Labyrinth Lord House Rules Mk II

Heres a revamped version of my Labyrinth Lord house rules.

1. 3d6 assign to taste
2. If combined bonus is not +1 or greater, roll a new set of stats
3. Max hp at first level
4. Common abilities: Climb, Search for Traps, Languages, Open Doors, Search, Survival, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, and Tinkering
5. Race Abilities: Stonecunning, Outdoor Stealth (needs a more halfling/gnomey name), Seceret Doors (needs a more Changelingy name)
6. Elves renamed Changelings and Halflings renamed Gnomes
7. Ascending AC -- No armor: 10, Leather: +2, Studded +3, Mail +4, Scale +5, Plate +6, Shield +1
8. LotFP:WFRPG Encumbrance system, along with removal of weapon and armor restrictions
9. Magicians need both hands to cast or a staff.
10. Fighters gain Combat Dominance: Fighters may attack a group of monsters with 1HD or less a number of times equal to their level.
11. Magicians only gain spells from research or scrolls.
12. Secret doors and traps can use different die types a la AD&D

These are also designed to work with the Mentzer version of the Basic rules, and it's possible that if I get a copy of the Expert and Companion versions of those rules I'll switch from Labyrinth Lord all together.  Since the characters haven't advanced past three yet, I haven't worked out the Base Attack Bonus tables for the Ascending AC system.

I'm hoping that this version is a bit more clear.

Apocalyptia

A post over at the Land of Nod has caused me to think about a setting I started to develop a little over two years ago.  Post-apocalyptic fiction is probably my third favorite subset of genre fiction (after Horror and Fantasy); however, I've only used it as the basis for about four sessions of roleplaying.

Those sessions were all set in my short lived Apocalyptia setting.  The name was shamelessly lifted from Fallout 3, but thats how I do things.  I conceived it as a combination of post-apocalyptic, spaghetti western, and hexcrawling campaign.

Prospectors set out on expeditions into the wilderness to find "ancient" ruins where technology lay waiting to be discovered.  Raiders mounted their 'Orses (scaled creatures that disturbingly resemble and don't resemble horses) and rode out to terrorize the various settlements and take slaves back to their unseen masters.  Mercenaries accompanied ranchers on their long cattle drives, where they would take the Big Pigs (exactly what it sounds like) from settlement to settlement.

One thing I changed from the normal post-apocalyptic setup was that this setting was not a desert.  Well, I suppose it was of a sort, but not due to any lack of rain.  Most of the vegetation was either completely dead or rough and poisonous.  The rain was actually the cause of this: whatever caused the end -- I was usually vague on this point -- also caused massive amounts of pollution to enter the water supply.  Rain itself was acidic and horrifying, though a few settlements had makeshift filter systems that allowed them to harness it to grow crops.

Interestingly enough, I decided to set it in Knoxville long before I knew I was moving up here.  Technically it was set between Knoxville and Nashville, which were both in states of terrible disrepair, but never the less it's still set where I'm living now.  The main settlement was Petrol Hill, a small settlement based around an old gas station.  The fuel had long since run dry, but due to clever trading on the part of the original "owner," the settlement was able to acquire other things that made it attractive to possible settlers.

Despite 'Orses and Big Pigs, this was not a zany Gamma World type of setting.  Though few people had them, guns weren't as unheard of as they are in most Gamma World setups, and the general nature of both mutations and adventures was much darker.  I used the BRP yellow book combined with some charts on movement rates and provisions I cooked up the few times I ran it.

I only ran it twice, each time for two sessions.  The first was a murder mystery set in Petrol Hill that the players never solved.  In the second, I converted the lay of the land and general conventions to the Fallout setting and had the players be science oriented vault dwellers stepping out into the world for the first time.  What they found was rough justice and cattle rustlers.

The ultimate reason I dropped it was a lack of clarity in the design.  I wanted my gritty, the Road + Once Upon a Time in the West setting but also wanted something with mutants to stalk the ruins of the past.  It became the kind of conceptual nightmare that Scott of Huge Ruined Pile turns into brilliance, and I turn into a quagmire.  I still daydream about it from time to time.

Since it isn't designed for D&D or one of its variants I'm unlikely to post any further material about it unless there is an extreme amount of interest.  The setting is more or less dead, I was just reminded of it.

Nightwick Abbey Session 1

You have no idea how long I've been waiting to use this picture.

Finally we get to the actual campaign.

I had four players who had contacted me earlier when they found out I lived in Knoxville.  The party consisted of a Thief (specialist), a Magic-User, a Cleric, and a Changeling.  The Changeling's player decided he had ram horns and a generally satyr-like aspect.

Unfortunately, character creation took a bit longer than expected, but not so long as to prevent play all together. Still the actually descent into the dungeon was far less extensive than the outings of my old gaming buddies.

We decided, due to time constraints, to skip over play in town.  I won't do this next session, but I thought it was a good idea as we only had an hour left to get any playing done.  They did hire two hirelings, one torch bearer and one man at arms named Clodivec and Oderic respectively.  My players assert (perhaps correctly) that they had the life expectancy of a mouse at a cat convention.  At the shaft that lead to the entrance, the players suggested tying Clodivec with a rope and lowering him down with a barrel attached to see if there was a "nibble."

At the base of the stairs they found a small chamber.  Opening the door to this was rather difficult, and once open the found that the room was filled about an inch deep with water.  The room was otherwise empty, which deeply disturbed all of my players.  Since the ceiling was too high for their torchlight to reveal it, they elected to leave it the hell alone and crossed into the dungeon proper.

Anyway, they took much the same route of the earlier party and ended up in the torture chamber/prison.  Here, since it's a keyed encounter and they hadn't been in the dungeon before, they found the same Death Worm that had been so easily slain by the previous delvers.  It put up a much more vigorous fight here.  Its hypnotic dance immediately transfixed everyone in the party other than the cleric.  To his dismay we discovered that Death Worms are not in fact undead.  He went toe to toe with the beast but was sadly slain.  Still, he managed to hold it off long enough that it only had one round to attack before the rest of the party left their stupor.  The Magic-User pelted the thing with Magic Missile and they returned to town to bury their friend.

Not the most exciting session, but it's a start.  The players seemed to enjoy it, and have asked me to run it again.  Hopefully we're looking at the start of a regular campaign.

 Sorry I don't have the character's names, but they only got an hour of play time and I can't find where I wrote down their marching order.

One Page Megadungeon Project

I've been giving a little more thought to my one page-geomorph-megadungeon project.  I'm beginning to wonder if the Underworld is the best place for such a project.  Yes, one perfectly fits in it, but I don't know how useful it would be to other DMs.  Also, I discovered over Thanksgiving that I obtain a perverse joy from stocking things with the DMG and FF.

My question is this: gentle reader, would you prefer freely available versions of an as yet unnamed Underworld Megadungeon, or levels of Nightwick Abbey edited for popular consumption?

There is of course a third option where I use the excellent How to Host a Dungeon game to get the broad areas and then detail them on the blog.  If I do so I'll most likely edit the game to fit better in Nightwick's setting.

I be placing a poll on the blog to ascertain the general opinion on the matter.

A Quick Question

Is anyone else trying to import AD&D/OSRIC/AEC classes into a game thats using the LotFP encumbrance/armor system?  How did you do it?

Sorry about the lack of a Monster Monday, but I'm a bit swamped right now.  Regular posting will return the week after next.

Nightwick Abbey Test Session II

Again I warn any readers living in the Knoxville who may be playing in this dungeon starting Tuesday to find something else to do.  Spoilers ahead.

This session began with the party recruiting a few more hirelings before heading off into the dungeon.  That done, they sought to explore a hallway that they had bypassed the previous session.  To their surprise, they found that it was quite short and ended in a large chamber.  Here some men in red robes seemed to be at work, painting various things on the walls.

The party quickly surmised that these were not truly living men, but rather undead revnants.  Alma managed to turn them and they fled from her sight before battle could be joined.  They then set about exploring a southern corridor.  At the end of it they found a door that was rather difficult to open, but Schlog managed to force it anyway.  Beyond they found a massive chamber filled with bats and their rather foul excrement.  The ceiling was far out of their torch's range, but they could tell by the squeaking that they had stumbled into a bat cave.  Armand elected to hurl a few vials of flaming oil into the room, neglecting the fact that the party had spied a large crack in the ceiling where the sun shown in.  The floor quickly caught ablaze and they exited.

After leaving, they heard a deafening noise emanate, as if a large creature had been stirred.  They were not the only ones who heard it.  They proceeded (quickly) down a side passage and found themselves confronted with a set of fat, saucer-eyed creatures.  The Goblins, upon seeing that the party was not in fact some horrible collection of beasts, seemed rather disinterested.  They let down their guard, but refused to let the party pass. Fearing the large number of Goblins, the party elected to treat with them a bit.  The squat things referred to a master, simply called "the Boss," and they had a bizarrely long conversation about the number of whippings they received from this figure.

Realizing a deal could not be reached and that the Goblins were growing impatient, the party decided to seek down a corridor they had not yet ventured into.  This corridor lay beyond the room where they had first seen the zombies diligently painting.  The undead had since returned and continued their work in eerie quite.  The Cleric again shooed them away with a wave of her cross.  They entered and began to debate their next course of action.  Unfortunately, the zombies quickly returned and set upon them while they were in disarray.

The fighting was fierce, and though the party was triumphant they were badly injured and most of their hirelings went to meet their maker.  They wisely decided it was time to return to town and recoup.  This took a number of days, during which time Coll heard that several loggers and trappers had gone missing after entering the woods.

They soon found the source of this trouble:  several giant bats that laired in the large chamber they set ablaze.  Angered by the flames, the bats had set forth to hunt and reek terrible vengeance on men.  The party found these creatures and did battle with them in the forest outside of the dungeon.  The party made it away relatively unscathed and set forth to return to Nightwick Abbey.

This time, at the behest of Coll's player, they decided to look through the cemetery that lay near the abbey proper.  In it they found a vault that concealed an entrance to some (apparently) extensive catacombs.  These were guarded by two iron statues that looked like this.

These proved to be insanely tough, though the party was luck in that they left the Paladin and the Cleric alone.  Unfortunately Coll -- whose player had suggested they enter in the first place -- perished along with his hirelings.  The party returned to town and he rolled up a Magic-User in short order.

When they returned, they elected to not tackle the remaining statues, but instead to continue down the path they had intended before the fight with the zombies.  One of the rooms along this corridor was a storage room with miraculous properties.  It appeared as though it had recently been cleaned and occupied, and a torched blazed on its wall.  However, any material brought outside this room aged as though it went through one hundred years in an instant.  The players spent the rest of the evening conducting experiments in this chamber. My favorite of which was when they brought several books from the library inside and found that they had reformed and were almost brand new (until being removed from the room).

All in all it was a fine session.  When Coll's player had to make a new character, I realized that I need to reform certain things about the Druid before it is a viable class for my system.  LotFP:WFRPG's strange encumbrance/armor rules (which I enjoy) are largely incompatible with the requirements of a Druid.  I will also need to decide how much Scale, Banded, and Splint armor add to encumbrance.

Nightwick Abbey Test Session

Wednesday night marked the first time I've run this version of Nightwick Abbey for a face-to-face group.  I'm happy to report that it went tremendously well.  There are a few things I'll have to tweak before presenting it to the face-to-face group in Knoxville, but it hit pretty spot on.

Before I get started talking about the session itself, I want to say a few words about how I prepared the dungeon for our would-be delvers.  I'm using a strange hybrid of Labyrinth Lord and LotFP:WFRPG for my system, but I found myself consulting the AD&D DMG and FF more than those two volumes.  I got a strange joy using those to stock my dungeon levels that I find very hard to convey.  It is physically impossible for it to be nostalgia because my first game was 3e.

Anyway, first I placed the various "Saturday Night Specials" that lie in the first layer of Nightwick Abbey.  Then I used the DMG and FF to stock the first three levels with monsters and the LL book for the various treasures and traps.  The map itself was a combination of Dizzy Dragon's interpretations of Dyson's geomorphs and Risus Monkey's geomorphs.  Each level is pretty dense, with about 80-100 rooms.

We had a total of five players, but two came to the game significantly later.  The first three characters to plumb those terrifying halls were...

Alma, a Cleric dedicated to the God of Law
Schlog, a pagan Fighting-Man who has a strange obsession with bones
Coll, a converted Specialist

I mostly skipped over their time in the village, allowing them to look for hirelings.  They found quite a few, and when they were satisfied they headed through the woods to the Abbey itself.

If you are possibly going to play in the Knoxville campaign please stop reading now.

They found that the abbey consisted solely of a large church and a graveyard.  The players noted that there seemed to be no sign of a cloister or dormitories for the monks who once lived there, and found it strange that it would be so.  They church itself was mostly ruined except for the foundations of two bell towers.  They discovered the staircase down within one of these.

At the bottom of the staircase, they found a large room that seemed to be a prison of some sort.  While investigating the rather fearsome torture devices there, a large snake-like creature made entirely out of a man's spinal column and skull surprised them.  Its strange dance caused all but Schlog and Coll to be completely entranced.  Fortunately they were able to dispatch the thing on their own (I had rolled pitifully for its HP).  They were most interested in a small dais that was bloodstained.

While attempting to discern the purpose of this oddity, they overheard the approach of a number of armored individuals.  It was a patrol of heavily outfitted skeletons who attacked once they saw the party.  Luckily, Alma was able to turn them and the fighters and hirelings were able to destroy them before they could flee back down the hallway.  Schlog then broke open all of their bones to see if there was any treasure within.

After exploring a few empty chambers, they found one covered in various bits of refuse.  Coll -- fearing the presence of an Otyugh -- refused to enter but prodded about with his 10ft pole.   His pole was grabbed by a pallid tentacle, and then the horrible face of a Carrion Crawler (or Carcass Scavenger if you prefer the LL nomenclature) appeared to greet them.  At this point the hirelings in the back rank bolted down an unexplored hallway.  The party the heard a number of strange, semi-intelligent, noises echo down the corridor that the hirelings had just fled through.

Schlog and Coll's players argued over whether or not they should close the door to the room with the Carcass Scavenger in it or if they should attack it.  Schlog ran in quasi-suicidally but due to lucky rolls (and the fact that I seemed incapable of rolling high on HD the whole night) he killed it in one, swift blow.

They then turned to greet the number of deer-headed orcs that stampeded down the hallway at them.  After fierce fighting, one character lay unconscious and their linkboy had soiled himself but the party was alive.  They retreated back to town to recoup and plan.

At this point the other players arrived, and they made their characters while the original party re-outfitted.  All but one of their (living) hirelings decided to jump ship after their previous expedition, but they were able to garner some new ones before venturing forth again into the dungeon.

The new players had not quite finished their characters before this, so I needed a way to work them in.   I rolled a random encounter check and decided that these characters were the remnants of a party that had been destroyed by whatever I just rolled.  So two screaming men running as fast as they could confronted the party.  Behind them came 15 Mites.  These were dispatched surprisingly easily (due to an ability I gave Fighting Men which I need to remove immediately).

There new companions were...
Armand, a Paladin
Franz, another Specialist

After arguing a bit over the contents of the room, and some rather humorous roleplaying (Franz has an IQ of 3, but believes it to be considerably higher), they continued off through the dungeon.

They next found a large room with an immense tapestry.  This tapestry seemed to shift in the flickering light of their lamps.  When the light hit it directly it depicted a number of valiant Sword Brothers slaughtering some demonized pagans.  When slightly obscured by shadow it seemed to depict innocents running from the fiendish blades of a number of undead horseman.

Beyond this chamber they glimpsed a figure in red robes who seemed to be placing a book in a shelf.  They debated what to do about this, as the Paladin was able to detect that a number of other chaotic creatures laired within.  They hastily formed a plan and destroyed the monsters -- which they determined were zombies -- with the liberal use of flaming oil.

The room that the zombies had emanated from was once a library, though now all the books were rotten and destroyed.  The players hypothesized that the zombies were carrying on work they had done during life.

The last chamber they were able to explore contained a fiendish trap lifted from Stonehell and the only real treasure they found on either excursion.  Afterwards, due to their trap-oriented Specialist's  injuries, they headed back to the village and we wrapped up the session.

All in all it was a good session.  It was a joy to see some of their strategic and tactical discussions.

In about an hour, I'll be running the second session.  I'll probably break that report into multiple posts due to this one's length.  Sorry about that.