Are We In Hell?

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.

Unfocused Thoughts on the Hell-Caverns

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

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 and the Philosophy of Raggi's Game

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.

Nightwick Abbey Monsters

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.

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.

Underworld Systems and Character Types

Forgive me if this is a bit rambling.  My thoughts on these subjects are a bit half-formed, but I feel like I need to get something about them hammered down before I continue developing the Underworld.

In the days when the Underworld was called the Lost Lands, I went through a number of possible system options.  It was originally designed alongside a homebrew system created in order to fill the requirments of Matt Finch's Quick Primer on Old School Gaming while still being appealing to the new schoolers I played with.  It did this with some success, but it lacked the kinds of guidelines I like when making wilderness and dungeon areas (such as No. Appearing and Treasure Class).  I toyed with using the "Lost Lands" as the basis for a Swords & Wizardry based game, even going so far as to write up a pretty extensive house rules document that is now lost to the ages.  I've even considered using a combination of yellow book BRP and the Bronze Grimoire to power the setting, but nothing came of that either.

Now that I've picked it up again (as a side project) and given it a bit of a face lift, I need to think about what system I'm going to use to power it.  Obviously, I could go the route of Scott of Huge Ruined Pile and make all the material as systemless as possible.  I don't feel comfortable with that option.  The amount of  changes that would have to be made to any given system to accommodate just the monsters is pretty large.  Almost all of D&D's monster list is completely useless.  The only exceptions being certain undead and summoned monsters.  I'm fine making a wholly new monster list, but I wouldn't want to burden some other sap who decided this setting was the bomb and wanted to use it in his or her home game.  Therefore I need some system I can provide stats for, though I will probably put out little handouts on how to run this setting with other systems.

So what system?  I'm currently getting better acquainted with Labyrinth Lord since the group that I will be DMing for is relatively familiar with that system.  I'm also a fan of LotFP:WFRPG.  So some sort of B/X D&D hack?  Well... no.  I've never really been comfortable making monsters for those systems as I never know how much xp they should be worth.  The most likely answer is the Swords & Wizardry White Box, which is by far my favorite retroclone.  It has a bare bones sensibility that I think will lend itself well to tinkering and this project in general.

Of course I could pick up another side project that would fill a similar niche in my creative efforts but not be as arduous a task.  Possibly more on that later.

With that out of the way, I need to decide what character types I wish to represent with these rules.  Fighters and Magic Users fit in easily to the setting.  Clerics stick out like a sore thumb.  They fit great in Nightwick Abbey's pseudo-Medieval milieu, but their holy magic and mace wielding antics are a poor fit for a setting where even the nicest gods have terrible serpents for pets.  I could just stick to Fighting Men and Magic Users, possibly importing LotFP:WFRPG's encumbrance rules and lack of weapon/armor restrictions, but I'm not sure about that yet.  I feel like I want to allow some other class options for the players if only to give them more options.

That being said, none of the other classes developed for TSR D&D strike me as appropriate for this setting.  Thieves could work, but I find that they generally muck up OD&D.  Still they are an option.  The others work less well.  I'll probably have to create some of my own with the setting in mind, but I'll burn that bride when I cross it.

To close, here is an inspirational image for the setting:

Now back to thinking about Nightwick Abbey...

Labyrinth Lord House Rules

Here is the first draft of my Labyrinth Lord houserules for Nightwick Abbey.  They are in no particular order.

1)  3d6 Assign to Taste -- If you want to assign them in order, go right ahead.

2)  Use HD from Advanced Edition Compendium.

3)  Use Common Abilities from LotFPWFRPG.

4)  Replace the Thief class with the Specialist Class.

5)  Druids from the AEC are available as a Human class.

6)  Ascending AC.  Unarmed Human starts at 10 AC.

7)  Use Encumbrance rules from LotFPWFRPG.  This includes removing weapon and armor restrictions.

8) Reroll any result of a 1 or a 2 on starting HP.

9) Use Small/Medium/Large weapon rules from LotFPWFRPG.

10) Fighters gain Follow Through.  When they kill an enemy, the may make an additional attack against an adjacent enemy.  They can do this until enemies stop dying.

11) 10% on money spent on genre or character appropriate actions is gained in XP.

12) Only Human or Changeling characters to start, but future characters can be of other races.

13) Magic-Users can only gain spells from research, scrolls and captured spell books.

14) Use magic research rules from LotFPWFRPG.

15) Magic-Users must have their hands free to cast spells.  That means no weapons or torches.

16) Some secret doors and traps will use different die types for detection a la AD&D.

That's it for now.  I'm sure more will come up during extended play.  Now that I look at it, I'm really playing a hybrid of LotFPWFRPG and LL.  Oh well.

LotFP Pros and Cons

These are in no particular order, and some entries will show up in both categories for reasons which will be explained in due time.


Pros

The lack of weapon and armor restrictions -- this is by far my favorite innovation, since it allows Gandalf to have a sword.  Of course encumbrance is more important now, but more on that later.

Specialists -- I'm a tremendous fan of Raggi's version of the Thief.  I especially like that the Specialist is able to determine individual things it is good at, such as sneaking or finding food in the forest.  It adds a certain amount of character customization without increasing the time spent making a character.

Common Activities -- These are dead simple and provide a framework for the Referee to use.  This is true of most OSD&D systems, but Raggi has expressed it elegantly while still allowing every character to sneak and search and find traps (though they're not as good at it as Specialists who have focused in it are).

Weapons -- I love the Small/Medium/Large Weapon system.  It reminds me of WFRP, and if D&D is my first love then Warhammer is the cheap floozy I'm cheating on her with.  (2e if anyone cares, and I've always thought someone could make a really cool Lankhmar hack for it)

Encumbrance -- Some of you who read that Weapon/Armor restrictions are replaced by encumbrance probably winced due to the normally fiddly nature of Encumbrance rules.  Raggi's are genius and dead simple, especially with his character sheet.

The Magic Book -- Some people may disagree with me, but I'm a huge fan of the way he has treated magic.  Unlike Labyrinth Lord, it allows for experimentation at low levels and they're very easy to handle (at least from my read through).  His spell descriptions also generally match up with the darker tone of Nightwick Abbey so I can use them almost whole sale.

Firing into melee -- it's mean and it should be.

Language Acquisition -- The rolling to see if you know a language thing appeals to me, even more so because I usually don't have all the languages set up in advance of a campaign, and can now add them on an ad hoc basis without the player's being handicapped by language choice at the beginning.

The good part is free -- Since I'm doing a dungeoneering based campaign, the Referee Book isn't terribly useful to me, and I'd just be using equivalent rules from other editions anyway.  The part I'd use is free though, so if you were worried about price, remember you can still check it out.

Class Roles -- Each class has one thing it does really well, that the other class don't do at all or not as well.  While the most famous example of this seems to be his interpretation of the Fighter, it's true of all the classes.

Edit: Ascending AC -- I know a lot of people don't like this, but I do.  I hadn't included it initially because Swords & Wizardry also had it.  If you don't like it, consider it a Con.

Cons


Demi-Humans -- The Demi-Human races are kinda sucky.  This is most true of the Elf.  I'm of two minds about this.  One the one hand I don't really like people to play demi-humans but understand their inclusion in D&D.  In this case Raggi's method is a stop-gap, but I completely understand someone who thinks that making them suck is not a good way to convince players to play humans.  On the other hand, they suck.  There is very little reason to play anything but a human, and they're basically an afterthought.  Regular readers will know I've given some thought to the place of Demi-Humans in Nightwick, so this doesn't jive well.

Common Abilities -- I told you some would show up more than once.  These are almost too good.  I more or less let player's describe where they are looking and let that determine whether they find secret doors and such, either by modifying the d6 roll or just saying the players found the fucking thing.  I know many Old Schoolers do the same, and it's one of the reasons I was attracted to OSD&D in the first place.  Raggi's system is so good it almost becomes a unified mechanic.  That makes it difficult to justify modifying it based on player input and their is another porblem...

The Specialist -- They can max out their skills, and pretty early if they do it right.  They still have a chance of failing, but it essentially tells that character "you don't have to describe shit because you will find anything secret any time it comes up," which pisses me off.

The Price List -- I just don't like this.  I know some people do, I don't.  I don't mind a steep one, like AD&D's or Labyrinth Lord's, but this is too much.

The tech level -- This is easily remedied, especially if you're importing one another price list, but the assumed tech level of the setting is way to high for me.  I prefer Antique to High Medieval technology in my D&D, not Early Modern.  (Yes, I know the Empire in WFRP is early modern, that's why I specified D&D).

The flavor in general -- I know I can change this, but the feel of a game is very important to me.  As mentioned above in the entry on magic, some of it really jives well with my setting; however, he's a bit too grim and dim even for me.  I also find his write up of Fighters almost offensive, but I won't hold it against the man.

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There is stuff I'm forgetting.  I'm sure of it, but they'll probably come up in the comments.

Writing this has forced me to temper my position a bit.  I'm thinking now that I'll try to figure out a way to integrate some of the aspects I like in S&W WB.  I'm not entirely sure how successful this'll be but I'm willing to try.

For a while now I've been pondering doing a free downloadable supplement for the White Box that would be like Greyhawk or Blackmoor but for Nightwick.  The largest problem I see with this is that I tend to steal from other Old School sources and forget where the hell I got it from in the fist place.  I know I got it from somewhere but I don't really remember where.  If I do create such a document it'll probably have some Raggi-isms in it, even if they are massively warped by my interpretation of them and the fact that they have to work with the white box.

(In case anyone is wondering, it'll be free because I don't have the money to commission any art, as well as a general principle that RPGs should be cheap if not totally free.)

Hope this is helpful.

Raggi's Game

I've recently been looking at the player's rules for the LotFPRPG, and I'm very impressed.  This is not going to be a review, as there are many excellent ones out there if you want to look at them.  Also, the Character and Magic rules are free so just go take a look at them if you haven't already.

Though I think it has its flaws,  its innovations are more than enough to make me consider using it over Swords and Wizardry for Nightwick Abbey.  Almost all of my houserules can carry over from S&W with no trouble.

I see no problem with switching systems at this point as they're both OSD&D in some form, but also because play has not yet begun.  I'll still be using the same resources I was already using for monsters, treasure, and dungeon stocking since I only have the free player rules.  Also, I'm not going to take his advice on monsters.  I like Orcs.  Sue me.