"Night Horrors: Primordial Peerage" Is Out (For Those Who Wanted To See Me Contribute to "Beast: The Primordial")

A lot of folks who are familiar with my work know that I love the World/Chronicles of Darkness, and that I've made liberal use of the Storyteller's Vault platform. Whether you checked out my 100 Kinfolk Bundle (which has over 1,400 NPCs for Werewolf: The Apocalypse), vampire supplements like 100 Resources and Rumors to Find on ShreckNet or 100 Havens, a changeling supplement like 100 (Mostly) Harmless Goblin Fruits and Oddments to Find in The Hedge, or even my supplements for geist and mage, 50 Geists and 100 Shadow Names (And Their Meanings) respectively, I've got a lot of content available for these settings.

However, one of the games I haven't worked on in the past is Beast: The Primordial. While it has both its fans and its detractors, it just wasn't a particular pool I'd dived into before... however, with the release of Night Horrors: Primordial Peerage, I've added one more notch on my belt for parts of this setting I've had a hand in adding to.

And you should all check this book out ASAP!

A lot of people worked hard on this, so help spread the word!

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

So Just What Is This Book About?

In Beast: The Primordial, players take on the roles of the Begotten... humans who have merged with the primal horrors that live on in the dreams of humanity. Beasts take on a thousand different masks, some familiar and some alien, but all of them prey on the darkest, most ancient fears of mankind... and the Begotten are those who connect with these ancient nightmares, who now live in their soul, and feed off mortal victims.

It's said that Beasts were the first of the Night Mother's offspring, but that most (if not all) of the other horrors of the Chronicles of Darkness are their younger cousins. Though the relations between them and vampires, changelings, werewolves, mages, sin eats, prometheans, and others may be distant, or strained, the Begotten often see themselves as the elder siblings of the world's darkest shadows.

Night Horrors: Primordial Peerage aims to dig deeper, and stretch wider, allowing for a greater variety of characters to exist within the scope of Beast... and it provides history, examples, art, and templates for making such characters!

We are legion, and we have taken many paths.

While there is a lot of content in this supplement book, the one that I think is most interesting are the templates for additional character types. Some of these are where the Primordial brushes up against another sphere, creating strange combination creates (Beast and Mage, Beast and Geist, and so on), but others are utterly unique, and play off the terrors that live at the heart of the human condition. The Cybernetic Horrors, for example, tap into the fears of what can happen when machines blend with flesh, and create something new and inhuman. Dark Lords, on the other hand, are people whose reputations are such that the urban legends about them begin to imbue them with genuine, supernatural abilities. You could use these for NPCs that could present a real challenge to a collection of Beasts, or who might act as allies or cultists helping to bolster a Begotten's goals. Or, if you really want to, you could run a chronicle where players take on the roles of these alternative types of mortals touched by the Primordial Dream.

So, whether you just enjoy expanded source material for Beast, or you've been looking for more ways to play that particular sphere, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of this new release!

And for all the folks who do wish I'd do more stuff with Storyteller's Vault, consider typing my name in there and checking out some of my other supplements! The higher those numbers get, the more likely it is that I'll be able to dedicate more time, energy, and effort to those supplements.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Mr. Nowhere Talks About Radio Free Fae in This Latest "Changeling: The Lost" Video Essay

There are those among us who have been to a world that doesn't exist... a place mentioned only in fairy tales. A place ruled by petty tyrants and mad gods, most never get the chance to escape... those who do, and who manage to make their way back to the real world, find themselves changed. With their transfigured forms and broken minds, they have become something else... something other. These Lost band together, though, and they fight for themselves and their communities.

The voice of these communities, though, often comes from the members of the Winter Court. An irony for the Silent Arrow, they use secretive broadcasts to help keep others like them infored. Known as Radio Free Fae, these broadcasts are the early warning systems of many freeholds.

And this week, Mr. Nowhere finally breaks his wall of silence to tell you all about this operation.

Welcome back, my friends and fellow travelers on the trods...

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my bi-weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

A Glimpse Into What's Coming For Windy City Shadows

For folks who've been watching my videos over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, you've likely heard me talk about my upcoming Windy City Shadows podcast project. And while I talked about it a while back in Ask Me Anything About "Windy City Shadows" A Chronicles of Darkness Podcast, the general gist is that season 1 is going to be what you'd end up with if John Wick was a changeling.

But the host of the show who handles our intro and outro is the Radio Free Fae DJ known only as Mr. Nowhere... and if you haven't heard his previous broadcasts, he's the voice of the latest video essay that just dropped on the channel!

While I'm still elbow-deep into writing season 1 (working on episode 4's script at the time of writing), I've wanted to start dropping occasional pieces of lore, and to give listeners a preview of some of the characters they're likely to meet as the season unfolds... and I thought I'd start with this simple video essay featuring our first host.

And if you want to help me keep making videos like this, while also revving us up so that I can get this podcast off the ground, please do the following things:

- Subscribe to the Azukail Games YouTube channel

- Watch this video essay, upvote it, and stay until the end for the secret outro, and leave the suggested message in the comments section

- Share this blog entry, and/or the video, on your own social media! Particularly on Facebook, as the site has made it exceedingly difficult for me to actually share links to anything

And, lastly, if you want to catch a few more glimpses of Mr. Nowhere in some published work I've put out, I'd recommend picking up the Changeling supplements 100 Mourning Cant Dialects, Phrases, and Meanings as well as 100 Strange Sights To See in The Hedge.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Table Talk. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Campaign Building - A Single Novel, Or An Episodic Story?

Campaigns are how we describe our stories in RPGs. And while it's true that not every game you play is going to follow the level 1 to level 20 format, the idea of a story where characters gain resources, skills, abilities, and experience to become more formidable than they were until they hit the final confrontation and the story gets a crescendo is the basis of how most games work. However, there is a question that you, as a GM, should answer when you start putting the next game together.

Do you intend to run a game with a single throughline the way you'd read a novel, or are you going to run a segmented storyline that's more episodic in nature?

It's all connected!

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

The Structure of Your Story

Whether you're writing your own adventure, or you're using a pre-written campaign like Storm King's Thunder or Kingmaker, the structure of the story you're telling still boils down to one of these two major styles. So I wanted to talk about them, and about the pros and cons, to try to get some of my fellow Game Masters actually thinking about these campaign styles, and why they use one or the other for a given campaign.

The Novel

From page 1, all the way to the end.

The novel is, essentially, when you have a long-running campaign that will have the same characters all the way through from the beginning to the end. However, the trademark of the novel is that characters are also involved in a single, cohesive story for the entire campaign. This is a lot harder to do than it sounds, particularly in games where you want your players to grind up their levels before you throw heavy stuff at them. However, there's two ways to maintain this single story cohesion all the way through.

1. Write a complex storyline that, from level 1, has your players hooked into the ongoing narrative and setting up the final endgame. For example, they act as a squad of mercenaries sent to deal with orcs attacking a borderland town. They defend the town, discovering members of a cult who were backing the orcs in their attacks. Through this, they find the town is actually safeguarding an ancient relic that had been forgotten. The party escorts the relic to the regional governor, and end up having to uncover a conspiracy where several nobles were members of the cult. This failure of the minions draws the eyes of the cult's leaders, who then begin attempting to take this item. The party has to find the rest of the relics in the set so they can finally end the undying lord of the Unseeing Eye for once and all.

The idea is that each segment of the campaign feeds into the next, with the plot growing in stakes and danger, and all of them are connected. Every aspect matters, and it is all part of the same story.

2. Start the game off at the power level you want for the "interesting" part of things. This is a far easier approach, and it often means you dispense with any filler or level-grinding parts of the game to get the PCs up to snuff for when the main plot starts really rolling. So there's no low-level quests like clearing out goblin caves, or dealing with bandits on the highway just to solidify the party and get some XP on their sheets... you just start at level 5, because that's when the main plot of an undead army attempting to claim the nation would have started to unfold.

This does, of course, mean that your game isn't going to run as long as it otherwise might. That is either a feature or a flaw, depending on your outlook, as some GMs (and players, too) might want a tighter game where they play for 6 months to a year and focus on the "good part" of the game, without all the faff and chaff of the unconnected side quests, monster hunting, and grind that can often show up in a game.

The Episodic Story

As we rejoin our adventurers...

An episodic story is, well, episodic. There are smaller stories that each have their own arcs, and these stories are added to over the length of a campaign to create a complete chronicle of the characters' adventures. While some of them might be connected, many of them won't be.

Perhaps the best comparison for this kind of campaign is reading a collection of short stories about classic sword and sorcery heroes like Conan or Solomon Kane. Because while the stories feature the same character, and there might even be a loose kind of timeline involved, the events of one story aren't necessarily going to impact the next except in references made, or perhaps in a call back somewhere in the text.

An episodic campaign might have an eventual end goal, but not all the parts of the campaign will be bent toward that singular goal. For example, level 1-3 might deal with the PCs routing out a bandit encampment, and bringing down their leader Three-Fingered Galt. Then level 4-7 might involve trying to find a buried relic in a recently-uncovered castle in the deep desert. Level 8-10 might involve them challenging the Warlock of Black Mountain, and ending the threat he poses. And then, once they've really hit their stride, they spend until level 17 getting involved in the struggle over the Aqualine Throne... will they choose a successor, topple the kingdom entirely, or will they become the rulers of the nation's next age?

Episodic stories give you a lot of freedom, but more importantly they offer you off-ramps. So if someone wants to switch characters to try something new for the next arc, or your table is getting kind of bored, you can end the game at the end of a given episode, and try something else. However, there is that question of whether or not you want to stick with the same characters for their entire journey, and just how interconnected that journey really was.

Consider Your Structure

There's no objectively superior campaign version. You can do a full 1-20 campaign with a single, interconnected plot. You could do short arcs put together. Hell, if you really want to you could run a bunch of individual one-shots and just have a game that feels almost like a TV show (which is, incidentally, sort of how pick up games of my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic would run). But it's important that you ask what kind of story you're looking to tell, and what your players are interested in experiencing, before you start putting together the blueprint for your next campaign.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

The Realm of Gaian Enoch - A Dark, Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy RPG

The world as it was is over. The War of The Ashes rent civilization asunder, and it left nothing but ruin in its wake. There is no time for rest... no time for healing. There are horrors that lurk on the fringes, and which stalk through the wreckage of cities and towns, seeking to devour what's left. This world needs heroes now more than ever... and they are rising from the ashes. Unions of ancient powers with mortal flames burn bright, but will they be able to kindle something to push back the darkness? Or will they just be the last gasp before the fire goes out forever?

If that little piece strikes you, and makes you wonder what the hell it is I'm talking about, then you need to check out The Realm of Gaian Enoch!

Seriously... if that intrigues you, check it out for yourself!

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

A Game of Dark Fantasy in a Broken World

For those who are getting a bit of a Dark Souls vibe from the introductory part of this week's entry, I feel that's not far off in the kind of feeling you should bring to the game. It's not mechanically similar, mind you, but that was the vibe I've gotten the longer I've looked through the game, the art, and the kinds of arcs players will be expected to go through.

And if you haven't grabbed the game for yourself yet, I'd recommend stopping by the Arrowland Games YouTube channel to check out what Tony Rowland, the game's creator, has to say about this RPG!

Though I haven't run the game for my own table yet, I have been keeping a close eye on what its creator is doing, and I wanted to take this week's Monday post to make some more folks aware of this game. Because I have a soft spot for dark and fantastical things, and too many games that go grim are either something that comes around to being tongue-in-cheek like Mork Borg, or it goes for the rules-light approach (and often both). The Realm of Gaian Enoch, though, is something that is definitely giving us all a unique opportunity... if we're willing to step through the doors to take it!

If this game peaks your interest, make sure you go to the Arrowland Games YouTube channel in order to watch the creator's videos (and subscribe to the channel while you're at it), and check out all the releases that have come out for the game thus far:

- The Realm of Gaian Enoch, Core Rulebook

- The Realm of Gaian Enoch, Blood in The Snow (Scenario)

- The Realm of Gaian Enoch, Premade Characters

- The Realm of Gaian Enoch, Gallery of Horrors (Volume 1)

Being an indie creators is a tough gig, so consider checking out this game and setting to see if we can boost their signal, and get the juice going for future releases!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Assigned Motivation in RPGs

Oceans of ink have been spilled by people writing about character motivation. From lists of potential motives, to questions to ask about your character, to story concerns, and the intricacies of the unfolding plot, few aspects of the game are as important as figuring out why your characters are doing the things they're doing.

Hell, it's why my supplement 100 Character Goals and Motivations is an Electrum seller, after all.

However, while characters should always have personal motivations that come into play throughout a campaign, a lot of Game Masters overlook the expediency of a game that comes with assigned motivation... often to the point that a lot of people are completely unfamiliar with the idea, or they consider it a form of unacceptable railroading.

So let's talk about that this week, shall we?

Forward! Go, go, go!

As always, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

The Mission IS Your Motivation

The standard model of many RPGs is that player characters form some kind of party, and then go off on an adventure. Sometimes they're mercenaries, and sometimes they're brigands. They might be wandering around looking for a reward, or for good deeds they can do. In these kinds of games the characters' personal motivations are often what takes center stage for each of them. Maybe there's a holy warrior attempting to follow their god's will, they team up with a former soldier trying to find where their next meal is coming from, and they cross paths with a savage warrior seeking some trial grand enough to act as a rite of passage for their people. These motivations are all very personal to the characters in question, and wildly different from one another. Generally what a GM will do at this point is figure some way to weave together all the characters' independent goals and motivations into the unfolding plot, dangling hooks for each of them to get them to work together.

And that is a lot of work... both on the players' parts, but also on the GM's part.

Assigned motivation works differently. In this structure, every character is part of a unit, an organization, a group, a cause, and that cause has the ability to assign them to handle matters on its behalf. You and your fellow party members aren't necessarily going to handle the current issue du jour because it fits with your moral code, or because there's treasure to be gained, or a reputation to be won... you're doing it because your commanding officer assigned you to go and take care of it!

Now, this is the method I used for my own RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, precisely because it's a military-themed game. Because yes, your characters should be individuals with their own wants, their own goals, and so on, but you're in the squad to do a job. And sure, maybe your medic joined up because they couldn't afford to go to medical school, and a tour of service will help them do that. Maybe your grunt is fulfilling a family tradition, and he's a third-generation soldier. Maybe your ordnance specialist caught a charge for arson and weapons trafficking, and he'd rather join the army than do time. Whatever the reason, and whatever goals someone is shooting for, they're still going to go and deal with the missions that command sends them on. They don't have to like it, but that's the agreed-upon framework for the game and story.

And this isn't a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. You see this same setup in the Warhammer 40K RPG Dark Heresy, where the PCs are all part of an inquisitor's retinue, and expected to complete the tasts and assignments the inquisitor gives them. You'll also see something similar in Spycraft, which is a game that I personally took a lot of inspiration from when designing Army Men. However, this same setup can be used in any RPG if your GM sits everyone down and says, "Okay, I want you all to be part of a mercenary company, a squad of town guards, conscripts in a current war," or whatever other flavor they've come up with.

On the one hand, there are a lot of players out there who do really well with assigned motivation in a game. Being told by the GM that they need to make a member of a knightly order, or a soldier in an army, or someone who works for this fantasy world's secret service takes the pressure off of them when it comes to character motivation, and it allows them to color within the lines they've been given. However, there are also players (and even Game Masters) who really don't care for this approach to character building and game management. They often feel that it means they can't make their own, individual characters with their own, individual goals, and that they're expected to just fall in-line, and to go along with the motivation that's presented to them.

Now, just to reiterate, preferences in your game are perfectly fine. But if you've never tried using assigned motivation in your campaigns before, consider giving it a shot if it sounds interesting to you. Just remember that it's something you need to bring up with your players early on in discussing the game, and you need to make sure you have full buy-in from everyone.

Or, if you really want to, you could try any of the games I've mentioned here, and see if they agree with you!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Fluff post. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

"Locales of Sundara" Fills Out The Growing Setting of "Sundara: Dawn of a New Age"

Regular readers around these parts know that I've been putting together supplements for my fantasy RPG setting Sundara: Dawn of a New Age for a few years now. However, I've also mentioned every now and again that I'm not the sole contributor to this setting. While I've done the bulk of the work chipping it out and laying the foundations, there are more and more parts of the setting being added by contributors like Adrian Kennelly and Isaiah Burt.

Speaking of Adrian, he's been adding to an ongoing series that I haven't talked about on this blog... but if you're a fan of my setting, I'd highly recommend giving the Locales of Sundara supplements a look!

You really should check it out if you haven't yet!

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

What Locales Have Been Released Already?

The idea behind the Locales of Sundara series is that they provide GMs (and players) with extra tidbits of lore, and more locations for Sundara as a setting. Of course, much like the Cities of Sundara, these locales can be picked up and shifted around, put into existing game worlds, or a GM's home game, as needed.

But which locales have been released so far? Well, I'm glad you asked!

- Dyehunting: Found on the outskirts of Silkgift, the City of Sails, this unique business allows customers to use modified aether weapons which fire harmless paint to compete in friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) matches. High fantasy paintball, this could fit into downtime as surely as into part of a larger plot arc.

- The Silkgift Gazette: The second location found in the City of Sails, the Silkgift Gazette has a surprisingly large circulation due to the amount of traffic that goes through the port city. Found in Fool Street, the Gazette covers a variety of news stories and local happenings which could easily act as a way to get plot-relevant information into your players' hands! And if they make friends with the reporters, who knows what sort of benefits they could get when gathering information?

- The Skelet-Inn: Found in the West Gate district of Moüd, City of Bones, this location has most of the day-to-day tasks completed by domestic skeletons. While there are living employees as well, this place is far from unusual in Moüd when it comes to how it employs the dead to do the hard work that living people would rather not handle.

- Darega's Bones: Another location in the City of Bones, Darega's is where those seeking rather... unusual constructs can go to examine what old Darega has put out on the market. Prices may be higher than one expects, but it's always worth seeing if you can make a deal... isn't it?

These are, of course, just a handful of supplements that have come out so far, but I'm really excited to see what it is that Adrian comes up with next! And, of course, the easiest way to keep him working on more of these is to grab a copy of one (or even all) of the ones that have come out so far!

Catch Up On "Sundara: Dawn of A New Age"

Cities of Sundara

The setting first began with the Cities of Sundara splats. Self-contained guides to some of the larger and more powerful centers of trade, industry, arms, and magic, these unique locations provide plenty of fodder for character generation and plots. Not only that, but each one comes with unique, mechanical goodies for players and GMs alike to take out for a spin!

- Ironfire: The City of Steel (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Built around the Dragon Forge, Ironfire is where the secret to dragon steel was first cracked. The center of the mercenary trade in the region, as well as boasting some of the finest schools for teaching practical sciences, Ironfire is a place where discovery and danger walk hand in hand!

- Moüd: The City of Bones (Pathfinder and DND 5E): An ancient center of trade and magic, Moüd was lost to a cataclysm, and then buried in myth. Reclaimed by the necromantic arts of the Silver Wraiths guild, this city has once again become a place teeming with life. Despite the burgeoning population, though, it is the continued presence of the undead that helps keep the city running, ensuring that Moüd is not swallowed up once more.

- Silkgift: The City of Sails (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Built on the cottage industry of Archer cloth (an extremely durable material used for sails, windmills, etc.), Silkgift is a place that prizes invention and discovery. From gravity batteries that store the potential of the wind, to unique irrigation systems, to aether weapons, the city positively churns out discoveries... and then there's the canal they cut through the mountains that makes them a major center of trade across the region.

- Hoardreach: The City of Wyrms (Pathfinder and DND 5E): A center of power across an entire region, Hoardreach is ruled over by a Cooperation of five different dragons. A place for refugees and outcasts of all sorts, Hoardreach boasts some of the most unusual citizens and creations from across Sundara. Infamous for their sky ships, which require the cast-off scales and unique arcane sciences of the Dragon Works to take to the air, one never knows just what they'll find in this city built atop a mountain.

- Archbliss: The City of The Sorcerers (Pathfinder and DND 5E): A floating city in the sky, Archbliss has been a refuge for sorcerers for thousands of years. It's only in relatively recent years that the city has allowed those from the ground below who lack the power of a bloodline to join them in the clouds. However, while there are certainly amazing wonders to behold, there is a darkness in Archbliss. Something rotting away at its heart that could, if not healed, bring the city crashing to the ground once more.

Gods of Sundara

- Gods of Sundara (available for Pathfinder and DND 5E): In a world with no alignment, and where the gods are often genuinely mysterious forces that are far too large for mortals to truly comprehend, the divine feels genuinely strange and unknown... something that really does have to be taken on faith. This supplement provides a sample pantheon for Sundara, but also provides instructions on how to easily make your own gods in a world where you can't cast a spell and tell whether someone is good or evil.

Species of Sundara

Sundara is filled with creatures that many of us recognize, but I wanted to give greater depth to their cultures, and a wider variety of options. After all, humans always get 15+ ethnicities, languages, and unique histories, while elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings, etc. are almost always left with footnotes, or maybe with a handful of offshoots. So, in short, I wanted to give all the fantastical creatures the treatment that humans usually get in our games.

And there is no human book yet. If readers demand to know more, then I may sit down to pen one... but I figured that humans didn't need to be front-and-center in this setting just yet.

- Elves of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Elves are one of the most quintessential fantasy creatures... but if you want to see more than just high elves, wood elves, and elves of the sun and moon, then this supplement has you covered!

- Dwarves of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): The children of the primordial giants who were meant to fill in the details of the world they'd made (or so the myths say) there are as many kinds of dwarves as their are kinds of giants... and possibly more, depending on who is keeping count.

- Orcs of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Supposedly a creation of the elves, none can say for certain exactly how or why orcs have been made. What most agree on is that these creatures are far more than most may think at first glance.

- Halflings of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Little cousins to the dwarves, halflings are tough, clever, and not to be underestimated. From living beneath the hills, to taking up residence in the deep forests, halflings in Sundara come in quite a variety!

- The Blooded (Half-Elves and Half-Orcs) [Pathfinder and DND 5E]: When orcs and elves mix their bloodlines with other creatures, the result is one of the Blooded. This inheritance takes many forms, and it can even wait generations before manifesting when the right combination of individuals come together to have a child.

- Gnomes of Sundara (Pathfinder and DND 5E): Gnomes are strange creatures, found in places where the spirit of the land has coalesced and made children of its own. The sons and daughters of the ancient nymphs, they are the stewards of these places, and they change as often as the weather and the land.

Organizations of Sundara

Phase 3 has been going strong, but there's still a few titles left in it! So if you haven't seen them, consider checking out:

- Sellswords of Sundara: With power structures being smaller in scale in Sundara, standing armies aren't often maintained for long. As such, soldiers of fortune are quite common! This supplement contains 10 mercenary companies, their history, uniform, sample members, whispers and rumors, as well as either an archetype or subclass for playing these unique warriors. Grab your copy for Pathfinder of DND 5E.

- Cults of Sundara: Faith comes in many forms in Sundara, and there are as many gods in the Prim as there are dreams in the minds of people. This supplement contains write-ups for 10 cults, their histories, sample members, rumors about them, their beliefs and tenets, and a unique magic item for each. Get your copy for Pathfinder or DND 5E.

- Guilds of Sundara: While cities and villages may be relatively local, guilds are spread across the length and width of Sundara. From professional orders of skilled miners and dredgers, to monster slayers and bounty hunters, this supplement has 10 guilds with histories, sample members, rumors, as well as unique feats one can take to represent the skill and benefits of joining this order. Available for Pathfinder as well as DND 5E.

- Merchants of Sundara: While city states might be the largest form of government you find in the setting, merchants hold an outsized amount of power. From huge mercantile houses, to small brands infamous for their quality as much as for their price, there are a lot of options listed in this particular world building supplement.

Rumors of Sundara

The newest series of supplements in the setting, these are meant to add to the cities, and to give GMs ideas for plots, or just to provide a little extra grist for the mill in terms of what people are gossiping about!

- Whispers and Rumors For Ironfire, The City of Steel!

- Whispers and Rumors For Moüd, City of Bones!

- Whisper and Rumors For Silkgift, The City of Sails!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Resource Management and Tracking (Additional Challenge or Needless Frustration?)

There are a lot of contentious discussions when it comes to roleplaying games. Everything from the age-old debate of casters versus martials, to whether alignment implies a game setting is deterministic in its morality, to whether clerics and paladins require divine patrons to empower them, it seems these topics crop up again every handful of years, and a whole new generation of players and Game Masters grapple with these issues.

One topic that is often overlooked, though, is the proper place of resource management as it applies to your game's challenge. Because while all games have this aspect to some degree, the question is how in-depth do you want to go with it in your campaign, and at what point does it become more of a frustration than a way to add challenge to your game?

Wait... how many rounds have you fired?

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Tools and Limitations

When we strip back all the upper layers and look at the mechanics of how RPGs work, resource management is one of the most basic concepts that goes into creating a game's challenge. How many spells a character can cast before they need to rest, how many hit points they have before they die, how many times they can use certain class features before they need to be refreshed, all of these things fall into the "resource management" category. And, generally speaking, the broad categories I just mentioned are things that we accept as necessary as both players and Game Masters.

However, like a lot of mechanical aspects of a game, resource management can very quickly become micro-management if one isn't careful.

Okay, so, exactly HOW are you carrying all of that?

For example, a system to make the use of magic finite is generally thought of as a good use of a resource management mechanic. Whether it's a pool of spell points that the character uses to fuel their powers (each use of which costs a certain number of points), or a Vancian magic system where they can cast a certain number of specific spells per day, the idea is that they have to figure out when a situation is serious enough for them to dip into their magic since they only have so much gas in the tank before they're going to be tapped out. There are other situations, though, where managing particular resources is seen as more of a pain in the ass than it's really worth. Whether it's keeping track of a character's carrying capacity (including the weight of their clothes and their armor), tracking how many arrows or crossbow bolts they're carrying, or asking how much food they have in their packs for their journeys, a lot of Game Masters and players just don't want to deal with these things.

And, to be clear, that's fine if you don't want to deal with those aspects at your table. However, too often we just toss tools aside without really examining them... which is why this week I'd like to propose something I don't see show up very often in this conversation.

Instead of just universally writing off a resource management mechanic because you don't care for it, or don't want to use it, take a moment to really look at it. And while you're examining it, ask what kind of game it would be good for, and how it could act to create serious challenge in that game.

Using The Right Tool For The Right Job

Resource management is deeply tied in to the challenge of a game, and often the players' access to resources is what shapes their strategy and their decisions. For example, if your party of adventurers heads out into the forests for weeks on-end, but your ranger only brought a dozen arrows for their longbow, what is going to happen when they've fired every shaft? Will they attempt to recover the spent ammunition from the undergrowth? Will they pull their arrows out of the corpses of the creatures they shot in order to reuse them? Will they craft fresh arrows around the fireside, or while they're sitting on watch, to be sure they have enough ammunition to see them through to their destination?

For the purposes of an example, you can swap out any other item. What if the wizard runs out of material components for their spells? What if the fighter's sword breaks, and they need a backup weapon? What if your party has a two week trek through the forest, but they only brought enough food for 4 days? Or, and this is the big one, what if they only have enough silver to buy a certain number of items, but not everything they feel they're going to need?

Now, if you're a Game Master who prefers to travel by map in between towns, cities, and dungeons, then none of that is likely going to make a difference in your game. Because if surviving out in the wilderness and having to deal with random encounters (or even planned encounters) isn't something you're going to worry about, then none of the things mentioned above are going to be a big deal.

But if that's the case, these tools aren't made for the game you're running.

On the other hand, games that do focus on scarcity of resources, on environmental dangers, or just on survival often do lean heavily on these exact mechanics. Whether your party is lost in deep caverns of the World Beneath, whether you're all escaping from slavery and have to use whatever you can get your hands on to survive in the wilds away from civilization, or whether you're on an expedition to lost ruins to see what lies deep within, part of the inherent challenges of these scenarios is that you don't have endless resources... whether those resources happen to be ammunition, spells, healing, food, or even the amount of time it takes to complete your mission.

Now, pointing out that some players legitimately enjoy games that utilize these tools doesn't mean you have to play games centered around resource management. It doesn't mean you need to incorporate them into your game, and subject your players to these things if they aren't really interested in these mechanics. However, if you're one of the folks out there who have been wondering why these "relics of an older gaming age" as they're so often thought of still exist... well, I just wanted to provide some food for thought on the matter.

Lastly, if this is a topic you're interested in that you want to include more of in your games, might I recommend checking out some of the following:

- How Does Your Character Stay Fed? What Does It Take?: A recent post talking about food and eating while characters are out on the campaign trail.

- 100 Random Encounters For On The Road Or In The Wilderness: If you want to throw some unexpected surprises into your party's travel time... for good or ill!

- 100 NPCs To Meet On The Road Or In The Wilderness: A companion supplement to the above piece, just because the road is long or the wildlands dense, that doesn't mean there aren't people to meet.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Crunch post! To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!