Mongoose's Marvellous Miscellany

[thaddeus6th]

That ever-so humble title is the name of the Patreon account I just started. It's all about sharing new ideas, both entirely original and inspired by history and myth, primarily with a view to helping flesh out and spice up TTRPGs (the numbers are based on 5e) but may also be of interest for general fantasy world-building.

Initially it's a dollar a month, with a 'proper' post each weekend and scope for shorter stuff in between. For the first month all the posts will be paid for but after that I'll put up free posts occasionally and link them here.

In addition to world-building, there'll be new magical and mundane items, classes, races, a revamp of Ancient Greece and some Nordic stuff too, plus random knick-knacks. Each post will have audio as an mp3, with a compilation of the entries at the end of the month. Mostly this'll be AI voices although I have cunningly persuaded an Actual Human (and a voice actor, at that) to do one for December 2023. The second paid entry, due out 9 December, features a new monster, the Longtail, with artwork by me.

If that sounds interesting then give it a look by clicking here.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Fantasy world-building: the short siege.

This is my first free content on Mongoose's Marvellous Miscellany, and may be of interest for general fantasy world-building as well as those into TTRPGs. Not going to copy and paste the whole thing because it's almost two thousand words, so here's the start of it, the rest is entirely free via this link. Also, parts two and three (more siege engines and the long siege/extra siege ideas respectively) are planned for release.


Sieges, large and small, offer some fun and mostly combat-focused possibilities for parties and DMs in an RPG. Here’s how they worked historically, and how that might be altered to better suit a tabletop game. In this first part of the siege mini-series, we’ll be looking at the short siege in particular.

Long or Short​

Many people think of a siege in the sense of a defended settlement or castle being subjected to assault by siege weapons then stormed with ladders or via a breach, whether that’s a destroyed wall or broken gate. However, most of the time in history a siege would be long, rather than short. This entailed a larger besieging force, and starving the defenders out. Sometimes an agreement would be made whereby the defenders would surrender if reinforcements didn’t arrive within a certain time period. This sort of deal pleased both sides as it meant the besiegers didn’t have to spend 11 months camped outside (as Edward the Third did to Calais) and the defenders know they’ll have their lives spared and won’t reach the ‘eating horses and cats’ stage of starvation.

A short form siege is perhaps better suited to an RPG (although it could be interesting to have a campaign setting under siege). There’s obvious potential for entertaining combat from either a defensive or offensive perspective and other things that may involve combat but allow other talents to shine too.

Siege Weapons​

The second part of the siege mini-series will include some extra siege engine ideas, but for a recent siege assault in my homebrew campaign I mostly used the rules as written (though I did add a postern gate, AC 15, HP 85). That said, I’m not fond of the way it takes three actions to load and aim and shoot a ballista, so I gave my party two squads of three helpful guards who did the grunt work while the party called targets.

The extent of offensive siege weapons might be limited according to the intelligence of the besiegers, but a ram should be available to just about anyone (it’s essentially a tree trunk within a shed on wheels and hardly high technology). The siege tower is a little more complicated, though not by a huge amount. Projectile weapons (ballista and trebuchet being the obvious) might be beyond some more simple-minded hordes.

First and foremost, though, is the siege ladder. If you feel like being finickity you can even have the attackers make an Intelligence check to see if they cut them the right length (not as daft as it sounds. Philip the Fifth of Macedon once attempted a sudden assault on a wall only to discover the ladders were too short…). In real life, ladders were made to end before they reached top of the battlements to prevent defenders easily pushing them over. Whether you stick to that or make them conveniently long so players can push or kick them over is a matter for the DM. It can be handy marking the enemy with siege ladders in some way, for the sake of convenience of both players and DM as this avoids having half a dozen or more ladder icons in addition to the various characters and enemies on the battle map.

My plan for the troll pushing the ram in an assault was to have the troll climb on top of the siege weapon and then try to climb the wall. That never happened thanks to a pesky druid with spike growth, but because the attackers also had a half-ogre with a giant siege ladder the troll was able to get up that way instead.


Later sections:

First Attack on the Walls​

Tunnels​

Night Raid​

Second Assault on the Wall​

Click here for the whole of the short sieges post.

​

 

[thaddeus6th]

Crazy Weather

Ice Rain aka Hail from Hel​

My first homebrew campaign is set in a Scandinavian/northern European type of climate, so ice rain or hail from Hel (the frozen underworld in Norse mythology) is very much on the agenda. Ice rain I envisage as icicles of a relatively small size. These can either be considered blanket coverage for minor damage while outside of cover (perhaps 1d4 cold) or you can make the icicles beefier but add a dex save. For this, I’d make the DC 12 but the damage 1d8 cold. Cover against this would include something like trees as the icicles are way larger than liquid rain and the branches would cause them to shatter into harmless pieces. If so inclined, you could even go nuts and have very few but massive icicles (easy dex save of 10 but a ton of damage, perhaps 2d8). This or the medium version could also be a way of altering the environment. If you’re in a boat, this can mean punching a hole through the hull. If you have the party halfway across a rope bridge, that can mean taking out the planks that get hit. This can be the choice of the person running the game, or you could have the players roll to randomise it, to add a little more stress to their lives.

Other sections in the link below:

Acid Rain​

Tornadoes​

Firestorms​

Fun with Fog (acid, freezing, petrifying)​

All the content here, for free:

World-Building: Crazy Weather | Mongoose's Marvellous Miscellany

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[thaddeus6th]

Bit earlier this month than usual but I liked this one a lot, and it's good for general fantasy writing as well as RPG world-building:

Why Castles are Abandoned

Why Castles are Abandoned | Mongoose's Marvellous Miscellany

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Abandoned ruins, perhaps especially castles, are a fun place to explore in fantasy, including TTRPGs. Castles can vary from enormous to little more than a tower, they can have settlements nearby or be isolated, and their ruins can be almost entirely intact or mostly rubble. They also make handy lairs for villains and bandits, nests for monsters, and haunts for ghosts and spectres.
But why do castles become abandoned?

Why Castles are Built​

One of the first questions to ask is why a castle is built in the first place. If the reasoning behind this changes then the castle might be abandoned even if wholly intact. Castles are fortifications which naturally means they have a military role, but what is this?

Is a castle there to provide troops to safeguard trade caravans from brigands? To protect imports arriving by ship? Is it a major bastion against a deadly rival, or is it simply there to act as a glorified watchtower?

If the reasoning for its foundation is changed, the castle may no longer be worth the expense of maintenance. However, they are very costly to build in the first place, so there should be some reason for having them. It might simply be that a lordly family believes their status requires them to have a suitably impressive home. But there should be some reason behind it.

Environmental Catastrophe​

In a pinch, you can’t go wrong with an earthquake. A castle falling to bits because of this is eminently possible, especially in a kingdom where earthquakes are rare. Somewhere that has them often will probably build in a way to make them more resistant (Chinese pagodas and Japanese castles are very different to European castles) but even the strongest castle can be brought low by a strong enough earthquake.
Water matters a lot. If a castle’s water supply dries up or the river changes course that can be enough to make the expense of solving the problem too high. This is even more the case if the water gets contaminated with poison.

Coastal erosion is another strong possibility. If half the castle has fallen into the sea, the king might well conclude the surviving half is not worth rebuilding. Similarly, if water levels are rising this could be a good way of having a mixed environment, with twelve feet of water totally submerging the ground floor and making the floor above difficult terrain due to the depth of water.

Economic Changes​

On the other side of things, if a castle is built to protect a port but the river has been depositing sediment and the coast has gradually been moving further and further from the harbour it might lose trade and eventually not be worth protecting.
Castles could well be built to protect valuable but finite resources. If the nearby silver or gold mine is exhausted, the castle may be abandoned as there’s nothing to guard any more.

But let’s say the gold mine is still going strong. If the castle guards the road east but the trading partner that way has imposed an embargo due to a diplomatic bust-up then, if it lasts long enough, this may make that particular fort redundant.

The general economic picture should also be considered. A castle might be fulfilling a useful purpose, but if the kingdom’s short of cash for whatever reason then some forts may be abandoned to make ends meet. On the other hand, if the economy is flourishing, perhaps a new, better castle will be built, and the outdated older one will be abandoned in favour of the newer, better fort.

Conquest, Politics, and Plague​

Border raids are a good reason for having a castle. But if they stop occurring, then the need for the castle vanishes too. There are multiple reasons this could happen. One kingdom could conquer another. Or there could be a marriage alliance. Or maybe one side throws up an impenetrable magical barrier and the raids are no more.
Plague is good for a lot of things in world-building. It can devastate a region so there’s insufficient manpower for many castles to be maintained. Or it can wipe out the livestock so there’s no reason to go raiding any more, and thus no need for the castle that previously helped guard against such shenanigans.

There’s also the instance of full-blown societal collapse. This doesn’t happen very often, but the departure of the Romans from Great Britain provides a pretty good example. Major walled settlements were simply abandoned. The Anglo-Saxons conquered what would become England, and it took centuries for small kingdoms to coalesce into big ones before finally England was founded by the House of Wessex. Alfred the Great, and probably before him the other kings of Wessex and Mercia, built forts and fortified settlements throughout the land, but this was about half a millennium after the Romans left.

New Threats​

New threats can render even the most impressive fortifications too weak. The walls of Constantinople were famously fearsome, only falling to the bizarre Fourth Crusade and the eventual onslaught of the Ottomans. However, the latter were aided by the advance in gunpowder weaponry that didn’t exist when the walls were constructed. In addition to newfangled technology like that, a castle might become obsolete if new enemies emerge.

Twenty foot high walls might be fine against bandits, but versus invading frost giants it might be rather less effective. And against flying monsters it wouldn’t do much at all. In that circumstance, subterranean fortifications might be preferred, or castles with arcane protection.

Stolen Stone and Crumbling Foundations​

Even if a castle is entirely intact upon abandonment it can be missing pieces decades down the line. This is because stone is great for housing but expensive. Nearby peasants may well take the stone from the castle to bolster their own homes. Without maintenance, the castle will gradually feel the effects of erosion and time. And burrowing monsters could make the foundations crumble all the faster.

Mongoose

 

[thaddeus6th]

Btw, made a new Twitter account dedicated to this sort of stuff. Will have a mix of TTRPG stuff, general fantasy world-building, history, etc, and if you find that sort of thing interesting I'd really appreciate a follow: https://twitter.com/mongoose1066

 

[thaddeus6th]

Extra shield mechanics is this month's free post. Essentially, it's strange/inaccurate to see shields as purely defensive. Limiting each shield to one type of bonus action was mostly a balancing matter, though I think it'd be interesting to write up a full combat mechanic for shields.

Here's the first half of the free post, rest in the link:

Bucklers​

Bucklers are dinky little shields, almost akin to a dinner plate of metal that can be used as easily as knuckledusters. Their ease and speed of use is where we get the term ‘swashbuckler’.

Characters wielding a buckler in one hand should be able to use a bonus action to make a ‘metal fist’ attack as a bonus action, smashing the buckler into the enemy’s face. This does bludgeoning damage, and the roll to hit should include the player’s proficiency bonus. Upon rolling a critical hit, the damage (1d6 plus either strength or dexterity modifier) is doubled and the opponent is stunned until the end of their next turn unless they pass a constitution saving throw. The con save DC is 12.

Buckler, 300 gold, +2 AC, 1 pound, finesse, light, 1d6 bludgeoning (attack can only be used once as a bonus action)

On a critical: stuns opponent for one turn unless they pass a DC 12 constitution save

Frisbee of Death​

The Frisbee of Death refers to a round shield the entire circumference of which is perilously sharp. In addition to the standard plus 2 to AC, the shield can be thrown as a frisbee. A Frisbee of Death, one might say. On a hit, with the roll including proficiency bonus, this causes slashing damage of 1d10 plus the strength modifier of the attacking player. Obviously this deprives them of the shield, unless it has been enchanted to return to their hand.

Upon a critical hit, the struck enemy must make a strength saving throw, with a DC of 16. On a failure, they are pushed back 10 feet.

Frisbee of Death, 150 gold, +2 AC, 4 pounds, thrown (range 20/60), 1d10 slashing damage (only when thrown as a bonus action)

On a critical: pushes an opponent back 10 feet if they fail a DC 16 strength saving throw

Mundane and Magical Items: Shields | Mongoose's Marvellous Miscellany

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