Relating almost entirely to the situation and typical attitudes of the people of Cach and its satellite city-states.

The people of the city states think themselves civilized, the masters of their surroundings and bringers of order and prosperity to an unruly world. And with good reason. Their walls are tall and strong, their fields and fishing fleets are bountiful, their mines are rich and deep. The markets and caravans make all available in plenty to those with the means to buy. Meanwhile the barbarians nomads and hill-people scrabble by desperately in squalor and ignorance, binding themselves to fickle sprites and pixies and what-have-you. It is no wonder that they envy the comfort and wealth of the cities. That they have not abandoned their foolish, crass ways and accepted proper culture and laws is truly a tragedy.

Cachic society is diverse, with several distinct races living side by side under common principles of mutual tolerance and support. Healthy rivalries between craftsmen, families, mercenary companies, and cities result in a noisy but functional meritocracy of sorts. Social mobility between classes is somewhat rare due to the various native gifts of the laboring poor, the artisan, the lesser gentry and high nobles, but within these rough strata competition is nearly constant and excellence finds itself rewarded. The incompetent and unlucky must sometimes serve as motivational examples, ground up and spat out by the process as cautionary tales. In the past sixty years or so a shift towards the creations of guilds with legal monopolies over specific fields has taken root in Cach itself, providing some protection and structure not previously seen. This dismays some of the more conservative citizenry who prefer motivations of personal ambition, family, and state to remain dominant forces.

The exertion of military power is handled at three scales: the mercenary company, the house armsmen, and the state militia. Mercenary companies are entities created through legal contract, with charters filed in the public records of the city they operate out of. Individual soldiers, officers, and other agents enter into contracts with the company just as the company enters into contracts with patrons. Companies range in size from banner of less than ten to entire battalions of three hundred or more. A mercenary company will typically operate until the retirement or death of its captain, sometimes re-incorporating under new leadership under a new charter. House armsmen are gentry and nobles loyal to a particular noble house that can be called upon to fight for the interests of that house. Some will participate personally, some hire mercenaries to accompany them, and others send mercenaries in their stead. An ambitious gentleman will almost always personally serve in conflicts as a matter of reputation. The state militia is almost always a hodgepodge of house armsmen and a few mercenary companies under long-term garrison contracts. The cities of Cach, Hamza, and Sergeli maintain standing military fleets crewed by such mercenaries with local gentry serving as officers.

Dwarves – Few in number, the Dwarves are perhaps the most insular of the civilized folk. Over the generations they have gravitated toward each other, their nobles feuding almost exclusively with each other until only a single noble line, House Binici, remains. The common Dwarves tend to live and work in the same neighborhoods as each other, and primarily stick to the cities of Bektemir and Cach. Dwarves can be found elsewhere during their professional lives, but nearly all of them raise their children in the Dwarven enclaves. House Binici holds a disproportionate number of seats in the Cachic Council of Elders, in part due to simple Dwarven longevity and in part due to centuries of skillful political maneuvering and alliances that last entire generations for the shorter-lived people.

Halflings – The Cachic city-states are positively overrun with Halflings. They work the fields, staff the shops and bureaucracies, fill the slums, work the manufactories, and generally the salt of the earth citizenry that keep everything working. Halfling politicians have somewhat less influence than the sheer number of their people would suggest. This is largely due to an inclusive attitude among the Halflings regarding the other civilized races; they don’t much care if their leaders are from some other race. They have five major noble houses scattered across the civilized lands, with sixteen seats on the Cachic Council of Elders. They are not known to vote as a bloc.

Humans – Less numerous than the Halflings but nearly as ubiquitous, Humans play a similar role in Cachic society. Individual Humans are somewhat more likely to indulge in ambition and great endeavors than their smaller counterparts. They currently have seven major noble houses with a massive twenty-four seats on the Cachic Council of Elders. The interests of their houses are diverse and often in conflict internally and against each other. Even individual noble families, particularly Houses Yilmaz and Uzun, don’t vote as a bloc, with split votes being the norm. Perhaps for this very reason is is common to see a Human as Lord High Executioner; it is typically expected that a Human will put his ideals and personal interests before that of nepotism.

Tieflings – More numerous than the Dwarves, but only just, the Tieflings have a particular rapport with the infernal forces that make magic broadly available to the settled peoples. Tiefling children are raised with expectations of becoming merchants, cult functionaries, or politically active in some way. The great House Kasabian of Cach, with its nine seats in the Council of Elders, is a Tiefling family renowned for its cunning use of alliances and favors. Many prominent Warlocks and Paladins have been Tieflings, with several of today’s most influential and popular cults being run by both common-born and noble horned men and women.

For use in a Dungeons & Dragons setting largely devoid of “monstrous humanoid” races. Due to a surplus of civilized noble races in the Player’s Handbook, half have been designated as less-civilized exotic people to fill the role of the menacing Other.

Before the first foundation stone was laid on Burkant Hill, before the sedentary folk of Cach or Abadan set sail to clear the forests and terrace the hills and harness the rivers, the lands were already long peopled. Four great tribes have lived here since the gods first set the sun and moon alight. They are people slow to change but quick to move on, abiding by ancient traditions. The sedentary folk of the cities erect their walls and think themselves civilized, building their society around stone and industry and coercion. The Great Peoples, though they vary greatly in their appearance and history and particular customs, build theirs upon family, honor, and hospitality, pillars far more durable.

Each of the Peoples organize themselves very loosely, largely by extended family, with no formal governments at all. Trade is largely done with neither currency nor barter, with most goods trading hands in the form of gifts between households and an informal credit and debt system. Between different Peoples and the sedentary folk barter and coin are common. Raiding between Peoples and families for livestock, goods, and women is common enough to form a continuous tradition of warrior culture stretching back thousands of years. Rarely these raids escalate to full-blown wars over territory. Casualties are typically minor, as the Peoples have nomadic tendencies and will generally withdraw when faced with overwhelming odds. In this way their lands have been gradually ceded in the face of the city-builders.

The names for each of the Peoples here are those used for diplomatic and legal purposes in Cach. Each has its own language, in which the word for themselves is translated roughly to “the true people” or “the great people.”

Dragonborn
The Dragonborn range primarily to the South, migrating North in the late spring to bring their herds out of the parched savanna, then returning just after the monsoons pass. They are perhaps the most exotic of the Peoples, dwelling briefly and rarely encamping in one place for more than a week. They tend to flocks of domesticated drakes, and often have access to goods hailing from distant lands. Their prolonged absences from territory they consider theirs can lead to misunderstandings and friction with homesteaders and expansionist city-builders. Dragonborn men and women dress very conservatively, veiling themselves when visiting or entertaining outsiders. They segregate between genders almost continuously.

Elves
The Elves hold a large portion of the Northern lands, dwelling in the forests and hills. Not as nomadic as the Dragonborn, not as settled as the Gnomes, Elven families move their homes to follow the growing cycle of plants they cultivate, sowing crops one season then leaving for months at a time before returning. A typical Elven family will rotate between five or six locations over a cycle of three years. They sometimes keep horses, but are most famous for their tame elk, which their warriors ride on raids but are never used for plowing.

Gnomes
Gnomes are the most settled of the Peoples. It is thought they were once city-builders themselves, or were wholly subjugated to some long-lost city-building race. Their oral tradition tells of a great immortal tyrant that was slain, his temple ruined and his followers put to the axe. The location of such a temple is unknown, for the Gnomes have lived in small mountain villages for as long as any other People can remember. Gnomish families are reckoned matrilineally and raiding for brides is rare. Gnomish settlements are strongly averse to interacting with other Peoples or city-building folk. Whenever the location of one of their villages is known to non-Gnomes, the people will almost immediately take up the debate to either silence the interlopers or move. Approaching a Gnomish settlement is extremely hazardous. Gnomes subsist on hunting, gathering, and small-scale gardening.

Orcs
These are the most physically imposing and least refined of the Peoples, in the eyes of city-builders. Raids between Orcish families are common, and trade with them is somewhat hazardous, as they have a long history of deciding (after the fact) that they have been cheated or disrespected in some way by a deal. This often leads to a surprising retaliatory attack, with dozens of fearsome Orcs on their Terror Birds pouring out of the hills, howling as if possessed. The Orcish diet relies heavily on hunting, supplemented by foraged vegetation. The needlework on Orcish textiles is world-reknown, with many brave merchants having made fortunes and lost their lives trading dyes and thread to secure samples for wealthy patrons.

Orcs as presented here use the rules for Half-Orcs found in the Player’s Handbook. Their Terror Birds are Axebeaks, as presented in the Monster Manual. Subraces are considered part of the same tribe, though of different family lineage.

The Bottomless City, the Eternal Colony, the Red Jewel, and a dozen other appellations apply to the city of Cach. The original census records and founding charter were lost long ago when the city was sacked, but legend has it Cach was the result of five separate settlements colonized by ancient civilizations beyond the Great Sea. All five were wracked by famine, plague, hostile natives, and ravenous monsters until only a few dozen survivors remained. They banded together atop Burkant Hill, where they erected a sturdy rampart, drove a well deep into the earth, and clung together for dear life. Half of them died during the first five years, but nearly twelve hundred years later their desperate fort has grown into a mighty citadel overlooking a vast, dense city with sturdy walls, fearsome armies, and a bustling port.

The city states of Bektemir, Hamza, Mirobod, and Sergeli were all originally outposts of Cach that have since won for themselves political independence. The nobles of Cach have a long history of infighting, and many of its Lord Mayors have spent their entire reigns focusing their attention inward. This leaves its satellite cities to their own devices. While now fiercely independent, these smaller states look to Cach as an economic and cultural center, and each maintains active embassies here.

Cach is situated around a hill overlooking Olmazar bay. An artificial harbor and series of lighthouses provide shelter for a fishing fleet and trade ships carrying exotic goods and passengers from far-flung lands. Canals cut across the delta plain of the Green River and through massive locks that double as the Northwest gates in the city walls. The inland hills are extensively terraced and irrigated by massive screw-pumps. The Cachic justice system and armies provide a steady supply of laborers for the great locks and pumps. Hundreds of craftsmen and professionals ply their trade inside the city walls, operating mostly from small shops; there are no large-scale manufactories.

The national defenses consist of a fleet of mothballed war galleys and the Mayor’s Guard. Individual noble houses maintain their own cadres of soldiers. Technically only the Mayor’s Guard are allowed to bear military arms in public places, but entire neighborhoods fall within the property boundaries of some houses, and are heavily patrolled by private armies. There are currently two mercenary companies under contract with the Lord Mayor. A special dispensation exempts members of these companies from the city’s arcane and sometimes draconian sumptuary laws. The Lord Mayor is elected to a twelve year term by a congregation of representatives of the founding families. It is widely believed that the bona fides of many of these electors are the result of fabrications and that nearly all of their loyalties are bought and paid for by a deep and broad network of special favors, blackmail, and bald-faced cronyism. It is considered extremely uncouth for an elector to ever stop backing a Lord Mayor he has previously voted for; the elections are nearly always a formality, the results known long in advance.

The city-state Abadan lies roughly one hundred thirty miles north by northeast along the coast, connected by caravan roads and sea lanes. The nation of Konjikala is a hundred miles south, separated by the Leviathan Channel. Sea trade between these three is frequent, and each has been known to raise massive navies for use against each other. Konjikala recently lost a war against Abadan and is burdened with reparations and tribute. Their official delegation to Cach goes to great lengths to conceal how thin their budget has stretched.

For use in a Dungeons & Dragons setting with a very low incidence of full-caster character classes. Each of the deities listed here grants any domain listed in the Players Handbook or Dungeon Master’s Guide and may have followers of any alignment.

Many temples and shrines have been built and scrupulously maintained or left as crumbling ruins over the ages. The gods of Man are commonly understood to be tremendously powerful and personal entities that take a direct interest in the lives of mortals, bringing calamity, prosperity, joy, and sorrow in varying measure. Unlike the Fiends and Fey Lords, their influence on grand-scale world events is subtle or nonexistent depending on who you ask. The gods act directly and personally, rarely affecting more than an immediate family with their interventions. They make no binding contracts with their followers, accepting or ignoring their petitions as suits their own inscrutable desires.

They walk the earth, unnoticed by most, listening to or ignoring the appeals of their faithful, accepting offerings, granting boons, and dispensing punishments themselves. Their motivations are obscure and unique to themselves. The clergy are not miracle-workers, but shrine-tenders, teachers, bureaucrats, and intellectuals. They have no more direct access to the gods than the laity, but have developed various means of reading the signs and portents the gods are known to leave for them so they may better guide the faith and appease their divine patrons.

Akunbek, a very old god thought to have been a warrior long ago. When the world was young he killed the goddess of storms and the god of steel, taking their secrets and their power for himself. Now doddering in his old age, Akunbek no longer answers prayers for rain or calm seas, imparts no secrets to craftsmen, and is known as the god of rust. Common prayers to him are uttered when using metal tools, embarking on a sea voyage, sowing crops, or preparing for battle. Those that can see him describe a withered, gray-haired man with a whispy beard, tired eyes, and threadbare noble regalia. It is thought that he rarely strays from his holy places, and it is typical to see a small shrine dedicated to Akunbek in seaports and near armories.

Karluk, a clever young man thought to be the most knowledgeable of the gods. There is some difference of opinion regarding his backgound. Some tales report him as the son of Mahatbek and Akunbek, others place him as the child of Sanira. It was Karluk that taught the Elves and Dwarves how to speak and invented written language. Through his gifts, useful information and gossip can spread like wildfire among mortals. Many stories of Karluk paint him as the god of fear. His faithful seek answers from him, but when he obliges they often come to regret it. He is revered by scholars, respected by the clergy generally, and his favors are often sought out by the desperate. Reports of his appearance are conflicting, with most divinely-inspired Clerics who have laid eyes on him declining to describe him. Some say his is a slight, frail man with shifty eyes and ink-stained fingers. Others report him to be a hulking brute of a man with a heavy beard calloused knuckles. It is common practice to inscribe a prayer to Karluk inside the binding of every book, making any collection of written works a shrine of sorts to him. A notable exception to this practice is the spellbooks of Eldritch Knights, Warlocks, and Wizards, who fear a prayer in such a book may provoke Karluk’s wrath.

Mahatbek, a wise old woman thought to be responsible for plants and fungus of medicinal value. Also the goddess most closely associated with pestilence. Myths involving Mahatbek tend to center around barbers, witch-doctors, and midwives suffering from hubris and bringing disaster to those under their care. She is thought to punish the proud with illness. Those that have seen her report she appears as an inscrutable middle-aged woman in simple attire. Prayers to her are uttered when preparing food for winter storage, when a ship arrives from a foreign port, and when doing business with courtesans. She is thought to travel widely from place to place, and her shrines are typically found in the homes of people that are frequently in contact with the ill.

Rostem is thought to be this age’s thriving and vital warrior god. In recent times it has become increasingly clear to the clergy that he may never have been a god of strength and martial valor as originally thought, but rather a spirit of deception and lies. He is portrayed as dashing, athletic, and valiant, eager to rush headlong into battle for a worthy cause. Those that have seen him in recent years believe this image is actually Rostem’s shadow, reshaped to distract and confuse those around him. Rostem negotiates in bad faith and manipulates his followers and fellow gods continuously. Prayers are frequently offered to him in times or crisis or to bolster bravery. Increasingly the laity is accepting the notion that their warrior champion god is a liar, and many gamblers invoke him before picking up dice or cards.

Sanira is the every-woman of the gods. Stories about her are nearly always parables of gender role expectations, with various other gods taking on the male role but Sanira always at the middle weathering abuse and doling out justice to suit the needs of the storyteller. Many of the popular tales are likely falsehoods, but she remains a cultural cornerstone. She is often thought of as the grieving mother, as any story about a fallen god places her in this role. Of all the gods she is the mostly frequently depicted in artwork, generally shown as a grey-haired matron with sad eyes and a kind smile. Prayers to Sanira are frequent, and offered to comfort her as often as to seek her help. Of all the gods, her mortal champions are the most likely to perish early in the execution of their duties. Her Clerics, when they arise, are mourned even as they live.

There are various other gods that appear in the folklore of the world, but these are the five most commonly venerated and the most likely to interfere with or assist mortals, and the only five thought to grant divine spellcasting. Several of the less notable gods are actually dead, victims of squabbles among themselves or even the machinations of the Archfiends or Fey. As a whole they are a fractious lot, and prominent servants of one god will often run afoul of the others.

Note that in this setting the magic used by Druids, Paladins, and Ranger are all of fiendish or fey origin. Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards are exceedingly uncommon, with perhaps a dozen of each alive at any given time.

Back in the 1980’s I swindled my mom into fronting the money for a series of strange purchases, including a funky red, blue, and green cardboard boxes filled with odd little saddle-stitched books, bizarre dice, and all manner of crazy ideas. In the back of one of these books was a sheet of paper covered with a blank hexagonal graph paper and guidelines for building your own fantastical world. I hadn’t been exposed to Greyhawk or Lankhmar or the Forgotten Realms yet; this was simply how you went about making a world for your evil sorcerers and hobgoblin armies and chromatic dragons to threaten. For other kids to explore. For adventurers to save.

It suggested you start in the middle of the page with the location of your first adventure and its nearest village or city. Fill in the immediate area with some terrain, and expand outward as needed. Sprinkle in some rivers and oceans and mountain ranges, and plant some points of interest as the locations of future adventures and quests and plots and schemes. You’re off to the races.

As I grew up a good portion of how a D&D game unfolded evolved, refined, and perhaps corrupted. Random encounters were ridiculous, as they don’t contribute to the elaborate story the Dungeon Master and players were weaving together. Wandering monster tables were immersion-breaking and had no place in a serious game. Adventure locations should make internal sense. If the original inhabitants didn’t have the resources or motivation to put a giant boulder trap in a hallway, it doesn’t belong there. Giant carnivorous monsters shouldn’t dwell where there are no prey. Monsters and villains should be carefully crafted to ensure the player characters have a solid chance of defeating them in a fight. The plausibility of fantastic treasures must not be compromised by random generation tables.

When I type all that out it becomes clear how hampered the role of Dungeon Master had become. How pampered and stifled the players. No clever 3rd level Fighter was going to accidentally find a +2 Flaming Ranseur. No 10th level party was going to have to run for their lives from an angry dracolich whose lair they accidentally camped in en route to another location, leaving one of their own behind for dead. I’m not sure where the desire to not have a slapstick Monty Hall campaign turned a game of swords and sorcery into Serious Business, but it did. Randomness in a roleplaying game isn’t just a tool for spicing up a success/failure mechanism. It is also an opportunity to force improvisation.

Time to dial it back a bit. Brew up a map with Hexographer. Brew up a few villainous NPCs with bad intentions and some random encounter tables and see what happens. I’m not going full-on OSR, just treating the release of 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons as an opportunity for a clean break and a fresh start.

Depending on your background and tastes, there are many places where Dungeons & Dragons may have taken a bad turn. For some it’s when weapon speeds and casting times were thrown out. For others it was when spellcasters got useful abilities they could use all day every day. Others feel the whole game was misconceived from start to finish and it’s just plain thoroughly bad.

Let’s take a look at the original four-person adventuring party: The Fighting Man, the Magic User, the Priest, and the Thief. What’s wrong with this list? The Thief. This wasn’t originally part of OG D&D. When you’re looking to play a bunch of tomb-raiding murderhobos delving through dungeons, slaying monsters, and taking all their stuff, isn’t everybody a lowercase-t thief? Who is responsible for finding traps? Everybody. Who is responsible for locating and bypassing perilous traps? Everybody. By introducing the Thief as a separate class, more recently called the Rogue, you take some of the core functionality of the other classes away from them to build a special little Thief-shaped niche in the genre that doesn’t belong there. Why should Conan the Cimmerian have to switch character classes midway through his career? He didn’t suddenly become a master of the arcane arts or the chosen miracle-worker of some god or other. He was an adventuring Fighting Man straight through his career, whether as a savage tribesman, pirate, mercenary, or urban thief.

So how about we just straight-up kill the Rogue as a character class and give its goodies back to those with whom they belong: everybody. In Type 5 Dungeons & Dragons, the Rogue is a middle-sized hit die character with four skill proficiencies instead of two that gains access to sneak attacks, cunning bonus actions, and some skill perks. Its subclasses are the Thief, the Assassin, and the Arcane Trickster. Thief gains benefits that, as discussed above, should be available to just about everybody. The Assassin is every bit as bad of a character class concept as Thief; a murderer for hire is an assassin. Whether this is accomplished by poison, steel, or spells the person is still a lowercase-a assassin. Really this is just a sneak attack specialist. We’ll keep that in mind. The arcane trickster is just a Wizard that’s a dick about other folks’ private property. We can probably ditch that outright. Get your Wizard Sleight of Hand proficiency and call it a day.

Let’s take a look at what to do with all these class features:

• Saving Throws: leave them be. Everybody else already has two proficiencies here.
• Proficiencies: Grant three skill proficiencies to every class that doesn’t include full (1st – 9th level) spell progression.
• Expertise: Grant Expertise to a single skill to every class that doesn’t include full (1st – 9th level) spell progression. All character classes (including full casters) may select an additional skill to have Expertise in at 6th level.
• Sneak Attack: Grant Sneak Attack to every class. Full casters get 1/3rd their character level from the existing Rogue table, everybody else gets 1/2 character level.
• Thieve’s Cant: This is dumb and shouldn’t be included in anybody’s game. Drop it.
• Cunning Action: Grant Cunning Action to everybody, with the following modification. The bonus action can be used only to perform a task directly related to a skill you have Expertise in. Disengage is related to Acrobatics, Dash is related to Athletics, Hide is related to Stealth.
• Roguish Archetype: At 3rd level a character that has not already selected an Oath, Domain, Archetype, or other subclass may add Assassin to the list of subtypes available. A character selecting Assassin gains Sneak Attack at full class level on the Rogue table, in addition to the benefits of the Assassin archetype.
• Uncanny Dodge: Starting at 5th level, whenever your character class or subclass grants you a new feature, you may select Uncanny Dodge instead.
• Evasion: Starting at 7th level, whenever your character class or subclass grants you a new feature, you may select Evasion instead.
• Reliable Talent: Starting at 11th level, whenever your character class or subclass grants you a new feature, you may select Reliable Talent instead.
• Blindsense: No. Drop it.
• Slippery Mind: Starting at 15th level, whenever your character class or subclass grants you a new feature, you may select Slippery Mind instead.
• Elusive: No. Drop it.
• Stroke of Luck: No. Drop it.

Now for the subclass features:

• Fast Hands: This is mostly covered by the changes to Cunning Hands above. Mostly. Leave this out.
• Second-Story Work: Starting at 3rd level, whenever your character class or subclass grants you a new feature, you may select Second-Story Work instead.
• Supreme Sneak: Starting at 9th level, whenever your character class or subclass grants you a new feature, you may select Supreme Sneak instead.
• Use Magic Device: Starting at 13th level, whenever your character class or subclass grants you a new feature, you may select Use Magic Device instead.
• Thief’s Reflexes: Starting at 17 level, whenever your character class or subclass grants you a new feature, you may select Thief’s Reflexes instead.

For Arcane Trickster, each of the archetype features are made available to Bard, Sorcerer, and Wizard characters in lieu of an equal or higher-level subclass feature. Clerics that are associated with a trickster God may also gain access to these features, and add Mage Hand to their list of available spells.

This has the overall effect of dropping the class count by one, the subclass count by two, and expanding the complexity and options for the remaining classes tremendously.

Revisiting the Muscle Rogue:

The Muscle Rogue is clearly a Fighter at heart. We start out with the same race, background, and attributes as before. Essentially this is the same character. For Fighting Style it seems Dueling has some appeal. We can buy him an extra attack with his Strength bonus with Two Weapon Fighting, but he generally isn’t using his off-hand to attack; he’s using it to trip. Duelism it is. We select Athletics for his single Expertise.

At second level he gains an Action Surge, which is a great Fighter ability. An additional action that can be used for basically any purpose? Quite nice. But now we have a choice between Cunning Action and Action Surge. We can set aside Cunning Action for later, but who wants to wait to actualize their character concept? Cunning action at 2nd level, at the cost of never getting an Action Surge.

At 3rd level we normally get to pick a Fighter Archetype. His reliance on wits and tricky maneuvers suggests he will be adopting the Battle Master archetype, but I want to keep him focused on his Sneak Attack damage, so we borrow the Assassin archetype from the now-defunct Rogue class. He is now proficient with the disguise kit and poisoner’s kit, and gains the Assassinate feature and full Rogue progression for sneak attacks.

At 4th level we get the standard ability score improvement, which we use to level off Strength and Constitution at 18 and 16, as before.

At 5th level our Muscle not-Rogue gets an extra attack. Alternately we may select Uncanny Dodge. Being more stabby is much more appropriate for where we’re going here, so we select Extra Attack.

At 6th level we gain access to our second Expertise selection. Depending on how the campaign has been going, it may be a good idea to pick Perception. We also use our Ability Score Improvement to top off Strength at 20.

At 7th would have gained Evasion as a Rogue, but there is no feature gained by Fighter nor Assassin here. This will still be an option at 9th level, when Assassin grants Infiltration Expertise and Fighter grants Indomitable. We’ll drop the Assassin feature and pick up Uncanny Dodge from back at 5th level.

At 8th level we can bump Constitution up to 18 and effectively gain eight hit points. Instead we take the Alertness feat.

At 10th level we can bump Constitution up to 18 and effectively gain ten hit points. Very tempting. With proficiency in Constitution saves, we may as well take Tough for twenty extra hit points and +2 per level going forward. Alternately select Dungeon Delver, depending on how the campaign is going.

At 11th level we must choose between Reliable Talent or a third attack. At this point we should have a strong feel for how the actual campaign is running. Considering that we already have two or three chances to gain sneak attack damage per round, but can only benefit from it once, I select Reliable Talent. Getting an opponent prone is important to everybody in the party, while an additional attack is only worth so much.

The resulting character feels significantly less thief-like. His skill list is short and notably absent of Thieves’ Tools. His Expertise is in two fifths of his skills, not two thirds. He has an additional chance to land a sneak attack every round, and does slightly more damage. His Cunning Action is more broadly useful, letting him attempt to trip or grapple or shove an opponent without leaning on Two-weapon Fighting to glean a bonus action. The additional attribute bump gets him an additional feat, which we could have used to pick up more skills if the party is really missing the presence of a dedicated thief. To make a dedicated Thief with this house rule, you would want to pick a more suitable background (one with Thieves’ Tools proficiency, perhaps) and lean more heavily on the Rogue and Thief class features, selecting the Champion or Battle Master as the Fighter Archetype.

In which we brew up a muscle-bound Dwarven Assassin that specializes in athleticism that, by 11th level, can deal 2d8+12d6+5 damage on the first round of combat if he has surprise.

With the removal of the five-yard-long list of causes for opportunity attacks and the general removal of piddling little minor “feat” character options in Type V Dungeons & Dragons, several interesting options seem to open up before us. Let’s consider, for a moment, the Muscle Rogue. The Thief is the original add-on character class from OG D&D, expanding the list from Fighting Man, Magic User, and Priest to what many consider the iconic four core classes. Generally the Thief (now called Rogue) is sneaky and nimble and weak. Typically your best attributes would be Dexterity and Intelligence. What if we treat the Rogue instead as a variation of the Fighting Man (now called Fighter) class, and prioritize brawn?

One of the key mechanical concepts of the Rogue is his Sneak Attack. This can be performed with only with finesse or ranged weapons, allowing the Rogue to take advantage of his normally-high Dexterity for attack and damage purposes. It turns out that the finesse quality doesn’t compel you to use Dexterity, so you’re welcome to wield, for example, a Rapier with brute force, applying your Strength bonus for attack and damage purposes. This doesn’t change the fact that it’s a finesse weapon. So it’s still eligible. So far we’ve lost nothing by switching to Strength.

Dexterity considered a highly useful attribute for any character. It applies to initiative, armor class, and several very useful skills. Clearly this is much better than Strength, which only applies to attack and damage with certain weapons, and a single skill. Oh, but what a skill. Athletics is used for climbing, swimming, running, jumping, and generally doing adventurous stuff. You wanted to do adventurous stuff, right? You’re playing Dungeons & Dragons, so hopefully that’s an unqualified “yes.” Athletics is also handy in a scrap, being used in opposed ability checks for grappling, shoving, tripping, and other improvised actions that stray from “I strike with my weapon” or “I cast a spell” bread & butter of your typical character. By opting for proficiency in Athletics and prioritizing Strength, any character can become a big bad bag of tricks in a fight.

That applies to any character, including character classes that already lend themselves to high Strength. Barbarian, Fighter, and Paladin come readily to mind. Why focus on it for a Rogue, our nimble backstab-monkey? Because Rogues and Bards have a lovely little class feature called Skill Expertise. It allows a 1st level Rogue to pick two skills to get twice the normal proficiency bonus. A +2 for Athletics checks becomes a +4. At high levels a +6 becomes a +12. Later on Rogues get the Reliable Talent feature, letting them treat any roll of 9 or less on any ability check involving a skill they’re proficient in. So an 11th level Muscle Rogue, with a 20 Strength, would have +5, +4, and +4 to any Athletics checks, treating his minimum possible roll as a 23. At the same level a Fighter would have a +9 and could run the gamut from a 10 to a 29 for his result.

Unfortunately actions like tripping or grappling an opponent are just that, actions. Rogues get a lot of possible bonus actions from their Cunning Action feature, but not for these purposes. Happily any character can wield two weapons and gain a bonus action to make an additional attack. Attacks can be swapped out for maneuvers like grapples or shoves, so our stalwart Muscle Rogue, armed with a Short Sword in one hand and a Dagger in the other, may use his normal action to attack with the Short Sword, gaining for himself a bonus action to attack with the Dagger, which he then uses to trip. You get to choose when in your turn your bonus actions happen, so he trips before actually rolling his main attack. If the target goes prone, the Muscle Rogue (and anybody else within five feet) gains advantage on attack rolls, so the Short Sword attack is at advantage, with sneak attack damage. This means sacrificing the use of the Cunning action to dash, disengage, or hide, but the option was there if he wanted to take it.

Please note that you need to take a feat to get Two-Weapon-Fighting benefits with non-light weapons, so our Muscle Rogue will need to use a Short Sword if he wants to take advantage of this kind of bonus action. Maybe he’ll opt for a Brace of Rapiers fighting style later in his career.

This still leaves initiative and armor class as possible problems. Initiative can be helped through the Alert feat, among other things, grants a +5 bonus here. This would come at the cost of an improvement to attributes, which may or may not be worth it. If the Muscle Rogue opts for the Assassin archetype, he will benefit greatly from winning initiative, so that should be taken into consideration. Regarding armor class, Dexterity is normally a big factor in a Rogue’s ability to withstand rough treatment. Having Studded Leather armor and a high Dexterity can pump your armor class to 17. If the Muscle Rogue only has a 14 Dexterity, that’s going to be limited to armor class 14. That isn’t going to feel very safe when a Bugbear is breathing down your neck. The solution? Be a Mountain Dwarf. In addition to a +2 racial modifier for both Constitution and (hey!) Strength, Mountain Dwarves get proficiency in medium armor. He buys himself a Chain Shirt at character creation for a 13 base armor class, then saves up for a Breastplate or Half-Plate to bump that up to 14 or 15 later on. Half-Plate gives him disadvantage on stealth checks, but being sneaky isn’t really the Muscle Rogue’s thing.

With a standard attribute array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 as suggested in the Player’s Handbook, a Mountain Dwarf Muscle Rogue can start with a 17 Strength, 14 Dexterity, 15 Constitution, 12 Wisdom, 10 Intelligence, and 8 Charisma. Switch the Intelligence and Charisma to taste, but keep the Wisdom for perception and saving throws. At 4th level he can bump up to 19 Strength. At 8th level he can bump up to 20 Strength and 16 Constitution. He may want to delay either of these ability boosts to pick up Alertness earlier. It’s okay, he’ll have another chance at 10th level to top things off.

At 11th level, using a Breastplate to avoid disadvantage on Sneak checks, he Muscle Rogue attacks once at +9 with his Short Sword for 1d8+5 damage, plus 6d6 sneak attack damage. With Two-Weapon Fighting he may also attack at +9 with his Dagger for 1d4 damage or attempt an Athletics-based maneuver at +13 as a bonus action. With the Alert feat, he has a +7 on initiative checks, and during the first round of combat he automatically has advantage against opponents that haven’t acted yet. This means he may want to use his Cunning Action to dash into the fray, moving 50 feet to close the gap instead of his normal 25 feet of movement. If the target is surprised, the attack is automatically treated as a critical if it hits. The Muscle Dwarf at 11th level does 2d8+12d6+5 damage on a critical sneak attack with a Rapier, 14d6+5 with a Short Sword. To increase the odds of winning that precious automatic critical hit and the oodles of accompanying dage, the Muscle Dwarf has Expertise and Reliable talent in effect, granting a +10 to sneak checks with a minimum effective roll of 21.

Please feel free to use in your own adventures, with or without attribution or even remembering where you got the idea. Games are made to be played.

For use in a 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons setting in which there are no Bards, Clerics, Druids, Sorcerers, or Wizards. The Warlock and Paladin classes are left to fill roles normally taken by these missing character classes, with the Paladins serving not Gods in the traditional sense but the same strange patrons the Warlocks bind themselves: the Archfiends (Amon, Baphomet, Baal, Paimon, and others), the Archfey (Aurora, Mab, Skuld, Titania, and others), and the Great Old Ones (for this purpose the intermediary servants of a single inscrutable cosmic entity).

In the Southern Realms there has been a longstanding tension between the nations of Man and the holdings of the Fey. Their strengths have waxed and waned, through war and peace, revolution and catastrophe. In recent ages, the cities, roads, and industries of Man have gained ground in fits and starts, largely through a tip in the balance between the Three Traditions.

The Archfey and the Archfiends have variously assisted, empowered, and protected the Warlock princes of each side, occasionally troubled by the One Who Is Many and His servants. Variously known as the Great Old One, He That Is, The One Faced By Seven, or simply The One True God, this inscrutable entity has rarely engendered a significant following. The odd hermit or madman here or there would claim to hear whispers from beyond the stars or receive wet, ominous dreams with strange portents, but the servants of the Archfiends in civilized lands would dismiss them out of hand. The green princes of the wilds ensured these odd teachings could not take root in their territory. There was balance of a sort.

Recently this has changed. A rash of charismatic Warlocks and Paladins have established popular cults, erecting temples and shrines deep in bustling cities, in frontier towns, and even in the wilds themselves. Each is dedicated to this unknowable entity to the exclusion of the regularly-excepted fiends and fey courts.

They preach that every mortal is stalked by invisible agents of the One, horrible guardian angels biding their time, observing, waiting to harvest them at the time of their inscrutable Lord’s choosing. They congregate for a ritual cannibalism, transmuting bread into the flesh of their martyred prophet and consuming it raw. They mutilate their infants to mark them as part of their contract. They proselytize vigorously, desperately, and sometimes forcibly. All in hopes of forestalling a coming doom. For none know the purposes of this terrible ancient power, but the cryptic warnings of His messengers have been increasingly specific, increasingly urgent.

The Princes and Emirs have inquired with their fiendish patrons, and found them mute. They offer no refutation of the Great Old One’s prophecy. Instead they are warned not to meddle with The One, his Choir, or his crawling Messengers. Their hands bound by arcane pacts, the mighty potentates must stand by and let this new cult thrive like weeds in their garden.

The Green Lords have looked deep into their pools and crystals and can divine no future guaranteed by the fey courts for all their power. They ask the trees of the origin of the One’s faith, but they do now know. They ask the stones and the stones cannot remember a time before the One. They ask the stars and the stars weep silently. Their silence on the subject, and the complicity of the princes of Man engenders fear and uncertainty among the laity. Even some of the Paladins bound by the Oath of the Ancients and champions under the Oath of Vengeance have turned from their paths, re-dedicating themselves in Oaths of Devotion to the One.

Stormclouds gather ever near. The angelic choirs ululate, wail, and chatter maddeningly. Is it this new faith in an ancient power that will save the world, or doom it?

Adventuring parties are strongly encouraged to have at least one Warlock and one Paladin tied to the same Warlock Patron. Characters devoted to the One Who Is Many are encouraged to subscribe to a number of strictures and taboos similar to Jewish Kosher Law or Muslim Halal. Fluff all interactions with the Great Old One Patron as a cross between the Abrahamic God and Cthulhu

This week I took advantage in a gap in my eight-year-old son’s summer camp schedule to go hang out with an old childhood friend and his daughters. I brought along the recent Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set to run them through as a little campaign. We had two sessions scheduled, which I hoped would be enough to get a reasonable idea of whether these children could handle the hobby and, perhaps more importantly, if I was ready to use 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons as a game system with children as players.

Spoiler: It went pretty well.

Characters

Having five pre-generated characters with backgrounds and relationships to NPCs and ideals and goals was handy. The six-year-old girl’s dwarven cleric was related to the missing miners and was keen on rooting out some brigands in the town they were heading to. The nine-year-old girl’s halfling thief had bad blood with those same brigands and an aunt living in the town. The eight-year-old boy’s human fighter had a chip on his shoulder about his childhood home being overrun by zombies. The girls’ dad ran an elven wizard that was on a mission to re-consecrate an altar that had been co-opted by goblinoids (who turned out to be allied with the same brigands the girls had ties to). It also meant we didn’t have to blow our first session on making adventurers.

A trap that’s come up repeatedly over the years is character creation. Some games, including the most recent major revisions and clones of Dungeons & Dragons, have droves of enthusiasts that publicly obsess over the various methods and options of building new characters. That’s well and good, go have whatever fun you’re looking for. Personally I find more fun in actually playing the game than in making the characters. Simple character creation (and it gets no simpler than pre-generated characters) shortens the road between getting a group of people together and playing the game you got together for. That’s not so much praise for 5th edition D&D as an observation about a common speedbump at the beginning of many adventure campaigns.

The character sheets provided emphasize the character’s bonuses to rolls, not their numeric attribute score. I like this, as it almost never matters if you have a 17 dexterity or a 16 dexterity. What matters is that you get a +3 on dexterity-related activities. The +3 is big and visible across the table, the 16 is present for occasional reference. The cleric and wizard really would have benefited from a more useful presentation of available and prepared spells.

Rules

Advantage seems, with a short sample size of actual play experience, to be a good thing. The players were happy to have a second chance to roll a die even if they already knew the first result was good enough to succeed. We who play pen & paper RPGs like rolling dice. Contriving a situation that grants advantage to a roll lets us roll another die. That’s the kind of thing that appeals to the tactile lizard-brain part of fun that ought to be present in a game.

The new proficiency system made it almost alarmingly simple to remember what everybody ought to be adding to their rolls. If you’re proficient at something at first, second or third level (as far as we got) you get a +2 on top of whatever ability modifier you have. If you aren’t, you don’t.

The lack of a table of contents in the little sample rule book made a couple of references not-entirely convenient. What benefits do you get from surprising a foe? What are the rules for recovering from damage during a rest? It’s all in there somewhere, but I had to fudge a couple of rulings to keep things moving. Again, the advantage system served me well for DM-ignorance-related adjudication.

We never saw an actual roll with disadvantage during eight hours of play. I wonder if that is typical, or a quirk of our formative group dynamic.

The Adventure

None of the core concepts of the stock adventure’s premise were ground-breaking. There are some evil humanoids and criminals working for a shady puppet-master that’s trying to get at some ancient lost treasures of awesomeness. And a dragon. Nothing we haven’t heard before. Several of the bad-guys have explicit motivations that helped run them as the DM. What does the Nothic get out of working with the Redbrands? That informs how it interacts with the player characters.

The adventure starts by railroading the player characters towards a town that acts as the narrative hub of the story, dropping a couple of plot hooks along the way. Once in town, several notable NPCs had tasks they would like the players to take care of if possible. As mentioned before, the pre-generated characters tied in nicely with the setting. Everybody had reasons to be there. Just about every side-story the NPCs want to drag the party into had a character hook related. The thief wants revenge on the bandits. The lady at the assessor’s office wants the bandits dealt with and will pay handsomely. The archer wants to clear his home town of zombies and a dragon. The druid that knows where the super-secret hidden place is happens to hang out in that same town and another NPC gives the party directions to a treasure hidden there. A bunch of disjointed story threads tie together to provide the players with plenty of things to do and plenty of motivation to go do them.

Motivation is often lacking in published adventures. I suspect that’s tied into that character-building trap mentioned earlier. You want to play your special snowflake character. That special snowflake probably has no business existing anywhere, and certainly has no business helping the Rockseeker Brothers in their mining/archaeological endeavor. Or the good folk of Phandalin in general. Or the other player characters. Largely due to a reasonably-clever intertwining of pre-generated characters (that aren’t just a lump of stats and combat abilities) this adventure works quite well.

The challenges presented were simple enough for two total rookies and an eight-year-old with limited play experience to make just about all the decisions and get through it. That’s not entirely fair. Three little kids putting their heads together can come up with really good solutions to fantasy RPG problems. Don’t underestimate the cunning of two fourth graders and a devious little sister. They may take a little while to do their addition and subtraction, but their creativity is rock-solid. They explored, scouted, made good use of available resources, and circumvented threats with aplomb. At one point the cleric fell into a pit trap. A few minutes later they were using that same pit to their tactical advantage in a sword fight.

Over all we completed maybe two-fifths of the major content of the adventure. The players completed their initial assignment and took care of a major side-job, climbing rapidly from first to third character level in two sessions. There is still ample material to go through involving some overland travel, exploration of ruins, and hairy boss fights (some involving hairy bosses). I can reasonably expect these players to be fourth level well before finishing the main brunt of the story.

House Rules

It just isn’t possible to play Dungeons & Dragons without some in-house strange rules coming up. In preparing for play I didn’t care for the way that very few creatures or antagonists had their inventories spelled out. I jotted down a modified “I search the body” table from the Vornheim city kit, as well as a modified “random book” table. Modified because I’m playing with children and some of that stuff is totally suitable for porn stars and not so much for grade-schoolers.

Upon looting a corpse (or captive), DM rolls 1d8. On a 1-7 a common item is found (a flask, 1d12 or 2d12 extra coins, that kind of thing). On an 8, something odd is found. DM rolls 1d12 and consults a list of thirty-odd items, counting down from the top of the list. Whatever the result is goes to the players and that line is crossed off. Interesting but not-terribly-valuable stuff goes at the top and is likely found earlier than interesting and increasingly-valuable stuff lower on the list. The little girls were somewhat disturbed to find a mummified fairy on a dead goblin, but later used it in negotiations with a hungry Nothic, so that worked out.

I may have bumped down the armor class of the goblins during the initial encounter. That wasn’t so much a house rule so much as I wanted to make sure their first-ever combat encounter wasn’t a total party kill because I have better dice luck than them. I was also inconsistent about whether groups of identical opponents all went on the same initiative count, based entirely off a read of the table as opposed to any hard-and-fast rule.

Conclusion

It’s refreshing to play a game that felt very old-school-nostalgia-fest with people that aren’t jaded by years of exposure to the narrative genre or the metagame tropes. During our second session we had a couple of problems with the two youngest kids running off to chase each other around the building, but I don’t think it’s entirely reasonable to expect young children to sit attentively for four hours straight.

Everybody should DM a gaggle of kids a time or two. Kids make for great murderhobos.