I'd been debating doing a post where I highlight a youtuber doing the Lord's work when Stavros Cole pointed out he had a criminally small amount of viewers.
So check out Bandit's Keep. He's replicating a lot of the OSR blogosphere wisdom for the youtube crowd. Here's a sample video:
If you haven't yet, head over to I Cast Light! and check out the adventures of the Thursday night Nightwick group. Warren's been summarizing them and even includes an info graphic illustrating how many characters have died!
Over at Roles, Rules, and Rolls, there are a series of "genre tables" that Cole of Abraxas used for his Swords of the Inner Sea campaign. I have recently been using these to make hex content for the Dark Country and thinking about its uses in the other Worlds of In Places Deep.
I thought the R,R,&R tables were lacking a genre, so I made it: Swords and Sorcery. Sorry that it's kinda rough in formatting but I realized if I wanted it to look nicer I'd never make this post.
Also, while you're here, why not check out my patreon? It's got a full month of preview material for Nightwick Abbey and now paid only content as well! This month I'll be posting about the abbey's upper works, two new monsters, and a new geomorph.
The following rules were created by Cole for his Swords of the Inner Sea campaign but are apparently derived from work done by Chris and Robert. They work well for Old School D&D games and I wanted to preserve them.
Normally the successor of a fallen adventurer may inherit 25% of the XP of the dead character.
However, 50% will be inherited if the body can be recovered and given a heroic funeral, with a value of at least 100 GP per level spent on of the deceased sacrifices, grave goods, professional mourners, orators, venal holy men, impressive incence, free food and drinks for hangers-on, et. al.
Donors will receive half the GP value contributed in XP, up to twice the minimum value.
Partial remains are considered by a case-by-case basis; burying the half of the body undevoured by the monster is acceptable, but there has to be at least enough to mock up a body with creative funeral garbing. The adventurer who unsentimentally severs the head of a corpse, prizing encumbrance slots over reverence will find no satisfaction in the rites.
Needless to say, attempting to recover donated goods after the funeral is likely to incur a terrible curse.
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Huth has written a version for 5e based on my criteria and I plan to use it in my Wilderlands game. It is reproduced below: Normally the successor of a fallen adventurer may inherit only one-quarter of the XP of the dead character. However, the successor will inherit half of the predecessor’s XP if the body can be recovered and given a heroic funeral. To provide such a funeral, contributors must contribute gp (or the gp value of appropriate goods) towards the funeral. This gold is put toward funerary monuments, beautifying the final resting place, preparing the body, sacrifices, grave goods, professional mourners, orators, venal holy men, impressive incense, food, drinks, and drugs for hangers-on, et cetera. If the total gp spent on the funeral matches or exceeds the heroic funeral threshold, then the deceased character’s successor gains 50% of the deceased character’s XP (instead of the standard 25%). This threshold is equal to 100 gp x (dead character’s level). If the threshold is met, then each contributor may spend a a downtime action on the funeral rites (to plan and assemble the above funeral goods and services and perform the rites). Every contributor who does so gains bonus XP based on the amount of their individual contribution. This bonus XP is equal to an amount based on the contributor’s current level (see chart below), per every (5 gp x (dead character’s level)) share contributed, to a maximum of 20 shares. (GP in excess of this may be provided to the funeral total, but will provide no XP bonus to the contributor.) Example: Anne (level 2) is contributing to Bob’s (level 4) funeral. For every 20gp Anne pays into the funeral, she receives 6 XP. Anne pays a total of 240gp into the fund, netting her 72 XP. (((240/(5x4))x6)=72)
XP per Share by Contributor Level
GP of Share by Deceased’s Level
GP Threshold of Heroic Funeral by Deceased’s Level
Zak posted these and I thought I'd answer them. 1. article or blog entry that exemplifies the best of the Old School Renaissance for me: Alas, I cannot give the perfect answer to that because it would've been on one of Huge Ruined Scott's blogs that he has destroyed and are now lost to time. A close second, however, is the Dismal Depths from Sham's Grog and Blog. The way he was able to pack so much flavor into those one line monster statblocks and the way it feels weird but still obviously inspired by the fantasy that inspired D&D is just great. It was the first thing I saw that made me want to do megadungeons, which anyone who has read this blog knows is a passion of mine.
2. My favorite piece of OSR wisdom/advice/snark: Just because a rule is old or out of fashion doesn't mean its bad. 3. Best OSR module/supplement: The Tome of Adventure Design is the one I use the most by far. It requires a certain level of interpretation if you're not running a fairly Pulp Fantasy game, but even for something like Nightwick it's extremely useful. 4. My favorite house rule (by someone else): Using Whitebox/OD&D number of hit die to determine bonus to hit. I learned that one from Antion but I think he may have gotten it from somewhere else. 5. How I found out about the OSR: I was running a Wilderlands game using 4e and was trying to find resources for the setting when I stumbled upon Huge Ruined Scott's Wilderlands OD&D blog. 6. My favorite OSR online resource/toy: Dave's Mapper. 7. Best place to talk to other OSR gamers: the Nightwick game hangout at 3am Monday morning. 8. Other places I might be found hanging out talking games: G+? I guess that's going away though. 9. My awesome, pithy OSR take nobody appreciates enough: All D&D prep is hack work. 10. My favorite non-OSR RPG: Delta Green. 11. Why I like OSR stuff: The big thing is that its simple while allowing for a great deal of creativity on the part of the referee. I also tend to like the pieces of inspiration OSR people look to better than the mainstream fanatasy RPG crowd's love of epic fantasy. 12. Two other cool OSR things you should know about that I haven’t named yet: I'm going to imagine anyone reading this is familiar with Grognardia, but I want to particularly call out his Dwimmermount session reports as a powerful inspiration on me.
Robert Parker's post on "campaign frames" is a must read for anyone working on rpg stuff, OSR or otherwise.
13. If I could read but one other RPG blog but my own it would be: So many of the ones I used to read don't update anymore that it's kind of hard to answer. 14. A game thing I made that I like quite a lot is: Nightwick Abbey, but that's not really in a form y'all can look at yet so instead I'll say the What the Hell is Wrong with this Guy hireling table. 15. I'm currently running/playing: I'm running a Wilderlands game in person on Saturdays and my long running Nightwick Abbey campaign online on Sunday nights. I'm playing in Huth's Zothesque game and a 5e thing Cole runs that I don't think has a name. 16. I don't care whether you use ascending or descending AC because: Actually I prefer you use ascending AC because I am young by grognard standards.
17. The OSRest picture I could post on short notice:
What’s the deal with my cleric’s religion? It depends on where you roll for your background place. Ilionians worship the Greek gods, Khemians the egyptian ones, and Nordrons the Saxon gods. Some clerics may be in mystery religions that worship monsters, but these rarely actually impart spells.
Where can we go buy standard equipment? Kistomerces the Merchant (Rogue 4) has a franchise of three shops in town where you can buy common equipment and slaves. For weapons and armor you can only get ones of Ilionian make.
Where can we go get platemail for this monster I just befriended? Monomachus is said to be part cyclops and thus gifted in the skills of metalworking. His shop deals in only the finest quality goods. Also, befriending a monster or race of monsters is the only way to get non-human characters as an option.
Who is the mightiest wizard in the land? The greatest wizard is likely the Lord Babashek (Wizard 10), but who knows what weirdos squat in the jungle?
Who is the greatest warrior in the land? The greatest fighting man in the land is reported to be Asterion’s marshal, Eirik Blom (Barbarian 12). He is a Nordron mercenary.
Who is the richest person in the land? It is reputed to be the Lord Babashek, High Vizier to Lord Ajaxos himself. He has a smooth-walled, apparently entrance-less tower in town where he is believed to store his wealth.
Where can we go to get some magical healing?The Temple of Apollo in the Palace District has the most skilled healers in Yavana.
Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath? See above, though some of those are beyond the skills of even his priests.
Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?There are no guilds of magic users, but it is possible one could apprentice oneself to someone in town.
Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?Sages and other experts are likely to be found in Asterion, but if they aren’t available then one must search many leagues to find a more suitable city. Olizon, though smaller, has sages that know things many in Asterion would not.
Where can I hire mercenaries?Asterion, Oetylus, or Olizon. Their culture will determine their kit.
Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law? It is forbidden to take certain weapons into the temples of Asterion, and the ruler of Olizon denies all wizards entrance into the city unless they become his slaves.
Which way to the nearest tavern?The Salty Squid is the most popular tavern among adventurers in Asterion. It can be found in the foreign quarter. Some prefer The Red Dog which can be found in the Military quarter.
What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous? There is reputed to be a kraken near one of the islands in the Winedark Sea.
Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?Some say Yavana itself is about to be ripped apart in civil war due to the animosity between the factions of Babashek and Eirik, but that has yet to pan out. There is certainly always fighting to be had along the desert frontiers or against the Aramite successor states in the south.
How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?There are no arenas as such, but whenever officers in Ilionian armies die there are often funeral games that function similarly.
Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?If you knew that, they wouldn’t be secret, would they? However, there are rumors of a number of mystery religions in Yavana and particularly in Oetylus.
What is there to eat around here?Most people in Yavana’s cities subsist on fruit and fish, but some in the villages inland are able to raise herd animals on the forest-steppe for cheese and meat. Some of the more outre establishments in Asterion serve “raptor eggs” and other delights only found in Yavana.
Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?Too many to list. See adventure hooks.
Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure? There’s that Kraken I mentioned... The only place that has “dragons” is the lands of the Nordrons or the Picts, but these are much different than those of other worlds.
Over at From the Sorcerer's Skull, Trey has posted about small-scale mystery sandboxes. This is a thing that several of us in the online Nightwick group have often discussed. Infamous artist, blogger, and Star Trek aficionado Huth has a kind of dream campaign he says is based off the structure of Junji Ito's Uzumaki. Since he has not done a post on it - despite several requests - I've decided to tackle the issue myself as best I can.
The idea is that the weird happenings in a small town are based around what Huth refers to as a "core phenomena" - a weird thing that causes the secondary weird things the PCs investigate and lends them all a loose theme. In Uzumaki this is the town's connection to a "spiral curse." In Twin Peaks this would be Bob or the Black Lodge. It is the innermost layer of Sandy Petersen's proverbial onion from the Call of Cthulhu corebook. Deciding what the core phenomena is is the first and probably most important step to setting up one of these types of campaigns.
The core phenomena should provide a loose theme for all of the sub-mysteries. I say "loose" because I feel like if you make it too thematic you will end up in a straight jacket. The Spiral Curse in Uzumaki provides for a wide variety of bizarre effects including people merging together and mosquito-women. The spiral is involved conceptually with each, but its a broad enough concept that it can work for multiple things.
The core phenomena would ideally provide a kind of mini-apocalypse that destroys the mini-setting in some thematically appropriate way. All of the sub-mysteries hint at the nature of the core phenomena and when the core phonemena is revealed its conflict with the characters will destroy the setting either literally or by removing the threat. This apocalypse could be an actual destructive event (like in Uzumaki) or it could be something more subtle. Take for example the town of Deer Meadow in Fire Walk with Me. The guys at RLM convincingly argue that Deer Meadow is what would happen to Twin Peaks if Bob's corruption is allowed to spread throughout the town. It is not something that would make the news in the way Uzumaki's does, but it is its own kind of apocalypse.
The structure of such a campaign beyond the core phenomena is perhaps the biggest sticking point between Huth and me. Huth has tried on a few occasions to do one where everything is a big web of relationships. The sub-mysteries all occur simultaneously and the sandboxy nature is enhanced by the players being able to access any part at any given time. It most closely matches the circular model of dungeon design described by Melan (though with facts instead of corridors and rooms). This sounds great, but each time I have seen him attempt it we floundered and spun our wheels. Perhaps mastering this would be the best form of the game.
The half-assed version I would argue for is closer to Melan's "branching" dungeon, but in reverse. Each component part is fairly linear with a couple of branching paths that connect it to neighboring mysteries (just one or two so that the connections don't get too crowded). All of the branches are accessible at any time but they are ultimately a line pointing to whatever layer of the onion they uncover. This should be less work for the GM while still getting the overall idea of the campaign across.
I have wanted to try such a campaign with my Lerouxville setting. When I ran it long ago I had not hit upon the idea of the core phenomena nor read Uzumaki. I think it suffered as a result, but since I'm currently in the midst of a Nightwick Abbey game and am running a location hopping Delta Green game for my home group, it seems like it might be a while before I can try my hand at a better version.
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.
I recently mentioned that I've become interested in the Harn setting. This happens to me from time to time, probably because it tickles some part of my medievalist brain. Still, whenever the Harn bug bites I find myself wanting to create my own low fantasy world rather than use Harn wholesale. I think it's largely due to my distaste at the idea of Tolkien's Dwarves and Elves running around my twelfth-century England or France.
As an experiment, I decided to make a small island based on the island of Sark. Mine was considerably larger, but it still serves as an acceptable test run. I guesstimated the area, assumed that it would be a rocky and inhospitable island, and punched in the numbers. Here is the result:
The Town contains a little more than 3000 people, and the surrounding farmland (the green hexes) contains some 69 villages. The Keep probably serves to keep some small humanoid tribe that lairs in the heath or the hills from carting off villagers.
I must say that I don't entirely like the look of it yet. I'm beginning to think the "Mystara Style," as Rob Conley termed it, is a poor match for a setting where one must map farmland. There just seems to be something off about the farms covering whole hexagons.
I'm also not entirely sure how a DM whose pressed for time, as I am, would detail 69 villages, but maybe that'll be the subject of another post.
I've already mentioned Chris of The Polyhedral Dicebag has played a litany of Magic-Users who've met their fates in Nightwick Abbey. I'm happy to say that Barley Brownbeard's player has started a blog chronicling the side game he DM's. Head over there and make him feel welcome!
Tonight's post was inspired by the excellent Dreams in the Lich House blog. Beedo's Gothic Greyhawk is a very similar setting to my own Dark Country (so it's easy to loot from). Also his Black City idea is the very definition of awesome, but that's unrelated to this post.
In a recent post, Beedo discussed the place of religion in his campaign. Much like the Dark Country, his setting uses the three point Law v. Chaos alignment scale instead of the nine point AD&D one. As such he had to figure out where to place Demons and Devils, and so must I.
One interesting facet of this conundrum is that B/X or BECMI D&D doesn't actually have Demons and Devils. Keep on the Borderlands mentions Demons, but otherwise you have to find them in AD&D. Since I don't have a copy of the AD&D Monster Manual, I'm pretty much left high and dry. The AEC has stats for a select few, but I only have a PDF copy and as such I'm unlikely to use it at my table.
If I had never played D&D, I would not really conceptualize Demons and Devils as being separate entities. For the purposes of the Nightwick Campaign they're one in the same. The legions of the Pit are without number, and many shapes teem in their vast hordes. Since every supernatural thing in my setting is somehow related to the God of Law's creation and the War in Heaven, it makes little sense for me to divide the two.
But where the hell do I get stats for them? If I get the AEC in hard copy (which is a possibility) I'll like steal at least a few from it -- particularly Orcus. However, I'm very tempted to use the Random Esoteric Creature Yadda Yadda by Jim Raggi of LotFP. It's a brilliant book which has yet to see use in this campaign, much to my chagrin. I'll likely use it to fill out the rank and file of Demons while looking to more Goetia based sources for the higher ups in the Demon hierarchy.
