On Worm Ships

Worm Ships are a peculiarity of Cuccagna, being a neccessity in some of its waters, for the perfect slight breezes which cool one in the gardens of that strange island are ill-suited to the occupation of sea craft, and the monstrous fauna which dwell beneath the waves of some its harbors, bays, and even some of its more turbid rivers are hazardous to vessels of more conventional type. The average worm ship looks like a largish gondola of pure white wood, often with elaborate carvings and certainly with fluted bow and stern to make it resemble in part the warships of ancient Acheron - though these "rams" are merely of wood and their similarity to those ships of old is but an aesthetic affectation. 

The most notable thing about the worm ship, regardless of its side, is its method of propulsion, for it relies not on sails but rather on a strange, shimmering-pink polychete worm bred for such purpose by some wizard of the island. The worminger, the sole necessary crewman on such a vessel, steers not from the back but from the front by prodding the worms with a specialized goad of wood and metal. Most work in teams of two or three, often accompanied by more conventional ship crews, for the prodding of an enormous sea worm is a dangerous business and the hardened bristles along the beast's segments can often snare the goad and hoy a man into the bosom of the ocean - and the waiting jaws of the worms.

The worms movement through the water drags the boat behind them, making the fact that the winds serve only the whims of some wizard of mercurial mood and great puissance a non-issue. Their perturbation of the water drives away the sawfish and swordfish which haunt this length of the Middle Sea. Cuccagna is well known as a site of shipwrecks and these creatures, who use their hardened and strangely shaped snouts to bore through the wood of a ship or to spear it at great speed, are one of the reasons why.

Worm ships allow characters to move across sea hexes as though they were traveling on foot on a road across clear terrain. Few wormingers will drive their away from site of the shore, for while the worms prevent the predation of weapon-snouted fish, there are more sinister things which lurk in the deeps near the island.

In Fair Cuccagna (Session 1)

I decided I wanted to run a dungeon that was kind of a redo of one I did for my Cuccagna setting some time ago. Some of the Nightwick Regulars agreed and I decided to use the version of the isle of wizards set in the World of Nightwick.

Characters Present

Cristobert 1st Level Karslish Mountebank

Cruart Staig 1st Level Karslish Fighter

Jules Mozarin 1st Level Averois Magician

Maglor 1st Level Changeling

Hirelings

Homobon - depressed cheesmaker turned linkboy 

Pippo and Rizzardo - Cuccagnan bravos (who died this session)

Tibio - Fellow bravo who managed to stay alive

Events

• The characters have heard rumors of the disappearance of Prospero the Blue and the vacancy of his infamous manse - the Lapis Vaults.
• Feeling this wizard's abode is ripe for looting, they hired a number of hirelings (described above) and set out on a worm-driven ship form the Great Wen to explore the smaller island which holds the Lapis Vaults.
• Landing on the southwestern shore of the smaller island, they made their way inland and quickly found that it turned into a formal garden at the base of a large cliff. Set into the cliff was a large, blue structure consisting of walls abutting the cliff and a squat, round tower.
• Approaching closer Cruart was challenged by a voice from within the squat tower. He claimed to be the king of this manse in the absence of Prospero the Blue, and demanded the party leave. The only clue to his identity was that his eye was visible through an arrow slit and - indeed- took up the entire slit. Cruart deduced the creature to be at least 15' tall.
• After accosting him, the unknown giant seems to have felt he was threatening enough and left his vantage point to do unknown tasks, allowing the party to enter unseen.
• But before they managed to make it to the doors, they found a number of statues set about the garden. All were in hyper-realistic mode and making pleading or frightened gestures. Cruart stated it was as if they had been turned to stone by a Medusa.
• Approaching the large, bronze doors of the tower - as at the time these seemed the only means of egress - Cruart was the only one foolish brave enough to enter initially. He discovered a large hall decorated with satyrs frolicking with women. Cristobert soon joined him and they noticed the number of present satyrs was seven, and speculated that these must in some way represent the colored wizards of the island. When Cruart pointed out that they were all blue, Cristobert asserted that this was some means by which Prospero the Blue had meant to show ownership of the others.
• The satyrs' eyes turned out to be peepholes through which guard chambers could be viewed. After looking through several of these the party found that one contained a number of dead, one-legged men.
• At first Cristobert asserted that Prospero the Blue had chopped off the legs of these men to make them into monopods (the legs, not the men), which are known to inhabit the island. However, investigating their wounds showed that they did not have their legs chopped off or, if they were, it was done far in advance of their deaths as they mearly had a flat piece of flesh over the legless side of their pelvis.
• The guard chambers beyond the satyrs eyes contained a number of arrows, which Cristobert grabbed up.
• Jules cast detect magic in hopes that he would reveal much within the manse, but was flustered until they came to a large room dominated by a fountain and fanciful floor tiles. The fountain was not magical, but rather there was a small alcove which contained a magic mouth.
• The magic mouth, glowing within the Averois magicians eyes, suddenly announced "I am unable to come to the door right now, but someone will be with you in a moment."
• The party debated the meaning of the mouth, and whether it could be interrogated, when a creature suddenly appeared within their torchlight. It was a serpent but bore strange ear-like protrusions from its head, vestigal wings, two tiny arms, and scintilating, opalescent scales.
• These scales quickly mesmerized most of the party, with only Maglor and the three Cuccagnan bravos free to act.
• They rushed in to do battle with it, the bravos hitting it about the head and body with their clubs. They wounded it severly but in its death throws it was able to grab Rizzardo in its serpents mouth and crush his body with its enormous bulk. It died soon after with blows from the changeling.
• With the creature dead its hypnotic pattern seemed to cease. Cristobert skinned the thing, for the scales still held an irridescent beauty, but found its body was strangely warm - especially for a serpent and especially for a creature gripped by the icy hand of death.
• Exploring the corridor from which the serpent had come, the party quickly found that it branched off in many directions. Choosing the nearest, they saw dark shapes moving distantly in a large room, but decided to explore a door - closer than the shapes - anyway. They left Homobon in the hall to watrn them of encroaching danger.
• As they entered the room, they narrowly avoided a trap consisting of a sack of stones held up by a trip wire mechanism. Cristobert observed this was likely not a trap made by a wizard as puissant as Prospero the Blue.
• The room held a number of tools and materials used in the making of various items, but nothing that looked particularly valuable.
• Suddenly. Homobon called out and shortly so too did the dark shapes in the large room - for they were those sinister fungi men call shriekers. Cristobert observed that if there were shriekers they must surely be on the lookout for piercers and other such strange dungeon creatures.
• The party rushed forward to destroy the shrieker only to find the room filled with them. They also found the fungus to be more resilient than they would've liked, and its screaming could not be shortened before creatures came to investigate.
• The creatures were largeish - but not necessarily giant - white rats. These rats called out in crued voices "Kill them! Kill them!" as one leapt at Pippo's throat and tore it open with its rodent teeth.
• The party engaged the rats in "social combat," though I unfortunately do not remember the barbs that were thrown back and forth. I am reliably told that the party "won" this exchange, but since they fled in terror from the rats out of the dungeon they received no experience for this.

Monsters Defeated

1 Scitalis, Some Rats (at least rhetorically)

Treasure Gained

Some arrows

XP Per player

75

*Called the "King Fish" by illiterate foreigners

Check out Bandit's Keep

 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: 

The Office of Scientific Investigation

Working for the OSI can be quite dangerous.

1945: the year that changed the world. An act of war that unleashed destruction on a cosmic scale also ushered mankind into a new age. The Atomic Age! Understanding this same destructive force could hold the key to unlimited energy and an understanding of creation itself. At the same time, scientific discoveries about the nature of outer space have opened mankind up to the possibility of a future among the stars. Still other new developments of the age reveal unguessed secrets about the ancient past and even about the nature of time itself.

With these new advancements come new threats. Scientists dabbling in forces newly unleashed create hideous mutations or strange intelligences never before conceived of. Foreign agents seek to steal advances in engineering using their own strange devices. Mankind's use of atomic power may also have attracted the attention of beings from other stars with technology far in advance of anything seen on Earth, if the contactee movement is to be believed. Given the stakes of these new discoveries, any or all of these potential threats could not only spell doom for the country but also the entire world.

With these threats in mind, the member states of NATO decided to create a new body - the Office of Scientific Investigation. From its offices in a secure bunker within the Nevada desert, members of the OSI act as a combination of research, law enforcement, and espionage agency. Its membership is composed of academics, soldiers, law enforcement officers, and secret agents from NATO member countries. Their task is to investigate and contain the new threats of this new age.

The year is 1952, and the OSI has already been involved in a number of classified cases. From what has leaked to the press, agents have foiled a Soviet plot to fake an interplanetary invasion, discovered an island populated with pre-historic life in the Pacific, and investigated the remains of what some believe to be an ancient spacecraft. Fighting enemies both foreign and domestic, wherever science goes awry there you will find the OSI!

Nightwick: The Continuing Adventures

Map by the man himself

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!

It's been real good to run it with OSE.

The DM is a Shut Eye

A post on Prismatic Wasteland recently outlined, fairly well I think, the basic procedure of playing an OSR or Classic style of game. However, I have some problems with their prescription for a "modified procedure," and unfortunately to get at them I have to do some theory. This is going to be my most pretentious post to date.

The dungeon master, or at least my ideal one, is what Orson Welles referred to as a shut eye. As Welles explains here, a shut eye is a psychic who has forgotten its a grift and begun to believe in their own "powers." They have entered a state of self delusion because of the advanced nature of their process. They are able to apprehend the factors that used to be consciously thought about so quickly that they can begin the grift without thinking. But what is the grift a dungeon master is pulling?

They are trying to convince the players of what Matt Colville calls the secondary world.* Many players, myself included, want the experience of interacting with a fantasy world that feels real and that reality is a trick. However, like the shut eye, the trick works best if the dungeon master is practicing a self delusion. All of us do this to a degree, because it is necessary to the very act of imagining. 

Nightwick regular and former blogger Cole calls the imaginative self-delusion "my dog barks some." To borrow the example but make it D&D specific, the DM rolls on a table and sees that the PCs have encountered a dog. From having the vibe of the setting and the scenario they are running, the DM just upon seeing the existence of this dog in the table knows the type of dog but does not consciously choose it. Colville in his video above talks about looking in on an imaginary dragon and seeing what it's doing. The incident of the adventure, the way a particular question the players ask is answered, the actions of an NPC are thing the DM "knows" without consciously deciding. Some, or indeed all of us because we are mortal, may need to take some processing time to "reveal" this unconscious answer, but it is important that the answer be unconscious or, at the very least, decided beforehand.

If you, like me, want the experience of this kind of violent fantasy tourism, the fictional reality of the secondary world must be maintained for engagement. If it no longer feels real, I get bummed out. Obviously it was never real, but my ability to pretend its real for the purpose of the game requires the self delusion of a shut eye.

One of the easiest ways for that to become punctured is for the DM to ask me, the player, questions about the setting. I locate the secondary world largely in the DM's head, and if they are suddenly asking for my input it reveals the artifice. They are not looking into an imaginary world that is locked in some portion of their midbrain, they're just making it up. The modified procedure, where the DM questions the PCs back about in fiction details, would cause me to be less engaged because I have stopped treating the secondary world like a world and started to treat it as something that is fake. I'm asked to operate the strings on the hubcap that was, moments ago, a flying saucer. I do not take joy in the co-creation of the fiction. Rather, my actions are revealed to be meaningless.

Maybe this is why I studied history instead of english. 

* I do not actually condone things he talks about in the video such as rebalancing encounters on the fly or quantum ogreing, but hopefully that is also clear from this post.

Running Nightwick on Start Playing

Art by Chris Huth 

Starting next Thursday, I'm going to be running my world famous megadungeon Nightwick Abbey on Start Playing. If you want to try OSE or do an old school dungeon delve into a Doom Metal Mega Dungeon, consider signing up!