to being one of the funniest blogs I've ever read). And many an old-school DM will advise against making every encounter rely on combat as the only solution.

It's important to keep in mind that both of these are relatively high-lethality systems, so a wise player would often use combat as a last resort. If the battle stood a high chance of killing the party, then most players would welcome a way around it! If you tend to run higher-powered games where PCs don't die as often, though, you may find players feeling this method is too easy.

Also, don't forget these don't have to be instant win conditions. Sometimes, the best course of action for PCs is to flee battle. When designing encounters, it's always a good idea to include something the party could use as an escape route, just so they know it's an option and don't feel forced into fighting a losing battle.

Do you have any other tips and tricks to make combat fun? Let me know in the comments!

The Lunar Lands Guide to Combat, Part 1

It doesn't really feel like this.
But it should.

First, let's address the elephant in the room. Yes, I haven't updated this blog in months. Call it a
combination of being busy with work, being busy with a move, and general laziness - but most importantly, I've also had a long post I've been meaning to get out there next, and that's what you're reading right now. I hope it makes up for the wait! 

What is there to be said about combat in 5e? I've seen discussions on numerous sites involving numerous people that have all identified it as one of the weaker parts of the system. And a lot of that boils down to the fact that combat in 5e...just isn't that interesting. There's not a whole lot of room for tactical manuevers, and most PCs are going to take the same actions time and time again - trying to hit and hoping for the best. Rinse and repeat ad nauseum until someone finally drops. And when you take into consideration how much HP some creatures have compared to their damage output, and the fact that your attacks aren't guaranteed to hit at all, it's no surprise that gameplay tends to slow down as soon as combat begins - and when gameplay slows down, you run the risk of players getting bored and tuning out of the action.

In my opinion, a good game should never be boring. That's why we play games in the first place! The good news is that, when you're dealing with a TRPG, there's infinite room to adjust the rules to your liking through house rules, homebrew, and DM decisions. If we want to make combat less boring, there's plenty of options out there. A few bloggers have written guides on the subject - and here's my addition to the pile. Here's a list of tricks I use to make combat interesting and engaging.

Making Combat More Exciting

Perhaps the most obvious way to solve this issue is to provide combatants with more things to do - other actions they can take, more elements to interact with, and more things to be prepared for. If combat requires more thought than taking the same action and rolling the same dice every round, you're already well on your way to making it more engaging.

Terrain

Take a moment to think of your favorite action movie. Pay attention to how it portrays its fight scenes, and the environments they take place in. Chances are, unless it's a one-on-one duel, you'll never see the characters squaring off in an empty, featureless room, facing each other and blindly exchanging blows. Instead, these movies take care to portray varied settings for their action sequences, using the environment to their advantage in playing into the choreography. Heroes duck fire from elevated walkways, charge down stairs, and kick their opponents off of ledges. There's no reason why your games can't be the same.

There's a reason this scene still gets talked about

There's plenty of options for terrain that can be exploited during combat. The next time you design a combat encounter, consider the environment it will take place in - and try to include at least one (more is even better) features that can be utilized in the fight. For instance, you could add a balcony to the room where enemies could fire down from (or be kicked off of), or a pit that the combatants should be wary of avoiding in the chaos of the brawl, or rubble that provides cover. This will give the players more options in terms of actions they can take and add another layer to the tactical planning that goes into their approach when they have to keep their surroundings in mind. Games like Dark Souls have some really good examples of this - most fights in that game (at least those with generic enemies) are in three-dimensional environments with ways to strike from above or knock enemies off ledges, and more often than not they'll have cover available - unless they're taking place on narrow pathways that restrict one's ability to withdraw, which itself is a factor that dynamically changes how combat is conducted.

Come on, I had to.

You can even add some mechanics to encourage combatants to use terrain to their advantage. The 5e-compatible Adventures in Middle-Earth RPG has some great rules for this, which I may need to do another post on, as they're really easy to lift wholesale and can add a lot to combat. For instance, attacking from high ground grants a combatant advantage. Dust on the floor can be kicked up to blind opponents. Fighting in deep mud counts as difficult terrain, and grants a level of exhaustion every three rounds. And so on.

Of course, you may have players accustomed to blindly exchanging blows who may be slow to realize the features you describe are more than just set dressing. It may be helpful to introduce this idea to them going in so that they can plan their actions accordingly to make use of what's at hand for them. And if you have an enemy shove them off a ledge (remember how the Shove action exists? Your players probably don't), or hit them from atop a rock, they can get the idea fast!

Alternate Actions

One big factor that tends to make 5e combat uninteresting is that, for most groups, there's really not a lot of choices to be made with combat. Every round, each participant rolls to hit, and rolls damage if they succeed. That's about it. But it doesn't have to be that way. An easy fix for this is to change up what happens on an enemy's turn. They don't have to attack every time!

A boss-type enemy might spend one turn gearing up for a strong attack that it will land on the next turn, for example - this helps to build suspense, and gives the players a chance to prepare. Enemies might use crowd-control attacks, like throwing bombs at the PCs that force them to manuever around and chage positions (again, I credit Dark Souls with imparting this lesson on me). An enemy might pull out a horn and blow a signal to draw in reinforcements, forcing the PCs to take them out first before they can gather aid. Or they might heal allies, once again making them a target worth prioritizing.

You can use this in conjunction with terrain to have enemies try to set up advantages, like disengaging from combat to try and seek cover, or running to higher ground to draw a bow and start shooting (or preparing an attack with advantage) - once again, this can also help clue PCs in to what tactical options might be available to them.

There are, of course, more combat actions provided in the rules as written, like Dodging and the aforementioned Shove. Some DMs might find combat to be livened up by throwing in some of these on enemies' turns, though I would use Dodge with caution, as it can make fights drag out longer, which is the opposite of what we want.

PCs could use alternate actions as well, of course. For another example stolen from Dark Souls, a combat encounter taking place in a room with a rope bridge could give the PCs the option of using their action to cut or untie the bridge, sending the enemies plummeting to their doom, or at least preventing them from closing into range. Of course, now the party has to find another way around!

Using Timers

In many battles I have run - which, I've found, tend to be the ones I find the most memorable - I include a timer at the bottom of the initiative track, keeping track of how many rounds have passed since the battle began. Sometimes, this is known to the players; sometimes it isn't. At a given number of rounds (usually three to five, depending on what enemies I'm using or the context of the battle), I'll have something happen that introduces a new element to the fight.

For example, if the PCs are assaulting territory held by enemy forces, it stands to reason that there might be reinforcements waiting in the wings. If you're using a dungeon laid out in advance, these could be drawn in from neighboring rooms, or just go with a good old Quantum Ogre. After a certain number of rounds, if the battle is still going on, more enemies arrive. Granted, this can make battles go on longer, but it also gives the sense that the battle is dynamically changing and staying in motion, which can make things more engaging.

You can also flip the script. Perhaps it is the PCs who are waiting for reinforcements to arrive against an attacking enemy force, and they need to hold the line for a given number of rounds before aid arrives (which could be anything from giving them NPC allies, or having an army sweep in and resolve combat altogether). Or maybe after a given number of rounds, a door will open, giving the PCs an escape route. Not only does this help wrap the battle up in a timely fashion, it also helps recontextualize the players' goals. Sometimes, holding out long enough can seem more practical - and more dramatic - than killing everything in sight. It can also allow you to throw enemies at the players they'd ordinarily never stand a chance against, since surviving a given number of rounds can be a more achievable goal than being the last one standing.

But there are plenty of other ways timers can be implemented. You could have the terrain change after a certain number of rounds - say, a giant slamming the ground with enough force to topple some rocks and trees, providing more cover or restricting escape routes (or necessitating that those falling rocks be dodged!) You could have a boss change phases and start using new tactics or attacks after the battle goes on for long enough. They don't even need to be based on rounds! Perhaps things start to change up when an enemy is brought down to a certain level of HP (like 4e used with its Bloodied condition), or when certain enemies fall, or when a certain condition is met a given number of times. Once you start using timers, you'll find there's plenty of interesting ways to implement them.

Alternate Goals

Art by Trevor Stephen Smith

Not every battle has to be about being the last living (or undead, or constructed) thing standing when the dust clears. One particularly effective way to make combat more interesting is to give it some alternate win condition - which not only makes things feel fresh and new, it can also lead to quicker resolutions if the goal can be accomplished before the last enemy falls.

Sometimes, these goals can be tied to the act of combat itself. For example, the battle might not necessarily end when every enemy is dead. It could be as simple as dropping an enemy to half HP, or even just dealing a blow that exceeds a certain threshold of damage - for instance, a duel or an instance of trial by combat can (usually) be resolved if one's opponent is sufficiently impressed with their prowess to yield. You might need to take out certain enemies but not others, such as defeating a leader and causing the rest of their allies to rout.

Other times, you can have a win condition that isn't related mechanically to combat at all. Maybe the battle will be decided once one side reaches a specific point of the area, and the exchange of attacks is simply a means to slow the other side down. Or the PCs might be protecting an ally or stronghold against the enemies and need to prevent those enemies from getting too close.

One of the most memorable combats I've ran had the PCs tasked with blocking a tunnel that an invading army was using to launch their attack. There was a crank they needed to operate a portcullis, which would block the invasion if they spent a certain number of rounds turning it (timers!). This one combined a number of different ideas I've discussed here. The PCs had to face incoming waves of enemies that were introduced each round (more timers!). There was one boss guarding the crank, which was more important than the rest of the encroaching hordes. But once they managed to drop the portcullis, the battle was over; their allies could handle the rest. Mix and match these ideas as you please to create combat encounters worth recounting!

Damage Types

There's a lot that can be done with damage types, and I don't think a lot of DMs use them to their full potential. I don't even think that they're used to their full potential in the rules as written. There are many creatures in the Monster Manual with resistances, weaknesses, or immunities to certain damage types, but when this information is tucked into the corner of the statblock, it's often easily missed. When designing your encounters, it's definitely worth taking a moment to think about how an enemy would be affected by certain damage types, and taking that into consideration while running combat.

This can make combat feel more interesting and tactical if players notice that their weapons might not be as effective as they thought, and require them to choose different approaches to deal with different enemies. It makes deciding their course of action in battle more involved than simply choosing the same attack actions every turn. As a bonus, this way, you can also move battles along faster if the PCs have attacks their enemies are vulnerable to, since it'll make them drop sooner if they take more damage.

You don't need to be too punishing with this, though. An enemy that the PCs can't hurt, or can only barely scratch, can quickly become a chore to fight, and ideally, players shouldn't feel it necessary to carry multiple weapons around they have to switch between. I don't necessarily go with what the Monster Manual says, either. My werewolves only have resistance to non-silver weapons, not immunity, and my golems can be hurt by mundane weapons (it doesn't make much sense for something made of flesh to be immune to attacks that hurt something also made of flesh), although the iron and stone varieties should definitely have immunity to slashing and piercing. I also make skeletons resistant to slashing and piercing, like they were in previous editions - now that bludgeoning deals them double damage but hitting them with swords works perfectly fine, this trait feels kind of pointless, given that it was intended to simulate the difficulty in slashing something hard with no vital organs. Anyway, feel free to tinker with this as is best suited to your table.

If you're truly a madman, there are always tables that give certain types of armor different AC values against certain weapons or damage types - for instance, plate armor might protect more against slashing or piercing damage but be more susceptible to bludgeoning. These rules can make the game more realistic and give more importance to keeping track of damage types. They also can be notoriously cumbersome and require a lot of back-and-forth page-flipping to consult, so be wary that this might not do much to help with long, boring battles!

This post is getting long, so I'm going to cut it in half here. Tune in next time, when I'll discuss how you can speed up combat so it takes up less of a session.

The Alternate Bulette Challenge

Among those versed in the history of roleplaying games, it's well-known that several perennial mainstays of the Monster Manual - the Bulette, Rust Monster, and Owlbear - were inspired by monsters included in a set of cheap plastic dinosaur toys owned by Gary Gygax. Sometimes the Umber Hulk gets lumped in with them, but it's these three that seem the most definitive.

From Tony DiTerlizzi's article on the subject

What's less well-known is that these strange creatures were most likely bootleg toys of kaiju (giant monsters) from the popular Japanese tokusatsu (live-action with heavy use of special effects - the same genre as the Godzilla movies, or other superhero series like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai, which you may know for its American remake, Power Rangers) television series Ultraman. The bulette has been variously identified as either of two monsters from the original 1966 Ultraman series - Gabora, from episode 9, or Skydon, from episode 34.

While Gabora does more closely resemble the modern Bulette, both the monster's classic depiction and the toy it's based on seem more likely to be based on Skydon to me.

Also, this is a clip from the Skydon episode.
No, you do NOT get context.

The Rust Monster is a bit harder to place, but the leading theory is that it's based on another monster from the original Ultraman - Kemular, from episode 21. Although the head is more reptilian than insectoid (as seen in the toy, either through poor sculpting, the need to dodge rights-holders, or both), the tail and the posture are a close match.

The Owlbear is a little bit different - while it's also based on a kaiju from a tokusatsu TV series, it seems to be Totsaurus from a different, non-Ultraman series, 1972's Go!! Godman. The smash hit success of Ultraman spawned a boom of kyodai hero shows (those featuring giant-sized superheroes fighting kaiju), which would give our friend the Owlbear the dubious distinction of being a bootleg of a bootleg of a bootleg.

An aside: Knowing that Gygax and his associates had access to (at least bootleg merchandise of) various works of Japanese popular culture, I'm also convinced that the Beholder was inspired by the character Backbeard from the 1960 manga GeGeGe no Kitaro, but as far as I know, this has never been confirmed.

So at long last, we have the answer to a mystery that has confounded gamers for generations. But there's something else here. What fascinates me the most about this story is how D&D as we know it could have been very different - and now, it's time for me to reveal I'm a nerd about more things than just TRPGs, history, and mythology.

See, Ultraman and its various spinoffs have been running, with the exception of a short break between 1981 and 1996, for the better part of six decades. As with many long-running tokusatsu franchises, every year, the series introduces a new hero, a new supporting cast, and of course, new enemies. Couple that with the need to bring in a different monster each week, the franchise has developed a deep rogues' gallery of kaiju and aliens over the years.

What if whichever manufacturers made the infamous dinosaurs set had chosen other Ultraman kaiju? Would the Monster Manual include menacing lobster-men? Eel-dragons? Whatever the hell this thing is?

Fellow minds of the TRPG blogosphere, I propose what I'm calling the Alternate Bulette Challenge. The concept behind it is simple. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to design a new monster based on a different Ultraman kaiju.

Here's how you can get started:

• Go to the Ultraman Wiki's Kaiju category.
• Pick an entry at random. Yes, I know there's no random page function, but use whatever method you like. If you want to go for full authenticity, you may want to only use kaiju from series that aired before when D&D debuted in 1974, but that isn't a requirement.
• Look only at the monster's visual design. Don't look into anything about its powers or backstory. Pretend you're a geeky Midwesterner in the 1970s who has never heard of Ultraman or tokusatsu, and whose only experience with kaiju is maybe watching reruns of old Godzilla movies on public television channels. You only have the design to work with.
• Stat up a monster for your favorite TRPG system based on that design. Anything beyond visual appearance is up to you; after all, Bulettes don't breath fire, and Rust Monsters don't feed on uranium (although a Rust Monster variant that only eats radioactive metals is a tempting thought for a killer DM). They don't have to be kaiju-sized - in fact, it's better if they aren't, since then they would of course be out of scale next to your medieval soldier miniatures.
• When you're satisfied with your creation, post it for the world to see!

Hopefully, we can create a fascinating look into the D&D that could have been, were it only for a few different decisions made along the way. Either way, we'll get those creative juices flowing and come up with some fodder for games. That can never be a bad thing!

The Brotherhood of Blackheads

If there's any trope in fantasy gaming I have little love for, it's the adventurers' guild. You know what I mean - an organization of itinerant mercenaries, operating in parties that take on tasks together - and wouldn't you know it, those parties just so happen to have the same breakdown of backgrounds, skillsets, and specializations as a typical group of PCs - either soliciting jobs from those incapable of helping themselves or seeking their own fame and fortune, who are willing to slay monsters, explore dungeons, and loot treasure hoards, and more often than not all in the name of wanderlust and/or profits.

To me, there is no greater flashing neon sign saying "this is a game." The typical adventurers' guild assumes that the PCs (or more accurately, the stereotypes of PCs) are not outliers; the sorts of people they are and the kind of work they do are so commonplace as to form its own immediately recognizable socioeconomic class. This, in turn, suggests that the rules of whatever game system you're playing are not abstractions of something more nebulous and harder to define, but a direct model of how this world actually functions.

Now, for some people, that's fine. There have been settings built around exploring RPG tropes and mechanics as the observable reality of the world, and some of them are quite enjoyable in their own right. However, I find it a barrier to becoming immersed in the stories we're telling at the table, and in the setting as a living, breathing world, if it seems that story and that world exist only to prop up the rules, rather than the other way around. The adventurers' guild stands out as a particularly egregious example because it's something so commonplace in games, yet something with nearly no historical or literary precedent that isn't directly traceable back to TRPGs...

With at least one notable exception.

We don't know as much about the Riga branch,
but their hall looks amazing.

The Brotherhood of Blackheads was a guild and fraternal organization that existed in the Baltic region during the Middle Ages, and whose traditions continued for many years. To understand the Blackheads, we first need to understand the context of the time. This was around the era in which trade in the Baltic Sea was largely controlled by the Hanseatic League (which is probably worthy of a post in and of itself), and thus associations of merchants and traders in this area grew very wealthy and powerful. But in Tallinn (now the capital of Estonia), the Great Guild - the most powerful of the merchant associations - was open only to married merchants who resided in or had established business in the city. Enter the Blackheads.

The Brotherhood of Blackheads (so called because their coat of arms depicted the head of their patron, the African Saint Maurice) was initially composed of the sorts of people who couldn't join the Great Guild - foreigners, unmarried merchants, and the like. The Brotherhood gave these merchants an opportunity to associate with another, and to attend the meetings of the Great Guild to keep up to speed on what the local market was like. It also gave them a chance to throw parties after work and on holidays, which they did a lot of, meeting in their halls each night for what no doubt involved a lot of drinking and merriment.

It wasn't all fun and games, though. The Blackheads had to abide by rules. Junior members of the guild had to serve established members. Those feasts were mandatory, and one could be fined for not attending them. There were also fines for insulting or striking another member of the guild - especially in public. Records speak of a fine of five pounds of wax (by medieval standards this is a lot) for grabbing another Blackhead by the hair and throwing beer in his face, which tells me this had to have happened at some point if there was a rule for it - the "Please Do Not Feed Hallucinogens to the Alligators" of the medieval world. In addition to their obligations to each other, the Blackheads also had responsibilities to the cities they resided in; at times, the guilds were tasked with tending to the altars at the local churches. In both Tallinn and Riga, the Blackheads were also responsible for buying the town Christmas tree.

But more importantly, the Blackheads were obligated to defend their cities against invasion. As the story goes, the guild was first formed when a group of foreign merchants banded together to aid in resisting the siege of Tallinn in 1343, and they were rewarded for their service with official recognition by the city. As such, military service was an important part of the Brotherhood, and at least the Tallinn branch supplied their city with catapults, cannon, and a cavalry detachment that patrolled the city walls.

Seeing it yet? We have a group of largely foreign contractors, not quite citizens, who are granted a guild in a city and serve its people, including in battle; whose members have their own business and pursue their own financial betterment but who hold their own traditions and retire to their halls to drink together. If you're looking for a historical adventurers' guild, this one ticks many of the boxes. Maybe it isn't a one-to-one match, but it's the closest I can think of.

A while back, I ran a Dragon Heist campaign with the setting transplanted to the city of Hynden in the Levic Marches - my setting's analogue for Hanseatic Livonia. In researching the history of this region, I discovered the Blackheads, and I knew I had to include them. In the Lunar Lands, they exist as the Company of Boars' Heads, a guild of those merchants and travelers who were unable to join the League of Three Crowns due to being foreign, unmarried, or both, who operate their own organization in return for serving in the defense of Hynden and performing other, more ceremonial duties (like helping decorate for Midwinter festivities). And, yes, their members might even take on some odd jobs once in a while.

Regardless of how you feel about adventurers' guilds, though, the Brotherhood of Blackheads is undoubtably a fascinating piece of history that reminds us of how colorful the past can be. It's ripe with inspiration for DMs, and something like it could fit into many a fantasy city. I'd love to see more settings take note.

More Gods of the Lunar Lands

Following on my previous post, here are some more of the important deities in my setting. Refer to that post for general details.

Olmo is the god of the sea, and all that dwells within it. In keeping with the tempermental nature of seas and storms, he is the most tempestuous of the gods, and the quickest to anger, as well as being more likely than many to seek violent retribution for perceived wrongs. Many temples offer to Olmo in the hopes of keeping him appeased in order to ensure safe journeys by sea. His children are the merfolk, who he tends to show favor to over the earthbound.

• Olmo's symbol is that of a crashing wave, and his associated colors are blue and green.
• The center of Olmo's cult is a fabled city beneath the waves somewhere in the Great South Sea, which has never been glimpsed by human eyes. However, the Water-Witches of the City-State of Ziggara are said to commune with Olmo's children and impart their teachings to mortal man.
• Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
• Domains: Tempest, Nature
• Oaths: Open Sea, Ancients
• Sacrifices: Gold, libations

Seidra is the goddess of magic and prophecy. It is she who guards the secrets of magic, sharing them only to her most trusted of mortal agents. Her orders tend to be quite esoteric and secretive and are hesitant to welcome outsiders, but for those who can secure entrance to their vaults, they possess some of the greatest archives of scrolls and spellbooks in the known world. Seidra's chosen are often granted the knowledge of the future, and many of these oracles have been sought out for guidance, though their advice is often imparted in riddles and vague warnings that one may misunderstand until it is too late.

• Seidra's symbol is a pentacle, and her associated colors are green, white, and gold.
• The center of Seidra's cult is Kveshenholm in Kvesland, and is tended to by an all-female order of mystics. It is led by Matriarch Dagny III.
• Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
• Domains: Arcana, Knowledge, Twilight, or use a Diviner to represent a cleric of Seidra.
• Oaths: Ancients, Watchers
• Sacrifices: Incense, candles, goats

Mimir is the god of knowledge - if Seidra represents knowledge over the arcane and what cannot be understood, Mimir presides over the rational world that can be understood, including history and the physical sciences. His temples often contain great libraries, and many philosophers have been trained in their halls. Those who have heard his commands describe him as being incredibly precise in his matter of speaking and using loquatious verbiage with many references to recorded facts.

• Mimir's symbol is an equilateral triangle with an eye in the center, and his associated colors are blue and purple.
• The center of Mimir's cult is Maltherios in Golnir. It is led by Patriarch Ourias XIV.
• Alignment: Lawful Neutral
• Domains: Knowledge, Order
• Oaths: Crown, Devotion
• Sacrifices: Gold, candles, incense

Weyland is the god of craftsmen and artisans, and all trades that produce objects. Valuing hard work, dedication, and artistry, he is revered as the greatest of all smiths, and there are many magical artifacts attributed to him or his saints. He is one of the most popular deities among the dwarven holds, and many craftsman guilds pay homage to him either officially or in their titles or coats of arms; in some guilds, an item cannot be considered a masterpiece until it has been inspected by a priest of Weyland to decide it lives up to the god's standards.

• Weyland's symbol is a hammer upon an anvil. His associated colors are grey, black, and bronze.
• The center of Weyland's cult is Mezurdim, the largest of the dwarven cities, located in Kvesland. It is led by Patriarch Ral VI, a dwarf who claims to be old enough to have seen emperors rise and fall.
• Alignment: Lawful Neutral
• Domains: Forge, Order
• Oaths: Crown
• Sacrifices: Coals and embers, which Weyland is said to use for his forge. Those that were used when forging a masterwork are preferred.

Nehalennia is the goddess of trade and commerce - Weyland oversees the production of goods, but Nehalennia governs how they are bought and sold, protecting merchants, dealers, and moneylenders either at sea or on the road from both thieves and dishonest traders. She is the patron of many trading guilds, including the Merchant Company of Karkossen, which includes the Patriarch on its council to bless their endeavors.

• Nehalennia's symbol is a basket of loaves, and her associated colors are blue and white.
• The center of Nehalennia's cult is the city-state of Karkossen. It is led by Patriarch Roeland I.
• Alignment: True Neutral
• Domains: Forge, Peace, Order
• Oaths: Devotion, Open Sea
• Sacrifices: Gold, silver, bread

Eostre is the goddess of fertility and the harvest. She makes plants grow and animals reproduce, and heralds the coming of spring and the rebirth that follows; the spring equinox is celebrated as Eostrefest with many processions, fairs, and ceremonies to mark the start of the growing season. Her monasteries often serve as working farms, where the faithful toil over the land to show their devotion to the bounties she gives them in return.

• Eostre's symbol is a cornucopia filled with the fruits of harvest. Her associated colors are white and green, along with pastel blue and pink.
• The center of Eostre's cult is the city of Meyhen in Vardessy. It is led by Patriarch Irnerius V.
• Alignment: Neutral Good
• Domains: Life, Nature, Peace
• Oaths: Redemption, Devotion
• Sacrifices: The first fruits of a harvest

Lady Fate is the goddess of fate and destiny. According to legend, she was once a mortal woman who, when she was supposed to die of illness at a young age, was visited by Morthanos, but the god of death was so charmed by her beauty that he refused to collect her soul. Eventually, he married her, granting her eternal life as the weaver of all things that shall happen. Her clerics interpret her warnings and advise on what must be done, but she is reckoned to be spiteful and tempestuous, and can wreak misfortune on those she scorns - often for reasons known only to her. Yes, we blame her for bad rolls.

• Fate's symbol is a loom, strung with threads in her sacred colors of red, green, and gold.
• The center of Fate's cult is Kobuz in Kvesland. It is led by Patriarch Daumantus II. However, there are many covens of witches, sometimes with their members sharing a single eye or tooth between them, who claim to know Fate's whims directly and can forsee the future.
• Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
• Domains: Knowledge, Order, Arcana, Grave
• Oaths: Watchers, Vengeance
• Sacrifices: Wheat, cattle, sheep

And lastly, one god unlike the others but worthy of mention all the same...

Reynard, the trickster god, is seen as a patron of jesters, bards, gamblers, and thieves. He is appealed to for luck, and represents chance where Fate represents what is predestined. Often, he is depicted with the head, legs, or tail of a fox, or as a fox wearing a jester's cap, but he is said to take many guises in the mortal world, working mischief against mortals and other gods for the sake of his own amusement.

• Reynard has no established cult, no teachings, and no formal clergy (where's the fun in that?), though he has been prayed to by gamblers and the desperate. However, gambling dens are often euphemistically referred to as the temples of Reynard, and in many communities, the term "Patriarch (or Matriarch) of the Cult of Reynard" is used for a person who conducts business between a town and the Caravan People - or more surreptitiously, with thieves' guilds and criminal elements.

More Amusing Historicisms

I promised I would follow up on the last post I did exploring interesting historical anecdotes that can be used for gaming, in order to both provide fuel for scenarios and help build a world that feels different than our own. Here's that follow-up.

As always, these topics have more depth than I can cover in a single post, and anyone looking for more information is encouraged to do so - I only provide a rundown for the sake of context, and ways these subjects can be explored in games.

Literacy

It's commonly understood that the majority of people in medieval Europe could not read and write. Unless you were from a wealthy family or a monk working in a scriptorium (these things are not mutually exclusive), there was little reason to bother learning - that takes time and effort, and you can grow crops just fine without being literate. I rarely see this explored in games; most DMs just assume that all PCs and NPCs are literate (at least when it comes up). And while there's something to be said for this - after all, it streamlines things, and cuts out what could be a tedious process of needing to get someone to relay any written information to a character - there was a great amount of infrastructure that sprung up to deal with this issue, and that offers some intriguing opportunities for games.

Some of the images we so closely associate with the Middle Ages arose out of necessity in order to communicate information to an illiterate populace. The colorful, descriptive names of taverns grew from the need for each establishment to have a distinctive, memorable sign so that travelers could tell them apart ("meet me at the Bull and Lion," for instance, told someone to look for the building bearing a sign with a bull and a lion on it). The elaborate stained glass windows of cathedrals depicted images from the Bible or the lives of saints so that people who couldn't read could understand the stories. These are compelling images that have survived to this day, to the point where many of us are unaware of their origins.

Other things, however, haven't survived as long - and this lends them well to livening up game worlds. Consider the town crier. In order to communicate news to illiterate townfolk, many towns would designate an official to walk through the streets ringing a bell or beating a drum, calling out important announcements, such as upcoming events or the proclaimations of nobles, or reminding people of laws. When the adoption of the printing press made mass production of written works possible, people often got news from broadsheets that were printed and pasted on the walls of buildings, but when literacy was rare, they would have people tasked with standing by these broadsheets and reading them to people who stopped by. Having a town crier in your game could be a great way to inform your players of plot points and adventure hooks, as well as providing exposition on local laws or customs of the city.

Furthermore, the fact that most people couldn't read books made plays a popular form of entertainment. These often took place at festivals or other public events, and were performed by traveling troupes or by local guilds. Religious stories or the commedia del'arte were both popular, and sometimes overlapped (The Second Shepherd's Play, while ostensibly about the shepherds present at the birth of Jesus, is largely a secular comedy until the angel shows up at the end). Having a play take place while the PCs are in town could be a fun bit of local color, and perhaps the party could even get involved in filling in for one or more of the actors.

In low-magic settings, illiteracy also provides a convenient answer to why magic isn't more widespread and influential in society. Even if magic is powerful, it traditionally requires long and careful study in order to harness that power, and much of that information is written down in books and scrolls. If we assume most people are illiterate, that restricts its availability to people who have the resources and time to pursue its study, like the wealthy or the clergy - which maps quite nicely to arcane and divine casters. For most people, learning magic simply wouldn't be worth it. This helps keep magic feeling rare and special without needing to change much about the magic system itself.

Lastly, if one wishes, it could even be possible for PCs themselves to be illiterate. Obviously, this would have a significant impact in what that character could and couldn't do, and this would have to be taken into account, but it could lend itself to some new, and interesting, challenges. It adds another step to any quest involving secret messages or arcane manuscripts - now, the party will have to find someone capable of reading any texts they find, and preferrably that should be someone they can trust!

Adventure Seeds

• Looking to spread discord, an enemy force feeds false information to a town crier so that the public will be misinformed - perhaps ahead of an attack, or to sew dissent. Can the PCs figure out the plan in time?
• A wealthy but illiterate patron has come into possession of a manuscript, and requests the PCs to decode it. When they find it contains arcane secrets or directions to hidden treasure that the patron would covet, will they do the job, or will they keep those secrets to themselves?

Oaths

In many historical societies, swearing an oath - whether it was one of alliegance to another party, a dedication to perform a certain deed, or to represent oneself truthfully when questioned - was taken very seriously. This still survives to some degree in the concept of purjury, but the way we view oaths today hardly approaches the gravity and importance with which our ancestors viewed them.

Oaths were often taken with a particular ritual involved, which could be as simple as making a specific hand gesture or as complex as making proclaimations during a feast or ceremony. In any case, it was viewed that these weren't simply promises, but vows to be appealed to the gods themselves - they would remember what was said, and they would enforce that such orders be carried out. To break an oath, then, would be considered to disobey the will of the divine. Oathbreakers were often punished severely, as their actions were seen as endangering the entire community. And even in cases where the law wasn't necessarily involved, it was believed that great misfortune would befall anyone who failed the gods this way.

To a modern eye, it might seem ridiculous that such matters were, ultimately, dependent on the honor system - but the belief in the power and sanctity of oaths made it possible to enforce complex matters in an era where the infrastructure needed to directly impose the will of a government over wider territories simply didn't exist. The entire concept of feudalism was dependent on oaths - vassals swore fealty to their lords to provide for them, and in turn, those lords were bound by their obligation to protect those subject to them. An easy way to add historical character to a setting, and to make it feel otherworldly and exotic to modern eyes, would be to work oath-taking into the practices of everyday life. When people start making oaths and depending on them with their lives, even when there's no real legal authority to enforce them, the world certainly seems less familiar.

Fantasy settings offer some especially interesting means to handle oaths, which we can see when we look at the folklore surrounding these proclamations. Throughout the world, there are many legends that speak of oathbreakers being punished with curses for failing to abide by their agreements to the gods, or of oaths being supernaturally enforced in other means. For instance, the Norse god Baldur was only able to be killed by mistletoe because it was the only object that didn't swear an oath to never harm him, and one
Greek folk song speaks of a man rising from the dead in order to fulfill his obligations to his mother. Oaths, evidently, are powerful things that transcend even the laws of nature.

In a universe where magic and gods exist, it may make more sense for oaths to hold the power they do, and it provides an easy way to introduce conflict into your stories. There are many monsters that can be justified as being spawned to punish oathbreakers, or even as the transformed oathbreakers themselves, and it's easy to work an oath broken by some ancient ancestor into the backstory of a cursed village or a misfortunate family. Perhaps even the PCs would need to swear oaths, and attract ill omens should those oaths be broken...

Adventure Seeds

• Long ago, a noble's ancestors swore an oath that they would never bear arms in the neighboring fief. The family has upheld the oath for generations, but now the fief is under attack, and they're powerless to provide aid. Can the PCs help?
• Before a difficult voyage, the PCs must swear an oath to the gods that until they return, they will not eat the flesh of their sacred animals - which, as it so happens, are the primary food source in the region they'll be traveling. They'll have to manage their resources carefully if they don't want to attract the wrath of the gods.

Slavery

I suspect this section is going to be a controversial one. To a modern reader, the very idea of slavery carries strong negative connotations, and that isn't surprising when the system is associated with some of the most notorious human rights abuses in history. This philosophy tends to get carried into the works modern-day authors produce. But for better or worse, almost every major historical civilization owned slaves, and they were a key part of society. One of my favorite bits of historical trivia is that the ancient Greeks had all the knowledge and technologies they needed to mass produce the steam engine - the reason they didn't was because they already had slaves to perform such tasks, so it didn't seem necessary. That should give you an idea of the role of slaves in the ancient world. And in a setting grounded in history, it makes sense for slaves to be present.

Part of the stigma around slavery in games comes from the fact that when most people today think of slavery, they think of chattel slavery, as exemplified the colonial-era Atlantic slave trade - an especially brutal and dehumanizing system that was controversial even at the time. However, this is far from the only form slavery took. One prominent example is ancient Rome. Although Roman slaves did not have the rights of citizens and were subject to the whims of their masters, they were allowed to hold and use their own property (in Greece, slaves could even run their own businesses), could become citizens if they were freed by their masters (whether that be due to personal choice or the slave buying their own freedom), and in later periods were even allowed to bring up charges against their masters in court. There was no association with race; although many slaves were prisoners of war, others were enslaved as a sentence for a crime, and citizens could sell themselves or their family members into slavery to pay off debts. Often there was little to visually distinguish slaves from citizens - which was in part by design, as the Romans feared that if slaves could recognize other slaves it would be easier for them to organize a revolt.

In medieval times, slavery was generally practiced in the form of serfdom, in which the workers who inhabited a plot of land were seen as part of the property; if the land came under new hands, the serfs would too. There was immense variation in this practice alone over times and places, but largely, serfs owned their own property and worked their own fields, but were not allowed to leave and would be obligated to provide service for their master as well, in addition to paying tithes. This was a part of life that everyone expected, and played a part in the functioning of the feudal system. In fact, by some records, medieval serfs had more time off of work than modern laborers, as many lords knew that overworking or mistreating their serfs would make them less willing to provide the services they depended upon.

All of these, of course, are still unethical by modern standards, but there's no reason they have to be by the standards of your game world. Having slavery in a setting, and having it be accepted as normal and not worthy of outrage, would certainly make the setting feel less like modern times. Of course, this is something you shouldn't commit to if you don't know your table. Many players are used to slavery being exclusively the domain of villains, and they may be unwilling to trust NPCs who own slaves even if they're only mentioned as a bit of background color. More importantly, some players may find the presence of slavery without it being treated as unethical in-universe to be offensive, and since games are supposed to be fun, it's never worth compromising your players' enjoyment for the sake of worldbuilding. But in a group that knows to expect slavery as a part of the setting, it offers plenty of areas to explore. If the players are so willing, slaves of the PCs could become recurring characters and could earn their freedom over the course of the campaign; one PC could even be the slave of another. And for a more treasure-focused campaign, an escaped slave in search of gold to pay for their freedom would make for a compelling PC backstory.

Adventure Seeds

• With apologies to the Anglo-Saxons: A runaway slave has stolen treasure from a dragon's hoard in order to buy their freedom - and now the dragon is attacking!
• After a feudal lord has gained control of a new fief, its serfs are unhappy with the new management, and are planning to rise up. Will the PCs aid them, or will they quell the rebellion?

With that, I've presented a number of historical phenomena that can be used to help your game worlds feel distinct from the modern day. I'm interested in hearing what other DMs have done with these ideas or others. What do you do to challenge the expectations of players used to more modern norms and ideals?

Historical Versimilitude for Fun and Profit

Some time ago, I wrote a post explaining the phenomenon of Flintstonism - the idea of ostensibly setting a story in historical era (or something resembling a historical era), but with the conceptions of modern times. As I stated there, there's nothing wrong with that - it can make topics more relatable and more relevant for modern-day readers, or in this case, players. However, if you would like your ancient or medieval fantasy game worlds to feel more authentically historical - or just add some color to your setting - here's a few simple examples of things you can play with. For each, I've included a couple of adventure seeds to show how you can exploit these differences for interesting gaming sessions (and introduce them to players in the process), but of course, the possibilities are limitless.

A note before we begin: these are obviously complex subjects, and there was immense variation between different eras and regions. This isn't meant to be an educational piece, more of just some examples of historical details and practices that can create fun opportunities in an RPG and allow for worldbuilding. Those more interested in the subject are encouraged to research further. 

Inns

On my last post, the esteemed Solomon VK of World Building and Woolgathering (a blog worthy of a look!) described how he forced his PCs to share a room at the inn in order to shake up their expectations of what inns were like. That's a good example of using historical versimilitude to provide new challenges in gameplay.

The inn is a staple of medieval fantasy, and it's particularly close to the heart of many a gaming group - "you all meet at an inn" is such an oft-used start to a campaign that many DMs have gone out of their way to look for alternatives. Unfortunately, the inns most D&D players think of have more in common with a modern-day hotel than anything from the Middle Ages. Most often, every patron will have a private room with their own bed, or perhaps two beds to a room, enough for everyone to comfortably split up. It's the sort of convenience we're used to - but your average medieval peasant would likely find it an incredible luxury.

Some inns might have private rooms, particularly larger ones in larger cities or well-traveled roads. But it'd be more common for patrons to retire to a common room with multiple beds, and often, they'd pack as many people into each of those beds as possible. Sharing a bed with a complete stranger seems unthinkable now, but when space and money was scarce it was simply the most practical thing to do. Even then, sometimes travelers wouldn't even have that - after the bar on the ground floor closed, the tables would be turned into sleeping spaces for the patrons. With the idea of the quaint, rustic, comfortable inn so ingrained in the popular imagination, forcing a party to cram onto the same mattress as a couple of strangers is sure to shake up expectations, and would likely provide for a memorable experience - certainly more so than the everpresent inn cliches would.

For that matter, the concept of inns as a discrete business was far less common than those raised on RPGs would be likely to believe. Many times, an inn was simply the house of one of the townspeople who opened their doors for travelers, who shared the same living space and accommodations. Other times, travelers would have to settle for sleeping in a barn. This might seem risky, but it was generally agreed to be a serious crime to betray hospitality, and many cultures respected this; for an excellent exploration of the concept of the guest-right in a fantasy setting, check out this post from Rosalind Chapman. Another interesting detail is that the conversations between travelers and their hosts were often how news spread in times before mass media and widespread literacy - which means it would be a great opportunity to sprinkle in rumors and adventure hooks, or even have the exploits of the PCs grow into tall tales. Perhaps their stories of recovering treasure from a sleeping dragon's hoard pass from their host to others, drawing the attention of curious villagers who end up drawing that dragon's ire!

For more information, Annwn Magazine published a quite extensive review on the subject, available here.

Adventure Seeds

• At an inn, the PCs must share a communal bed with a few other patrons - one of whom is an old enemy of theirs from the past. Are they plotting something, or will they respect the guest-right? Can they be trusted?
• When their travels take them to a remote village far from any major roads, the PCs find that there hasn't been enough traffic to justify the construction of an inn - and the townsfolk are slow to trust outsiders. How will the party win their good graces?

Feudalism

If there's any concept ubiquitous in studies of the Middle Ages, it's the role of the feudal system. The topic is too broad for me to cover here; I'm just a DM who runs a gaming blog as a hobby, and you shouldn't expect an in-depth exploration of a concept that displayed great variation from time to time and from place to place. Instead, I'm just going to focus on the broader concepts of the feudal system, and how they can be used for gaming.

Many settings seem to assume a modern understanding of how geopolitics work - the law of the land is absolute, and directly centralized from the capital. But that's something that often requires complex infrastructure in order to work; you need to make sure people can get from the capital to any point in the kingdom in a reasonable time, and without important details of an order being lost along the way, to ensure communications stay consistent. Even the ancient empires of Rome, Persia, and China had to overcome this obstacle. And in medieval Europe (along with other areas, most famously Japan), local rulers had a lot more sway. As long as they were paying their tithes, they were essentially left to their own devices.

For that matter, the term "capital" would more accurately describe wherever the king was at the time rather than a permanent residence, but that's another matter entirely.

Essentially, at the very bottom of the ladder, you had your serfs and peasants. They were subject to a lord (typically a noble, but sometimes a clergyman), who they supplied with a tithe, or tax, in wealth or goods in exchange for protection. That lord would then be subject to other lords higher up the pyramid - counts, dukes, and the like - and ultimately everyone was subject to the king. Again, this is a gross oversimplification, but it does the job for my purposes.

Many settings assume some sort of feudalism in the background, but it rarely actively comes into play beyond a few NPCs having noble titles. The fun part of feudalism is that it lets you have both sweeping courtly intrigue that could impact the fate of entire kingdoms and independent points-of-light-in-a-sea-of-darkness, depending on which strata of society you focus on. The Lunar Lands might look like a number of large unified countries on the map, but when you zoom in, each nobles' holding is its own autonymous statelet. This expands the range of stories you can explore. If you want to tell stories of ambitious nobles plotting within the courts, you simply focus on what the king is doing. If you want to make your villain an oppressive petty noble who subjects his people to brutal taxation in order to serve his own corruption, you make him a feudal lord under that same king, who may not necessarily approve of what he's doing, but then the king doesn't have reason to care as long as the wealth eventually gets to him.

In some places, it wasn't uncommon for feudal subjects to squabble among each other, even those under the same liege. Perhaps a lord wants to extend his reach by taking over some territory from a neighbor, either by sending men-at-arms or trying to persuade the subjects to swear alliegance to him instead. If you wanted to incorporate political shakeups into your setting, you can do so while still keeping the status quo more or less the same if they happen on the lower levels of the feudal ladder. If you use domain-level play, feudalism can also lead to a sense of progression as PCs build more and more favor with their betters, and may be granted greater and greater power as their domains expand, going from competing against frontier barons to exerting influence on the higher courts. The same lords they once worked for could even become their vassals, and may need to be called upon in times of need.

Adventure Seeds

• An ally of the PCs can't pay tithes to their lord, and now they risk being cut off from their protection - and with threats afoot, that's too great a risk to afford. Will the PCs solve the problem keeping them from their duties? Will they appeal to the lord instead?
• Two minor nobles covet each others' land, but they're both vassals to a count who would like things to stay peaceful. When one of them has his men disguise themselves as bandits to wage war under their masters' nose, will the PCs discover there's something bigger at play?

Law and Justice

Now this is a fun one. Not always fun for the people accused, of course, but the topic of justice in the ancient and medieval world is ripe for exploration. There were, of course, codified systems of law dating back even before Hammurabi, but their importance has often been overstated by historians and the general public alike (the Magna Carta, for instance, was specifically about royal authority over nobles, and several kings ignored it anyway). Often, laws were whatever the greatest authority decided upon. This ties into feudalism - if one of the duties of a lord was to provide safety and stability for his vassals, then dispensing the law was part of that.

Early in the Middle Ages, courts were typically held at a lord's...well, court. The accused and any relevant parties would be brought before him, or a magistrate appointed by him, and their sentence was determined accordingly, which would then be carried out by a reeve or baliff. This, of course, meant that lords were free to decide the law as they pleased. You could be fined for wearing clothes that were too fancy, or taxed for having a beard. There were some treaties that limited this to some degree at various times and places, but overall, it's a far cry from the consistent and agreed-upon laws modern people are used to. Strictly speaking, a corrupt lord who always ruled in the favor of his allies wasn't doing anything illegal, even if it was frowned upon. And, of course, this makes them very useful as villains, as anyone familiar with the Robin Hood mythos can tell you.

Towns, which would increasingly fall under the influence of guilds and councils of influential citizens, had their own laws - and as such, the law that held in one city might not apply to another. Some towns, for instance, prohibited the bearing of weapons unless they were "peace-bonded" with a leather strap to prevent them from being drawn from their scabbards. The Bergsburg Project, a community-sourced city supplement for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, details one town square containing a stone that was once believed to control peoples' thoughts, so legally anything spoken by anyone touching the stone - no matter how seditious - cannot be punished. I love this. It's the exact sort of specific that seems like it could be a real medieval town law (I wouldn't be surprised if it was directly based on one). It's a concept I've stolen, and one that gets me thinking about what other silly local laws could exist in my setting.

In addition to how laws were decided, the ways in which they were enacted would also be unfamiliar to modern eyes. How many fantasy stories can you think of in which criminals were locked in a dungeon as part of their sentence? This is familiar to us in an era where incarceration is a common punishment for severe crimes, but in the actual Middle Ages, it was more likely that this would be done to keep the criminal from running away before their sentence could be determined. Actual punishments were more likely to involve public humiliation (eg. being put in the stocks to be pelted with rocks and vegetables), corporal punishment (having a hand cut off for theft), or both (being locked in a gibbet on the side of the road to starve). It may seem barbaric to us, but to people of the time, this was simply part of life.

One particularly interesting concept is that of trial by ordeal. In short, the accused would need to perform some sort of task, and based on their response, it would be determined if they were guilty or innocent. The idea was that if they were innocent, God would have intervened on their behalf. For example, if the accused could walk across hot coals without being hurt (or if their wounds healed within three days), they were innocent. And then, of course, you had trial by combat, in which whoever won a duel (either personally or by way of a champion - perhaps the PCs could find themselves filling in) were declared the winner of the dispute. In a fantasy setting, this could be expanded upon with the use of magic to ensure the ordeal works, or perhaps things truly do work by divine intervention!

Furthermore, we must discuss the concept of outlaws. The word originated from the fact that wanted criminals could be declared to legally be outside the law, and thus, anything done to them up to and including murder was legal. However, this did not apply to churches, which were considered to be under the authority of God, not whoever owned the land they were on - and thus, an outlaw would be protected as long as they stayed inside a church (hence the concept of sanctuary). There are a great many quirks to medieval and ancient laws that could translate into some great gaming material, and all of them help make a game world feel more distinct, immersive, and unlike the real modern world.

An Addendum: Since this post was first published, my players managed to exploit the medieval justice system beautifully in a way that used the established context of the setting to their advantage. When one of the PCs was on trial for murder and brought before the lord, the others - having appealed the god of death for a miracle to restore the victim to life - presented said victim alive and well. The lord had absolutely no response to this, as it wasn't a situation he would ever be prepared for...and so he pardoned everyone involved, because if he was unable to weigh in on the situation he had no choice but to concede that he had no authority to act upon it (he is, after all, the lord of the land, and if his word is law, how is the law to handle something he has no words for?). That was some brilliant thinking on their part, and it deserves a mention here to show what players can do with these tools on the table.

Adventure Seeds

• The PCs are in a village where the local cult of the cleric's patron deity practice a form of trial by ordeal - but the cleric finds they (or others they know should be) aren't protected. Has the village fallen out of favor with the god, or is it all a ruse to control the populace?
• An outlaw takes shelter in a temple, insisting that they're wanted for a crime they didn't commit. An angry mob has surrounded the temple waiting for them to emerge, and the priests are growing impatient. Can the PCs clear their name before the oath of sanctuary is broken?

I have many more subjects I would like to discuss, but this is getting to be a long post, so I'm cutting it in half here. Let me know how you've introduced aspects of historical culture into your games, or if there are any other topics I should cover!