Link to Google Doc version to this draft:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Bs9eR_cSsNAne2Z1u4oa0OcBq7rnStxfunYNBOGc28/edit?usp=sharing
This was prompted as part of the November 2023 Blog Carnival, with a
topic of "Festivals & Ceremonies"
Mondenberg Calendar
Mondenberg has a thirteen month calendar. Each month is composed of four seven day weeks.
If Mondenberg is tied to only one mundane world, that world’s moon’s phases occur as follows:
The full moon (🌕) occurs on the last day of each month, the 28th.
The third quarter moon (🌗) is on the 7th,
The new moon (🌑) occurs on the 14th, and
The first quarter moon (🌓) occurs on the 21st of each month.
This will occur regardless of the length of day or month on the mundane world, as long as it has
a notable moon which causes tides, similar to our world.
The year is broken up into two seasons of six and a half months each, with winter going
from the start of Wintermonat to mid-Kuhmonat, and summer going the other half of the year.
Winter
During this time of the year, the nights become increasingly frigid and damp from the
start of Wintermonat to Yulefest, especially at the docks and in the Necropolis. Chamber
pots and other still water are often frozen over during these months. Precipitation is
similar to the levels of the summer, but very cold. Rain is more dangerous than snow,
because it can quickly lead someone to develop hypothermia if they are not sufficiently
insulated.
Summer
During this time of the year, the days and nights are fairly temperate,although
humidity is high at the docks and stifling in the Necropolis. Precipitation is notably
warmer than in winter months, and the sun is arguably hotter and brighter.
Holiday Overview
Getting Boons and Banes
There are boons and banes associated with each holiday. Characters can try to gain a
boon during the festival. Alternatively, the player can try to interfere with the festival, and
must succeed in a test to not incur in a bane.
The Game Master chooses the appropriate test. For boons, the GM typically has the
player make a charisma check to gain the boon, although at the Game Master’s discretion,
a different attribute or even a different test may be used. Generally, those interfering with
a festival must make a save to avoid gaining a bane.
Determining Which Boons or Banes
The boons and banes are specific to each festive period or deity, each with six random
boons and banes. The boon and bane tables are all set up as d6 roll tables, although for
edge cases, the GM may choose to instead roll a d4.
Boon or Bane Durations
Social effects will last as long as the relationship is maintained, unless otherwise noted.
If you’re frustrated by social penalties, avoid the district(s) they’re incurred within for a
few months.
Unless otherwise noted, supernatural effects will last until the next new moon.
Dice Notation
1d6L notation indicates you roll 2 d6s, and take the lower value.
Major Festive Periods
While the overall calendar is generally accepted in Mondenberg, the festive calendar
is particularly dominant on the Eyrie and on the Docks, where the founding culture is
most dominant. It is still recognized on all Corvinus University campuses as well.
Yuletag - 1st of Æfteryule
The day after the first full moon marks the new year, as the days start to get longer
again. It celebrates light, and days getting longer.
Boons
Gain the eye of someone in the area you are attracted to.
Need an hour less sleep to be well rested.
The first five feet of dim light in a radius counts as well lit for you.
You take 1 less damage from a cold environment or from cold spells & effects.
While out of combat and concentrating on this ability, and remaining either
motionless or moving slowly, you may emit bright light in a cone 15' in the
direction you are looking.You cannot be surprised while outdoors at night.
Banes
Gain the ire of someone in the area you are attracted to.
Need to sleep an hour longer to be well rested.
The outer five feet of a well-lit area counts as dimly lit for you.
You take 1 more damage from a cold environment or from cold spells & effects.
Your group takes a -1 penalty to navigation checks.
You specifically take a -1 penalty to surprise checks.
Fórnálfarblot - 1st of Ærryule
This festival goes on for two weeks, celebrating things and people lost, and meeting
strangers.
It is celebrated with feasts of roasted meats, potatoes, beets, carrots, and parsnip.
Hard cheeses, apples, pears, nuts, both fresh and in cakes and braided strudels. Drink
is bold wines and plum, pear, or peach brandies.
Bonfires are set up in the town square, with trestle tables with tents set up around
them.
Typically, Grey Elf envoys visit every ninth year during this festival to trade and
build relations, and hire manpower for nine year long voyages on the Astral Seas or
the Ethereal Ocean.
Most people find the Grey Elves off putting, but there are occasional dalliances
between them and some of the locals.
Boons
Anyone bringing game meat to share in a roast over a bonfire will immediately be
treated like a VIP, and will have a +1 to reaction rolls with members of that
neighborhood, provided they are not trying to disguise themselves. Acceptable game
meat includes boar or venison from the mountains to the north or the forests to the
west.
You meet a traveler of random class and level 1d6L, new to Mondenberg, and
become friends. They may help you with activities in town.The food and drink fortify you, +1 to saves vs. spells, toil, or the environment.
A stranger shows interest by bestowing cheese. They may adventure with you,
in return for a full share of the spoils.You catch the eye of a Grey Elf. They may become a companion for the
duration of the festival.You impress a Grey Elf, and are given an elven trinket.
You lose the weakest curse on you.
Banes
You offend a stranger, who demands satisfaction.
The drink overcomes you, or the food upsets you. Player chooses -1 to
constitution or wisdom for a week.You offend a stranger, who speaks ill of you to all who listen. -1 to reaction
rolls in the neighborhood the stranger frequents.You encounter a stranger who mistakes you for someone else, and demands
that you pay a debt of 1d6 x 50 gp.You offend a Grey Elf. You disappear for 1d3 nights, with a vague sense of
unease when trying to remember what happened.You mysteriously lose the first that you have of: 1d6 x 10 x your level gold;
your weapon; your best holy symbol; your spellbook; your sight for 1d3 hours.
Sigurálfarblot - 28th of Lichtmonat
This festival begins the day before the second full moon after the spring equinox,
and lasts for a week, celebrating the return of friends and the recovery of lost things.
Every night includes a feast of waterfowl, early fruits and vegetables, and fresh
round breads and nut cakes. Drink is spring wines, the last of last year’s ciders and
gins.
Path of bows, reminiscent of walking through a green forest. Music on fiddles,
brass horns, and mandolins.
An official delegation of Sun Elf envoys visit every seventh year during this festival
to trade, maintaining relations with Mondenberg and hiring mercenaries to fight off
giant enclaves. On such visits, it is discouraged but not unheard of for liaisons with
the elves to happen.
Small bands of young sun elves may visit during other years, often looking for
scoundrels willing to explore places better left unvisited.
Boons
Anyone bringing duck or goose meat to share in an oven roast will immediately be
treated like a VIP, and will have a +1 to reaction rolls with members of that
neighborhood, provided they are not trying to disguise themselves.
You meet a colleague who has been absent for a long time.
The food and drink fortify you, +1 to saves vs. spells, toil, or the environment.
An old friend looks to renew their acquaintance with you.
You catch the eye of a Sun Elf. They may become a companion for the
duration of the festival.You impress a Sun Elf, and are given an elven trinket.
You gain a +1 bonus on all lore checks.
Banes
You run into an enemy, who slaps you.
Memories of things you have lost overwhelm you. Player chooses -1 to
intelligence or charisma for a week.You encounter an old beau or belle, who speaks ill of you to all who listen.
-1 to reaction rolls in the neighborhood they frequent.You encounter an old beau or belle who seeks to resume your relationship,
and does not accept ‘no’ for an answer.You offend a Sun Elf. You disappear for 1d3 nights, with vague memories
of being a frog when trying to remember what happened.You run into a lender, and must pay: 1d6 x 25 x your level gold, or be beaten.
Lesser Holidays
Hostblot - 28th of Weodmonat
Celebrated at the end of harvest, this celebration begins early in the morning with young
men walking in groups from house to house and singing loud songs of the sun, officially to
remind each home to keep warm, but also to impress the ladies living in each such house.
In return, they are given a bun filled with a hazelnut and honey paste, and a shot of
moonshine. At noon, the eligible maidens of the town travel to their town squares,
and form a large circle to dance to music played by some of the elder folk on fiddles,
brass horns, accordions, mandolins and double-basses, set up on a stage in the middle
of the square. The girls leave their belongings in red and white embroidered cloth bags
tied to the latticework of the stage, and dance with short staves or sticks. Typically, the
boldest of the young men will try to jump through the circle to steal the bags of maidens
they are interested in. In response, the maidens will charge in, beating them with their
sticks until those bachelors get back outside the circle. This can be anything from gentle
taps from interested maidens, to viscous thwacks from jealous maidens whose own bags
haven’t been stolen. Bags can be recovered by the maidens signing a song to the bachelor
with their bag, or with a threat of a beating by a group of the maiden’s friends.
The night before, the bachelors set up trestle tables around the square, which are
populated by the married folk and young children, each family bringing a meat dish,
a dish of vegetables, a loaf of bread, and a collection of pastries and strudels. At
mid-afternoon, the circle dances end, and the first of the beer kegs is tapped in ritual
celebration of music and marching, followed by drinking songs. After this, the married
folk dance to the music of the band, along with paired younger couples.
Boons
Dance with a fellow reveler. Recover 1 point of attribute damage, or roll a save
to recover from an illness.Mysteriously gain a straw man figurine of yourself. Crush it to become fully
rested and satiated. Wears out at the next full moon if unused.Dance with a fellow reveler. Gain that reveler’s interest. Have a place to stay
while in that district.Mysteriously gain a straw crown. While worn, and on cultivated land, it gives
you a +2 to AC as the vegetation and land there interfere with those attacking you.Dance with an older reveler. They take an interest in you, and offer to mentor you.
It takes you a turn to travel across up to six miles of cultivated land.
Banes
Mess up the drinking beer songs. -1 to reaction rolls with those in this district.
Cursed by harvest spirits. Anytime you drink, get drunk on one beer.
Insult a reveler, gaining the non-lethal enmity of a level 1d6L thief.
Cursed by harvest spirits. You are always hungrier than you should be. Eat an
extra ration of food every day to not be hungry.Mess up the rites so badly, everyone’s worried the harvest won’t last the winter.
Insult harvest spirits. You are attacked by them for the balance of the month
when crossing cultivated terrain at night.
Wolfenoot - 14th of Kuhmonat
This feast honors canines, both wild and domesticated.
All meals center around meat, preferably game meat. It may be accompanied by
other forms of food, but onions, leeks, and garlic, coffee, grapes or raisins, chocolate,
or yeasty dough are banned. Deserts are usually biscuits cut into moon or hound shapes.
While this is not a feast dedicated to Hecate, her temple fully endorses and supports it.
It is considered a blessed act to give a canine a raw bone from a cow, deer, yak, or
bison. It is considered taboo to serve any banned foods, or to injure canines.
Boons
They appreciate your belly rubs or head scratches. Gain a +1 to reactions with them.
You can sense the exact location of canines within 30 ft., even if you can’t see them.
You canine a +1 to reaction rolls with anyone who has a canine companion.
Canines automatically react as friendly with you unless you attack them or steal their
food.You keep giving them food, and they appreciate it. Gain +2 to reaction rolls with
canines, and can’t get a hostile reaction without attacking them.Gain a faithful dog (+1 morale, +1 HD per 2/levels of character receiving boon).
Banes
You smell wrong. -1 to reaction rolls with canines and canine lovers.
Canines tracking you by scent have a +2 on tracking checks to track you.
A canine attacks you. Take 1d6 dmg. You have -2 to reaction checks with those
who witness this.A wolf pack will track you and attack you in your sleep if you travel outside the
city in the next month.All canines are at least unfriendly to you.
You upset a werewolf, who will try to track you down and attack you some night
in the next 2d6 days.
Other Holidays and Feasts
Other holidays are specific to particular deities. Their boons and banes are the same for
all of their festivals, and are noted at the end of each of their sections.
Hecate
Hecate is a goddess with a broad portfolio of night, magic, death, crossroads and keys,
vengeance, dogs, and snakes. Her followers observe the three following days as significant:
Hecate’s Night - 16th of Dunkelmonat
On this night, just as the new moon is waxing, she roams the earth with her hounds, in
her guise as Diana, searching for those who have wronged her or her followers, and
wreaking vengeance upon them. This is also the night that new initiations are made
for Witches who follow her. Hecate’s Supper is left out on the steps of her followers’
dwellings, usually consisting of honey and mushrooms. Hecate then blesses those inside.
Hecate’s Night - 13th of Weodmonat
Hecate is recognized in her guise as Persephone, an Earth and Agriculture goddess.
Offerings for her are left at the Crossroads, consisting of rare mushrooms, honey cakes,
and strong wine, in the hopes of appeasing her to get bountiful crops. In Mondenberg,
where farming is not a primary economic activity, food is also donated to those in need,
especially in the Eyrie’s Jakes, where most of her followers are located.
Hecate’s Feast - 3rd Blootmonat
This feast honors all three aspects of Hecate, Diana, Persephone, and Selene.
The foods start with a charcuterie board with meats, cheeses, nuts, and mushrooms,
accompanied with a garlicky leek soup.
In Mondenberg, the main course consists of local fish grilled with rosemary and
thyme. Traditionally eggplant is also served at this meal, but that is sometimes difficult
to get in Mondenberg. This is accompanied with marinated mushrooms and quinoa or
couscous salads with local herbs, typically parsley, mint, and basil.
Desserts made in Mondenberg for this feast are honigkuchen, baklava, and lebkuchen,
the latter usually shaped into crescent moons, hounds’ heads, and keys.
Boons
Anyone bringing wine, mead, meat, honey, or mushrooms will have a +1 to reaction
rolls with followers of Hecate.
Additionally, those helping with celebrations gain one of the following:
Friendship with a witch of level 1d6L. She may come along on a delve, for a full share.
Friendship with a witch of level 1d6L. She provides an elixir of healing (if you roll
over the number of days you’ve had it on a d12, it heals 1d8 hp).Friendship with a priestess of Hecate, who may provide a job or offer the odd rumor.
Gain a sacred sacrificial blade of Hecate (silver dagger 1d4 dmg), the display of which
also provides +1 to reaction rolls with any of her followers.Gain a job to scout a location believed to have an artifact or relic of value to the
Church of Hecate, with a bonus if that item is recovered.
Gain a faithful dog (+1 morale, +1 HD per 2/levels of character receiving boon).
Banes
Anyone disrupting observations sacred to Hecate have a chance of gaining one
the following:
Someone in a crowd trips you or spills food on you, soiling your clothes (-1 to reaction
checks until you clean yourself up).A witch of level 1d6L pretends to like you and gives you a fake rumor to a dangerous
place.
You are bitten by a dog, take 1d4 dmg.
You are given bad food. Save or take -1 to all checks.
You are cursed by a priestess of Hecate.
Gain the enmity of a priestess of Hecate: -1 to all reaction checks in the Eyrie’s Jakes.
Ifni
Ifni’s followers revel in her as a goddess of change, destruction, and growth. She is
sometimes identified with Eostre, Freya, Hathor, and Kali, amongst others.
Her followers are often scoundrels, gamblers, mercenaries, merchants, and the happy-go-lucky.
Feast of Fertility - 7th of Hasemonat (Spring Equinox)
This feast recognizes Ifni as Eostre, a fertility goddess. While farming is not common
in Mondenberg, breeding of animals is, especially chickens, dogs, pigeons, pigs, and goats.
These animals are all served up during the feast to her, although which animals are
considered fair game as entries to this feast depends on the quarter one is in. Dogs are
generally limited to the Necropolis quarter, since those in the Eyrie’s Jakes are strongly
aligned with Hecate, to whom dogs are sacred, and those of other quarters find
consumption of dog meat culturally distasteful.
The feast starts at noon, including spit-roasted and braised meats, apples and peaches
(fresh when available, canned otherwise), curries, kebabs, spring greens–especially endive
and red cabbage served with apples, carrots, nutmeg, and cinnamon), pickled beets, and
barley–either mixed with vegetables and walnuts, or in a soup or stew. Desserts consist of
strong bitter black or green teas with iced apple, peach, or poppy seed danishes dusted
with icing sugar and cinnamon. Games of chance are played, such as wheel of fortune,
10,000, bobbing for apples, and tossing a woven basket so that it flips end over end three
times to land on top of an upright log 6 ft. high.
Boons
Anyone bringing wine, mead, meat, honey, or mushrooms will have a +1 to reaction
rolls with followers of Hecate.
Anyone celebrating or carousing with Hecate’s witches and priestesses has a chance
of gaining one of the following:
Gain the attraction of a reveler of level 1d6L, who may come along on a delve, for
a full share;Gain +2 on your next save;
Gain the attention and, if you wish it, friendship of a wild mage of level 1d6+1L.
They may request your company in an adventure to recover something they desire.
That item will not be part of the loot share.Roll a d6 each morning: on a 6 you get +1 to all saves that day.
Impress a priestess of Ifni of level 1d6L+1, and get offered a job to deal with a
frustration to Ifni’s temple.Gain +1 on all saves.
Banes
Anyone disrupting observations sacred to Ifni has a chance of gaining one the following:
An embarrassing but harmless piece of food somewhere on you, causing -1 to all reaction rolls.
Your energy flows become turbulent. -1 to your next three saves triggered by foes.
Gain the attention and, if you wish it, friendship of a wild mage of level 1d6L.
You are not in sync with the vibes here, disturbing your connection with magic.
Take a -1 penalty on magic saves.Impress a priestess of Ifni of level 1d6L+1, and get offered a job to deal with a
frustration to Ifni’s temple.In combat, you are targeted thrice as often as other members of your adventuring
party in combat.
Appendix Y: Design Notes
Boons and Banes
The whole point of banes is to answer what happens when you “FA; FO”. Of course, if
we’re going to incorporate the negative, I have to balance that with the positive benefits
of community building.
To fully benefit from either, you need to pass a test. In the case of boons, it’s usually an
attribute test, which players can try to engineer to be in their favor. In the case of banes,
it’s typically a save, which is harder to engineer, and much more punitive at low levels.
I’m okay with this because I want to encourage players to build things up rather than tear
things down, and I think we should use the carrot and the stick to direct this, but it’s not
important enough for the most ultimate of carrots, experience points.
Either way, there are six possible outcomes. I try to pattern them like this:
Small social
Small supernatural
Medium social
Medium supernatural
Major social
Major supernatural
I try to make boons a little more beneficial than banes are detrimental, but not so good
they dramatically tilt the playing field, just to add more carrots to my players’ meals.
I’ve talked about mechanics and incentives, but there are other aspects to boons and
banes: they inform the backstory of the world without explicitly spelling it out. The
players can then investigate whatever whets their appetites, or at least wonder about
what’s going on that they can’t see. Good boons and banes, like good loot tables and
good random encounter tables hint at a broader world without grinding the player’s
faces in it with excessive unrequested exposition.
Finally, the most important part for some tables: they are opportunities for character
development. While the opportunity exists in isolation, boons offer more incentives, and
banes offer more consequences to roleplay and develop, both mechanically and as
character development.
Comments
Post a Comment