Appendix N: Epic Duels

Sing, O Muse, of the wars between the stars.
Sing of the clash of light, the hum of the blasters
The sith speed sith speed sith speed super sith speed sith speed super sith speed
The all too 5/1, the future foreseen
Sing, O Muse, of a game that is a board game, a card game, and a minis wargame all at once.

This is a post about Star Wars: Epic Duels, the game that formed the core inspiration for the experience loop of combat in Against the Fall of Night.

As you might guess from the name, Star Wars: Epic Duels is a Star Wars boardgame in which players take on the roles of characters from the Star Wars universe.  Each player selects a character, but each character also comes with one or more secondary characters attached to them.  For example, if you play as Darth Vader, you also control two Stormtroopers; if you play as Han Solo, you also control Chewbacca.

Your actions are determined by a deck of cards, unique to your character choice (Darth Vader has their own deck, Han Solo has a deck, Obi-Wan has a deck, Yoda has a deck, and so on).  These cards are your actions.  You start the game with some cards in your hand.  On your turn, you get to roll a die to see what movement you can do; you might be able to move all characters you control some squares, or move only one character some squares.  Then you can take two actions, which in short, an action is to either play a card or draw a card (or you can discard a secondary card to heal your main character, if you have no secondary characters left, but in general, it's either play a card or draw a card).  Cards are either basic or special.  A basic card has two numbers on it; one for attack and one for defense.  Special cards might have attack, defense, both, or neither, depending on what they do.

The most important part, though, is the overall flow of gameplay.  To make an attack, you choose an attack card, but do not reveal it.  The defender chooses a defense card and reveals it, and then you reveal and compare your attack.  If the attack value is higher than the defense value, the defender takes damage equal to the difference; if the defense value is equal or higher, nothing happens.  You don't know what the attacker has in their hand, but you know generally what's in their deck.  For example, Darth Vader has a special attack, All Too Easy, which has an attack value of 3 if defended against or 20 if not (which is enough to one-shot any character).  So when Vader attacks you, and All Too Easy hasn't been played yet, it can be using a card as a defense that normally you wouldn't bother with.  

You may also notice the way that this interacts with hand economy; if multiple people attack the same target, that target is going to run out of cards to defend with.  In a 1v1 duel there will be a flurry of activity as you both attack and defend, then a break as you both draw cards to refill.  This is a gameplay pattern that strongly matches lightsaber duels in Star Wars, with a flurry of activity followed by an exchange of quips or high-altitude chase or other event.  It's also fundamentally an exciting and fun experience.

So what can we take from this for RPGs?

First, movement is important, and forcing choices with it can be valuable.  In Epic Duels, you don't control your movement; you roll the die each round to see what your available movement options are, and then you do the best you can with what you get.  In most RPGs, this kind of uncertain movement would be simulated with checks to see if you get to do the movement you want, and you don't move if you fail.  Making it more like Epic Duels would give you move control and more options, by letting you know at the start of your turn what your movement options are.  In Against the Fall of Night, movement isn't randomized, but you have to pick between Half Movement or Full Movement, which occur at different times in the round.  The thing that they share is the knowledge at the start of the round that you need to plan what you want to do with your movement, and different goals will require adaptation to circumstances.

Second, the back-and-forth gameplay of attack-defend is exciting both to experience and to watch.  Many RPGs have the problem of players not paying attention outside their own turns, because nothing happening will affect them and it's not interesting to watch.  But by adding a back-and-forth comparison mechanic, we can recreate a higher energy event that's more interesting for everyone involved, which results in higher investment both from the active player and from the players watching.  In AFN, I took away the blindness of the mechanic; the attacker's information is revealed to players before they choose their defense, and this is because it's a GM-player split instead of a player-player split.  Because non-player attack options are theoretically infinite, instead of coming from a known deck like in Epic Duels, the way to get back the excitement of 'is it All Too Easy' is actually just to tell the players 'it's All Too easy, what are you gonna do about it'.  If a monster threw that out there unprepared, it would just be a surprising gotcha, but if the player knows that this will kill them without defending, it lets them make interesting choices.

Finally, the hand economy lets us have an organic and organically interesting mechanic for ganging up that reflects how boned you are trying to fight 1v3 without needing to adjust numbers or do anything complicated.  In Epic Duels, if you're outnumbered like that, you're going to get your cards ground down and you're going to die unless you can counterattack and defeat them very quickly.  In D&D-like games, it doesn't matter, you're just going to compare your HP pool to their HP pools and if you have 3x their HP, you're still in good shape 1v3.  This made its way into Against the Fall of Night with the attack point/defense point economy, instead of hand economy; you have a certain number of points to attack or defend with, and if you face multiple enemies, you're going to let more things through than if you faced only one, either by using weaker defenses or by not defending at all against some attacks (not defending at all is bad.  You don't want that.)  But by doing so as an economy choice, instead of a numerical modifier, it's intuitive, organic, and requires no additional effort in resolution.

And that's why Star Wars: Epic Duels is in the Appendix N for Against the Fall of Night, and my design theories in general.

Holes of the Systemic Variety

From the widest gully to the deepest trench, holes define who we are and where we are going.  And although Rover here may not know it, he is participating in a ritual as old as time itself; he is giving birth to a hole.

I mean, uh, holes.  That's what this post is about.  Specifically, systemic holes.  In order to talk about a systemic hole, first we need to define them.

A systemic hole is a hole in a system.

Ok, that was easy.

The question then is, what is a hole in a system, and how do you identify them?  No system will cover everything, and it shouldn't be expected to.  A system actively choosing not to cover or include something is not a hole; it's a wall, a boundary.  Just like people, it's good for systems to set boundaries and enforce them as needed.  

A hole is something you trip over or fall into.  It's nothing where you expected something.  It gets in your way and blocks travel, or you get stuck inside it and can't get out.  So a systemic hole is a place where a system failed to include something that it implied; a thing that the system seems like it wants you to do, but then gives you no way to actually do it.

An easy example from recent times would be ship combat rules in the 5E Spelljammer adaptation.  The setting has ships, it has combat, you'd think that you might want to do both of these at the same time; but the rules given for it are anemic at best, basically just a handwave about how to use your ships to do personal scale combat.  This is a systemic hole, because the system leads you to expect something and then you fall in a hole.

This implies two basic things to ask.  First, if you're designing a system, how do you avoid filling it with holes?  Second, if you have encountered a hole in a system that you're using, what do do you do about it?

When designing a system, to avoid holes, you need to maintain your focus.  Set your boundaries and stay within them.  A lot of holes in systems are the result of the designer not staying within the boundaries that they set.  If you're making a fantasy adventure game, for example, and you add a throwaway line about "Players may be able to rule domains and engage in mass combat", you just dug yourself a hole.  Players are going to want to do that and they will go looking for the rules, and then they fall in the hole because there's no rules there.  If you can't resist mentioning things like this, make it clear that they are out of bounds for this game right now; for example, "Future supplements may add options for ruling a domain and mass combat" or "If your players want to take over the world, you're on your own, good luck GM".  Again, just like people; set your boundaries and communicate them.  There are no holes outside the boundaries of your system (or, if there are, they're not your problem).  The only holes you care about are the ones inside your system area.  Your system is about the things that it is about.  If someone wants to use it for something else, that's their problem.  Don't dig holes inside your system boundaries, making the game worse for people trying to play it as intended, just to support a hypothetical person who wants to take it outside the bounds.

The second question is what to do about it if you find a hole in a system you're using.  There are two basic options for this; go around it or fill it in.  Going around it is much easier, but harder to describe, so we'll talk about filling it in first.  Filling it in just means homebrewing something.  A complete explanation of how to homebrew things is outside the scope of this post (so it's not a hole that I'm not explaining it), but Ten Rules of RPG Design is a good place to start.  You fill in the hole by providing the missing rule or rules.

To go around, you do the opposite; you remove the rules that imply the hole.  Using Spelljammer as an example again because I'm too lazy to think of a second example, the grid-scale ship movement rules are the strongest implication that there should be ship combat rules.  So you remove them.  Ships can't move on a grid and there's no particular way to track that.  Now no one expects ship-to-ship combat; if you want to get in a fight in space, you do it using your personal-scale grid rules.  The lack of ship-to-ship combat is no longer a hole, no longer implied that it should be part of the game, because a new boundary was drawn, and it's outside the boundary.

Holes are all about expectations.  A hole is something you trip over or fall into.  If you know that there's nothing there, that the space you're about to travel to is out of bounds, then there's no problem; you're forewarned and, hopefully, forearmed.  If your system correctly sets and communicates your boundaries, it will make expectations clear, and there will be no holes for anyone to trip over.

On Metagaming

Depending on who you ask, metagaming can vary between 'the reason we play' and 'cheating, get out'.  This is in part due to changing definitions over time and in part due to differing expectations.  The basic problem is that we're all using the same word to mean different things, and then interpreting the meaning differently, and the whole thing is a huge mess.  I'm going to muse about the different kinds of metagaming, and the different ways that it was expected to be used in old-school games, here for a little bit.

First to note, although oldschool and OSR gamers are among the most likely to call metagaming cheating, there were absolutely aspects of what we'd call today metagaming that were a normal and expected part of OSR gameplay.  I've mentioned a little of this elsewhere and may talk more about it in the future, but a lot of the very early games were actually more roguelikes than they were a modern conception of RPG.  If you consider the original stories of Castle Greyhawk gameplay, the expected pattern of play was to go into the dungeon, die, make a new character, and try again with the information you learned from your previous character.  This is a roguelike play pattern (and also obviously a form of metagaming).

As a result, in old-school expectations, the core distinction between 'normal gameplay' and 'cheating' isn't whether or not the knowledge is purely in-game; the distinction is whether or not the knowledge was gained through gameplay.  It was expected and normal for you to use your own knowledge and your own experience, about the game and about things outside the game, to assist in gameplay, and that's still expected today; anyone someone mentions 'player skill', that's a form of metagaming.  It's not a negative thing and is designed as part of the games and play culture.  The most common example of this is the fact that trolls are weak to fire.  An experienced player, who has encountered trolls hundreds of times before, is expected to know that trolls are weak to fire and no one considers this a problem.  This is because the experienced player has learned that through gameplay.  If, on the other hand, you encounter a unique monster and you learned its weakness by reading its statblock, this is considered cheating.  That's because you didn't earn that knowledge through gameplay; you got it by reading the module or the splatbook or whatever.

Similarly, if your new characters go back into a dungeon that your former characters died in, that was expected for you to use your player knowledge; your existing maps, your knowledge of traps and monsters.  You earned that knowledge yourself by playing through it.  If you've never been in this dungeon before, and you learned about it through reading the module, that's cheating.

So we can see different kinds of metagaming here, and distinctions between them, and one is considered good and normal part of gameplay and another kind is considered cheating.  Obviously, the line as to whether something is good or cheating is about play culture and expectations.  Talk to your groups, people.  In order to help distinguish between different kinds of metagaming, I'm going to classify a few types and give them names.

First up is meta-consideration.  Meta-consideration is the recognition that you are playing this game with real humans and you should consider their existence, experience, and opinions when you make decisions.  Every form of RPG gameplay that I'm aware of considers meta-consideration to be an unalloyed good, and frankly I wouldn't want to play with anyone who disagrees.  An example of meta-consideration is choosing not to summon a giant spider, and getting a pair of wolves instead, if a fellow player is arachnophobic.  The vast majority of meta-consideration boils down to 'don't be a dick', but sometimes it's more complicated.  Usage of safety tools is also an example of meta-consideration.

The second type identified is meta-tactics.  This includes knowledge like 'trolls ill like fire', or simply discussing tactical options with players out of character (whether it's done in downtime or during combat).  I have encountered traditions of roleplaying where meta-tactics is considered negative (I used to play a LARP that permitted some forms of meta-tactics, but considered others to be cheating), but in the majority of situations, it's considered fine to good.

Our third type listed here is meta-knowledge.  This would be using knowledge about the game world that was learned through gameplay or appropriate player-available sources, but not with your current character.  An example would be using the same dungeon map for Castle Greyhawk despite the fact that you started that map six characters ago.  Meta-knowledge is considered negative or up to cheating in most traditions of roleplaying I'm familiar with; but as described above, in sufficiently old-school traditions, it was normal and approved.

Finally, we have meta-cheating.  I feel no need to hedge on this category because every tradition of roleplaying I'm familiar with considers it cheating.  This would include things like reading the DM's notes, reading the module ahead of time, playing the game with a Monster Manual open to read all enemy stats, and so on.  The use of knowledge that was never gained, never earned, and is not expected to be available to players, and usually includes lying to the other members of the group about where the knowledge came from.

I don't expect people to start using these terms instead of calling things metagaming; I'm probably not going to use these different terms myself.  But I think splitting it out like this helps identify, at least, the idea that there are different kinds of metagaming, and that different traditions and cultures of play will approve or disapprove of these things in different ways depending on context and details.  In very old games, meta-cheating is the only kind that is explicitly considered negative and meta-consideration the only explicit positive; but the other kinds could be positive or negative, depending on whether or not the knowledge was earned through your own gameplay at some point.  In more modern, more character-focused gameplay, meta-consideration is usually positive, meta-tactics are a maybe, meta-knowledge and meta-cheating are a no go.  

Find your culture and find your sweet spot for your own group; both blanket bans and blanket approvals will tend to fail because context matters.

The Nodecrawl Post

 This is the nodecrawl post.  A nodecrawl is the way that I tend to think about information that isn't organized in a more specific way.  As this post will later define, there are many ways to think about information at different levels of abstraction and one or another can be the best for you.  The nodecrawl is the most universal, and therefore most abstracted, way to think about pacing and travel through a sequence of imagined spaces or units of time.

Thesis: All crawls are the same thing, a way of presenting and pacing travel through an imagined space or time.  They can be generalized as nodecrawls, where you move from node to node through linkages.  A linkage is how you travel from one node to another node.  A node is not a point of interest, though it might contain points of interest.  Rather, a node is whatever location or nexus you can travel within without needing to engage your systemic travel mechanics.  Use of a linkage moves you from one node to another but engages the systemic travel mechanics.

Here's some examples of existing things expressed as nodecrawls and the mechanics they use:

Classic dungeon crawls:  A room is a node.  Moving from one room to another takes up 1 turn of game time.  Events such as random encounters may trigger when moving or as time passes, torches burn down, etc.

Hexcrawls:  A hex is a node.  Moving from one hex to another requires your game's overland travel mechanics.  Exploring within a hex uses different mechanics, details varying by exact game.

Citycrawls:  A district or neighborhood is a node.  Moving from one district to another utilizes your travel mechanics, while travel within the district (from one shop to another) does not.

Wavecrawls:  An island is a node.  Moving from one island to another utilizes your game's travel mechanics.

Skycrawl:  A Land is a node.  Moving from one Land to another uses the travel mechanics.

If you're famliar with all of these, you might notice an additional thing; points of interest can occur during a linkage as well as at a node.  If you're trying to draw this on an actual hexmap, this can be annoying, because you need to place it exactly within a hex and figure out which hex it's in, since you're in the process of moving from one to another.  With a nodecrawl map, it's easy; you just put it on the linkage that goes from A to B, and when the party travels from A to B along that linkage, you know that they have the option for that PoI along the way.

A node and its linkage can be defined at whatever level of 'zoom' or abstraction that you want to define it at.  It's also worth nothing that this helps free up easy ways to diagram things that are not limited by in-game terrain; a shortcut or teleportation portal, for example, is annoying to include on a traditional hexmap.  But on a nodecrawl map, it's just another linkage.  A has a linkage to B, and also a linkage to F.  Of course, you don't have to explicitly diagram out every possible linkage either, if you're doing something like a hexmap or a dungeon map.  On a standard hexmap, every face of a hex is a linkage to the other hex that it touches, unless you need to define otherwise (perhaps a range of high mountains can be accessed only through one face of its hex, and none of the other faces are linkages, which you could diagram on the map by putting a / though every inaccessible face).

Here is a very simple example nodecrawl about climbing a mountain.  On the map, nodes are labeled as N# and linkages as L#.#.  The two numbers for a linkage are the two nodes they connect.  (It's easier to understand when looking at the map than the list.)  Details of linkages are defined only if they're interesting; otherwise, they are mentioned but not defined, and assumed to follow standard travel rules for the area and system.  One-way linkages are notated with a crudely drawn triangle on the map; they are also only mentioned on the node that you can take them from.

(Map note:  Note that the actual arrangement of the nodes doesn't matter, just the linkages between them.  I'm sure there's a better way to draw this.  I made it in Paint in 5 minutes and I can't draw the broad side of a barn.)

N1: Base of the Mountain

Linkages: L1.2

The base of the mountain.  Contains base camp as a point of interest.

N2: Ascent

Linkages: L2.3, L1.2

The ascent is crowded with other climbers.  This may involve social encounters, combat encounters, or environmental challenges including rescuing climbers who have fallen from higher up.

N3: Chimney

Linkages: L3.4, L2.3, L3.1

A narrow vertical climbing section, requires challenging skill checks to progress.  At the top of the chimney is a flat ledge that can be used to rest.

Linkage L3.1:  If characters fail badly enough climbing the chimney, they fall off the side of the mountain and are returned to base camp with a large amount of falling damage.

N4: Cliff

Linkages: L4.5a, L4.5b, L3.4

Linkage L4.5b: While the other path up is a standard vertical climb, a side path around the edge of the cliff offers an easier climb.  If located, this path offers a new linkage with easier climbing checks.

N5: Summit

Linkages:  L4.5a, L4.5b, L5.2

Linkage L5.2: A steep, winding slide offers a fast way down for characters willing to daredevil their way off the mountain.  Some sort of vehicle, like a sled, would make this path vastly safer than trying to slide down on foot.

In this particular example, the thing to note is that not every linkage is two-way.  The straight path up and down the mountain is two-way, but the chimney and the summit both have one-way linkages that go down the mountain to another node.  The cliff also has a secret linkage, not immediately obvious to characters, that provides an easier way up if located.

As a practical matter, what does this do for you, other than letting you use more sci-fi type words when describing your pointcrawl?  First, there are a few differences from the standard pointcrawl.  Most notably, there's the explicit definition that a node requires using your game's travel mechanics to leave.  A pointcrawl doesn't separate as cleanly and can include both traditional points of interest and major areas.  You can run a pointcrawl off a hexmap where every hex is a point, and every PoI is also a point, but there's not a lot of point to it.  With a nodecrawl, you can take a hexmap and make every hex into a node, then every path from hex to adjacent hex becomes a linkage, which helps define your travel in the imagined space while also providing a clear place for points of interest to occur along the linkage.  (In this case, every hex face would be a linkage, and you might have other linkages as well for shortcuts, underground passages, teleportation circles, and so on.)  Is that a lot of nodes?  Yes it is.  If you prefer, you can define a group of hexes as a node.  Your nodes don't need to be equal size to each other.  As long as you can travel around inside a node without invoking travel mechanics, and use travel mechanics to move from one node to another, the exact details of what a node is don't need to be consistent.

Second, it defines the paths as places of their own.  A path isn't just something that you scroll over in the background; it's a place that takes you from point A to point B.  It can have points of interest along it, and you know where those PoIs are and how to get back to them.

Third, we should all admit that as a practical matter, no, there isn't that much difference between the different kinds of crawls.  We're all describing the same kind of thing and the main diference is just whether or not the mapping used also maps cleanly onto your brain.  Use whatever presentation you like, whether it's a traditional hexmap, a pointcrawl map, a nodecrawl, the index cards from Skycrawl, or whatever else works for you.  Mix and match methods, and mix and match GM advice for different kinds.  If there's one thing to take away from this that's valuable, that bit is what I'd say is the most important; if you're running a hexcrawl, and you see someone giving advice for a citycrawl, you can probably still use that advice if it sounds cool to you.  All crawls are one and all advice is convertible between them.

The key to making a nodecrawl setup worth the effort is to use interesting linkages.  If every linkage you define is just a door between rooms, or a six mile border of clear terrain with no interesting parts, what's the point?  You put in a bunch of extra effort and got nothing out of it.  If a linkage between hexes is the only passage through the high mountains, suddenly this is an interesting fact about the world that might become relevant in other ways.  You have it defined, you know how it works to traverse it, and you know that it's the only passage between these two hexes (or is it?  is there a secret linkage, an ancient dwarven dungeon under the mountains?)  A teleportation portal might be a linkage between hexes that only works on a full moon (but takes you to the Abyss if you use it in a blood moon).

Also a fun fact to note; this method of organizing things doesn't have to actually refer to physical places in the game world.  You can use the nodecrawl structure for scenes in an adventure, progression through a magical ritual, decrypting a code book, or anything else that involves travel or progression (literal or metaphorical) from one thing to another along defined paths.  A nodecrawl can describe progression through time as well as through space.  (Space and time are, after all, related.)  You progress from one node to another in a skill challenge as easily as you do in a dungeon crawl.  (This also fixes the biggest problem with skill challenge type designs, their failure to evolve to the situation; with a nodecrawl, you have clearly defined what causes the situation to change and what the new situation is once it does.)

Paths of Heroism (PF2E Proof of Concept)

 As part of my current exploration in PF2E, I'm collecting a set of houserules that I would use which I am currently calling PathfindOSR.  I like many of the things PF2E is doing, and it's useful to me to have the large amount of content that it has, but there are also a lot of ways that I would like it to be more like an OSR game.  This post is a proof of concept of one of those ways that have the placeholder name of Paths of Heroism.

So one common thing I see with people is that PF2E has too many choices with its feats for them and they would prefer to make fewer choices; not no choices, or just one choice, but fewer.  Paths of Heroism are a set of feat packages that cover a tier of levels so that players can make one choice covering multiple feats, reducing the number of choices for class feats from ten (ish) to three.  With names stolen from Shadow of the Demon Lord/Weird Wizard for now, I'm calling them Novice Paths of Heroism (levels 1-6), Expert Paths (levels 7-14), and Master Paths (levels 15-20).  (Really, it's levels 8-14 and 16-20, since class feats show up at even levels, but it feels better to me to list the whole set of levels.)  Each path is given a Role, which right now I'm just using the 4E roles (striker, controller, defender, leader).  If feats involved in a path require or work best with a certain skill or set of gear, that's included in the Path description as a recommended thing to have or use.

It's also possible to create Paths for skill feats or general feats to help optionally trim down character building choices even further, but that's beyond the scope of this current proof of concept.

As a proof of concept, here's a few Novice Paths for the fighter class.  Fighters get class feats at levels 1, 2, 4, and 6.  There is no guarantee that these paths are optimal or good, but they demonstrate the concept.

Fighter Novice Path - Tempest
Role: Striker
Recommended Gear: Two weapons, at least one of which can deal piercing damage
Feats: Double Slice (1st), Lunge (2nd), Twin Parry (4th), Revealing Stab (6th)

Fighter Novice Path - Wrestler
Role: Controller
Recommended Gear: A free hand
Recommend Skill: Athletics
Feats: Snagging Strike (1st), Combat Grab (2nd), Slam Down (4th), Dazing Blow (6th)

Fighter Novice Path - Blocker
Role: Defender
Recommended Gear: Shield
Feats: Sudden Charge (1st), Aggressive Block (2nd), Powerful Shove (4th), Shield Warden (6th)

And so we can see that with a little work, we can turn one gun into five guns.  Which actually went the other way around when Moe said it, just like these choices, where we turned four choices into one choice.

These are pretty easy to make, but of course they can't cover every possible combination of choices (ignoring that there are some feats that make no sense to be taken together, and also ignoring archetypes and other out-of-class options, and also assuming that you always take a feat at the maximum available level, there's 10,560 possible novice paths to put together here for fighter) and they shouldn't be expected to or intended to.  Paths can cover some common character goals with a set of feats that's good enough to fulfill that particular fantasy.  If a player wants to be more specific with their character build, they can pick feats themselves, or they can take most of the feats from a path but swap one or two of them out.

The intent of paths is to simplify choices, not to restrict players, and a player can always just go back to picking feats themselves if they want to.  But if they don't want to think too much about it and just make one choice that works well enough, they can pick a path and be done with it.

Community Copies on OBS Sites

Indie RPG creators love community copies.  We put them up all the time on itch.io.

Other creators have products on OneBookShelf (OBS) websites (which actually is owned by Roll20 now but I still think of them as OBS), like DM's Guild and DriveThruRPG.  I often see people say that they can't do community copies on those websites and it makes me sad because you can!  You can provide digital copies either for free, or for a discounted price, or you can do both.  So I am putting this together as a guide for how to do that.

The basic process is the same for any OBS site, but the exact UI steps are different whether you're publishing it yourself (DTRPG) or using a community content program (DM's Guild, Pathfinder Infinite, etc.)

For an initial proof of concept, here's what it looks like on Ilkhana's Grimoires: Beyond Necromancy on DM's Guild.

The arrow and image were created as part of the Keep Playing it Forward initiative, which long story short, a bunch of DM's Guild creators decided to do that after a 'pay it forward' weekend where we got higher than normal royalties from the site.  That part, I won't be providing, because it's not mine.  You can make your own image or no image.  Here's what it looks like on Dungeon Crossing: Dragon Home Designer on DTRPG.

So this is what it looks like as an end result.  Now here's how to create your own.

DriveThruRPG (Published by you)

1. Go to your Publisher Tools.

2. Scroll down to the Promotions section.

3. Select Special Discounts.

4. Fill out the form; select the title you want, the maximum uses of the code, the price that the link will give someone (zero is an option), the effective date and expiration date.  For a limited number of community copies, you'll usually just want to put in some max uses, zero price, no expiration date.

This will create a link for you.  You can then put that link in your product page, or wherever else you want to put it.  The link will not automatically update to users how many copies are left; if you gave it a maximum number of uses, you'll have to check the remaining uses here on the special discounts page yourself.  You can either keep that updated publicly or not bother.

Community Content Programs (DM's Guild, Pathfinder Infinite, etc.)

1. Go to your Account page.

2. Scroll down to the My Content section.

3. Select Promotion Tools.

4. Select Create/Edit Special Discounts.

5. Fill out the form as above to create your link and then do whatever you want with it.

And that's how you make community copies available with products on OBS-family websites.

Random Historical Events

 ...or at least their names.

I had an idea for a useful table that would actually fit in a blog post and said to myself all right, let's do it.  This is a system/table for generating the name of a random historical or important event.  It may be something that you use as part of hyperdiegetic information, or something that you use as part of more traditional worldbuilding, or maybe just something you needed a character to say and will never think about again.

To generate a historic name, first roll 1d12 to find the shape of the name, then roll 1d20 on each column that it directs you to.  Feel free to add or remove any pluralization as needed to make it sound cooler to you.  The intermittent words may also be edited as needed, though ideally in most cases they won't need to be (easiest is to swap articles, such as a/the).

Some example historical events created with these tables:

The Secret Year

The Irregularity Century

The Season of Resurrection

The Eruption

The Flaming Eternity Disaster (maybe adjust that to Flaming Eternal Disaster in this case).