The Value of Lorebooks

The Value of Lorebooks

I've been reading Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes recently, and something has struck me about the first chapter, the one for the Blood War. It is how the paragraphs that list and describe each ruling archdevil and the layer of The Nine Hells that they rule function as both a travel narrative and bestiary, and at the same time they are seeds for adventures; a tool to inspire dungeon masters.

It is a treasure trove of inspiration. I've read only part of the first chapter and I've already started thinking of several ideas that I would like to use in a campaign. I went over and re-read that part so that I could delve deeper into the lore and its layout and how it can be used. Just one piece of lore can spark an idea that can span a whole campaign, and this book has a wagon full of chests bursting with lore.

For those that haven't read the book or are otherwise unfamiliar with D&D Lore, the Blood War is an ages-long feud between devils and demons. The demons boil up from their home plane, the Abyss, and assault the first layer of The Nine Hells, Avernus. The devils push them back out but are unable and/or unwilling to push further into the Abyss. So the infernal creatures are perpetually at war with each other.

The chapter deals with both the devil-ish and demonic side of the Blood War. The section I just finished reading was for the Lords of the Nine, the nine archdevils who rule the layers of The Nine Hells. It talks about the lord, their personality and traits and the kinds of deals they make with mortals. It talks about the layer that the lord rules, its environment and history and its purpose within The Nine Hells as a whole. This is where one gets to the high grade campaign fuel.

Each section lists possibilities for adventures by mingling them with the lore. The first layer, for instance, has multiple tie-ins for adventurers seeking any number of things.

First of all, Avernus is the front line for the Blood War, and that alone has many opportunities. If you want a mass combat, you can find an endless horde of demons or devils. If you're looking for infernal weapons or armor, scavenge after a battle. Nothing wrong with looting the bodies of dead devils, right? Perhaps the adventurers have been recruited as scouts, impartial messengers or mediators, or maybe even assassins by some devil of interest.

Even if the Dungeon Master plans to avoid the Blood War directly, there are still innumerable forts that have been built to hold back demonic hordes. These forts may have been abandoned as the Blood War shifts to a different front, or perhaps they have been destroyed in battle. In their time, they may have stored treasure of many kinds, from magic items to demonic lore to forgotten trinkets that still hold value to some quest giver.

The second layer of the Abyss, Dis, is an active metropolis. Lots of arms-dealing is done here, and so is a lot of mining. This is where the supplies that support the Blood War are created. Adventurers could come here seeking weapons or armor, they might be searching for an item to be used for some other adventure, or just looking for work in one of the busiest places in the planes.

They might get involved in some intrigue involving the de-facto ruler of the plane, Tivisius, who is the true ruler's second in command. They might be contracted by the true ruler, Dispater, to seek out some nugget of lore, which could lead them anywhere in the planes, or to a lower layer of The Nine Hells.

This is not an exhaustive list for these two layers, not by any means, and it is only the first two layers. There are seven more with just as many potential adventure seeds waiting to be developed by Dungeon Masters and played out by the adventuring party. I can go further.

The third layer, Minarous, is ruled by Mammonon. Mammonon is listed as potentially the richest entity in all of the planes, due to his obsession with seeking out opportunities for enrichment and his eye for efficiency. So if you found some supposedly priceless artifact that no one in the Material Plane can pay full price for, then Mammonon can, and he might throw in something more valuable than gold to seal the deal. Of course, you have to reach him first or contact him somehow, and that can be its own adventure, because everything involving Mammonon has a price. 

That is the other thing, Mammonon is said to be one of the safest demons to make an infernal pact with because he might not ask for your soul. If you have "the wealth of a dozen kingdoms", then you can buy arcane power and influence from him with mundane money. Of course, stealing from him is also an option. 

He is an excuse for the Dungeon Master to go all out and make the most complicated puzzles, the most deadly traps, and the most numerous guards; dungeon obstacles that would be fairly called "unfair" or "unbalanced" if in some ruin created by mortals. But this is Mamonon, for whom no expense is too much to protect his vault, and who has had multiple mortal lifetimes to advance its security.

However, he is also incredibly stingy, so despite the wealth in his vault, the layer itself is shambling and decayed. It is a Wretched Hive if there ever was one. Such a place could be the scene of literally hellish criminal activity, or an opportunity to stir up trouble for Mammonon, and possibly an attempt to unseat him as the lord of the layer.

The fact that the layer is a swamp gives rise to other more implicit opportunities, only hinted at by what is present in the book itself. It may be that the comatose princess the adventurers are trying to cure was soulnapped (kidnapped via soul theft) by a night hag who plans to auction off the poor girl's soul in Mammonon's town. So they could try to track and kill the hag, participate in the auction or bargain with/steal from the entity who purchased the soul.

Wow, this is getting long, and I've only covered, briefly, some of the potential adventurers from three of the nine layers. Which, itself, is only one part of one chapter of one book. So, as you can see, there is a lot of inspiration a dungeon master can draw from a good lorebook. 

They don't even have to use the full "Nine Hells of Baator and Blood War" cosmology if such a thing wouldn't fit in their campaign. The idea for the night hag auctioning off souls could happen in the Material Plane amid some devil cult, or maybe a school of necromancers, or some other entity. Just one aspect of one section of lore can spark an idea that could fill a campaign, one adventure or even just a single session or two. That is the Value of Lorebooks.

For other 5E D&D books containing useful lure, you can turn to the Dungeon Master's Guide

To read my review of the entire book, click here

Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

D&D 5E Dungeon Master's Guide (Read for utility - and fun)

 Previously, I wrote a review for the 3.5 edition of the Dungeon Master's Guide for Dungeons and Dragons, and I useful I found it for writing novels. All of that applies to the 5th edition too, but more so. I much prefer this edition as a writing aid. Oh yes, I also find it useful for running a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. 

This book is split into three main sections, each describing the responsibility of the Dungeon Master in the game. They are "Master of Worlds", "Master of Adventures" and "Master of Rules".  The first is for creating the campaign world, the second is for creating the adventure, and the third is a list of rules to help the DM run the scenario, tweak situations to fit the campaign, and a section with advice on homebrewing elements. 

As a Dungeon Master, I find this book extremely helpful. I have several areas of it bookmarked for easier and quicker reference. One of them is the area for building encounters and managing random encounters. This helped break my previous conception of random encounters, which I picked up from video games.

 In video games, there is no point to a random encounter other to beatdown on the monsters for some droppable resource (Experience points, money, some form of loot). Then you move on. Not so in a Dungeons and Dragons session, where some groups play for 2-3 hours a week or even less. That can become tedious (as it sometimes happens in video games as well). This area of the book taught me how to make a random encounter more meaningful. There is a "Sylvan Forest" encounter table in here that I merged with another table in the Monster Manual to create the one for the area that my party is currently adventuring in. These "random" encounters provided the seed necessary to create events that are relevant to the here and now of the session. 

I also bookmarked the area that explains how to create maps for dungeons, settlements and wilderness, as well as adjudicating and describing what your players do in each. Because each area is different, different methods are used for each one. For instance, a dungeon is likely to be traversed room-by-room, as the player-characters check for traps and treasure. The wilderness, by contrast, is more likely to be a more general environment that does not involve the player-characters checking behind each tree or the top of each hill. Unless, of course, they are in a particular section of wilderness that doubles as a dungeon. 
Also, my players have done a lot of foraging recently so it is useful to have a table that enables me to quickly determine if they find something and how much they find. 

A third bookmark, of which I currently have seven in total, is a rule variant for chases. In Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, all creatures have a set movement speed, which makes chases deterministic and therefore less interesting. This area lists certain rules that can be used to add randomness to this otherwise pre-determined scenario, basically obstacles that both the pursuer and the quarry can run into, which can slow them down. There are also rules for determining when the chase begins, ends, or turns around and makes the hunter the hunted. 

Oh, I wish I had read this book cover-to-cover when I first started DMing. I thought I knew the rules well enough as a player and that I would do fine by imitating what our group's original DM did, but I didn't do fine. Not in the least. I have several embarrassing sessions under my belt, and this book could have prevented several of them. Particularly the Chase section; especially the Chase section. 

On another note, there is gorgeous art in this book. This review is mainly about the usefulness of the book for a Dungeon Master (and therefore also a novelist) but I have to mention the gorgeous art. You can see landscapes of everything from mountains and meadows to the Shadowfell or the Elemental Plane of Fire. You get portraits of an adventuring party consulting/drawing a map or in combat with a dragon. Most of the magic items listed in the treasure also get their own images along with their listing. 

Trickster Eric Novels gives "The Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D 5E" an A+

If you want to read my review for the 3.5 E version, it is here 

Click here for my next book review: Ah! My Goddess - omnibus #1

Click here for my previous book review: Spice and Wolf volume 9

Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration).

His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

Spice and Wolf volume 9 Town of Strife part 2 (Read for Fun)

Spice and Wolf volume 9  Town of Strife part 2. The second part of the first two-part adventure in the series.

I must say upfront that I did not enjoy this volume as I did the others. Despite being two volumes long, not as much appeared to happen in comparison to previous volumes. If there were many events and commotion going on I certainly didn't follow them. Lawrence acts as though he is in terrible danger right from the start, and that Kieman is a direct and immediate threat. This is before Lawrence does anything that could upset him. In fact, in the previous volume, he had affirmed his loyalty to Kieman and the Rowen Trade Guild, as though it were a matter of course. That is one of the things that confused me.

I got the feeling that there was a lot more going on between the lines and off the page than what the reader was presented with. Lawrence had a greater understanding of the situation, but did not share this information with the reader even though he shared his thoughts and feelings.  So I didn't understand why he was so nervous the whole time, and why he was so afraid of his guild's sub-leader asking him to be a messenger. Eventually, I got an inkling that Kieman was plotting a coup to usurp the leader of the Rowen Trade Guild, and that he would make life difficult for Lawrence if Lawrence refused to cooperate, but I don't think that this was ever made explicit.

What I saw was all about how intimidated he was by Kieman and Eve being administrative merchants, heads of their own companies, in comparison to the traveling merchant who makes all his deals on the spot and with immediate goals. So I guess keeping the reader in the dark was supposed to help them emphasize with how out-of-his-depth Lawrence feels in this situation. I get that. It worked. However, I didn't understand the danger he or Eve were in, and that really deflated the tension of the story for me.

Another thing that I didn't understand was all the fuss about Eve. I was under the impression that she was a traveling merchant like Lawrence back in her introduction a couple volumes back. I understand that she has a lot of connections, and that the "Bolan Company" is basically just her and these connections, but what's the deal with her in this town, and why is knowing her such a big deal. Kieman acted as though only Lawrence or a local trading company head could serve as intermediaries in his shady deal with her. 

There are other things that I didn't get about this particular story, but that would make this review longer than it already is.

I still enjoyed this book. The out-of-his-depth experience Lawrence feels is well executed, and shows a different side of him than in previous stories, so it is good character development. His banter with Holo was as good as usual, and she seems to have become comfortable enough to express her jealousy more openly. I just didn't understand the economic angle this time.

Trickster Eric Novels gives "Spice and Wolf volume 9  Town of Strife part 2" a C

Click here for my next book review: Dungeon Master's Guide for D&D 5E (Read for Utility, and fun)

Click here for my previous book review (for fun) : The Ultimate Book of Martial Arts

Brian Wilkerson is a independent novelist, freelance book reviewer, and writing advice blogger. He studied at the University of Minnesota and came away with bachelor degrees in English Literature and History (Classical Mediterranean Period concentration). His fantasy series, Journey to Chaos, is currently available on Amazon as an ebook or paperback.