Running games in Covalon

Covalon is a living world server, and as a result there are many differences in comparison to a traditional home game among friends. As a core tenet, we try to keep the experience of games between adventures consistent and we try to make the experience of running games as enjoyable as possible. At its most basic, this means four things:

1. Host when you want to

As a Dungeon Guide, you choose when you run your adventures. There is no quota of games you are expected to host, and you can run any type of game you wish to run. You may run as often or as infrequently as your time and motivation allows.

2. Consistency of Games

Our game types, explained in greater detail below, have guidelines on how to build encounters, settings and treasure piles to ensure that the experience across the server is consistent. In this way, players have a good understanding of what to expect when they sign up to play a game.

3. Give It To Me RAW!

We use Rules As Written (RAW) rulings as much as possible to reduce the burden on Dungeon Guides of needing to learn a multitude of server-specific rules in order to run games. You should be able to run an adventure and reference core rules of the game in order to make mid-session judgements if needed without having to reference a thousand other documents.

There are however occasions in which we have made non-RAW rulings in order to better fit a Living World Campaign. These can be found in the #!?Rule-Clarifications-and-faqs channel.

4. Choose your table

As a Covalon Dungeon Guide you have full autonomy to choose who sits at your table. You will never be mandated to run for specific people or groups, and we will never implement server systems that impact who you take at your table.

Thank you for taking the first step to running games for us! As an Aspiring Dungeon Guide you are in the process of learning how games are set up on the server.

Aspiring Dungeon Guides should read through this guide in its entirety before submitting their first game for approval.

Once you have completed your adventure outline, Create A Ticket to submit it for approval. Your first adventure approval ticket must include:

Your Adventure Outline

This can be as simple as a block of text, or utilising one of the tools created by the community for adventure submissions. As a minimum, this must include:

• The Hook that players will see in your #Scheduled-Events Post. This should be the call to adventure provided by your portal specialist.
• All of the monsters and hazards that the players will face, including links to Archives of Nethys entries
• All of the treasure the players will receive
• A breakdown of the narrative of the dungeon
• Any other specific details that the staff team should know about, including potential trigger warnings or themes.

Your Portal Specialist NPC

Every Dungeon Guide creates their own Portal Specialist NPC. This is an individual who works for the Dungeoneering Society and provides quests and guidance to the party. They are also responsible for opening and sustaining the portal to take adventurers to the quest location. Your Portal Specialist must be cooperative with the party, and invested in their success. You should submit a brief summary of their personality and a description of their appearance for approval.

Your player character cannot be a portal specialist.

Scheduling A Shadow

In your ticket, submit two proposed times on non-consecutive days that you are able to run the adventure along with the time you intend to run. As an Aspiring Dungeon Guide you must be shadowed by a Moderator when you run games, and providing two days and times increases the likelihood someone will be available to shadow you.

Once you are approved and have a moderator ready, you're good to run your adventure! The shadowing moderator will keep your ticket open to provide you feedback after your adventure.

Core Rules

Before starting to design games for Covalon, it is strongly recommended that you read through chapter 9 and chapter 10 of the Core Rulebook. This includes the core rules of the system in terms of creating encounters that are balanced, challenging and fun!

APL and Party Size

When designing a game adventure, you should start with determining your Average Party Level (APL). You can do this by working out the average of your party members if you know them in advance, or selecting an APL in advance you expect to have.

Most adventures in Covalon assume 6 players in attendance. You can run an adventure with a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 6 players.

Keep in mind that your party size will impact your experience Budget. Sometimes you will find that the average party level of a group is in the middle of two whole levels. In the event of finding you have a party of a 0.5 interval, you should balance for one additional player of the lower level. For example, if you have a party of six with an APL of 6.5, you should balance for 7 level 6 characters.

Building Encounters

It's time to select your creatures! For most Covalon game modes, you need to design for Moderate difficulty encounters. This page is the perfect place to check the experience values of monsters you are selecting for your challenges. Keep in mind you cannot select a monster that is more than 3 levels above the lowest level player in the party. Keep this in mind when designing encounters, especially if you don't know who your players are yet.

Of course, monsters aren't the only challenges your players will face. You can find the experience costs of hazards here.

Sometimes you may wish to use particular environments, weather, magical terrain or other non-creature, non-hazard considerations within your adventure. This should be included within your approval, and often will require an experience value associated with it. The experience value should be proportionate to how heavily it will affect the party. A large patch of difficult terrain might only be 10 experience, but a patch of Energy Surge Terrain with on-type monsters might be worth 20 or more experience.

Always make sure to double check the Restricted Monsters list for any experience adjustments that need to be made for certain monsters in Covalon adventures!

Covalon Considerations

Unless specified otherwise in the game type instructions, all adventures in Covalon must follow the following rules:

• Each player gets one Hero Point at the start of the adventure, up to the usual maximum of 3 if they already have any. Unlike other Hero Points, if this Hero Point is not used by the end of the adventure it is lost.
• The party must be able to try to escape if they choose to. The portal cannot close behind them, and they cannot be locked into an area.
• The adventure must stick to the timeframe for the game type. If it appears to be going over time, wrap the adventure up early.
• As long as players overcome at least one challenge or encounter, they receive full experience if they leave early. They receive all of the loot that they have found so far.

Selecting loot for your adventure is a critical part of its design! Below, you will find the rules and guidelines for selecting loot and treasure for your Covalon adventures. Keep in mind the theme of your dungeon, and take a look through the available items and equipment in order to select thematically appropriate loot.

The total value of loot for each APL value can be found in table 3-1 and 3-2. Underneath, you will find loot guidelines to ensure your submission will be approved!

Table 3-1: Loot values per APL for Non-Patrols

Table 3-2: Loot values per APL for Patrols

Keep in mind that the above tables are for a 6 person party. You will need to adjust for a lower number of party members if you are running for fewer than 6 players! You can do this by dividing the above figures by 6, and multiplying the resulting number by the total number of players you will be running for.

Loot should contain:

Gold and Treasure

Cash is great! At least 50% of the treasure budget must be gold to ensure people can buy or commission items they want instead of relying on drops.

Consumable Items

Bombs, mutagens, elixirs, potions, scrolls, talismans are great rewards that players will often not craft for themselves.

Basic Permanent Items

Basic weapons and armor are good additions. In particular, relevant uncommon weapons are a good reward for an appropriately set dungeon.

Appropriately Levelled Formulas and Items

Crafting is the main source of permanent items in Covalon, and formulas are an excellent way to facilitate that. Formulas and items given as loot should be the same level or lower than the APL of the party. For example, an APL 7 party receives item level 7 loot and cannot receive level 8+ loot.

Wands of spells that need heightening to scale

This basically means anything that deals damage or heals is great. Avoid long-term buffs like Longstrider, etc.

Rings, capes, and other magical accessores

Permanent magic items that are not weapons, armor, staves, or other high-priority items are acceptable for non-patrol adventures only. This can be rings, cloaks, boots, bags, aeon-stones, and other universal magical accessories.

Loot should not contain:

Specific Magic Weapons, Armor, Staves and Runes

These would be more appropriate as a formula for people to create themselves in Covalon. An exception to this rule is made for Tier 1 and Tier 2 adventures, and you are encouraged to include fundamental runes as loot in these adventures.

Formulas of Items Higher Level than the Adventure

Formulas for items higher level than the APL of the adventure should not be given out.

Homebrew Items That Provide Mechanical Benefits

We stick to RAW as much as possible. This helps to provide consistency for the other Dungeon Guides so we do not need to keep track of lots of different magical items that cannot be easily looked up.

Universally Useful Wands

Longstrider, Resist Energy, Circle of Protection and other universally useful spells that do not scale with levels should be crafted and not dropped.

Stasian Technology

The technology level for the Covalon setting is ‘Gunpowder and Clockwork’ and Stasian Technology is too advanced for this purpose.

Disallowed Items

Any items marked as disallowed on our server whitelist, which can be viewed here.

GM Rewards

You receive the rewards listed in tables 3-4 and 3-5 for running a game. When your adventure ends, you may choose to forgo the rewards if you wish. If you forgo rewards, you must forfeit both the experience and the gold. You cannot take one without the other.

Table 3-4: Non-Patrol* GM Rewards

Table 3-5: Patrol GM Rewards

Hero Points and Keepsakes

You may award Hero Points at the end of your adventure for exceptional roleplay or enjoyable moments. These should be reserved for character-based interactions and decisions rather than simply rolling well with dice. You may award up to one Hero Point per hour of play.

You may also wish to provide mundane narrative items as keepsakes from your adventure. These should be included in your adventure submission ticket. These items must have no mechanical impact, and have no value for resale, but are an excellent roleplay prompt for the future!

Vanity Pet Samples

As described in the Covalon Player's Guide, players can get samples of creatures they come across on their adventures to hatch their own Vanity Pets.

You can give players a 'sample' of a creature that has either the Animal or Beast tag during their adventures as part of the loot. This should be included in your adventure submission.

Table 4-1: Adventure Types

Dungeons

Dungeons are a game type initiated as a mission from the Dungeoneering Society. Your Portal Specialist transports the party to faraway lands via portal magic to investigate mysteries, gather supplies and defeat dangers.

A dungeon generally consists of three moderate encounters that are appropriate for the Average Party Level. These adventures generally take about 3 hours and must not go longer than 4 hours. Activities besides combat may be budgeted as an encounter, such as a trap, a puzzle, a social encounter, or exploration/travel, with approval in your approval ticket.

Patrols

Covalon Patrols are small adventures and missions that take place in the immediate vicinity of Covalon-controlled locations.

A patrol consists of a single moderate combat encounter, and is expected to last no more than an hour. Patrols should have little to no narrative elements or non-combat encounters.

Patrols never contain permanent magic items as loot, but magical consumables (such as talismans, potions, scrolls, etc) are allowed.

Expeditions

Expedition missions are a special game-mode that is heavily intertwined with the ongoing meta-narrative of Covalon, beyond gathering supplies and going through portals. Expeditions represent our efforts to reclaim the world after the Cataclysm and face the challenges left behind in a shattered realm.

Expeditions require the installation of the Covalon Expedition Module on Foundry.

Expeditions consist of a choice of three missions that have special instructions that can be found inside the Module.

Finales

Expedition Finales are a single boss encounter with special mechanics that are narratively tied to defending the planted Seeds of Terra used to purify reclaimed areas of the world map from Maw monsters. Check out the Expedition Module for more details on how to run each finale!

Descents

A Descent may currently only be run by Senior DGs and Administrators. These adventures are exclusively for the current highest tier of play, and always balanced for the maximum level players in Covalon can achieve.

Descents are composed of up to four single-room encounters. After clearing a room, players may make the decision to continue onward to the next room or retreat with any rewards they have collected so far.

After clearing a room, each player may undertake one 10-minute activity.

Descents have a maximum time limit of 4 hours. If the third encounter is completed with less than 45 minutes remaining the party may not continue. The race against the clock is part of the challenge!

Descents are composed of combat encounters exclusively. No narrative, puzzles, exploration, or roleplay will be present.

Clearing at least one room rewards the party with 250 experience in total and 1376 gp per room per player. These gp rewards should be flavored as "Maw Stones" that Arto uses Covalon Funds to purchase from the players.

The first encounter in a Descent is moderate difficulty. Each subsequent encounter must be severe difficulty. The restricted monster list does not apply to Descents, and you may use more sinister environments when designing Descent rooms.

Descents are usually run for 6 players, but can be run for a party of smaller than 6. Encounters should still be balanced as Moderate for the first encounter, and then Severe for each subsequent room. The time limit is reduced by 15 minutes per player less than 6.

Brawls

Specific PVP events where two teams of three players face off against each other are brawls. Brawls may only be hosted by Senior Dungeon Guides.

Brawls are always run on the arena map. (Use a grid size of 128 pixels.) One team starts in the red square in the top right and the other team starts in the blue square in the top left. All platforms are 10 feet high. The DC to climb any ladder or rigging is 10, but magical oil is applied to the sides of all platforms to make climbing more difficult; use a level-based DC based on the average player level for climbing the sides of platforms. For control points, the three yellow squares indicate the control points, while the blue flag in the top-left and the red flag in the bottom-right indicate the locations of the blue and red flags respectively, as well as the scoring locations for the blue and red teams, respectively.

All participants in Brawl gain Gold and experience, even if they lose. The winning team each receives a Gladiator Token for prestige. For more information on brawls, check the Brawl listing in the Player's Guide here.

Duels

Players may participate in 1v1 friendly duels after getting approval via a PvP ticket. Any Dungeon Guide can host a duel. Duels do not provide any rewards for dungeon guides or participants, and the rules of the duel should be defined by the participants.

You must confirm with the participants that they have had their duel approved in a ticket before proceeding.

Portal Specialists

Before you can run adventures, you must first have a Portal Specialists approved via a ticket. Portal specialists are the workers of the dungeoneering society that work tirelessly identifying, testing and using portal keys to send players on adventures. Specialists open portals during portal key testing and briefly scout the surrounding area to get a sense of how valuable the area is… and how dangerous.

Portal Keys

Portals are opened by using "portal keys," which can be any small object, but most tend to be objects with a strong connection to a physical place in the world. Good candidates have strong, but narrow, "object memory." Objects with broad "object memory" might open a portal anywhere in the world (such as a gold piece that has been traded through dozens of trade ports). But the location that a portal opens to is also affected by two other major factors: strong emotions and ley lines.

Dungeoneering Contracts

All new characters to the dungeoneering society must sign a dungeoneering contract before they can complete any adventures on behalf of Covalon. This is a great opportunity to have people introduce their character to a group, and a copy of the contract can be found here!

Emotional Resonance

Areas where strong emotions were released tend to magnetize portals to those areas. For example, say a village burned to the ground during the cataclysm and all the villagers were incinerated in a matter of minutes. The screams of terror and pain from the villagers would create a strong emotional magnet that might influence a portal key more than anything else in its object memory (hence why many portals tend to open to ruins or other sites of tragedy). The other major factor that influences portals are ley lines, which are invisible loci of magical power scattered across the world. Ley line interference is highly unpredictable, and can cause portals to open quite a distance off from the source of the object memory feeding the portal. As a result, it is impossible to "pinpoint" a specific location with portals.

Holding Portals Open

Once a portal is opened, it must be receive a constant flow of magical energy in order to remain stable. Portal specialists are capable of keeping portals open, though keeping one open for too long can cause quite a bit of strain on the spellcaster. For this reason, excursions should be kept to no more than a few hours in length.

Aftermath

After a portal key has been used and an excursion has been finished, portal specialists are instructed to destroy the portal key. This ensures that a portal key is not accidentally used again (as an excursion to somewhere that's already been cleaned out would be a waste of time) and keeps powerful entities from tracking Covalonians when they return home. As long as the portal specialist doesn't come into contact with any creatures while scouting, the portal key is not destroyed during testing.

Purpose

The primary purpose of Covalon's adventures is to explore the world, gather valuable supplies to ensure the city's continued survival and to fight dangerous threats in order to achieve those goals. Try to keep this in mind when themeing your adventure hooks and narrative.

Try to avoid scenarios in which Covalon is explicitly attempting to rescue or improve a location, outside of Expedition missions. Part of the setting means that we don't fully know what's out there until we get there!

Locations

The location of your adventure is one of the most important considerations after your encounter design and loot. The setting of Covalon allows for a wide variety of locations for your adventure to be set, but there are still some constraints in place to keep the feel of a post-Cataclysm world.

Post-Cataclysm

The Cataclysm wiped out all known civilisations, with only scattered individual survivors. Covalon is the largest settlement that presently exists, and so it's important to keep this in mind when designing for an adventure. You adventure can include some small number of NPCs, but it is important not to create an implication of large pockets of survivors after the Cataclysm.

NPCs

Including NPCs in your adventure can allow for the inclusion of social encounters or just prime opportunities for roleplay. These NPCs must be included in your approval ticket if they are present. In order to keep with the post-Cataclysm setting, there should be no more than a handful of NPCs included in an adventure submission.

It is important that NPCs never return to Covalon. They must have their own motivations or reasons for this in order to prevent the town becoming a dumping ground of NPCs.

Technology

The level of technology for the setting can be summarised as 'Gunpowder and Clockwork'. Stasian technology is too advanced, and even the most advanced pre-Cataclysm civilisations were only in the very early stages of industrialisation.

This means that settings that include heavy sci-fi elements, factories, heavy industralisation or similarly non-clockwork mechanical elements are not appropriate for Covalon adventures. Mixtures of magic and machine are suitable, however. If you're unsure if your setting fits the wider narrative, make sure to ask in a ticket!

LFGM

The LFGM channel is the easiest way to get a ready made batch of players. LFGM posts are organized into individual threads, and you can be made aware of groups that are ready for a dungeon guide by selecting the LFGM tag in #role-selection.

You can browse through the LFGM threads to find a group whose APL matches your dungeon and whose schedule matches your own, and notify them in the thread that you will run their adventure, at which point they will mark it closed.

Scheduled Events

If you do not find a group in LFGM, or would rather not use LFGM, you may instead simply post your adventure directly to #📅scheduled-events. When you do so, you should indicate to players that they should get in touch with you via PM to send you their character details, including their token art and JSON, or other relevant means to import their character sheet to your table.

You do not have to take players first-come, first-serve. You can add them to a pool instead, and select the players you think are most appropriate for your dungeon.

Post your Adventure

Once you have decided how you want to gather players, post your adventure in #📅scheduled-events. Your post should include the tier of adventure, what type of adventure it is, the date and time you intend to run the adventure, and the adventure hook. If the group was formed via LFGM, you should put player names and levels here as well in a numbered list; Otherwise, fill the list out with applicants that get in contact with you, or add the players who apply to a pool and select them later.

Mentors

If you are struggling to fill out the players required for a lower level game, the mentor system allows higher level players to join lower tier games by utilising pre-made NPC characters. Mentors should be used when you are unable to get enough lower tier players for your adventure, and can be used in any tier that patrols are permitted.

You will need to install the Covalon Mentor Module in order to use Mentors in your game.

Making Adjustments

Sometimes you will need to make adjustments to your dungeon after it has been submitted and approved. This might be because a player has dropped out, or enough players have levelled up that your APL has changed.

When making adjustments to your dungeon, these must also be approved. Please Create a Ticket and submit your adjusted dungeon for approval with enough time to allow it to be processed.

You have spent time finely tuning your encounters, scouring over loot, gathered your players and its finally time for your session! Here are some key tips to help make your session a successful and safe environment for both you and your players.

Setting Ground Rules

It is recommended that at the beginning of your session you set some ground rules for how you like to run your table in terms of player participation. Playing over Discord can be much harder than playing over a tabletop, especially when playing games with people you don't know well yet.

You should determine a set of boundaries and expectations for players at the start of your session. This can include things such as trying not to talk over each other, how you will settle rules disputes, when players should (and should not!) offer feedback and any other areas you think are important for your players to be aware of so they have a fun time at the table.

Managing Disruptions

We are fortunate that Covalon is generally a positive and welcoming space for everyone. We invite others to sit in and watch sessions being run on the server to help people get a sense for the culture of the server. As Covalon is a public server however, this means anyone can join and enter the voice channels while you are running a game session.

The expectation is that anyone not actively participating in your game session mutes themselves and watches silently, utilising text chat channels for interaction relating to the game and freeing up the voice channel for players and yourself.

In the event that a player or audience member is actively disruptive and detrimental to the play experience of your session, all Dungeon Guides are able to mute people in voice channels. If you do this, please create a ticket after your game to let the moderator team know so it can be addressed. In the unlikely event of ongoing or serious disruption to your table, please ping the moderators or admins for additional assistance!

Adjudicating Rules

Pathfinder Second Edition is a complex game with a lot of rules, and we try to stick to RAW interpretations as much as possible. Sometimes however, there are some rules that you will need to make a decision on during a session, or you may have forgotten how a particular interaction works and it would be disruptive to the flow of the session to spend a significant amount of time looking it up.

In such cases you should make a table ruling for that session, and endeavour to look up the correct rule after the session. You can do so in any of the appropriate text channels (🧮munchkins-and-mathfinder or 🐣newbie-help-and-discussion are a great place to start) or via creating a ticket to ask the staff team.

Death and Downed Characters

Pathfinder Second Edition is a tightly balanced system, and players will often find their character in the dying state in combat. For Covalon adventures, you are generally discouraged from attacking players with the dying condition, unless it makes clear tactical sense for the monster to do so.

Actively trying to kill player characters is against the ethos of Covalon, but that doesn't mean to say that character death will never happen.

The hallmark of a well-balanced encounter is one that is high in tension and the party barely makes it out alive. Sometimes though, characters don't make it out due to bad luck with the dice, poor tactical decisions, or a combination of both. In the event that a player character does die, give the player the space to act out any final moments if they wish. After the session is concluded, please ping the @Servants Of Terra role. They handle the enacting of contracts and roleplay associated with character deaths.

Loot Distribution

Items must be distributed according to the following procedure:

1: At the conclusion of the adventure, all players go to the #🧮dice-channel and roll 1d100.
2: The GM notes each result, then posts the loot table in #💰loot-chat.
3: Players, in order of highest D100 roll to lowest, claim items by typing !claim [item name].

Players can select a maximum of one permanent item.

Any permanent items left over after all players have claimed an item are lost, but consumables may be claimed by player choice or distributed by the GM.

Lingering Effects

Resolve and track any remaining lingering effects that have been applied to player characters throughout the dungeon. In most cases this will be making a post in 🤢 affliction-tracking and pinging the affected player.

At the end of an adventure, create a thread for each player who has received an untreated affliction from that adventure. Your thread title should follow the following format:

If the player has not identified their affliction, the name of the affliction can be "unknown disease," "unknown curse," or even just "unknown affliction."

The first post of the thread should include the following information:

• Name of affliction
• Affliction stage (if applicable)
• Effects of affliction at current stage
• Affliction's level (be sure to note whether this is a spell level or a non-spell level)
• Save DC

Normally, you should only include information that the player's character has uncovered about the affliction, but you can include more information if you wish. When the player makes a save against their affliction, be sure to reply with any information that has changed (normally the affliction stage and its current effects). If a player has their affliction successfully cured, the affliction expires, or the character dies, the GM should archive the thread. If the player character has an affliction that doesn't show symptoms until a certain stage, you have two options: make the thread as normal, but don't tag the player in it until they need to make their next save, OR make the thread and tag the player in it as normal, but let them know their character doesn't know they have an affliction until after their next save.

Dungeon Summary

A summary of your dungeon must be posted in the #📜dungeon-summary channel, with the following format:

Dungeon summaries are mandatory, and are used to help track experience and level for players on the server. You must complete any outstanding dungeon summaries before submitting further adventures for approval.

Delete Your Post

Once everything else is done, and you have done everything else you need to do, including writing your dungeon summary, the final step is removing your post in #📅scheduled-events. This keeps clutter down and avoids confusing players.

Covalon Module

The Covalon Module provides a compendium of all information required to run games in Covalon, including all of our current Mentors, Expeditions and Deities. You can install the Covalon Module at the below Manifest URL.

Adventure Approval Submission Tool

A number of people in Covalon have contributed to a tool originally created by Ionela in order to help make the adventure submission process easier and more simple, while also making sure you provide all of the required information.

You can make a copy of this tool here: Covalon Adventure Submission Tool

Hammertime

Hammertime is a very useful tool that provides a code that converts time into a user's local time in Discord. This is very useful for organising games or events inside Covalon!