How to Steal like a REAL Dungeon Master

"Somewhere in the world of Domhan a teifling flees from agents of the Savit Cel Ru through the twisted streets of Selunim City. He wears the black and red of the Horned Alliance and thinks to himself, 'By Asmodeus, if I can just make it to the Dark Shroud, I'll be safe in the hands of the Zarathi emissaries.'"

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Note: If you are a player in my home game, turn back. There are spoilers in this article.

That's right, kids! Today we're talking about crime, the noblest of Chaotic activities. I'd bet all of my dice that there isn't a dungeon master out there above plundering maps or ideas from popular culture, history, or even other DnD campaigns! And that's what this post is about.

In all seriousness, though the title of this article accuses you of stealing and in the above paragraph I call it a crime, it's hardly an evil act. In fact, it can be argued that all art builds on the art that came before it. The trick is knowing how to take an idea that you find inspiring and make it your own. You have to add something of yourself into the mix, that's how you elevate art.

For instance, it will be plain to anyone who was a reader of Chris Perkins' incredible column "The Dungeon Master Experience", that this website is partly inspired by his format. Starting off each post with an anecdote from the world of my home game? That's a Perkins move right there. But my style of writing is much more stream of consciousness than his. Plus, I swear more than he did.

Balls. Hehehe.

As a matter of fact, there are many facets of my homebrew world of Domhan that are inspired by Chris' incredible Iomandra campaign setting. Chris is an incredible creative force, and his mind spawns all manner of mad ideas. It's literally impossible to hear him talk about Dungeons and Dragons and not be inspired.

Image by enriquelopezgarre from Pixabay 
Take the Dark Shroud. In my campaign world of Domhan, the Dark Shroud is a menacing wall of black smoke that towers hundreds of feet into the air, it was created by Vecna and until recently had hidden the undead empire of Zarath which Vecna had raised from the sea,

While in Chris Perkins' Iomandra, the Black Curtain was a wall of clouds that towered hundreds of feet into the sky. It hid the Kingdom of Vhalt which Vecna had raised from the sea.

At first glance, it seems that I just changed the names of the world, the clouds, and the kingdom they hid while keeping everything else the same. And at first glance, you'd be right to think that.

But the key to stealing like a REAL dungeon master is how you use the things you steal. That's what makes the difference between inspiration and theft.

Chris used the Dark Shroud as a mystery. What is it? What's behind it? It was a slow burn device meant to add atmosphere and intrigue until the players were high enough level to finally journey through the shroud. The kingdom of Vhalt was made up, largely, of warforged powered by necrotic energy, and was sending spies out into Iomandra to sow chaos before revealing itself when the time was right.

In Domhan however, The Dark Shroud was used, primarily as a device to imply that when Vecna died, his plans were thrown aside by his usurper. In the third session of my campaign, the Dark Shroud dissipated and sunk into the sea, creating Dead Water. Or at least, it did until one of my players used the Deck of Many Things to undo Vecna's death. Now, The Dark Shroud is back, but rather than let the players wonder at what might have been behind it, I'm telling them next session. The kingdom of Zarath is revealing itself to the world. A nation ruled by Vampires and Liches served by hordes of intelligent zombies and ghouls is striding onto the stage in Domhan, and attempting to open peaceful relations with the living. It's a bizarre situation, and since two of the characters in my party are nobles from the kingdoms bordering Zarath, they're gonna have to deal with it personally.

That's what I mean by stealing like a dungeon master. Taking an idea from somewhere else and changing it to fit in the broader context of your world.

Let's take a different example from Chris' Iomandra world: The Horned Alliance.

The Horned Alliance is a criminal organization run by teiflings. They're basically a teiflings-only mafia; they're huge, terrifying, and most places are content to let them be as they're almost too big to fail. I remember reading the article Chris wrote titled "She Eats Babies" where he delves into the Horned Alliance and being blown away.

In the context of Iomandra, the Horned Alliance is a response to the treatment of teiflings. Teiflings are treated like third-class citizens in Iomandra and many have turned to organized crime as a means of surviving. As a result of the sheer numbers of the Horned Alliance and the cunning of its leaders, it has power enough to rival some kingdoms.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

I fell in love with the Horned Alliance as a concept. Somehow, it had never occured to me what a mafia would look like in a fantasy setting. It's more than a thieves guild, it's a criminal organization with the power to level an economy. Because I loved it so much as it was, I didn't change as much for the Horned Alliance as I did with the Dark Shroud. You can't mess with perfection.

That being said, I did change some things so that the Horned Alliance would fit in my world.

For starters, teiflings aren't treated like third-class citizens in Domhan, so the motivations for the organization's creation had to change. I decided to give the upper echelons of the Horned Alliance connections to the Nine Hells, making them an even more dubious organization. While the majority of the Alliance doesn't know it, their dealings are consigning souls to hell.

Next, I went into more detail on the inner workings of the organization. The biggest difficulty with borrowing from other sources, like the "Dungeon Master Experience" is that they don't always go into the detail required to make something work when holding it up to scrutiny, so you have to fill in the blanks yourself. I added a military-esque ranking system and made it so that members of the Horned Alliance each carried a sigil coin that proved their allegiances to other members. This way, not just anybody can claim to be in the club.

Lastly, since my campaign centered in the elvish kingdom of Elbereth, it didn't really make sense for it to be a teiflings-only group, they would never have enough members to do anything impactful in that part of the world. So, I switched things up so that other races could join the Horned Alliance, but decided that only Teiflings could hold an officers rank. This way, it is still a teifling led organization And with this small tweak, I've added racial tensions back into the mix.

In this way, I've taken something that, by and large, was made for an entirely different type of world and fit it into my own game.

"But wait!" you cry, not understanding that this is a blog and I can't hear you, "What about maps?!"

And ooh boy, can I tell you about maps.

Battlemaps have become a cornerstone feature of tabletop gaming, it brings a little real-world perspective to the classic theatre of the mind gaming that Dungeons and Dragons has always consisted of, no longer are we describing every 20ft by 35ft by 60ft stone room. It's made the game even better.

But with this renaissance has also come one more thing DMs have to worry about. Where the fuck am I gonna get all these goddamn maps? And that's a fair question. Most people work for a living and we already devote so much time to creating the world and writing the adventures and creating interesting NPCs and working on character-driven arcs and researching monsters and... wait what was I talking about?

Oh, right! So we don't always have time to dream up brand new maps. The answer to this is simple. STEAL THEM. All around the internet, there are battlemaps that people are dreaming up. Just searching "Battlemap XYZ" produces numerous options. You can subscribe to people who draw incredible maps for a living and throw them up on a screen or print them out, or you can pull out a good old fashioned Chessex and draw out the lines on the stolen map that you have cleverly kept hidden behind your DM screen.

But that's bush league, this article is about theft. And right now, we are stealing from the real world.

Image by Lorenzo Cafaro from Pixabay 

Looking around online you can find blueprints suitable for almost any location you could need! From the layouts of Parisian catacombs to medieval German castles and Japanese cities, the internet is truly a land of wonders. For the most part, you can simply slap a grid on these with very little tweaking and BAM you got yourself a map. Hell, if your feeling adventurous, you can even smack a grid on a top-down photograph of a landscape and BOOM, there's a battlemap you can print out or pull up on a tablet.

The point of this article is that not everything has to come from your own head. You can take bits and pieces from other sources and put them through the filter of your campaign. Not everyone is Matt Mercer and has to the time to craft intricate maps and locations because the majority of us don't get a salary for our work. But that doesn't mean our work isn't worthwhile, it just means that we need a little help.

And what better place to get that help than from the noblest of all Chaotic activities, theft?

Thanks for reading and stay Chaotic!