Note notturne

Even the most common scroll or potion has a crafting cost of 25 gp (according to the Xanathar's Guide to Everything). According to this article , using the conversion of 1 cp = 1 euro (or 1 $), we could evaluate this as 2,500 Euros (or $); we can also compare this value to the cost of hiring an unskilled hireling, which is 2 sp/day (according to DnD Player's Handbook); so, with 25 gp we could by the services of such an hireling for 125 days, which is approximately 4 months. Therefore, the sensible wizard (or cleric) will use something very durable to keep those potions and those scrolls. How much will this wizard spend in the container? It would not be unreasonable to spend between 5% and 10% of the price of the crafting cost of the magicwork. The minimum is a glass of vial, or a scroll case, which are going to cost 1 gp. I have devised the following table, based on the rarity of the magic work contained. For each ca...

If your alignment in Dungeons & Dragons says that you are an "a-hole", the rest of the world will react accordingly. Alignment is a general tool we use to describe how our characters in D&D are going to behave. It's an abstraction, and it is subject to nuances (two lawful characters can be lawful to different degrees, even though they will be sharing some trait). But, a lawful character will "usually" behave accordingly. It doesn't mean that this character can't behave in a different way, but when not actively thinking, this will be the character's behavior. Due to this, I think this is how people are going to see a character, in general. So, when people interact with a lawful character, they will usually assume that he is somehow reliable: he will keep his word, get organized, show up when he is supposed to be; if he can't keep up to his word, he will see this as a major failure in his behavior. They won't assume the same for a neutr...

A new video about Subclasses of the Hag, by Jessica Marcrum, from MCDM Arcadia Magazine 9.

This is a follow-up both at my thoughts about money in Dungeons & Dragons vs money in our world and magic object as artwork. Instead of going down the path of personalizing magic objects (which was not the initial intention in the previous article, but you've to write what you have to write), I will pursue the idea of a magic object as artwork; let's call them magicworks. Making the parallel between an artwork and a magicwork, we can see that a magicwork should have:   a patron: the person or the entity who commissioned it, and paid for the magicwork to be created in the first place a craftsman: the spellcaster who actually imbued the magicwork with the magic a purpose: as we will see, a magicwork is usually an expensive endeavor, so there is going to be a purpose attached to it an owner: this could be the patron, but could be someone else, if the magicwork has been gifted, stolen, or lost I will use the patrons (mostly the names) from the group patrons listed in the Tasha...

    I combattimenti sono una delle parti più complesse da gestire per un DM di Dungeons & Dragons. In questo video vi mostro tre diversi modi per gestire l'iniziativa. Di seguito potete trovare il testo delle macro descritte nel video.  

  I always had the idea that magic items in Dungeons and Dragons and in RPG should be treated more like artworks or at most highly skilled craftworks than normal, mundane objects. As such, we should never forget that they have been crafted by someone, for someone else, with a purpose in mind. There is a very handy table in chapter 7 of the DMG, with four different tables for the Special Features of the magic objects. I think that rolling on these tables will add a lot of flavor to your magical objects, and help you create a little lore for your world. Let me show you how. I will start with a "simple" longsword +1, which is an uncommon magical object, and roll on the four tables for it. On the first table (who created or was intended to use it), I roll a 5. So, the weapon was created by celestials, or was intended to be used by celestials; it weights half the normal weight, and has engraved motifs of sun, wings, and other possible symbols of good. Fiends find the item's pr...

So, you have gone into the dungeon, you have defeated the monster, and you have returned with the gold. What are you going to do,  now? Are you going to hide your money and pretend nothing happened? Or are you going to show off your gold, and live like one of those nobles who seems to have an endless flow of coins?  In the latter case, there will be a number of people who will be more than willing to separate you from their money. Rulers No matter who they are, rulers have a distinct habit of waging war against one another; and war have something in common: they cost money. Do you know where the word soldier comes from? It comes from solidarius , which has the same root as the Latin word for "pay"; and solidus was the name of a coin in ancient Rome. So, your ruler will look at your treasure and will start thinking that a part of it (most of it maybe) would be better employed if it were in their hands rather than yours. And they have the mean to do that: taxes. Aren't you...

Una volta importata una mappa in MapTool, ed dopo aver creato alcuni token, due funzionalità importanti per un Virtual Tabletop sono quelle di permettere ai giocatori di scambiare messaggi (in modo pubblico o privato) e di tirare dadi (di nuovo, in modo pubblico o privato). È possibile fare entrambe le cose usando la finestra di chat di MapTool, come mostro in questo video.  

  Let's say that you are an hard work person, in an RPG village; maybe you're a smith, or a farmer, or a carpenter, or a baker. Your exact job is not important, the important part is that you earn your money with your hard work. Let's say that you earn between 10 and 20 silver coins/day, which is between a modest and a comfortable style of living. This would correspond to earning something between 100 and 200 Euros/day (you can assume 1 Euro = 1$ here). Now, while you go on with your life, in the town arrives this group of strangers. First of all, they have a lot of weapons with themselves, and they are not afraid to show them. Not the occasional spear or the long knife maybe, no, we are talking about military grade weapons, like longswords or even great swords, chain mails or plate armors, warhorses maybe, or something even more fancy than that. These people, they take residence in the inn, and they have money. Just silver for the moment. They disappear for a while, after ...

There are a couple of interesting effects which stem out from giving my players an easy conversion rate between D&D coins and modern currency (as I did here ): players understand how big a treasure is when they find it (it's different to say: "we found 1,000 gold coins, and "we found 100,000 Euros, or 100,000 $) players can have an idea of how much things are going to cost around as a DM, I can make up costs without resorting too much to the tables   So, for example, if they enter a tavern, I will expect that they could eat something for a price which could go between a one or two silver coins per person, up to 10 silver coins (i.e. 1 gold piece) for something very fancy. In an inn, a normal room will cost probably 4 to 6 silver coins, and so on. Eager to see what other effects this is going to cause. Image by Gerd Altmann

A new video about Long Term Curses, by Leon Barillaro, from MCDM Arcadia Magazine 5

  I am going to base the conversion cost on the cost of a mug of ale. According to Player's Handbook, Chapter 5, a mug of ale costs 4 copper pieces. The average price of a pint of ale is around between 4 and 5 Euros in Ireland (closer to 5 Euros than to 4, to be fair). Keeping these two numbers in mind, and the possible differences between a pint and a mug (a pint being more than a mug), I say that we can approximate 1 copper piece with 1 Euro. So, we have the following: 1 cp = 1 Euro 1 sp = 10 Euro 1 ep = 50 Euro 1 gp = 100 Euro 1 pp = 500 Euro Let's now check the initial equipment for a fighter; I am going to choose: a chain mail: 7,500 Euro a greatsword: 5,000 Euro a light crossbow and 20 bolts: 2,600 Euro dungeoneer's pack: 1,200 Euro for a total of 16,300 Euro. These numbers become quite interesting if we start to look at things like crafting a magical item; a spell scroll of 9th level will require 250,000 gp, which translates to 25,000,000 Euro. Now, from this number ...

La volta scorsa vi ho mostrato come importare una mappa e condividerla con i vostri giocatori. Naturalmente, avete bisogno di token per rappresentare i personaggi, i mostri, gli oggetti all'interno della vostra mappa. TokenTool è uno strumento complementare a MapTool, e può essere usato per creare token a partire da una qualsiasi immagine. In questo video vi mostro come prendere un'immagine, farla diventare un token, e usarla in MapTool. Nel video ho scordato di dire che potete salvare il token come immagine da TokenTool: a quel punto, può essere usato come immagine in altri VTT.

Questo è il primo video di una nuova serie, che in modo molto pomposo ho chiamato "MapTool da Zero a Cento". MapTool è lo strumento che uso da circa 3 anni per giocare a Dungeons & Dragons; è un Virtual Table Top (tavolo di gioco virtuale) o VTT open source, che mi permette di condividere il tavolo di gioco con giocatori che non sono nella mia stessa stanza.   Lo scopo della serie è mostrare come completare una serie di compiti specifici con MapTool. Il primo è come condividere una mappa con i giocatori.

 Published a new video, this time about the article "The Chained Library" from MCDM Arcadia number 4, by Cat Evans.

I am not going to explain what is D&D here. In short, there are so many resources out there (text, audio or video) which can explain it so much better than me, that it would be just a waste of time. I am instead going to explain what is my current set-up for  playing D&D, and why, with all the cludges it has, makes the game better. In short, I am using MapTool as a VTT, with (a lot of) custom macros, and a VPN to allow my players to connect to it, and this is a picture of the view of me as a DM of a typical session. The laptop on the left is the laptop of the DM (me); it runs the VTT server; the laptop on the right is used to provide the local players (my wife and my daughter) with an instance of the VTT, connected to my server; it also runs the videoconference software (Google Meetings in this case); the remote players (Paolo being one of them in the picture) runs their local instance of the Virtual Table Top to connect to my instance, and have their instance of Google Mee...

As I am very fond of old style Role Playing Games, I am working on a toy project about Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st edition. Now, this game is full of strange rules. For example, when the characters encounter a group of monsters, both parties have to roll a d6 (standard six faced die); if one of the parties rolls 1 or 2, that party is surprised. Also, in this case, the value of the die (1 or 2) indicates the number of "segments" (6 seconds period) for which that party is surprised. In my first Python implementation, this lead me to write a method in the Party class, which was something like this: def surprise_segments(self): roll = random.randint(1, 6) return roll if roll <= 2 else 0 Pretty simple, right? This simple piece of code didn't satisfy me very much. The roll variable wasn't very useful here: it was just a temp variable to keep the roll value so that it could be used in the following expression. So, I decided to extract that pa...