Horror and Consequences (Traditional and Video Gaming)

I've been playing a lot of video games recently and I spent a few hours in Dying Light, before dropping back in time to Dead Island: Riptide to see how Techland evolved their formula.

Both games are pretty similar, first-person melee-combat action games with looting, and some 'RPG' elements like a skill tree. What interested me is that both games seemed surprisingly close to being full-scale 'true' zombie-themed horror games, in gameplay at least if not in tone. You're scrabbling around in containers to scavenge and repair improvised weapons, managing a limited pool of health that enemies can drain really fast, and your combat options are limited by a small 'stamina' pool where your character needs to take a break after swinging around their weapons a bunch.

---

What separates them from being genuinely 'horrifying' is their lack of any sort of permanent consequences for failure. If you die in DI or DL, you lose some money and/or experience points and get back up at a checkpoint, with all objectives still cleared and all defeated enemies staying dead. Thing is, impermanent consequences are kind of a staple in video games. Even many 'true horror' games like Silent Hill or Amnesia simply restore the player to a save point or quick-save on death. Video games often struggle to make these failures have any impact.

Limited saves or restricted checkpoints are one approach, for example Resident Evil makes you use consumable 'ink ribbons' at pre-defined save points. My issue here is that this approach doesn't give your mistakes 'permanent consequences', but rather just forces you to re-play segments of a game you've already cleared in order to take a second try at a difficult part. In games that have repetitive or tedious mechanics (such as Resident Evil's notoriously awkward controls), this can kill the tension even faster than a consequence-free death would.

Another approach to solving this is permadeath, seen in a lot of roguelike-inspired games and also integrated as a difficulty mode in games including Dead Space. Personally I can't recommend either approach. In the roguelike approach, you procedurally-generate your levels so each layout is unique, but that unfortunately means that you can't have a talented designer hand-placing encounters and designing a consistent and well-paced experience. The full-permadeath mode, on the other hand, has the problems of the 'limited saves' system above cranked up to 11. Now if you die, you have to replay the entire game! Better hope the cut-scenes can be skipped (which they often can't be) and that the game doesn't have any annoying bugs that might cause you to unfairly die (which it often will).

---

'Respawn' and 'checkpoint' mechanics are fairly rare in traditional RPGs, a few notable exceptions being resurrection rituals in high-level D&D, or Paranoia's backup clones. In theory this means you have more permanent consequences, but there's a catch. Making a new PC is usually time consuming, and becomes far more difficult if you want to give them a unique personality. This is compounded if you're playing a more complex system like Pathfinder at say, level 10, where suddenly you need to work out 10 levels worth of classes, prestige classes, feats, skills, attributes and racial bonuses before you even get into questions like "what is their name?" or "what are their ideals?"

Some video games, notably ZombiU have this sort of approach, where a dead player character stays dead and is simply replaced by a new PC. They inherit the same drawbacks too; why make your character unique or invest time into their design if they could die at a moment's notice and need to be replaced? This is where you get all those apocryphal tales of the Dwarf paladin with six identical paladin brothers, from players who just want to play a dwarf paladin and can't be bothered to completely change their approach to the campaign when they inevitably die.

---

I don't have a clear-cut solution for this 'problem' and I'm sure to a lot of people this isn't a problem at all. I just figured it was worth saying something about. For the sake of a satisfying conclusion, I'll drop some potential solutions here.

1. Replace most 'deaths' with a different consequence. The excellent Skyrim mod known as Frostfall has PCs be 'rescued' by-default if they collapse from exposure and hypothermia, with the player waking up in a strange place with stat penalties and missing items. Running out of fuel or food in Sunless Sea doesn't just end the game, but triggers random events and skill checks where your crew desperately try to burn cargo as fuel, or draw lots to see which of them gets used as replacement rations. Maybe the Medusa doesn't kill the whole party, just petrifies them for 80 years and the campaign resumes from there? If a party member would 'die,' houserule instead that they've been 'critically injured' and need something like an expensive operation or expert surgery or a kick-ass elvish plant-based prosthetic cyberlimb.
2. Defer death with a wounds or debilities system. As PCs get closer to dying, they rack up penalties such as concussions, burns, or missing body parts. Check out the OSR wounds table on Cavegirlgames for a great example. Ideally, the players will slow down when they realize they're at risk of permanent damage, or have to make the conscious choice to keep putting themselves at greater risk. This is good if you can give really unpleasant and graphic descriptions of the injuries, so it doesn't work as well if your players are gamist-types and just view those injuries as just stat penalties. It's also not a good option if your players are particularly squeamish or have bad responses to gore; even horror games are played for entertainment and not to deliberately dredge up everyone's past traumas.
3. Have a pool of available PCs to replace dead ones. This needs more investment from the players, since they'll be making maybe three or more characters even if they only use one. Decide for yourself if the pool is shared or individual. This has the same multiple-character problems I listed above, but having players create a pool in advance minimizes downtime while they think of a replacement for that dwarf paladin. Also, if players get invested in their characters they could be genuinely excited to play as someone else from the pool even if they miss their old PC. Finally, you can let players swap characters in and out from the pool in downtime or between sessions, which might encourage people to experiment with new builds or even do 'crazy' old school stuff like 3d6-in-order.
4. Have resurrection be an option. No, I don't mean 'cart the body back to the village chapel,' I mean real-shit 'go on a spirit-quest into the underworld to drag their soul out.' Cheap and simple resurrection undoes the permanence of death, whereas a potentially fatal quest into the realm of the damned is both a fun concept for a short arc and difficult enough that it won't ever be the first option to solve the party's problems. Having the party play Frankenstein and assemble a new body for the thief's disembodied brain could also be great fun, or having them run errands for the mob to pay off a replacement chassis for the team's pilot AI. Just remember that the key immersion-breaking question of resurrection in any setting is "why doesn't everyone just do this instead of dying?"
5. All of the above, at once. Overkill? Maybe. But the point here is consequences. The Bard's bad choice to seduce the dragon could lose them an arm, and then they start to bleed out, so the party needs to get them to a surgeon but they pissed off the surgeon earlier by stealing from them so the bard dies, so the party tracks down a powerful Paladin of Debauchery (from the character pool) to aid them on a noble quest: to enter the realm of the dragon god and free the Bard from their clutches in the name of Eros & Bacchus!

How to Motivate Your PCs

Here's how the question is usually phrased, as far as I've seen it.

"Hi everyone. So, I'm running a piracy-themed game of 7th Sea and four people signed up. I started them on the docks in a port ready to sign onto a ship's crew, and instead they all decided they wanted to attend the Baron's masked ball! I said that I hadn't planned any scenes set in a 'masked ball' and they all got upset and one walked out. How can I motivate their characters to get on that pirate ship?"

If your PCs don't want to go on an adventure, chances are the players aren't keen on it either. There's been a mistake somewhere. Maybe you've insisted on a setting or genre even when your players weren't keen, or your players immediately latched onto something in the setting you didn't care for, or maybe they're feeling deliberately contrarian and just want to cause problems. If it's the latter, then you'll need to have a frank conversation with them about it. If it's either of the former, then you'll need to have a different frank conversation where you figure out exactly what each player wants from the game.

PC motivation is a two-way street, but seeing as (typically) PCs are designed by their players, they have to make the first move. GMs, make sure you clearly explain the themes of a campaign to your group before you start. Players, make sure you create characters that will engage with those themes!

And to pad out this article a bit, I'll just throw some examples around and see what sticks.


You're a dashing loner who doesn't trust anyone.

• There's something the party can help you do that you can't achieve on your own.
• You don't like being a loner, but you can only trust friends who fight by your side.
• You hate the party and everyone in it, but you are somehow obliged to assist them.
• (Challenge) Start as a typical sad loner, but warm up to everyone over time!

You're a good/evil person who's travelling with an evil/good party with different morality.

• You respect the party for their skills, but only accompany them for practical reasons.
• These poor souls will someday be redeemed, and you shall redeem them!
• The party is bad, but the villain is worse. You'll deal with the greater threat first.
• Eventually, you abandon your original morals and adopt the party's morality.
• (Challenge) You're undercover and eventually betray the party for your ideals.

You're of noble blood, but are travelling with some common folk.

• Isn't it thrilling to live like 'regular folk?' You could get used to this!
• These commoners disgust you, but you're paying for the best and they're it.
• One day, you'll reclaim your titles. These peasants will be [destroyed/rewarded] afterwards.
• This band of adventurers needs a diplomat, and you need a meat-shield.
• (Challenge) Travelling with commoners helps you hide your true identity.

You're a commoner, but have ended up tangled in a web of noble intrigue.

• You're helplessly out of your depth, but if you don't make allies your realm is doomed!
• This employer turns up their nose at your normal methods, but at least their money's good.
• If you help this so-called 'prince' regain their throne, you might just be richly rewarded.
• Eventually you'll crack skulls again. For now, the blue-bloods pay your food & board.
• (Challenge) One day, you will bring down the 'noble' houses of this realm. For now, you learn.

My Wounds System (Donut Steel)

I figure if there's anywhere I'm allowed to just post my houserules, it's on a blog I made for myself where I post about my writing and game design. So here we go.

The system's designed for Dungeons and Dragons, or rather for a generic OSR-style hack that's partially LOFTP and partially reverse-engineered from 5th Edition, which is where I started actually playing RPGs instead of just reading about them. Only thing worth noting is that I use 3d6 instead of 1d20, since 3d6 lands on a bell-curve and means I can make critical successes & failures more memorable. They're fun, okay? Remember fun?

As for the wounds themselves, it's a total mishmash that's like 90% in-the-moment rulings. As such, I'm publishing this more as inspiration than as anything else!

tl;dr:

Zero HP or below is Death's Door. Wipe negatives and reset to zero. If a PC takes damage when they're on zero, instead of losing hp they receive a permanent consequence. Enough of these permanent consequences and they're just dead.

The Mechanics

If your hit-points are reduced to zero, you're now on Death's Door. If you'd normally be in negatives, you're just at zero (exceptions below). You are not unconscious, though if you're feeling cowardly you're allowed to lie on the ground and pretend to be dead.

There's now two ways to proceed, pick one or mix and match. Or use a third, I guess.

Stat Damage. (Thanks Chris McDowall and Into The Odd, sorry for stealing from your system.)
If you're on Death's Door then every point of damage you take is removed from one of your stats. Typically, you'd remove it from Constitution or your system's equivalent. If you're taking non-physical damage or under psychic attack, maybe apply the damage to Intelligence or Charisma.

Whenever you take stat damage in this way, reduce the stat and then roll a d20. If the result is equal to or less than the stat you took damage in, then nothing happens. If the result is greater than the stat you took damage in, then you are incapacitated. Typically you're rendered unconscious, but depending on circumstances you could rule this as something like 'hallucinating vividly' or 'asleep.'

Wounds Table. (Cavegirl has a really good table, and Dark Heresy has plenty of them.)
If you're on Death's Door, then every subsequent attack that hits you causes a nasty injury, most of which will be permanent until fixed with serious medicine and probably some magic or something. See how much damage the attack does (e.g. 6) and then find a result in your Wounds Table with a matching number and a matching damage type. Roll randomly for hit location if you need it.

I could do up a table here, but there's a ton of good ones (one of which I linked above). The important part of using a Wounds table is the permanence of it. Once you're at zero HP, then your lifelines are gone and even a scratching blow dealing 1 damage can result in your character losing an eye, whereas larger hits of 8 or 10 damage will often just straight up kill you dead.

More Caveats

The reason for the 'Death's Door' mechanic is pretty simple- it gives the players a vague second chance. If they're on 1 hp and take 10 damage, it's not instant death- they're put to zero and then their next mistake has permanent consequences. That said, I would always apply a 'massive damage' exemption for situations where a character would be put to like, -20 hp in a normal game. If a PC jumps off a cliff and takes capped fall damage, there is no way that they should pull a 'b-but the mechanics say Death's Door' on you. I'll just tell you to rule this case-by-case. A hard number like -20 might be okay for a low-level dungeon crawl, but a high-level campaign might have the party exchanging damage numbers like that in a single hit.

You don't have to offer a way out from your 'permanent' wounds or 'permanent' stat damage. Actually make it honest-to-god permanent if you want to! Just don't break your own fiction to do it. If NPCs are regenerating missing limbs with first-level spells, then it's rude to arbitrarily prevent PCs doing the same thing.

Violence, Depictions of Violence, and Gaming: In Practice

Just like anything in gaming (and fiction), you don’t want to make your violence too real and thus have it be too complex, potentially off-putting, or both. Finding the line between ‘immersive’ and ‘unenjoyable’ is virtually impossible as well, because it’s such a subjective judgement. Look at the sheer volume of ‘realism’ mods found for sandbox RPG video games such as The Elder Scrolls or fan-made encumbrance rules in tabletop dungeon-crawlers. Finding a ‘perfect’ level of abstraction for gaming violence just simply isn’t going to happen on a large scale; thus the responsibility falls on individual groups and GMs to tailor their experience or choose/write systems that appeal to them specifically.

Speaking as another subjective GM, here’s some stuff I’d do.

Implement a wounds system.

I’ve seen a lot of games with ‘wounds’ and a lot of ways to use them. My personal preference is for wounds as punishment for poor play, rather than the fairly common ‘wounds as result of critical damage’ approach. Ever since reading the system Chris McDowall used in Into the Odd I’ve had that in all my OSR games, since ‘damage suffered after you’re out of HP is temporarily deducted from your stats’ is brutally punishing, but it also requires PCs to make the choice to stay in a dangerous location after they run low on HP.

Another option for this system is to have your ‘wounds table’ only come into effect after characters reach zero hit-points. (Cavegirl sniped this one from under me, seeing as I was already using a similar system and starting to rough it out into writing as well. Definitely worth a read.) Put simply, make it possible to receive injuries that aren’t soaked by hit-point abstraction, and maybe even let them have permanent (or semi-permanent) effects on your PCs. Potentially apply the same thing to NPC enemies as well, if you’re willing to do the bookkeeping.

Implement a morale system.

Lots of OSR stuff already assumes morale systems and reaction rolls and so this goes without saying. If you’re playing something more like D&D 4e/5e, you might need to houserule one in. A morale system gives mechanical representation to the nigh-universal drive that sentient beings have to not be brutally murdered. You’ll probably want to keep it fairly light and flexible to account for unprecedented circumstances, and it’s your choice if you want morale calculated per-person or for a whole group. I guess you could apply morale to the PCs as well, but I’d personally be against doing that.

When thinking about morale, factor in: relative numbers, relative gear, motivation to fight, who’s ‘winning,’ personal tenacity, appearance of the party, ‘intimidation’ checks, who’s dying, etc. A particularly nasty wound dealt or taken could have an effect on morale, as could the death of a key team-member (e.g. an officer). Whether you use a mechanic or just eyeball it, keep one question in mind. If I were the NPC, would I be willing to risk a painful and violent death in order to continue this combat?

Don’t expect opportunistic bandits or cowardly goblins to fight to the death when they could run instead. Even if NPCs choose to fight on, have them acknowledge the threat in some way! One option is having one bandit from a pack of 12 choose to run. Another is bloodied enemies choosing to surrender. A third is changing tactics, from ‘rush and engage the barbarian in melee’ to ‘keep as far away from the raging half-orc as possible.’

Narrate your attacks.

For some this’ll go without saying, for others it’ll feel like a time-wasting flow-breaker. (I guess it is, if you expect to be running multiple to-the-death combats per session.) Let your sword swings result in more than ‘six damage!’ If your hit-points are highly abstract (in a ‘fighting spirit’ sense) then you can have attacks fail to connect but still reduce HP. If your system gives characters a lot of hit-points and expect them to be depleted by a lot of attacks… maybe don’t do this. There’s only so many times you can hear ‘the sword grazes their [body part]’ before it loses any meaning.

As for narration, I did a handful of examples a month ago. They’re not great, but hopefully they’re a good starting point. The goal of this is to drive home that every single ‘attack’ action represents a real and serious attempt to cause injury to something or someone!

Don’t run multiple to-the-death combats per session.

It’s hard to make combat and death feel authentic and relatable to the players if your PCs are hacking down sentient beings by the dozen every few dungeon rooms. It’s hard to make your super cool and intense narration (see above) work if you have to come up with new verbs and adjectives every few in-game minutes! It’s really hard for your players to buy that a small town of 200 peasants and no fighters manages to flourish in a forest if the party’s attacked by 3d6 bugbears and 2d12+4 goblins fresh off the random-encounter-table every time they step off the main road to visit!

“Any situation that would reduce a character's head to the consistency of chunky salsa dip is fatal, regardless of other rules.”

There’s a lot of ways of saying this. I’ve heard Massive Damage, I’ve heard Coup De Grace, I’ve heard System Shock, I’ve heard Mortal Wounds. Essentially, don’t let mechanical abstractions (such as hit-points) overrule what’s actually happening to your characters! If you’re a regular human holding a live grenade when it detonates, it’s pretty safe to assume a max-damage critical hit to the hand in question rather than rolling damage. If a PC is hit by an explosive projectile but the hit location is a limb, assume the explosion spreads beyond that limb even if the rules don’t explicitly state it. If a PC is falling from orbit at terminal velocity, maybe it’s not authentic to break out the “make a dexterity save to roll when you land and take half damage” clause from the corebook… or if you’re playing with superhuman PCs, maybe that’s just a regular tuesday. I don’t know what campaign you’re playing.

Apply this principle to things other than just damage. Don’t add a ‘dodge’ bonus to armour class on a character that’s unconscious, for example. Don’t have enemies roll to hit at -4 because of ‘partial cover’ if the enemy is behind the PC or tall enough to just shoot directly over it! Don’t let an untrained animal companion make a medicine check to heal a party member, even if there ain’t no rule saying that direwolves can’t use scalpels!

Violence, Depictions of Violence, and Gaming

For the purpose of this article I'm talking about violence in the sense of causing (deliberate) physical harm to someone’s body.

Exposing a character to danger is the fastest way to increase the tension in a narrative. Danger can take many forms, from ‘being unable to financially sustain your business’ or ‘your romantic partner leaving you’ to things like ‘being killed’ or ‘suffering serious injury.’ The latter have the draw of being both life-threatening and universal. Not every audience member might be at risk of losing their business, but everyone is at risk of experiencing a physical injury (even if only a little).

Applying this to gaming, many games use physical violence as their ‘danger’ hook; i.e. a fail state in your game will result in a character experiencing physical violence. Physical violence is often preferable to other life-threatening dangers like starvation or disease because of its immediacy. The hero being skewered by spikes can be avoided by a last-second dodge, whereas the hero starving to death will (almost always) take weeks.

So violence-as-danger is fast and can be used frequently. It's high-stakes in that there are potentially large consequences for failure. It's relatable in that the audience will know why the characters want to avoid the danger.

Conflict is another universal element of narrative. A common type of conflict is a ‘love triangle’ where two characters compete for the affection of a third. Other conflicts can be ideological or political (such as a story about an election), commercial (such as two inventors trying to market their creations), or physical (such as two sportspeople trying to win a tournament).

This is a lot of words to say why combat is popular in gaming, isn't it? Put simply, combat is a fast & volatile form of conflict where the characters are in danger of experiencing major physical trauma. The success states and failure states are immediate and universally recognizable.

There's plenty of writing on non-combat gaming, and right now I don't feel like talking about that. Instead, I brought this up to discuss a different problem.

People don't like observing realistic graphic violence.

So we have a paradox here! On one hand, violent combat is an easy & effective form of narrative conflict (and can be represented clearly in mechanics). On the other hand, realistic depictions of violence tend to be unpleasant or unnerving at best, and straight-up horrifying, disgusting or triggering at worst.

Popular media in the Horror genre often features graphic and brutal violence intended to provoke those reactions of horror and disgust in the viewers. In my experience, most horror media actually overplays its physical violence and makes it appear more viscerally disgusting than real-life violence would be… which can paradoxically make it less viscerally disgusting since it’s obviously fake.

In the sphere of tabletop RPG horror, games like Dark Heresy have memetically gruesome critical-hit tables (linked site is NSFW) in order to heighten tension in its gunfights. “Your heroes are facing nightmarish terrors from beyond the stars” can be illustrated quite well when the descriptions (and mechanics) showcase how horrible your inevitable deaths will be.

As horror-inspired ‘weird fantasy role-playing’, many Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures use graphic imagery for similar purposes as DH does. The viscerally detailed cannibal kitchen the players may explore in Better Than Any Man (free and linked) explicitly chooses to portray violence in a way intended to disturb and disgust RPG players that have probably raided dozens of cannibal-cultist lairs in their adventuring career.

So how come players would be disgusted by BTAM if they’ve raided dozens of cannibal-cultist lairs already? It’s probably because despite all the violence and murder seen in a typical combat-heavy role-playing-game, it’s never really dwelled upon. I’d like to lay at least some of the blame on hit-points abstracting away actual injuries, but honestly it’s not a mechanical problem.

Realistic violence just isn't fun.

It’s sudden, painful, unpredictable and irrevocable. You can experience it at any time as a result of blind chance, accident or deliberate malice. Realistic violence means realistic suffering. It’s hard to feel like a hero when the ‘evil’ drow is clearly and unambiguously feeling quite a lot of pain and regret. It means bookkeeping to determine the extent of specific injuries. It means that even an unambiguously heroic action like ‘prevent the doomsday cultists from burning the orphanage’ is going to be a harrowing experience full of the smell of burning hair and meat.

On the other hand, a game like Paranoia might have fun narrating gushing arterial sprays, or your party's barbarian might run around collecting ears, but those aren't more realistic. They're just less sanitary. Sure, real people collect ears and real arteries gush, but you're not being realistic if your depiction of violence extends to the gruesome displays and not to the real psychological effects of causing suffering.

No wonder that writers shy away from publishing it, and that GMs avoid narrating it. I really wouldn't make violence in my games realistic unless I was deliberately trying to depress people.

Why bring it up, then?

The more abstract and disconnected from reality your combat is, the more abstract and disconnected from reality the participants are. In combats represented as rounds, attack actions and hit-points, it's easy for players to lose sight of what they're fighting, what they're fighting for, and why their characters should care. You need at least a taste of real weight and consequence to stay present.

The same thing applies to a lot of other things, such as encumbrance mechanics and food. Tracking a 'realistic' depiction of calorie intake and waterskin volume might not be 'fun' for most players, but simply brushing those elements off as 'you put it in your bag' or 'you find water' both robs some authenticity from your world, and risks confusing your players when you decide that no, you can't just 'put in your backpack' a pile of gold bars, and you can't just 'find water' if you're making an un-supplied impromptu walk across a desert!

Read on if you want to read some amateur nonsense about how I deal with this 'problem.'

1d10 Ways to Make that Attack Action Sound Cooler

You just swung a 'sword' at a 'bandit' and you hit them for some 'damage.' Let's make it sound cool.

1d10 Ways to Make that Attack Action Sound Cooler

1. You feint a thrust to the head and the foe loses their nerve, flinching momentarily to cover their exposed eyes. In that moment, you slash your cutlass across their thigh, tearing through their clothing and inflicting a shallow cut.

2. Your opponent eyes you warily and shifts their footing, only to stumble momentarily over an uneven flagstone. She looks at the floor momentarily and you strike, a slash to the wrist that clearly stings but fails to pierce their mail.

3. A sloppy mistake- your opponent fails to withdraw their weapon after you parry a thrust. Using your free hand, you grab the spearshaft and pull it to the side, causing the foe to stumble forward into your deadly counterattack. He stumbles backward, bleeding heavily from his now-empty eye socket.

4. Your foe over-commits to an overhead cut, which you catch on the blade of your longsword and turn aside. While they are off-balance, you strike them in the side of the helmet with the pommel of your sword, then a second time, then a third. She falls to the floor, motionless.

5. You barely give your opponent a chance to blink, sprinting across the chamber with sword in hand. They barely get an inch of blade from their sheathe before you run them clean through the stomach, twist the blade violently, then kick them free. The swordsman staggers back, but somehow manages to stay on his feet. One hand raises his gladius, the other presses down on the mortal wound in his stomach.

6. The opponent surprises you with a lightning-fast kick to the groin, which horribly backfires upon them when their toes break on your armour.

7. Wasting no time, you simply let the weight of your greatsword carry its point through the front foot of your enemy and into the dirt below. A well-placed strike to the forehead with the guard causes the bandit to lose his footing and hit the floor, before you tear the blade free from what's left of his foot.

8. After your first flurry of cuts deflect off the target's plate to no effect, you turn aside their counterattack with your buckler and follow through with a shield-assisted punch to the face.

9. You stare down your opponent for several seconds, pacing in a circle, before you end the fight with a single, precisely-placed rapier thrust through the eye-slit of their greathelm. Your victim barely makes a sound when you withdraw the blade and watch them fall.

10. Your opponent is a skilled swordswoman, and manages to deflect your first chain of attacks with great effort. When you step back to recover her arm is visibly shaking, and you see obvious dents in the blade of their cheaply-made jian.

Subverting and Redesigning Deities: Calamari Special (Part 3)

Ignoring how they're misused, an 'unknowable' deity can work wonders in your setting. A God who is truly a higher being, detached from concepts such as mortality, morality, linear time and three-dimensional space.

If you're going to use a cosmic horror themed deity, be willing to accept the consequences! Everything in your setting feels a little less important when it's contrasted to the uncaring whims of the infinite void, and "your characters are just flotsam in the tides of fate" isn't the sort of mood you want to set in a heroic adventure full of PC empowerment! Settings like Arnold Kemp's Centerra (sorry I'll try and stop leeching off them eventually) thrive in an endless fractal nightmare of billions of concentric, pointless conflicts. Settings that want to focus on individual heroics and triumphs will feel a tad undermined by that sort of thing. 

Also, in a touch of irony, a setting such as 2011's Dark Souls with a central theme of "player struggling to hold onto the last few embers of light left in a dying world" would actually be made less bleak by the introduction of gods beyond time and space, since that would mean that the end isn't inevitable everywhere, at least not yet.

PUTTING THESE ENTITIES IN YOUR SETTING IS NOT A THROWAWAY DECISION.

Some of the most interesting uses of 'eldritch-adjacent' themes (in my opinion) are seen below.

Doctor Manhattan

Doctor Manhattan in all his blue glory.

Image taken from DC Wikia

Minor spoilers for Alan Moore's Watchmen. As you can see, Doctor Manhattan's not crazy or tentacular or horrific. He's just blue and (mostly) naked. He's a comic book superhero. Jon gained powers after a freak lab accident, took up a cool codename, and fought evil. He's got a pretty basic suite of powers, like flight, the ability to make copies of himself, complete invulnerability, reality alteration, the ability to see all of time and space at once, and can rearrange individual molecules into anything he wants.

We have an entity that can see all of time and space at once, and change it according to their own whim. This entity can never die, be anywhere at any time, and can change any given piece of matter into essentially any other piece of matter. They could seize complete control over everything in the known universe and subjugate all sentient life, but just have better things to do. Oh yeah, and they used to be human, and their former relationships and perspectives are clashing horribly with their new existence.

I wouldn't recommend putting something like this in your game; they're just too powerful and too likely to derail the story to the detriment of everything else. They might make an interesting antagonist or 'force of nature' to contend with, however.

A Microbiologist

I'm going to cheat and just link directly to the article on Goblin Punch that introduced me to this idea. Thanks Arnold!

For those who don't want to check out one of the best OSR writers I've ever read, the summary is straightforward: What if the universe is just a petri-dish from some higher being? It acts upon us in macroscopic ways our microscopic selves simply can't perceive, to complete an experiment that only makes sense to macroscopic beings?

This is very much the 'classic' eldritch abombination. A creature that acts on a scale incomprehensible to humanity, and ignorant to the suffering they cause to us. A real-world analogy would be bulldozing a termite mound to build a cricket pitch- the termites have no concept of bulldozers, and would be completely incapable of understanding cricket. Oh yeah, and the destruction of the termite mound would simply be a side-effect of the cricket pitch's construction.

The Reapers

Harbinger, a recurring named Reaper.

Image taken from ME Wikia

Minor spoilers for the Mass Effect franchise. These guys aren't actually 'eldritch horrors.' They're big, their machinations span hundreds of thousands of years, they possess technology beyond understanding, they're physically imposing, etc. They're also very certainly not any sort of 'higher being.' Their technology is bizarre and advanced, but obeys the same physical laws as everything else. Their arrogance leads them to make fatal mistakes. Finally, we eventually learn their 'incomprehensible' morals... To breed. Just like every life form from bacteria, to mammals, to Turians and Asari.


These guys can end feeling like a cop-out to your players, if you've built them up as 'beyond comprehension' and reveal them to just be 'normal' and capable of being killed in a boss fight. Use with caution.

Bloodborne's Great Ones

A Caryll Rune, representing Formless Oedon.

Image taken from Bloodborne Fextralife Wiki

Minor spoilers for Bloodborne. 'Great Ones' exist outside of our world, but intersect with it in some ways. They are alien, even to experienced scholars. The Eldritch Calamari Special space gods of the Bloodborne setting are neither malevolent or dismissive of humanity- they're friendly. Many of the most twisted nightmarish places, scenarios and creatures in the setting aren't caused by malice, they're a direct result of people trying to understand and emulate these creatures.

This is a more personal horror than a traditional eldritch evil, seeing that the actual pain & suffering come from the actions of people and not the whims of a god.

So there's 4 things that I think make excellent use of the classic cosmic horror themed trope of 'unknowable entity from outside our reality that exists outside of our concepts of life, death, matter, space or time' in one way or another.

I've probably missed some great cosmic horror stuff, but I'll let it lie for now.

Selecting Weapons and then Attacking Things With Them (Part 3: Swords & Sword-Like Objects)

Part 1.
Part 2.

Treat weapons as physical objects in your games not just stats. Here's some stuff on how to do it. Stats listed are from the 5e Compendium. Let's go.

Part 3: Swords!

'Sword' is a really broad term, used for a huge family of weapons. Broadly, they're metal and used to cut and/or thrust, but that's not universal. Zweihänders and rapiers are both 'swords' even though the former is a heavy two meter long slashing weapon, and the latter is half the length and a quarter the weight, used in an entirely different fighting style. So let's look at the compendium again.


Shortsword: 1d6 piercing.

Longsword: 1d8/1d10 slashing.
To start with, the gaming definition of a 'longsword' is not on par with what was historically considered a longsword. The shortsword category could include such weapons as the xiphos, kopis, kukri, wakizashi and potentially the machete. What D&D calls a 'longsword' could include weapons such as the dao, jian, arming sword, gladius, Viking sword, scimitar or spatha. It's... kinda vague, honestly. Some models are intended to cut, others are intended to thrust, some can do both. Most are one-handed, some are two-handed. It's possible with most to punch with the pommel or strike with the guard on most swords with a pronounced pommel or guard, though it's definitely going to give a shorter reach.

Scimitar: 1d6 slashing.Rapier: 1d8 piercing.

Scimitar is a strange distinction here, I'd personally roll curved swords such as the shotel, kilij, sabre, falcata, ōdachi or even khopesh into the regular categories above. Curved swords don't really thrust, so that part of your arsenal is limited, but many of the other elements are still there. Some, like the shotel, have a curve so pronounced that it's not out of the question to completely bypass an opponent's guard (if they're not paying attention). Likewise, Rapier is a narrow category that really could be rolled into the above. I'm pretty sure it's only distinct in 5e because of the designers not wanting to put the 'finesse' rule on the 'longsword.' Weapons like the rapier, estoc or smallsword are notable for their sharp (ha) focus on thrusting and their narrow blades. Weapons such as the cutlass or broadsword were also light weapons often designed for dueling, but had much thicker blades intended for strong slashing attacks.

For all the above swords, there's not much to say. Stab if they're pointy, chop if they're edged, both if they're both. Thicker swords such as the arming sword might be able to bruise if the user strikes with the flat of a blade, but it probably won't damage much more than the enemy's pride. Make sure, however, that you take into account things like 'sheathe shape and position.' I know, it seems pedantic, but having your players specify that the fighter has a gladius sheathed on their left hip can come in handy later if they're partially engulfed by an ooze and are saying that they TOTALLY could reach their weapon.


Greatsword: 2d6 slashing, two-handed.
There's a lot of different kinds of 'big sword' out there. European two-handed swords came in various sizes and names such as zweihänder (German for 'two-hander') or claidheamh-mòr (Scottish Gaelic for 'great sword'). Even the smallest of these swords is intended to be used with two hands (or possibly on horseback). These swords could cut or thrust, and in fact were sometimes held by the blade and thrusted like a spear, or even swung like a warhammer to bludgeon enemies with the pommel or guard. No, really. Here's a (detailed) video.

Some other weapons such as the Japanese ōdachi or Chinese zhǎnmǎdāo or chángdāo would also fall under the 'greatsword' category. These swords weren't designed to be used like the pointed and double-edged European swords above, but were still a deadly cutting edge with a lot of mass & momentum behind them. I'd personally use these with what 5e calls a 'longsword' statblock. In fantasy, some two-handed swords can get absolutely obscenely massive. I'd probably come up with a custom statblock for these monsters, more like an 'exotic weapon' (and I will get to exotic weapons).

So how to play with a European greatsword? I'd personally draw attention to the twin cutting edges, point, and the weighty guard and pommel all being potential striking surfaces. Let the user thrust like a spear, and maybe even use spear damage and range dice. Let them bludgeon enemies like a greatclub... and again, maybe even use the statblock of a greatclub for those attacks. A sword like this is truly a multipurpose weapon. Balance this versatility in two key ways. Firstly, a greatsword like this is bigger and heavier than a dedicated spear or hammer, and would be correspondingly harder to carry, store, lift, and even just hold in your hands. Secondly, the sheer difficulty of making a weapon like a greatsword would make one very expensive, and it would take the user a lot of time to keep it oiled, sharpened, and rust-free.


The last thing that's worth mentioning is that historically, swords weren't intended to be used against metal armour. Even simple padded armour like a gambeson can prevent a blade from cutting into skin and organs, and something like this suit of Swedish plate armour would turn even a larger sword aside with barely any difficulty. Most systems (such as Dungeons & Dragons, say) don't model armour with a great degree of fidelity, and that doesn't bother me too much. That said, it may be worth factoring an enemy's armour (or scales) into your combat narration. A roll of 16 against AC 17 doesn't simply 'miss,' it's a lethally precise sword-slash aimed right for the neck that simply doesn't pierce the target's armoured gorget.

A critical hit with a pata against a chitinous thri-kreen wearing a suit of mithral-alloy Gothic plate armour doesn't just 'cut through' the enchanted über-metal and the exoskeleton underneath, the attacker looks for a gap in the armour plates and strikes where the protection is weakest. The greatsword doesn't 'cleave through' the breastplate, the barbarian simply flips the sword over, grabs it by the blade, and crushes the foe's ribcage with the ram's head carved on the pommel.

Selecting Weapons and then Attacking Things With Them (Part 2: Polearms)

Part 1.
Part 3.

Treat weapons as physical objects in your games not just stats. Here's some stuff on how to do it. Stats listed are from the 5e Compendium. Let's go.

Part 2: Polearms

Polearms in General: "Reach" property adds extra attack range, two-handed.
Polearms can work pretty similarly to the quarterstaffs & staves entry from Part 1. They've got all the typical uses of a long stick, but with the added complication of a striking surface such as a spearpoint, hammer, or axe. There's a real risk of hurting yourself with that if you swing the weapon around carelessly, and doing something like testing water depth in a ford is less attractive if you've got a rust-prone iron spike on the butt of your spear. That said, it's all still possible. Use the halberd to hold up a washing line! Poke dead bodies with it! Use the shaft of a spear to trip someone!


Javelin: 1d6 piercing, can be thrown.
Typically you'd want javelins to be light and short enough to throw with one hand- factors that don't exactly make a good primary battlefield weapon. Don't be afraid to break javelins after one or two throws. Hell, break them after one or two strikes. Consider one of the uses of the Roman pilum, and allow javelins to lodge into shields & armour before breaking, weighing down your opponents and their equipment.

Spear: 1d6/1d8 piercing, can be thrown.
About the most simple weapon ever made- a pointy stick. Spears can be thrown but I'd limit their range more than the javelin statblock above since they're heavier, but also that makes them sturdier. See this image with reproduction European spears compared to javelins. There's so many kinds of spears I can't even come close to giving a good representation of them all, but just remember there's a big difference in usage (if not in stats) between something that's just a spike on a stick and something with wings, barbs or lugs. Even if you keep the stats the same, consider the risks of the latter being stuck in armour on a failed attack, or of trapping an enemy weapon on a successful parry. Also, some spears have sharpened edges, allowing them a limited ability to slash as well as just stab.

Pike: 1d10 piercing, reach, two-handed.
The principle for a pike is pretty straightforward, just take a spear and make it longer. Examples include the Macedonian sarissa, the partisan, or the svärdstav. Just remember the same rules on lugs/wings/barbs/blades apply as above. Also, you'll want to account for how a 2m long shaft would be hell to maneuver indoors. On the other hand, it's great at keeping opponents at a distance.

Lance: 1d12 piercing, heavy, two-handed, one-handed on a horse.
Lances were essentially spears intended for use on horseback. Specifically, for a big glorious high-impact charge on horseback. I'd personally just give them the same stats as a spear or a pike, myself, with 5e's special "one-handed on horseback" caveat.

Trident: 1d6/1d8 piercing, can be thrown.
If you want your spear to be a trident or bident, just use spear or pike stats. Technically there's real world weight and impact distinctions, but most RPGs are nowhere nearly granular or crunchy enough for that to matter. Just like lugs/spikes/barbs in the spears category above, consider narrative implications of extra spikes rather than mechanical ones. A trident might get wedged in armour more easily, for example.


Halberd: 1d10 slashing, two-handed.
Halberds are pretty classic polearms, consisting of a spearhead spike and an axe blade, often with a rear spike or hook. The draw of a halberd is versatility, though coming at the cost of extra weight & more metal being required than a simple long axe or pike. There's plenty of different Swiss halberds, but other weapons such as voulges, guisarmes, pollaxes or ji have similar properties. Make sure to account for thrusts with the speartip, slashes with the axe head, and potentially armour-piercing strikes with the rear spike or trips or grabs with the rear hook. Switch 'axe slashes' for a different spike or a hammerhead, and you have a weapon such as a bec de corbin or a Lucerne hammer. Remember to account for the weight & length of the pole when trying to maneuver in close quarters!

Glaive: 1d10 slashing, two-handed.
For some reason, this is considered mechanically identical to a halberd in 5e. A glaive is essentially just a blade on a stick. They vary from smaller slashing blades like the naginata, to the woldo or guandao, to much heavier designs such as the war scythe or fauchard or bill. Some of these might enable thrusting attacks, but the emphasis is on cuts and slashes, for better or worse. Get your players to specify (or draw) a shape for their blades, and then factor in spikes, hooks, etc. as above.


With all the weapons above, consider asking for a special proficiency in order to make use of their multiple functions. Stabbing with a spear is easy, and anyone can pickup a halberd or pike and use them to at least some extent. Chaining together slashes and thrusts with a halberd is harder, and making use of the rear hook at opportune times takes practice. Assume a 'soldier' class can do it, but maybe ask the scholarly magic-user where they learned to unhorse cavalry with a billhook (and by doing so, give them an opportunity to fill out their backstory).

The last thing to remember about polearms is the pole itself. Even a wooden pole is difficult to cut through, iron or steel is even harder but increases the weight. Swinging around a polearm is tiring and difficult, even moreso if it's got three potential striking surfaces weighing down the far end like a halberd does. If a player tries to bring a lance or pike to a dungeon, punish them for it by having them get it stuck in every single doorway until they realize that their inventory takes up physical space!

Selecting Weapons and then Attacking Things With Them (Part 1: A Bunch)

Part 2.
Part 3.

So there's a lot of weapons in an average D&D book, right? Tons of them. So how do you use them? Firstly, don't forget that weapons have non-combat uses, like all items. Udan-Adan said it better than I could. Battleaxes can cut down trees, daggers can cut a cheese wheel, swords can be used as levers if you're trying to pry open something, staves can be used to trigger pressure plates from afar.

Secondly, don't just let a default 'damage type' and an 'attack' action override your ability to role-play and creatively problem solve. Many historical (and modern) weapons were and are multipurpose, intended to do more than one thing. Work a dash of this into your gameplay, reward some creative thinking, and you're already priming your players to think of both weapons and monsters as real physical objects that interact, not simply blocks of numbers that modify their die rolls.

Seeing as I'm a hack, I've simply picked out the default 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons compendium and the table of default weapons from there. Links are there so you can see what the hell I'm talking about, so I've used them liberally.

Part 1: The easy stuff.

Dagger: 1d4 piercing damage. Can be thrown.
Not much to add here, is there? Remember that a dagger can be (in most cases) used to stab OR to slash, and that there's a lot of historical daggers. Check out a 20th century trench knife for a 'dagger' intended to be used in tight quarters, especially those that are also a set of brass knuckles. There's a bunch of other historical daggers, from the rondel dagger known for round grips and a cylindrical tang, to the somewhat phallic bollock dagger, to more specialised things such as the 'parrying dagger' or 'swordbreaker' intended specifically to be used in concert with another weapon. Rules-wise I wouldn't do anything crazy, but letting a player choose whether they're armed with a bichuwa or a cinquedea can add both some personal flavour and the possibility of a unique narrative or puzzle-solving use down the line.


Club: 1d4 bludgeoning.
Greatclub: 1d8 bludgeoning, two-handed.
Mace: 1d6 bludgeoning.
'Club' is possibly the broadest possible weapon definition in the world, and 'big club' isn't exactly a narrow category either. As with daggers, there's no need for major rules changes or alternative uses for either. Typically, a 'mace' is essentially a club, with a specially shaped striking head. I'd personally use the statline of a 'club' or 'great club' to refer to a caveman-looking lump of driftwood, and the statline of a weapon like a mace, maul or warhammer for something more interesting like a Japanese kanabō, Fijian totokia, Indian shishpar, 20th century trench club, or Maori patu.


Handaxe: 1d6 slashing, can be thrown.
So the actual lines between 'axe' and 'handaxe' are blurry as hell, so i'm interpreting this as a hatchet or tomahawk rather than an actual 'hand axe' which is more of a roughly shaped hand-sized rock. Essentially, I'd use this statline for any axe that can be reliably used as a thrown weapon. Something like say, a fransisca. The weight of an axehead lets the weapon both cut and bludgeon, which is handy if your party is fighting skeletons that don't have any skin or organs to cut! Plus, it's an axe. Cut down a sapling with it, or whatever. Shave, if you're crazy.


Quarterstaff: 1d6/1d8 bludgeoning.
There's lots of different names for them, from the Chinese gùn to Japanese bō or jō to the English... quarterstaff. There's long and short versions, modern and ancient, metal or fiberglass, specially carved or hacked off a tree. A staff isn't exactly a 'good' weapon as it lacks any hand-guards, specialized striking surfaces, grips, spikes or blades. They are, however, versatile. Staves can be used to strike or thrust, gripped at one end or by the centre, held like a spear, held like a baseball bat, used to block or parry, and used in one hand or two depending on their length. They're also highly practical out of combat- as levers, used to check the depth of a ford, used as a walking stick, or used to poke a dead body from 5-6' away to make sure it's not about to get back up again. It's also probably the least lethal weapon on this page, as it can reliably be used for leverage in grappling or to trip opponents, while also still being able to crack ribs if you go all-out. I do think 5e overestimates its base damage a bit, though, and pretty much any sort of padding will entirely ruin its ability to actually hurt.
Fun fact: this is actually the only weapon on this list I've ever used in a 'fight'. More than once.


Whip: 1d4 slashing, long reach.
I personally wouldn't call a whip a 'weapon' but obviously Wizards of the Coast didn't consult me for the 5e Player's Handbook. It's even less lethal than the quarterstaff above, but not in an effective way. Classic examples are bullwhips and stockwhips. Some, like the cat o' nine tails were intended to be used as punishment for convicts and sailors, whereas the sjambok was notorious in parts of Africa (including the Congo). There's a common thread here- none of these were intended to be used on any human capable of fighting back. A whip's very unlikely to pierce any sort of armour, and in many cases won't even pierce clothing. If a player wants to use a whip as a weapon, they've got three main options. Firstly, using it exclusively to cause minor pain & injury, or as an Indiana Jones style tool. Secondly, make it just somehow magical, like Castlevania's Vampire Killer whip. Thirdly, put weights or hooks on the end... at which point it stops being covered here and gets shuffled under flails.

Battleaxe: 1d8/1d10 slashing.

Greataxe: 1d12 slashing. Two-handed.

Axes are a highly effective tool, and a versatile weapon. There's a bunch of different kinds so a quick wrap up is difficult, but you could see anything from a double-bit utility axe to the bearded axe, to the aforementioned francisca. Greataxe is a more 'gamey' term for a dedicated two-handed axe. Some real world examples include the bardiche, Dane axe or pollaxe; however some variants of these should really be considered polearms. A video-game style greataxe can exist in your setting, but any character using one really should have superhuman strength. No matter the size, most axes can be used to cut with the blade OR strike with the back of the head. Some like the bardiche have long sweeping spikes at the top or bottom of the head, allowing for thrusting strikes. The 'beard' that gives the bearded axe its name can be used to assist in parrying and hooking enemies or their weapons, or can allow the wielder to shift their grip under the blade and use the axe like a push dagger or ulu.

Flail: 1d8 bludgeoning.

Oh boy, the flail. A 'typical' flail seems to be what the compendium stats are going for, but there's some doubt that those were ever used in real combat. If you look at historical flails, you've got everything from 'peasant flails' to the Chinese three-section-staff and meteor hammer to Japanese nunchaku. Let's break these into groups.

Chain Staves: Two section staff, peasant flail. Swing the stick, hit with the dangly bit. For stats, I'd use the closest non-chain polearm. These are the common real-life ones!

Chain Clubs: Nunchaku, Kusari-fundo, a length of bike chain with a fishing sinker on the end, Meteor hammer, or 'classic' chain flail. Same pros and cons as above, but smaller enough to hold in one hand. I'd use a mace statline for a smaller one, or a warhammer statline for a bigger one.

Crazy Fantasy Stuff: Say, the Witch King's flail from the Lord of the Rings movies. (Credit to Stelter Creative for the image! That's some amazing work.) Use the statline for whatever greataxe or massive warhammer you want at this point, reality has no bearing.

Bladed Flails: I'd list kusarigama, urumi, any sort of chain or bladed whip, and some things like the Chinese rope dart. They're not quite the same, but a lot of the same pros and cons apply, as well as some unique ones (like the ability to throw and retrieve a rope dart).

All of these chain weapons have a similar property: the user stopping the section they hold does not necessarily stop the striking end of the weapon. Start swinging a flail then bring your arm to a halt, and the striking portion will continue to move through. On the positive side, that means that a weapon or shield intercepting the swing doesn't necessarily stop the weapon from impacting. On the negative side, this makes it hard for the wielder to stop the weapon once they've started an attack. In play, I'd give the weapon a chance to wrap around guards and shields to deal damage, but also a chance to injure the user on a missed attack. Depending on the length of the chain or rope, you could also use it to garrote an unsuspecting victim, trip someone up, or even restrain them if you can keep them still for a bit.

Warhammer: 1d8/1d10 bludgeoning.

War Pick: 1d8 piercing.

Maul: 2d6 bludgeoning, two-handed.

Despite what D&D tries to tell you, real warhammers don't weigh all that much. The Forgotten Realms wiki treats warhammers as miniature sledgehammers or combat-adapted mallets. A medieval warhammer, on the other hand, looked more like this. Compared to a mace, they have a much smaller striking head, and many actually had a spike or hook on the rear, similar to a war pick. Like a halberd, a war hammer or pick was often a multipurpose tool designed to pierce or crush through heavy armour. A 'maul' on the other hand is essentially a tool rather than a weapon, but a tool like a splitting maul or a spike maul would do serious damage to a human... if they stood still long enough to get hit. If you have someone with superhuman strength that can swing that, however, then go for it! No matter the size of the hammer, it's probably going to be intended as a tool for a specific purpose, a tool for multiple purposes, or a weapon for multiple purposes. Pierce armour with one side of the hammer, then spin and hit with the other side to smash apart a skeleton.

Polearms will need to be consigned to Part 2. Swords will need a whole page to themselves. I somewhat regret my choice of topic.

Subverting and Redesigning Deities: More Than Just A Name (Part 2)

Part 1.
Part 3.

So now I've staked out a few traditional archetypes, how can we actually subvert and redefine these bastards?


Immortal / Mortal extraplanar entities of great power.
The first change I'd make to how these suckers work is to give them interesting domains. A God of Fire is cool, a God of Thunder is cool, a God of Justice is cool. If you want to make new gods, give them new domains. In my own random scribblings, I created a pantheon of deities for a random mythic fantasy setting. Some of the gods included...

Llorue, God of Repose. Her domain included sleep aids, anesthesia, medicine, euthanasia and death. She opposed the undead, obviously, but her church kinda doubled as a Voluntary Humanoid Extinction Movement that sought a peaceful but very final rest for everything.

Velir, God of Servitude. Honoured by bodyguards, knights, samurai and servants. It's actually kind of rude to 'worship' Velir just due to his nature, but working in a hierarchy is considered paying respects. Velir actually used to be a god of Fellowship in the backstory, whose role was usurped by another being.

So yeah, those are my amateur attempts. Give them weird and contradictory domains. Have them uphold morals that don't align with 'normal' human beliefs and thoughts. Have, as Arnold Kemp suggested, 'foreign' angels and gods, like an Angel of Greed or an Angel of Pride, encouraging the virtues of Pride and Greed, and a Demon of Agriculture or a Demon of Peace that encourage the sins of pacifism and self-sufficiency.

If you want to use default D&D gods, go for it! Make them interesting by applying their domains constantly and always. Have Tyr bear nothing but scorn for pacifists and altruism! Asmodeus respects those who try to outwit him, and idolizes those who try! Gods of Fire may scorn burials and demand cremations, Gods of Air demand sky burials (NSFW), Gods of Nature demand their followers to lobotomize away their higher brain functions. These don't always need to be negative, I'm just a pessimistic son of a bitch.

Incredibly powerful mortals, mages or spirits.

This is almost an ideal level for your deities to be at for a sword & sorcery dungeon crawler. A 'serpent god' that draws power from the ritual sacrifices performed by their literal dozens of worshipers can be both a terrifying threat and something that can be killed by a handful of greed-obsessed scrubs with crowbars and 10' poles. The downside is that a population of gods that can be killed by the aforementioned scrubs raises a major question- namely, 'why haven't some other scrubs already dealt with these guys?'

These 'godlets' are best suited to a setting where the PCs are constantly roaming and exploring, discovering new parts of the world and new strange cults & religions. A large, established hub of civilization with temples & cathedrals built to a 'god' that has 30 hitpoints and does 8 damage is going to feel a little shallow when the party learns that Orthros the Mighty is worse in a fight than his pallbearers. 

Charlatans, grifters, con-men and men behind curtains.

See above, I guess. The main difference is that you can put these guys at the heart of an established religion even if they can't fight their way out of a paper bag, and explain it as them just being really good at lying and faking miracles. I wouldn't lean too hard on frauds myself, but I'm not running your campaign, am I?

Calamari-themed eldritch beings from beyond the stars that are dead but dreaming.

Oh, these bastards are getting their own post.

God, G-d, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, The Light, The Lord, The Tetragrammaton.

Last but not least. I'd approach these Big Boys one of two ways. First, have them be a reclusive creator god that doesn't really interfere much. Have it be up in the air as to whether they even exist! Sure, their clerics or whatever have magic, but so do the setting's wizards and sorcerers. The other option is to do a straight mythic black & white fantasy setting, and set up Big G as a counterpart to an ancient evil (or several ancient evils). Honestly I think that 'Christian God But With A Dragon Head' is probably the least interesting way to put religion in your setting, but I'm biased.

Subverting and Redesigning Deities: Who Is This God Person, Anyway? (Part 1)

Part 2.
Part 3.

I was literally just given the name of this article with no further context and told to make an article on it. So I did.
Deities. I see them used in a lot of RPG settings in a few defined contexts, so here's a discussion.


Immortal extraplanar entities of great power.
Tyr, Pelor, Pan, Zeus, whatever. They have their own realms and afterlives and grant spells to clerics. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. You'll see tables of them in any Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide. I doubt I could write anything new there.


Mortal extraplanar entities of great power.
Often treated the same as the ones above, but more likely to have an actual 'challenge rating' or stats. There's still tables upon tables of info on them in countless published settings, but a 'mortal' deity sits closer to the player's level as something that can be spoken to, bargained with or even killed. In D&D 5e parlance, the above Gods would empower PCs using the Cleric class, whereas these lower-case gods would be closer to a Warlock PC's Patron. (Except the Great Old One class, but see below.)


Incredibly powerful mortals, mages or spirits.
These guys play by the 'rules' way more than anyone else. For a good pop-culture example, think of the forest gods & demons from the (excellent) film Princess Mononoke. Lord of the Rings technically isn't an example of this (see below), but it's entirely valid from a surface reading of the books (or from watching the films) to see characters like Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron and even Shelob simply as mortal beings of immense power and knowledge. Worthy of worship and adoration, capable of enforcing their will upon the world by means incomprehensible to many mortals.


Charlatans, grifters, con-men and men behind curtains.
This probably works just fine in a no-magic or low-magic setting, and can be a great mix-up for a high-fantasy or sword & sorcery campaign. The bolts of lightning are just a big taser! The booming voice is a megaphone! The terrifying winged beast is a taxidermied chimera only seen in silhouette! I'll probably do a bit on fake-out campaign themes & villains in the future so this'll be better covered there.


Calamari-themed eldritch beings from beyond the stars that are dead but dreaming.
Cthulhu! Zalgo! Hadar and Gibbeth and Acamar! The Eldrazi! Anything TVTropes would call an 'eldritch abomination!' I hate these. Hate, hate, hate. The concept is fine, but in Dagon's name is it easy to abuse these. Why give your entities cohesive motivations when you can just say they're 'eldritch' and leave it at that? Why create a unique visual appearance for your monster when you can just rip off a racist paranoid weirdo from the 1920s? That said, you can do them well. Guess I just found myself another article.


God, G-d, Allah, Jesus, Yeshua, The Light, The Lord, The Tetragrammaton.
There are 'gods' and then there's 'God.' This is the second one. They're omnipotent, or may as well be. They're outside context and do things that 'lesser' gods cannot. Most importantly, they're just a straight-up stand in for the Christian god in that they have no flaws, are perfect, do no wrong, and are an absolute moral arbiter of everything ever. You'll probably know them as Eru Ilúvatar from Tolkien's writings, or Aslan and the Emperor from Lewis. More recently, you've got the 'White God' in Butcher's Dresden Files novels, a being that seems ineffable from the point of view of not just people that regularly shake hands with Hades and Odin, but from Hades and Odin themselves.

So now we have an idea on what we regularly see, how can we mess around with it to create new stories? Find out in Part 2.