Social Currency in your campaign world

I've had an idea tumbling around in the back of my head ever since I read Patrick Stuarts post about using food as a means of granting XP instead of gold:

Optional Rule - XP for served food. I strikes me that one diegetic element which serves this softer play in a manner similar to that in which Gold serves standard Old-School play (encouraging ambition, conflict but also lateral thinking and problem solving), is food.

Sharing food with someone, being tolerated in their personal space, talking to them, being invited to share, are all major social milestones.

Kids bloody love food, as any kids series will show (I am also a fan myself). Getting special foods, and especially being *served* special foods, and sharing food and certain drinks, is almost a marker of your integration into local societies and your ability to integrate others.

If the old witch serves you Tea, that’s one point, if you can get her to bake you a cake, that’s another, or provide a feast for the Village, that’s a treasure hoard.

It's kind of percolated into the idea of having a social currency in your campaign/setting world that is different from the hard currency like gold or silver or whatever. Partially as a means to add an interesting dimension to your setting and partially because I think it fits in well with how most player/NPC interaction tends to go where it's transactional.

Or well in most of my games it tends to be transactional. If the NPC has no reason to not tell the players something I tend to just tell them whatever they want to know. As, the more information the players have the better decisions they can make and the more interesting the game is. I tend to not hide information from players.

If the NPC does have a good reason for wanting to withhold information, the players usually have to make some kind of deal with the NPC to get it. In a lot of games this tends to end up as vague favors or deals that they owe the NPC. So in this sense there is already an unintentional sense of social currency, the "favor".

However, I also find that most of the time favors aren't really followed up on and tend to be vague. I think it's much more interesting to define an explicit social currency for your setting. 

This could be something simple like food. Where, as mentioned in the False Machine post, each NPC is a simple village person who has a favorite food. Getting to know people's favorite foods and getting them for them goes a long way to getting them to open up and deal with you. Food in this way functions as a social currency and gives the setting a certain theme and aesthetic. 

But a social currency doesn't have to be food. It could be something like humiliations. Like if you're setting is a high court full of scheming lords and ladies they might want to have nothing to do with you unless you humiliate a rival lord, the more public the better.  The players then have to think up a creative way to humiliate a rival NPC and get away with it. Performing humiliations has a social value in the setting and grants it an interesting theme.

Or if you want to go a more classic route, you could use true names. Where characters or monsters or spirts have a true name. When you discover somethings true name it serves as a bit of a commodity, where you can let others know it in order to gain something you want, perhaps at the risk of betraying the persons whose true name you know.

Another one could be secrets. Where each NPC has a dark secret and if you find it out and tell other NPCs you can gain their trust. Although I find secrets a bit abstract. I think it's better to try to have something with a bit of tangibility to it.

Like maybe signet rings or letters of renown which signify official trust? Or handkerchiefs from maidens who have chosen the party as their champions? Or medals? There are a ton of things in the real world that we use to signify things socially to each other. 

Overall by having a defined social currency, maybe even a list of them if it's something like letters of renown, I think can really flavour a campaign and make it interesting. It gives the players something to look out for that they know will give them an edge in social interactions that are transactional in nature. 

I think the most important part is having the social currency recognized as being valuable by more than one NPC. It stops the players from having to do a boring favor for one NPC they want something from and then another favor for the next boring NPC to gain their trust. They can come up with their own schemes and ideas on how to get the social currency and drive the adventure that way and then 'spend' the social currency on whomever they want. 

Experience Points for Different Modes of Play

This a follow up for my other post thinking about experience points and design considerations about them. In this post I will try to use those guidelines to come up with some solutions.

Experience Points for Different Modes of Play

In my previous post I talked a bit about how there are different modes of play in most OSR games and that XP for treasure only really rewards dungeon crawling. This is great if your players are mostly dungeon crawling. Such as exploring a megadungeon and only really going back to town at the end of the session, mainly to sell and buy stuff. It's not so great if your players are doing other things like hexcrawling which is supposed to be an activity in of itself and not just something you do to get to the dungeon to dungeoncrawl.

I think for each major activity of play you need a different way to gain experience points. It's why I think a lot of OSR blogs develop experience point rewards for exploration. However, I also try to want to satisfy the other main guidelines I created:

1. XP rewards should not be given for something the players will already do

2. XP rewards should encourage risk

3. XP should be given at the end of a session

You can read my reasoning for these guidelines in my previous post.

Three Main Activities of Play

The main modes of play that I would want to grant XP for in my games are:

1. Dungeon Crawling: composed of encounters and exploration of rooms.

2. Hexcrawling: composed mostly of traveling about the map.

3. Investigating something big in the setting: composed of seeking out answers for various aspects of the setting.

There are arguably other major activities of play. Such as spending time in town buying and selling items. But I wouldn't grant XP for engaging in such things as players are likely to do them anyways and they contain very little risk. XP should be used to encourage player risk, and given as a reward for players successfully taking a risk. Dungeon Crawling and Hexcrawling definitely involve lots of danger and risk. Investigating knowledge, not as much, it's a bit more dependent, but I think there are some cases where there is genuine risk. I'll explore that more when I come to that activity.

XP in Dungeon Crawling

For dungeon crawling I'm just going to use the tried and tested XP for treasure via carousing with the following rules:

Carousing 

Carousing is the easiest and the main way for character to gain experience points, especially in earlier levels where they have yet to venture very far from their starting settlement. In short, carousing is action taken in a settlement in which the group spends a large amount of their hard earned money, having a good time about town, blowing their fortune as they blow off steam, before becoming desperate enough again to raid another crumbling ruin for treasure.

Carousing lets a player turn money directly into experience points at a 1:1 ratio. First they choose an amount of money to convert into experience points. Then they roll on the following table to see how their bender went. After they may have to roll on the carousing mishaps or fortunes table to see how their relationship with people in the settlement has changed.

 

2d6	Result
2-6	Experience is gained. However, you've all made fools of yourself in some manner. Roll on the carousing mishaps table.
7-9	Experience is gained.
10+	Experience is gained. You've all had a stroke of good luck! Roll on the carousing fortunes table!

 

	Mishap	Fortune
1	Start a brawl. You all are involved in a brawl that gets out of control. Start the next adventure with a black eye and -1 health per level. The local tavern keeper is no longer quite as amicable.	Jackpot! One of you strikes it rich at the card tables! Gain level x 100 coins.
2	Minor misunderstanding with local authorities that you’re unable to smooth over. You all spend the next 1d6 days in jail. Now seen as local troublemakers.	Gain a local reputation as the life of a party! Those of ill repute much more friendly and see you as one of their own.
3	One of you insulted a local person of rank. They will hold a grudge unless you all publicly apologize and humiliate yourself before them.	Whoa what a trip! The strange powder you sniffed revealed mystic truths about the universe. Young people in the settlement see you as cool and not one of the squares.
4	Hangover from hell. The first day of adventuring all luck rolls are done with a bane.	Well fed, well rested, and ready to go! The first day of adventuring all luck rolls are done with a boon.
5	Gambling binge. You’re party owes a collective debt to someone you don’t want to owe money too.	Citizens arrest! You catch some criminal in the act and are able to restrain them until the authorities arrive. You are seen as hero’s by the settlement for a short time.
6	You've ruined the local economy! Your excess spending means that all prices are now double until next season.	The local blacksmith, due to your influx of cash, has been able to order in an exquisite weapon that he’s willing to sell to you guys for the normal price.
7	Major misunderstanding with local authorities. All weapons, armour, and magic items confiscated until fines and bribes totalling 1d6 x 1000 coins paid.	The local clergy see you guys as protectors of the settlement. They offer you a blessing before your next adventure.
8	When in a drunken stupor and in some trouble, you sought refuge in a church. They took care of you but now as repayment have begun hounding you to perform a charitable act.	Impressed by your ability to drink for days and keep standing, a local hireling is willing to join you on your next adventure if you wish at no initial cost.
9	Invest all your spare cash in some smooth-tongued merchant's scheme. Turns out it’s bogus! One of the towns merchants flees!	Invest all your spare cash in some smooth-tongued merchant's scheme. Turns out it’s real! It returns 75% profits next Season.
10	Due to a lost game of darts at the tavern. You make bitter enemies with a local rival adventuring party.	Your ability to carouse with the common folk as lead them to see you as one of their own. The peasants of the settlement are thankful to have you around. You receive free room and board in this settlement of poor quality.
11	Beaten and robbed. You are waylaid by a bunch of thugs during your drunken carousing. Loose 1d100 coins.	Your time spent carousing has let you in on some juicy gossip. You learn one secret about a person in authority.
12	The roof! The roof! The roof is on fire! Accidentally start a conflagration Roll 1d6 twice. 1-2) burn down your favorite inn 3-5) some other den of ill repute is reduced to ash 6) a big chunk of town goes up in smoke. 1-2) no one knows it was you guys 3-5) one other person knows you did it 6) everybody knows.	A local elder has warmed up and begun to approve of you despite your antics. They let you in on a secret about a nearby adventuring site.

 

The above table I use is a modified version of Jeff Rient's one. It's meant to make the gaining experience points a little more interesting and to change the characters relationship with the settlement their in to make their interaction with it a little more dynamic.

XP for treasure meets all of my guidelines. It encourages risk, it is done at the end of the session, and it's given for something they wouldn't normally do. They have to purposely search for treasure in the dungeon and seek it out. I make the players choose between spending the coins on equipment and things and spending it on XP. I kind of like this as it keeps them somewhat broke.

XP in Hexcrawling

Hexcrawling is a bit more difficult than dungeon crawling. I don't want to just give a straight XP amount for every hex explored or new place discovered. Most of the time, players are going to do this anyways as a normal part of moving around the map, even if it's just to get to the dungeon. I want to encourage them to take risks. 

I'm going to borrow a rule I found in Neoclassical Geek Revival by Zzarchov Kowolski. Basically in it he had a rule where for every room the players explored they'd gain cumulative XP. So if they got 10 XP the first room, they'd get 20 XP the second room 30 XP the third 50 XP the fourth, 80 XP the fifth etc. I'm going to do something similar but for hexcrawls and call it Telling Tall Tales.

Telling Tall Tales

Telling tall tales is another way characters can gain experience points. It involves spreading word of your travels and exploits, generally telling tall tales in places like taverns, at court, to the high and the low, shamelessly boasting and self-promoting, and to simply entertain or achieve status.

This method of experience gain is generally used during the mid levels as the characters begin to venture from their starting settlement more and more and begin to explore the world that surrounds them.

Telling tall tales lets a player gain a certain amount of experience points for every hex of the hex map they have explored since they last left the settlement. The experience gained is cumulative per hex. This is calculated by giving 30 XP for the first hex and adding the previous two hex's together for every additional hex. A table below is provided as an example.

Hex Total	XP Amount
1	30
2	30
3	60
4	90
5	150
6	240
7	390
8	630
9	1020
10	1650
11	2670
12	4320

Once the players have calculated how much experience points they will gain they need to roll on the following table to determine how their telling of tall tales went. After that they may have to roll on the Telling Tall Tales Mishaps and Fortunes table to see how their relationship with people across the land has changed.

2d6	Result
2-6	Experience is gained. However, you've all made fools of yourself in some manner. Roll on the Telling Tall Tales mishaps table.
7-9	Experience is gained.
10+	Experience is gained. You've all had a stroke of good luck! Roll on the Telling Tall Tales fortunes table!

	Mishap	Fortune
1	Inspired by your tales of treasure the road to places you've explored becomes clogged with fortune seekers slowing your travel.	The local authority, upon hearing of your discoveries, is willing to buy maps of your travels for 1d6 * 1000 gp.
2	Jealous of your fortune, a rival adventuring party begins to trail you next time you set out with ill intentions.	Enamoured by tales of your exploits, a local orphan child has begun tending to your belongings in hopes you'll bring them along.
3	Word of your mighty deeds has spread. A mighty warrior has arrived in the settlement to challenge the strongest among you to single combat.	Word of your crimes have spread. There is now a bounty of 1d6 * 1000 on all your heads across the land.
4	Word of your brave exploits has spread. A powerful wizard has arrived in the settlement to challenge the wisest among you to a wizards battle.	Due to your exploits in a region you have explored, you have been granted a deed to a small tract of land and honorary title by the local authority seeking to capitalize on your popularity among the common folk.
5	Sensing a power vacuum, bandits have moved into a location you recently explored and begun raiding the countryside. People are not happy.	Your recent explorations have opened up the land to new settlement. The roads become full of travellers seeking a new beginning. A sense of optimism and hope is in the air.
6	The local authority does not like you intruding upon and causing mischief in lands they see as their own. They forbid you from venturing into them again.	You've become well known among merchants as experienced travellers. They let you in on the location of some exotic trade goods if you're willing to accompany them there.
7	Too late! Your explorations and exploits have upset the unseen balance of things. One enemy you thought defeated or vanquished has struck back! Something big has happened! Refugees begin to flood the area.	A powerful but frail wizard seeks you out. They've found the location of a small trove of spellbooks and wish you to accompany them there.
8	Your heroics have garnered many unseen enemies. Assassins strike out in the dead of night. Defend yourselves!	Word of your righteous deeds has spread among the common folk. You can always find poor accommodation for free in any settlement.
9	Fire! A major forest fire is occurring in several hexes. People are fleeing the area.	Because of your growing renown, a local merchant is willing to pay you for endorsing their products and/or services.
10	Flood! A river or body of water has flooded occluding travel in the area.	In telling tales of your travels, you encounter some old travellers with tales of their own. You learn the details of three unexplored hexes.
11	Pestilence! Plague has broken out in a random settlement. A quarantine has been put in place.	A strange monstrous beast has been seen in an area you recently explored. It's capture or scientific notes on it's behaviour would be worth a lot of money.
12	Word of your exploits has reached the ears of the local authority. They have 'granted' you a non-voluntary audience with them. You suspect they are becoming concerned about your growing fame and popularity.	Strange visitors from beyond time and space have been seen in an area you recently explored.

So while they players aren't likely to gain a level from exploring a few hexes. The amount of XP they gain really begins to ramp up the more they explore. This encourages them to not just make a beeline between the town and the nearest dungeon, but to push into the wilderness a bit, to wander, to seek out the dark corners of the map. The deeper into the wilderness they go, the more dangerous it gets and the more they begin to run out of health and supplies, and the more XP they gain. 

The Telling Tall Tales Mishaps and Fortunes table is meant to make gaining XP this way a little more interesting and kind of reflect the characters growing renown. Where people are taking note of them and it feels like the landscape and setting is reacting to them. I find something like this is needed every once and a while so the landscape isn't just a static thing that only moves when the players interact with it. That dramatic things can happen that they have no control over or never saw coming. In this manner the table is meant to change the characters relationship with the landscape.

Unravel a Mystery

The world is full of strange mysteries. I think players should be rewarded for seeking out answers to them. These aren't small monster of the week mysteries, like who stole the chickens or where did the bandits run off to, but larger mysteries about the strangeness of the setting. Engaging in them means the players are often pursuing a very open ended quest and not just decided to tackle the low hanging fruit of lets just clear another bandit lair this week, or lets just come up with some quick scheme. 

Unravel a Mystery

The world is full of strange mysteries, age old questions, and wonderous places. Things from so long ago their origins are unknown, or seem to exist wholly outside reason. Things that just are, that are whispered about.

This method of experience gain is generally used during high levels as the players seek to truly plumb the depths of their world and try to explore and unravel the mysteries of it's age old wonders.

These wonderous things are not plot goals. They are often just that, things, not people, or events. or happenings. They can be pursued or ignored as the players wish. Taking this action represents the players returning to a settlement with some form of proof about the wonder, some form of answer to it's mystery.

Each mystery is phrased in the form of a question. The players must explain to the Referee the 'answer' to the mystery. What exactly is a sufficient answer is up to the Referee and players to determine but generally involves being able to sufficiently answer who, what when, where, where, why, and how about the mystery. Once they do they must roll to see how such an unravelling went. For the unravelling of such a mystery often comes as a shock or surprise to the wider world. It will often draw attention from those with great power and influence who will invariably seek to exploit it and the players knowledge about it.

There is no set value for the XP reward but it's in the 10,000-100,000 range. Mysteries are highly dependent on the setting but a couple examples are provided below:

• What lies up top Bald Mountain?
• Does the lost city of Xu exist?
• What happens when you put the Rod of Many Parts together?

There is no table of mishaps and fortunes to roll on for unraveling a mystery. Age old mysteries are important enough and specific in nature that each should have natural consequences from their pursuit. Big players in the setting will take notice if the characters are successful in their investigation of them.

Weirdcrawl: Investigating the Weird and Wondrous

This post is a part in a series on creating a weirdcrawl campaign where the focus is on seeking out and exploring strange wonders in the wilderness far from civilization. For the full series click here.

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In a previous post I came up with a weird wonder along with six different facts about it based upon answering a series of questions. I'm going to revise things slightly so I have one answer per question:

The Moon Pool

• Who guards it? The Moon Pool is a haunted place, a place where strange creatures called the Forgotten dwell. They are the watery dead, empty hollow men and women who walk about. Some recently dead, some having died many years or even eons ago. They forever walk about lost amid the endless pools of the swamp, forever seeking to remember who they once were, what they have forgotten. Strange tales abound about encounters with them.

• What is it physically? Few know about it, but deep within the Black Basin lies a pool of silver water so bright and luminous it looks like a sliver of the moon. It is known as the Moon Pool. It is said to have been sacred long ago and was worshiped when the moon was young and the swamp a forest. Many who venture to it do not return.

• When was it forgotten? Once long ago there were people who dwelt in the forests before the swamp. They worshiped a sacred pool. They used to make offerings of silver to it and every so often one of the strange necklaces of the old swamp folk turn up, dredged up from the bottom. Every so often one of their crumbling moon markers can be found in the swamp. No one knows why they abandoned the swamp.

• Where is it located? It is said the Moon Pool lies westward beyond the last bend of the river Olb but can only be found on nights of a full moon and that one can only be lead there by the urging of a tormented soul.

• Why was it forgotten?  Long ago, in funeral rite, the people from before the swamp would place their tormented dead within the waters of their sacred pool to grant them a peaceful rest as it's waters cause forgetting. The flesh of the corpse would sink from it's bones which would would arise as shimmering moonlight and their skeleton would arise to dance amid the stars. It is not known why but to keep it secret they all drank from the pool to forget it's existence. From then on it has become a lost place, only the Forgotten knowing the way to it's shore. 

• How do you interact with it? The howling of lost and vengeful spirits can be heard above the waters of the Moon Pool. They howl for they know the awful bargain of the pool. From spirit to flesh, and flesh to spirit the pool can transform. And so the vengeful spirits swirl about the pool desperately wanting to clothe themselves in flesh again to wreak their vengeance, but unwilling to forget the awful grudge that drives them. Desperation mounting, at last, unable to bear it no more, they enter the waters of the Moon Pool. When they arise from it they arise clothed in flesh seeking to remember the grudge they have forgotten.

I have done my best to keep the answers to these questions terse and with little overlap between them. These six paragraphs is the entirety of the lore I would create for the moon pool and what I would relay to the players. However, I would not present this information to the players all at once. Their journey is to the Moon Pool is to be a quest! I would present them in a more investigative format.

Investigative Adventure

As the primary activity in my campaign is the players seeking out weird wonders deep in the wilderness, an investigative structure fits well this goal. While investigative adventures tend to be common in other RPGs they tend to be relatively rare in OSR games.

OSR games, especially D&D orientated ones, tend to emphasize freedom of player choice. Investigative adventures are hard because if structured too rigidly then the players are pulled from location to location looking for clues, unable to advance to the next location until they have found the crucial clue. If structured to loosely the players might be confused as to what direction to take, unsure or unable to piece together all the clues, and overall feel lost as to what they are supposed to do or how to measure their progress or form goals.

The first thing that must be realized when structuring a investigative adventure is that it is information that is the real reward and measure of progress, not gold collected, not rooms explored, not monsters killed. It is information that allows the players to form goals about what they want their characters to do and what their next step is, and to see how much progress they have made.

In this manner the above six bits of information about the Moon Pool serve as the real rewards for the players investigations. As they seek out and learn more about the moon pool they will be better able to formulate further ideas and plans.

The six clues outlined above form a 'flat' hierarchy of information where each clue is not more important than any other and each can sought out and learned in any order. This is intentional to try and maximize player choice. It's also intentional that players can choose, if they wish, to seek out he wonder after discovering the 'where' clue (or even find some even more clever way of doing so). It is up to them to decide when they feel they have learned enough to make the journey worthwhile, and probably more importantly, feel they can survive it.

If they seek out the wonder knowing too little about it then they will likely remain confused about what exactly it is and how it works and return with more questions than answers. The possibility of an unsatisfactory conclusion to their journey is once again purposeful. Knowledge is it's own reward.

Artifacts

In order to help facilitate adventure, it is best that the six clues be embodied in objects or people in the game world that the player characters can seek out and interact with. I think this goes well with D&D based OSR games as in them there is an emphasis on loot and items and it's much easier to quest after something tangible.

I am calling these things artifacts. Not in the traditional D&D sense, but more in the archaeological sense. They represent physical things that are found that tell us something about the past.

Creating an Artifact

There are four ways the fragment of lore can be transmitted each with a different challenge associated with it based on it's method of transmission. 

1d4	Method	Challenge
1	Pictorial	Seeing the visual display, which is probably immovable, and making sense of what it's trying to depict.
2	Written	Obtaining the written object and deciphering it.
3	Verbal	Getting someone to tell you the information and recording it.
4	Magic	Conducting a ritual to gain the information through extra-sensory or magical means.

I have created four charts to further define the artifact. Roll a d20 and cross reference to determine its form:

1d20	Pictoral	Written	Verbal	Magic
1	Paintings	Scrolls	Poem	Scrying
2	Sacred architecture	Tablets	Ballad	Speaking with the dead
3	Metalwork	Book or Tome	Legend	Speaking with a demon
4	Sculptures	Engraving	Recounting	Speaking with a spirit
5	Ceramics and Pottery	Fragments and scraps	Insane ramblings	Viewing past events
6	Jewelry	Letters	Oral history	Viewing future events
7	Tapestry	Chronicle	Speech	Using astronomical events to find location
8	Fresco	Last will and testament	Riddle	Dowsing
9	Mosaic	Map	Eulogy	Mind Reading
10	Illuminated illustration	Travelogue	Rant	Summoning, Binding, and Torturing
11	Hieroglyph	Philosophical/Metaphysical treatise	Lecture	Speaking with Monsters
12	Petroglyph	Encyclopedia	Conversation	Dimensional traveling
13	Altarpiece	Encoded Document	Debate	Unearthly visions
14	Bas-relief	Religious or Occult text	Play or performance	Time travel
15	Carving	Scientific Observations	Audio recording	Contacting the Outer Spheres
16	Graffiti	Official missive	Chant	Speaking with Animals
17	Model or maquete	Compendium	Coded language	Mind-meld
18	Globe	Leaflet	Echo	Magical illusion
19	Embroidery	Suicide note	Sound	Summoning a guide
20	Etching	Schematic	Recitation	Magically locate

Fragments of Lore for the Moon Pool

Taking the above information I can apply it to the above 6 clues. I will roll randomly for each and from it create a description of the main challenge the players will face and the hook. A hook is an inciting incident that doesn't tells them a bit about how they may find the fragment of lore. Kind of, oh, I don't know that, but I know who may know that. It points them in the direction of the fragment. 

1. Who guards it?

Hook: a party of travelers enters the gates of Vorba bearing the slain bodies of their comrades. Hungry, wounded, and miserable, they beg for help and tell tales of being attacked by strange cold skinned dead things in the night, deep in the swamp.

Fragment (Verbal: Recounting): the man who was on watch at the time knows best what these things are. Unfortunately, he has slunk away from his fellow travelers to drown himself in drink. If found and convinced to talk he will recount details of the attack. A host of tallow skinned strange men and women came upon him when he was on watch that night. Their skin was cold, their eyes a milky white and they muttered continually, one of them calling him brother, accusing him or murdering it, although he swears he has no brothers or sisters.

Clue: The Moon Pool is a haunted place, a place where strange creatures called the Forgotten dwell. They are the watery dead, empty hollow men and women who walk about. Some recently dead, some having died many years or even eons ago. They forever walk about lost amid the endless pools of the swamp, forever seeking to remember who they once were, what they have forgotten. Strange tales abound about encounters with them.

2. What is it physically?

Hook: In a tavern smelling of old ale frequented by students, a priest in a frumpled frock drinks with celibate monks. He is about to be fully ordained and they all sing old ditty's and hymns in celebration. He remarks how he is going to be baptized in the baptismal fount of the grand cathedral of Vorba, Our Lady Victorious. To any who listens, he lets slip that the baptismal font in the cathedral is said to be older than the city itself and is made from a strange metal. 

Fragment (Pictoral: Metalwork): underneath the grand cathedral in a grotto few but those the Bishop allows to visit, lies a large metal basin made of a strange silver metal. It is perfectly round and has been set into the bedrock like a pool. It appears to predate the church. The water gleams brightly, dappled with light, no matter the darkness. Strange etchings of an auroch trampling a serpent adorn its rim. 

Clue: Few know about it, but deep within the Black Basin lies a pool of silver water so bright and luminous it looks like a sliver of the moon. It is known as the Moon Pool. It is said to have been sacred long ago and was worshiped when the moon was young and the swamp a forest. Many who venture to it do not return.

3. When was it forgotten?

Hook: in the market place, amid the finely woven carpets from the east and the black briarwood of the north an old jewelry vendor with a crippled back sells a strange necklace. Primitive, made of large links of a silver metal with the image of an auroch dangling from it's end it is like no other. Rubbing his chapped hands he drives a hard bargain. If any shows interest in his tale, with a craven grin he tells them he will tell them more about it if they buy it.

Fragment (Verbal: Poem): the jewelry vendor once attended the halls of storytellers in the north. He is acquainted with the poem of the god Islador, an ancient creation myth of the ancient forest people and the pool they worshiped. He will recite it to the players if they buy the necklace. However, he knows the necklace is the centerpiece of his collection and draws much attention to his stall. He will only let it go for an exorbitantly high price or in trade for a similarly unique item.

Clue: Once long ago there were people who dwelt in the forests before the swamp. They worshiped a sacred pool. They used to make offerings of gold to it and every so often one of the strange necklaces of the old swamp folk turn up, dredged up from the bottom. Every so often one of their crumbling moon markers can be found in the swamp. No one knows why they abandoned the swamp.

4. Why was it forgotten?

Hook: the maidens of the Peatsmen are said to be the keepers of the history of the roaming boat clans for it is they who embroider the old stories onto their wedding dresses. Each dress contains the history and legends of the clan depicted in colourful thread. Yur Zhdanov, a scholar, is seeking out several well experienced travelers to help him collect several such dresses to study.

Fragment (Pictoral: Embroidery): the wedding dresses of the maidens of the Peatsmen are treasured. They are not made to be given away or traded and each is specific to the recently married maiden who made it. Only they can decode the full story of what the embroidery conveys, stories that are passed down from mother to daughter in secret. If several such dresses are collected they show the reoccurring symbol of the Moon Pool and starry skeletons. If decoded by the maidens who made the dresses, the full tale can be learned.

Clue: Long ago, in funeral rite, the people from before the swamp would place their tormented dead within the waters of their sacred pool. It would grant them a peaceful rest as it's waters cause forgetting. The flesh of the corpse would sink from it's bones. It's skeleton would arise as shimmering moonlight to dance amid the stars. It is not known why but to keep it secret they all drank from the pool to forget it's existence. From then on it has become a lost place, only the Forgotten knowing the way to it's shore. 

5. Where is it located?

Hook: a clan of Peatsmen in the swamp is in disarray over their disgraced prince who recently died in a duel with another clan. The entire clan is in mourning and the funeral rites last many weeks. The matriarch refuses to bury her son until his soul can be laid to rest.

Fragment (Magic: Mind-meld): in order to find out why the princes soul is tormented the party must conduct a ritual to mind meld with the recently deceased prince. They must gather black saw-grass, the eye of a blue eel, and a powder of fragrant glass the traders bring far from the south. In the darkness of a new moon they must sing the ancient incantations and place their palm upon the Prince's head in which their minds and his, pulled from the afterlife become conjoined. They receive visions of the Moon Pool and feel his urging for it.

Clue: It is said the Moon Pool lies westward beyond the last bend of the river Olb but can only be found on nights of a full moon and that one can only be lead there by the urging of a tormented soul.

6. How do you interact with it?

Hook: Grigory "The Great" Ivankov is a wizard of ill repute has created a machine to record and play the voices of restless undead spirits. He seeks a brave group of individuals to travel deep within the swamp to one of the crumbling 'moon markers' within the swamp. These are haunted obelisks with holes that line up with the moon. No one knows who built them but the whispering of evil spirits is heard about them. He wishes to record their voices there.

Fragment (Verbal: Audio recording): If recorded, the spirits, in insane howling voices, obsessively speak of the temptation of the Moon Pool. Recording them, of course, draws them like a loadstone and they will be loath to simply return to their aimless roaming of the swamp. 

Clue: The howling of lost and vengeful spirits can be heard above the waters of the Moon Pool. They howl for they know the awful bargain of the pool. From spirit to flesh, and flesh to spirit the pool can transform. And so the vengeful spirits swirl about the pool desperately wanting to clothe themselves in flesh again to wreak their vengeance, but unwilling to forget the awful grudge that drives them. Desperation mounting, at last, unable to bear it no more they enter the waters of the Moon Pool. When they arise from it they arise clothed in flesh seeking to remember the grudge they have forgotten.

Following the Trail of Information

In the above one weird wonder is outlined with six different trails to clues. A campaign would have multiple wonders in the wilderness, each with six different hooks. The players would run across them primarily in civilized areas and have to decide which they wish to pursue and more importantly which they feel are connected to each other.

There are some repeating motifs across the six hooks. These serve let the GM riff on things and help them help the players make connections as they narrow in on what weird wonder they are pursuing. The GM might tell the players that the baptismal fount and the strange necklace seem to be made of the same metal connecting those leads for the players. They might even to go so far as once the players have managed to overcome the challenge of the fragment, to summarize the clue in it's entirety to the players. In investigative games, the real interesting fun come not from finding information. It comes out of what the players decide to do with the information they find. Do they trust all of it? How will they leverage it? How will it effect their current relationships? Their future plans? At what cost did the information come?

Civilization holds the Clues

Overall the hooks for each clue are meant to be random type encounters that the players can have in civilized locations or not to far outside civilization. I place them mostly in civilized locations as the easiest way to get information about something is from another person, so civilized locations have a greater chance of someone knowing something about something, if not the final clue, then something that will help them towards the clue. 

Civilized locations tend to also create small quickly resolved situations that are easy to role play and help expand the setting and characters detail by detail through play. I also find these sorts of situations at the beginning of an adventure help build suspense and interest in the end goal. 

A natural turning point is when the players decide to actually set out into the harsh wilderness to find the weird wonder. Before, they are still safe in civilized lands. After they set out, the journey will be long and arduous, there is no easy turning back. Once they set off, what they find lacking will test them in body and soul. 

In my next post I will detail this second half further.