In Places Deep

Greyhawk Maps

2012-03-13T00:16:00.001-04:00

Here are some old maps I made back when I was running my version of Greyhawk. As with so much I do, these use the Welsh Piper's map templates.

The one above was the map we were going to use to divide up the setting.

This one was my section (Greyhawk and its environs).

Organizations in the Dark Country

2012-03-12T16:11:00.000-04:00

The Dark Country is a land embattled with itself. Even in the face of numerous, inhuman threats that stalk the dark woods and wander in the high mountains, the Seven Cities constantly scheme against each other and wage terrible wars against the scattered remnants of the Hundred Kingdoms. Men like Arnawald the Black Eagle and Notker the Unshaven wish to unite the Dark Country into a single kingdom, but it would seem that human avarice will dash their desires against the rocks.

And yet, the strife does not end here. Holy orders, mercenary companies, criminal rackets, mystic cabals, and resistance movements compete with one another for resources and for rights in the Seven Cities. These are usually not tied to a single city and will often play both sides of the more overtly political conflicts in an attempt to improve their own place in this fog-shrouded land.

There are far too many of these organizations for a single post, and I generally want to take a “make it up as I go” approach to worldbuilding. As such, the organizations listed below represent only those that intersected with or were created by player action in the initial Dark Country campaign. In the even that I’m able to get another campaign going with a semi-regular roster of players,* this list will hopefully be greatly expanded. At some point I would like to assign mechanical benefits to joining each of these factions, but I imagine that is best done on a case-by-case basis.

The Sword Brothers (defunct)

Symbol: red cross over a sword pointing upwards on a white field

While not currently active, no discussion of the various factions of the Dark Country would be complete without at least a mention of the ignominious Sword Brothers. Originally founded to protect pilgrims and merchants on their way to the Desert Lands, this Holy Order included a large number of Clerics,** Fighting Men, and even some Magicians. At some point, the Brothers became interested in bringing the Rule of Law to the people of the Dark Country, and thus they began the first of many holy wars the region would see over the next few centuries. At some point they fell into darkness and began worshiping a mysterious, diabolic entity whose exact nature is unknown. Another crusade wiped them from the face of the Dark Country, but their scars still remain.

The Brotherhood

Symbol: a skull with a coin in each eye on a black field

The Brotherhood (of Thieves and Assassins) is a nefarious organization of smugglers, lowlifes, and thugs that has somehow achieved an air of mystery and mysticism. To outsiders they are not unlike the mafia of the roaring 20s, possessing their own twisted code of ethics and being primarily concerned with the smuggling of goods and the flesh trade; however, rumors persist that they in reality a cult dedicated to a long forgotten Old God or a diabolic parody of a more venerable saint, depending on the teller. By rights the Brotherhood should have been extinguished long ago in the fires of inquisition, but their usefulness to men possessing more legitimate modes of power has made them a permanent fixture in the Dark Country.

Bader’s Boys

Symbol: a badger ringed with gold on a red field -- often coupled with the cross of Lychegate

This mercenary company can be found in small numbers throughout the Dark Country, but they are by far the strongest in the city of Lychegate. Their founder, the eponymous Bader the Badger, currently serves Bishop Notker the Unshaven of Lychegate as a military advisor – much to the chagrin of Lord Eckhard, governor of Nightwick. They are infamous for their brutality and for their loyalty to the Bishop. Their recent founding means that they did not fight in any of the famous battles in the history of the Dark Country, but they have proved to be excellent at the more monotonous daily oppression of the pagan population in the south east.

The Pagan Liberation Front (PLF)

Symbol: an elk's head

The Pagan Liberation Front was originally founded within the Bishopric of Lychegate. It's mysterious leader, Yim Yimsley, has become a folk hero among the pagans living in that region, and his exploits form the basis of many tales. Notker the Unshaven is convinced that he and his band are a cult of devil worshipers bent on the destruction of the cosmos. He has offered an extremely high prices for Yim's head. The PLF operates as a number of separate cells, many of which predate the actual formation of the PLF. In a way, the PLF is not one organization, but a network of smaller groups dedicated to the removal of Western influence from the Dark Country. There are rumors that this organization has ties with the Brotherhood.

The Order of the Elk

Symbol: an elk's head

The Order of the Elk is a military order founded to defend the weak from the forces of darkness. Its founder, Paladin Lord Fitzgerald, is a controversial figure within the Church. He and those of his order advocate for a peaceful method of converting the Dark Country. The Church of Law should lead by example, Fitzgerald and his ilk argue. If they hold back the tide of darkness, then even the pagans will flock to the Law. Many are skeptical of these ideas, and the fact that many of the PLF's symbols (such as the elk's head) match the Order of the Elk's has led some to consider that an inquisition might be necessary to keep the order to falling as the Sword Brothers did.

The Cult of the Ever Watchful Eye

Symbol: a flaming eye

Sometimes simply called the Watchers, this cult is one of the few diabolist organizations that is known to the common people of the Dark Country. If rumor is to be believed, the Watchers seek to give the demons trapped in the Infernal Pit more purchase in this reality. Many of their members work in secret, but in some remote locations they have been known to wear surcoats and robes bearing their sinister insignia. A number of adventurers who have recently entered Nightwick Abbey have reported seeing cultists who match the description of the Watchers.

*Whether this will be on G+ or in person has yet to be seen, but I'm leaning towards G+.

**A relatively high number of clerics. The way I'm currently handling clerics is that the class represents those who are on the fast track to saint-hood. Your average churchman can only do the few spells necessary to perform the mass or make holy water.

Monster Monday: Orknies

2012-03-05T00:01:00.002-05:00

Orknies are creatures most commonly encountered in the stories told in the courts, taverns, and brothels of Kars. These tales most commonly concern unlucky women who marry a rich noble from the Northern Isles only to find out he's a blubbery, murderous thing whose castle is under the sea. This is what counts in Kars as satire.

Fishermen in the Northern Isles know better. Tales of Orknies, or as they call them the Sea Things, in those regions take a far darker turn. It is said that the fiends waddle up to seaside houses at night and peer in through the windows. Many say they've heard them muttering in some incoherent language which sounded both soothing and frightening. Whenever a child or young maiden goes missing, Orknies are almost always blamed. Some of the more disreputable and mad sailors claim they've sen a vast, underwater city in which the Orknies play with drowned children, but who can believe those drunkards.

To avoid being taken, coastal villages will often leave animal sacrifices on the beach in the hopes that those carcasses will satiate whatever dark pleasures the Orknies wish to indulge. The Church has placed a ban on such action, believing that it is a Pagan rite whose days are long past. Surely the God of Law would protect the innocent from molestation, say the priests. The peasants are less convinced.

Those few who know of Orknies in the Dark Country primarily know them as a heraldic device. Noblemen from the Northern Isles often ironically adopt them as their colors, a habit the majority of the West finds quaint at best and that the peasantry of Kars finds sickening.

Orknies
No. Appearing: 1 (3d6)
Armour Class: 14
Hit Dice: 2+2
Move: 60'/120' (swim)
Attacks: 2 (flipper 1d4 and see below), or Gaze (see below)
Morale: 6
Alignment: Neutral

Orknies are bloated, blubbery monstrosities possessing a vaguely humanoid shape and terrifying appetites. They stand roughly half a head taller than a man, and their gate is a gross, undulating waddle. Some scholars claim they are sexless, but others claim that the presence of something resembling facial hair on some points to a difference between male and female creatures.

Despite their generally clumsiness on land, Orknies can be eerily silent when they want to be. At night or in other dark places they gain surprise on a 1-3 on 1d6. They are found of dragging off victims -- usually young children or beautiful maidens. Their beady, imbecilic eyes posses a strange power, and any human or demihuman 1 or less hit die must save vs. paralysis or be unable to move or speak for 3d6 rounds. The Orkney may make two attacks with its flippers. If both hits are successful, the target is grabbed and silenced (since Orknies always make sure to wrap one of their flippers around the victim's mouth). Before entering the water they employ an air-tight bag made of an unwholesome, leathery material that both muffles the victim and provides he or she with what scholars believe to be an endless amount of breathable air. These devices, when captured, do not seem to work in the hands of non-Orknies.

Orknies are cowardly beasts, and will usually flee at the first sign of armed resistance; however, if they have any victims grabbed they will not release them unless slain. What they do with the poor women and children they take to the depths is best left to the imagination, for the reality is far too terrible for this blog post to relate.

EDIT: It has come to my attention that I have neglected their unnerving habit of tapping on windows during stormy nights. There. Now you know they do that.

Lost Worlds Part 2: Dungeons and the Lost World

2012-03-04T00:25:00.000-05:00

When I initially thought about turning this into a series of posts, I thought I would save this one until the end. Now I've decided that I'm not going to get anywhere unless I talk about the most obvious example of lost worlds in a D&D context: dungeons.

There are a few published examples of this idea, notably B4: the Lost City and Caverns of Thracia. These modules take place in dungeons that are the ruins of some lost civilization, and the inhabitants of these ruins still retain a degenerate version of that civilization's culture.* On the surface it might appear as though this describes most dungeons; however, it is easy to think of counter examples such as T1: the Village of Hommlet or the B2: the Keep on the Borderlands.

So what makes one dungeon a lost world dungeon and another one just a "regular" dungeon? This might seem like a simple question, but it's worth thinking about. The most obvious answer lies in the explanation for the dungeon itself. The Lost City once belonged to a culture unknown to the broader world, and outsiders have not set foot in it for quite some time. The moathouse is simply a... well... moathouse that some bandits/cultists have decided to use as a base of operations. While not a shabby setup, the moathouse lacks the exotic mystery of the Lost City.** They're essentially in two different genres.

But that's not all that makes a Lost World dungeon, or at least it shouldn't be. Part of what makes these settings so fascinating is that they contain wonders that are hidden away from the larger world. This can be difficult to convey in a magical milieu such as the one that is the default assumption of the D&D rules, but it is not impossible. The easiest way to do it, to my mind, is to fill your dungeon with new or extremely underused monsters. If your lost world just has the same old orcs the surface world does, it doesn't feel very "lost." Grimlock/morlock cultists who sacrifice captured surface-dwellers to their albino dinosaur-god are better.

Try to think about what the original civilization/world was like and how being isolated in the subterranean depths has changed it. I like to imagine what horrors would "evolve" down there and how the new environment might affect the more humanoid inhabitants, if any. What do the people eat? Do they have any domesticates they created since being cut off? What nameless things stalk the less patrolled parts of their domain? Now, I'm not arguing for a fully fleshed out ecology, but I cannot deny that thinking about these sorts of questions can spark ones imagination. A good rule of thumb is that the more fucked up the answer is the better it will be at contrasting with the surface world the PCs are used to.

As far as I'm concerned, I can think of no better premise for a megadungeon. It'd be easy to have different factions, such as the cults found in B4, and if the alien wonders of such a setting can't excite your players then you should probably find new ones. However, I would caution against a more "underdark" style setup in which the cavernous world spreads across the entire planet. For one thing, this makes the area the players are exploring a little less unique, and the underground monsters just become part of an equally large ecosystem. It turns a place of nightmare into just another environment like a jungle or desert.

This isn't to say that all such dungeons have to be the size of the Lost City. In fact, I find the size of that module a little constraining. Where are my lost seas and subterranean suns? Instead, you should make sure that your lost world dungeon is closed off from the influences of both the surface and other, hypothetical lost worlds. This allows you to make it unique without having to explain how that interacts with something else.

One final bit of advice, and one I find much less necessary than the above bits, is to make the surface world either a fantasy version of historical Earth or an analog thereof. Now, don't make the surface world "mundane" unless you plan on setting every single session in the lost world,*** but having something that looks a bit more familiar to the players as the baseline allows them to contextualize the weirdness a bit better. One way to do it might be to have the surface world resemble a kind of medieval romance. Surface adventures have dragons and maidens and black knights and haunted castles. The instant you go into the underworld, things get really weird as you run into the remnants of Earth's terrifyingly advanced past. That's what I was going to (will?) do with the Hell-Caverns.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this only barely related Hawkwind song. Hopefully there will be more to come soon.

*At least they do in B4, which is the one I have the most familiarity with.

**This is not meant to denigrate T1. It's worth noting that I've run the Village about four times and have never actually run B4.

***Hopefully more on that later.

Ill Met in Marlankh

2012-02-28T01:50:00.000-05:00

The following was found written on a crumpled piece of paper on the floor of the Blue Rabbit.

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It has come to my attention that a number of erstwhile companions have published their accounts of this tale in one form or another. Unfortunately for both the general public and me, these uncouth scoundrels have spread naught but lies and balderdash. Therefore, I am moved to set down my own version. I will present the facts of the matter as plainly as possible in order that the truth might speak for itself.

I had been summoned to Marlankh by a few violent men that aided my scholarship in the past. Sadly, the life of a diabolist is not without peril, and it often behooves me to align myself with a less savory sort. They explained that they needed the services of one skilled in the Black Arts and that no one other than myself would do. I graciously acquiesced, hoping that whatever task they needed me for would lead to my further edification.

I am not afraid to say, gentle reader, that the mission they wished to undertake was a kidnapping. I am not a proud man, and if my studies in Toledo taught me anything it is that one should not be afraid to get one's hands dirty. The reason for this kidnapping was somewhat obscure to me. The best I can put together is that one of my fellow rogues wished to rid himself of his wife and in so doing gain access to precious lucre at the expense of his father-in-law.

It is in this matter, that is to say the matter of the mark, that things became more complicated. You see, the woman in question was a vision of loveliness such as I had never seen before in all of my travels. Her passion for the study of human anatomy and the more subtle ways in which it can be manipulated rivals only mine, and her eyes' fiendish intelligence set my heart alight. I knew that I must have her! I would perform my part, but only up to a point. Rather than release her to her scheming father and her oafish husband, I would take her for myself and whisk her away to Wessex where we might live in happiness.

At first everything seemed to be going according to my plan. Through subtle use of my own magics we were able to spirit her away to a finely appointed manor house I had procured in order that she might be comfortable while we practiced our extortion. I am sad to relate that while doing so I had to hide my appearance and wash off some of my distinctive odor that has been the delight of women around the world. I, Philip the Black, will do anything in the name of love.

It was my companions' job to actually secure the money; however, their general incompetence and slow minds made them fail in even this relatively simple task. I suppose it is not entirely their fault, for it seems the father had little care for the fate of his lovely daughter. The fool! How can these men not appreciate one so beautiful and marvelous as she? I am sickened by the mere thought that she now is with these imbeciles.

But I am getting ahead of myself. When it became apparent that we were not going to receive any money, my companions reverted to their violent natures. The clown was the worst of the lot, but it must be said that all of them were united in their murderous intent. It was only when I threatened them with powerful magics and reminded them of my compact with Satan that they ceased. It was decided that we would release the fair lady in some back alley. I feared for her safety, but even though my threatening had worked I knew that the combined might of these viscous criminals would be able to stop me from saving her.

And so she was released to run back to the arms of two men who care not for her. Damn them! Now in exile, I must pine for her from afar. I take solace only in the fact that Satan's eight eyes watch over me, and that with his aid I will one day take her away from her moronic husband and bless her with many, many children.

New Poll for FLAILSNAILers

2012-02-23T14:24:00.000-05:00

I'm curious to see what levels the existing FLAILSNAILS characters are. So I put up a poll.

Monster Monday: Groans

2012-02-20T20:32:00.000-05:00

Groans
No. Appearing: 1d4
Armor Class: 16
Hit Dice: 5+5
Move: 90'
Attacks: 1 (claw 1d12)
Morale: 7
Alignment: Neutral

Groans are immense anthropophagi that lurk in the benighted forests of the Dark Country. They appear as immense bulks roughly 10' in height that terribly combine the aspects of both men and trees. They stalk through the forest searching for their favorite food: man-flesh.

Groans loathe humans but love their meat. Their hatred comes primarily from the practice of farming, which groans feel is the equivalent of genocide or slavery. To the groan, digesting any vegetable matter is murder. This is not to say that groans are moralists, for they are slow witted creatures whose primary pleasures in life involve disemboweling human victims.

In their natural environment, groans are incredibly stealthy. When in a forest at night, they surprise opponents on a 1-5 on 1d6. They will occasionally parley with potential meals, but only if it is very clear that the party in question has not recently eaten fruits or vegetables. Otherwise, they will attempt to devour any humans or demihumans they see on sight. Even if there is no evidence that the party in question has eaten any vegetable matter, on a reaction roll of Uncertain or worse the Groan assumes they have and attacks anyway.

Groans fear fire and they fear the sun even more. Groans always take full damage from fire-based attacks and always catch fire if that result is possible. When hit by the rays of the Sun, a groans feet bury deep into the ground and the groan becomes little more than a dried up dead tree. It is said that the White Lady knows the ancient magic by which these trees can be turned back into groans, but most woodsmen agree this is a rare event. It is also the general consensus that this solar problem, combined with their general slow-wittedness and their small numbers, that keep the groans from attempting to stamp out all of human civilization.

What the West is Like

2012-02-19T18:08:00.000-05:00

Stealing from Jack yet again.

The West

Precis: Petty lords feud and scheme against each other while dark things lurk in the woods; A Game of Thrones meets Averoigne

Conspectus: Four (?) kingdoms: the Iron Kingdom, the Realm (Holy Roman Empire), the County of Averoigne (France), and the Kingdom of Kars (England); tournaments with painted lances still take the lives of foolish nobles; poachers and bandits hunting the king's deer; court wizards; competing high pontiffs fight over the Church of Law through poison and proxies; ancient, pagan shrines that still hold some measure of magic and terrible monsters; trial by combat; chivalry and courtly love side by side with treachery and rape; plague and famine; peasant revolts; witch burnings; constant, but petty, warfare; bloody dynastic struggles; cheap death; troubadours sing and spy for monarchs and counts; foolhardy knights ride out to slay dragons and other local monsters; knightly orders; dancing banners splashed in blood; secret, heretical cults plot the downfall of the Church; burning fields and cattle raids; self-made men who gain position through fire and sword; boar hunts and great feasts; wilding and robber barons

Taste, Sound, Image: Cassoulet and hard cider, Pentangle "The Hunting Song," the Morgan/Maciejowski Bible

What Castle Drakenstein is Like

2012-02-18T21:27:00.000-05:00

Once again stealing from Jack.

Precis: A funhouse megadungeon run by a horror host. Mummies, vampires, werewolves, aliens, and human flies all rub shoulders in Frankenstein's lab.

Conspectus: The more-or-less ruined Castle Drakenstein is home to a foppish, capricious lich whose only pleasure in life comes through torturing adventurers; peasants fear to tread in the shadow of the tower; caverns contain fog-bound, haunted forests where the moon is always full; mad scientists have moved in to conduct their hideous experiments; an ancient pharaoh's tomb has been rebuilt, stone by stone, and filled with the appropriate Egyptian horrors; satanic cults hold metal concerts; medusa heads!; Atomic horror monsters made by Frankenstein; technicolor dungeon lighting; regular monsters forced to dress and act the part by the insane Baron; lots and lots of terrible puns

Taste, Sound, Image: Movie popcorn and Coca-Cola, The Cramps "God Monster," Tales from the Crypt (TV show or comics, your pick).

The Seven Cities: Lychgate

2012-02-17T21:54:00.000-05:00

Lychgate is one of the more powerful of the Seven Cities, and it's position at the edge of the Long Swamp, where the Lesser Dark and River Deep merge into the Dark River, makes enables its magnates to control almost all the trade in the Dark Country. The skyline is dominated by the Cathedral of St. Gax Lawgiver that was originally built when the Sword Brothers founded the city.

The cathedral does not resemble its Western counterparts, rather it appears more like an enormous version of the fortified churches established by the Sword Brothers throughout the Dark Country and the Desert Lands. It is squat but bulky, and a combination of defensive towers and the city's inner wall make the cathedral an imposing sight for those new to the city. The other buildings are mostly in the typical Western style of wood and whitewash. They huddle together next to twisting streets, their roofs obscuring the sky in some of the slummier districts. Fire is a common problem, but not common enough to prevent Notker from publicly burning "Enemies of the Law" in the various squares.

The farms and thorps that lie in its shadow are some of the few truly settled areas in the Dark Country. Still, a trip to the Long Swamp or a day’s ride to the Witchwood would quickly dispel any sense of civilization one might have within the city walls. The majority of the populace within the walls are middle and upper class merchants as well as exiled nobles and priests from the West. The peasants whose farms dot the surrounding countryside cannot afford the 2gp per leg entry tax required to entry the city. Froglings too are forced to remain outside the walls, though this is because of the bigoted zeal of the Bishop.

"SOMEONE TAKE DOWN THAT SIGN!"

Lychgate, like all of the Seven Cities, is very much defined by the man who rules it. Notker the Unshaven is the worst sort of bishop: officious, domineering, irritable, and most of all loud. He has recently sustained a number of personal insults that he believes originated from a secret Satanic society bent on obstructing the will of the Law. While his lieutenants and cronies do not share his paranoid suspicions, they know that to keep their positions they must find suitable scapegoats in order that Notker might vent his rage at someone other than themselves.

His chief lieutenant and marshal, Lord Eckhard, was recently sent away from the city to serve as the "governor" of Nightwick Village. The Bear is a grumbler, but his sense of duty and his fear of the Bishop's anger made him go. In his absence, Bader the Badger -- the leader of Bader's Boys, a mercenary company with low moral standards -- has filled the void left by Eckhard. He lacks the scruples of his predecessor and is both a sycophant and a sociopath. In his zeal to please Notker the Unshaven he has butchered many an innocent.

Notker's suspicions are not entirely without cause. While the other cities have mostly stamped out paganism within the shadow of their walls, the Bishop's overzealous pursuit of enemies has galvanized those who might otherwise have been converted. The people whisper of a messianic figure named Yim Yimsley who will overthrow the tyrannical Church of Law and return the people of the Dark Country to the Old Ways. None know his true identity. Some say that he is not truly one man, but several who take up the moniker whenever the innocent people of the Dark Country are threatened.

New Blog You Should Check Out

2012-02-16T12:14:00.000-05:00

Have you ever seen that Cole or Welcome to Dungeon! guy in the comments of a blog post or on G+ and thought "that dude is sharp?" Well that's because he is.

Anyway, he has a blog now. Go read it.

Unfocused Thoughts on Castle Drakenstein

2012-02-14T00:31:00.000-05:00

"No! You musn't go! We People of the Mountains believe fucked up shit happens at the castle."

Tunnels & Trolls is a game that fascinates me. I've run a session or two using the quickstart -- which I don't seem to be able to find at the moment -- and I remember having mixed feelings. However, Scott Driver's love of the game combined with its lighthearted tone have made me want to revisit it at various points. I think, for example, it would make a kickass system for the Land of Ooo.

One thing I particularly like is the idea of a dungeon "proprietor." I especially liked Scott's making his a messed up parody of himself. So I decided to see what I could come up with for myself. Thus was born Castle Drakenstein.

Note: this is another one of those settings I'm not likely to run. This is especially true because the overlap with Nightwick Abbey is pretty heavy. However, I'd like to have something if I ever decide to give T&T a second chance.

The general theme would be horror movies of various sorts, particularly the Universal and Hammer ones, with a smattering of 50s sci fi, horror literature, swords & sorcery, ufology, and metal stuff thrown in willy nilly. It might be best described as "the kind of castle a horror host would live in."
The proprietor, Baron Edric van Drakenstein, is a capricious and melodramatic lich who has a habit of dressing like the above picture. He is usually sulking in his chambers beneath the castle, playing an enormous pipe organ. When he's in a manic state, however, he will often appear to badger the delvers with terrible puns, horrible monsters, and incoherent whining. This is all done with an excessive amount of gesticulation.
Dungeon levels/sublevels will have themes based on various types of movies. For example there would be a Frankenstein lab (this would also include things like Mu-tants), a Dracula crypt, a cavern that looks suspiciously like the forest from The Wolfman, etc.
Monsters will include Wolfmen, Wolfwomen, Mu-tants, Frankensteins, Draculas, Draculaensteins, Skeletons (a la Jason and the Argonauts), Orcs with Halloween masks on, Froguloids*, Creatures from Various Lagoons, Gorgons (complete with purple back lighting), CHUDs, Morlocks, Zombies (both flesh eating and voodoo varieties), Flatwoods Monsters, Igors, Jersey Devils, Swamp Monsters, and a lot more. I'm too lazy to think of more now, but that took me like a minute so whatever.
Sections of the dungeon will disappear based on the good baron's mercurial moods. If somehow the delvers were to integrate Edric on this point, he would declare "the map was ugly!" and complain about how hard running a dungeon is.
The Baron is just the most recent in a long line of fucked up liches in the van Drakenstein family. They all look eerily similar, but that's easy when your face is a skull.
The castle is on a high mountain and only appears at night. A village lies at the foot of the mountain, and the peasants have various nonsensical excuses for why they don't move.
Various magic items and/or technological gizmos would only work on the levels whose genre matches their theme. So the ray gun you found on the Devil Planet level doesn't work in the Tomb of the Mummpire.
SFX provided by Ray Harryhausen.
There will be a lot more lighting than in most of my dungeon complexes. In this case it will appear like the various psychedelic lighting tricks used to make Hammer movies so lurid.
I like the idea of the more traditional fantasy monsters in the dungeon thinking all this horror movie stuff is stupid and complaining. They stick around because they get a hot meal and a place to sleep.
DRACULAS HATE WOLFMEN!
The system would obviously be T&T, but I'm not sure what edition I would use. I only really have experience with the quick start.
I suppose there would probably be some TOS Star Trek references in there.
One of the Draculas, or perhaps the Baron himself, would have a gallery of busts of himself in different extravagant hats.

Ok, I feel like I'm reaching now, so that's it until I get more inspiration.

Monster Monday: Vault Weaver

2012-02-13T15:21:00.001-05:00

Vault Weaver

No. Appearing: 1d3 (0)

Armor Class: 18

HD: 3

Move: 120'

Attacks: Special

Morale: 6

Alignment: Neutral

Vault weavers subsist on a diet of decaying flesh, but are also known to attack and devour unfortunate living beings that happen to cross their path. They appear as luminescent orbs roughly two feet in diameter. The color of these orbs is difficult for the human eye to comprehend, and when combined with their great speed this makes them incredibly difficult to hit.

When feeding, the vault weaver protrudes thick, goopy strands of phosphorescent ectoplasm of the same color as their unnatural bodies. These protrude out from the creature 10’ in all directions, and victims must make a Save vs. Breath Weapon or take 1d4 points of damage. Afterwards, the vault weaver selects one target that it will continue to feed on. This target is randomly selected, but must have been damaged in the initial burst. Every round thereafter until the creature takes damage or until the victim is slain, whichever comes first, the victim takes 1d4 points of damage.

Characters or creatures killed in this manner have all of their organic matter dissolve into a strange dust that then flies into the vault weaver’s body. Once the creature has thus eaten, it immediately makes a morale check. If successful, it once again sends out strands to find a new victim. If it fails, the creature is full and will flee from combat.

Due to the fact that their body is composed of an otherworldly energy, vault weavers are not only immune to energy based attacks but are healed by them. This includes magical attacks of various sorts. If the creature is healed in this manner when it has full hit points, it gains extra hit points above its normal maximum. Strangely, physical attacks do harm vault weavers, but only deal half damage (minimum 1).

The origin of vault weavers is a mystery, and they can be found in tombs and underworlds throughout the Desert of Demons. They are most often found in the ruins of Old Jerah where the catacombs – along with a constant stream of foolhardy adventurers – provide a nigh inexhaustible food supply. However, those who believe this is their only haunt are often surprised to find themselves spending the last moments of their life as the victim of one of these blasphemous orbs.

Unfocused Thoughts: A Barbaric Age

2012-02-08T13:45:00.000-05:00

The Great Cities have risen and fallen, civilization's grip on mankind has grown weak and arthritic, dark powers seek to renew forgotten covenants, and primordial beasts reclaim the wilderness. -- Korgoth of Barbaria, "Pilot"

Ah, another setting destined for the creative detritus of my wandering mind. Hopefully this will get it out of my system and I can get back to Dark Country and Uz* related things. The impetus for the idea came from this post by another Evan** whose blog appears to be defunct. Anyway he points out that OD&D using the Outdoor Survival map is a rough place to live, and it's filled with roaming bands of armed humans. That's saying nothing of the castles.

Anyway, that reminded me of Korgoth, 80s S&S movies, and the Greek Dark Ages for some reason, so here are some setting notes.

The map is (obviously) the one from Outdoor Surival. Ponds are castles, buildings are towns, deer are probably going to be villages and the little wolf-looking things (I can't really see what they are from the maps online) are probably what Scott would call an "8 page module" dungeon. I may cut the villages out or make the monster layers if I want to make it very "barbaric," which I do.
Basic premise is, as stated above, our civilization has crumbled and a civilization that looks suspiciously like pre-modern Earth has risen in it's place.
Rules would be OD&D plus some classes and monsters from the supplements and probably some copious house rules.
Part of the idea would be to develop things (house rules, setting info, monsters, etc.) through play and the needs of play. I want the setting to have an overall flavor, but it's a bit closer to baseline D&D than is say... Uz.
While I want to retain some of the barest Tolkien elements, I want to emphasize some of the other source literature a bit more. If orcs are in it then they'll be the pig-faced guy from the three Deathstalker movies or something equally stupid.
Since it's a far-future Earth I plan to make good on OD&D's promise of Robots. Ray guns are probably but not a replacement for magic items in the way they will be in Uz.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet with alignment. If I go with a REH style split between barbaric and civilized people I may use it to get that across; however, it seems like this setting is going to be pretty barbaric all around, so I dunno.
I wanna go back to using some mythological monsters I haven't gotten to use with Nightwick Abbey or Uz. I miss Minotaurs.
If it looks like I'll run this at some point -- which seems unlikely right now -- I'll probably work up some kind of "underworld" for beginning play. OD&D's wilderness can be rough on level 1 characters.
On that note, I may steal a page from Scott and use the CSIO 4 Level dungeon for that. I wouldn't have to draw many maps right away and it seems like it would be fun to stock.
Speaking of the underworld: I need more dungeon NPCs!
I'd generally take the "whatever you want to play" approach to PC races, but I think I'd like to work up some writeups for things like lizardmen and other weirdos. I swing back and forth between human only campaigns and campaigns where you can play minotaurs.
The basic culture of the area would probably be movie-style-medieval, with a thick layering of bronze age and classical crap over it. Some clerics might worship God, while the next one over is a fan of Apollo, and that wizard is totally a Satanist.
The various castles on the map would be generated using the rules for such things in Underworld & Wilderness adventures. I'll probably also add a few fighting men whenever that seems appropriate.
The towns will use a combination of the guidelines for determining population in the Greyhawk Folio and in the Ready Ref Sheets.
Place names will be a mix of historical place names and shit I like spelled backwards. Expect the return of Vennax the Mauve.

That's it for now. Hopefully the idea will stop bugging me now.

*More on that later

**There can be only one!

Witches of the Dark Country: Goody Gallows

2012-02-08T00:00:00.001-05:00

The fetid bogs and benighted forests of the Dark Country are filled with all manner of hags, witches, strigoi, and other cronish creatures. This series of articles is meant to detail only the most powerful of these "women." They owe much to Scott's Granny Grimtits, the various witches of Adventure Time, and VectorSigma's Random Tables for Generating Striga.

Witches are without exception loathsome and hideous creatures, but none more than Goody Gallows. Goody is a stunted, emaciated figure whose skin is pulled taught over her bulging, misshapen bones. Her skin is mottled grey, and here and there black down feathers emerge from bleeding sores. What little hair she possesses grows in small clumps across her scalp, neck, face, and shoulders. Some patches exceedingly long, but these are universally gray and wispy. Her nose and upper jaw fuse into a strange, hooked beak, while her lower jaw is little more than a limp flap of skin that moves unsettlingly whenever she speaks. The whole effect is that she looks something like a humanoid buzzard.

The toothless nannies of the Dark Country will tell you that Goody Gallows' birth was the result of her equally cronish mother's copulating with a carrion bird. She was born only three days later and grew to full adulthood three days after that. Shortly thereafter her mother was slain, and the nannies bicker over who did the slaying. They all agree that it was a beautiful woman who was avenging the death of her lover, but the particulars are enough to start fist fights.

Since then, Goody has born hatred for all beautiful women. She is particularly fond of strangling brides the night before their wedding and eating their hair. This gives Goody Gallows the ability to transform into the bride, and she then fakes her way through the marriage celebration. On the wedding night -- during the act of love -- she returns to her horrid natural form and slays the husband. Old wives say she then takes whatever bits she found most "handsome" from the groom and sews them to an enormous flesh golem she has fastened from other victims. This abomination is one of the few things uglier than Goody herself.

Goody Gallows' preferred method of travel is her mother's coffin. She opens the lid and crawls in next to her foul predecessor. Once she closes the lid her coffin flies to whatever location she wishes. Any obstacles in its path will be moved aside with magic. Trees will hunch and bend, doors will fling open, and hills will crack into strange, crooked valleys. Once it has arrived, the coffin lid flies open and out pops the irate witch. She always carries a dagger made from the thighbone of a drowned woman, but she prefers to strangle opponents even when this is unwise.

Goody is foul tempered even by the standards of witches, and as a witch born from a witch she is almost universally hostile to mortals who happen upon her. She reportedly lives in a hut inside a gigantic birds nest somewhere in the Fog-Bound Forest. Those living near her home know to keep a goose inside during dark nights because she fears geese more than all other things.

Note: I was going to call these posts "Witch Wednesdays" but then I realized it's unlike there will be more than three or so.

Some Songs About Wizards

2012-02-07T12:51:00.000-05:00

Monster Monday: Meat Animals

2012-02-06T00:19:00.001-05:00

Meat Animals were genetically engineered by Earth's scientists in the years before the Deluge. Initially they were created to provide a more humane alternative to traditional animal-based food products, and as such they were simply piles of cloned meat without any nervous system or appendages. At some point before the Deluge, a scientist came to believe that these piles of ugly meat were the key to humankind's survival. Since he knew most cloning facilities would shut down in the face of the oncoming catastrophe, he altered the DNA of the cloned meat such that it could be herded and bred in a post-apocalyptic world.

To our eyes, Meat Animals appear as nothing so much as an enormous, boneless pile of flesh. Closer inspection reveals the rudimentary flippers used by these loathsome creatures to scuttle about, the gash of a mouth they use to consume whatever slop their masters can muster, and the small, dim eye spots that provide them with only the barest semblance of sight. They move at a frightening, if uneven, pace. They possess several calls that can alert the herdsman to various positional problems with the meat. Meat Animals also provide a source of "dairy." They sweat a sweet smelling, viscous liquid which tastes like a combination of honey and cream. The herdsmen who deal with these animals are usually knowledgeable in the creation of several cheeses from this bizarre residue.

If not for their stupidity, they would be the perfect source of food; however, they are extremely difficult to control and manage. While the creatures themselves are bred to be docile, they are stubborn to a fault, and they often charge headlong off of cliffs or sink into bogs despite their herders' orders. They have few defenses against predators and are very vulnerable at night since they have difficulty seeing. Some genetic defect also causes the creatures to desire to wander aimless, and when combined with their stubbornness this causes them to be difficult to raise except by either the most easy going pastoralists or the most organized cities.

This being so, Meat Animals are most commonly found around large urban centers like Uz and Almodad. The few villages which dot the arable land in the Desert of Demons usually rely on more conventional fare for their food. The Meat Animals size combined with the amount of their flesh that is usable in the production of food makes them perfect for those urban centers that can more or less protect them. They are also often used as sacrifices, and it is said that beneath the city of Uz whole hecatombs are cast into the Fuel-less Fire at the direction of Moloch. Those in the know are quick to point out that Moloch generally prefers humans to "meat."

While the Uzite tongue is well acquainted with the taste of "meat," our modern tongues would perceive the flavor as a riotous cacophony of pork, beef, lamb, chicken, white fish, salmon, catfish, and other as yet unnamed meats which will be invented in the centuries to come. If the unlikely event were to pass that a modern or pre-modern human found themselves eating one of these creatures they would have to Save vs. Poison or become immediately addicted.

No stats are provided based on the assumption that they will not fight any PCs. In the event of a sacrifice, a Meat Animal has 5HD.

Lost Worlds Part 1: Lost Worlds and Me

2012-02-05T13:34:00.001-05:00

I'm not the first one to discuss the importance of "lost world" fiction to D&D. A quick scan of Appendix N makes it clear that the genre appealed to Gygax, and its impact on the development of D&D cannot be overstated. However, I haven't read as much of Appendix N as some of my fellow bloggers, and as such I don't feel comfortable guessing the effect of this genre on Gygax beyond the above truism. Instead I want to focus on two things: how lost world fiction has influenced me and how lost worlds can be portrayed in Dungeons & Dragons.

There are few things nine-year-old Evan liked more than the science fiction and monster movies of the 1950s and 60s.* This love had grown out of the typical childhood obsession with dinosaurs, and it was those monsters that most resembled prehistoric creatures that were my favorites. My parents at some point purchased a VHS "documentary" entitled Hollywood Dinosaurs that they thought would entertain me. In it a narrator would discuss various trends in giant monster movies -- few of them were actually about dinosaurs -- and then they would show the trailer of some monster movie that illustrated the narrator's point. I posted some of these a while back, and you can see the one for Mothra: Monster God at the beginning of this post.

The one for Mothra and the one for Valley of the Dragons -- the later of which seems to have disappeared from the internet -- both captured my imagination in a way that the other trailers on that VHS were unable. They both have something in common beyond their lost world plots: they provide a list of awesome things that are in the movie. In the more naive time in which these films were made, the trailers would often provide a list of things to SEE or THRILL at while watching their motion picture. These two had particularly good ones: Vampire plants, monster gods, gorilla people, stone age mountains, and underground demons.**

Now, I've not seen either of these movies, and perhaps in execution these things are lackluster. In my mind's eye, though, they are magnificent. They combine the feelings of both wonder and terror, which is the ultimate expression of what D&D is.

At some point in high school I began listening to Coast to Coast AM. Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorists, and my primary reason for listening to the show is its unintentional hilarity. However, I have drawn a great amount of inspiration from the litany of whack job guests for both Call of Cthulhu and D&D. Just before I entered college they had a guest on who discussed Hollow Earth theory and the Shaver Mystery. The combination of bat-shit-insanity, Ufology, lost races, and dinosaurs really tickled my brain. I tried to work vast, subterranean areas into my Wilderlands games, and eventually I came up with my own Hollow Earth setting.

The Underworld is a cool setting. I said in one of my responses to Zak's questionnaire that of all the things I've made I was most proud of Nightwick Abbey. This is true; however, I have a feeling that if I was ever able to get Underworld to work that it would be my greatest creation. Nightwick Abbey is obviously an idiosyncratic blend of things I enjoy, but those things aren't that far from baseline D&D. Underworld is different while still fitting very well with the kinds of activities one does in D&D. It has more or less been replaced by Uz,*** but I sometimes think Uz lacks the requisite amount of wonder. It has plenty of terror though.

Lost world fiction had greatly affected the way I view D&D. They define the range of emotions that I seek to evoke as a DM and that I want to feel as a player. I want to marvel at things not seen before by human eyes. I want to flee in terror from pallid creatures who have grown sightless in their benighted land. I want adventure.

This post has become much longer than I originally expected. I'll spend further posts discussing the different ways to do lost world scenarios in D&D and the pros and cons of each. I don't know how many further parts there will be because I initially intended this to all be in one post. If the other parts run away with me the same way this one did, you can expect a lot more.

*One of those few things was the Universal monster movies of the 30s and 40s, and I would later add Hammer to that list. However, I've already made that setting.

**Notice I remembered several of the ones from Valley of the Dragons despite the fact that I do not have any way to watch the trailer. Now that is good advertising.

***There may be some Uz related announcements shortly. On a related note, make sure you're reading Dandy in the Underworld and Rogues and Reavers. They're cool blogs run by cool people.

Monster Monday: Mu-Tant

2012-01-30T00:01:00.004-05:00

Here is another Uz monster usable in Old School campaigns:

Mu-Tant

No. Appearing: 2d6
Armor Class: 17
Hit Dice: 3
Move: 90’
Attacks: 2 (Claw, 1d4)
Morale: 8
Alignment: Neutral

Mu-Tants are a degenerate, servile race often employed by the various extraterrestrial entities which haunt the Desert of Demons. They approach 7’ in height, and are covered with a thick, blue-grey carapace. Their hands are malformed and have fused into pincers. Their misshapen heads appear to have large, exoskeletal brains; however, Mu-Tants are only slightly above an animal in intelligence.

It is possible that Mu-Tants were once a highly advanced race, and that whatever entities first enslaved them removed their capacity for creative thought. As it stands, Mu-Tants make somewhat effective body guards and laborers, but they can become irritable and often strike down overconfident masters.

Crowdsourcing: Magical Mishaps

2012-01-28T20:20:00.000-05:00

Everybody loves Jeff's Carousing Rules, but being a drunken lout isn't appropriate for every character.* I've particularly heard cleric players complain that their character is unlikely to seek the pleasures of the flesh. I've also often thought that magic users might be more at home in an alchemist's lab than in a brothel.

As such, I would like to propose two subsystems to attach to the carousing rules. One will model a magic user conducting magical experiments in his or her free time, and the other will model a cleric's giving alms to the poor and helping the local church/temple conduct services and exorcise people.

Let's deal with magic users first. Money is expended in the same manner as the normal carousing rules. In this case, the money represents the magic user's paying for various magical components and a space to practice his or her arts. Note that this expenditure does not count towards the creation of spells or other such magic items. This experimentation is purely theoretical. Members of a local wizardly organization, such as a guild, can pay an additional 50gp per pip to gain access to that organization's superior facilities and components.

Instead of saving against poison, the magic user must save vs. spells or roll on the chart below:

Well, that was a waste of time. Gain no XP. Roll intelligence check or gain a reputation as a fraud among other magic users.
BOOM! Your experiments cause an explosion to rip through your laboratory space. 1-3 explosion contained within laboratory 4-5 laboratory is destroyed 6 explosion rips through the entire town. Save vs Breath Weapons or begin next adventure d3 hit points short.
How were you to know they didn't want people digging up those bodies? Roll a Charisma check. Success indicates a fine of 2d6 x 25gp. Failure (or inability to pay the fine) indicates 1d6 days in the lord's dungeon.
You accidentally turn yourself into a member of the opposite gender. Reroll your Charisma score. If you should find a way to restore your original sex, your Charisma score returns to normal.
Your experiments kill the local livestock. The peasants are angry! 1-3 they don't know it was you and blame some unfortunate 4-5 they know it was you but are too scared of magic users to take action 6 expect torches and pitchforks.
Your experiments cause you to age. 1-3 you age five years 4-5 you age ten years 6 you age twenty years.
You are sucked into a nightmare dimension. You emerge after 1d6 days completely naked and babbling incoherently. Lose all personal effects and begin the next adventure d3 hitpoints short.
Somehow you've ended up with a second, smaller head of the alignment opposite of your own. Make a save vs. Spells. Success indicates the head disappears after the next adventure. Failure indicates the head remains permanently.
Your magical experiments have attracted a local ghost. You are now haunted. Ghostly voices fill your head making it difficult to concentrate. Take a -2 penalty on all saves and checks during your next adventure. Afterwards roll 1d6. On a roll of 6, the ghost is still interested in you and you will suffer the ill effects for another adventure. Otherwise, the ghost loses interest and finds someone else to haunt
You've trapped yourself inside a summoning circle. Make a charisma check to convince someone to release you. If you fail, lose 1d6 x 25 gp.
You probably shouldn't have eaten that nugget of purest green. Your skin is changed into a bizarre color. 1 Blue 2 Green 3 Orange 4 Purple 5 Black 6 Red 7 White 8 Ulfire 9 Jale 10 Dolm. The non-weirdo colors are all bright and crayony.
That potion was disgusting! Save vs. Spells or have your teeth fall out. 1-2 they don't grow back 3-5 they do 6 they do, but now they're fangs.

Ok, now I need your help with the last eight. Post your proposed results in the comments below!

*Just most of them.

Uz Visual Inspiration

2012-01-28T14:50:00.001-05:00

You'll notice a severe lack of Mesopotamian looking stuff, but that's more because I couldn't find any I like.

As always, click to embiggen.

Unfocused Thoughts on Uz

2012-01-27T20:00:00.001-05:00

I've been trying to coalesce a few Uz related thoughts into a coherent post. I've failed, so I'm going to do what I always do when I fail at that...

What the Dark Country is to Doom Metal, Uz is to Space Rock.
Uz takes place in Earth's very very very distant future. Some of the humanoids (morlocks, deros, etc.) are degenerate humans. Others (reptoids, greys, etc.) are the remnants of alien invasions that succeeded and failed at various points in the planets past.
The biggest influences are: HPL, CAS (particularly the Zothique cycle, Atomic Horror movies, Coast to Coast AM, and the Old Testament.
I need to go back and remake the Priest class. I still like the idea of them mutating hideously as they get higher in level, but I'm not sure how big to make there spell lists. I'm also not sure if I should make different spell lists for each god or one big one they all draw from.
If I can nail down Priests good enough, then I'll probably get rid of MUs. That'd mean there would only be three character types: Fighter, Specialist, and Priest.
No demi-human characters. Well... maybe Reptoids. That would be kinda cool.
Psionics and tech stuff taken from Carcosa. Also a bunch of monsters.
No magic items, just ray guns.
No alignment. Hell, there won't really be any metaphysical forces at all. "Gods" are killable (with probably only like 15 - 20 HD) super-aliens who have strong enough psionic powers to give mortal spells. Theres probably really powerful ones like Azathoth, but most are what CoC would classify as Great Old Ones, and pretty weak ones too.
Two types of ruins/dungeon: high tech and low tech. Low tech ruins are structures that became ruined after the deluge. High tech ruins usually became ruined before the deluge, but some priests/sorcerers/whatever that survived the flood remembered crazy super-magic-science long enough to pass it on to other enterprising young demons.
Gods are Moloch (a sentient patch of radiation), Dagon (exactly what it sounds like), Mot (mass of swirling, decaying flesh with awful Ghoul Priests), Kothar (Yog-Sothoth in a disconcerting, humanoid form), and a few others. I want to include Lilith, but I'm not sure how to treat her yet.
The Sun has turned a deep shade of red. Most of the world is desert with rain forests trapped in little valleys.

That's it for now. I might post more later on this crap later.

Carcosa Review

2012-01-25T20:53:00.000-05:00

Note: this is a review of the PDF version of this product. My physical copy has yet to arrive, and I will update this review once it does.

I first became interested in the OSR about the time Carcosa was causing a big stir. As such, I associate the two things very closely. Despite the fact that I had never seen the product, Carcosa in its own way showed me that D&D didn’t have to be about blue nosed hobgoblins and color coded dragons. Instead, a D&D setting should be an idiosyncratic amalgamation of the creator’s influences and preferences. I’ve tried to do this with all of my projects since starting this blog, and its greatly affected the development of the Dark Country even if the two settings don’t look anything like each other.

As such, I was delighted to hear that James Raggi was going to be reprinting Carcosa. I never got the chance to purchase it the first time around, and I knew from his Grindhouse boxset that Raggi was capable of extremely high production values. This seemed like the most opportune time to see what Geoffrey McKinney’s world was all about.

I have neglected to explain what Carcosa is thus far in the review because I believe most of you reading this already have a pretty good idea. Still, I suppose I should give some introduction to the product before I essay to review its contents further. Carcosa is a controversial science fantasy setting that is heavily based on the works of H P Lovecraft with a dash of Jack Kirby. The reason for its controversial nature is likely to be well known to all of you, but it will be discussed below.

The PDF itself is very attractive, though the choice to essentially put two pages on a single page can get a bit clumsy, and often causes the background image to look unsightly. I imagine this isn’t a problem at all with the physical book. The art is usually excellent, though a few pieces are too busy and are difficult for the view to correctly interpret. On the whole though it is an attractive pdf, and it lacks the long loading time similarly attractive pdfs often suffer from.

The contents themselves are, for the most part, excellent. The two most controversial parts of the book are actually presented fairly early on. The sorcerer class and its associated rituals are what caused the largest part of the kerfuffle when I first heard about Carcosa. On the one hand, the rituals appeal to my “crossroads and dead goats” aesthetic; however, I must admit that I was a bit more disturbed by the most infamous ones than I thought I would be. In particular the Summon the Amphibious Ones ritual was especially disconcerting, and I think it’s rather illustrative of the tension I felt when reading the rituals. On the one hand, I enjoy playing casters – even evil ones. It would be hard to say that Philip the Bloody is a nice guy. Also, in case my regular readers haven’t noticed, I love frog monsters. So one would think that the two would mesh well and I’d have an evil sorcerer that could summon frog things, and that is what you get. However, the human cost of the profane ritual required to get some frog minions is so disturbing that I could never play a character that would do such a thing. This is the intention. I don’t think McKinney is the depraved degenerate some accused him of being, but instead he’s trying to make the evil sorcerer truly evil. Carcosa is ultimately a horror setting, and horrific it is.

The other controversial aspect, though it’s considerably tamer than the rituals, is the dice conventions. While I haven’t tried them in play, they look as though they would be a bit too fiddly at the table.

However, even if one removes these controversial elements, there is still a lot of stuff left in this book. There are alien technological artifacts, different kinds of lotuses and their uses, a whole plethora of monsters, tables for generating random ray guns and random robots, a simple psionics system, and of course the setting itself. If one is interested in science fantasy gaming using an OSD&D-type rule set, I cannot recommend these sections of the book highly enough. The monsters are a wonderful mix of Lovecraftian horrors and weird, lurching slimey things. The psionics system seems easy to use, but might be a little too randomized for some tastes. This is easy enough to house rule without changing the whole system.

The hex descriptions vary in quality, and sometimes in format. Often, villages are given approximate population figures, but other times they are not. The overall effect, while possibly a bit uneven, goes a long way toward preventing the development of a “canon” Carcosa. The DM will have to do a bit of work to bring the setting to life, but McKinney has provided a consistent enough vision to make this both easy and enjoyable. I found myself particularly drawn to the Silken Conclave precisely because the population figures had not been expressly stated for those hexes.

The map for Carcosa is a not the most attractive one in the world. This has less to do with the specific rendering of the map and more to do with the sketchy nature of the original. It’s serviceable enough, and the use of purple helps establish to the viewer that Carcosa is an alien world.

Ultimately I’m glad I purchased Carcosa. I’m generally a fan of weird science fantasy sorts of settings, and it will definitely help me with much of the legwork for my Uz setting. For that matter, the setting itself seems interesting enough that I may run it with minimal changes, though I’d likely use more conventional dice mechanics. Carcosa is an excellent product and the Lamentations of the Flame Princess version has production values to match this excellence.

I give Carcosa 4 out of 5 stars.

Note: I have not included Fungoid Gardens of the Bone Sorcerer in this review. I found flipping back and forth between the map and the text in the pdf a bit tedious and I want to wait until I get my physical copy before I pass final judgment on that adventure.

Monster Monday: Devils of Steel

2012-01-23T00:00:00.013-05:00

For this monster Monday I decided to give you a new monster I made for Uz. I know I've haven't been doing them as regularly as I said I would, but settling into this semester has been more difficult than I imagined. Still, I hope to do it more consistently in the future.

Anyway, here is the monster:

Devil of Steel

No. Appearing 1d10

Armor Class 18

Hit Dice 6+6

Movement 120’
No. of Attacks See Below
Damage 1d6 Each
Morale 10

Alignment Chaotic

The Devils of Steel are large, humanoid monstrosities that haunt the Waste of Rust. Their skin is composed of a strange, rubbery metal that is hard as steel but allows them to move freely. This cobalt-colored metal is stretched tightly over their skeletons, giving them an emaciated appearance and a skull-like visage. Their heads are bulbous and topped with a boney ridge, and their limbs are twisted in ways which would make moving painful for most humanoids.

They can attack with both claws in one round. They will always attack the same target, and if they hit with both attacks the target is grabbed and can take no actions. The Devil of Steel will then swallow the victim down its horrible, rubbery gullet. The victim will then take automatic damage each round until he or she can be freed.

The metal which coats these creatures makes them impervious to all magic and also halves all damage from energy weapons. The color of their skin has led some scholars to believe they are related in some fashion to the Deros, but none know what this connection might be.

Zak's Questionnaire

2012-01-19T12:15:00.000-05:00

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?

Probably Nightwick Abbey/the Dark Country if only because there has been such a positive response to it.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

About two weeks ago.

3. When was the last time you played?

About one week ago.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

A Star Trek adventure where the bridge crew find themselves stranded on a D&D-style fantasy planet.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Sit there.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

With my original group it was always pizza, but more recently it's been chips and various dips or chex mix.

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Sometimes. Sometimes I actually find it invigorating.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Dragging an animated statue kicking and screaming out of the only room it could be animated in, hauling it back to town, and then selling it.

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

The first one, definitely; however, I'm also partially to blame. As much horror and what not as I try to inject, I'm naturally kind of a clown.

10. What do you do with goblins?

This

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?
The "Groans" from that Hobbit spec cartoon that was floating around the blogosphere recently.

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?
I had a player who liked to metagame and who had a quasi-encyclopedic knowledge of the various stuff (monsters, magic items, etc.) in 3.5. I put out a rumor that a "juvenile" dragon was looking for a wizard to teach it magic. The metagamer, who happened to be playing a wizard, figured that they could easily just kill the dragon for it's hoard. Once they got to its layer they found he was an Ancient Wyrm that acted like Frito from Idiocracy. He particularly liked to tell people to "suck one."

That one might also double as the creation I'm proudest of, now that I think about it.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

WFRP 1e. I was a big fan of 2e and I wanted to see if 1e was everything I've heard it is.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?
Mostly that his or her work is appropriate to the material itself. I will say that I want a supplement or even a corebook to have a consistent look, which usually means a single artist.

Having said that, either Dave Trampier or Russ Nicholson.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

Rarely. More commonly the response to my games is "Weird..." I think I joke too much to scare people.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

I ran the village of Hommlet once and the PCs 1) brought capitalism to the World of Greyhawk and 2) made Hommlet into a tourist trap. They never actually went to the moathouse.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?
Everybody around the table in comfortable chairs. I'd also like it if I have enough room for my giant binder and AD&D hardbacks. I'd also like to have some system where I can easily play thematically appropriate music.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?
Not really sure about this one. Maybe Traveller and Harnmaster because of the Sci Fi/Fantasy split.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?
Atomic horror movies and Medieval History

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?

One who is willing to buy in to what I want to run.

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

The look of Nightwick Abbey's underworld in my head is very much tied into my trip to Hastings Castle -- but with more slime.

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?
A megadungeon "kit" in the style of Vornheim or a wilderness kit in the same style. Alternatively a simple version of D&D that more or less runs like OSD&D but has a unified mechanic and allows for a modicum of character customization.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?
Not really. There was one guy who I would talk to about setting stuff -- he's a writer -- but I got he played in the online Traveller game I did about a year ago.

Short Update

2012-01-14T23:45:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting the blog recently, which is due to a combination of getting Skyrim for Christmas and settling in to the new semester. Once I get a better handle on my schedule, I should be posting quite a bit more.

I've put the Nightwick Abbey G+ game on hiatus until I can expand the dungeon a bit more. I'll also be tweaking a few things and restocking the first level. Those who are already on my list of players will remain on my list of players once I get started back, and the time should be the same.

I'm also going to be returning to the Wilderness around Nightwick Abbey and fleshing out the settlements in the Bishopric of Lichgate. Once that is finished* I hope to run a Dark Country game with a more regularized cast of characters instead of a rotating pool. I'm not sure what time I'll be running this or how I'll be selecting players, but I should have more on this very soon.

*By finished I mean "finished enough to run." I don't really think I'll ever be finished with the Dark Country.

Mappa Mundi

2011-12-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Several months ago, I said I would make a post about what makes a good fantasy map. At the time, I would have said that utility is the highest good. A gaming map should ultimately be usable at the table, and as such its primary purpose is to display the distances between two points so that the travel time and the number of random encounters that will occur between the two can be determined. However, almost a year later I have come to a different conclusion: every campaign setting needs two maps.

The first should be more or less what I described above. I'd prefer a true hex map, but different configurations are possible. The ultimate goal of such a map is to display distances and to help determine what random encounter charts the referee needs to roll on.* If it can also be pretty that's cool too, but utility is far more important.

The second map is the setting's equivalent of a mappa mundi. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a mappa mundi is a type of highly symbolic map used throughout the middle ages. The one pictured above is particularly famous for its detail, but simpler designs also exist. Mappa mundi are not meant to get you from point A to point B. Instead, they are meant to convey ideological information. The most simple ones show how the sons of Noah spread across the three continents, and more complex ones can tell the entire story of man from the Garden of Eden to the Apocalypse.

For gaming purposes I mean something a bit more like this:

This map doesn't do a terribly good job of telling you how far the Gates of the Moon are from Runestone but does tell you something about the character of the place and the people who live there. This is often difficult if not impossible to achieve with a typical hex map. Plus, this style of map is just more pleasing to the eye.

A good example of a setting that uses both is Harn. First, we have Harn's hex map:

While not a true hex map in the way Erin of the Welsh Piper uses the term, one can still uses this map to figure out how much time it will take to get from one point to another and to generate encounters over that period. One also gets a sense of how much farmland is present, which is a rare thing for a gaming map to do.

Now the mappa mundi:

This map is much better for giving Harn a sense of place, even if it lacks the utility of the earlier version.

Sadly, my talents are much better suited for the more hum drum sort of maps, even if I do admire mappa mundi. I may attempt one anyway, but my cartoony style will likely be a poor fit for the tangled forests and squalid cities of the Dark Country.

Unfocused Thoughts After Skimming WFRP 1e

2011-12-21T23:55:00.000-05:00

Today was the first day I was able to look over the new copy of WFRP 1e I got for $5 off of amazon. I've only previously dealt with 2e -- which I love -- and I believe someone on G+ wanted me to say what I thought about 1e once I got it. I've only skimmed it a bit at this point, so here are the things I noticed just flipping through the pages.

Holy shit! This is awesome!
There doesn't seem to be the same kind of unified mechanic that exists in 2e, which kind of saddens me.
The monster list is much more robust than the one found in 2e's corebook.
Wait... WFRP rules for random encounters and treasure? I'm in love. Does anyone know if they port over well to 2e?
There's a lot of... stuff in here.
The more I look at it, the angrier I get at my 2e book. I think I like 2e's system better, but the amount of material in 1e makes 2e look like crippleware.
The art ranges from mediocre to evocative, and I absolutely love the cover.
There's a Jabberwock on the monster list. I approve.
There's also an entry for boars. Some may find this boring, but boars are fucking mean.
I like how the careers are divided up into types. SBVD does this too, and I may make new tables for 2e that incorporate the materials from those two games.
There is a certain irony in the fact that my copy of 1e is less beat up than my copy of 2e; however, since it's a softcover I doubt that will last long.
There is a lot more info on the different states in the Old World. It'll be interesting to read over Bretonnia to see how it's different. From what I've heard, I think I'll enjoy the 2e version better.
Alignment?!
The organization seems a bit... off, but it's nowhere near as bad as the DMG.

That's it for now. I'll make a more complete report after reading through it some more.

No Regular Nightwick Abbey Sessions for Two Weeks

2011-12-20T07:20:00.000-05:00

Due to the fact that the next two Saturday's are Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, I won't be running my regularly scheduled Nightwick Abbey game until January 7th. However, I might do a pickup game or two during the week.

In the meantime, I hope to get more work done on the lower levels.

Monster Monday: Children of Stone

2011-12-19T06:08:00.000-05:00

Few claim to have witnessed one of the Children of Stone in person, and those that have rarely know them by that name. They are rare creatures, and in the Dark Country they are most commonly found in the various ruins left by the Sword Brothers. How they came to be there, none can say.

They appear as stunted, vaguely humanoid figures with a passing resemblance to an overgrown baby. Their heads are universally misshapen, and their features roil and contort to make new, hideous faces that most find difficult to look at. Their bloated form is composed of a bizarre mixture of broken stones, burning cinders, and smoke that all somehow clings together to give this terrible entity the appearance of solidity. The dim light they cast and their horrid wails can be seen and heard long before the creatures themselves are upon you.

Their precise nature is somewhat of a mystery. Since their bodies disintegrate into ash upon death, none have been able to study them for any length of time. Their manner of procreation is the subject of much controversy and speculation. Some have postulated that they are physical manifestation of the psychic trauma created during the events that cause edifices to become ruins. Others claim that they are demons summoned by terrible diabolists to do their bidding, but since no one has every seen them directly in the employ of such a magician this hypothesis seems unlikely. The most popular, in the most literal sense of the word, theory is that these mewling creatures are the result of too much old stone being too close to too much fire. The mixing of the two substances in large quantities, such as often happens when old churches or castles burn down, creates them in the way meat creates maggots.

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This is the first in what I hope to be the resurrection of my Monster Monday articles, as I discussed in an earlier post.

The Children of Stone is an idea I've been throwing around since the very early days of 4e, when I ran a mediocre Wilderlands game using that system and the map of the Elphand Lands. Originally, they looked a bit more like silicon breast implants that had been crudely molded into babies, but I decided to change them when I saw this image. They've cropped up in a couple of campaigns since then, and I rolled some of my background for them into my version of the Mite when I ran the Labyrinth Lord version of the Dark Country. While I thought Mites added quite a bit fun to the game, it was mostly in the form of comedy. These guys, I think, are a bit creepier.

Only two ConstantCon expeditions have bumped into them, and both of those expeditions lost a hireling as a result.

How I Like Magic to Work

2011-12-18T23:50:00.001-05:00

Inspired by this, this, and this. Here is an excerpt from Clark Ashton Smith's "The Beast of Averoigne."

"Now, when the priest and the marshal had gone, I spent several hours in making ready for my journey. It was necessary, above all other things, to compound a certain rare powder that had been recommended by the demon in the purple gem; for only by the casting of this powder could the Beast be driven away before its time. The ingredients of the powder were named in the Book of Eibon, that manual written by an old Hyper-borean wizard, who in his day had dealt with ultra-mundane spirits akin to the demon of the comet; and had also been the owner of the ring...

Then, an hour before sunrise, when the shadow of the great pine had reached the wall and was climbing toward Theophile's window, there came the thing which I had anticipated. Very suddenly it came, and with no warning of its nearness, a horror of hellish red light, swift as a kindling, windblown flame, that leapt from the forest gloom and sprang upon us where we stood stiff and weary from our night-long vigil.

One of the men-at-arms was borne to the ground, and I saw above him, in a floating redness as of blood, the black and serpentine form of the Beast. A round and snakish head, without ears or nose, was tearing at the man's armor with sharp innumerable teeth, and I heard the teeth grate and clash on the linked iron as I stepped forward and flung the powder of Eibon at the Beast. The second man-at-arms, undaunted, would have assailed it with his spear, but this I forbade.

The floating powder, fine as a dust of mummia, seemed to dim the bloody light as it fell; and the Beast relinquished the fallen man, writhing away like a burnt serpent from the fire. Its members and body were loathfully convulsed; and the thing seemed to change horribly beneath our gaze, undergoing an incredible metamorphosis. Moment by moment it took on the wavering similitude of man, like a werewolf that returns from his beasthood; and the red light grew dimmer, and the unclean blackness of its flesh appeared to flow and swirl, assuming the weft of cloth, and becoming the folds of a dark robe and cowl such as are worn by the Benedictines. Then, from the cowl, a face began to peer, glimmering pale and thin in the shadow; and the thing covered its face with sooty claws that were turning into hands, and shrank away from me as I pressed upon it, sprinkling it with the remainder of the powder.

Now I had driven it against the abbey wall; and there, with a wild, despairing cry that was half-human, half-demoniac, the thing turned from me and clawed frantically at the gray stone as if it would climb toward the abbot's window in that monstrous fashion that had been its wont. Almost, for a breath, it seemed to run upward, hanging to the wall like a bat or a great beetle. But the change had progressed too far, and it dropped back in the shadow of a pine, and tottering strangely as if with sudden mortal weakness, fell to the ground and lay huddled in its monkish garments like a black night-bird with broken vans."

Obviously there can be some problems transferring this kind of thing over to a D&D type game, but in a perfect "worldgame" this is what magic would look like.

ConstantCon SuperWorld

2011-12-18T12:53:00.000-05:00

Inspired kinda sorta by Grumpy Old Troll, I have an idea for a project that's probably of no use to anyone but amuses me. I want to stitch together all the wilderness maps from various judges' ConstantCon campaigns into one big map. It would probably look something like this only done in Hexographer.

It's probably too much of a headache to work out, but that doesn't mean I'm not stupid enough to give it a few attempts.

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon (Session 8)

2011-12-18T09:37:00.001-05:00

You may find Jason's account here.

If you're interested in playing in future sessions send me an email at evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom. We play every Saturday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST.

ConstantCon: Rupert the Frogling has something to sell you

2011-12-17T17:19:00.000-05:00

Rupert van Toad, resident slimy merchant and frogling, has just received an odd item in his most recent shipment of goods. It is a mauve potion in a clear flask. He has no idea what it is, but he's willing to make some money off of it.

As such, the frogling's cart outside the walls is now offering this Mystery Potion (tm) to any willing to pay the price. The bidding starts at 100sp.*

Characters who are on the Nightwick Abbey list or who have been to Nightwick Abbey before may bid on the Mystery Potion (tm). To do so, state the amount of money you are willing to bid in the comments of this post. Bidding closes at 12:00 AM EST December 21st.

*King Stephen and Empress Matilda are well known for diluting their currency. If your character has gold pieces, those only count as silver pieces for the purposes of this auction. Sadly, this is true even if the character is not from Wessex because the Froglings mistrust all such coins.

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon (Session 7)

2011-12-17T14:16:00.001-05:00

Session report provided by Zzarchov. You can find Jason's here.
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Commander's Journal: Broken Table, Broken Dreams

Today I once more had to lead the weak and mewling masses to victory in that most vile Nightwick Abbey.

Assembling a crack team of unimportant nobodies I had to venture into that place, seeking to give final comfort to those bodies I was forced to leave behind due to the incompetence of cowardice of my previous subcontractors. This time I was able to bravely take decisive action and storm into the south tower. Alas some squatters had resealed the door since my last successful venture, damaging my shovel in my attempts to continue forth and provide last rights to those poor souls trapped in that horrid place.

Forcing my way back into the site of my previous victory over the mewling magma babies, and came to a sad and aggravating sight. Some morons had broken the table, and put it back in the position I last left it in (propping up the portcullis) and then lowered the portcullis through its wreckage to taunt me. Despite the fire burning in my heart, deep within my rippling barrel chest, I warned my employees to be wary of the safety hole (editors note: the oubliette) as I dutifully gathered the remaining bodies and returned them to our entryway for easier removal. I returned to the assurances that no more bodies had been found in any of the jail cells I did not have time to search myself. Heading towards adventure I discovered a statue to that St. Gax guy, you know, the saint of that thing. Something was off however, but I couldn't put my finger on it. The incessant wailing in pain as I touched the statue with my holy symbol was quite peculiar and I believe the statue may not be the bastion of holy energy it appears to be. Also discovered was an altar littered with leftover wax. Cost recuperation is extremely important in any modern venture of this nature (margins being what they are). After a few brief prayers and some unusually timed seismic activity we left the altar and continue into an office.

Rather than properly dealing with the situation, some of the subcontractors rushed in blindly and were attacked by eye eating rat crows which I have named "Wingless Miniaturized Griffon Related Rodents" for easier reference. These vile vermin managed to kill one of the subcontractors through ocular ingestion and nearly killed a dwarf employee , Chuck was his name if I recall (editors note: just no). Thankfully I was able to save Chuck with some quick thinking, and slay Wingless Miniaturized Griffon Related Rodents by trapping them in a corner and pelting them with rocks. Thankfully I was there to properly motivate and manage the team or things would have been far worse. The office had a rather large bureau that was unfortunately damaged by these vermin. We were forced to accept some silver coins and a few gems to cover our losses, at least one of my employees was able to find a ring he had lost.

Our expedition in the black we returned to the surface, sans table, and buried the poor souls now given their last rights.

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If you're interested in playing in future sessions send me an email at evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom. We play every Saturday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST.

Thoughts on Maps and the Dark Country

2011-12-14T05:55:00.000-05:00

After doing some math,* I've come to the conclusion that the Welsh Piper Hex Templates are the best thing ever. I was already fond of them, but I more or less used them while wishing I had a bad-ass Judges Guild map to use instead. However, my sloppy number crunching revealed some things to me that might make me prefer Erin's.

First, the "continent" level is just big enough to hold the areas of France and Britain combined. There is also some room left over for the channel, but you'd probably have to move parts of Scotland off of the map to really get the amount of water that surrounds Britain. The point is that it easily fits two fairly large kingdoms who can slug at each other constantly, or perhaps even more smaller ones. But it doesn't end there. The "regional" level maps are only a tiny bit smaller than the estimated size of the Duchy of Normandy. Each one of these represents either a powerful magnate's demesne or a smallish kingdom.

Whether or not this was intentional, it provides a great deal more structure than using Wilderlands maps. I can guesstimate** their size now that I know how large Erin's templates are, but I don't really have as good of an idea of what a single map represents. Also, the Welsh Piper templates happen to match up to the sizes of areas I'm familiar with historically, so it's a bit easier for me to figure out how many cities and castles they should contain. I'll still have to rely at least somewhat on other methods, but that certainly helps.

If one thinks about the number of cultures that existed in both Britain and France in the Middle Ages, one can easily see that an "atlas" level map is probably large enough to last any DM the entirety of his or her career. Admittedly, this does not incorporate flights of fancy that might make him or her want to run something set in a totally different kind of milieu, but as long as he or she is content with whatever kind of setting he or she set up in the first place it should provide a framework for innumerable campaigns.

With this new information under my belt, I'm going to try and remap the Dark Country. Longtime readers will know that I am constantly tweaking every map I make -- which is part of the fun -- but this is going to be a major overhaul. I want the "atlas" map to include large parts of the West, the entirety of the Dark Country, and small slivers of Zenopolis and Novgova. Those are the four areas I'm most interested in running campaigns in, and it makes a kind of rough sense that they would be next to each other.

I'll be doing the mapping by hand because I've become enamored with colored pencil maps like these two. Since I don't have a scanner, you're not likely to see these in the immediate future; however, I do hope to be able to present them at some point.

One last note unrelated to maps: I've more or less decided the rough historical date for the Dark Country would be the first half of the 14th century. This is a bit outside of my normal time frame, but the Sword Brothers represent the Teutonic Knights c. 1250, and I want them to be in the past. I'm a bit more comfortable making a fantasy setting move at a glacial pace than I would be if this was a historical setting, but I do think that settings need to change over time.***

* I'm really really really bad at math, so if I'v made a mistake let me know.

**Chrome's spell check recognizes guesstimate as a word.

***Not necessarilly published settings. I hate metaplot as much as the next guy, but if every campaign in the same setting resets to status quo ante bellum, then it starts to feel too artificial. These changes are for the individual group to make, and it is best if they are created by player action.

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon (Session 6)

2011-12-10T19:07:00.000-05:00

Today's session report is provided by Lon, who played Erasmus the Magic-user.

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Five PCs set out for Nightwick Abbey: Father Jack, Egor, Erasmus, Morgan and Norrick along with men-at-arms Edward and Frankenstein, Egor's Doberman. The six humans and dog entered the South Tower, after pondering the new arches that seem to have sprung up wince the last time Father Jack and Egor had come to the abbey.

They found an empty room, with stairs leading up to nowhere and an open trap door leading down. A faint blue light could be seen from below. A well-placed iron spike was left from those who last forayed into the room below. These PCs used the rope, except for Norrick who tried the rusted ladder and found it to be greased with lard. At the bottom, the group found a glowing blue stone and a doorway. Leaving the stone alone, they found themselves soon in a torture room, complete with corpses of men with enough flesh to keep their bones in place. After a few false starts, the group was able to get through a portcullis and followed a short corridor to a large circular chamber lit by candlelight.

A chance encounter allowed the PCs to catch sight of a cultist in robes trying to flee the scene. Father Jack threw his mace with force and struck down the cultist. Which was a boon and bane. For eleven more cultists charged into the room. A quick fight, as well as a bit of bluffing scared the cultists away. Frankenstein was able to hamstring one of the cultists, which the group tried to question through his cries and blood loss.

While the group was bust with the wounded cultist, Edward, the stalwart man-at-arms gave a cry of panic and was struck down as three ghouls attacked. Norrick went on the attack and was paralyzed. The rest of the group tried to defend themselves as best they could while Father Jack took his time to call for the power of his god to turn away these vile creatures. The three ghouls ran and disappeared behind a set of self-opening and closing doors.

Choosing not to flow such folly, the group looted the altar of the cultists, coming away with 82 pieces of silver and a piece of obsidian worth about 50 silver pieces. They set off to explore further down the dark corridors. But, first they left the cultist in a pit near the altar, "for later."

After finding a ransacked room, the group followed a few archways, finding two niches with statues of emaciated bat-like men. Turning to another room, the group found eight deer headed creatures that thirsted for blood. The magic-user Morgan let loose with his spell color spray and struck six of them unconscious. The remaining two were laid low by Norrick and Frankenstein. There, the group gained another 100 silver and decided to leave. They rounded up their scared cultist prisoner, named John and left.

On the way back to the village, the cultist was told if he wished to live, he would take the name Edward, shave his beard and head and continue on as the party's man-at-arms.

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If you're interested in playing in future sessions send me an email at evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom. We play every Saturday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST.

Revisiting the Dark Country

2011-12-05T10:25:00.000-05:00

Beginning in a week or two, I'll be revisiting the wilderness map of the Dark Country along with its encounter tables and settlements. Ultimately my goal is to excise most of the standard D&D monsters* that populated my original encounter tables and replace them with monsters of my own design.

Most of these monsters will be specific to the region they're encountered in. The drowned corpses of the Long Swamp aren't going to be found anywhere else. I'll make some exceptions, normally with monsters that can be created regularly by magic users such as the standard sorts of undead. There are also likely to be a few monsters that can be encountered throughout the dark country, somewhat like how I described mites living in dirty houses.

I'll also be fleshing out the Seven Cities a bit more, particularly Lichgate -- for which I also hope to figure out a canon spelling. I may also take another look at Nightwick Village with an eye towards getting rid of NPCs with character levels.

While quite a bit of this is inspired by Raggi's advice in the Referee book for LotFP, I'm not doing this to evoke the "weird." I consider the Dark Country to be Dark Fantasy instead of Weird Fantasy, and while that may be a fine distinction there are important differences. If one is to go by Beedo's Taxonomy of Horror, the Dark Country is firmly in the Supernatural position. I suppose it is a little different from typical Supernatural Horror in that while an all powerful and omniscient god exists it is horrible and inexplicable in its own right. My goal from day one has been to make sure that the Church isn't the good guy and neither are the pagans and neither are the satanists. Still, the Dark Country is heavily reliant on the Gothic** for its aesthetic and I want my vampires, werewolves, and ghosts.

What is more important to me than making the setting "weird" is making the setting mine. I think Empire of the Petal Throne is possibly the greatest work of early D&D because it takes OD&D and bends it to the idiosyncrasies of MAR Barker's imagination. While my vision isn't as outre as his, it is certainly idiosyncratic. I've said before that I am more of a horror fan than a fantasy one,*** and I'd like to bring that to the fore even more.

In the days before In Places Deep started, I ran a short lived proto-Dark Country campaign that used a monster list where most of the entries were either invented by me or taken from intentionally obscure sources. You can see one of my old players' confusion about my decision to go back to standard monsters here, and while I was somewhat dismissive of him at the time I think he was right.****

What this means in the short term is that I hope to restart Monster Mondays sometime around the beginning of next year; however, rather than showing how standard D&D monsters fit the setting I want to introduce and explain the new monsters I'll be using. I'll also be posting articles on other setting related matters such as settlements, magic items, and dungeons. This will probably mean that the development of my Albigensian Crusade campaign will be put on indefinite hold. I still like the idea but I consider the Dark Country to be my magnum opus -- such as it is.

* I'm still going to be using a few like goblins and ogres whose names are evocative enough that they can be used without reference to Tolkien. Still, I'm going to try to make these conform to my vision of the monster rather than to the standard D&D vision.

** More accurately it's reliant on the version of the Gothic presented in Hammer Horror, Corman's Poe films, and Dark Shadows.

*** I'm even more of a fan of things that mix the two together, such as CAS's Averoigne Cycle or "The Black God's Kiss."

**** I'll still be keeping Dwarves and Elves because there are interesting things to do with them. Especially Dwarves.

What the Dark Country is Like

2011-12-04T07:46:00.002-05:00

I know that I've spent a large amount of this blog trying to express the feeling of the Dark Country, but I was inspired by Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque to put it into a more concise form.

The Dark Country

Precis: A wet and mountainous haunt of pagans, vampires, and satanists. Hammer Horror meets The Baltic Crusades with a dash of Diablo I for taste.

Conspectus: undead Templars; The White Lady and her bestial servitors; pagan rebel groups and secret societies; satanists masquerading as clerics; horrible nature "deities" that demand sacrifice; bickering city states and bishoprics; wild eyed mercenaries who believe they kill for God; werewolf villages hidden the woods; fogbound forests; ruins tainted by foul sacrifices; haunted battlefields; Frogling caravans with perversely magical wares; secretive necromancers probing the nature of humanity; human sacrifice; villages besieged by unseen forces; the Great Swamp; cyclopean ruins older than humankind; the Mountain King and the last kingdom of the dwarfs; Black masses; the Devil; mindless vampires; glowing horrors created by a magician's mad experiments; fearful peasants; lots of frogs; the haunted and endless ruins of Nightwick Abbey

Taste, Sound, Image: A mouthful of mud, Pagan Altar Volume 1, Roger Corman's Masque of the Red Death

Does that sound about right to everyone else?

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon Session... What is it, 5?

2011-12-03T16:46:00.001-05:00

This post provided by Zzarchov, who played Samson (a 1st level Cleric)

Commander's Journal: The descent into the abbey

Today I had to test my vast leadership skills to their very core. I was forced to lead a band of rag tag "greens" into a dangerous ruin of a fallen church. Undaunted, I clenched my jaw and set to work, the cool morning breeze blowing my golden locks. Our team began by noticing several recently constructed arches amongst the ruins. They appeared to be coated in a thick slime that was both burned by holy water, and in my personal opinion, foul tasting. Making note of this (I assume someone did) we moved on and investigated the ruins of the south tower, or maybe it was the north tower. It was a tower, and that is what is important. Leadership requires confidence more than facts.

Dropping one of the many glowing stones I had acquired into the tower we saw it was a long way down. As superior leadership requires a clear mind, I decided to lower everyone else down first, allowing me a top down view of any potential problems should they arise. Forcing our way into the tower I lead the group down a stairway until we came to two doors. Using my raw muscle, I easily cracked the door leading to the interior of a tower, allowing one of my subordinates to easily finish opening it with a crowbar. The room appeared empty except for large amounts of rotted wood and slime. I attempted to throw a glowing rock to the ceiling, to see how high the room was, but a strong updraft prevented my rock from sailing more than five feet in an awkward motion, as if thrown by a small infirm child. Sensing nothing of value we moved the only other room available.

This room was surrounded by a large number of sealed iron doors and portucullii. An absolutely fabulous table of great workmanship dominated the room. It was a little rough, but with some proper care I am certain this table could be worth a fortune on the antique market. It is over 200 years old and still functional as a torture device, they just don’t build them to last like that anymore. Exploring around the area we uncovered an oubliette and several unfortunate skeletons trapped in cages. While others dallied about, I bravely cracked open each of their rotted wooden cages with loud snaps. I then assembled the bodies for removal from the dungeon for proper burial, before examining one of the portcullii.

Unfortunately I over-estimated the competence of one of my juniors, I think his name was Chuck (editors note: He was not named Chuck). Who upon opening one of the cells loudly called the attention of a large group of hideous monsters, squat little dwarves of stone and flame belching smoke and embers. Thinking quickly I threw my waterskin onto one of them, extinguishing much of its embers. Then I carefully dove into the partially flooded oubliette to lure them to their doom. Unfortunately it appears some of my subcontractors panicked or were injured by these creatures (including one of the poor dogs, also some temp whose name I didn’t care enough to learn). However the creatures were defeated, the final one extinguishing around me in the water amidst a cloud of sparks and smoke.

I was raised out of the oubliette, and looked over by my fellow clergyman Chuck (editors note: Still not named Chuck). Given a clean bill of health, I combed the water out of my golden locks and we left the dungeon victorious, burying the body of our recently felled comrade as well as the poor souls who’s bodies we liberated from that fell place.

Granting their spirits rest with a proper burial is the real treasure you see, and that is why this mission was a rousing success. A. Rousing. Success.

Yours Truly,
Samson Jones

Caves of Myrddin Session Report

2011-12-02T19:58:00.000-05:00

I emailed this to Jeff, but he hasn't posted anything on it yet.

The following letter was found discarded next to an inebriated messenger boy.

My dearest Susan,

My return from Ireland has thus far been inauspicious, and I regret that my failing health will prevent me from visiting you in your bedchamber. Since I was unable to bring you an treasures from the Emerald Isle, I thought I might win some more prizes from the ruins of Castle Dundagel. Oh, how wrong I was.

In the company of one of your husband’s boorish knights, whom I hired to serve as my body guard, as well as two stout fellows and another fighting-man I headed out to the ruins of the castle. Since the Dragon had been seen entering the southern tower, we elected to check the northern one to avoid its ire. If only we had known what perils awaited us. We explored the tower itself, which seemed rather non-descript aside from the presence of a coffin which I now believe must be the resting place of a vampire.

While investigating the roof I was once again mocked by those hideous crows. I managed to kill one, and I intended to turn it into one of those taxidermic displays you so love. Now I cannot look at the thing after the horrors I saw in those dungeons!

After leading into the dungeon proper one of the dwarves abandoned us to die leaving us only with a cryptic warning to “watch out for cage traps.” Would that I knew what he meant because it could not have been as terrible as what we experienced. Exploring the chambers more, I found an area that looked familiar to me. Just as I did, we were assailed by misty figures who soon materialized into vampires.

Luckily, I had brought a large number of flasks filled with holy water. These were quite effective against the creatures, but not before the most terrible of their number – a crow faced monstrosity whose terrible visage will haunt my dreams forevermore – raked me with his awful talons. The shock of this still haunts me, and I find it difficult to remember the incantations that were once so easy for me to rattle off.

On the positive side, the mysterious power I learned in Ireland was of used to me as I used it to slay one of the vampires, which once was a woman. While I have this small victory I am still gripped by the horrors of the things I witnessed. I saw the crow-headed master of vampires burst into flame, but I know he still lives.

Incidentally, your husband’s stooge whom I had temporarily borrowed met his end in those tunnels. I have included the sum of 600 solidi to make up for his loss.

Hopefully I will recover soon and be able to see you once again, my love.

Your snuggle-bear

Philip of Luxembourg

EPT Session Report: The Tale of Dagazar

2011-12-02T06:20:00.000-05:00

I, Dagazar, who came to the city of Jakalla seeking fame and fortune, had until just a few days ago only found poverty and despair. The gates that lead from the Foreign Quarter to the areas of the city where real wealth can be obtained are locked tighter than the chastity belt of a virgin sacrifice to Sarku three days before her death. With my last golden kaitar gone into the hand of some wine maker, I no longer could afford to live in the meager tenement that had served as my abode since I arrived in the City Half as Old as the World.

But, as I was out on the street with only my sword an armor to keep me company, I overheard two gentlemen discussing a plan to win gold for themselves. They were from distant lands, just as I am, and they were planning to explore the manor house of Kotaru hiChakresa. I offered them my services as a slayer of men and beasts, and they graciously accepted -- allowing me a share of whatever treasure we might find in that abandoned house.

After acquiring what little supplies we could attain in the Foreign Quarter, we paid a fisherman to take us in his small boat out to the island on which sits the manor. Rather than landing on the beach, as we saw other ships had done, we decided to circle around the island to get a feel for the place. While doing so, we spotted what we knew to be a sea cave and decided that this cave would be the place we began our adventure.

We waded in the chest deep water, with me being careful to carry my pack over my head so as not to wet my supply of torches. Luckily we soon found a dry enough place to light a torch and continue on into the "caves." My companions were Orin the Wise and Orin the Witless. Orin the Wise was a priest of some god who is foreign to my people, and I would guess foreign to Jakalla as well. Orin the Witless was a warrior much like myself, but he was given to a pride that may one day prove to be the death of him.

I went ahead with my torch, and we soon found both an idol wrought from a strange stone with gold decorations that made it appear most valuable and an obsidian dagger that was too large to comfortably fit a man's hand. I shudder to think what dark creature could have carried such a thing. Soon after this we found that the cave was only a small part of a larger complex, and after the cavernous antechamber we were greeted with the squared masonry of -- presumably -- human hands.

We did not get very far down these man made corridors before we heard the sound of voices gibbering in some tongue foreign both to my islands and the wretched city in which I find myself. Orin the Wise seemed to understand their ramblings and warned us of their approach. Orin the Witless and I set an ambush that would prevent their travelling further down the hall, and we waited for them to arrive. They soon did so. Both were soldiers in some foreign army my comrades inform me is an enemy to Jakalla.

Through bravery and force of arms we attacked and slew a host of the villains. Wishing to be modest, I only took two of their heads as trophies so that the others of my tribe would not be jealous. We then took what little valuables the heathens possessed and returned to Jakalla. There, some acolytes of Sarku were willing to mummify my trophies so that everyone might know who brought those two to their end. I have tied them to my belt, and there they will remain. Hopefully soon I will be able to add others.

Thoughts on Harn and Medieval Campaigns

2011-12-01T07:33:00.000-05:00

Harn is a setting I have wanted to like for a very long time. Longtime readers of this blog should know that I love medieval history, indeed I study it for a living, and I in fact came to gaming through medieval history rather than the other way around. My early high school campaigns were clumsy attempts to more or less recreate the fall of the Roman Empire and the establishment of the various Gothic kingdoms in Western Europe.

I'm far more interested in early and -- especially -- high medieval settings than I am the late aesthetic that seems to hang over AD&D and its settings. Perhaps it's the fact that I first became acquainted with medieval history when I saw Simon Schama's the History of Britain when I was twelve, and the episode that fascinated me the most was "Conquest!" which, if the title isn't enough of a give away, was about the Norman invasion of England.* Whatever the reason, I've always been more attracted to hauberks than Gothic plate, and the feuds of petty castellans strike me as better game fodder than the maneuverings of great Houses.

The Dark Country is more an exercise in medievalism than the properly medieval. It is constructed from a great morass of popular perceptions of the Middle Ages, Gothic literature, as well as actual medieval history. Still, sometimes I want something with more grounding. I mentioned in my discussion of the Albigensian Crusade as a setting that merely the idea that the campaign takes place in a more historical milieu allows me to picture it better. Jeff Rients' melting chairs, cowardly rust monsters, and talking dogs are placed on top of a setting which at its heart feels real to me. If one was to stand in Nightwick Village and look towards the menacing abbey it would appear as a matte painting on a Corman set: Moody, terrifying, and beautifully twisted but clearly artificial.

For the most part, this does not bother me. However, from time to time I want to set something in a world more like the period I study, but perhaps with some embellishments. Certainly one need not look far for action and adventure in twelfth-century Europe. Violence and more importantly violent men are common enough that the players should have no trouble finding someone to cross blades with, and the scheming of seneschals provide ample amounts of intrigue for those less interested in combat.

So on the surface, Harn looks perfect for my desires. The world has often be touted as being one of the most, if not the most, medieval of medieval fantasy settings. It even takes as its model twelfth-century England which, though it my preferences have now shifted across the channel to France, still appeals to that twelve-year-old boy who heard for the first time how the crown of England was seized, defended, and lost all within one fateful year. In Harn, Norman helmets and hauberks are the order of the day, and that's just the way I like it.

Harn even has things going for it the actual middle ages lacks, for gaming purposes anyway. First, the vastness of Harn is mostly a sprawling wilderness. The Kingdoms of Kaldor and its fellow states are merely islands in the sea of forests, mountains and heaths. Second, the fact that it is a fantasy setting allows it to be a bit fuzzier with time. While Kaldor might have Norman-style knights and subinfeudate like William the Conqueror's kingdom, Orbaal is more in the vain of the Danelaw of over a hundred years prior. Still, it does this without breaking believe ability, which brings me to my third point.

While a historical setting can never truly be accurate due to the limited knowledge we possess, Harn can at least be accurate within its own milieu. While I'm not one to agonize over crop rotation, I may be more comfortable presenting Harn's towns and cities than I would be those of the Languedoc. Why? Because Harn is more definite. I understand that one should place issues of accuracy aside when dealing with D&D, but my historian's brain finds that very difficult in a historical milieu. Harn somewhat circumvents this problem.

However, I have some problems with Harn. Bet you didn't see that coming. First, a quibble: the fantasy naming conventions irritate me to no end. It both distances the setting from the medieval Europe I so love and makes comprehension of the setting more difficult as one must work through a series of foreign words -- even though in many cases these words have equivalents that would make their meaning more readily apparent to the reader. Second, and much more damning, Harn lacks the Church. A medieval setting with no bishops isn't medieval. Harn may say it has bishops, which it calls by some bizarre term that I can't be bothered to look up, they are really just D&D pagans with miters on their heads. Without an organization to give power to their actions, a unified Church, these religions are given far less power than their Earthly equivalents had.

To me the Church is one of the more interesting things about the Middle Ages, and there are ways to include it without including Christianity itself. One way to do this is the way I took with the Dark Country. The Church of Law is a kind of crypto-fascist Catholicism with a theology which is similar too Christianity but distinct enough from it that I have wiggle room to make them the bad guys. Granted, one could also make the organization that started the Crusades and the Inquisition the bad guys, but they are not here to defend themselves.

The other way still allows for elements of paganism. The fourth Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, had a more or less medieval Church.* It had monasteries, abbeys, and cathedrals. Its monks were tonsured and were benedictine habits. However, it was still pagan. All of the good gods had been brought under one Church, and each cathedral was dedicated to one or another in the same way a real world cathedral might be dedicated to the veneration of a saint.

So I'm left with mixed feelings about Harn. On the one hand it seems better suited for fantasy roleplaying than the Middle Ages. On the other it lacks one of the core elements that make the Middle Ages interesting and the name recognition places like Northumbria or Gascony have. I haven't abandoned my Occitania project, but it is already showing some holes that will need to be patched or that ship will have to be abandoned. While a setting with a silver standard, petty barons, and robber knights might not be up everyone's alley, there are days when its exactly what I want. Those days have been coming more frequently and consistently in the past few months.

A Fistful of Denars...

2011-11-30T17:58:00.001-05:00

...or if you prefer, Once Upon a Time in the Lauragais.

I recently played in Zzarchov's Neoclassical Geek Revival game on G+. It takes place in a highly fictionalized version of medieval Europe -- the party was currently in Ireland -- and oddly enough that meant Philip the Black of Luxembourg merely had to get on a boat and cross over from Wessex. After playing in both of those games I noticed something odd: the historical background allowed me to picture the setting more easily even though they both included fantastical elements. This is even more remarkable in Jeff's Wessex game since I'm still able to picture the physicality of the setting despite football-helmeted goblins and what I can only assume are travelers from Carcosa.

These two campaigns have inspired me to think about how I would use a historical milieu for D&D. I'd already been thinking about setting a campaign in Southern France, and so I decided to shift the focus away from the Hell-Caverns and towards the Wilderness that surrounds it. Occitania, a region that contains much of Southern France, will be the broad canvas on which I will paint my milieu. During the middle ages -- and to a lesser extent today -- Occitania was separated from the Ile-de-France by language and custom.

The time period I would most want to highlight is the Albigensian Crusade. Depending on which scholar you believe, the crusade was either an attempt to dismantle the various heretical movements in southern France, an act of genocide, an attempt by the northern French to gain territory at the expense of their southern neighbors, or some combination of the three. This period provides a macro-level event that I can use to give the events in the campaign context. It also provides the violence necessary for an action-adventure game like D&D without either falling into the trap of being too chaotic or of having the sides remain too stable. Players, assuming they want to become involved, can either through their lot in whole hog with one side or the other or they can play both sides against the middle a la Yojimbo.

It also provides niches for NPCs. Fighters and Specialists (since I'll likely be using LotFP) are mercenaries, brigands, and war profiteers who have come to the Lauragais to make their fortunes. Clerics can be inquisitors, mendicants, or possibly even heretics trying to win support for their side. Magic Users I'm especially happy with. This period also marks the emergence of nigromantici (black magicians) in medieval literature, and in a story related by Caesarius of Heisterbach we see a necromancer summon the devil to help root out heresy.* Some will possibly point out that these characters can be put in any setting if I'm willing to make it fantastic, but it's nice to have "historical precedents."

I want to give the setting a bit of a Spaghetti Western flavor, only with dungeons. Luckily, parts of southern France are scrubby enough to look like a Fistful of Dollars. They may not have looked this way at the time, but mood is just as important here as history. This brings me to a potential problem: I need some way to divorce the setting from actual history in order to make the way I interpret facts for the game separate from history. This is necessary in order to add in the fantasy that comes along with D&D and also to avoid offending anyone who has strong feelings about the Cathars -- you'd be surprised how many people that is. Jeff Rients did this by a fictionalized version of south western England invented by a Victorian novelist. Sadly, I don't know of anything like that for Occitania.

Or do I? Take a look at this map:

Those with a knowledge of French geography or the fiction of Clark Ashton Smith will note that Averoigne has replaced Auvergne. If wikipedia is correct, CAS actually based Averoigne off of Auvergne. While Auvergne is not where one thinks of when one thinks of the Albigensian Crusade, it might make an interesting frontier area. Simon de Montfort or one of his emissaries could use Vyones as a staging point for campaigns further south and Gaspard de Nord could be impressed into hunting heretics in Toulouse or Carcassonne. This would obviously allow me to add in more fantastic elements since they are already present in the setting.

I may not use Averoigne, since it would be away from most of the actual action of the war, but it is a thought. I would like to have Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Narbonne be on the campaign map, but I think Vyones might deserve a place as well. I wouldn't be surprised if you see more posts on this idea soon.

EDIT: had to change the link to the Danzig interview I have up there because I had accidentally used a "humorously" edited one that actually completely undermined the humor of the thing.

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon Accidental Session Report

2011-11-28T15:40:00.000-05:00

I wasn't going to run Nightwick Abbey this Saturday, but I ended up doing it at 3:00 in the morning for the first round of Fight About Games Club. It just kind of happened.

Anyway, here is the session report from Mike, who played Boloris the Cleric

My senses and memory is still reeling from my journey towards a strange place I would eventually come to know as Nightwick Abbey. I don’t remember how I came to be here, or who my fellow travellers are though they have saved my life. I washed upon the shores of this foreign land years ago, learning the local language while traveling in disguise using robes stolen from the local clergy. Such a strange place...

Where I would sense the presence of the gods of my homeland I only sense malevolent spirits, wrathful and full of hate. My mana is strong still and these evil spirits turn, much in the way the evil spirits of my old homelands did when bidden to leave.

Some of my fellow travellers had been to this tainted place before. Thieves, robbers, mercenaries intent on looting whatever treasures lie below. I was in the same predicament, drifting throughout the countryside with little besides what I had looted along the way. Horrors I could never imagine haunted the desecrated abbey.

We entered a trapdoor and followed a trail of dead bodies as the mapper in our group carefully recorded the labyrinth like passages. Some of my fellows beheaded many of the bodies along the way. I did not question them, the place reeked of evil spirits and I have seen it possess men before even after death. One of my fellows had an odd sense of humor about it though, switching heads and body parts as some sort of joke to confuse future looters. The same fellow also insisted on collecting the armor and hats made of human skin. I kept my sword ready should his madness be directed towards the rest of us.

There was a baptismal font along the way, I believe it is used to induct newborns into the faith of this lands god. A chemically green liquid filled the fountain which we collected before moving on. Eventually we reached a desecrated chapel. Blood appeared to be painted on the walls and frescoes. Within a book completely smeared in blood and with pages torn from it we found a scroll of sanctuary.

Not much later we discovered a secret room and a lockbox filled with treasure. Sick of rations I began to dream of the feast I would soon be enjoying, then something struck me from behind and I blacked out in a sea of pain. I dreamt of the old lands, chants to the old gods became twisted mockeries and then the earth fell into the ocean. I awoke back in town under the care of a local cleric. The others had rescued and paid for the cleric to heal me. I decided to set out with them again. Before I first entered Nightwick Abbey I did not intend to go back to that hellish place once I collected my share of the treasure but I have come to believe that this darkness that has taken the place of my old gods must be destroyed or laid to rest.

Our second expedition was not as fruitful. We discovered some desecrated shrines before discovering a door covered in sigils. Inside was the skeletal remains of some priests that locked themselves some time ago. They had used chalk to ward off evil, but their sanctuary had become their tomb. We felt as though time was running out and headed back to town for now...

If you're interested in playing in future sessions send me an email at evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom. We play every Saturday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST.

New Blog: From Beyond the Drowning Woods

2011-11-26T21:47:00.000-05:00

Here is a new blog. It looks to be the sort of dark fantasy I like. Plus, he listed me as an influence, and he likes Perytons so we know he has good taste.

By Popular Demand: Random Cult Generator PDF

2011-11-26T04:44:00.001-05:00

You can find it here.

Edit: Gender table provided by Chris Huth. Go look at his stuff now. Also, he has a blog you should probably read. I know Blair has talked about how awesome he is before, but he's awesome.

The City at the Center of the World

2011-11-26T00:43:00.002-05:00

In the eyes of the people of the West, Zenopolis is a city without equal either in luxuriousness or depravity. Its domed temples and tall spires are a testament to a bygone age: the age of the Empire. When the barbarians swooped down from what is now Novgova into the Dark Country and the West, the Empire could do little to resist them. Plagued by internal struggle and external invasion, the emperor Zeno moved his capital to an island city once used to as a fortress to defend against pirate attacks from the Desert Lands. The Empire may have withered, but in the eyes of the people of Zenopolis some corneal of it still remains.

Zeno did not only move the capital. He also revived the worship of the Old Gods. While the Church of Law still exists legally, it does not hold the position it does in the west. Instead, a cacophony of religions exist in the City at the Center of the World. The Church claims many of these are diabolic in nature, and the clergy shudders to think what slithering things these deranged madmen worship.

Zenopolis's climate is arid when compared to the West, but the trade from the Desert Lands, the Dark Country, and places even farther than that have made it rich. Its armies are filled with soldiers from across the World, though the Autocrat is particularly fond of using barbarians from the Dark Country as his personal guard. Many of these men fled the lances of the Sword Brothers and found employment in the City. It is sometimes said that the Autocrat's fondness for them goes beyond mere martial prowess, but most of the barbarians would staunchly deny this. Such activity is unmanly.

Zenopolis is not the first built on this island. Even before the imperial fortress, cities existed here. The location is perfect for trade between the East and the West, and as such there has scarcely been an epoch where the island was uninhabited. Rumors say that the ruins of these cities lie beneath the current edifices. They intertwine and overlap creating a network of tunnels, chambers, and catacombs which could never be fully mapped.

In the days before the Church of Law, many of the temples possessed undercrofts and secret chambers that connected to these dungeons. Since the revival of the Old Ways, many of these structures have seen renewed habitation; however, most still languish in obscurity. It is said that when they were sealed, many of the priests and oracles were still inside. What has happened to these populations in the thousand plus years since they were trapped inside is a mystery.

A more intriguing mystery, however, is what became of the golden idols and relics which were sealed in as well...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Recently, my mind has been filled with ideas for different games. I was having a hard time picking one, but earlier tonight I decided to take the common elements and spin them off into their own project. The above is a result.

Essentially, I wanted to make an EPT style Underworld that was heavily inspired by CAS's Zothique cycle; however, I don't want to abandon the work I've already done on the Dark Country and the World. Hopefully, this is a good compromise.

The monsters will not be standard D&D fair but neither will they be LotFP creatures. I'm not exactly sure what they will be yet, but I have some ideas.

Random Cult Generator

2011-11-25T17:12:00.000-05:00

I was looking through my new copy of Vornheim, and I became disappointed in the lack of a random cult* generator.** So here is one I just made up:

The [Table A] of the [Table B] [Table C] -- Worships a [Table D]

Masculine terms are used whenever the word is gendered, but if the judge would prefer to have the cult worship a goddess or be an all female order he or she has only to change the gender of the noun.

Table A -- 1d20

Cult
People
Servants
Lovers
Friends
Followers
Faithful
Hearers
Mystes
Masters
Teachers
Students
Slaves
Perfecti
Brotherhood
Cabal
Congregation
Temple
Order
Church

Table B -- 1d30

Blessed
Blood
Transcendent
Terrible
Silver
Gold
Electrum
Hateful
Glorious
Hidden
Burning
Sacred
Holy
Bloated
Fearful
Blinding
Unnamable
Voracious
Divine
Hideous
Blue
Red
Purple
Yellow
Green
Orange
Enlightened
Night
Omniscient
Unconquered

Table C -- 1d20

God
Eye
Toad
Serpent
Worm
Maggot
Maw
Tongue
Phallus
Mask
Light
Fire
Dark
Idol
Star
Comet
Oyster
Hands
Angel
King

Table D -- 1d12

Strange aspect of a mainstream deity
Delusional NPC
Powerful undead entity (lich, vampire, crypt thing, etc.)
Non-sapient monster (carrion crawler, peryton, oozes, etc.)
Non-magical idol
Construct (golem, animated statue, crazy-frankenstein thing, etc.)
Demon/Devil (1d6: 1-4 - minor demonic entity 5-6: demon lord or prince)
Powerful intelligent monster (medusa, dragon, beholder, etc.)
Dungeon
Constellation or star sign
Lovecraftian entity (1d6: 1-4 -- Independent Race 5: Great Old One 6: Outer God)
Ephemeral concept (love, hate, death, etc.)

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* Technically a cult is any religion that venerates one god above others, making 99% of clerics cultists; however, this definition is really terrible when applied to how the word cult is used by most people. For the purposes of these tables a cult is a religoin that does not actually worship a god of goddess but thinks it does. In some systems this definition would mean that the cult should not have clerics. That's perfectly fine, if not desirable. The upper echelons of the cult should be filled out with magic users or anti-clerics, whichever makes more since with your chosen system.

**Vornheim is otherwise an excellent product. Cults are just something I shove in everywhere.

Are We In Hell?

2011-11-24T22:28:00.000-05:00

Have the players roll up a new character sans equipment. I recommend using LotFP for reasons that will be spelled out later, but use whatever you want. Once they're done, they awaken naked (or in weird futuristic gaffer tape underwear) in a a sleeping chamber (or sci fi sleeping pod). Once they figure out how to exit this, assuming the referee is mean enough to not have it open automatically, they find themselves in a seemingly endless maze of corridors and rooms.

The monsters they encounter should be outside of what one would normally encounter in D&D. No goblins or orcs to be found; however, it is important that some of these creatures are intelligent and could be cajoled into trading with the PCs. To make sure these are alien as possible be sure to only reveal their names once a PC has asked them what they call themselves. Other dungeon monsters should refer to them with descriptive titles like "the pallid things" or "those angry midget dudes."

One of the reasons you might want to use LotFP is for its language system. That way your amnesiac characters might dimly remember the language the scaly guys are speaking without having to select it from a predetermined list. Also, since almost all equipment (including spell books and holy symbols!) will have to be gained through foraging or trade, the lack of weapon and armor restrictions should help the magic users and clerics feel a tad more useful. The encumbrance system too will help because it means that characters will have to pick and choose what's important enough to take with them.

The dungeon should be big. No. It should be huge. Enormous. When designing it make sure to make it have lots of interesting specials and factions so that the players won't get bored, but the overall structure shoul seem endless. Also, and this is important, there shouldn't be any exits. The dungeon itself is the campaign setting.

Here are some hypothetical explanations for this:

Hell or purgatory is a really weird dungeon. You're there now.
This is the remnants of some crazy-big spaceship that went all metamorphosis alpha in the most D&D way possible.
Some stupid wizard built it and wants to see how brave heroes from various dimensions work together.
It's an ark.
The PCs are part of some past experiment to see what the future will be like a la The Morrow Project or Idiocracy. Turns out it's a dungeon filled with morlocks. Who knew?

One last note: whatever your explanation is, one of the factions should think everyone is in hell. It's just better that way.

CSIOSR

2011-11-23T21:32:00.000-05:00

Last night I suggested that someone should do a city campaign on G+, and over a number of different posts this idea has evolved into a shared campaign with multiple players and multiple DMs all in the same city. Something like a tabletop version of Thieves' World.

I must admit that I'm not entirely sure yet how such a campaign would function, but the idea is one that I would totally be on board for. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions post them here.

I Don't Know if Anyone Still Cares About This...

2011-11-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

...but I'm a Pundit. Does that mean I have to start smoking a pipe and complaining about Swine?

More Unfocused Thoughts on Arklyrell

2011-11-23T07:24:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I messed around with this, but I've had a bunch of ideas I haven't articulated so here they are:

A lot of this setting will be based on The Sword's Album Warp Riders. They're both set on a tidally locked planet of science fantasy nonsense, so I thought they fit well together.
The south is ruled by the Chronomancer, a pseudo-immortal God-Lich of immense power. He trades minerals and other natural resources with the civilizations on the campaign map that are mined on the Day Side of the planet. He does this with a horrid, skeletal work-force.
The Chronomancer is probably equal amounts machine and undead.
The Elves on the Night Side get more tribal as it gets colder. The ones closest to the sea are (comparatively) hospitable.
One of the cities in the icy part of the map is totally going to be Vornheim.
System will probably be LL + AEC so that I can have some of the doofier classes like Illusionist and Assassin in there. I'll also add some weird races like Ghuls.
Equipment list will include a giant, white dragonfly that you can purchase as a mount.
I might get rid of the Roc nests, but I'm not sure about that yet. They provide a good excuse for the large citadels. It's sorta like Might & Magic 1 where the people live in underground cities to avoid being burned to death by dragons.
Treasure tables are totally going to include Mutant Future artifacts.
I need to work the Fuel-less Fire in there somewhere. (In case you haven't guessed from the other posts that mention it in passing, the Fuel-less Fire is a sentient patch of radiation).
I bet I'd use the Fiend Folio pretty heavily when making wandering monster tables, but that's just a guess.
There are ruins on both the Day and the Night Side. No one knows how they got there.
I've pretty much settled on the human settlements on the islands being grunting, Mycenaean types.
Dwarves are gross, genetically engineered degenerates who mine precious things out of the mountains on the islands. Rumor says that a strange, dark skinned race of Dwarves lives on the Day Side, but that's probably impossible.

That's all for now. I'm probably not going to do much more with this, but that stuff had been in my mind for a while.

Nightwick Abbey Visual Inspiration

2011-11-22T01:22:00.002-05:00

This stuff has been cluttering my Nightwick Abbey folder, so I decided to post it here. I may have put some of it on here before, but I don't really care. As with the last post, click to embiggen.

From the Journal of Brother Leif

2011-11-21T14:12:00.000-05:00

Here is one of the player's report's of Saturday's session. You can read Zak's slightly more stream of consciousness version of events as well.

Visual Inspiration for My Next Project

2011-11-21T07:16:00.000-05:00

This'll probably be for the Hell-Caverns, but I may do something else. Click them to embiggen. Trust me, you want to.

If you're not following Monster Brains, then you should be.

Attention People Who Make Geomorphs

2011-11-20T17:52:00.000-05:00

I've been using Geomorphs for Nightwick Abbey since the the first time I ran it in its current form. Since that time, one thing has been a constant thorn in my side: those damn geomorphs are hard to describe to players! I love how easy and quick they make mapping interesting dungeon levels with lots of connections and nonlinear stuff, but they make rooms really hard to get across without looking at the actual geomorph.

Sometimes this isn't a problem, especially when I have a mat handy, but on G+ it's a nightmare.

So I guess what I'm saying is make some more ones that have square rooms.

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon (The Actual Session 3)

2011-11-20T13:30:00.000-05:00

Throughout the Dark Country dark rumors have begun to spread. The soldiers who frequent the Medusa's Head Tavern in Nightwick village say that the Abbey has become more active in recent weeks, no doubt due to the meddling of all these bizarre foreigners who have recently come to the village. They have the look of dangerous men, and the peasants and the soldiers -- who rarely agree on anything -- know they are not to be trusted.

Yesterday, a dark omen was seen in the village. According to several of the more superstitious peasants two priests were seen heading up to the abbey with a foreigner and even stranger company: a talking pig and a talking hound the likes of which no one in this benighted country has seen. No doubt these priests were actually warlocks in a clever guise, for only the devil could be behind such dealings. What they did there no one knows, but the barkeep at the Medusa's Head swears on his life that shortly after they were seen a talking pig arrived at his establishment and paid for a drink and a room with ancient coinage.

Hopefully some of the players will comment on their experiences, and I remind them that they receive a 10% experience bonus if they write up a session report.

If you're interested in playing in future sessions send me an email at evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom. We play every Saturday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST.

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon (Session 3)

2011-11-19T16:30:00.003-05:00

The party, after purchasing several dogs and a linkboy named Richard, headed straight to the du

Edit: This is a joke. The internet in my neighborhood crashed as soon as they got passed the entrance to the dungeon.

Nightwick Abbey NPCs

2011-11-18T16:43:00.000-05:00

Lord Eckhard is the appointed governor of Nightwick. He is a boisterous and opinionated man who was exiled from the Realm several years ago. He made a name for himself as a mercenary in the Bishop of Lichegate's army and was "rewarded" with this posting after the Bishop had the previous governor executed. He is a short but broad man with a large beard. He is fond of wearing his battle scared armor even when it is impractical to do so.

Father Roderick serves as the village priest. He is a soft spoken balding man of tall stature and thin frame. He gets on well enough with the pagan members of Nightwick's population. He believes the Church's chief goal in the area should be to protect the innocent from the horrors that lurk in the forests and old ruins. This has put him at odds with the Bishop Notker, but Notker has not yet found a priest who will willingly live that close to the Abbey.

Bruno is the proprietor of the Medusa's Head tavern. He is a veteran of a number of campaigns both in the West and the Dark Country. Currently he primarily caters to the men-at-arms in the service of Lord Eckhard, but he has enough rooms to put up travelers. Bruno looks like an out of shape former athlete, and he loves to hear tales of blood and thunder as they remind him of his glory days.

Rupert van Toad is a Frogling merchant who sells his wares outside of the North Gate. He is not allowed within the walls due to a law passed by the Bishop. He has a finely appointed shack that, sadly, lets too much of the cold, and during the winter months he becomes sluggish. His wares are usually of fine quality, and he "rarely" overcharges.

Duncan is a simpleton with a surprising gift for making metal objects. His slack-jaw, scraggly hair and filthy clothes make some newcomers to the village a bit uneasy. He serves as the town blacksmith and makes weapons, armor, and more mundane things of the finest quality. His mother was, if rumor is to believed, a witch and so few are willing to take advantage of his decreased mental state.

Halfdan the Black is the local wizard. He lives in a stout tower only a few hundred feet from the village. He is not fond of guests and typically only leaves his tower when he needs to purchase new "supplies" from Rupert. He occasionally takes interest in magicians who make expeditions into the Abbey, but few know the purpose behind this. The villagers know him as a man of mercurial moods and believe that he is best avoided. His hair is long and unkempt and his clothes look as though he took them from the body of a dead noble buried a half a century ago.

Bishop Notker the Unshaven is an officious and arrogant clergyman who presides over Lichegate and the villages and towns that surround it. He is a small man with a round head and he dresses in the finest vestments possible. Recent pagan actions against his men and position have angered him immensely and he wishes the governors and priests under his jurisdiction would take a harder stance on pagan practice.

Monsters of the Hell-Caverns (Updated Periodically)

2011-11-17T20:29:00.000-05:00

The Hell-Caverns (of Narbonne?) are stuck in my brain. Here are some monsters I started working on before I decided I needed to focus on the dungeon I'm currently running (Nightwick Abbey). This list owes a lot to the Dismal Depths as do most of my monster designs.

If I ever go back to working on this project, I'll update the list as I need to flesh out the dungeons.

Awful Rats (N) AC 14 Move 12 HD ½ Horrid rats with crow heads. On a natural 20 to hit, roll again. If the roll is again a 20, the attacked character takes maximum damage and loses an eye.

Maggot Men (N) AC 12 Move 12 HD ½ Small creatures that resemble a combination of human and maggot features. Build huts out of spittle and filth. Wield stone spears and daggers (break on natural roll of 1). Leaders have 3HD.

Frogmen (C) AC 12 Move 9/18 HD 1-1 Small, bloated toad-like humanoids. Usually waddle uncomfortable, but will occasionally jump to attack. Gains +1 to hit and damage. Love the taste of Maggot men.

Skeleton (C) AC 14/15 Move 9 HD 1-1 Undead. Ancient warriors animated using foul magic or mad science. Typically wield rusted swords and shields but 25% chance of having a bow and 3d6 arrows. Take only 1 damage from piercing and slashing weapons. Take normal damage from bludgeons.

Morlock (C) AC 14/15 Move 12 HD 1 Degenerate descendants of a technologically advanced race. Wield stone weapons (break on natural 1). 25% chance of having a bow and 3d6 arrows. Leaders have 4 HD and are often found with mail armor and steel weapons.

Robbers (C) AC 14/15 Move 12 HD 1 Hoodlums who have hidden in the dungeon. Typically outfitted in leather and shield. 25% chance of bow and 3d6 arrows. Leaders have 6 HD and wear mail.

Cur (N) AC 12 Move 12 HD 1 Mangy, aggressive dogs. Used as guard dogs by many of the intelligent dungeon inhabitants.

Mole Men (N) AC 14 Move 9 HD 1+1 Pseudo-insectoid humanoids with large claws for burrowing. Sometimes used as slaves by morlocks. Those not enslaved will kill morlocks on sight.

Creepy Crawlies (N) AC 13 Move 6 HD 2 Cleanup crew. Blanket of flesh eating insects. Hit all opponents in a 20’x20’ area as if they were AC 12. 1 in 6 chance of being poisonous. All attacks deal 1 damage, except fire which does maximum damage.

Deros (C) AC 16 Move 12 HD 2 Unfortunates who have used the Deros Machine on level 3. Have cobolt colored skin, milk-white blood, and red eyes. Attack anything that isn’t a Dero.

Ghoul (C) AC 14 Move 12 HD 2 Undead. Appear as hybrids of humans and hyenas. Surprise on 1-3 on 1d6. Touch paralyzes (Save allowed) for 3d6 rounds.

Glow Mutant (N) AC 12 Move 9 HD 2 Poor, irradiated bastards. Constantly scream and glow as a torch only green. Never surprise party. If hit is successful, target is grabbed and takes damage each round until the creature is slain.

Zombie (C) AC 12 Move 9 HD 2 Undead. They’re Zombies. Only take 1 damage from piercing weapons. Slashing and bludgeoning weapons act normally.

More Unfocused Thoughts on the Hell-Caverns

2011-11-17T09:22:00.000-05:00

One of the entrances to the caverns will be an archway in the dungeons of the local castle. The castellan's ancestor who built the edifice stole a number of stones from the ruins nearby and even some inside the caves. At certain times of day, the doorway -- which is made entirely out of stones from the caverns -- turns into a portal to some deeper level.
I picture the monster list as a mixture of lost world fare, mythos booglies, more traditional looking demons (with extradimensional origins), and radioactive mutants. Those last guys look like this:

The rules would definitely be LotFP, but I'd draw from Realms of Crawling Chaos and the Dismal Depths as well. The Black City is also a big inspiration.
I'm refining the elevator pitch to '"The Black God's Kiss" meets the Shaver Mystery.'
I might be able to cannibalize some of my Uz material, particularly deros.
In case it isn't obvious yet, the Hell-Caverns aren't entirely made out of caverns. Depending on whether or not I use Dave's Mapper this could mean that theres an even mix of caves and dungeon or it could mean that the various Saturday Night Specials are manufactured complexes and are connected by natural caves and tunnels.
The magic items and dungeon specials are as likely to be technological as they are magical. Since the characters are High Medieval knights, clerics, and magicians I don't think this will matter all that much to them. It's all deviltry.
Mole people. There will definitely be mole people.
You will find few more staunch opponents of Erich von Daniken than I, but his fantastical bullshit makes good fodder for D&D.
I bet I'll be using the Random Esoteric Creature yadda yadda quite a bit.
Despite the name of the dungeon, I'll be taking a slightly more atheistic attitude towards the metaphysics of the setting. I'm not sure where clerics get their powers from yet. The Malleus Monstrorum for CoC -- an awesome book btw -- I think says Jesus might be an avatar of Yog-Sothoth. While that offends me on some small level, I suppose it's kinda neat if I'm also throwing von Daniken in the mix.
When I settle on a specific location I'll change the name of the dungeon to The Hell-Caverns of X.
I think the Hell-Caverns of Narbonne sounds good, but the Hell-Caverns of Conques could explain where the vivid depictions of demons on the Cathedral of St Foy come from.

An Alternate Play Report Method

2011-11-17T08:28:00.001-05:00

I just remembered the Ryth Chronicle presents a considerably more truncated sort of play report than the ones more commonly found in the blogosphere. Fore example, my last Google + session would have looked something like this:

A: Group of 4 player characters and 1 henchman descended down the steps in the North Tower on two separate expeditions. Lost 2 in a berserker ambush and were forced to retreat with little treasure. Purchased several dogs and recruited 2 new characters and attempted a second expedition. Lost no characters and gained 400sp and some leather armor made from human, but lost all of the dogs and failed to push beyond the dungeon entrance.

This form only represents the first few reports in the Chronicle, but I thought it might be a neat way to do a quick session report. Still, I like the idea of the players sharing their experiences, so I'll likely continue to use my current method for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps I can use this form when none of the players has the time to make their own reports.

Another idea, though one I imagine would be quite difficult, would be to put out a ConstantCon newsletter that included a list of the active characters and the expedition reports from the various dungeons. That could be pretty sweet and I know I'd read it. Maybe DMs could through in a short article or two about their dungeons/campaign worlds.

I Don't Think My Players Would Agree

2011-11-17T08:05:00.000-05:00

Lawful Good Human Cleric (3rd Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength- 9

Dexterity- 9

Constitution- 10

Intelligence- 14

Wisdom- 13

Charisma- 15

Alignment:

Lawful Good- A lawful good character acts as a good person is expected or required to act. He combines a commitment to oppose evil with the discipline to fight relentlessly. He tells the truth, keeps his word, helps those in need, and speaks out against injustice. A lawful good character hates to see the guilty go unpunished. Lawful good is the best alignment you can be because it combines honor and compassion. However, lawful good can be a dangerous alignment when it restricts freedom and criminalizes self-interest.

Race:

Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:

Clerics- Clerics act as intermediaries between the earthly and the divine (or infernal) worlds. A good cleric helps those in need, while an evil cleric seeks to spread his patron's vision of evil across the world. All clerics can heal wounds and bring people back from the brink of death, and powerful clerics can even raise the dead. Likewise, all clerics have authority over undead creatures, and they can turn away or even destroy these creatures. Clerics are trained in the use of simple weapons, and can use all forms of armor and shields without penalty, since armor does not interfere with the casting of divine spells. In addition to his normal complement of spells, every cleric chooses to focus on two of his deity's domains. These domains grants the cleric special powers, and give him access to spells that he might otherwise never learn. A cleric's Wisdom score should be high, since this determines the maximum spell level that he can cast.

Need a Megadungeon Idea?

2011-11-16T23:18:00.001-05:00

How about Derinkuyu?

Assuming Google image search didn't lie to me, you even have a side view:

Edit: Heres a better side view

click to embiggen

Unfocused Thoughts on the Hell-Caverns

2011-11-16T20:19:00.000-05:00

Hercules in the Hell-Caverns is one of the least-recounted tales of that hero

While it's unlikely that I'll seriously develop another megadungeon in the near future, I thought I would spend a bit more time thinking about what I would do withe the Hell-Caverns. There are three reasons I decided to go with the Hell-Caverns instead of Old Jerah. First, the Hell-Caverns are much closer to my normal aesthetic, and therefore if I ever decided to run them I would be much less likely to experience the Gamer ADD that often overcomes me when I run things that aren't pseudo-medieval dark fantasies. Second, the Hell-Caverns model offers a bit more flexibility. It's much easier to imagine pseudo-Babylonian ruins in a dungeon beneath a medieval milieu than it is to imagine gothic ruins in dungeon beneath a Babylonian milieu. Finally it fits better with the implied setting of LotFP.

Here are some unfocused thoughts:

I'd probably place the dungeon near Conques since I have some familiarity with that region in the time period I wish to set the game.*
Narbonne might also work.
The wilderness around the caverns would mostly be populated with mundane encounters. Robber knights, wolves, bandits, pilgrims, heretics, etc.
I might do separate encounter tables for day and night, with some small chance of encounter creatures from the nearest dungeon entrance at night.
Some of the upper dungeons will be the remnants of a monastery carved into the side of a mountain.
The caverns contain a mixture of medieval, Greco-Roman, Atlantean, snake-men, and old ones ruins. Generally the deeper you go the older, and therefore more alien, stuff gets but there are isolated nuggets of the weirder shit in the upper levels.
I kinda picture this as the the Shaver Mystery during the Albigensian Crusade. In other words: they'll be a shit-ton of heretics and morlocks.
Some areas of the caverns are miles across and are essentially lost worlds with their own ecosystems. These will usually just have dinosaurs or ice age megafauna, but sometimes they'll have weirder things too.
I'd probably put more strange lights in the dungeon, rather than the pitch-blackness that clouds Nightwick Abbey.
CAS's Averoigne is once again a big influence (as is his Hyperborean Cycle). Much like the Averoigne stories, many of the menaces will be Mythos (Smythos?) in nature, but the characters -- or at least the NPCs -- will contextualize them as Abrahamic demons.
If the Dark Country is my attempt to do Averoigne and Uz is my attempt to do Zothique then the Hell Caverns are all three of his big cycles pushed together.

That's it for now. I'll possibly put up more later, but who knows?

Two Weird Fantasy Megadungeon Ideas

2011-11-16T08:44:00.000-05:00

Old Jerah: Once the City of Mot, the One Who Pulls into His Gullet, now all that is left of Old Jerah are broken buildings and its supposedly endless catacombs. When the priest-kings of Jerah ruledit was known as a place of great terror, and all slaves and soldiers feared becoming the next sacrifice to the Black God of Ghouls.

Then, if accounts are to be believed, the demon Li-Lit appeared in the temple of Mot and slew his priests and the Priest-King himself. Only the women of Old Jerah, which was famous for it's misogyny even among the harem managers of Almodad, survived. They fled the ruins and founded the city that men currently call Jerah and set there a black temple dedicated to the night demon that freed them.

Since then Old Jerah has lain in ruins. The merchants who travel in caravans that pass near the outskirts of the necropolis tell dark tales in the taverns. They whisper of inbred degenerates, hyena-headed ghoul-priests, and strange lights that dart about the ruins.

The Hell-Caverns: In the eons before humankind walked the earth far stranger races built towered cities on the great continents of the world. Great were the heights they reached, and even greater were the cataclysms that crushed their palaces beneath the earth. Many were their names and numbers, but all these are lost to humankind's memory. Their forms too were numerous, and they can be guessed at from their degenerate descendants that often dwell in the deep places of the world.

One such place lies near a small town in the Languedoc region of France. The rocky landscape hides a vast network of caves and ruins. Many of these ruins were built by humans in some forgotten epoch when fair Atlantis or distant Mu were in their infancy. Some are older still, built by slithering things with alien masters. These creatures wielded magic and technology beyond the understanding of men.

Those that have gone in the caves seldom speak of their experiences. Those that do often are cleansed with holy fire by the Church, for what they say questions the nature of humankind and its centrality to God's universe. Some even question the existence of God, pointing to the unquiet things that lurk in the dark as evidence that some far more strange power than Him governs the universe. Those that can be bothered to stop their heretical babbling do tell of glittering gems and items of wondrous power, but their usually shuffle off this mortal coil shortly thereafter.

Nightwick Abbey G+ Play Report

2011-11-12T16:47:00.006-05:00

The G+ Nightwick Campaign will primarily rely on player made play reports. Below is one from Zaunn, a Magic User:

It was a dark and loathsome day as I, the mage Zaunn, joined forces with warrior Sigmar, the sorcerer Igor, his dog Frankenstein, Beaumont the unruly and his manservant Gentle Ben to plunder the ruins of Nightwick Abbey or as I would like to think of it, "The Temple-Tomb of Elemental Horror".

Climbing over the fallen abbey wall we made our way to the north tower where Sigmar had explored before. Within we opened a trapdoor and proceeded down a rusted ladder to the dungeon proper. At my suggestion we lowered a rope tied to an iron spike in the floor of the tower as to supplement the ladder as I did not trust it to withstand our weight.

Once down we discovered and followed stairs leading down into the darkness. At the bottom there was a large chamber and a corridor. We followed the corridor but before we reached the far end I heard from ahead a voice cry out "shut up you fool!" from behind a closed door. We threw open the portal and found within 6 warriors dressed in leather armour made from tanned human skin. Battle was joined. But alas Beaumont, Sigmar, and Frankenstein all fell to the blades of their foes but not before one of the evil cultist was themselves slain.

Igor and I beat a hasty retreat. All the more hasty as Igor had the only source of light. We rapidly climbed up the ladder and made it to the top as the cultists reached its foot. They jeered us from below and Igor cast down his lantern, smiting one of them in the face. He fell, dead, his face aflame and his companions retreated themselves lest we launch more flaming missiles in their direction.

Returning to Nightwick town the three of us, as Gentle Ben had also survived, recruited to new companions. These were Redwall and the Cleric Gregor. We also purchased hounds, Igor to replace his lost Frankenstein while Gregor and I felt is best to beef up our party as best we can and dogs were the cheapest force available to us. Gregor and I both bought two dogs apiece, mine I named Riddler and Lemming. Our task was to recover the remains of Beaumont and Sigmar and perhaps avenge their deaths upon their killers.

Thus upon the next day we returned to the Abbey, descended the rope, as I suspected that the ladder had somehow alerted them to our descent upon our previous expedition. Arriving in the large room at the foot of the stairs we encountered the undead corpse of the burned cultist. Unleashing the dogs we surrounded it. It lashed out and slew my Lemming but Riddler and I soon cut it down.

At this point things went down hill for us again. Igor was overcome by "disconnection sickness" He retreated with Frankenstein the second, leaving the lantern with Redwall. Meanwhile before I could examine the defeated undead Gregor seized up Redwall's crowbar and forced open the door to the chamber where we had encountered the cultist before. The four of them were there. However Gregor had made such noise opening the door our chances of surprising them were nil. Again we retreated, Redwall leaving a booby-trap in the form of a bedroll across the hallway. We made it to the ladder but this time the cultists were close on our heels. We ordered the surviving dogs to attack as we climbed to safety. The dogs slew half the cultists, the remained of whom fled, chased by the remaining dogs. I took the opportunity to loot the fallen cultists and thus we were able to leave with 400 silver coins, 2 hideous suits of leather armour and two longswords. The coins were divided between the four of us while Redwall and I took a suit of the armour apiece; I suspect it may be enchanted. Nobody expressed an interest in the swords so I dragged them back to town with us to see what their resale value might be, if any. Who knows, perhaps I may be able to learn something about from where the cultists are being equipped.

Zaunn.

If you're interested in playing in future sessions send me an email at evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom. We play every Saturday from 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST.

Nightwick Abbey and the Philosophy of Raggi's Game

2011-11-10T22:00:00.000-05:00

Let me start by saying I wouldn't describe Nightwick Abbey or the Dark Country as "weird." According to Beedo's taxonomy of horror the Nightwick Campaign should fall firmly into the Supernatural Horror camp. While the Church of Law is a bit too hierarchical -- some might say fascist -- to be truly considered good in the context of modern, Western society, it is somewhat admirable in its eternal struggle to hold back the creatures of the Pit. In light of the fact that the greater evil is, in fact, Satan, the God of Law and his followers more or less fill in the "good" niche. The setting is intentionally filled with a mix of Judeo-Christian and Gothic imagery, even if that imagery is filtered through metal album covers.

But there is a reason I picked Lamentations of the Flame Princes: Weird Fantasy Roleplaying as my preferred system for the setting. The primary reason is that the players' part of the rules is almost a perfect fit. The classes work not only the way I want them to on a mechanical level, but also on a flavor level. This is especially true of Magic-Users. On a more petty level, I'm generally a fan of Ascending AC and I enjoy the fact that any class can wield any weapon or wear any armor, but these reason pale in comparison to the way that the overall flavor of the rules meshes with my vision of the game.

At least on the players' side of the screen. I'm not as comfortable with some of the advice for the GM's side of the screen, or rather I'm not as comfortable with it for what I want to do right now. The two key points of tension are monsters and magic items. Raggi, rather famously, doesn't like standardized monsters, and I agree with him, up to a point. Where it becomes a problem is in the stocking of a megadungeon. Now, I've already established that I don't mind non-standard monsters. Quite the contrary. I feel that a diversity of such terrors can greatly improve the quality of one's megadungeon.

Herein lies the problem. In Raggi's conception of the game, as I understand it, monsters are only an occasional threat. Of course, when they do show up their supposed to be horrible and memorable. This model doesn't seem to fit terribly well with my vision of Nightwick Abbey. It certainly doesn't fit with the campaign I ran with my face to face group. I'm afraid I'm probably not creative enough to come up with an plethora of completely unique creatures to haunt the abbey, and it just isn't the sort of place where humans are terribly common. I suppose I could use Raggi's own Random Esoteric Creature Generator, but the results would by and large lack the themes that make the Abbey what it is.

Magic items are more of an issue of practicality than anything else. I've pitched this as a FLAISNAILS game, and some of the incoming PCs are undoubtedly going to have magic weapons and armor of the simple +X variety. What is easier: stocking my dungeons in a way that makes those characters consistent, or coming up with some sort of houserules to change those items to be more thematically approprate? What happens if someone gets one of Nightwick Abbeys LotFP style magic items and then takes it over to Wessex?

Still, his ideas are not without merit. Last night I decided to read the example of play in the tutorial book on a whim. I'm generally a fan of such things, and I'm especially fond of the one in Empire of the Petal Throne. Raggi's did not disappoint. While I'm not entirely sure this was the purpose, it reminded me of the more exotic works of Clark Ashton Smith. Specifically I was reminded of "The Weaver in the Vault" and "The Tomb-Spawn." Both of these can more or less be described as TPKs in short story form. They're also among the few dungeons, in the D&D sense, that I've seen in literature.

When I think about D&D, I usually have one of CAS's worlds in the back of my mind. For the Dark Country, Averoigne is undoubtedly the most important of his milieus; however, the above two stories and "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" have profoundly affected the way I view dungeons and D&D in general. When I say that Raggi's model reminds me of those stories I mean it as the highest form of compliment. I must say that I am interested in trying it out in a Smithian context.

So while the G+ version of Nightwick Abbey will not follow his conventions, that doesn't mean that future versions will not. I may try to find a way to wed the two together, or maybe it would be more interesting to think about what kind of campaign dungeon I would develop if I took Raggi's philosophy entirely to heart. Perhaps something like the catacombs of Chaon Gacca.

Whatever Happened to Greyhawk?

2011-11-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't posted a play report or even a musing on Greyhawk and its accompanying castle in about a month (I'm too lazy to check the exact time). There are several reasons for this, but I'll focus on two of them.

First, my group usually meets on Tuesdays, and while that day has been good for me the majority of the time I'd been with them in recent weeks my Tuesdays had gotten a lot more hectic. This is due entirely to graduate school concerns, which I will not bore you with. Since I've been unable to play with them the last few weeks I've turned over my DM responsibilities to one of the players (the one responsible for Verbobonc on our campaign map). I believe he started the Village of Hommlet on Tuesday and I look forward to joining them next week.

So why haven't I talked about Greyhawk while I wasn't playing it? The chief reason is that it doesn't excite me the way it did when the current campaign started. While I liked working on some of the city bits, the dungeon just didn't have the same Evan-ness that Nightwick Abbey does. The Dark Country is the best expression of what I want D&D to be like and while I may occasionally be lured by something more "vanilla" or tongue-in-cheek, it is the setting that has the most traction with my otherwise Gamer ADD addled mind. Handing off the shield to another player and then setting up for the G+ game has allowed me to avoid smashing the campaign against the rocks. I heard the sirens' call, and I handed the rudder to someone with wax in their ears.

On a tangentially related note, I haven't posted on my Traveller blog for essentially the same reasons. I hope to pick it up again in the lull between semesters, but only time will tell if that happens.

The Peril that Lurks Among Ruins

2011-11-09T12:48:00.001-05:00

The Dark Country and Hattiesburg

2011-11-08T23:25:00.000-05:00

To truly understand the Dark Country you have to see the clouds passing over the full moon above the longleaf pines in South Mississippi. It would also help if that same moon was illuminating the still waters of the marsh the water company accidentally created just off of Hatcher Rd. when they failed to recognize and fix a leak that lasted over several months. You would also need to see the yellow lights of my parents house peeking through the trees, strangely contrasting the silvery-blue of the moonlight.

Hattiesburg and its accompanying satellite towns, of which my home town of Purvis is one, were founded shortly after the Civil War as timber towns. They are all firmly in the Pine Belt, and I have it on good authority that the peculiar manner in which the native flora creates a canopy over the roads is a bit creepy to outsiders. If you're driving from Meridian to Hattiesburg you will pass through about two hours of empty forest before little towns start appearing like lights in Mirkwood.

Despite the fact that much of those woods are actually pine tree farms, there is a certain wildness to the area that is hard to describe. What it lacks in mountains, which both my current home and the Dark Country possess, it makes up with a sloppy wetness that creates all manner of streams, swamps, and bogs. I can't help but think that this is the reason that the Dark Country and so many of my other settings are riddled with swampland. Swamps are dangerous and they look dangerous. Those in South Mississippi, and therefore I would wager those in the Dark Country, are a thick mass of brambles that lie below a strange mixture of pines and cypresses.

It is in this context that I used to take my "nightly constitutionals." On cooler nights -- which are rare outside of the winter -- when I couldn't think or needed inspiration, I would grab a walking stick my father made for me and pace up and down the little stretch of road the led to what was once the family farm. I only started doing this in college, and by that time the part which formerly constituted the farm had been taken by the forest.

The farmhouse, where I spent the early phases of my boyhood, is little more than a ruin and the only stable structure on the whole property is the barn that houses my parents last two animals: a feral sow that wondered onto our property and wooed my mother with silly pig antics, and an old mare who my mother could never bring herself to break. My typical route took me to the edge of the old farm, where the marsh mentioned above almost came up to the road, to the "Dead End" sing that stood outside of our neighbor's pasture. Sometimes I could hear the pig crashing through the woods, walking beside me for whatever inscrutable reasons pigs have for doing such things.

The pasture too had a strange sense of benighted mystery. Whenever it would rain, which was quite often, the section closest to the road would become more of a pond than a pasture. This caused the pasture, even in drier times, to become fog-shrouded during the cooler hours of the evening.

Purvis itself is an odd town. Their high school, which I did not attend, had a rather peculiar mascot that I think illustrates some of the town's macabre oddity. They are the Tornadoes. The story goes that when Hattiesburg was first founded, Purvis served as a den of sin that the loggers would go to when they weren't on the job. It was filled with all manner of brothels and gambling parlors. That is until the day the tornado came. Supposedly it caused the clock tower to stop at the very time the town was destroyed. The citizens of Purvis rebuilt, but they left the clock in it's broken state to remind everyone what God does to punish the sinful.

The tower is gone now, and I've only heard the story from my parents and another couple of locals so I can't speak to its veracity. Still, this combination of Baptist mysticism and fog-bound forests fires up my overly imaginative synapses. I am the sort of person who sees supernatural and sinister designs in everything, even if I know they're not real. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but rather a day dreamer. It is this quality that has most affected my presentation of the Dark Country. If it seems like I'm uncannily capable of describing a superstition-riddled patch of swamp and woods, it's because I come from a superstition-riddled patch of swamp and woods.

Inspired by this post at Hill Cantons.

Nightwick Abbey G+ Game Ad

2011-11-07T16:28:00.002-05:00

Nightwick Abbey has lain in ruins for almost two centuries. Built by power hungry knights and mad wizards, it now is home to only ghosts and goblins. Peasants refuse to work in the shadow of the ruined church, and at night eerie lights issue forth from its depths. Many have tried to wrestle gold from the crypts which lie beneath, but few have returned. Are you brave enough to seek your fortune in a demon-haunted dungeon?

A ConstantCon game using the Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Roleplaying rules.*

Play will be from 2:00 - 4:00 PM EST every Saturday. The end time is somewhat flexible, but I'd rather not go longer than two and a half hours.

I'll be determining the party composition randomly. If you would like to be added to my list send an email to evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom. I would like to begin play on the 12th of this month, but I may have to postpone it until the 19th.

This is a FLAILSNAILS game. If you have any questions or need help converting your characters, let me know.

I decided to go with Nightwick because I have material already made for it, and thus it will be less work for me.

* A free version of the rules may be downloaded here.

Edit: I can't spell.

Treasuredeep

2011-11-06T16:29:00.002-05:00

Since I did a pitch for the Wild Lands, I thought I'd do one for Treasuredeep. I originally made to test out the excellent "game" How to Host a Dungeon. My wife gave me the name.

The premise: Many dwarf years* ago, a clan of dwarves sought to build a great hall in a land they knew to be rich in mithril. For many years they toiled in the rock, and from the ore they made many wondrous items and fabulous treasures. Under the Hammerhand kings the dwarves of Treasuredeep entered a golden age. Songs from this time are still sung by dwarves everywhere. These songs tell of great battles against the goblins, of magic swords of terrible power, and of large-breasted mustachioed dwarven maidens.

They also tell of the sad fate of the Hammerhand dwarves. It is said that one day while expanding their hall, the dwarves tunneled into a series of caves that housed the Wyrm as Old as Time. It slew many dwarven warriors and drove them from that section of their mine. In the many years that followed, the Hammerhands led campaign after campaign into the caverns in a desperate attempt to win back the treasures of their fathers and to slay the Wyrm for good and all. Alas none where ever successful, and it is said that the last members of the house of Hammerhand who were still alive led a suicidal charge into the dragon's den, never to be seen again.

In the time since, the Realm of man has spread over the surface, and the races of dwarves and elves have slunk to the dark corners of the world. Now a town of men lies near the most famous entrance to the abandoned mine. Rumors say that the Wyrm as Old as Time has slept for the (human) centuries since it ate the last king. They also say that new residents now lair in the old mine, and they are much less friendly than dwarves. Still, if legends are true their is a fortune in that old mine, and you're just the PCs to get it.

How this works: This one would be much closer to Myrddin in design. Each session is a discrete delve into the dungeon with a randomly selected party roster. The dungeon itself would be a mixture of geomorphs and my own hand drawn maps. Most areas will have a definite theme determined by the results of the How to Host a Dungeon game.

Like the Wild Lands, this campaign concept is vaguely inspired by the Hobbit; however, I think this one would be a bit more gonzo.

I may work up a similar pitch for Nightwick abbey, but I imagine most of my readers are familiar with that dungeon. In session format, it would more or less work the same way as this one.

* dwarf years are much longer than human ones and are based on tectonic processes rather than the movement of the sun.

The Wild Lands

2011-11-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

As I start this post the West Marches model is currently winning by one vote. Though hardly a definitive lead, I decided I'd work up a model for such a campaign just in case. I also figure it'll be fun to do so even if I don't end up running it.

First the premise: PCs are based in a fort town that controls a mountain pass that exits into the Wild Lands. These lands were once part of the Realm but long ago fell into ruin and darkness. Toppled fortresses stand guard over dark forests, goblins prowl the high mountains, and the tombs of nameless kings lie sunken beneath still waters. No caravans cross the Wild Lands. It's up to the PCs to see what has become of the land now that the soldiers of the realm no longer patrol it.

Older races also left their mark on the Wild Lands. The Dwarves once had a a great mountain kingdom there, and the Elves built glittering cities hidden from the eyes of men. These too are now in ruin, and some have been that way since before the Realm was even founded. Who knows what treasures they could hold?

The way this works: each week I'd run about a two hour session with players who have been randomly selected in the manner of Jeff's game. Each session is a discrete expedition into the wilderness or an already discovered dungeon. The wilderness area will probably be fairly small so that you can strike out and return to town in a reasonable amount of time. Players will be responsible for play reports, but I'll post them here on the blog.

Most of the dungeon and lairs will use maps I've taken from various places online. Still, due to my limited prep time I'll probably only be able to have either one medium sized dungeon or a few small dungeons stocked before play begins. As such, I'll be adding dungeons as the game goes on, and just because you passed through a hex doesn't necessarily mean you found everything in it. Most likely though, if I add a dungeon I'll post a rumor about it on this blog so that you're not completely in the dark.

What do you think?

A New Poll and Other G+ Business

2011-11-05T18:18:00.000-04:00

Play Reports: I mentioned earlier that my model for my upcoming G+ game is Jeff's Wessex campaign. Jeff has been making the play reports for that game based on what he imagines the drunker members of the party would tell everyone else in town. This method has a certain charm to it, and I must admit that I'm fond of it; however, I see another potential model in the West Marches campaign. In it the players provided the play reports. I see merits in both and I'm not sure which I'll go with.

Possible Games: Speaking of the West Marches, I'm wondering if G+ needs another megadungeon. While Nightwick Abbey offers a different flavor, it'll be hard to match Jeff's level of quality. I'm wondering if it might be interesting to more directly steal from the West Marches and run a game more focused on wilderness exploration and smaller dungeons. I'd still have a fixed time and randomize the party like Jeff does, but I think a focus on wilderness adventuring might make it stand out more.

I also have another dungeon other than Nightwick Abbey I might do. It's an abandoned Dwarf hold I made with How to Host a Dungeon. It has more entrances and a more interesting vertical set up than Nightwick does. It'd be a bit closer to base line B/X than the Dark Country, but I imagine that isn't a selling point for most of my readers. Vote in the poll if you have a strong feeling about one of these models.

G+ Nightwick Abbey Polls

2011-11-04T18:18:00.000-04:00

I've added two polls so that my readers can help me decide how to run a ConstantCon game I'm planning. My model is entirely stolen from Jeff's Wessex game. Mine will take the players into the dungeons of Nightwick Abbey.

The first question I had was which rules y'all would most like me to use. I'm quite partial to LotFP, though I'll be adding a customized bestiary in order to more easily facilitate megadungeon exploration. Still, Jeff's game uses B/X and I imagine that there will be some crossover in players. As such, I thought I'd open up Labyrinth Lord and B/X as options in order to assure maximum compatibility. Select the one you would prefer.

The second one is to help me decide when I should run the game. I've noted times that are particularly good for me (this semester). Select any of the ones you could potentially make. I'll pick the one that gets the most votes. This time might be subject to change next semester depending on how my work hours shake out, but I tried to pick times that wouldn't bee in too much jeopardy.

You have one week to vote. Post comments here if you have any.

Nightwick Abbey Monsters

2011-11-02T18:13:00.002-04:00

I recently purchased the Grindhouse edition of Raggi's Game. Now that I have all of it in front of me -- at least in pdf form -- I can give it a more honest review than my first one.

But that's not the point of this post. I'm planning on using Raggi's Game to power an online version of Nightwick Abbey if I get the time to do that, and the books have inspired me to make some nonstandard monsters to fill out my dungeon. Now, I'm sure Jim would be disappointed with the fact that I definitely plan on having gaggles of these guys, but at least they aren't just some more hobgoblins.

Submitted for your approval are some of the monsters. Part of me would like to keep them secret in order to make them more of a surprise for my pool of players, but I would like to know what other people think. So here the are:

-- Level 1 --

Beastmen AC 14 HD 1 Move 12” Attacks 1 (Weapon) Morale 8 Horrible combinations of man and animal. Break into tribes based on type of animal. Seem to only be male.

Pool Things AC 12 HD 1-1 Move 12” Attacks 1 (Claw 1d6) Morale 7 Small, humanoid figures with jet black skin. Faces are misshapen and eyes are large and pallid. Supposedly emerge from the blood of slain demons. Surprise on 1-4 on 1d6.

Awful Rats AC 12 HD ½ Move 12” Attacks 1 (Beak 1d6) Morale 7 Gross rats with crow heads. If to hit roll is a 20, roll again. If it is again a 20, the Awful rat tears out the eye of the victim.

Skeletons AC 17/18 (Ranged) HD ½ Move 9” Attacks 1 (Weapon) Morale 12 Skeletal sword brothers and other slain warriors. Wear chain and typically wield spears and long swords.

Devil Men AC 17 HD 1+1 Move 12” Attacks 1 (Weapon) Morale 9 Humanoids with red skin and horns. Unusually well equipped (mail hauberks, longswords, spears, shields).

Children of Stone AC 15 HD ½ Move 9” Attacks 1 (Claw or Vomit, 1d6) Morale 6 Bloated, humanoid figures of small stature. Appear to be made out of a mix of stone and embers. Vomit deals damage as above and Save v. Paralyze must be made or target is blinded.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T02:55:00.003-04:00

Edit: You may prefer...

Nightwick Abbey ConstantCon (Session 1?)

2011-10-30T17:32:00.000-04:00

Last I ran Nightwick Abbey on G+ for two ConstantCon players and my wife. I thought I would have three players plus an old friend of mine, but one of the players said he hadn't used G+ before so I told my wife to make a character just in case.* As it happened, both that player and my old friend couldn't make the game. To make up for it I gave the players two free men-at-arms.

It lasted only about half an hour longer than my face to face sessions with the Knoxville group, but we got much more playing done because we didn't spend as much time bullshitting. I don't mind bullshitting. It's part of the game, but it is nice when you can keep on task sometimes.

The characters were Rando the Halfling (from Wessex) and Sigmar the Viking (who I believe was made especially for this game), ~~Zebina the Cleric~~, and Dominic the Chartreuse.

Here are some random bullet-pointed notes to summarize the game...

The party went on three separate expeditions. Two ended rather badly.
Most of the monsters they encountered were of the undead variety, but there were some human-skin clad berserk devil-worshipers.
Zebina died on the second excursion and so my wife played a character I had made for my friend (Dominic).
We jokingly decided that this version of Nightwick Abbey was somewhere in 12th Century Transylvania because one of the characters was a Viking and the other was from Jeff's Wessex game.
Apparently cultists in medieval Transylvania spoke pig Latin. Who knew?
The session was light on monetary treasure, but they found two magic swords: Man-Killer, a +1 lifedrinker, and Stabber, a +1 short sword.

I may post a more full write up later, but my memory is a bit hazy at the moment. I think it was a good session, though I was a bit mush mouthed at times and at one point I forgot what a fresco is.

I put the "(Session 1?)" up there not because I'm thinking of running it again with the same people, but because I enjoyed it enough to possibly run it in a manner similar to what Jeff does with Wessex (a rotating pool of players). More on that later.

Still Looking for Players

2011-10-27T21:03:00.000-04:00

There are still two slots open for Saturday's G+ game. Shoot me an email if you're interested.

Constantcon Nightwick Abbey Session

2011-10-21T03:16:00.001-04:00

In honor of Halloween, I've decided to run a one shot consisting of the first level of Nightwick Abbey on October 29th, 7:00-11:00pm EST. If you're interested, email me at evanDOTvanDOTelkinsATgmailDOTcom, though I can only take four players.

You can find the the FLAILSNAILS conversions for the Dark Country here.

Edit: the first level of Nightwick Abbey is designed for first level characters, but anything through third level should be fine.