New Poll: A Weird Question

Pierce of The Rusty Dagger (I see what you did there) commented earlier that "I'm a huge Dark Country fan. I would be running a game there if my players would let me."  My question to you: is that possible?  Could you run a game set in the Dark Country with just the information on this blog?  If you couldn't, what other kind of info would you need?


EDIT: Poll removed because I got an answer from the person who prompted it.

A is for Almodad, the Jewel of the Desert

Yes, I am aware this is an anachronistic picture.  No, I don't care.

Almodad, the Jewel of the Desert, is one of the six great city states which were founded after the Great Deluge.  It's glittering spires and golden domes can be seen for miles, and it is said that even the men of Uz are jealous of the quality of their architecture and the excellence of their craftsmanship.

The traveler who arrives in this fabulous city will not only be assaulted by its colorful vistas but also its myriad of smells.  Almodad is one of the largest trading cities in the Desert of Demons and - likely - the world as a whole.  Any manner of spices, dye, textiles, foodstuffs, drinks, weapons, armor, dyes, textiles, slaves, or any other sorts of goods may be found in its raucous markets.  This excludes items possessing magical properties, though even they might be attained if one knows the right person.

In fact, knowing the right people is very important in Almodad.  Little can be done without the approval of the king, but since the king of Almodad is a notorious recluse one must work through other channels in order to meet their ends.  Almodad has a powerful bureaucracy that all but controls the Crown.  This bureaucracy is largely staffed by priests of various sorts, though secular scholars, nobles, and warriors also  have a hand in organizing and running Almodad's byzantine system of government.

The God of the Almodites is Kothar, the Opener of the Way, the Key and the Gate.  He is a god of the forge, craftsmen, merchants, thieves, male magicians, and scholars.  He is a distant god, but he does seem to impart his favor on a select few.  His favored weapon is the khopesh, which his fanatics forge within a great furnace in the temple itself.  He supposedly hates women of all sorts, but often Almodites capture the women of other cities to involve them in strange rites that make them the bride of Kothar.  Why the female citizens of Almodad are not used for this purpose is a mystery to all but the most wizened priests in the temple.

Despite it's focus on Kothar, most of the gods of the Desert of Demons have temples in Almodad.  Even Mot, the One Who Pulls Into His Gullet, is represented.  Few other cities possess a temple to Mot, and no cult of Mot is more active than the one present in Almodad.  Moloch, Dagon, and the other usual sorts also have their own shrines or petty temples.  The only exception is Lilit, whose worship is outlawed and punishable by death.  Still there are rumors that even the Mistress of the Night now has a small following in the Gleaming City.

Almodad's military is notoriously weak.  They are a city of traders and masons, not warriors.  Though many Almodites fight in the wars it wages, most troops the city uses are mercenaries of various sorts.  It is particularly fond of using Thulians, whose hatred of women rivals their own.  Many point to this as the reason they were so recently defeated by the warrior women of Jerah, but the Thulians have been effective in their other wars.

Adventure is common in Almodad, as it is everywhere in the Desert of Demons.  Its internal politics are rife with intrigue. Its incense shrouded alleys are filled with mystery.  It even possess an underground network of tunnels, mazes, and chambers.  While it pales in comparison in both size and antiquity to Uz, the First City of Men, it possess a grandeur which cannot be toppled.

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I know I'm a bit late on the A-Z thing.  The reasons for that are explained in my earlier post. However Mike's comment and my wife's enjoyment of the setting convinced me to continue work on Uz and it's surroundings.  I'll try to squeeze in some Nightwick Abbey/Dark Country material, but those posts will be in addition to my A-Z posts on Uz.

Uz, the Underworld, and other Updates

I'm probably going to stop developing Uz and it's surrounding territories.  This was a hard decision for me because I enjoy the ideas quite a bit, but the Ugarit project at Sword +1 is so similar that I don't want to steal his thunder.  I started working on Uz after he started his work on Swords of Abandon so I'm the late comer.

Of course the problem is that Uz filled a niche in my brain-space, one that was left empty by my many conceptual problems with the Underworld.  For lack of a better, shorter term I call this niche Sword & Sorcery Science Fantasy.  It's one part Hyboria, one part Zothique, one part Shaver Mystery, and one part Harryhausen movie.  Mix well, serve hot over rice.  But I haven't figured out the right admixture that works without any mental dissonance in my own noggin (or hasn't already been thought of by someone whose doing a perfectly good job already).  So I'm left to wander in search of an appropriate project to act as a funnel for those urges.

Thats more or less why I'm not doing the April Alphabet thing.  I was going to use it to express some of my thoughts on Uz, but now I'm without a project.

There are two reasons you haven't seen Dark Country material as much lately.  First, and most importantly, most of my time spent developing the Dark Country is spent stocking dungeons and making sure I'm ready for the next session.  Theres less high conceptual stuff I need to get out of the way.  What does need to be dealt with usually gets dealt with in play, and thats the way it should be.  The other reason is that I'm feeling a bit of ennui in regards to that setting, for reasons I may discuss in another post.  Still, it's unlikely to go anywhere for a long while.

It's unlikely I'll be able to do my one page dungeon version of the abbey.  The way the Abbey is structured in my notes is just too different from the format, and I'd essentially be creating a wholly new dungeon.  Since that  more or less defeat's the point of using the abbey the project is effectively dead.  It's also unlikely that I'll seek another form to publish it in because I rely too heavily on monsters which aren't available in the OGL.  I can't imagine Nightwick Abbey without Mites for example.

I hope to work on the community megadungeon some more, but just as I was finishing my level, cola got spilled all over my map.  I'm going to try to redraw it so that it looks nicer, but there will obviously be a delay.

Mutant Future Wilderness Map

Here are some more postapocalypitc maps.  These are intended for use with Mutant Future, instead of something darker.

First I took this map:

click to embiggen

It is a map of the North America after a bout of catastrophic global warming.  I believe it was created by the same people who did the one I used for the Dark Country, but I'm not sure. 

 Anyway, next I got the map more centered on the area I thought was most interesting.  I then roped off squares that in order to help me make the type of large wilderness map I typically make.  Here is the result:

click to embiggen

Next I mocked it up in Hexographer.  I added some rivers which aren't apparent on the main map.  Gray is hills, dark grey is mountains: 

click to embiggen

It was difficult for me to pick which area to enlarge and make into the first region.  I couldn't pick between the Mississippi islands or the Knoxville area.  I finally picked East TN since it provided a more diverse landscape.  

click to embiggen

Obviously this looks quite different from my earlier map of the same area, and I believe the first one was more accurate.  I figured whatever caused the Mutant Future could be responsible for much more dramatic changes in the landscape than a more "plausible apocalypse."

Finally I set about stocking the thing.  I did this a bit more literally than I usually do, following Welsh Piper's system and my my own tables more rigidly than I normally would.  The big exception is the blast site.  Heres the result: 

click to embiggen

Quite a bit of adventuring to be had there.  I might do a similar map for the Mississippi Islands in due time, but if I need to run a post-apoc game in the near future it's likely I'll use this and Mutant Future.

Stocked Postapocalyptic Map

click to embiggen

The high occurrence of bunkers when I rolled makes me think this would work best as a map for a Fallout game set in East TN and SC.  Of course they could Vivos Group Shelters if you wanted something more "realistic."  

There are a number of unplaced caches and wandering mutants, but I'll let that go for now.  Tell me what you think.

Nightwick Abbey Session 10

picture only tangentially related

Since my wife was away dealing with certain aspects of our lease -- we decided her character had been placed in the stocks for being a witch -- the party consisted of...

Mo'ongo -- an extremely dimwitted Fighter (dumber than most great apes)

Thign -- failed Magic-User

Slimey -- brother of Slick and expert Thief

and Barley Brownbeard -- craven (and drunken) Dwarf

We picked up immediately where we left off rather than use the 1 real time week = 1 game time week since Slimey wanted to burgle the Bishop's palace while he was engaged in the chevage ceremony.  He made preparations for that while the rest of the party looked for gainful employment.  They expected to be in the city for about a month while Almaric the Incontinent studied the Staff of Power in order to find it's key words.  Asking around Barley discovered that a group of Bandit's laired in the nearby swamp.  At first they sought to join a group of mercenaries (Bader's bo

ys) who were contracted to fight the bandits, but upon discovering their was a bounty of 5 gold per bandit head they decided to go freelance.

At that point the bulk of the party made their way to the cathedral square to watch the peasants perform chevage while Slimey got ready to pilfer the Bishop's valuables.  Slimey managed to sneak into the Bishop's chambers without attracting the attention of the guard.  Within it he found a chest containing too many copper pieces for him to carry and a silver ring bearing a star sapphire.  Sensing that the ring was not only valuable, but likely magical, he chose only to pilfer this one object.  He then urinated on the Bishop's bed and made ready to leave.  He was able to scamper down his rope undetected, but had to abandon it when a guard approached.  Seeing the rope (but not the thief) the guard alerted his fellow watch-mates and they scattered to raise the general alarm.

While this was transpiring, the rest of the party was listening to the Bishop's speech and being very glad they weren't serfs.  Mo'ongo especially expressed disdain for the ritual the peasants were forced to undergo.  Slick soon made his way to them and explained that they needed to leave the city ASAP.  Unfortunately at that point the bells of the town began to ring, sounding the general alarm.  Quite quickly all became chaos as guards rushed about and peasants began to riot.  The party decided just to play it cool and wait for things to cool down, but when they could not leave the city they realized this might be a sticker situation than they originally thought.

That night Slimey met with one of his guildmates and negotiated passage out of the wall through a secret method known only to the thieve's guild.  They then found themselves in the cold swamp that stretched for miles along the Dark River.  Instead of waiting until morning, they began looking for the bandits that night.  

This turned out to be a fateful (and fatal) decision.  They were soon ambushed by a huge number of ghouls.  Mo'ongo's player commented "This is the last time we do a wilderness adventure!"  to which Slimey's player responded "Well with this party anyway."  Despite the fatalism, Barley and Slimey were able to escape, though Mo'ongo and Thign met an unfortunate end.  Thign had been paralyzed during the surprise round, and Mo'ongo had lifted him up with the intent to carry him to safety.  Unfortunately that took his hole turn and he was now subject to the ghouls' attacks.  They managed to bring him to -2 hit points, at which point I told him that normally he would get to save vs. death, but since he was surrounded by ghouls both he and Thign were quickly, and unceremoniously, devoured.

Slimey and Barley now found themselves lost in the Swamp.  However, they were soon able to regain their bearings with the sunrise, and made their way to the farmland around Lichgate.  Unfortunately, the city was still locked up tight.  However, since the peasants from the countryside were in the city when it was locked up, their houses were all empty.  They then squat in a rather nondescript farmhouse while Slimey waited for Barley to recover from his injuries.  During the following days, a number of armed men came by and searched the neighboring farmland but where unable to find any sign of Barley or Slimey.  A few days after that, a Frogling caravan came by with a brightly colored carriage.  They seemed very confused by the lack of peasants to buy their goods, and they also did not find any sign of Slimey or Barley.  They moved on to the city gates, and at that point the session ended since it became clear that the two new characters would not be finished in time to continue play.

I suppose this as good a time as any to explain my "basic luck mechanic."  When a player asks me if something is present that I haven't decided on myself, I roll a d6.  If the result is a 1 they get exactly what they ask for, but the higher the number gets the worse off they are.  This is done within reason of course: for little things like the presence of a rope, the way a door swings, that sort of thing.  So there you have it.

Minor Encounters Take 2

A second attempt of a Minor Encounters Table for post-apocalyptic map stocking.

Minor Encounters (1d8 + 1d12)
2 -- Ancient Structure (Intact)
3 -- Battlefield
4 -- Religious Structure
5 -- Cave System
6 -- Meeting Place
7 -- Mutant Lair
8 -- Fort
9 -- Ruined Structure
10 -- Village
11 -- Isolated Homestead
12 -- Natural Hazard
13 -- Infrastructure (sewer, roadway, etc.)
14 -- Camp, Industrial
15 -- Camp, Semi-Permanent
16 -- Wandering Mutants
17 -- Cache
18 -- Fallout Shelter
19 -- Construction Site
20 -- Special Hazard (Biochemical, radiation, etc.)