Dynamic Domains: Four Options for Proactive Pantheons

The worst thing about TTRPG deities is the certainty of it all. The mystery and myth of a terrible, powerful, ultimately unknowable divine consciousness, boiled down to entries on a table in the cleric class description.

I understand why. As a mechanical element of a fantasy TTRPG, deities are essentially an extension of character creation. A deity needs to be immediately grokable, and it helps if it makes some kinda sense within the presumed universal vanilla fantasy milieu. 

But I think there is room to make our deities more interesting without losing players. That's why I've written about how to improve pantheons quite a few times before. 

So consider the following twists for fantasy deities. Assume in each case that we're talking about deities who possess three spheres, or domains, or whatever you like to call them. Death, weather, the hunt, commerce, the stars, the sea, that sort of thing. Then alter it juuust a bit from what you would see in your bog-standard fantasy setting.

Two Truths and a Lie

Each deity is well-known for three domains. What is not well-known is that two of them are real and the third is a lie. 

The deity claims power over that third domain – or at least their followers do – but the deity doesn’t have cosmological influence over it. Maybe they once did, and hope to again. Maybe they can kinda fake it. Maybe their followers’ belief is patching the hole, or their followers are unknowingly drawing power from elsewhere. But it is ultimately a lie, and discovering that, or hiding it, or leveraging it, could play a major role in a campaign.

The Public and the Secret

Each deity has three domains. Two are commonly known, and what the deity is famous for. The third is secret, and is only known to a select few.

Those who know could be clerics and paladins, particularly past a certain level. Or it could be scholars and spies who have come across this information on their own. Or perhaps even the warlocks who draw power from that deity secretly.

Again, a secret can be a powerful motivation for adventure and for deity action as a front or antagonist. And it just raises intriguing questions. A god who is the deity of life and the sun… but also (secretly) the god of the underworld… is a bit more interesting, yes?

Rising and Falling

Each deity has three domains. In one domain the deity is rising, in another they are stable, and in a third they are falling.

This lends itself to change over time, particularly in a campaign on a longer time frame. Imagine that the game begins, and a dozen deities are each rising, stable, or falling in three respective domains out of a total count of 24. They overlap on many of these domains. 

Whenever a god achieves a goal associated with a domain, they can improve “falling” to “stable,” or “stable” to “rising.” If they are already at rising, they can force one other god to decrement their status in an overlapping domain from “rising” to “stable,” or from “stable” to “falling.”

Regional Competition

Most modern fantasy pantheons are by implication global (pan-prime-material?) This is serviceable, but also takes away one of the most interesting sources of conflict and competition that we see amongst real-world religions, as belief systems intermingle with geopolitical and national/social forces. 

Assign domains to regions of the game world. Some of these could have a symbolic relation (the sea to coastal regions, for example), but it is not required for each one. Gods have power in domains based on how much of the population within the domain-attuned area follow them. In this view, gods have quite a strong incentive to evangelize, and much of the conflict in the game world could reflect this struggle for power. Imagine that a rival army conquering your lands means not just a new ruler, but also that an entirely new god will take possession of the domain of the afterlife, and consequently the fate of everyone’s ancestors. Those are compelling stakes that can drive in-game action.

Review: Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow

Last year I ran Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow (also known in a different iteration as Ragged Hollow Nightmare). I will refer to it as NORH going forward. I previously discussed part of this adventure in my rats-in-the-basement post. 

This review is intended for DMs who might run the adventure. I would recommend readers skip this post if they think there’s any chance they’ll see this adventure from the player perspective, as the review will definitely spoil some aspects of the book. 

What It Is

NORH is an Old-School Essentials adventure for low-level characters. It exists in the same space as The Black Wyrm of Brandesford or Blackapple Burgh; a small rural region, compliant with D&D tropes, but with some classic fairy tale energy. A brief introduction explains some of the tenets of old-school play for the uninitiated. 

What Works

Fast start. The premise of the adventure is that a golden dome has mysteriously sealed much of the titular town’s populace in the local temple. The people who would typically deal with such problems are among those trapped inside. The adventurers are the most capable people left outside. This is your call to adventure. 

Grounded PCs. The PCs are locals who have returned from a local tradition akin to a rumspringa. They’re from Ragged Hollow, so they’re invested in what is happening, but they also have adventurer skills they presumably picked up on their travels. It strikes a good balance between believable PCs and player discretion in creating characters.

Good NPCs. The NPCs have nice little bits of detail, but are open-ended enough to run. Favorites of mine included the goblin Croaker, Beatrix, and Master Neven the satyr (fun to do with a Matt Berry-style voice). The NPC adventuring party has a lot of personality and was a hit with the players. They also attached themselves to Joanna, Keegan, and several other town NPCs, who are easy to personify based on the concise details provided. The goblins are particularly well-done as a troublemaking faction who can be fought or befriended, as the PCs see fit.

Complications and opportunities among the survivors. NPCs rescued from the temple present a range of opportunities and threats. Some are likely to get in the party’s way, while others could be good hirelings. You could imagine turning this adventure upside down, letting the players play the people trapped inside, and running it as a funnel.

Escalation. Things get worse as more time passes and the adventure’s McGuffin ratchets up the titular nightmare. The temple bell sounds each night at midnight, indicating the number of survivors trapped in the temple. This provides a nice player-facing clock, and provides that Strict Time Records energy without requiring the DM to explicitly signpost it. 

Presentation. The editing and language is clear and concise, with only a few minor formatting issues. I found one or two incorrect room references, but those appear to be the only content (versus formatting) mistakes in an otherwise very clean product.

What Needs Some DM Work

Every TTRPG product needs at least a little work to bring to table. The following is intended less as criticism per se, and more as guidance on where to best spend prep time tailoring the product to your table. It is longer than the above section not because there is more to "complain" about, but simply because explaining criticisms and areas of possible improvement is more word-intensive than praise.  

Too many “Huh, that was weird. Anyway…” moments. The adventure includes nightmarish events that manifest in the area due to the influence of the McGuffin at the heart of the adventure. I appreciate that these are not combat encounters, but most of them don’t “mean” anything, and vanish before the PCs can engage with them. “Thousands of white worms wriggle up through the dark soil. They hum a deep resonant chord, swaying in the starlight, before burrowing back down into the ground.” “A severed hand crawls toward the party and dissolves into red foam.”

This stuff is mostly non-interactive by design. Perhaps at some tables these work just as mobile bits of set dressing. But my players (and I suspect a lot of other players) engaged with the first few instances of these events by obsessively focusing on "what they meant.” By the fourth or fifth event, they (pragmatically and correctly) concluded that these are random, dissociated, spooky events with no inherent meaning, and just ignored them. In my game, I mostly replaced them with echoes and omens tied to interactive elements of the adventure.

The main dungeon is (kinda) linear, and presumes one method of ingress. I don’t dock points for NORH’s small regional dungeons; these are basically lairs, not true dungeons, so it is OK that the kobold caves have only one entrance and lack much exploratory complexity. The temple that is at the heart of the adventure only has one intended entrance: the belltower, the highest point of the temple, exposed after time passes and the golden dome begins to shrink. 

I don’t think this is bad, per se. It is a neat inversion of the standard bottom-to-top tower adventure. And the conceit of the adventure kinda requires it. But the game definitely presumes the PCs will quickly focus on “how to get up to the belltower” as their main goal, and the region around the adventure is geared toward facilitating that. For a number of reasons, my players did not immediately focus on the belltower, because the adventure premise and telegraphed course of action depends on several assumptions that the players may not make.

For example, it was not initially obvious to my players that the outside walls "block" the dome (i.e., that once inside one part of the building, they could move freely throughout, and that the dome would not continue to block access inside as it shrunk). I essentially had to have an NPC tell them this, so they wouldn’t completely base their plans around the presumption that the dome would continue to slow progress once they were inside.

The players also considered digging underground. Through some investigation they learned that the dome was really the upper part of a sphere (I improvised this detail), but they still considered the merits of digging. The adventure does not provide a clear indication of how far the basement levels of the temple are from the edges of the dome, so there is potentially a lot of work for the DM if a group goes in this direction. 

Eventually my group found one of the magical items that is intended to facilitate access to the tower, and did eventually get on the "right" course of action. But some support here would have been a nice addition, as it would in turn support the PCs engaging in some outside-the-box problem solving. 

The monsters attack! The adventure has a few too many encounters that only make sense as fights. There’s an overabundance of ambush attackers, some with an X-in-6 chance, others simply stating they “immediately attack.” Ambushers have their place, but too many of them train the PCs to expect every adversary to be a fight. This is especially relevant for a product that assumes at least some players will be new to old-school play, as this one clearly does, since it includes a brief primer for this purpose. I would recommend DMs running NORH spend some time developing goals and desires for some of the NPCs and monsters to facilitate more varied interaction.

The kobolds, for example, occupy one of the regional lairs, and possess one of the magical items that can be used to enter the temple. They have no named members, no connections with other creatures in the region, and no agenda. They’re just... mining. All the notes about their lair treat it as a trap-laden combat encounter. My players ultimately did decide to ambush the kobolds, and I couldn’t really blame them – the module wasn't really suggesting any other purpose for these creatures besides a fight. 

I liked the idea that the monsters in the region were affected by the titular nightmare, just like the townsfolk. I decided that the kobolds were mining crystals to trade to the bandits for stimulants, so they could avoid sleeping, and escape their nightmares. The bugbears were in turmoil because terrible dreams from the adventure's McGuffin drove their shaman to the brink of madness. I replaced the ogre with an ettin who was quite literally fighting with himself over which head would sleep next.

The temple itself is populated by monsters that are the products of nightmares. These make a bit more sense as combat encounters, since they are inherently hostile and have no instinct for self-preservation. And a few of them have neat hooks. When a nursery rhyme wolf emerged from a magical storybook, the PCs blockaded it behind a door, allowing me the unique DM pleasure of doing the whole “I’ll huff and I'll puff…” act in-game.

But several of the others are weird-for-the-sake-of-weird. Acknowledging it would swell the page count, tying particular nightmares to particular villagers would allow for some fun interactions. Rescue the appropriate villager, or understand their fears, and gain an edge over the monsters. If I were to run this a second time, I would probably embellish this aspect of the product, as the players generally liked interacting with the townsfolk, and would have appreciated some more Nightmare on Elm Street flavoring to the dangers.

All that said, I do want to again give credit to the monsters and NPCs that break the "they attack!" pattern. The goblins are the faction that shines the most in this respect, as many of them will show up in situations where they are helpless or in danger, which does a better job of opening the door to PC discretion in defining the interaction. 

This adventure could be a lot shorter than intended. My group explored two of the three regions outside the town, and we got about a dozen sessions total out of this book, which is a good return for the price and page count. But it could have been much shorter if the players made different choices! One of the three magic items that could facilitate entrance to the temple is located immediately outside of town. A group could grab that item and then wait until the temple is accessible. Sure, they would be underleveled, but that is not inherently an obstacle in OSR play. 

This isn't inherently bad. It is not a scripted adventure path, where the players are punished for not following the designer's intended path. But speedrunning this product would not be much fun, and would involve missing out on some of the best bits (like the goblins, satyr, and witch in the woods). 

Final Thoughts

We had an overall positive experience with this adventure, and I would recommend it. “Regional classic fantasy for low levels” is a very well-served niche, and there are other competing options that you may want to consider. But the inciting incident of the townsfolk trapped in the temple is a genuinely distinguishing selling point, and the organic clock it puts on events really brings the "time matters" energy to the proceedings. 

Ultimately, the adventure provides a lot of good stuff to work with, and the areas of potential improvement are a reasonable ask for the DM's tailoring and prep time. 

I give it four out of five spider-rats. Praise Halcyon!

You can buy NORH here.

RPG Scheduling: Making Peace Between the Anchors and the Corks

Scheduling is one of the most common subjects of complaints, memes, jokes, and Reddit rants in  the TTRPG world. A familiar lament: Players did not show up, game was canceled. 

I don’t typically write about the logistics of running RPGs. But I have not had a game canceled for anything short of illness or emergency in years. So just in case it is useful to anyone out there struggling with game attendance and player commitment – here are my thoughts, beginning with some simple psychographics.

Anchors Versus Corks

There are two types of schedulers in the world: Anchors and corks.

Anchors commit to participate in things and, barring emergency or unusual circumstances, it becomes a fixed part of their plans. They scope other commitments around that plan. It is solid. Their schedule is a world of anchored things among the shifting currents of life.

Corks bob and drift from engagement to engagement as the tides and winds carry them. For a cork, every event and social engagement is more aspirational than actual until it happens. They will certainly be doing something on a given evening, but they don’t quite know what it will be until that day arrives. 

No Judgment Zone

The definitions above may make it sound like I’m praising anchors and criticizing corks, but that’s not my intent. Well, maybe a little, because I myself am an anchor, as are most GMs (and more on that in a bit). I find anchors easier to understand, and I struggled for a long time to figure out the corks. They just seemed… unreliable, even sketchy people.

But I have grown to appreciate corks more over time. When corks do show up, they usually bring their best selves. An anchor will sometimes grit their teeth through a game they didn’t really have the energy or patience to participate in (I myself have occasionally been guilty of this). The cork won’t make that mistake. When they do show up, they are there because they unambiguously want to be there. 

And anchors need some corks in their game sessions to mix things up some of the time. Some of my all-time favorite sessions have featured rare appearances from corks who brought wild card energy to a table otherwise dominated by familiar anchor vibes.

Corks particularly shine in one-shots or GM-less games, where the lack of long-term commitment really lets them go crazy. Corks are usually extroverts and anchors are often introverts, although these categories don’t completely line up.

The Anchor DM versus the Cork PCs

Anchors and corks can misunderstand each other in many parts of life, but RPGs present a special challenge.

An anchor planning a party can get by on bulk alone, even if most of their corks don’t show up. Expecting 60 people, but only 45 actually come? It will probably still be a fun party, because a typical party doesn’t really depend on any particular participant being present, nor does the fun scale neatly with the number of people. And the anchor’s plans don’t change dramatically, aside from practical considerations, many of which can be controlled by common sense methods (e.g., asking people bring food and beverages means supplies will naturally line up with attendance).

But RPGs introduce a unique problem. They often pit a single anchor (in the GM role) against a group composed mostly or entirely of corks (the players). I think this is the most common source of the all-to-familiar “I had to cancel the game AGAIN ;_;” laments.

Because RPGs are really good at attracting cork players! Corks love anticipating an RPG session, even if they don't join it. The idea of creating a character and dreaming about the adventures they might have is exciting. Many corks look at your D&D night invitation the way someone in a hot air balloon might look at an impressive mountain; something exciting to admire from afar, but not something you think deeply about until the wind starts blowing you closer to its position.

GM-less, prep-less games can often be a good fit for a social group filled with corks, since they logistically work more like board games, versus the prep of the conventional TTRPG. But assume you are running a traditional GM plus players system. How can you make it work?

Knights of the Open Table 

Once we’ve accepted the differences between corks and anchors, it becomes easier to schedule with both of them in mind. And one of the best ways to do that is to run an open table.

When I hear stories about canceled sessions and failing campaigns, the most common theme is that the GM expected almost all or all of their players to be there for all or almost all of the sessions. The GM expected the players to be anchors, essentially. But some of them – or all of them – turned out to be corks. 

At a closed table, that immediately becomes a problem, because every instance of cork-like behavior disrupts the game for everyone else. The anchors are annoyed that the corks aren’t taking the game seriously and respecting others’ time. And the corks feel like the anchors are sucking all the fun out of what is supposed to be a game.

An open table avoids this issue by ensuring that no single player is essential to a particular session. Instead, the total number of players collectively provide enough “coverage” to ensure the session can happen.

My minimum quorum is usually three players (not counting myself as GM). To ensure at least three people show up, I typically invite 6-10 players to such games. People have sometimes asked me, what will I do if all 10 people show up? 

After I finish laughing, I explain that if that extremely unlikely scenario actually did happen, it would be fine. I have, on very rare occasions, run for very large groups, and while those sessions were noisier and more chaotic than normal, they were fine. The minor inconvenience of a (very unlikely) oversized session is not a big deal compared to the (much more likely) threat of an undersized one.

The Game Is Afoot, Statistically Speaking

If you are thinking that a binary of anchor versus cork is an oversimplification, you are correct. A more nuanced way to understand player attendance is to assign a predicted likelihood of attendance to each player. 

Don’t worry, you do not need to do risk-buffered forecasting via Bernoulli trials to get the answer. Back-of-the-envelope math is fine. If I were to invite six players to a game, I would feel pretty comfortable if at least two were 90% likely to attend (strong anchors); one was 60% likely to attend (anchor-leaning); and three were 25% likely to attend (corks). The specific composition might vary from session to session, but you’re almost always going to get at least three players (again, not counting the GM) out of that group.

Reassess When You Greenlight a New “Season”

While I love open tables, I will also acknowledge their biggest drawback: attendance tends to taper over time.

A new open table will draw a broad range of players, excited by the newness of the game. As time passes, the players who stick with the game will become more invested; you might even see some corks turn into anchors. But at the same time, the number of interested new players will fall off. Even if a game continues to advertise its open table status, many players will be reluctant to join if they learn that others have already been playing the game for months.

I get it. Even apart from any question of rules fluency or knowledge of the shared fiction, it just feels different to join an established group with dozens of sessions under their belt. Most open tables will eventually feature a lot of regulars, and no matter how welcoming they are, some number of new players will bounce off their established vibe.

When a game reaches that point, you probably want to talk to the players and decide how to proceed. The table may remain nominally open, but for all intents and purposes look like a closed table. It’s a good time to have a conversation about what the end of the game would look like, and to institute “seasons” that are up for renewal, with a satisfying end-point in mind.

Be Willing to Walk Away

You can do all of the above, and the same problems can occur. Too many cancelations, not enough games. You need to be able to walk away.

Your D&D group is composed of the people who show up. It doesn’t necessarily include the person who knows the rules best. Or the person who first convinced you to run the game. Or the best roleplayer. Or your sister or your spouse or your best friend. It is made up of the people who show up. 

If the game is struggling, the game is not happening. Do something else socially with those people that requires less commitment. Like a lot of things in life, a willingness to walk away when things aren't working is an important backstop for the health of the game.