Cursebreaker Gardeners

The devotees of the Order of the Enfolding Root have a sacred duty, laboring to disenchant and defuse curses on the blasted ground of magical wastelands. They work tirelessly, cultivating the land in careful phases and cycling through curated seed libraries in terminally ambitious projects of reclamation.

The Work starts with innately magical plants that can withstand the intense arcane residue. As the soil's taint decreases they're followed by plantings of hardy mundane cultivars, flowers, grasses, and finally crops.

A reclamation can take years, a lifetime, even multiple generations to realize. Successful efforts usually end in fallow fields and tracts of wilderness that are strange, bearing the faded scars of magic but no longer virulently cursed.

Etiquette For In-Person Games

When I started playing RPGs, games were in-person events. The tools and resources for playing online in real time didn't exist yet, so everyone got together at someone's house and played. (If you were lucky enough to have other players living nearby.) I don't miss those days. Voice and video chat, virtual tabletops, and the ability to find other players from all around the world are absolutely improvements on how it used to be.

Online games are a different experience from in-person though. Not better, different. With different sets of logistical complications to deal with in order to run a smooth session.

The availability of online groups combined with pandemic conditions and the world being what it is means there's a proportion of players who've never actually played in person before. And for those who have, pandemic conditions may have made you rusty. Since folks are starting to gather and play in person again (which I think is unwise) here are a few things to keep in mind to help you be a considerate player and friend in meatspace.

(Most of this is basic etiquette and common sense you probably already know. It would apply to any social situation just as well.

This is also advice about managing to exist together in physical proximity, not about playing the game. The basics of playing (taking turns, respecting x-cards/lines and veils/boundaries, making sure everyone's having fun, etc.) don't change and are even more important in person than when playing online. Don't be a jerk. If someone around you is being a jerk, stop them.)

Commitments, scheduling, and communication:

Scheduling multiple adults to do something together is a feat. Scheduling them to do it in person on a regular basis is a miracle. If you're invited to a meatspace game be sure you can actually commit to show up, especially if there wouldn't be enough people to play without you. Everyone understands that things happen and real life takes priority over games; but if you're going to regularly miss sessions let the rest of the group know so they can bring in more players to have a reliable group size or bow out.

Also, if you join a game and realize you're not enjoying playing, bow out. You can always come back for a different game later, don't force yourself to play if you're not feeling it. Your time is valuable too.

Be on time. You don't need to be perfectly punctual, but try to arrive within 15 minutes of the planned time and let the group know if you're running late. It's fine if you're late, things happen, just make sure to communicate with your group so they don't worry about you. They're your friends, they'll worry.

If you have to cancel or reschedule give as much advance warning as you can. Let your folks know what's going on and don't feel bad about asking for a schedule change if you need one, just try to give the rest of your group as much time to plan as possible.

TL;DR: To play in person folks have to travel, spend money on fuel and transportation, haul stuff around, and get back home. It's more of an effort to organize and more of an inconvenience to change plans unexpectedly, so be considerate. Respect your friends' time and communicate as much as you can if plans change.

Table manners:

There's a finite amount of room when you're playing in person. Be aware of how much table space you're using and try to make sure no one is too crowded. Try to bring as little stuff as possible, only what you'll actually use, and if you're not actively using something don't keep it on the table. Put it by your chair or against the wall where you can grab it if you need it, but it's not taking up table space.

Be proactive about messes. Watch your drink, watch other people's drinks. Watch your snacks, crumbs, and greasy fingers. Clean the table thoroughly before you set up for game, especially if you all ate there first. We all know how expensive these books are, and how many of them are out of print and literally irreplaceable. Do everything you can to not destroy your friends' stuff. The easiest way to do that is just to pay attention and think ahead. Watch your elbows. Keep drinks away from things a spill would damage. Use coasters. Consider what could go wrong and be ready to respond to other folks' messes too. Have a roll of paper towels on or near the table at all times, I'm not kidding.

Try not to distract from the game. No one is going to be completely focused on the game for the entire session and it would be unreasonable to expect that; but don't hand your phone across the table to share a meme while folks are in the middle of something. Wait for a lull or a break. If you're going to use electronics at the table, wear headphones or make sure your devices are muted. Online it's not a big deal, but in person it can make it very hard for folks who have trouble focusing to enjoy the game. Do your best to help make sure your friends have fun.

TL;DR: Make an effort to be self-aware and look out for your friends.

You got this. Be excellent to each other and have fun!

Tiny Coffins Challenge: August

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"seeking to escape the relentless sun"

While it's the source of all life on earth, never forget the sun is a giant self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction that eternally screams at us in an unending electromagnetic barrage. It hates us and being out in its light is cumulatively bad for you.

Meringue

Meringue is a little egg, aware and friendly inside her shell. One day she'll hatch into something, but until then she needs to be kept warm and protected from getting squished.

"She's wiggling again."
Meringue can sense when invisible, magical, and concealed things are near and wiggles in response. She doesn't need eyes to help her friends.

"Hey, is that a crack?"
Meringue starts with a d30 usage die. Roll every time she detects something. When the die is depleted she hatches into a…

1 Duck
2 Goose
3 Swallow
4 Kestrel
5 Falcon
6 Owl
7 Hummingbird
8 Heron
9 Cormorant
10 Kingfisher
11 Sandpiper
12 Kiwi
13 Cassowary
14 Velociraptor
15 Ankylosaurus
16 Caiman
17 Iguana
18 Gecko
19 Tortoise
20 Rat snake
21 Python
22 Stick bug
23 Stag beetle
24 Preying mantis
25 Jumping spider
26 Fly
27 Dragonfly
28 Moth
29 Bumblebee
30 Wasp

If you roll an insect, roll a d8 to see if she's:
1-3 Normal-sized
4-5 Cat-sized
6 Dog-sized
7 Human-sized
8 Horse-sized

Tiny Coffins Challenge: July

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"disguises, sacrifice, and a snare drawing closed"

I have a lot of memories of my dad getting bit by snakes. When I was little we'd go on family hikes in the woods and I'd catch animals along the way. Mostly toads, turtles, and bugs. The only snakes I was allowed to catch were garter snakes, because they're not likely to bite and are easy for a kid to identify. Dad would catch all the rest. He'd scramble down a river bank and come back up with a water snake wrapped around his arm and its teeth sunk into his finger, then tell me how its anticoagulant saliva worked. There are lots of local species I've only been able to see up close because he was willing to get bit, scratched, or stung in order to catch and bring them to me. Thanks dad.

d100 Dragon Hoards

Dragons have no need for gold and the other shiny baubles valued by the infant, ephemeral civilizations that grow and die around them. They amass vast, exquisitely-curated collections of whatever appeals to them, disdaining any judgment but their own.

1) Uranium glass
2) Teapots
3) Classic cars
4) Flags and banners
5) Stuffed animals
6) Taxidermied animals
7) Cameras
8) Items decorated with the Solo Jazz motif
9) Other people's scrapbooks
10) Vintage computers
11) Radio equipment
12) Remote-controlled vehicles
13) Trading cards
14) Buttons
15) Cardboard standees
16) Quilts
17) Handwoven rugs and carpets
18) Silkworms
19) Tropical fish and coral
20) Vinyl records
21) Scissors
22) Hand tools
23) Stained glass
24) Pillows
25) Dogs
26) Mirrors
27) Clocks and timepieces
28) Cardboard boxes
29) Bubblewrap
30) Marbles
31) Souvenir snowglobes
32) Fridge magnets
33) Collectible lunchboxes
34) Birdfeeders
35) Prisms and suncatchers
36) Art supplies
37) Thimbles
38) Pewter figurines
39) Half-filled diaries
40) Enamel pins
41) Retro videogame consoles
42) Pinball machines
43) Arcade cabinets
44) Eggs
45) Haute couture
46) Bouncy balls
47) Office supplies and stationery
48) Fountain pens
49) Trophies and ribbons
50) Houseplants
51) Boardgames
52) Comic books
53) Seeds
54) Garden gnomes
55) Wind chimes
56) Skeletons
57) Candles
58) Heavy construction equipment
59) Forklifts
60) Jean jackets
61) Blank notebooks
62) Bells
63) Seashells
64) Puzzles
65) Fossils
66) Paperback potboilers
67) Home movies
68) Musical instruments
69) Accordions
70) Novelty telephones
71) Neon signs
72) Stickers
73) Vintage televisions
74) Trampolines
75) Slugs
76) Blacklight posters
77) Circus memorabilia
78) Psychedelics
79) Cool rocks
80) Personal aircraft
81) Maps 
82) Autographs 
83) Secret family recipes
84) Bottles
85) Pinecones
86) Driftwood
87) Graphic tees
88) Kawaii mascot merch
89) Fanfic
90) Gossip
91) Virtual pets
92) Beadwork
93) Lamps
94) Doll houses
95) Weird fiction
96) Withdrawn library books
97) Fancy soaps
98) Hand-knit socks
99) Furniture
100) Postcards and letters from pen pals

Ghost Livestock

These strange creatures resemble animal skeletons wrapped in hazy, transparent ghost flesh. They're the same as normal livestock in their care and behavior, and are raised for their intensely magical meat and byproducts.

The only difference between ghost livestock and their mundane cousins is in how they reproduce. They don't breed. After being slaughtered the bones must be scoured and sheltered from the sun. If the skeleton is complete, undamaged, and perfectly clean a new ghost animal will rise in three nights. It won't be the same creature as before, though it shares the same skeleton.

No one knows where the come from, only how to care for them.

Thinking About Wards

Warding is one of my favorite types of magic. It's extremely flexible and there are so many flavors that it's easy to work into just about anything. I'm always disappointed when games reduce warding to basic shields and 'protection from'-type spells, or ignore it in favor of flashy destructive magic. Immolating your foes at will isn't always the answer. It's practically boring compared to setting guardian spirits behind you to tear apart your pursuers.

I boiled down the different variations of wards I've seen and came up with six general types that spells tend to resemble. Description and flavor-wise a spell could be anything, but the effects and power sources usually fall into at least one of these main categories:

1) Creates a physical barrier that intruders can't pass. This is stuff like magic circles and boundary stones that exclude or contain entities. Anything trying to get into or escape the warded area runs into a solid wall of force that keeps them from entering or leaving the space.

2) Repels intruders with the sight or physical properties of an object. This is "garlic repels vampires" and "fae can't touch iron"-type stuff. There's not a physical force keeping intruders out, but they're blocked by the properties of whatever's set out along the boundary. It might have an actual effect or the intruder might just believe it does, but it's more applied folklore than magic.

3) Repels intruders by invoking a Power to protect the space. This is when the warded area is guarded by a god or guardian spirit that the caster has politely asked to help. Anything that tries to get in either can't, gets thrown out, or has to fight the guardian entity. The key thing is that the guardian is helping because of an entreaty from the caster, not compulsion.

4) Tethers a force to guard a space. This is stuff like the spirits of ancient warriors bound to statues in a tomb to guard it forever. It's the same as 3, except the guardian(s) is there and acting the way they are because of a compulsion from the ward's magic.

5) Makes an area actively hostile to intruders. Things like holy ground or threshold magic, where an intruder either can't enter at all without an invitation or are severely weakened while inside the bounds of the ward. May also burst into flames.

6) Acts as an alarm. Intruders can pass across freely, but it pings the caster or otherwise records their presence. Sometimes acts as a trigger for other spells.

That's it. There are your archetypes. You can break down most types of protective magic and they'll fit into one or more of them. Try it out.

I also thought about why warding regularly gets downplayed or entirely overlooked in games and settled on two main reasons:

First, cowardice. Like I said before, warding is extremely flexible. Your options for using it change with each new space you visit. Codifying how the magic could potentially interact with different architectural elements vs things inside rooms vs open space in a way that produces satisfying rules would be an effort. So designers don't and we end up with boring and generic protection spells. Cowardice. There's no need for that level of exactness and specificity in rules, just give the players things and trust them to have fun.

Second, flavor. Warding is usually complex, static magic with (by definition) sharply marked boundaries. Making wards takes careful planning, time, and precise spellwork because they're supposed to be major enduring pieces of protection. It gives you things like castle cities where the wards have been active for centuries, family homesteads protected over generations, and magic barriers in the far-off wilderness that have barred monsters since before living memory.

It's good stuff and works great for locations the players might visit, but not so well for the players themselves while they're on the road adventuring. Any wards players might use in the field would have to be made fast. Improvised work cobbled together from whatever was lying around or in their pockets. Protections that would serve to secure a campsite for a few days or seal an area of the dungeon so nothing can sneak up on them, but that wouldn't last long after the party leaves.

In that spirit, here are some ephemeral wards made from basic supplies that can be easily carted around and deployed as needed.

1d12 Ephemeral Wards
1) Water from a holy lake or well. Works until it evaporates.
2) Blessed bones. Animal? Human? Something else? Yes! Each have a spirit bound to it that awakens and attacks when an intruder comes within range.
3) A stone. Seal evil entities by way of plonking a big rock on them.
4) Teeth. Summons a ghostly maw to devour unwelcome visitors.
5) Smoke. Creates solid walls of haze between fires burning at the edges of the safe zone.
6) Carved pebbles. Put them in conspicuous places around the area, the sigils on them repel interlopers.
7) A design of footprints pressed into the dirt by dance. Creates a palisade of invisible spikes from each print.
8) Sootblack collected from a sacred fire. A figure made of greasy lampblack tirelessly pursues anyone who crosses the ward's perimeter.
9) Fallen leaves arranged in careful patterns and drifts. Forcefully imparts the idea of gravity to pin anyone who enters the space uninvited.
10) Chunks of empty honeycomb. Houses a swarm of spectral bees. If anything passes by they fly to warn the caster with a waggle dance.
11) Holy texts. Stack them like bricks into a solid wall that'll seal doors and portals.
12) Braided cord made of hair. Delicate and so fine it's almost invisible. If anything breaks it, it starts screaming and won't stop.

(If you'd like more stuff in this vein, Luke Gearing's created a magnificent batch of wards that I absolutely love.)

Tiny Coffins Challenge: June

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"the first signs of your efforts coming to fruition"

I grow morning glories every year. I've grown the same seedline for almost a decade now, collecting seeds to plant again each spring. The plants I have now are exceptionally hardy because I'm a neglectful gardener. Only the ones who can withstand regular droughts and bad soil make it to flower. I still worry though, mostly about the newly-sprouted seedlings. Will they survive frosts? Is their soil draining properly so their roots don't rot? Do they actually need fertilizer this year? It's not until about June when the vines have climbed onto the trellis and started flowering that I can be sure something won't go terribly wrong.

1d20 Ways to get the demon's attention

1 Call their name three times

2 Say their name

3 Think their name

4 Look in a mirror, any mirror

5 Compliment them out loud

6 Insult them out loud

7 Go on down to the crossroads and make your presence known

8 Talk to the doll they gave you

9 Write your request on an offering and burn it

10 Submit a request for audience in triplicate via courier imp

11 Turn around

12 Close your eyes

13 Go to sleep

14 Pour a drink

15 Put out a plate of cookies

16 Call them up, they've got a cellphone

17 They prefer texts

18 Email works best

19 Just talk to them, they're accompanying you on your journey

20 No need, they're always watching

Message for you

Message is a classic spell, one of the oldest and most useful out there. Here are some variations on it for when you want to play with magical telephony.

Black Fax
Duration:  3*[caster's level] minutes
Components: Your best imitation of a dial tone

Instead of conveying information this spell fills the target's head with darkness and static. Thought and movement is impossible for the duration of the spell while they receive the warped message. When it ends the target knows exactly who cast the spell. The target can't respond to anything happening around them, but can choose to make an INT or WIS save. On a success the spell only lasts half its normal duration, on a fail the duration doubles.

Spam
Components: A list of strangers' names and a shard of your soul

Sends an identical message to every intelligent creature within 1000'. They can't respond or tell who sent it. The spam message preempts or interrupts any other communication a target might receive. Spam can be cast as a cantrip to send 1 message, or with a spell slot to send [spell level] messages in sequence.

The message's subject is:

1. Advertisements
2. Unsound medical advice
3. Sketchy pharmaceuticals 
4. Celebrity gossip
5. Risky financial advice
6. Thinly-veiled wire fraud
7. Opinion poll
8. Gambling
9. Religious screed
10. Vampire transformation testimonials

Party Wire
Components: 1 SP

Sends the same message to up to 10 targets the caster chooses. Each recipient can respond, but their return messages will get garbled if they try to reply at the same time and talk over each other. After the caster sends their message and hears all the responses roll even or odd. On even only the chosen targets got the message. Odd, the caster accidentally connected another person into the spell and they heard everything. GM decides who the extra person is.

Landline
Duration: Up to 10 minutes
Components: A little bit of your dignity

Lay face-down on the ground with your forehead pressed into bare soil. While in that position you can speak to 1 target and carry on a normal two-way conversation with them no matter where they are as long as their feet are touching the ground.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: May

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"winding trails, disorientation, and the scent of flowers"

Getting lost in the woods is a peculiar feeling. It quietly picks at something superstitious in the back of your head. The absence of people, places, even background noise you could use to orient yourself gets to you in a way that just 'not knowing where you are' doesn't match. It's easy to get turned around, even when you're on a trail, and if you can't find a blaze or marker to get your bearings you have to look for landmarks. A distinctive tree, a big rock you passed, the sound of a stream, anything that might cement where you are. I used to use the smell of honeysuckle. Most of the parks around here have their parking lots and trail heads in meadow areas where they grow; so smelling honeysuckle meant I was on the path back to the car.

How are the guards tonight?

Unless you invested in perimeter golems, guards are people. They have off days, get distracted, and are people. It's unlikely that every guard you meet will be completely on top of things all the time, so roll for their mood when you come up to a guard post. This doesn't replace a reaction roll.

The guards are... (1d8)

1. Attentive - On guard, doing a good job
2. Nervous - On guard, overly attentive and jumpy
3. Distracted - Focused elsewhere (weird noise, disturbing thoughts, personal problems, daydreaming)
4. Bored - Inattentive, lost in thought, maybe dozing
5. Grumbling - "Why are we even out here?"
6. Asleep - Physically there but unconscious
7. Patrolling - Roll again and they're mobile
8. Missing