Patron Design Tricks - For those stuck on designing a patron I share this

I love designing patrons, they are (among)( my favorite thing about DCC - one day I am going to run a variant without clerics and no wizard magic other than patron magic but give that to all the classes.   

But anyway. I do love patrons and I love designing them, though the latter was not always true.  Patrons often appear deceptively easy to create fully until you sit down and realize you either do not have enough for a full patron or you need to whittle it down to a more focused single thing.   IT can be a real challenge, especially when you are creating new original material and so lack the yardstick of a more familiar thing.   

Even then, executing an end result that anyone wants to play with ever is almost a second skill set.  I used to have a much harder time breaking down patrons and making their design nay good – especially in sorting out What (of the idea) goes where? 

Then at some point I recognized that they are all legendary, in the folkloric sense.

 What do you mean LEGENDARY?   Here’s what I mean - Once I realized that the one defining element in the game world  (within the fiction) that ALL patrons have in common is being Legends, then designing them became easy and a lot more fun.   Taints? You become like them. Cool.  Do they have curses they are laboring under? Now you do too.   Spells? Well, what is the legend’s story? What is the legend? 

The three spells are what happened in the legend.  You tell the story by describing the spells and their effects.  

Its’ a neat medium to work in and I love writing mythologies for things.  So it’s been bang on for me ever since.

Remember, the patrons you create are your (fantasy)’ settings folklore.  Build from there.

 Of course, you can call me on this as Through the Walls of Mistand Thorn contains no less than FIVE patrons, all very Fairyland themed (well psychedelics horror show Fairyland, _I_ wrote it)  and give me the what-for on my patron design. 😊