Back Screen Pass - A DM's Secrets

Beautiful Bob Blew Up the Hovercraft

2012-01-31T20:48:00.000-08:00

Every other Friday I preside over a 4e campaign. Calling it "4e" is more than a bit of a stretch, as I add new magic and new rules every single session and it ends up being "D&D - Carl's (gonzo/sci-fi/morally relativistic) Flavor" whether we are playing Mutant Future or Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition.

I have gotten in trouble before claiming that 4e and Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and B/X et al are all functionally the same thing in the moment of true immersion in game play. I still stand by that point, but I will content myself with noting that no matter for what edition I play Dungeon Master, the players will always surprise me.

A couple of weeks back, I was totally flabbergasted when Beautiful Bob activated the overload circuit that he had built into the ship at its creation (the entire hovercraft is a magical item created by the party, indestructible by normal means) and let loose all the magical energy stored in its battery in a tremendous explosion to prevent it from being towed to an unknown location. Maybe even more surprising, the other players did not protest at all.

A tiny bit of back story: the party was exploring a completely alien planet in another dimension, having left the hovercraft behind well hidden in the canopy of the jungle, guarded by the brothers Beobob and Beebul of the fierce people. The hovercraft was the destination of the matched teleporter coins each party member held as a get-a-way option. The hovercraft held Hammer's alternate mechanical/magical bodies (a Warforged Barbarian at character creation, Hammer has subsequently bound his soul and intelligence into a magical crystal that can be mounted in different bodies, allowing him different builds and classes as long as he keeps the same base INT, WIS and CHA scores). The hovercraft held the largest piece of meteorite metal the party had found, an amazing natural battery capable of storing tremendous amounts of power... which the party had charged completely full by draining a giant whirlpool portal to another dimension. The hovercraft had 20 rail guns constructed of Brood X leg blasters linked to the central battery with focusing lenses harvested from the eyes of the brood of Kariki Kalos.

And Beautiful Bob blew it all up without a second thought. Honestly, the hovercraft was the one thing that had made travelling around in the jungle during the wet season feasible, and its firepower when fully manned by native gunners was a powerful deterrent to the devil bounty hunters and everyone else that the party has pissed off so far.

Of course, the party already has plans for how to make an even better hovercraft...

Better partial and late than never...

2012-01-04T21:03:00.000-08:00

So Mike Monaco's awesome Iron Chef adventure challenge has long since come and gone, but I am still planning on finishing up my "entry" one of these days. I took a new job that involved getting trained and then starting an office up that had been closed due to widespread corruption for several months. I literally did not have a day off except for Thanksgiving and Christmas for several months. Real life once again intrudes on an awesome hobby!

Of course, I kept up on my DMing duties and (mostly) on my player's duties in my buddy Carter's campaign, so it is not like I totally left D&D behind for a few months. I just haven't kept up on my bloggerly duties.

I am going to try to dust off what I had started for the challenge and present it here, starting with some (incomplete) random encounter tables. This first post does not really have anything to do with the cards I got, directly. These are incomplete random encounter tables for road travel through the abandoned vineyards and farmlands outside of the last frontier town. The wilderness setting I came up with was directly influenced by the cards, but no cards show up in these charts. If I had finished the Hex Special Chart the cards would have been more directly involved.

Farmland (road travel): (2d6 - roll once per hex traveled across)
2: Possibly Dangerous Encounter
3: Physical Obstacle
4-5: Physical Feature
6-7: Animal Encounter
8-9: Civilized Encounter
10: Rare Animal
11: Rare Person
12: Roll on the Special Chart for this hex

2: Possibly Dangerous Encounter (Farmland Road) (2d6)

2:Aggressive Wild Boars at the edge of the road roll 1d6: 1-3: 1d4 3 HD boars and 1d4 2 HD sows, 4-5: 1d4 3 HD boars and 2d4 2 HD sows, 6: 1 5 HD boar, 1d6 3 HD boars and 2d6 2 HD sows

3: Biting Fly Swarm persists for 1d6 turns (Save vs. Poison every turn if no precautions taken - minor fever persists for 2d6 days, unless double sixes are rolled for duration; then Save vs. Poison again or drop into a potentially fatal fever coma)

4:Ground Wasp Nest (roll for surprise; if surprised, swarm targets random PC, attacking each round like a 5 HD monster, 2d4 damage, pursuing for 2d6 rounds. Other PCs that remain in the area or attempt to help must Save vs. Spells or find themselves targeted as well using the same rules.

5-6: Aggressive Dog on the road roll 1d6: 1-3: 1d6 1 HD stray dogs, 4-5: 2+1 HD Guard Dog, 6: 1d4 2+1 HD Guard Dogs

7-8: Local Drunks (Thugs) in a foul mood roll 1d6: 1-3: two 0-level thugs, 4: 1d4 0-level thugs; 5: 1d4 1st level thugs; 6: 1d4 2nd level thugs and 1 3rd level thug)

9:Fracas in the Field roll 1d6: 1-3: 2d6 1 HD Hired Hands quarrelling, 4-5: 1d4 2 HD Hunters pursuing game, 6: Predator attacking a calf (1d6, 1-3: 2d6 wolves,4-5: mountain lion, 6: one mountain lion attacks, one mountain lion is hidden)

10: Aggressive Bull on the road roll 1d6: 1-3: 5 HD, 1d8 charge, 1d6 trample 4-5: 6 HD, 2d6 charge, 1d8 trample; 6: 7 HD, 2d6 charge, 2d6 trample

11: Travelling Sellswords approach roll 1d6: 1-3: 1d4 2nd level fighters; 4: 1d4 3rd level fighters on horseback; 5: two 5th level fighters on horseback with 1d6 extra horses and 2d4 1st level fighters; 6: 1 8th level fighter in wagon, 2d4 3rd level fighters on horseback and 2d6 1st level fighters

12: Poisonous Critter roll 1d6: 1-3: Snake, random PC or horse is attacked (1 HD, 1 damage, Save vs. Poison if not wearing boots or take 3d6 damage), 4-5: Large Snake, random target is attacked (3 HD, 1d6 damage, Save vs. Poison or take 5d6 damage), 6: Scorpion (1 HD) attacks random party member or horse, Save vs. Poison or Death

3: Physical Obstacle (Farmland Road) (2d6)

2-3: Fallen Tree

4-5: Herd of Sheep (4d8 sheep) roll 1d6: 1-5: herded by 1d4 1HD sheep dog (1 HD shepherd within earshot), 6: unattended

6-7: Herd of Cows (4d6 cows: if number of cows is 4-8: roll 1d10, 9-12: roll 2d6, 13-15: roll 1d12, 16-20: roll 3d6, 21-24: roll 1d20) : 1-10: herded by 1 1HD mounted farmhand and two 1 HD dogs, 11: herded by 2 1 HD mounted farmhands, 12: herded by 2 2HD mounted farmhands and 1d4 1 HD dogs, 13-15: herded by 1d4 mounted 1 HD farmhands and 1d6 1 HD dogs, 16-17: herded by 1d6 mounted 1 HD farmhands and 1d6 1 HD dogs, 18-19: 20: unattended

8-9: Washed Out Section (1d6 turns of travel, 10% chance per turn of a wheel breaking or horse turning an ankle unless speed is reduced)

10: Broken Down Wagon roll 1d6: 1-3: abandoned full of produce, 4-5: 1d4 children waiting for pa to return, 6: full of beer kegs, being pulled by two brothers, runaway horse

11: Large Boulder (2d6 hundred pounds)

12: Fire roll 1d6 1-3: small field fire, 4-5: large field fire, restricts visibility, extends 1d6 turns, 6: large fire blocks path for 2d6 turns ahead

4: Physical Feature (Farmland Road) (2d6) (all buildings are set back from the main road, dwellings accessible by a well defined path)

2: Bridge over chasm roll 1d6: 1-4: Wood Bridge, 5-6: Stone Bridge

3: Stone Wall roll 1d6: 1-4: mostly fallen, 5: in poor repair, 6: in good repair

4:Wooden Fence roll 1d6: 1-3: in poor repair, 4-5: in good repair, 6: freshly painted white

5: Old Orchard roll 1d6: 1:Apple, 2: Pear, 3: Nectarine, 4: Peach, 5: Plum, 6:Cherry

6: Stand of Hard Wood (good quality, straight grain, old trees)

7: Outbuilding roll 1d6: 1-3: 3 sided cattle shelter, 4: Barn, 5: Grain Silo, 6: Bunk for Hired Hands

8: Corral roll 1d8: 1-3: 2d6 pigs, 4: 2d6 goats, 5: 4d8 sheep, 6: 4d6 cows, 7: 2d6 horses 8: abandoned and now home to a huge honey bee hive in the old trough

9: Farm House roll 1d8: 1-2: abandoned, 3-4: 1 family hovel, 5: 1 family farmhouse, 6: 2 family farm house, 7: Ale House, 8: Country Estate

10: Year Round Stream roll 1d6: 1-3 decent fishing, 4-5: good fishing, 6: great fishing

11: Thorn Bushes choke the road for 1/4 mile roll 1d6: 1-3: there is an established trail around the briar patch, 1/2 mile detour, 4: there is a narrow overgrown trail down the middle of the road, 5: there are wasp nests, and no easy trail, use ground wasp result under Farmland Road Dangerous Encounters if a path is cleared, 6: a 5 HD witch with 1 2nd and 2 1st level wizard spells and 1 2nd and 1 1st level cleric spells lives in the briar patch. Roll 1d4 random potions and 1d4 doses of deadly poison for the witch.

12: Interesting Mushroom Patch roll 1d6: 1: mildly nauseating, 2-4: edible, 5: rare curative (as a prepared broth): delays poison and grants a new Save vs. Poison or Disease, 6: poisonous, appears as edible (1-3 on d4) or rare curative (4 on d4); Save vs. Poison or Death if ingested

Obviously I never started the "Animal Encounter", "Civilized Encounter", "Rare Animal", "Rare Person" and "Hex Special Chart" sub charts. The hex special chart was going to be a big 2d20 chart of special encounters and unique places that would not get put on the map until rolled randomly. Groups of hexes could share a Hex Special Chart, but a result could only be placed in one hex, subsequent rolls of that result calling for a reroll. Some hexes might have a unique Hex Special Chart, while other large tracts (of similar farmland type, for instance) might all share one Hex Special Chart.

I was going to do a similar type of encounter chart for offroad farmland travel, town outskirts and town, the hot springs area, forest edge/ mixed forest, deep forest, forest swamp, and mountains.

Of course that would have been a crazy amount of work! The next time I start a "traditional", more western / Tolkien / pseudo-medieval game I would like to do something like this, however. I have never been satisfied by traditional random encounter tables. Encounter or No Encounter does not seem like a good initial result; using my charts, every hex will have some kind of randomly generated feature to spur the imagination of DMs and players, and that does not necessarily just mean the potential for combat. An unattended herd of cattle is an extremely unlikely result to roll, but it is also essentially a big pile of loot just sitting there in the middle of the road. But if the party succumbs to temptation, whose cattle were they? Who will come looking for them?

I like the highly varied results of the basic structure of two bell bell shaped 2d6 charts multiplying and then multiplying by at least a 1d6 with three results to get the final outcome. For instance, you would have to travel through 3888 hexes on average to encounter a large enough wildfire to block your path while travelling on a farmland road (1 in 18 chance of getting a result of "Physical Obstacle" on the original 2d6 throw, 1 in 36 chance of getting a "Fire" result on the second 2d6 throw, and a 1 in 6 chance of getting a large fire result on the final throw).
The probabilities get too complicated for me to figure out quickly in my head when you start talking about a 1 in 36 chance of rolling on the Special Hex Chart multiplied by a bell shaped 2d20 chart. At its simplest, a result of 2 or 40 on the 2d20 chart would only happen once every 14,400 times! Outlier rolls on the Special Hex Charts were going to call for extra planar activity, including a chance for a roll on the gate to random plane opening and things coming across chart.

The basic thing I was trying to accomplish was to change the basic dynamic of the random encounter roll. As usually played in D&D a single roll (often a 1 or a 6 on 1d6) determines if there is an encounter; if there is an encounter, a second roll on the encounter chart determines what the encounter is. This leads to frustrating results occasionally (three straight "random" encounters with black dragons on a road trip by wagon in Carter's campaign come to mind) and it is usually fairly obvious to the players if the result of the initial throw was "no encounter" so the basic mechanic does not build excitement well. The first throw on my charts is not a chance to see if there is or is not an encounter, it is a check to see what kind of encounter occurs when the hex is traveled through. It can and should be rolled each time the hex is traveled through! It is an acknowledgement that if you spent time in any chunk of land on the map, you would keep finding "things of interest". No DM will have these detailed out beforehand, but there is no reason that the random charts cannot combine "encounters" and "physical features" and even blur the lines between the two. For instance, rolling a possibly dangerous encounter is an outlier result on the initial throw, snake eyes. 1 in 36 chance to even get to roll on what would be the only chart in a standard D&D random encounter system. Rolling a physical obstacle to encounter while travelling through the hex is twice as likely, but still something of an outlier result. But if the "Thorn Bushes choke the road" result is thrown on the Physical Obstacle chart, itself a 1 in 18 result like the first throw, there is a slim chance that a possibly very dangerous encounter will be rolled in the form of a witch living in the middle of a large briar patch, armed with both wizardly and clerical spells, potions, and poisons.

I probably won't finish the planned charts for the challenge, but I will still put the main gist of my ideas out there in the next few posts. My cards inspired a creative twist on the traditional frontier sandbox, and I can't wait to show how a Moon Dragon, a Sun Dragon, and an Astral Dragon all fit into it!

Alien Dimension

2011-12-05T23:30:00.000-08:00

The players in my 4e campaign are exploring an alien dimension, in hopes of righting a wrong that is more or less attributable to them and which is in all likelihood completely un-rightable.

I sketched pictures and took brief notes on four alien ecosystems the party was likely to cross through while looking for Tshuin the tree jumper. Tshuin, his brother Yerush and a young warrior named Anank had first encountered the party while tracking a large hord of alien locust-scorpions being driven by Minotaur vampires under the sway of Manu Jibleetu (the lich technomancer). Yerush and Anank currently lie unconscious, kept magically subdued in the hold of the hovercraft back in 4e dimension while the party tries to track down Tshuin to explain that they had not listened to him when Tshuin had told them to just kill the pair.

You see, my players are having a moral dilemma. Tilia and Beautiful Bob pretty much are the reason that the cross-dimensional instabilities have ceased and the borderlands between the jungle and the alien dimension no longer exist. Tshuin, Yerush and Anank were on the 4e side when the dimensions separated, and their village and families were on the alien side.

The party has also learned that the villagers are at least as much alien as they are "normal", with a secondary insubstantial nervous system (ghost nervous system) attached to two very real mycelial tissue masses in the lungs and lower digestive system.

One of the effects of this ghost nervous system is that all the villagers are bound together with a telepathic link; when the dimensions parted, this link was severed for Yerush and Anank. Tshuin still felt something... somewhere... but the others would not listen to him. "Our families are dead! Our children are dead! The elders are dead! The mother plant will go unpropagated and the pitcher-flowers will be undrunk! Let us do the ritual of the black mask and welcome those who have wronged us to the same fate!"

Tshuin watched as his older brother and the arrogant warrior Anank anointed themselves and drank the sacred drink. He watched as they burned their own blood and smeared the ashes into the raw flesh revealed after they flayed their own faces. Tshuin said the ritual words that are said to free the soul, and watched as the eyes of the two glazed over... and became black... and the black spread across the face, a featureless black mask with two slits for eyes.

Tshuin hailed the party from a treetop as the hovercraft flew over the jungle. He told them that his brother and Anank were coming to kill them. The ritual of the black mask had revealed Beautiful Bob and Tilia as the reason the family had been lost. Tshuin asked the party to kill the pair, because their souls had already been lost. There is no reasoning with them, he said. They are already gone.

But did the party listen?

Charts

2011-10-18T23:17:00.000-07:00

I love reading the Tao of D&D and even (tentatively) commenting on occasion. I have generally avoided the wrath of Tao, but rarely do my comments raise much of a reaction at all. A minor victory, I suppose. A typically awesome read inspired this post.

I couldn't agree more with the basic gist of the linked post; if I am going to make a random chart at all, it has to be useful in a thousand situations and not stale after six rolls. Of course, Tao goes beyond simple complexity and demands of himself (and others, I guess, if I were to acknowledge the sub-plot of many of Tao's recent posts) charts and game mechanics that model the consistencies and vagaries of real life within an acceptable statistical deviance.

I usually just stick with making charts with a gajillion results. Ferrinstance, when I wanted to randomly generate magical fungi for my Mutant Future campaign's brief stint on Celestia, I created a "chart" with some number of thousand total possibilities,and I actually do not even possess the statistical acumen to give you a correct total. The version that I posted on the interwebs is lacking the addiction and overdose tables, but even just the primary effect (d30 + subcharts + some random duration rolls) + secondary effect (d20 + subcharts + some random duration rolls) tables generate thousands of possibilities.

That is the kind of chart I am going to create, if I create any at all, because in general I just rely on my ability to perform well under pressure and come up with something awesome, and my ability to sit back at the correct moments to allow my players to come up with something awesome. The time that I spend in prep is normally spent creating new creatures and cultural practices and items and sketching and most dearly refining the physical rules that govern my RPG universe (i.e. expanding on magic and its relationship to energy, time and intent). It is spent jotting down quick reminder lists of the various NPCs and factions that are going to be most active during the period of time the session is likely to entail. When multiple days pass in session, I rely on my own ability to just create weather conditions and terrain descriptions that are not just accurate for the latitude and time of year, but evocative as well. I do a fair amount of research on conditions in Earth analogs of the kind of places I stage my adventures, and I just wing it from there. It seems to work well; weather is not an afterthought, it is a tangible part of the game, but I don't think any of my players care HOW I generate it.

I fly without a safety net a lot of the time; not all of the time; not even most of the time; and my poker face is good. I act the same one way or the other if I am improvising from the seat of my pants based on the setting to date and the actions of the players, or if I am working from fastidiously prepared notes.

Don't get me wrong; I DO have fastidiously prepared notes. I prepare reams of material for every game I have ever DMed... scribbled pages upon pages of notes, pen and ink, illustrations, diagrams, sidebars and more. I just accept that a good portion of that work is just a mental exercise and that the number of hours spent conducting freestyle mental gymnastics during a session has no correlation to the number of hours spent preparing for a session.

There is rarely a situation in one of my ongoing games that I feel the need to create a chart for, because I have taught myself the lesson over and over again that I can be a successful DM just by staying out of my own way; providing interesting tidbits and reacting to player actions. I have honestly never felt the need for "random" encounters and weather, and even when I have made such charts I usually have ended up using them as inspiration in the moment. A post like Tao's makes me sort of wish that I had an alternate reality version of myself to make awesome detailed charts for every region in my 4e game, while the real-life me kept on happily creating undead mechanical constructs, strange tribal customs and new magic. But then I remind myself that Tao's campaign is set in a world that exists, Earth, and a history that not only mostly exists (late middle ages with magic, if I can sloppily summarize), but is familiar to the typical gamer, while my games tend to be set in very alien climates and social conditions. I fall closer to the Tekumel side of the divide than the Pendragon. I align myself nearer to the Sci Fi / Arnesonian / Temple of the Frog school than the Fantasy / Gygax / Keep on the Borderlands camp.

There is something about your standard, bog simple, pseudo-European generic default D&D setting that does still stir my blood, I must admit. I am really enjoying what I am working on right now precisely because of that. I am making random encounter charts for my entry into the Iron Chef Adventure Challenge issued by Mike Monaco (Swords & Dorkery). There are going to be several layers of complexity layered on top of your typical THIS kind of terrain, THAT chart routine. The basic format is going to be a d20 roll for each terrain type that a party could travel through in the hex-crawl (currently: Farmland (grain - travelling by road); Farmland (grain - cross country); Farmland (root crop - travelling by road); Farmland (root crop - cross country); High Moor (via road & traveler's shelter); High Moor (cross country); Millbrook Town; Hot Springs and Abandoned Estates surrounding Millbrook; Mixed New Growth Forest and Farmland; New Growth Forest; Old Growth Forest; Mountain Foothills; High Mountains; Glacial Ice Field; Temple Marsh & Hotsprings; the Moon; the Sun; Astral Plane) with a result of 20 calling for a roll on a special chart.

I am going to call for a roll once per hex entered OR once per day if no travelling is conducted (with a secondary roll for time of encounter) .

Results 1-15 on the d20 terrain type encounter chart typically call for a roll on a sub-chart (a common feature of my chart design; when creating a version of Mutant Future for "Fantasy" gaming, I used the [d100 roll gives a result that leads to a sub-chart] mechanic to create WAY more variation in random character generation than the original game's mechanic); for instance, these results might be "Wildlife - roll 3d6 on the following chart" or "Civilized Folk - roll 2d12 on the following chart" or "Uninhabited Structure - roll 1d20". Results 16-19 are more unusual / notable encounters for that terrain type. A result of 20 = a roll on the special chart for that hex. Most hexes within a terrain type share the same special results chart, but many hexes have unique charts.

The special charts are d30 charts and the linear distribution means that once the d30 comes out, some crazy results can come up. Results 25-30 are typically major encounters that occur on a spread of hexes, with Demonic activity concentrated in the areas near the temple but still occurring on a 30 in hexes all the way out to Millbrook.

On top of that, the locations of some major NPC actors will be rolled randomly when the PCs enter the region and then their subsequent movements determined on a daily basis on another chart.

On top of that, there is a d100 roll each day for the 1% likelihood of a spontaneous portal to a (random) extra-planar destination opening in a randomly determined hex around the temple for a random amount of time, each portal with its own supplementary charts that reveal what crosses through to this plane, and subsequent movements.

I would love to add yet another layer of complexity, the ability for the last result to influence the next result, but I am not sure the players would pick up on it. It does give me something to aspire to, if for no one else but myself! There is no reason to be lazy with chart creation. The entire purpose of charts is to save you time during the game, so investing time in their creation will give an exponential reward as a DM. If you aren't going to go all out, then why not just ad lib it?

I got my secret ingredients!

2011-10-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

Mike Monaco over at Swords and Dorkery issued a sweet challenge that I could not refuse. My unopened pack of 1992 Series TSR Collector Cards arrived today (this was a Max the Cat approved operation):

LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!

I have already figured out how to easily integrate all 16 of my Counterfeit Proof Limited Edition Fantasy Cards. There will be a forgotten temple involved, there might even be gates to the moon and the sun... who knows these sorta things? Guess you gotta roll on the random rumor table like everyone else...

Get ready for a solar system spanning wilderness hex crawl with the potential for planar travel!

Iron Chef Challenge

2011-10-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

I was browsing the blogosphere the other day and came across a blog that was new to me: Swords and Dorkery.

Mike Monaco, the blog author, issued a challenge to open a pack of AD&D collector cards and use at least half of them in an adventure, encounter or to stock a dungeon. He is also generously donating an unopened pack to the first sixteen respondents (I believe there might still be a few openings as of my writing this). This is the Iron Chef Challenge!

I jumped at the opportunity and eagerly await my pack of cards. I am going to use every golldurned card, I swear to Jeebus! I have also offered to donate a prize to the prize pool (an extra copy of the 1e DM's guide that seems superfluous to me now that I have a copy with the original cover; the prize copy has the Easley cover with a cloaked figure opening a door).

I have long wanted to do something similar with Magic the Gathering cards (randomly deal some out and use them as adventure seeds), so this is really right up my alley.

I can't wait to find out what my secret ingredients are!

Devils Bathe in Holy Water in the Labyrinth. Lord.

2011-10-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

In the Labyrinth Lord game that I play in (I am Dak, the Steve Buscemi of dwarfs) we had a great encounter with a demigod / powerful devil last session. Exploring a temple hidden deep beneath the manor house of the recently deceased lord of the region, Dak was nearly compelled to worship the altar of an evil god when he touched a magically warded door into the temple fane. Luckily, I rolled a 19 on my save and laughed in the face of evil. And then I got really ticked off, because I have been playing my character as afraid of magic in the first place, and this really struck to the core of my character's fears. I spent a goodly portion of last session destroying the evil altar with my dwarf steel hand ax, even though our good cleric's Detect Evil spell revealed that the evil presence in the altar grew stronger with every blow.

Sure enough, when Dak and Yor (the other party dwarf) succeeded in striking the last blow to the altar in spectacular fashion (collapsing a load bearing pillar onto it), an explosion of green flame occurred and a terrifying four-armed humanoid fish-demon-thing with a long eel-like tail burst into existence over the rubble.

Despite being dwarfs, with our inherently KICK ASS savings throws, we both failed a save vs. paralyzation when the evil fish thing sprayed us with a green liquid which subsequently encased us in a rock-hard goop. The rest of the party looked on in horror from the doorway, with the exception of Innominus the lawful cleric of Indra who warded himself with a spell and dived in to combat. (Thank Indra!)

Dak, terrified as he is of both magic and water, had tied a rope around his waist before entering the partially submerged chamber and tied the other end off on the spikes he had driven in to hold the door open. This enabled my hireling Rodney to pull my paralyzed body out of the fray, but it was obvious that it was going to take several rounds of work by Rodney to chip the coating off and free Dak.

As I was paralyzed and unable to take actions myself, I couldn't help but get involved in the meta-game and I began asking Kom, the player of a character with the ability to make two ranged attacks in a combat round, if he had anything likely to damage the monstrosity. We went through his list of equipment and it turned out that he had little if any magical or dwarf steel missile weaponry (besides his +2 crossbow, which he had already fired and would take a round to reload).

AHA, I thought, when I noticed that he had several vials of holy water written down. Holy water, blessed by a lawfully aligned temple, had to be effective against a chaotic and/or evil being such as this, right?

Kom rolled a solid to hit roll and the vial of holy water splashed across the hideous visage of the slimy bastard... to no avail.

According to Labyrinth Lord, holy water works against undead, period. If this is a faithful emulation of the early game, it seems to me like one of those lacunae in the old rules that occurred through oversight and not intention; after all, the very idea of holy water and its efficacy comes squarely from the catholic church, where it is used precisely to drive away evil spirits and devils. Its not like a lousy 1d8 damage is going to be overpowering any devil anytime soon, but it seems to me like it should do something.

It does make me curious, however, if ANY of the older editions (OD&D, B/X, AD&D 1e) make any provisions for holy water damaging a devil or avatar/agent of an evil god. Being a lazy fuck myself, can anyone find a reference?

I spent $25 at Emerald Comics today...

2011-09-28T23:32:00.000-07:00

And look what I got!

I did not own the actual box for the 1981 Basic D&D set before (I had been keeping my Ebay'ed copy of the rule book in the box for the Expert set), so I was going to pick up that bad boy for $5 no matter what... but the rulebook and The Keep on the Borderlands inside are in absolutely perfect condition, and the set still has the original dice, uncolored, with the original crayon! Too good.

The RuneQuest 3rd edition Deluxe Box Set is likewise in perfect condition inside, and the box has only minimal wear. Again, uncolored dice with crayon inside. $10? I think so!

And then something that has been on my wish list since I was a kid looking at the ads in Dungeon magazine (Dungeon and sister publication Dragon magazines were the only things D&D carried by any store in Haines, Alaska, available for a short while at the Babbling Book); the Planescape Campaign Setting! That one was incomplete (missing the maps of the planes, but including everything else PLUS two Planescape Monstrous Compendium softcovers) but still a steal at $10 given how much those things always go for on the secondary market.

Be still my fluttering heart!

Sweet Magic Houserule

2011-08-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

I was checking out The Same Universe wiki (a truly amazing wealth of material can be found there, including dozens and dozens of hex maps) when I came across this alternate spell casting system contributed by James.

http://www.thesameuniversewiki.org/Alternate-Spellcasting-Rules-Spell-Fatigue-and-Magical-Mishaps.ashx

It is a simple system for magical fatigue that increases the chance of spell failure the more spell levels cast. It bolts on to traditional D&D magic and allows a caster to cast any spell in her repertoire with a d6 roll + level vs Spell Fatigue, a new number to track (which increases with each casting, successful or not). A first level caster should be able to get several spells off successfully, but runs a chance of spell failure with unpredictable results.

I think it would go a long way toward "fixing" OD&D / B/X / AD&D style Vancian fire and forget magic for me. I have just never liked the feel of magic as presented in those editions. The house rule both increases the power of low level casters and makes magic work in a more intuitive way. At higher levels, it looks like it would limit casters a little bit with the chance of a spell failure, but high level casters are pretty dang powerful anyway.

Saving the Universe as a side mission

2011-08-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

I was browsing the blogs this afternoon and stopped by Grognardia to see how a rereading of Tolkien was treating James.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2011/08/brief-gaming-thoughts-on-re-reading.html

In the comments, from Aos: "I do, however, very much prefer to avoid world saving as a campaign emphasis. I've done it in the past and while it has an inherent charm, it also tends to deflate any further interest I might have in the setting."

I am dancing around this issue with my 4e campaign. My entire 4e universe has been "ending" in a slow protracted process that started with the stars going out in response to events in my Mutant Future campaign. The mutant future players, while exploring a strange chamber that evidently had been created by snakemen, activated a subprocess in a controlled singularity device on the planet of Celestia in the Mutant Future universe.

Like a bathtub draining, all the energy of the 4e universe is being sucked into the Mutant Future universe. The particular planet the 4e campaign is played on will succumb in just under two months game time, which of course can be an eternity or just a couple of sessions.

There are many powerful NPC actors in the 4e universe, none of the them (with the possible exception of the royal inquisitor from the city state of Siss Anor) friendly to the PCs, but all of them with a vested interest in seeing the universe persevere.

The party is currently fighting tooth and nail to survive against the minions of Manu Jibleetu, pinned down into a sphere of protection against shadow in the middle of a rain storm in the jungle and taking mortar fire from two artillery positions. Manu Jibleetu is an ancient lich technomancer who may or may not be allied with the snake men... and if the party thwarts Manu's plans, they may accidentally and unwittingly prevent him from stopping the destruction of the world personally (Manu just showed up last week after a centuries long absence from the region, and is up to all kinds of shit, including being commissioned by the snakemen to repair the malfunctioning sentient computer that controls the singularity, thereby saving the 4e universe for the time being).

What I have been enjoying is that the saving of the universe from impending doom is FAR from the top priority of the campaign, and it will not be a campaign ending event when it happens, regardless of if an NPC actor or the party succeeds. The party is currently trying to collect samples of each of five alien elements that do not occur in the 4e universe but which are necessary to activate the gate in the grandmother and grandfather tree at the confluence of the river to prevent all the energy in the 4e universe from flowing into the Mutant Future universe (this course of action having been arrived at through consultation with the gadoro, the race of spirit monkeys that guard the confluence of the river and the grandmother and grandfather tree, and after lengthy research among the tribes of the area). This is a short term goal, and they are ready to get back to the REAL task of trying to figure out what the heck the snake men are up to, and who were the race of tiny aliens who abandoned powerful energy vessels below the surface of the planet and on the moon.

Last session Tilia had a breakthrough (natural 20 on an arcana check) while trying to gain entrance into a sacred metal pod. She realized that the metal was an alloy composed of the five alien elements, at least theoretically opening up the possibility of breaking down the metal into its composite elements. As one of the areas of dimensional instability where the alien elements appear is hidden underneath Manu Jibleetu's twisted tower, the party welcomed at least the possibility of obtaining the shadow element without having to brave the dead hills and enter the tower.

Initiative by the Book (Labyrinth Lord)

2011-05-16T01:32:00.000-07:00

I always used to think that group initiative, especially d6 group initiative, was both incredibly boring and unrealistic. I have used d20 individual initiative, plus Dexterity modifier, in my Mutant Future campaign, and I have been generally happy with that.

Recently, in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord campaign, we switched back to by the book group initiative. The key thing that I had always failed to grasp when I read the initiative rules was that initiative was rerolled every round. This is a ton of rolling if you are doing individual initiative, but really not hard at all if you are doing group initiative.

Short story: I really like d6 group initiative, rolled each round of combat, ties meaning simultaneous action. It allows the tide of battle to change rapidly, it allows dramatic things like knowing you are already dead but getting one last attack in (and the chance for the ultimate cinematic moment, the simultaneous death shot), and it actually takes less time than the mess of going around the table and recording initiative rolls and constantly having to remind everyone when it is their turn in the initiative order.

I think I am going to switch my Mutant Future game over to this system, and I am seriously thinking about switching my 4e game over as well. I have to think about that latter proposal a little more, as there are feats that you can take in 4e that improve initiative (I am not sure if any of my players have taken these feats, but if they have, it would be cheesy to completely castrate their usefulness). I still think I am going to do it, and may just allow players to pick new feats and or powers if they want to given this new information.

I really like the way that this simple change in initiative has made the combats in our Labyrinth Lord game WAY more exciting, and I see no reason why it wouldn't work in other systems as well.

A Tale of Time Travel and Aliens: 3 Nights in One (player post [annotation by Carl])

2011-03-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

Heya all!

So…I’m going to try and wrap up a bit of what’s been going on after the last couple sessions. I didn’t really have time to stop and write about the last few…

So, where to begin?

TIME TRAVEL

After sinking the tower that Akili and Ghoudy lived in on accident, thus dispelling the whirlpool that was at the outlet of the two great rivers from the mountains, we had to deal with a very ANGRY Akili and Slotek.

[The party managed to dispel the whirlpool by sucking its energy up into the meteorite metal battery that powered their magical airship - I had already described how the magical energies of the two rivers that met at the confluence were being caused to rotate against each other, so when the party navigated the ship (in the water, not the air) into the whirlpool and started trying to suck up the energy I gave them a chance... and also warned them that if they failed their ship would be smashed to smithereens. Of course, they had a great string of luck rolling the dice, as they are wont to do, so I ruled that they had succeeded in stopping the whirlpool. What the party didn't know is that the stone spire that Old Man Gootie and Akili lived in was not actually sticking out of the bottom of the river, it was sticking up out of a large portal powered by the whirling water. So when the whirlpool was stopped, the portal closed and the top of the stone spire that protruded into this dimension was severed and began to fall over into the river. - Carl]

Akili had Slotek poised to leap at our ship and destroy us. However, Beautiful Bob managed some awesome diplomacy and kept her from destroying us right out. She was currently sated, but worried because (although she didn’t say it) we had sealed Ghoudy in the portal that was at the bottom of the whirlpool, allowing the tower to come through and causing the whirlpool to begin with. Apparently we also sealed all her food stores in there as well. She was slowly reverting to her most insatiable self, and we had to think fast! She wanted our big meteorite battery that we had just fully charged on whirlpool energy because it would sustain her for months! Well, we weren’t about to give up our awesome air ship just yet….so, Antillia quickly offered her a lightning beetle (powerful magical creatures that they are) and she was sated for the time being. That gave Bob and the rest of us the opening to negotiate a cease fire and Antillia said she had the means of traveling through time (using some fungus she found early on in the adventure), however, it could potentially be fatal if consumed. Antillia had learned of the first weave of shadow from Ghoudy and decided with Akili’s help (who had a mass amount of knowledge) that she might be able to create a portal in the shadow realm, using the fungus in the weave, which stretched back in time. So, with Beautiful Bob’s help, Antillia had Akili attach a pseudo pod to the albino minotaur’s head. (These pseudo pods allow her to control anyone they are attached to and basically take control of all their actions. Antillia was gambling that she could also transfer her knowledge/memories through the link). Beautiful Bob busted out his Tower of Iron Will to filter the transmission….Antillia cringing (having tried this before on the alien space sphere and failing) because she thought her head might explode. Antillia took this chance to bust out her d30, hoping for the best….rolling 23 she sighed with some relief, but then Carl rolled for Akili…………NAT 20! Antillia’s player (me) jumped with delight and let out a yelp of joy! Beautiful Bob was able to keep the minotaur’s head from exploding and Akili was able to transfer her vast amount of knowledge into the mind of Antillia. Now, this allowed Antillia a nice bonus on making the portal…which turned out to be a DC50 Arcana check. (Holy Cow! No pun intended!) So, with Akili’s help the minotaur was able to meet the DC. We entered the portal…but messing with time is never easy…..

Our first attempt was to simply have Akili go into the temple and let the old version of herself know the outcome of leaving the temple early. Antillia shot her with a dose of meteorite energy to last her a week, so that the old Akili wouldn’t go crazy and eat everyone. Meanwhile, we also gave her a lightning beetle to breed inside the temple over the thousand years or so….and Antillia set up a regular meeting time in the shadow world (because time flows strange there) so that she could keep the old Akili company every year or so. (This would turn out to only be a passing of a few moments in the shadow world to Antillia) After some debate on whether to change anything else….Antillia arguing that we should save some other historical flops we had committed, but it was concluded that we shouldn’t mess with much of anything else. So, we zipped back through the portal and left the Akili of our time in the past, after instructing the Akili of the past on what to do. Coming out of the portal we noticed Slotek, wondering where his mother was…but looking remarkably different. Still mentally delayed, but a bluish color and a different power keeping him from being the great river spirit he needed to be. Through some handy psychic investigation by Bob we found it was the spirit beetles, that the Akili of the past had decided to start eating them and had binged on them for hundreds of years, not needing the dolphin consumption ritual to gain the power to give birth to Slotek. However, she was now addicted to spirit beetles (lightning beetles) and so was Slotek. We all let out a long sigh, trying to puzzle out ways to fix the problem….we thought if we could put her to sleep she wouldn’t go crazy from being alone and find Ghoudy and used him to do crazy things…then it hit us like a bolt of lightning! We had taken the rest of that sleeping potion from the temple! (The potion that Beautiful Bob took a sample of and it almost put him into a coma for 1000 years!)

[This potion was from the 1e adventure "The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan", from the room where two monks slumber eternally unless attacked, and a potion vial with dust in it can be reconstituted to form a potion of eternal sleep. I had a ton of fun making some 4e monks to kick the party's ass with, which is exactly what happened when they decided to decapitate the sleeping monks before they could do anything to the party! At least the party ended up with the potion after getting their rear ends handed to them, as it now came in very handy. - Carl]

So, Antillia went to her first meeting with the Akili of the past and gave her the potion to drink! She then stepped out to see that Slotek was gone, the Ghoudy of the past was met with the Akili of our time and that wrapped everything up nicely. The Akili of the past was still asleep in the temple and we were able to convince the dolphins to remove the curse from Akili of our time because they didn’t know what she had done in the first place to get it. (Seeing that we had removed that happening from the time line) Ghoudy and Akili went off to live happily ever after and we were set with a new mission….go to the temple and wake Akili so she could create the true river god being.

[I was pretty sure the party could not avoid a combat with Akili and Slotek, which would have ended very badly for the party. However, once the idea of travelling through time was brought up and the characters told Akili that they could journey back and prevent the terrible curse of gluttony from ever afflicting her, she was all ears. This session was very tough for me to DM, because Antilia's player (the writer of this blog post) wanted to go back in time and change all sorts of things the party had done, most notably releasing the elder jellyfish god Kariki Kalos from its temple prison. I didn't want to just use DM's fiat to say "No, you can't do this", but I did hint around that the more the party messed with time, the more unintended consequences would happen and the crazier the results would be. In the end, Beautiful Bob's player managed to convince Antilia's player that they should limit their messing around with time to one brief mission and get back. Phew! - Carl]

That ended the first of the three sessions…on to the next!

A SINKING FEELING(OF DEVILS AND COWS)

So, having successfully (or at least, it seems that way) helped Akili, we were all patting each other on the back and trying to decide whether to approach the island or not when a jolt went through all of us. We felt a disturbance so profound it rocked Bob’s psyche. Antillia immediately went into the spirit world to see what was going on, being more perceptive there to the disturbance. She followed it to it’s source and found out that Kariki’Kalos (the giant jellyfish squid elder god thing) had sunk the entire continent that it had been attacking. Basically half the known world was now under water!

[I had been rolling some dice at the beginning of each session after the party had released Kariki Kalos, to represent the battle between the elder squid god and the cadre of lich priests that had originally imprisoned it, and who set out after it as soon as the party released it. I rolled a d20 for each side, and whichever side won, I recorded it as a minor victory. When a natural 20 was rolled, I rolled a second d20, looking for a second natural 20 to represent a total victory. At the beginning of this session, I finally got two 20's in a row for Kariki Kalos. Game over, man. - Carl]

The disturbance was the profound loss of life and some strong souls were trying to cling on in the spirit world. Antillia approached one of these powerful ones and attempted to feed it some of her energy to help it materialize, hoping to help at least one or two people. However, much to her surprise, it turned out to be a devil! It laughed and possessed her (by continuing to absorb the force she was feeding it and increasing the flow!), which caused her to go crazy on the boat. Her eyes began to glow red and she began speaking in a demonic tongue on the boat, cutting her hand with a longsword and etching a rune of summoning on the boat’s surface. Hammer, always quick to the draw, wrapped his arms around her and bear-hugged her into submission so Chmee (our Artificer) and Beautiful Bob could figure out what was going on and de-possess her. Carl was quickly reading through the effect, learning it was permanent with no save, until he caught the line “the only way to break the possession is by grappling the opponent”. We all laughed, but even with the devil expelled, the summoning rune pulled two ice devils into existence to fight us with the disembodied humanoid dragon-like devil. Chmee quickly threw down his all-seeing eye artifice that allowed everyone to see the dragon-like devil, which Beautiful Bob and Hammer made quick to weaken by pounding him pretty good. Antillia decided to try something, since she had felt the draw of energy during her spirit travel and had felt him sucking away her energy, she decided to try reversing the effect on the dragon-like devil with a malevolent nut!

[The malevolent nuts are the product of a twisted tree that grows on the site of a terrible wrong. The nuts suck in the soul of anything that dies nearby, preventing it from travelling to the afterlife, instead imprisoning it in a hell-like subdimension. This was the first attempt to use a nut in combat to suck the soul out of a creature in combat, and as I am wont to do, I allowed it to happen, albeit with a slim chance of success. Subsequently, the party tried to use the nuts to just one-shot every powerful creature they encountered, and I ended up ruling that the nuts could only be used on a creature that was already defeated. - Carl]

With a battle of wills, Antillia successfully sucked the dragon-like creature’s energy, using the nut to filter out his personality so she could directly absorb his power. This left Hammer, Chmee, and Bob facing two ice devils and they immediately set in on one of the two. Hammer made a ridiculously good roll and cleaved into it, his damage flowing like a river to wash away it’s hp. Chmee had a bit of trouble hitting and Bob attacked it’s will causing it to attack itself! Needless to say it was feeling the pain, bloodied and then some. The other devil made a break for our power core and tried to attack it, failing to do any significant damage to our relief. Antillia ran to that one and managed to use the same tactic, sucking him dry and storing his personality in a malevolent nut. She let out a cackle using the power to infuse her voice and the other ice devil looked disturbed by this turn of events. Hammer, Chmee, and Beautiful Bob managed to knock it unconscious and Antillia repeated the “soul suck” on it. She handed one of the ice devil nuts to Beautiful Bob who interrogated it psychically and found out who it worked for, why it was there, and left it with a warning for the Great Devil it worked for. He then opened a portal to the layer of Hell it was from and sent it through. After this, we were all pretty winded…but we decided to put some of the power we had gained to use. Antillia used the power of the ice devils to imbue her Winter’s Herald with extra strength, allowing the difficult terrain to expand out to five squares from two. She also gained an Aura 2 slow effect that persists outside of the form. Beautiful Bob decided to use his d30 to see if he could gleam some insight into the malevolent nuts and what would happen if you ate one with a soul trapped inside. (such as the devils) He lived up to his reputation and rolled a natural 30, giving him the insight and ability to eat a nut and substitute one of his powers of equal or higher level for powers from the being inside the nut. However, each nut that you consumed also lowers your will defense by 2. A hefty price to pay, but worth it if you find the right nut!

So we rested up and ended the second of three gaming nights that I am catching up on….and so the last night came.

ALIEN ISLANDS AND WHISTLING NATIVES

We had come back to the game shortly after Beautiful Bob had learned the secrets of the nuts. We decided it was time to try and approach the mysterious island with the temple that held Akili of the past and wake her up, then figure out how to help her make the great river creature. So, we kicked our air ship into full blast and shot for the island…as we approached Antillia noticed the black and white clay sphere she had began to vibrate. It turns out the white monkey statue in the middle was harmonizing to an unseen and unheard frequency. As she was puzzling over it, Nima appeared with Dwarmel on her shoulder.

Now, taking a side step from the story to introduce Nima, because some of you probably have no idea who she is. Nima is an interesting person…she can apparently physically enter and leave the spirit world and travel wherever she wishes. We first met her in the fierce people’s village and according to Ti’tsua (Antillia’s shi’bori teacher) she has been able to do so since birth. When we first ran into her in the spirit realm she had a strange lemur-like creature on her shoulder that she called Dwarmel. Apparently he accompanied her in the spirit world at all times. We still aren’t sure where she falls into things, but she is an outsider to everyone and only seemed to converse with Ti’tsua on a semi-regular basis.

[I have used Neema and Dwarmel as a sort of DM's cheat, a couple of NPCs that can appear and give insight to the party and drive the story along in interesting directions. I have a back story for them that has never really been fully discovered by the party. - Carl]

So back to the story….she appears on our ship, much to our surprise with Dwarmel on her shoulder. This being the first time we’ve seen him outside the spirit world. Antillia studied her for a moment with her new-found spirit/shadow sight lenses she created and discovered that Nima is actually blind and Dwarmel works as her eyes. Antillia was a bit shocked by this and was mulling it over, meanwhile the subject of the vibrating statue came up and the worry that something was approaching. Nima laughed at us a bit and held one up to Dwarmel's eyes, saying it wasn’t a ward but a lens. Antillia strapped one to her head over her left eye and used it to look around. Everything seemed dark, but when she looked upon the Baddy-Baddy island it suddenly came into focus. (Previously being completely chaotic and full of random imagery and energy) This gave Antillia and the rest of the party the ability to look upon some large albino four-armed cyclopean apes, who we learned were the Gadoro. They stood in a triangular pattern, one ape taking up each corner and they sang in a chorus. One would start up a vibration/hum of a certain tone, then stop as the next picked it up. When they made their sound the area around them on the island would become lush Amazonian landscape, but when it faded it would turn dark and almost barren for a split second. The party tried to decipher the sounds of their song but failed.

As soon as we crossed the threshold of the island everything suddenly went silent, Antillia got a strong sick feeling of being pushed away like we didn’t belong (a natural feeling at that) and we were assaulted by a pack of small Gadoro images. It turns out they were projections of some other Gadoro we didn’t see and they kept coming by bunches of six at a time! They were minions, but they could do a nasty attack where they turned into a beam of energy and blasted into you. It would kill the minion, but put a nice hole in your body. They could also shove you around with a normal attack and they managed to throw Beautiful Bob off our boat, who made a daring athletics check to catch himself in a tree. Antillia used her “shield-like” flying device to fly to Bob and blow him a floating bubble from the Horn of Kariki-Kalos, which gave him a way to move around unless the Gadoro images popped it. Shortly after that Hammer was thrown from the boat as Antillia flew back up, leaving her the only one on the vessel. With some lucky rolls she managed to maneuver the flying ship to swoop down and pick up Hammer with the attached side nets, before flying away from the island. She then left Hammer to recover from his ordeal (having been thoroughly punched with holes from the Gadoro images beam attack) and used her flying shield to head towards Bob who was persistently trying to tap into the trees with his psychic powers and find out what was going on. Suddenly the landscape began to change and the Gadoro began gathering on a cliff face and singing a mournful dirge. The trees began turning into these pink fleshy tentacles with a metallic coating, the ground made up of the same metallic coating. Beautiful Bob not one to miss a beat, tried to tap into the tentacle to make it his friend but it rejected him and he got an image that the thing the tentacle was connected too was much older than our universe. Surrounded by walking tentacles that were getting ready to pummel them to death, Antillia and Bob were stranded. Antillia used her shape shifting powers (sacrificing one of her dailies) and attempted to commune with the Gadoros and become one of them. Using her d30 she rolled a 25 on the nature check that Carl let her make. Success! (Thanks to her high Nature skill) Antillia changed into a Gadoro, but it didn’t have the effect she hoped for though immunity to falling damage would be handy! Antillia then used her Burst of Nature to convert two of the tentacles back into real trees and the area around Bob and herself, buying them both time to get the hell out of that crazy place! So she grabbed Bob and flew up to the Gadoros, telling them their reasons for being there. The big Gadoro told us we needed to seek those who still knew the old songs to prove we were worthy of being on that island. So taking a hint, we left…though we did learn there was a ritual performed daily by the Gadoro that was a sort of key to the island. Anyone in on the ritual would be able to enter the island without triggering its defenses. Apparently the metal tentacle, barren, alien landscape was only one version of the island and thanks to Bob tapping into it we could tell there was another reality to the island locked away from us. So Antillia and Bob returned to the air ship and we left the island, our heads hung a bit low as we were humbled by such a display of power and unable to make much progress on the island. However, we knew where to go….and it was actually where we had planned to go before going to the island in the first place.

We were off to see the Song People that Ti’tsua had told us about. They supposedly had some knowledge of the island and might even give us some insight into the songs of power the Gadoro said we should learn. So we follow the river that the Song People supposedly lived along and stopped at the first village we came to. First thing we noticed is that the Song People all looked emaciated and had smoke rising up off of them constantly. The older they were the more emaciated they looked. When they saw us they all made some sharp whistling sounds to warn the other villagers. They also had some well tended to gardens of small white peppers and some berry plants. They seemed extremely friendly and outgoing and Beautiful Bob got us off on the right foot with his gleaming smile and charming demeanor. Antillia asked them about their peppers and even had a chance to look them over. They were happy to show her their gardens and were incredibly proud of the well-tended plants. It turns out the peppers drew a lot of nutrients from the soil and the berry plants replenished those nutrients and kept the soil fresh. The soil also seemed to be imported from somewhere else, as this was not the natural growing area for these peppers. Hammer asked if he could try one and the villagers warned him of the heat, but Hammer chomped down on one with confidence. Soon after he spewed gouts of flame from his mouth and took some fire damage from the pepper. We all had a good laugh and Hammer mentioned making pepper spray out of the peppers to blind our enemies. However, we were soon greeted by the village leader who was dressed in finery and had magical rubies in the holes in his teeth that produced different tones of whistles. Apparently all the villagers had holes cut in their teeth and by plugging certain holes with their tongue they could create different song-like tones. We also discovered that the chiefs, or leaders, of the villages got in that position based on the “Big Man” principle of leadership. Basically, the person who can call on the most resources (Most men during a time of war, most food during a time of starvation, etc.) at one time became respected and elevated to a position of leadership. The session ended shortly after they invited us to a feast they were planning for the evening where some of the boys of the village would be elevated to adults. Though we did manage to pick up the fact that these people consumed the peppers on a regular basis and it was a sacred plant to them. We all were left with a sense of awe and determination to find the secrets of these people. Not to mention a mighty hunger for some super peppers…

Well, that was a lot to write up…but it wraps up the 3 sessions I was behind! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we all did playing it!

-Mike P.

sweet score at the comic shop

2011-03-02T02:05:00.000-08:00

I scored Eric Weidanz' old copy of Runequest (2nd Edition with full color cover and detailed dragon logo) for $5 at Emerald Comics near campus in Eugene today.

At this point I feel like I know Eric a little bit - you see, I snagged some of his old AD&D 1e stuff (a DM's screen and some Dragon magazines) last week, but I also grabbed his old DM's binder out of the free box outside of the comic shop. I always check out the free box before I go into the shop (why not?) and I first picked up a cover-less copy of Dragon, which I immediately put in my backpack. Then I picked up the heavy, blue 3-ringed binder. Flipping it open I instantly knew it was a DM's binder. The inside was stamped "ERIC WEIDANZ" and then was a 9 digit number which looks like a SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER! Did people go around stamping their library with their social security number back then? What a different time, before the menacing scourge of identity theft.

A clear plastic sleeve held the first contents - a bunch of envelopes, the top one enticingly labeled "Demon" (these held little cut outs of monsters xeroxed from the Monster Manual, with the average height of the monster in feet written on the back of the cutout, each envelope containing a different category of monster).

A d100 Fumble Table was the next sheet (a lot of armor straps breaking, ankles getting twisted, hitting friends, and otherwise sucking - sounds terrible, must implement immediately!).

Basic Equipment and Supplies Costs (a very comprehensive hand written list that expands upon the 1e Player's Handbook and DM's guide by the looks of it) came next.

And then the icing on the cake - type-written sheets labelled "GAME MASTER ONLY" detailing Eric Weidanz' houserules for magic users.

"STARTING SPELLS

Each magic-user gets five spells after leaving his apprenticeship. One will be a READ MAGIC spell, one will be a [sic] offensive spell, two will be deffensive [sic] spells, and one miscellaneous spell."

He then proceeds to split the 1st level spells up into three categories, "Offensive", "Defensive" and "Miscellaneous".

The binder is awesome - it contains a bunch of cherry-picked sections from the DM's guide xeroxed in plastic sleeves, it has a bunch of Eric's locations (inns, castles, dungeons), random tables, etc. There is a really sweet Conjured Animals Table that gives a d100 table for each HD category of animal (1 HD, 2 HD, etc.). The table tops out with Mastodon (12 HD), Titanother (12 HD), Mammoth (13 HD), Whale (small) (14 HD) and Whale (up to 36 HD).

Eric clearly ran a bunch of 1e games - a lot of his pages had the scribbled HP deductions and notes that occur during game sessions.

I don't think Eric ever played Runequest.

The copy of Runequest I spotted today on the bottom shelf of the comic book shop was in absolutely pristine condition (well, one little oil spot on the back cover), with absolutely no marks inside.

Eric, in addition to his ink stamp with his social security number (?), got a cool embossed stamper at some point that said "Library of Eric Weidanz" and gave his address in a small town in Oregon. He had two copies of the 1e Player's Handbook, one owned by just himself (as evidenced by both the ink stamp AND the embossed stamp, a 2nd printing) and another owned first by someone else (a friend?) and then Eric (crossed out old name and number and Eric's new stamp).

I grabbed the copy of Runequest off the shelf and took it to the counter. While paying for it I asked if it was brought in by the same guy that brought in all the AD&D stuff the other day. It was.

ROLL ALL THE DICE!

2011-02-24T12:43:00.000-08:00

I was tidying up one of the computers that I use at my work and I discovered a .PDF that I had totally forgotten downloading. It is a Random Robot Generator by Sean Wills, and you can find it over at swordsandwizardry.com under the heading "General S&W Resources" as "Robot Generator for gonzo-style S&W by Sean Wills ('Geordie Racer')"

First off, I love that you get to roll all the dice! We were just having yet another discussion about the poor old d12 at the Labyrinth Lord session last Monday. Well, you get to roll the d12 for perhaps the coolest part of this chart; the mission the robot is out on when encountered!

If a Small Clockwork Snake Robot with 10' Ray Attack that can Find Traps out on a Retrieval Mission doesn't float your boat, then what the hell is wrong with you sir?

Theory vs. Play Experience - I am an edition relativist

2011-02-22T23:01:00.000-08:00

What Is "Old School Play"?

A lot of time has been spent on old school blogs over the last few years talking about what exactly the OSR is, what makes the earlier editions of the game different from modern iterations, etc. This discussion tends to break into two main sub-topics; a discussion of the mechanics of old school, usually including fast and simple character generation, rules-lite systems, and relatively low-powered, high mortality games; and old school as an ethos, a system-less "style of play" or way of doing things. As James over at Grognardia reposted recently,

"We don't explore characters, we explore dungeons."

There are definitely a lot of default assumptions as to style of play to that seem to go into most old school games, if I may broadly generalize from reading hundreds of actual play reports over the last few years here on the blogs.

I have noticed many times that my actual play experiences do not always match with the theoretical arguments advanced by proponents of mechanical old school definitions. What I find is people looking at their actual game experiences, and attempting to explain how the mechanics of the game they are playing led to that experience. For the purposes of a theoretical exercise, it is convenient to assume that there is a direct cause and effect going on there - the mechanics of the game = the play experience. Of course, anyone who has ever played a role playing game knows that there is a missing variable in this equation; the face to face interaction between the players and the DM, and ultimately, how the DM as final arbiter of the rules parses the system as well.

When you are talking about actual play experience, you are venturing firmly into the realm of the subjective; you may not even find consensus among a group as to what the play experience was to each member after a session. So many things go into the experience for each person; how they interact with the other players, how they interact with the DM, the personal assumptions that they bring in to the game...

I Confuse Myself (and you?)

Switching gears here, I was once a philosophy major at Tulane University. But the more I studied philosophy the less I became convinced that theoretical exercise was the path towards any kind of truth. Ultimately I am an agnostic in the broadest sense of the word; I try to maintain a conscious awareness that I do not know anything for certain.

That does not mean that I cannot have a discussion with somebody about the reality that we both assume each other lives in - it just means that I don't like to frame that discussion in any kind of universal terms.

Back to my point - while I would certainly agree that it would be ludicrous to suggest that game mechanics have NO impact on actual play experience, I would argue that they have such a minimal impact compared to the giant elephant of group/DM interaction in the room that it is either impossible or very difficult to make meaningful observations linking mechanics and the actual flow of play.

The reason this is true is because PEOPLE are just too damn complicated of a variable. You would think this would be a simple matter: IF Labyrinth Lord has fewer rules, AND 4e has more rules, THAN Labyrinth Lord will run quicker at the table.

But that does not take into account the wide variation among players and DMs. There are groups of 4e players that have the rules internalized to the point that no one would ever have to open a book to refer to them, and there are groups playing Labyrinth Lord that have to constantly stop to refer to the rule books, or to explain how combat works, and what dice to roll again, etc.

Okay, now I am sure I have pissed off/lost a ton of people. What do you mean there is no point in talking about mechanical differences! How do you explain the fact that I like Labyrinth Lord and my group explores a sandbox and slays critters with alacrity, and yet I hate 4e and when I tried it it sucked; surely mechanical differences must have something to do with that!

Well yeah, sure, but...

The mechanical differences don't explain the differences in your play experience once the game is actually going. I think there is a far more useful way to look at mechanical differences between editions.

Wherein I try to Wrap it All Up:

What the different mechanics do across the editions is they require more or less buy in from the player to be able to play the game. Once the player has bought in (successfully navigated character creation and understands the rules), the game can be played and the mechanics may even cease to matter to the game play experience in any meaningful way (again, in my own experiences as a player and DM of old and new school systems). If the entire group has "bought in" to the system, the group dynamic can easily cause the play experience to match the desires of the group. Group/DM interaction is incredibly powerful and can make the lamest game rock and the coolest game suck, as long as everyone is invested in making it happen!

That does not mean mechanics or editions are not important. On the contrary, mechanical and edition differences are very important! They are so important that they can make or break the game for somebody before they ever get to the "actual play" part of the experience. Most people can sit in on a pre-3e version of D&D and pick up the general rules within minutes of play starting. Once the first combat starts, a few more details might need to be ironed out, but in general, there are very few barriers erected mechanically in the rules to prevent somebody from getting it. So why would any game add rules and complications that might prevent a player from enjoying the game? Ah, now the discussion might go somewhere besides a repetition of the same tired old song of "simple game mechanics = old school play and complicated game mechanics = new school play". Some people shy away from a game that provides many tactical combat rules - just as many people may chafe at the lack of character options and abilities available in old school games. There is a reason there are a ton of people playing 3e, and 4e. The editions changed the way the have over the years because players DEMANDED more options, more rules, more mechanics! The problem, in my opinion, is that rules lite and rules heavy are always framed as opposites. Old School and New School are presented as a duality. Why not have both in the same game?

I firmly consider my 4e game "old school" - not in any mechanical way, but because the actual play experience is old school. Unfortunately, I could never share this game experience with my good friend Carter (to pick on him for the umpteenth time today, because I know he is a good sport and is genuinely interested in this subject as well), because he simply does not like the default mechanical assumptions of 4e to the point that his mere presence at the table would grind the free-flowing game that I know and love to a halt. I would love to get Carter to be able to experience how the game runs, but I don't think that would be possible short of somehow swapping his brain out with one of the players in my 4e game; if Carter could somehow magically ENJOY comparing the relative benefits of one feat choice vs. another, or the tactical implications of his movement in combat, he could play a session of the game and he would never have to stop to have the rules explained to him, and the game would run as it has run and he would think to himself, "Wow, 4e really is a great game, and it sure is old school!". Well this is not the land of make believe and that ain't gonna happen, because 4e was designed with such a giant mound of potential barriers to players that many gamers will never get to enjoy what a 4e game could be like in actual play, and many others are so turned off by what was expected of them in char gen and rules mastery that they hate the actual play experience.

Why can't a game support a play style, "old school", for instance, through multiple mechanics? Once we have accepted that different people enjoy different things, and that some people want the mechanics to be dirt simple as a player so they can just get straight to the actual play experience, and other people actually enjoy spending hours outside of the play sessions tinkering with mechanical options and choices and generally getting to interact with the rules outside of play - why can't we provide a game that gives both options to players? Couldn't we then put the mechanical issues to bed and just focus on some good old "Old School" game experience?

This is similar, in point of fact, to the original game - fighters were your basic dirt simple char gen, and magic users were for your "system mastery" guys.

I would love to see an old school game that includes a much more complicated char gen and combat rules set as an optional system to go alongside the basic char gen and combat that is so often assumed to be a requisite of old school games. If you turn that default assumption on its head, I don't see why you couldn't do this. Characters created through the complicated char gen would satisfy the players who love having multiple options to be able to fully create that character they envision; as long as this does not lead to the complicated char gen characters being more powerful in play than the simple char gen characters (and that is just a matter of doing the math right and playtesting). I see no reason that a single game cannot both satisfy the guy who just wants to hit it with his axe and the dude who wants to make the perfect tactical choice of powers for the moment; and as long as both end up having about the same statistical chance of doing roughly the same damage, why couldn't it work?

This is actually how I suspect many old school games work anyways; players in the group that want to engage mechanically with their characters to a degree not supported by the rules usually figure out a way to do it with DM support, and this normally can go on side by side with players who put absolutely zero in outside of sessions without conflict. This is one of the reasons long running campaigns tend to become such teetering constructs of houserules!

Anyway, I hope this long and rambling post has at least some kernel of interest that might be taken away by a reader. I sincerely do not intend this post to be yet one more salvo fired in the Edition Wars - I am an agnostic edition relativist, and I game in peace.

Apologies

2011-02-22T17:07:00.000-08:00

If anyone regarded my last point as unseemly because it was a personal response to another's blog post, posted here rather than in the comments over there, it was simply because my comment exceeded the blogger maximum character limit and I didn't want to waste the 5,000+ words I had just banged out so I copy and pasted it over here.

Even though the post was directed at Carter and in response to his post, I think the topic in general is worth posting about. I hope the particular method I used did not make the whole thing seem confrontational, as this was not my intent: I love Carter, I love playing in his game, I love 4e, I love Labyrinth Lord, I love D&D in general, and I love me some Mutant Future most of all.

Thanks Everone!

Carl

Edition Differences

2011-02-22T13:26:00.000-08:00

This is a continuation of my last post, but it originated as a comment on my friend Carter's excellent blog, responding to this post. It is therefor written in the second person, addressed at Carter, and references some past experiences we shared (namely Carter's brief foray as a player into the jungles of 4e).

So... @Carter:

I really feel like your frustration as a player in the one or two 4e games you played in was due to two factors:

One: The DM had no previous experience in any edition and literally started combats before giving us any options;

Two: The other players in the group liked spending time mastering the system outside of the actual session time (and had done so).

You totally failed to notice the true point of what I was saying: the commonalities between editions occur DURING play, and the extra work requested of players in 3e and 4e occurs OUTSIDE of play.

You did not, as a 4e player, invest the required amount of time outside of the session to understand how the game and combat worked. When it came time to play the game and especially to fight, you did not know what you were doing, people kept telling you you were doing it wrong, kept overriding what you said you wanted to do to tell you what you SHOULD be doing, and generally made you feel like the game sucked big donkey balls.

Had you played with group of like-minded players who also spent no time outside of the session understanding the game, you would have had a much better experience - you guys could have all quite happily ignored your powers and the (actually quite simple) intricacies of what you can do on the battle field, and you could have charged in with your dwarf and hit things with your battle axe in EXACTLY the same manner that a Labyrinth Lord combat proceeds.

4e supports that; it just also supports much more.

When I say that the commonalities occur during play, that presumes that any requirements made on a player outside of play have been met.

This is a big point, and a big if, but IF you spend the time required to actually understand all of your character's abilities and how they work in combat, 4e combat feels very similar to any other edition. I really feel that the modern editions are just geared towards a player who wants to engage outside of the session, and previous editions provided more or less no rules for this. To me, that is the single biggest difference, and the root of all the moaning and bitching about how different 4e is. It requires a different commitment of time and energy from the player before play begins, old school players are not used to that, they do not spend the required time and energy, and therefor, they NEVER ACTUALLY PLAY 4e OR PATHFINDER (or whatever modern iteration we are talking about).

If you don't know the rules of the game, and you don't care, then you aren't playing the game.

I would respectfully venture that you have about as much basis to make an intelligent critique of 4e combat as a monolingual English speaker has of critiquing the Upanashads in their Sanskrit incarnation.

You have no idea what was happening, and you didn't like it. That has nothing to do with how the combat engine worked, and everything to do with your willingness as a player to engage in complicated rules.

Again, I am certainly not trying to minimize differences between the edition; outside of play, there are HUGE differences! LL character creation takes all of five minutes and I could easily spend HOURS building a 4e character!

I am just saying that in play, assuming the players and DM are all aboard with the system (which the system assumes as well), I have observed little to no differences in how the games run. Combat takes place the exact same way in your Labyrinth Lord game as it does in my Mutant Future game as it does in my 4e game as it has done in every D&D game since the first campaign;
Initiative is rolled; players and enemy combatants go in order and say what they are doing, and roll a single d20 to determine its success.

That is it. Period. Just because a 4e player has many more options to choose from before picking one and rolling the d20, does not mean that the basic mechanic is different, nor does it impact the flow of combat AT ALL. As long as the players are familiar with the abilities of the characters in 4e, combat is just as quick flowing as Labyrinth Lord.

You would just have no idea, because you never got to see a 4e game in action where the DM and players were all on board together. Nor would you want to, because as a player, you don't want to think about rules at all, and you actively rebel against a system that asks you to.

Now... on to the second main point of my little mini-rant, which was that the final product of Labyrinth Lord (or any other old school edition of choice) + houserules is much closer to the modern iterations of D&D than most would care to admit. That is because most houserules are aimed at exactly the same kind of player that all the extra rules in 3e and 4e are aimed at. Many players chafe under the perceived restrictions placed on them by a simple game like LL. At this point, you and some of your players have put considerable time and energy in your Labyrinth Lord game into making more complicated character classes, more options for players in character creation, and more options in the game in general outside of combat. Most long running old school campaigns that I am familiar with grow and morph over time, adding in rules and interpretations, player options, etc., precisely to satisfy the same natural desires of certain kinds of players that led to 3e and 4e taking the shape they do today.

[EDIT - I first posted the following as a comment on my own post. I think it is important enough in the terms of the larger debate that it should be included in the actual post - Carl]

Oh, and the healing surge point is utter horseshite, pure and simple. A classic straw man. All the 4e healing surge has done is acknowledge the de facto way the game has always worked. What, exactly, is the difference between a character using healing surges to heal themselves outside of combat in 4e vs. a Labyrinth Lord character drinking a healing potion? In fact, the healing surge mechanic actually serves to LIMIT the kind of totally absurd combat that can occur in earlier editions when characters are loaded to the gills with potions. Each character has a limited number of surges, and when they are gone, the character cannot be healed in combat. Each character can use one surge themselves in combat, by forfeiting their attack that round: this cures 1/4 of their total HP. Other than that, healing surges are activated by other characters with healing magic: an individual character's number of surges, then, is a cap on the total number of times they can be healed in combat. A cap that earlier editions did not have; it is ironic, then, that the healing surge is always held out as the ultimate example of what is wrong with 4e, the ultimate gamist rule.

It is less gamist and absurd than totally unlimited clerical and potion healing!

OD&D = B/X D&D = BCMI D&D = AD&D = 2e = 3e = 3.5+e = 4e (in play)

2011-02-21T01:45:00.000-08:00

I 100% agree, no reservations, with the sentiment Mr. Mearls expressed to begin this kerfuffle. I run a Mutant Future (heavily houseruled) game, and I run a D&D 4e (heavily houseruled) game, and I play in a Labyrinth Lord (+AEC, heavily houseruled game)... and guess what. IN PLAY, the experience is exactly the same in all three. And of course, the experience is totally different. Completely unique to the game and the moment in all three, but while the game is going, we are playing a role playing game and occasionally rolling dice as decreed by the GM filtering the rules.

I could care less what the current version of D&D does, but I totally agree that the differences of edition are trivial compared to the commonalities experienced at the table.

In my opinion, the biggest differences between the editions are rules aimed at players who want to engage OUTSIDE of sessions. I would never ask someone brand new to RPGs to join the 4e game I run - I would ask them to join the Mutant Future game - 4e asks a much higher load of a player before the game even begins.

Old School Gamers Beware

There is nothing wrong with rules aimed at accommodating a player who wants to engage in the game outside of the session! In fact, a good DM should always encourage and enable a player's desire to participate outside of sessions. Good old school DM's do this without needing rules for it written in the game they are playing; if the player wants to get badass at using that cool scimitar they found, you figure out a way to express that at the table in a manner that works. The end.

New School Gamers Beware

There is nothing awesome about rules that make a player jump through hoops if the player doesn't want to jump through hoops! Many players will be alienated before the game even begins and they even get a chance to experience the real magic of RPGs in action.

The Point Is:

The final product of houseruling plus the old school game system of choice is far closer to the current iterations (Pathfinder, 4e) of D&D than most of the OSR would care to admit. And the actual play experience when the dice are rolling, the food is eaten, and the libations consumed - good fun was had by all, and to all who give a fuck about edition in any kind of negative way, fuck off.

The Internet is a Megadungeon

2011-02-13T02:12:00.000-08:00

And there is some fucked up shit waiting to devour your soul, tucked away in a rarely visited sub-level.

I have been spending a lot of time lately geeking out on my own website - modesty never my strong suit, I bought the carlnash.com domain name a while ago and I just recently purchased hosting and started making my site. Time spent making my site easily navigable, integrated with Facebook, findable by Google, etc., got me thinking about dungeon design in a whole new light.

My website is a small little collection of hand-carved tunnels; but it is part of a megadungeon. There is a cave mouth in a little hill outside of town; that cave leads to http://carlnash.com/index.php - the home page - the "front door" of my little corner of the dungeon. This cave is mostly empty, well visited, with five tunnels leading away to other chambers of my site, each tunnel mouth helpfully marked with the name of the destination chamber.

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 1: All exits are clearly marked with a descriptive name for the destination]

There are other exits as well, obvious exits, but these dive straight underground and travel a great distance before re-emerging in other regions of the vast megadungeon; telepathicdumpster.com; the kingdom of myspace; one lengthy and serpentine passage even emerges right here in this blog!

But wait! Might there be more to the well traveled entrance chamber than first meets the eye? Graffiti scrawled on the cave wall seems to have been left by the original cave builders, goblins of Clan Carlnash. One scribbled note seems to be referring to a secret exit from this chamber! The secret door is not hard to find; if the cavern wall is prodded, one section will be found to swivel on a central pivot, revealing a black portal beyond... the portal leads to another dimension, the dark side, http://carlnash.com/darkside.php. Anyone running their mouse over the carlnash.com home page will find the "secret link" as their cursor turns from an arrow to a selector icon when it passes over the hidden exit. Using visual clues as to likely locations for the secret exit may speed up the search. Those bold enough to step through the portal may not so easily find their way back; the only exits from the dark side go further into the dungeon besides one marked "Destination as yet unknown". This unnamed portal does return to the home cave. The dark side itself is unremarkable; it has a blacker feel and a strange image for a banner, but not much else... unless "Detect Magic" or a similar ability is used... then it is revealed that hidden messages and locked portals were woven into the very substance of the dark side during its creation (hidden messages and "shadow links" in the source code of the page).

Leaving the home cave down one of the five exits leading further into the carlnash caverns, explorers would soon find a peculiar feature of the megadungeon; most chambers within a level of the dungeon will be totally interconnected, allowing for easy travel from any point to another in only one step.

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 2: the original dungeon designers WANT the dungeon to be easily navigable]

The carlnash caverns are also connected to a parallel world, with gates to the world in every chamber... but the gates are one way FROM the world to the caverns! The gates are plainly visible in each cavern, marked with the ancient symbols of Facebook, and invite any who know the secrets of that alternate reality to use their secret password to unlock the gate and open a two-way portal directly to the speaker's Facebook homeland. Using a gate in this manner does leave a visible power signature that makes it possible to tell how many visitors have activated it.

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 3: many exits and other features will be password protected; prior membership in a particular organization or subterfuge may be required to gain access to passwords. Carrying a badge of membership in an alternate reality like the Kingdom of Facebook will often unlock different content in many rooms throughout the megadungeon. Many other actions and even the paths taken by Internet Megadungeon explorers may also impact what content will be found as the megadungeon is explored...]

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 4:, over time the dungeon will make itself appear as the explorer WANTS the dungeon to appear (cookies; the targeted ads/treasure maps and personalized content/room decorations feature...)]

Long term observers of the carlnash caverns would notice that the front cave is not the most heavily trafficked area; more than twice as many explorers come through the portals from the land of Facebook directly into various areas of the caverns than enter the caverns through the cave mouth in the hill. The busiest cave is the vast cavern that houses the Nash Emporium. The few vendors peddling their wares in the dark bely the bustling underground marketplace the chamber could hold.

A greedy adventuring party would soon grow tired of the caverns of carlnash; there is not much loot to be had at this point (just a few free song downloads and free art) and like almost all explorers of the Internet Megadungeon, the party likely possesses a magical warp whistle that lets them teleport to almost any other section of the megadungeon at will.

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 5: the URL bar is the magic warp whistle, and all explorers can just teleport to a known destination or use the scrying balls that are cheaply had at any general store (search engines like Google) to find a destination]

Map of the Internet!

So why does our brave adventuring party not just teleport to the biggest chambers full of loot, slay the dragon, and party like it is 1999? Sometimes all is not as it seems in the Internet Megadungeon. Many clearly labelled exits actually lead to somewhere completely different; many well known and previously safe chambers may suddenly become home to cunning assassins who strike from ambush, or worse yet, use tasteless, odorless gas to cripple explorers from hiding. Countless factions live out their lives in the Megadungeon, and many vie for the attention of the party. Come raid our caves, they hiss from the shadows, our dragon is uncensored, and our jewels are available for free download... lies, all lies! The dragon has a giant black bar obscuring its chest, rendering your slaying arrows impotent as they find no target. The jewels, so carelessly scattered, vanish into vapors in your clutches as chuckling devils run out clutching contracts. The free download is of a trial gem! It is a worthless piece of crap crudely shaped to look like a gem!

[Internet Megadungeon Feature 6: subsequent inhabitants of the megadungeon take advantage of rules 1 - 5 manipulating and breaking them in an attempt to harm and rob explorers...]

To Win and Lose Some: Recapping Our Adventures in the Amazon

2011-02-10T12:32:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone! It's me Mike again...I know it was forever since my last post, but I wanted to post my weekly email recaps here, so any who are interested can keep up on the crazy situations Carl keeps throwing our way!

This way he doesn't have to post it for me...although I do enjoy laziness to some extent.

Anyways, on to the recap!

So we start off with Old Man Goudy disabled before us. We take his pouch of powder and ask him about its contents. We discover a pouch of white deer fur, sewn shut with gold thread, at which point he tells us that it is a powder he paid too high a price for. Apparently, it allows you to see anything, anywhere, anytime, without knowing exactly where you’re looking…awesome stuff! However, he also told us a story of his past once I helped him feed Akili his “wife”, who was cursed for eating a magic River Dolphin. He told us a sob story of how she was jealous of him fathering all these children in his Pig were-form and that she wanted a child, so she performed this ritual to summon the powerful river spirit and mate with it….which involved eating the dolphin flesh. He further stated that the powder in the deer skin pouch was made from the ground bones of a river dolphin and their son was cursed by the dolphins as well, into being this hideous, mentally unstabled/delayed creature. Akili kept their son calm by using one of her pseudo pods that she shoots out from her flesh that has accumulated from her curse and mass eating to blobdom, apparently these attachments burrow into the brain of the person they are fired at and allow control. Also, Goudy said his mother was from a sacred temple on the island of the Bady Badys (the temple of the Bady Badys) and his father was a spirit from one of the protective statues on the temple. Apparently immortal until they leave the temple, she had left the temple to seek a life of mortality and the spirit had basically seduced her and gotten her pregnant. As it turns out….GOUDY IS A DAMN LIAR!

Argh! Was Antillia furious! The rest of the party was keeping Akili distracted while I was helping him grow food to feed her (because she is sustained by shadow food where as no other food will “fill” her hunger) and she was riding their son (the hideous river creature) and headed for the air ship where Goudy was located. Using our magical portal coins (amazing little ritual devices that work as a portal focus and are the size of a coin…in sets of 2) we were able to get ‘Tillia into the shadow world and bring him along with Bob’s portal ritual. Now…I was more than happy to help someone in need, who dropped a sob story on me of how oppressed they are by their insatiable wife and his crazy son and how it takes him FOREVER to grow the food etc. etc. etc. However, once we finished up with Akili and Goudy for the time being, we went down the river and thanks to Bob’s awesome idea to put his feet in the river water and try and commune with the spirits of the rivers, he managed to get us blessed by the light-hearted sprite of the river. This resulted in us having a bunch of the River Dolphins show up and bless our boat! Bob is the man! I should also mention that we discovered these dolphins while Hammer was using himself as a fishing lure and trudging the bottom of the river for useful items, while being tied to our boat. This to me, is an amazing use of the ability to go without breathing and I am just amazed at how useful it is! While trudging Hammer managed to uncover some spheres of black and white clay that were along the top of a low wall in the river. They were placed there long ago by what we think might be the ancestors of the “Song People” and are warding against the Bady Badys, which are apparently some sort of eye sphere abominations. They are spheres with 4 eyes circling the center of the creatures. They aren’t very big, but they incite one to remove their own eyes upon seeing them. So, of course the first reaction of the party is to now hang onto these warding devices. Through some Arcana checking we realized that the clay sphere was much newer than the trinkets inside warding against the Bady Badys and, to our amazement, something else! So with Bob’s ritual to look into the past of an object, we found out the trinkets inside are a preserved human eye from a powerful sorcerer (which is coated in a clay, shaped to look like an eye) and a small white, four-armed ape statue. (Oh Great. These guys again…) We found out the eye wards against the Bady Badys. The clay sphere is enchanted to be hardened (Clay Pot +2!) and is set to always return to its spot on the wall in the river. We couldn’t figure out what the white ape statue does, beyond the fact it wards against an ability. Having run into these apes before, we made a knowledgeable guess it wards against them returning from the dead, or perhaps keeps them from raising up the dead as stone guardians. What it does, none of us want to tear our eyes out…so Hammer immediately made a necklace out of his to hang around his neck stating, “If we encounter these things I’m going to hold it above my head and close my eyes.” Sensible to be sure…so we decided to hang onto them for now and hopefully we can learn more with further study.

So, I know I side tracked a bit…but back to the River Dolphins! So after Hammer kicked up these trinkets and notice the Dolphins we decided to have a chat with them. Antillia (thanks to her Hekura) was able to talk with them and they seemed super friendly, happy, joyful, and cherished nothing so much as their river. Similar to Unicorns (Unicorn of the Sea! Dolphin Safe!) in their care-free, happy-go-lucky manner it gave us a good idea why the curse upon Akili, Old Man Goudy, and their son was so bad. After chatting with them for a bit and them telling us they were blessing and guarding our boat, I asked them about Old Man Goudy. They immediately picked up on who I meant, saying that he had coerced a temple guardian to leave her temple and forced her to perform the ritual. He couldn’t produce an offspring powerful enough, so he used her love for him to get her to perform this horrible ritual. So, the River Dolphins, had all come together to curse all three of them. (Originally Old Man Goudy had said he was impotent and unable to bare offspring in human form) So they cursed him with impotence, her with the insatiable hunger, and their child so he was unable to grow into the powerful creature and fulfill the destiny Goudy wanted him to. They made their son mentally delayed and with the urge to kill his mother and father. This is why Akili was using her pseudo pod to control him and why Goudy strived so hard to keep her happy and fed. It created a dependency circle that I’m sure Goudy despises and hence his want for a cure to the situation. The deceiver. After finding this out Antillia was enraged! Hammer and Bob weren’t as surprised, and I have to say that deep down Antillia didn’t expect him to be honest, but he did teach her a weave she could use in the shadow world to make a structure that would stay the same shape and endure the shadow world’s influence without changing. This is a HUGE find for her. I suppose Antillia was angry with herself for being even slightly moved, more so than she was surprised at him being a liar.

At this revelation we were getting dangerously close to the joining of the two rivers into the one great river, where Bob had discovered a flow of chaotic energy created by a whirlpool at the center of the confluence. In the exact middle of this whirlpool was, go figure, Goudy’s tower home. Well, to displace the energy of the whirlpool and get us through it safely (because we wanted to show the River Dolphins we could navigate it without fear) Antillia retrofit some of our “Rail Cannon” insect legs to absorb energy and store it in the meteorite piece we use as a battery. She began sucking the chaotic energy in the area out of the whirlpool. Luck! It seemed to be working splendidly, however, it was settling the whirlpool and causing the Goudy tower to rock on its base. Apparently, the whirlpool’s forces were keeping his spire upright. So came the choice….suck out the energy, destroying the whirlpool forever, and topple Goudy’s tower….or stop and let the whirlpool continue, leaving his tower intact. Antillia was busy manning the battery and blasters, Bob was on the helm, and Hammer was keeping the rigging in line. All three of us looked around at one another, eyes making contact, measuring our own motivations. Hammer exclaimed, “FUCK YA! Screw that tower!”, Bob shrugged his shoulders and mentioned something along the lines of, “It’s an abomination of nature.” Trying to convince ‘Tillia that this action was more just, than not. Meanwhile, ‘Tillia was worried that she had just found the best teacher for some new knowledge of herbs, the shadow world, and overall new talents…and would already make him an unwelcome enemy.

Over went the tower, away went the whirlpool, and powered up was our meteorite battery to such an extent that we’ll not have to worry about running out anytime in the next forever. And thus…Antillia gained and lost a master within an hour…..

-Mike P.

Alligator Staffs and Shadow Pterodactyls - guest post

2011-01-26T12:00:00.000-08:00

A while back I posted about the weekly email one of the players in my 4e group sends out after the session; he usually puts a brief recap in the email and puts out the next date for group confirmation. I have to post this weeks email - it picks up right where my last post left off, and Mike does a great job of describing all the crazy twists that happened last session. So I will sign off here and let Mike (Tilia's player in my 4e group) take it away - Carl

Heya all!

Wow...what a session!

So, it all starts with us sitting around deciding on what to do? After a lot of debating over island, other cities, inventing things, we manage to make our air ship a hover ship with some of the rituals we learned from the golden flying shield Antillia received. We also managed to mount some of the insect leg rail cannons we created on the sides. Then we used a huge chunk of battery meteorite metal and attached lightning rods to charge it in the upcoming storm! Shortly after that we headed out to meet the Song People who supposedly know a lot about the island we need to head to. Tit'sua told us that it was their spirits that inhabit the island and keep the Fierce People away. Talking with these people is our number one priority, because they are also responsible for some of the celestial magic. However, on the way to them we ran into a patch of forest where the trees appeared dead and they had huge burls growing in the middle of them. The only remnants of life were three shadow peacocks, which we appropriately dubbed "Shadow-Cocks" and some grass shoots that came up out of the ground when we touched down. ‘Tillia, being the ever curious botanist, decided to touch one of the shoots and try communicating with it. (Rolling a Nat 20) She was sucked in to the Shadow World, inside one of the burls, and found out that the plants in the area had all their roots in the shadow world, twined together into those huge burls in the trees. Amazed she began to examine them and found out the burls were the control center for all the plants in the area. She immediately stopped the shoots of grass from growing, as they apparently grew into creatures that would attack the party.

While messing around in the shadow world however, Antillia began to feel a presence. It was trying to shunt her out of the shadow, how rude! It turned out to be an old looking man with an alligator staff. He apparently owned this section of trees and was offended someone was “trespassing” into his creations in the shadow world. So, ‘Tillia used one of the dark nuts to unleash a Bor along the line he was trying to force her out with and attempted to use the nut to suck him in, kind of like a trap. The party had begun to wonder where ‘Tillia had gone, so Bob touched one of the shoots of plant and began to work on making a psychic link with her. She got it and everything he thought to her was SUPER fast. ‘Tillia’s return responses were incredibly slow, this gave us an idea that time moved different in the Shadow World. ‘Tillia had thought herself gone only 12 seconds, but it had been 10 minutes on the real world. This gave us excellent insight to the time changes and also let the party know ‘Tillia was ok. She was then pushed out of the Shadow World and realized our loveable Chmee had set the nearby trees on fire. She looked around the burl and noticed all these crazy plants growing up into it, so she harvested some. (The coolest description being the corn, with each kernel being a face in either extreme agony or pleasure, twitching like a Hellraiser movie) She then harvested as much as she could, coerced one of the Shadow-cocks (with Beautiful Bob’s telepathic help) into being her friend so she could jump down onto it and ride it away. Meanwhile, Bob and Hammer rocked the other two Shadow-cocks and Hammer managed to harvest their feathers. ‘Tillia put out the fire with her ice form and we all quickly hopped onto the air ship with out new shadow-cock pet. I told them of the old man and we all decided we should confront him, so we turned the ship in order to do so…and WHAM! He was coming straight for us! Slightly worried we moved towards him in a calm pace, Hammer and Chmee sighting him in with rail cannons as soon as he was in range. It turns out he was riding a mind-controlled shadow-pterodactyl. After Chmee and Hammer let loose with a mighty blast, he leaped off the beast and began using his staff to fly around us, attempting to flank us with the pterodactyl.

Whew…what a fight it was! Chmee (having fallen asleep) was down and out. The pterodactyl was destroying us from one side and the old man was on the ship doing crazy knife fighter maneuvers. He took Hammer and Bob to extremely low health (actually knocking Hammer unconscious at one point) and his staff dominated ‘Tillia for a few rounds and made her pop her Kariki’Kalos horn bubble that she was flying with. She plummeted and the old man managed to continue tearing up our crew, but Hammer lit into him with some mighty swings of his electric charged axe and had him running. Bob had used his coercive strikes to keep the pterodactyl chewing on it’s master. It turns out the old man’s dagger was draining life, so thankfully we got Hammer back to his feet before the old man could suck out his soul. With one mighty swing, Hammer got the old man fleeing for his life. He leaped over the edge onto the staff…at which point ‘Tillia had used her golden shield to keep herself from making a new indent into the earth and flew up within range of the air ship to blast her Kariki’Kalos horn’s call to battle effect. She did so and managed to stun and knock prone the staff, the pterodactyl(who fell onto the ship) and the old man. He saved just before hitting the ground and ‘Tillia dropper herself with the shield, trying to land on top of him. Even Hammer threw the unconscious pterodactyl down to try and hit him with no luck. He ate some of that wicked corn, turned into a little pig, and lunged at ‘Tillia with his evil dagger for one tooth. However, just before he reach ‘Tillia, Chmee’s player woke up…and sate those fateful words. “I fire the rail cannon at the pig. Nat 20.” And so…the pig took 110 damage and was burnt to a crisp before it could touch ‘Tillia. There was a huge release of tension and many relieved sighs let out, but ‘Tillia had a feeling something might be up so she grabbed his dagger and stabbed it into his chest, sucking out his soul before it could escape.

This being done, we all sat around and realized that…we may want to talk to this guy. The alligator staff flew off to get his wife, the pterodactyl was set free as a good friend, and let us know he HAD a wife for the staff to run to. We sat around with the soul sucking dagger, pondering how to bring the man back to life to chat with him and had a discussion on if he was REALLY evil and not just misunderstood. Also, there was talk of who shot first…us or him?

Well, we decided, in the end, to use the dagger as a focus for a raise dead and bring him back to life. So…awesome dagger in hand, was now pounds of residuum and a much weakened old man. We told him his staff had flown off to find his wife and he immediately freaked out…so…that is how the session ended. Us with weakened old man, answering questions, and suddenly being panicked when he learned his wife was on the way. If she’s tough enough to scare him….well…I’m shacking in my boots a little right now.

What did we learn?

The Shadow World time moves slower than real world time.

Alligator staves with giant white glowing spheres can dominate and ruin your life.

Air ships that can levitate are useful.

Falling hurts.

Shape-shifting were-pigs are deadly.

Wives of shape-shifting were-pigs are deadlier than their husbands.

When one of our healers is asleep, someone falls unconscious.

Rail guns are the new way to cook pork.

Knowing is half the battle, unfortunately, doing things right is the other half.

So….who’s on for the 4^th of February?! Whew…that was a lot of writing and a damn good session last time. Let’s get some answers and gtfo before his wife goes crazy on us.

-Mike P.

Magical Circuitry pt. 1

2011-01-14T03:38:00.000-08:00

I have been having a blast lately exploring how magic works in my 4e game with some very receptive players. I touched on the foundations of a logical understanding of magic in this post a few weeks ago; last session, I introduced a new wrinkle to the subject - shadow transformations of magical energy. The party had already figured out how to create magical "circuits" with organs that they harvested from the larval spawn of Kariki-Kalos (man, I really need to write a post about how the party accidentally freed Kariki-Kalos and started the end of days happening and all that...); if you point the energy-emitting "light organ" at the "dark organ", the dark organ converted the energy into invisible broadcast energy that could be used to power devices within range. The two organs, when joined in this fashion to create a circuit, seemed to be capable of generating and broadcasting raw magical energy indefinitely. As long as the light organ was within about five feet of the dark organ when it was first shined at the dark organ, the circuit would be established and the two organs would begin hovering in place. As long as the circuit remained unbroken, the two organs moved as one and maintained the same relative position in relation to each other that they were in when the circuit was formed. The party subsequently created some magical items that relied on this broadcast energy for power, most notably a magical propeller and air heater for the party's hot air balloon.

Last session, the party learned some much more sophisticated ways to create magical circuitry. A tiny, very fast and very powerful magical monkey (tsoro-tsoro) that the party had rescued from certain death had been collecting spirit beetles (the most powerful single use "magical item" that I have introduced into my campaign, spirit beetles grant wondrous boons when eaten or powdered and smoked but are HIGHLY addictive) for the party in repayment. The date had come for the party to collect on the debt, but the little tsoro-tsoro was not to be found at its sentient tree home when the party came a knockin'. The tsoro-tsoro had left them a message with the tree though, regretting to say that he had been ordered to return to the cloud city with his entire spirit beetle stockpile; apparently the elder tsoro-tsoro sorcerers foresaw some calamity coming and were circling the wagons. Only four spirit beetles had been left behind for the party, but this initial disappointment was soon forgotten when the tree revealed that another object had been left behind as well - a great curved golden shield, inset with an inward curving circular mirror at the top, in the center of which was a great faceted ruby. The object, buried in the dirt beneath the forest floor for thousands of years, radiating magical energy, had caused this tree to become self-aware after hundreds of years of feeding on its energy through its roots.

The party set to examining the object, and soon were very confused by it. It weighed far too much and was too tall to be useful as a shield in battle. A strange tube like structure on the back seemed to indicate that the device could be mounted on something about the diameter of a telephone pole. Two matched sets of small rubies and black pearls adorned the back of the tube, and an indented square with four circular depressions was set on the inside edge of the tube. Two structures that seemed to be handles protruded out from the top of the tube to the edges of the shield, and upon grasping them, the party realized that the entire thing was flexible and could be twisted 45 degrees around the central tube (despite it being made of magically hardened gold). Squeezing the handles caused a visible beam of light to emit from the large ruby in the mirror - this beam shifted slightly to fall on a startled squirrel in a tree, then tracked the squirrel as it ran for cover. The party surmised that this was some sort of assisted aiming system, and soon verified that through further experimentation.

Tilia examined the object with her Goggles of Arcana (magical glasses she made from the small dark crystal lenses she found behind the eyes of the larval spawn of Kariki Kalos) and realized that a powerful U-shaped magical battery was inserted into the base of the tube and linked to the four small gems, and then to to the large ruby mounted in the mirror on the front of the shield. Following the path the magical energy took from the battery, Tilia traced it first to the small rubies (two separate magical circuits, one on each side of the tube), then from the rubies to the dark pearls. From there, the energy seemed to disappear and reappear in the large ruby; Tilia surmised that the black pearls must perform a similar function to the dark organs and broadcast power.

At first, no one was able to figure out what the four circular indentations on the inside of the tube were for - they each had a bunch of tiny raised dots on their bottom surface, which felt soft and organic. When Tilia completed the ritual requirements to become a shabori of the fierce people a few sessions ago, she summoned a hekura to live inside her chest. Her hekura was a nature spirit, and grants her the ability to speak with plants and animals (and take the better of two throws on Nature checks). Tilia stuck her finger in one of the holes and instantly realized that the textured surface was some kind of mycelial structure. Speaking with the tissue, she realized that it was a control interface with four separate "communication channels" running from the four indentations. There was also a fungal "brain" node that seemed to contain a basic physics engine. The purpose of the mycelial structure seemed to be to activate and control two separate functions of the large ruby; Tilia, after some difficulty in communicating with what was apparently an alien fungal species (which of course made the party think of the satellite footage they had seen while inside the energy ship under the hidden shrine of Tamoachan, when they saw mushrooms sprouting from a fallen meteor, then releasing spores which grew into yuan-ti!), determined that the object could be used both to shoot out a laser blast and to fly, and the propulsion for the flight seemed to be some kind of force ray emitted from the ruby.

Tilia was confused by this, as the ruby itself did not seem to be working any differently when looked at through arcana goggles when in flight mode or when it was blasting lasers. Tilia could observe nothing at all different in the way the magical energy from the battery was being routed and manipulated in the object on the way to the large ruby that would explain the differing effects. But there was that gap in the circuit, where the energy disappeared after entering the black pearl and reappeared in the large ruby... the party had initially assumed this was simply an energy broadcaster or repeater. But when they attempted to observe the energy as it left the black pearl, they realized that unlike the invisible energy broadcast by the dark organ (which the party could observe by detecting magic), the party could not detect any energy leaving the pearl at all.

Whatever was causing the ruby to emit propulsion rays one moment and laser blasts the next must be happening in the unknown gap in the circuit. Now thoroughly intrigued, Beautiful Bob cast a ritual that allowed him to see five images from the objects past. After seeing snippets of its creation, its use in battle (the strange tube part fit over the anaconda like lower body of the yuan-ti) and the spectacularly destructive last few moments of its former owners life, the party had a few more insights into the yuan-ti artifact. The party had observed yuan-ti scientists carefully using dark-crystal implements to weave shadow sigils over the dark pearls.

Tilia got out some incense that (in addition to creating a long lasting euphoric and mildly sedated state) granted bonuses to Arcana and Religion and soon followed the magical energy into the spirit world. Looking beyond the spirit world for the first time into the shadow world, Tilia realized that the energy was leaving the pearl and going into the shadow realm, where it traveled down one of two different paths before returning to the physical world in the ruby. The shadow sigils traced by the yaun-ti artificers had laid down the path that the energy traveled on, and that path transformed the energy as well as transported it.

At that point the session broke down into a think tank, as the party rapidly grasped the promise of this shadow circuitry and started planning on what they were going to do with this new magical "technology". But first they would have to get their hands on some more black pearls...

Carl's Creatures pt. 2 - Shadow Octopus

2010-12-29T01:22:00.000-08:00

(See pt. 1 for the general intro)

In part the second I want to introduce a really scary monster that I have not actually had a chance to inflict on my party yet. Having just blogged about attribute attacks on my other blog, this seemed especially apropos. Had my Mutant Future party continued to head out into the dry sea instead of investigating a magical portal tree, they might have run into this bad boy if the dice rolled just wrong...

Shadow Octopus

HP: 75 - 100
AC: 4
Size: 3' long head, 9' from tentacle tip to tentacle tip when not extending shadow tentacles
Movement: Swim: 150', Land: 30', Sudden Jet Escape: 300' movement for 1d4+1 rounds (must rest motionless for 1d4 rounds after using this ability)

Attacks: 8 x DEX15 range 50' (shadow tentacles) (see my blog post about attribute attacks on my other blog to make sense of this)

Damage: 1 temporary Dexterity attribute drain (lost attributes regain at the rate of 1 per hour outside of the dry sea, but never return in the dry sea or in any other area of strong shadow concentration) + the shadow octopus gains a corresponding point of Dexterity (making subsequent Dexterity attribute attacks more likely to succeed...)

The shadow octopus lurks invisible and nearly insubstantial in the shadowy currents of the immaterial sea. It can extend its tentacles out to 50', stretching impossibly far, and twinkling ghostly lights from the rims of each suction cup. It lures prey with the curious glimmering, separating comrades until it begins draining the very quickness from their muscles. With each point of Dexterity that it drains through its tentacle attack, it becomes more colorful and corporeal.

Special Abilities: Roll its 8 attacks in two sets of four labeled A-D as shown on the drawing above. If both tentacles in a matched set hit, the shadow octopus can choose to instantly teleport the two targets into the space occupied by the other (no save to avoid).

When the shadow octopus reduces any target to 2 or fewer Dexterity,it can immediately attempt to engulf the target with a CON15 ATT. If successful, the target is destroyed and the shadow octopus regains 50 HP. If this attack fails, the shadow octopus can forgo its tentacle attacks in subsequent rounds to repeat the attack.

Special Defenses: The shadow octopus can only be damaged by mutations, magical attacks or magical weapons. Normal physical damage has no visible effect on it.

If the shadow octopus is reduce to 20 or fewer HP, it will emit a 50' radius shadow ink cloud, obscuring all normal and magical vision for 1d4 rounds while the shadow octopus uses its sudden jet escape movement ability to disappear into the darkness.

Where does magic come from, Pa? (And how does it work?)

2010-12-27T21:47:00.000-08:00

As much as I am a free-wheeling, seat-of-the-pants, gonzo, over-the-top DM, I actually have an underlying desire to have it all make sense. I make up the weirdest monsters you cannot imagine, but there is always a perfectly reasonable explanation for how they came to exist and what they are doing where the party ran into them. Evolution is a crazy thing - give it enough time, and throw magical abilities and pressures into the mix, and everything is fair game.

At the same time, I try very hard not to let any more slip out about the method in my madness than the characters would have learned in play. I love nothing more than listening to the group after a session as we are all wrapping things up, getting our stuff, grabbing another slice of pizza, finishing the beer and soda... I love testing my poker face as they throw hypothesis after hypothesis out there, sure that THIS TIME they have finally figured it all out.

I don't care if the players know how it all makes sense, and sometimes they don't either. But sometimes they do, and they start prodding and asking and pretty soon they start figuring out that there are underlying logical principles and secrets to uncover. This is especially the case when it comes to magic.

I have never been willing to accept "its just magic" as a good explanation for magic. I need something that is not self-referential. I need to fit magic into the logical framework of my rpg multiverse in a way that can translate across different systems. I need magic in the Mutant Future to work the same way as it does in my D&D 4e game.

Magic is a name for the ability to manipulate energy directly without bothering with a stage by stage transformation of the current form it is taking. You and I have to painstakingly flake away wood with a knife to carve a perfect miniature poodle - a magician can just cause the energy forming the wood to take the form of a wooden poodle. Or the energy in the air to take the form of a living poodle.

The question isn't where does magic come from, it is where does energy come from? And while I have answered that in my own campaign cosmology, I don't believe it needs to be answered once magic is understood to be simply another form of energy manipulation that follows rules (albeit different ones) just like dropping a ball or lighting a match. You don't need to know where energy comes from to accept that there is energy in the universe and it can be manipulated. You just need to know how to do it.

There are many different forms that energy can take. There are many different ways to manipulate it directly. These are magical traditions. Some claim that the ultimate source of their power is divine, others that it comes from hours of meditation on musty tomes, memorizing arcane formulas. Some promise magical power at the cost of sacrificing your immortal soul. Most cultures have at least one cooking tradition that imbues magical properties into food. There are those who have taught that magical energy can be manipulated through controlled physical activity, graceful movements that trigger magical effects. Others invite ancestral spirits inside themselves and assert that the spirits are the ones doing the magic. All are correct. Each is one way to manipulate energy, one small facet of the truth.

I have created and explored many different optional magical systems for characters in every edition of D&D that I have run.

Creatures often have magical powers as well. Where does the magic come from in this instance? Intelligent monsters have their own cultures and are little different from humans in that regard. Magic often comes from diet in the case of animals, and from the land in the case of plants.

Animals feed on magical plants and seek out magical elements and trace minerals to lick at. What they do with this magical energy, how they evolved the ability to perform that particular manipulation of energy and why that ended up being a competitive reproductive advantage varies from species to species. The greatest diversity in form and magical function is to be found (not surprisingly to those in the insect know) in the Insect Kingdom.

Plants absorb energy directly from the sun and the earth. Plants contain more genes than animals. Many of these genes code for plant structures that produce magical effects; plants are always the greatest factories of the multiverse, both chemically and magically.

When I create creatures or jot down notes on areas for my campaign worlds, I also might jot down some notes about organs and their uses in the case of animals, or uses for various plant parts. These components can be discovered and eventually utilized by the clever player.

As a result of this, the last few sessions in my 4e game I have seen my players dissect several genetically engineered, partially-robotic insect warriors, harvest their energy-retaining cell tissues, remove the blasting systems from two insect-robot legs, hook the cell-tissue up to the "dark organs" that they had harvested sessions ago from the larval spawn of an elder god to create a magical energy circuit (they had already discovered that the dark organs would accept energy in almost any form as an input, and would then generate invisible broadcast power that could be used to power devices within a short range), in an attempt to make two laser cannons (the bugs shot off a nasty blast of energy when they were alive, and the party wanted in on that action once they were dead!).

Roll your Nature and Arcana checks, guys...

Of course they succeeded wildly.

At the end of last session there was talk of mounting what have proved to be rather unwieldy and impractical weapons for melee combat (although they certainly did a ton of damage the couple of times anybody ever managed to get a shot off that hit anything) onto the party's hot air balloon. The party is talking of recruiting some of the Yanomamo to accompany them as gunners on the hot air balloon. Oh shit. I just realized that I never posted about the session Beautiful Bob talked a bunch of lonely miners into making him a hot air balloon. Maybe next time...

Carl's Creatures pt. 1 - Thraxian Hive Soldier

2010-12-27T00:48:00.000-08:00

I collect monster manuals. I never use them, but I collect them. Every now and then I might page through one looking for inspiration, but that really doesn't happen often when I am actually running a game, which I have been doing pretty solid now for the last three years. So why do I buy monster books if I never use them? I dunno. I guess I like monsters.

My campaign worlds always end up becoming more and more bizarre through a process of accretion. I make up some weird ass shit, my players do things I didn't expect, I riff of their actions and come up with more weird ass shit, and pretty soon there are so many original creations in play that the standard D&D monsters just don't get into the game anymore.

I make up at least 95% of the creatures that my players encounter in game, be it Mutant Future or D&D 4e (the two games I am currently running).

I end up scribbling out crude illustrations for most of my creations, and I thought it might be fun to share some of them with y'all.

- Disclaimer - I am making no effort to present these according to the standard stat block for either Mutant Future or 4e. I use THAC0 for my Mutant Future critters, at least in part because I don't use HD (instead writing down a HP range when creating creatures). I may not use the correct syntax for the 4e creations.

Carl's Creatures

part one

Thraxian Hive Soldier

(for Mutant Future or any pre-3e version of D&D)

(I love this picture, because it started out as a quick sketch so the players could get a better idea of what the alien bugs looked like, and then one of the players at the table doodled on it and shaded it. Apparently, Thraxian Hive Soldiers are polka-dotted!)

HP: 100-150
AC: 2
THAC0: 9
Movement: 150'
Attacks: 4 or 1
Damage: 2d6 x4 (tentacle arms) or 4d12 (bite) or by weapon (see below)
Saves: Level 12

Thraxian Hive Soldiers can survive in a vacuum without sustenance for years, if that gives you a better picture of these tough son-of-a-bugs. Although fond of and brutally effective in hand to tentacle combat, Hive Soldiers also carry disruptor pulse weapons. These resemble a large circular shield grasped with all four tentacles (these contain an extremely dense and heavy power core, and each weapon weighs nearly 200 pounds!), concave side facing the target, which emits pulses that molecularly destabilize the target.

Disruptor Pulse Weapons: Range 1000', half damage to 4000', damage: 5d6, special: Save vs. Energy Attacks or the target suffers an additional 5d6 damage at the beginning of its next turn. This continues until the save is made. When not in use these weapons are slung over the back of the first body-segment of the Hive Soldier.

Little is known of Thraxian Hive Society; it is unclear if the bugs are telepathic, or use scent and chemical markers to communicate, or if they are simply so single-minded of purpose and unified in goal that they can act with incredible synchronized precision without any need of communication at all.

Ethnographies! A DM's best friend

2010-12-21T03:35:00.000-08:00

I admit it. I have totally lost focus. I had a specific purpose in mind when I started this blog.

I wanted a blog that I could freely publish on without having to censor myself. I wanted a place where I could reveal the unfinished side of the DM's screen, the teetering construction of notes, drawings and inspiration that existed in the moments before game night.

I wanted to talk about the thought processes that led to the fun times. I am a good DM. I say that without false modesty, and with a confidence that can only be won with the experience of pulling off the successful juggling act literally hundreds of times.

My other blog had become a place that only reflected the amazing polished creation, the session, the actual living drama, the flesh of the god of RPG's. The ongoing story, narrated by players and DM alike.

No, I wanted a blog that I could publish the unfinished bits and pieces to, without fear that a player might stumble across the blog and learn the secret before I figured out where exactly to insert it into the ongoing campaign.

As it has happened, this blog has kind of become my default 4e blog, because I was just beginning to dabble in playing and DMing D&D 4e when I first started writing this blog. This has meant that I have, indeed, been censoring this blog so as not to blow some major secrets of the campaign. It has also resulted in some session recaps, which are (of course) exactly the finished process kind of stuff that I was trying to avoid with this blog.

I want to get back to the unfinished and process-oriented goals of this blog. This will probably mean less material directly focused on the unfolding events of my 4e game, and more posts on my observations as a DM and wanna-be game auteur. Or maybe it will mean that I quit giving a shit if any of my 4e players see this and post anyway! Maybe a simple warning at the beginning of a post.

But enough about that. Today I want to talk about ethnographies. An ethnography is a written description of a human culture distilled from the research of an anthropologist. You can find ethnographies at any used book store in a college town. They almost invariably look like the one below, varying only in the subject matter and color the cover.

I collect ethnographies, and I think any DMs reading this out there in blogland would be wise to do so as well.

You see, the thing is, people are crazy. You may think you have a wild imagination. Your late night inspiration, your fantasy creation, pulled from literary inspirations, movies, from past campaigns... sorry to tell you, it doesn't hold a candle to the real thing.

With that in mind: Ethnographies are the DM's best friend!

They will typically be about 100 pages in a format very similar to the LBBs. They will contain a distillation of a human culture which can easily be grafted onto any race in your campaign world. They contain a cosmology, not just gods and spirits, but a description of how the divine is viewed, and interacted with, and impacts day to day life. They will tell you about a human adaptation to an environment, culturally and technologically, that enables the culture to derive sustenance from the land. They will contain descriptions of ceremonies and feasts. They may contain titillating details of secret societies, fraternal organizations, magic spells and witcrcraft. But most importantly, they will teach you that EVERYTHING that we take for granted as "normal" would most likely be completely different in a monstrous or alien culture. What does brother or sister mean? I assume that you and I share a similar definition for that term. What does marriage mean? Are humans immortal (can they die from natural causes)? If it surprises you that the answers to all of these questions vary dramatically across human cultures, than I suspect the fantasy cultures and monsters in your RPG life are probably far too vanilla.

I use my ethnographic collection much more often than I use my vast RPG library, and I have never paid more than $10 for a single one (and most were far cheaper, if you don't mind a dinged up cover or high-lighter covered text). As an example, the players in my 4e campaign have been getting to know the Yanomamo indians of Brazil and Venezuala as they are presented in Napolean Chagnon's famous ethnography, Yanomamo: the Fierce People (at the time of my typing, this link leads to an amazon.com page for the exact same edition I own, pictured above, used, 11 copies, starting at $1.90!).

The party has been staying in a Yanomamo village for several weeks of game time, and one party member has even completed the ritual fasting and drug taking requirements to become a shabori (sort of like a shaman, basically someone who has invited a spirit or hekura to live inside him [this is a male tradition] which can then be exhorted to cause harm to enemies or protect allies). I have implemented the Yanomamo cosmology with the 4e mechanical engine quite easily and effectively. Hekura cost the permanent loss of a healing surge when they call your chest their home. They grant an encounter power that can be used as a minor action, and in my game, that encounter power is related to the particular manifestation of energy that the hekura represents. I tend to use real world sources as inspiration, not doctrine, so I riffed on the idea of hekura a little bit. In my 4e world, hekura are tiny spirits that each represent one particular form that energy can take - so there are lightning hekura, curative hekura, disease hekura, fire hekura, dance hekura, song hekura, etc.

This post has almost made me want to do a series of posts drawing from my collection of ethnographies. A distillation of the ethnography into the bits that are most interesting for game play. I would probably start with the Igbo of Southeast Nigeria. Or possibly the Mardudjara aborigines of Australia.

Why you roll the dice.

2010-12-14T22:37:00.000-08:00

My 4e game has become such a whirling engine of death, destruction and cultural exploration that any kind of meaningful session recaps are next to impossible. There is simply too much going on.

Loyal blog leaders may remember that early on in my adventures as a 4e DM my players found four shrunken heads in a clay basket. When the party removed the shrunken heads from the basket (which turned out to be an anti-magic basket [if there is one thing I actually hate about 4e it is the treatment of magical items, so I make up my own and have also used a ton of magical plants] that temporarily nullified any magical effect of level 20 or lower within the area enclosed by the sides of the basket), the heads and the party formed an uneasy relationship that has maintainend, more or less, to this day.

The exception would be that one of the skulls, Xbalanque, the self proclaimed Keeper of Secrets, disappeared of his own volition a while back. In exchange for Xbalanque raising a deceased party member, the group agreed to carry a skull-corder enchanted by Xbalanque into a temple they were exploring so Xbalanque could see the carved glyphs that covered the walls (an intense field of magical energy that permeated the temple prevented the shrunken heads from animating within it). Xbalanque made a point of teaching the party the glyphs that signified the beginning of a long date in the Chitlan calendar, and instructed the party to make sure they recorded everything in a room that contained dates.

The party later learned that an ancient form of celestial magic native to the region is tied to particular dates when cosmic alignments happen. Vast structures, so large that their shape could only be identified from high in the air, were designed by long dead hands to harness celestial energy and activate when the stars came together in just the right order. And they had handed the keys to this system to Xbalanque.

Luckily for the party, events in my Mutant Future campaign recently have resulted in the stars "going out" in my 4e campaign, as the 4e campaign world is currently being removed from space and time. As the stars disappear, the celestial power that makes the monumental magic constructions work has also failed. A magically engineered insect army that had arisen from the ground under the command of Xbalanque now rampaged out of control on the other side of the mountains from the party, and a lone squad of the insects (I have code named them "Brood X" until the party learns more about their origins) was sent out by Xbalanque, controlled with a magical jade mask mounted on the head of one larger member of the soldier caste. The party intercepted this group of giant insects as it headed straight for Gadoro island at the confluence of the two rivers that drain the highland areas of the rainforest that the party has called home for the last fortnight.

The party has been getting more and more self-righteously angry at Xbalanque for several sessions now, as he has been totally incommunicado since his disappearance. You see, as much of a prick as Xbalanque was, and as much of a shrewd bargainer he was when it came to prying out some bit of information from him, the party had grown used to having the long dead sorcerer's shrunken brain to pick. The party had bent over backwards to accommodate him, had given him everything he had ever asked for, and they have never quite forgiven him for just ditching the party. Worse, the other shrunken heads had shaken the party with tales of Xbalanque's megalomaniacal tendencies.

Their worst suspicious were confirmed when they discovered that the giant four legged metallic insects that had been carving a path of destruction through the jungle were controlled by their old friend. Xbalanque did not stop his insects as he barked through the jade mask that he had no time to stand and parlay. He had to get through the hole in the roots of the universe and undo what had been done. The stars must shine again. I am losing control... losing power... I don't have much time

And then Xbalanque ceased communications through the jade mask and the party suddenly found themselves confronted with a bunch of out of control killing machines. If a soldier lands all four legs strikes in a round and rolls decent damage, it can drop some of the party members in one round. The smaller bombardier caste were annoying with their chemical heat aura, their stinking gas clouds and their energy laser slices, but in the end their damage output paled next to the whirling blades of destruction that were the soldier caste Brood X.

The last two sessions have been bug hunts. The title of the blog post comes into play due to a peculiarity of the soldier caste of Brood X - any soldier can spontaneously become a new brood mother, gaining the allegiance of all Brood X members closer to it than the old brood mother, and gaining the capability to broadcast a new brood of tiny larvae across the landscape in a great explosion. The party did not know about this capability. The exact mechanic is tied to a recharge 6 power I gave the soldiers called "X Blast". A close burst 5 targeting all enemies in the burst with a single roll for 5d6 damage and curing all allies in the burst of the same amount - but if a natural 20 is rolled on the attack, all soldier Brood X allies recharge their X Blast and use it as an immediate reaction. If any of those soldiers also roll a natural 20, it spontaneously becomes a brood mother, exploding in a magical blast that first destroys all Brood X insects within 500' and then sucks all that energy back into the new hive mother, who swells, shedding her legs, sticking her head into the ground and raising a steadily growing giant sack of squirming life into the air.

So while the party was dicking around out in the jungle, licking their wounds after their first bug combat, I was rolling to see how often the power recharged as the remaining soldiers rampaged through the landscape, then rolling X Blast attack rolls and looking for natural twenties.

It only took 13 total rounds of player actions (including a five round short rest) before I got the double 20 combination on a recharge 6 power and a tremendous explosion occurred to the south. A new brood mother had formed, and the pair of soldiers the party had been hunting suddenly reversed course and headed back toward the explosion. The party hightailed it there themselves and beat the incoming soldiers, gaining several rounds to attack the hideous pulsating blob they found in the middle of a totally leveled blast clearing.

And that is why I am glad I actually rolled the dice to see when the new hive mother occurred instead of just going with the statistical average time. You never know what will happen when you roll the dice. And often, what happens is sheer dramatic genius. If I had gone with the average time, it would have been hours until the new brood mother formed, and by that time the party would probably have hunted down quite a bit more of them in the mean time, reducing the probabilities even further.

As it was, we had a great session that ended with the last two Brood X insects psychically dominated by Beautiful Bob and serving the party as mounts as they returned to the native village they have been calling home. And for once, the party saved the area they were adventuring in instead of scarring it forever!

Random d20 Chart of Magical Plants for 4e

2010-11-17T02:23:00.000-08:00

Here is a d20 chart of magical or otherwise useful plants for 4e. This is lifted directly from a spreadsheet a player in my campaign compiles and updates between sessions. All abbreviations and effects are as notated by him based on what I said at the table; as my notes are scattered and disorganized, his spreadsheet has more or less become a better resource than my original notes! For simplicities sake I have left out the unique effects created by combining different plants.

d20 Roll - Type - Effects - Side Effects

Cidna Berries - Restores 1 Healing Surge - None
Vine Milk Ingest - +2 init, +2 AC, +2 to Hit for 2d6 rounds. - Nausea for 1 round. -2 Hit and -1 dmg.
Leaf - Cure any ongoing poison damage and if taken after poisoned, neutralize previous poison damage. - None
Vile Smelling Fungal Growth Ingest - +10 to any ritual check with Arcana for 1 hour. -4 Will Defense for duration.
Odiferous Sap - Use as incense - Close Burst 1: +2 Hit and Damage for encounter. - None
Leaf (Evergreen) Grants Sv. To end Domination with a +4 bonus.- None
Seeds (Licorice) +5 Streetwise and Diplomacy for 1 hour. Hangover for 1 hour aftereffect: -1 to all rolls. - none
Sap Coat Gear - +2 AC/Fort for encounter. -2 Reflex for duration.
Brush with Spongy Core Spongy Material - Minor Action - Clamp spongy material over a wound to stop poison. Consume - Susceptible to coercion: -5 Will Defense.
Oily Solution When heated the oil turns anything it is coating invisible. +10 stealth, lasts 1 encounter. - None
Sap (Evergreen) Incense - +5 Insight and Knowledge checks. Blissful Aftereffect: -8 to Initiative(stoned)
Ebene Tree - Cambium Layer of Bark Powdered and Dried - Snuff - Enter spirit world for 2d4 hours. Can't return to physical world in that time. - None
Hisioma Seed Ground Seed - Snuff - Returns spirit body to self. - None
Ryath Root Healing - Spend a healing surge, but gain 2d4hp. - None
Fungus - Grew out of network of mycelium. Super fast growing. Edible. Only needs water and innate magic to grow. High protien. 1 inch cube fills a mason jar with just a few drops of water. More magic and water equals a MUCH faster growth. - None
Sweet Red Berries Minor Action - Grant a 2nd Second Wind once per encounter. - None
Leaves and Root (Wolfsbane) Infusion - Contact Poison. +10 poison damage on contact and ongoing 5 damage (Save Ends). One application lasts one encounter. - None
Flowers (Wolfsbane) Used to create a wash - Potency degrades quickly in light - Coat item and it becomes a +1 magic item for one encounter. Requires total immersion. 1 flower create 1 gallon of wash. Twice the uses if you can keep it unexposed. Newt people coat their ritual knives in the wash. - None
Seeds (Wolfsbane) Used by Newt female casters to invoke their patron witch spirit. - None Known
Fruit (Cucumber Like) Slices placed over eyes - Invoke spirit porjection. You control spirit, fly 60 miles per house, lasts 2d6x10 minutes. Have to get back to body before duration runs out or your soul may be lost. DM rolls time and gives a 20 minute warning. Cucumber lasts d6+1 days after being cut open. - None

GAAH I HATE BEING BROKE

2010-11-09T22:29:00.000-08:00

So, masochist that I am, I stopped in at my favorite comic shop/gaming store today even though I had no loot to spend. WHY!!! WHY!!!

Why do I do this to myself?

Why did somebody bring in a bunch of old Victoria Games James Bond 007 modules in boxes with cool maps and player handouts and stuff? There was Gold Finger, and a couple of other ones, and they looked really cool, and they had all the handouts and tokens and everything in the box and I REALLY REALLY WANT IT MOM CAN I HAVE IT!!! Its only $10, and I know I already have the 007 game, but the bundle comes with the game AND the modules and they are SOOO COOL!!!

I want it so bad!

I am going back tomorrow credit card in hand, bastards.

Gaming Ritual: Weekly Group Email

2010-11-05T00:46:00.000-07:00

I took over the DM reigns of my 4e group on only a couple of days notice a while back. I grabbed an old campaign world that I had made in high school off the shelf, jotted down some ideas and hit the ground running. One thing about this campaign that I have really enjoyed are the weekly emails that a player in the group sends out, briefly hitting some of the highlights of last session and setting the date for next week. I am going to share these emails in a couple of posts, on the off chance they are amusing to someone else besides me. This first batch gets us from the beginning of the campaign to partway through "The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan", a 2e adventure that I ran backwards from end to beginning as an old fashioned, trap-filled dungeon crawl.

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 8:58 PM, Carl Nash wrote:

"Ok, I am definitely going to DM tomorrow and I have a plan

The players will start the session by getting off the boat in the "new world", a newly discovered land mass across the ocean from the established D&D default setting.

A small town (New Hope) carved out of the jungle on the shores of a large bay and a mining operation on a mountain up the river are the only specks of civilization.

Expect the unexpected. Lost Valleys with all kinds of messed up stuff that Time Forgot. Dinosaurs. Witch Doctors and Jungle Creepy Crawlies. You know, your garden variety Trip to the Amazon on Acid...

This could be a one shot or an ongoing thing that we can come back to whenever Shashi can't run the existing campaign.

See you tomorrow night!

DM Carl"

The following are the weekly emails that one of the players in the campaign (who also has been good enough to post on this blog from the perspective of his character in the campaign, a female albino minotaur) sends out.

Monday, February 15

"Heya hey!

Well it's that time again...I'm sending out the weekly e-mail to see how this weekend is for everyone and what day is best for roleplay this week, if any. I feel we can't deprive our "workers" of our presence for too long, lest they revolt. Besides, our bugbear cleric may get antsy and I'm not going anywhere near that. Anyways, what day is good for everyone? I'm up for even doing Sundays if people decide that those are better days. So far I have better luck with this character, I only almost lost my face, but I still have both legs! (so far). Let's see what Hammer can drudge up off the bottom of random river water, other than giant crocodiles. I could really go for some peanut butter to compliment that honey.

Get back to me when you can, I generally try and have a set day by Thur at the latest, preferably Wed.

-Mike P. "

Monday, February 22, 2010

"Heya,

The title explains it all. Just sending out the feelers to see who is up for making it to roleplay this weekend. Let me know what days you are all available so we can get a solid day set in stone. I am really enjoying the debate over the native religions and different groups/forces at war. Let's hope next time we don't wind up fighting an "acidic tar" four-armed hillbilly. Congratulations to those who reached level two! (Now you can protect the rest of us from the alligators). Let's all follow in those foot steps and see what the path reveals.

Kickin' ass, by getting my ass kicked,
-Mike P."

Monday, March 1, 2010

"Heya all!

And so our adventure continues, blazing a trail through the vast amazon, spelunking dark caverns full of altars to dark gods, and voodoo heads that turned Vomar (aka Jamey) into their bitch! All in all an exciting session and I'm much enthused to jump into the mine looking for four-armed white apes! The last one wasn't enough to dash my spirits (although it did a good job of dashing our intestines across the landscape) lol. So I say, stock up on lanterns, hard hats, and mutton. It's time to go exploring! Last one to the mine cart is a rotten egg! Besides, how bad can a hideous, giant, salivating, black as the abyss, human-handed, and spiny spider be?

Famous last words by:
Mike P.

P.S Which days are good for all of you?"

Monday, March 15, 2010

"Heya,

Well it's about that time again to check and see what all our demon slaying, town saving peeps are up to. What day is good (if any) for all of you this week? Let's see if we can't get some shrunken head lovin' to get rid of this STD. I knew we shouldn't have tag-teamed that mummy Vomar! At least it's down and out (for now) and all we have to worry about is what lies ahead and the giant human-handed spider behind! So let's all meet up and roll our save vs death check!

-Mike P.

P.S - Shashi might be once again joining us. I hear tales of a bullywug(sp) assassin, at least. "

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

"Heya all!

Well I think Friday was set out as the best time for people to show up to this next D&D session, but I wanted to get this e-mail out there in case anyone had any objections to that day. Please let me know if you do! Also, I hope you are recieving this Carl as I updated your e-mail on the list...I guess you really can't tell me if you aren't. At any rate, last week was awesome! We spent so much time trying to figure out that crazy room of elements, only to stumble into ANOTHER crazy room with gelatinous cube mirrors. Also, our clerics seem to be the most daring and "courageous" (see also: Foolhardy) people in the party. One of them dives down to take on a spider with baby heads and razor sharp arms...the other runs off down a secret passage and gets engulfed by a gelatinous cube! Sheesh, I think our barbarian was hardly able to keep up! As for everything else though, I guess it pays off to be a master of interpretive dance and huge diplomacy! I'd like to welcome our newest pet to the party: Giblets the Gibbering Mouther. Thanks to our half-elf cleric who apparently has a lot of experience fitting in and rolled an amazing 30 on his d30 roll. Apparently he does have everything under control when he says so and walks into a room of death. Hope to see you all this weekend!
-Mike P."

Magic Mushrooms

2010-11-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

Two random charts: One for the primary effect and one for the side effect of a magic mushroom. I will spare you guys the addiction and overdose charts for now. This is pasted from a spreadsheet, so the formatting is a little funky: Duration of the effect follows the short description. Sub charts follow the primary charts. I grant non-commercial rights to use these charts in private games. I retain all other rights.

Roll on both charts.

Primary Effect Chart (d30):

Cures 3d6 HP worth of damage. instantaneous
Grants one extra attack per round. 2d6 rounds
The mushroom secretes a contact poison which does 50 damage (Save vs. Poison for 1/2 damage) instantaneous
The ingester grows to 10 x her original size. HP and Strength double, Dexterity is halved and AC receives a -4 penalty. 1d4 hours
The ingester shrinks to 1/10 her original size. HP and Strength are halved, Dexterity is doubled and AC receives a +4 bonus. 1d4 hours
The ingester receives +8 to one randomly determined attribute and -4 to another. 2d10 rounds
The ingester receives 15 temporary HP which disappear in 1 hour if not used. 1 hour or less
Sticky sweat: +2 bonus to AC and the ability to stick to and climb on vertical surfaces and ceilings. 4d6 rounds
Spore breath: The ingester takes 2d6 damage and can spray a 15' cone of spores that do 10d6 damage (Save vs. Poison for 1/2 damage) to all in their path.
The ability to see in darkness as if it were daylight 2d6 hours
Irresistible aroma: +2 to Charisma and most members of the opposite sex are strongly attracted. 1d4 days
Magic Resistance: A percentage chance that any magical attack or effect will completely fail to work against the character. Roll 1d10 on the Magic Resistance sub-chart. 1d10 rounds
Grants the ability to see invisible and shadow creatures, and to discern the true nature of illusions. 2d12 rounds
Doubles movement rate. 1d4 hours
Breathing is unnecessary. 1d4 hours
Cures all diseases. instantaneous
Cures blindness. instantaneous
Cures deafness. instantaneous
Cures muteness. instantaneous
Ingested poison: roll 1d10 on the poison chart ??? in MF
Turn into a shadow (cannot be targeted by physical attacks, can slip through even the tiniest cracks, all equipment is transformed but no other physical objects can be picked up, carried or manipulated while in shadow form) 1d12 rounds
Time slows: +2 to AC, +2 to hit, +2 to Dexterity, 1 extra attack per round. 1d4 rounds
Dried mushroom functions as a grenade: roll 1d10 on the Mushroom Grenade sub-chart. special
If cultivated on a body within 1d4 hours of its death, this mushroom will re-animate the body as a free willed zombie with all of its former memories minus the last 4d6 days. The mushroom-zombie sustains itself by consuming magical radiation, and can only "live" for 1d4 days without it. special
Body becomes slightly lighter than air. Without at least 10 pounds of ballast, the ingester will slowly float away at the rate of 20' per round. 1d4 hours
Immune to fire and heat damage. 2d6 rounds
Immune to cold damage. 2d6 rounds
Ingester must tell the truth. 1d4 hours
Roll on the Side Effect Chart instead.
Roll twice on this chart, ignoring any result of 29. This result may be rolled more than once.

Side Effect Chart (d20):

Sleep (15 minute onset time). 1d4 hours
Sharp Headache: 1d6 damage and -1 to all attacks. 1 hour
Blind in daylight, sensitive to low light 1d4 days duration
Nausea and intense vomiting. No other actions possible. 3d6 rounds
Double vision results in a -2 penalty to hit. 4d6 rounds
Persistent diarrhea. Effects adjudicated by the GM. 3d4 days
Skin turns a random color (roll 1d10 on the Skin Color sub-chart) 3d12 days
Deafness (roll 1d6 on the Deafness Duration sub-chart) special
Strong odor is emitted (roll 1d6 on the Strong Odor sub-chart) 1d6 hours
Clumsy: -4 to Dexterity 1d4 hours
Strong intoxicant: -5 to Intelligence and Wisdom 1d4 hours
Weakened: -4 to Strength 1d4 hours
Save vs. Poison or the ingester must attack the nearest living creature (must save again each round). 2d4 rounds
Blindness (roll 1d6 on the Blindness Duration sub-chart) special
Muteness (roll 1d6 on the Muteness Duration sub-chart) special
All of the ingester's hair falls out over the course of the next day until the ingester is completely hairless. Hair begins to regrow in 1d4 weeks
Intense visual hallucinations: -4 to hit. 3d6 hours
Terrible nightmares: No benefits can be gained from resting, and the ingester takes 3d6 damage each time she begins to dream after falling asleep. 1d4 days
Roll on the Primary Effect Chart instead.
Roll twice on this chart, ignoring any roll of 19. This result may be rolled more than once.

Magic Resistance Sub-Chart (d10):

Mushroom Grenade sub-chart (1d10):

Duration Note: Clouds left by a grenade dissipate naturally, lingering longer in still, contained areas than outside.

15' radius cloud of smoke
10' radius spore cloud; Save vs. Poison or sleep for 2d6 rounds
10' radius blast for 4d6 damage
10' radius spore cloud; Save vs. Poison or hallucinate for 1d4 hours
10' radius blast for 6d6 damage
500' radius flash of light (Save vs. Energy Attacks to avoid 3d6 rounds of blindness if looking at the light)
10' radius blast for 8d6 damage
25' radius magical darkness (permanent)
10' radius blast for 10d6 damage
10' radius spore cloud (Save vs. Magic to avoid petrification)

Skin Color sub-chart (d10):

Red
Orange
Yellow
green
Blue
Indigo
Violet
Black
White
Tie-died swirl of every color.

Blindness/Deafness/Muteness Duration sub-chart (d6):

1 hour
1d4 hours
2d6 hours
1 day
1d10 days
permanent

Strong Odor sub-chart (d6):

Skunk: -10 to Charisma
Rotting Meat: -5 to Charisma, carnivorous and scavenging predators attracted.
Syrupy sweet: swarms of insects are attracted.
Shadowy Aroma: The shadow world draws closer.
Aggressive pheromone: The ingestor must make a successful Charisma attack to avoid being attacked by any creature that comes within 15' of her.
Fear pheromone: Any creature coming within 15' of the ingestor must make a Save vs. Poison or flee for 1d4 rounds

Demon Resource

2010-10-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

So I was making a really kewl boss creature for my 4e game (a shadow demon that has been slowly coming through into this world by taking over the body of Hammer, a warforged barbarian in my game, who brought this on himself by knowingly drinking what I had described as the "amniotic fluid of an elder frog god" just to see what would happen...) because the party has finally crossed the mountains and located a shabori (shaman) who can help them expel the demon from Hammer.

The party has been told that enough of the demonic entity has already crossed over into this world that it will be a horrific struggle when it emerges from the body of their friend. I gave this baddie some amazing mind-bending and terrifying powers, and after the party faces it tomorrow I will post a little write up of the demon because I think it is an excellent example of how to make a 4e creature that is terrifying and fun to fight without it being a slog-fest of slowly chipping away hundreds of HP.

I decided I wanted a good "authentic" demon name, a name that the shabori could let slip in the village and all the natives would freak out and chase the party away and make them perform the exorcism out in the middle of the jungle. I googled "indian names for demons" and found a resource that I am going to come back to over and over again, a Demon Dictionary. Check it out! Demontastic. I came up with "Tchort", a Russian name for Satan, which apparently translates as "Black God".

Blind Dwarf Attack!

2010-09-28T23:31:00.000-07:00

I love my character in the Labyrinth Lord game I am playing with my friend Carter of Carter's Cartopia as DM. I am a dwarf, Hakken Aksa-Dak, and I was blinded three sessions ago whilst exploring Stonehell Dungeon. I was twisting a serpent statue which (of course, in retrospect) shot poison gas out at me. Everyone else made their saves, but poor Dak has not seen the light of torch since.

Always one to turn life's lemons into healing potions, I got the rest of the party to clear out of the room while I went about trying to remove what I presumed and hoped was a container of poison gas concealed in the middle of the statue. Carter rolled with what I was trying to do and eventually let me get out the gas container and stopper it with a rag while we carved a cork for it.

Ever since, I have been the maniacal and probably more than slightly crazed (and of course, always drunk) first line of assault. Did I mention that I have had 2 HP for the last three sessions as well? We use the "Shields Will Splinter" houserule, so I can survive at least one hit, but really I expected to die many times as I charged, blind, screaming and holding a container of poisonous gas, straight into the middle of a band of lizardmen or hobgoblins. This tactic has worked with varying success, but so far I have not died and I have been able to contribute something meaningful to combat.

I have also been tickled pink by all this. Even though we just found a major pile of loot and high-tailed it out of the dungeon to re-supply and get my blindness removed, I almost don't want to give up the ride just yet. Playing a blind, suicidal dwarf has been a lot of fun!

Snuff Demons, Hekura, and little magic monkeys that grant you immortality if you eat their crushed bones

2010-09-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

Yup, its been a while since I posted about my 4e campaign. That does not mean shit has not been happening! The party has finally made it across the imposing 30,000' tall mountain range to the verdant jungle beyond that slopes far away until it finally meets another ocean. Along the way, exploring a forgotten temple they found 20 miles under the mountain along the tunnel they were following, they accidentally released a great elder being.

I will have to do a separate post about this incident, or perhaps ask Mike (the player of Tilia the albino minotaur in the campaign) to write another guest blog post detailing his decision to drop a magical fungus (that he knew fed off of magical radiation and water and could grow with breathtaking rapidity in the right conditions) into a closed series of flooded tubing leading down to a contained elder entity that was doing very little else but radiate intense magical energy which was being trapped and siphoned by the magical wards and systems in place around it. This thing was called Kariki Kalos by those who built the temple and here is what it looks like (the jellyfish like cap is 3000' feet across, the main body from tentacle tip to the top of the cap is 3500', and the long stinging (radiant and lightning damage) tendrils stretch out up to 15,000' behind). A "light organ" inside the cap emits a burning beam of light and from each lidless eye (18 in all, in a circle around the gaping mouth) a ray of darkness is cast.

But that is not what I want to write about. On the other side of the mountain now, the party has taken up with one among many independent, but loosely organized (by kinship, trading and raiding ties), bands of an indigenous human population that call themselves "the fierce people". After an initial tense and frequently hostile confrontation with an overwhelming force of fierce warriors brandishing bows and blowguns, many with glowing red or black eyes and red or black slime oozing out of their noses, the party finally fell in with an older shabori (shaman) who had foreseen their arrival and was eager to question them.

The shabori, Titsi-Waa, somehow managed to intimidate the waitari (chieftain, literally "the fiercest") that was confronting the party. The shabori puffed himself up as much as his lame leg would allow, and then something strange happened. His chest began to expand and swell, as if something was inside it. Then his eyes flashed and the waitari big man backed down, called to his men, and ran off up the mountain pursuing the original mission of glorious death while fighting an awakened god.

While this was happening, Tilia pulled down the Goggles of Arcana that she had made last session (from small black crystal disks she discovered behind each of the 18 eyes surrounding the central mouth of the larval form of Kariki-Kalos - the party was beset upon by many of the 30' larval monstrosities, which emitted beams of darkness from their eyes and a blast of burning light from their horned tail). These give her a bonus to Arcana checks performed while attempting to diving the nature of a magical occurrence. Looking with "magic vision", she saw four tiny humanoid creatures (hekura) living inside the old shabori's chest. One of these was performing a magical incantation, growing and swelling and changing in form as it did so. Tilia was able to divine something of the rough nature of each hekura; one was a protective charm spirit, one (the active one) was a malicious curse spirit, one caused sickness and disease, and one cured such ailments.

Later the party learned that the hekura are a race of spirit beings that live in the spirit world. Places in the real world marked by large isolated boulders, or rocky mountain sides, are frequented by hekura in the spirit world. You cannot persuade hekura to live inside you by going to them in the physical world. You must visit them in the spirit world and sing to them and dance until they voluntarily enter your body, draining a small part of your physical essence but greatly enriching your ability to interact with the spirit world.

The fierce people visit the spirit world primarily through the use of a snuff made from the bark of the ebene tree ground and mixed with saliva and ash. This mixture is then dried and pounded to form a snuff that is shot through a tube into the nose of the recipient. There is no attack roll required to hit the recipient if the snuff is taken in this manner. Part of the inhaler's soul (the noreshi) leaves the body and, attached by an umbilical energy chord invisible to the inhaler and unbreakable to all others, must reside in the spirit world for 2d4 hours. If the noreshi wanders too far from the body and is lost, or cannot return in time, the noreshi can be come separated from the body and a serious and invariably fatal illness will set in unless the lost noreshi can be found and recaptured.

[mechanics sidebar: the cosmologies of my campaigns rarely resemble any printed "official" version too closely. In this case, you could think of the "spirit world" of the campaign as the shadowfell and feywild of 4e rolled into one, with a good dose of what the astral sea is supposed to accomplish in 4e as well.]

The party also eventually learned that the red and black eyes and snot of the warriors they encountered in the jungle (already ferocious looking with faces painted black and large plugs of tobacco in their lips) were caused by beings known as "snuff demons". Summoned by snuffs artfully composed of ground seeds and powders, the snuff demon marked by red eyes and mucous is known as an aihal and the one marked by sunken black eyes and dark mucous is known as aihan.

Snuff Demon Aihal

After being summoned inside the nasal passages, an aihal snuff demon grants the inhaler the ability to see in the dark as if it were daylight, +2 to hit and damage with basic ranged attacks and the ability to make an extra basic ranged attack once per round as a free action. Until the aihal is expelled in a dark red mass of goo, the inhaler take a -5 penalty to Will defense.

Snuff Demon Aihan

After appearing in the nasal cavities, aihan radiates a fear aura 2 in which all enemies take a -2 penalty to hit. The inhaler also receives +2 to hit and damage with basic melee attacks and the ability to make an extra basic melee attack once per round as a free action. Until the aihan is expelled in a black mass of goo, the inhaler take a -5 penalty to Will defense.

Little Magic Monkeys that grant you immortality if you eat their crushed bones:

Let me say here that my players have a nasty habit of rolling critical successes at all the critical times. Nat 20's, and even natural 30's on the once a session roll of the d30 that every player gets (check out my sidebar to the upper left, Order of the d30, if you don't know what I am talking about), abound in my game. Dunno how or why, this has just been one of the luckiest groups I have ever seen. So the group had just managed to somehow avoid a sure confrontation with an angry allosaurus that had ambushed them when they found themselves in the midst of a wildlife stampede. The fierce people had united when the side of the mountain blew off, and thousands of warriors beat drums and spears against trees as they marched to the mountain to do battle with the great god that was supposed to rise up during the end of the world. They drove the animals and dinosaurs of the jungle ahead of them.

Tilia, ever interested in collecting, examining and cataloguing the flora and fauna of the new world, took this opportunity to collect some animal species.

So Tilia rolls a nature check (I usually use checks like this as a rough barometer to see how well a player succeeds, rather than a simple yes/no, succeed/fail target number skill check) and gets a natural 20. I decide on the spot to introduce an interesting creature to the scene that I hadn't figured the players would run into for quite a while. Nearly impossible to catch, blindingly quick and possessing the ability to run on air as if it were solid ground, the tiny tsoru-tsoru (fast fast) monkey is as intelligent as a human but has a nearly immortal lifespan. Cooking a tsoru-tsoru in a stew, boiling it down until there is nothing left but bones, and then grinding those bones and eating the resulting paste grants near immortality and great resistance to physical and mental damage. The party learned this when the host village that they were staying at began loudly demanding that Tilia cook the tsoru-tsoru and share its bones.

A nature-lover through and through, and already aware of the creature's intelligence, Tilia was loathe to acquiesce to her hosts' demands but also wanted to avoid upsetting them. Tilia began questioning the monkey (with the aid of the comprehend languages ritual that has come in handy so many times for Beautiful Bob the face man of the group) and soon found out that the tsoru-tsoru (like all young adults of its species) had to remain in the jungle until it had caught enough "lightning bugs" to "last it a lifetime in the cloud city" where the tsoru-tsoru had "sorcerers more powerful than you can imagine". Some back and forth questioning with the village elders revealed that the lightning bugs spoken of by the monkey and a very valuable spirit creature called a spirit beetle by the elders were the same thing. Tilia arranged a deal where she would let the monkey go if he would promise to deliver a weeks catch of lightning bugs, which could apparently be used as one-use magical batteries, to add potency to a magical attack or effect or to create and power a one use magical device. This was made much more poignant by the presence of the pregnant mate of the capture monkey, who had followed the party through the jungle and was hiding out at the smoke hole rim of the thatched roof which enclosed the circular village. Reunited at last, the couple dissapeared into the jungle and the party turned their attention to more pressing matters...

Much more to come. Trying to even MENTION all the plot threads that are out there, just tempting the players with all their juicy glory, would take quite a while, let alone fully describing them.

So I got the Red Box yesterday...

2010-08-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

I am actually pretty excited about the rest of the D&D Essentials boxed sets, but this one is of little use to me as a player. As a way to introduce a new player to the concept of the game, it is pretty cool. It introduces character creation through a choose-your-adventure type format; you run through the solo "adventure" in the player's book and by the end you have filled in your character sheet along the way and learned the basic concepts and vocabulary of D&D 4e. Haven't had the time to read the DM's book or the included adventure, but it was nice to get a box with dice, tokens, character sheets, et al. Thanks WOTC for the review material!

A more detailed review will be posted soon at the Eye of the Vortex.

Amazonian Escapades: Day One: "Welcome to New Haven!"

2010-08-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

Well hello there! I’m Mike and I am stepping in to write on this blog because Carl asked me if I would provide a perspective for his 4e campaign from the player. First off; I have to start by saying that I am amazed by how Carl was able to step in and start his own campaign so quickly. As some of you may have read already in: This Post he kind of had the job of DMing dropped into his lap at the last minute. His first words to us were, “It’s going to be a jungle setting and you’re fresh off the boat.” How much that line would change our lives, we never knew….

I plan to write in installments if possible, cataloging our exploits as the adventure unfolds. I am also going to try and use this as a place to record the history of the party and the world as we explore it. Not only will this give you, the reader, a good insight from the player’s point of view, but it will also help myself and the party call up relevant information when needed. It will also help us reminisce some day when we’re all heroes of the Amazonian landscape…..if we survive.

So, it all began with a ragtag crew of adventurers seeking fame and fortune promised us on far away continents. There is Antillia the female albino minotaur warden(me!), Hammer the male warforged barbarian, Vomarr the male bugbear cleric of Kord, Rhaziel the male eladrin rogue, and Beautiful Bob the male half-elf ardent who joined us later on in the mines. So, the story begins…

Antillia, Hammer, Vomarr, and Rhaziel caught a ride on a local slave ship headed to a new and unexplored continent with promises of fame, fortune, artifacts, and the raw knowledge of new landscapes and fauna. We all exchanged our greetings as fellow passengers on a long voyage across the sea and became fast friends. (convenient!) We landed on the foreign beach and disembarked the ship, having also gotten to know a slave, Zoggins, and his thoughts of a revolt, we kept an eye on him. Meanwhile, governor Sir John Laymen, greeted us and informed us of how happy he was to see us and how welcome we were. When asked about the area he filled us in on some of the local events. Apparently not everything was going so well in the new world…he did however tell us of the three mines in the mountains and how the slaves were there to be sold to the mine managers. He also mentioned the “White Death” which was a disease that had infected the village and killed many of the people. Apparently a local Doctor had helped cure the disease by traveling across the mountains, which was thought impossible, and collecting herbs that he brought back. Fourth on the list were rumors of the local hunters, Dornal "The Swift", Elijah Silver, and Martin Treebreaker who had found a city made entirely of gold in the middle of the swamp. To top it all off the town was vacant and housing, land, and most tools were completely free.

So, what does a group setting out for fortune, fame, ancient knowledge, and power do with their first day in a town chock full of adventure hooks and plot twists? They claim a house, start a farm, and go fishing! No, seriously, that’s what we did! Well, we DID ask around about some of the rumors pertaining to the “White Death” and the city of gold. We decided to split up to make the best work of it. Antillia and Vomarr went to talk to the Doctor about herbs and the “White Death” cure. Meanwhile, Rhaziel and Hammer went to find the hunters in the local tavern (where they displayed many of their trophies) and inquire about the city of gold. We decided this was the best course of action while waiting for the slave auctions to start later on in the afternoon.

Antillia and Vomarr met with Doctor John Lock and realized almost immediately that he was on some pretty heavy self-prescribed “medication”. He was huddled up in the back of his office mumbling about the great serpent and held out a spoonful of some brownish-green looking paste that he had made in a bowl. So of course, Antillia ate it! Let’s talk about amazing! Antillia began to hallucinate and time seemed to slow down around her. She saw a great green serpent fly up from what seemed like over the mountains, and into her chest. After that Antillia could see life in everything around her, detect spirits that she couldn’t before, and could literally FEEL nature in everything living. She walked outside and gazed upon this ancient stone head and saw shadows of people performing a ritual around it and it seemed to glow in an amazing wash of light. A beam shot from the head in the direction it was facing, towards what we later discovered was the center of the swamp. She was able to make out some of the glyphs on the ancient head, but not what they said. After the trip-tastic fun time they were finally able to talk to the Doctor and determine that this concoction he had made was the product of the Great Serpent that taught him how to mix the right herbs/fruits/youdon’twannaknow/etc. so he could be lead and perceive the great pass (as well as the Great Serpent) in the mountains that opened on a certain celestial alignment. He told us he would be leaving in a week, because the alignment would happen again and he would be able to cross the mountains to get the herbs, that could only be gotten to cure the “White Death” on the other side. He said he had tried to grow them here, but something in the earth allowed some healing spirits to enter the herbs over the mountains and give them their curative property. Also, that something in the region we were in was hindering and killing plant growth. Many of the locals attributed this to the “White Death” as well. Another thing we made note of was that supposedly the Great Serpent was the “One God” of all nature. We bid him farewell in hopes of traveling with him in a week to see this pass through the mountains.

So while Antillia and Vomarr were having their little acid koolaid test, Hammer and Rhaziel were seeking out the hunters at the local tavern "The Engorged Serpent". The hunters turned out to be a trio called "The Jungle Boys" and they asked them about their tale. The hunters were glad to tell it, with a few free ales in their hands, and soon the two adventurers were enthralled. Apparently the trio had once been a quartet and had lost one of their hunters to the “serpent-like guardians” of the golden city/temple. They said they had adventured into the swamp, in search of new found glory and trophies. There was a wall of vegetation around a specific area that seemed impassable, but they had managed to find a way in. Once inside the wall the land before them sloped quickly down into a crater so large they couldn’t make out the other side. Immediately they noticed that the crater’s walls were covered in what seemed like a black glass and the obvious giant wall made of gold around the city/temple in the center of the crater. They slid down for a closer investigation when they were ambushed by a group of serpent men. The hunters ran for their lives, but one of them was set upon by the snake-men. (You only have to run faster than the slowest hunter!) Their jaws dropped as the snake men, right off his still squirming body, ate their friend’s face! It was all they could do to gather themselves and make for the passage in the wall. They have never been back to that place since… Well obviously this story had the intended effect upon Hammer and Rhaziel, warding them from ever going to the deadly temple of gold, right? Right?! If anything it only whet their appetites. What could be better for a rogue and barbarian? Plenty of evil creatures to slaughter with the promise of so much gold you can build a city out of it. Not much tops that!

So as the group gathered info the sun slowly waned towards later afternoon. It was nearing time for the slave auction so we pooled our gold and all went to attend. We knew we wanted Zoggins and, borrowing from our knowledge, we decided to stack the odds in our favor. Antillia went separate from the group to bid on the slaves, while Hammer, Rhaziel, and Vomarr spread rumors about the slaves we wanted. It turns out we were against Seyra, Grobin, and Picktooth. They were the representatives of the local mines; "Steaming Pit"(Seyra: Red Headed Beauty), "Yellowbrick"(Grobin: Fat Man), and "Snorter's Sluce and Slurry"(Picktooth: Half Orc). In the end we had scared off many of the potential bids on those slaves and acquired Zoggins, Er’ekt, and Blister. We promptly pulled Zoggins aside and told him how we’d like to set them all free, but employ them working on our farm and keeping up our house. Being a natural born leader, we put Zoggins in charge, and he was thrilled. Antillia showed them all how to farm and Er’ekt was a natural born cook and housekeeper. Meanwhile, night was falling and Rhaziel and Hammer decided to go fishing! We gave Hammer a sunrod and Rhaziel snagged a boat on shore. Rhaziel passed a rope down to Hammer (who doesn’t need to breathe) and Hammer waded around the bottom of the small gulf, searching for lost relics and fish. Hammer had amazing eyes that evening and managed to bring up 2 ancient pots full of a nectar similar to honey. He also managed to get in a fight with a giant halibut and Rhaziel dived in to help him finish it off. When they came to shore Rhaziel brought in the jars and a net full of about eight pounds of fish. The other fishermen were mocking him as they were bringing in their hauls, until Hammer came wading out carrying a 300-pound halibut on his shoulders. All the other fishermen were speechless after that as their jaws hit their decks. We all had a hearty laugh at the tale and set our workers to cutting, cooking, and glazing some fish on a stick to prepare to sell it in town the next day.

While the fish was being prepared for the next day we were approached by a messenger asking us to attend Seyra, the red headed beauty, at the tavern. We were curious who she was, so we asked around some on the way there. It turns out she was one of the people bidding on the slaves and the lady who had won almost all of them. We were intrigued so we went to meet her, at which point she laid a proposition at our feet. She said we had been seen around the town and had heard we were the seasoned type. She said she didn’t have enough guards of her own to escort all the slaves up to the "Steaming Pit" mine, but would pay us to help guard them along the way. First, we asked her a few questions about the need for so many slaves and that began a new tale….

Seyra began her story telling us that her company had lost many of it’s miners recently and production was almost halted completely. When we asked her if it had anything to do with the “White Death” she told us that the disease didn’t reach anyone in the mine. We assumed this was due to the fact that most miners avoided the town during the epidemic, even though local rumor had suggested the "White Death" might be the cause of the mine's shortcomings. So, this naturally raised our suspicions. If it wasn’t the “White Death”, then what could kill so many miners so quickly? She simply told us it was an unforeseen accident and she needed the slaves. We eventually bargained out a price, getting more than the original offer due to the lack of answers, and bid her farewell until the morrow.

We returned to our farm to see that our workers were well settled and then went back to our home where Er’ekt had dusted, cleaned, and put things back in order. We bedded down for the evening with adventure on our minds and a long trip up the river to the mountains ahead….

I’d like to also note at the end of this that we had wondered if the “White Death” might be spread by flying insects, similar to mosquitoes, so we found a local spider webbing that is coated in sap to strengthen and preserve it. It made for a very light netting that was stronger than steel and served as a great way to keep insects out of our sleeping areas.

Places and people of note:

New Hope - Starting Port with a tavern, whorehouse, general store, and blacksmith.

Engorged Serpent - Tavern in New Hope.

Silken Thigh - Whorehouse in New Hope.

Sir John Laymen - Governor of New Hope.

Dr. John Lock - Doctor who lost family to the "White Death". Came back from the far side of the mountains with herbs that can cure the "White Death". Had a religious experience with the "Great Serpent" and is looking for help to gather herbs within the week. The only person to ever cross the mountains.

Jungle Boys - The three best hunters in the area.

Elijah Silver - One of the "Jungle Boys", botanist.

Dornal "The Swift" - Leader of the "Jungle Boys".

Martin Treebreaker - One of the "Jungle Boys", the muscle.

Easter Island Heads - One known to exist in New Hope, suspected that there are many of them that form a circle. The faces all pointing towards the "city of gold" in the middle of the swamp. Antillia saw a beam of light shooting out of the face of the one in New Hope during her experience with the concoction Dr. John Lock fed her. They seem to be guarding something, or sealing something in the swamp.

Matt Humphreys - Farmer in New Hope. The only successful farmer still working a field.

Seyra - Representative of the "Steaming Pit" mine. Red headed beauty.

Grobin - Representative of the "Yellowbrick" mine. Fat man.

Picktooth - Representative of "Snorter's Sluice and Slurry", a river sluicing operation just south of the mines. Half orc.

Zoggins - Hobgoblin leader of our workers.

Er'ekt - One of our workers, cook and housekeeper.

Blister - One of our workers, half orc. Dumb as a sack of rocks, but works like an ox.

Antillia - Female Minotaur Warden (Player)

Vomarr - Male Bugbear Cleric (Player)

Hammer - Male Warforged Barbarian (Player)

Rhaziel - Male Eladrin Rogue (Player)

Thanks for reading and I hope I gave you a good look at what we’re up against! I think the sheer amount of plot hooks and story background made sure we would be busy for some time to come. I’ll post the next bit of our adventure as soon as I can! I also apologize for any naming differences between my post and previous posts, I am going off my notes where names are spelled how they sounded to me.

8 Devils

2010-08-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

I retain all commercial rights to this material. Feel free to use, steal from, modify or do what have you with this post in your own personal gaming life. This is material that will be published in a modified form in an upcoming supplement I am working on.

Mechanics note - there are references to attribute attacks (Charisma attack, Dexterity attack, etc.) in the text. Either replace with a standard melee or ranged attack roll, make the effect an auto-hit and give the target a save to resist it, or make up your own attribute attack rules because I cannot share mine with you at this time!

8 Devils Willing to Make a Pact With a Mortal:

Devilish Pact optional rule: Instead of gaining the normal benefits of leveling up, a character can choose to make a pact with a devil upon attaining a new level. The character must seek out the name of an individual devil, conduct an expensive ritual (1d6 x 100 GP) to summon it and make a pact with it to gain the abilities granted by the devil. Even attaining this knowledge may take many game sessions of persistent seeking as adjudicated by the GM. Either choose a devil or roll 1d8 after performing the ritual to determine which devil was contacted and the effects of the pact.

Drawbacks of a Pact: All Devilish Pacts come with a drawback: Whenever the pact maker is recalled by others, their first impressions are overwhelmingly negative. Even if actual interactions with people go well, when they think back on those interactions they will realize that there was something amiss. There is just something off about that one... Over time, if a character stays in the same area, the entire population of the area will grow to dislike the character even if the character gives them no real reason to do so.
Leveling Up a Pact: Upon gaining a level, a player may choose to level up the character’s Devilish Pact rather than gaining the usual benefits that accrue to the character's class at the new level. No HPs are gained, the chance to hit does not improve, no new spells are learned... a devil requires total devotion from those servants who hope to gain great power. Leveling up the Devilish Pact requires another ritual; each subsequent ritual costs twice as much as the one before.
Breaking a Pact: Each devil demands a different form of payment in return for granting a pact boon. If at any time this payment is not or cannot be made, the pact is broken. The devil will provide no more services, and depending on the exact terms of the pact made, there may be other consequences of breaking a pact. Death and loss of the immortal soul of a character is a real possibility unless the character was an extremely shrewd negotiator when making the pact in the first place.

Roll 1d8 for random Devilish Pact assignment:
1: Orobas
A Devil who appears as a noble horse or a princely man. His pact grants limited knowledge of the future, improving AC by a +2 bonus, granting a +1 bonus to hit and the ability once a day to take the better result of two dice throws instead of making a single dice throw. Orobas tasks those who agree to his pact with uncovering knowledge and secrets and is aware of anything that they observe or experience.

Level 2: Further +1 bonus to AC

Level 3: Further +1 bonus to to hit

Level 4: The ability to ask a question and divine the true response even if the person questioned does not verbally respond. This ability requires a Charisma attribute attack.

Level 5: The ability to speak the language of and command lesser devils (5 HD or fewer) while they are within speaking range. They will follow orders only while within this range. If they are currently under orders from another, this requires a Willpower attribute attack.

Level 9 (levels 6-8 are required to be dedicated without reward but at no ritual cost to furthering the relationship with Orobas for Level 9 to be attained): The ability to summon devils (4d6 HD a day) and command devils of up 9 HD with no limitations on range or duration. Summoned devils remain until dismissed or killed.

2: Valefor
Normally appearing as a lion with a bellowing ass’s head, Valefor is a sneaky devil who seeks to accumulate great riches. His pact grants +2 to Dexterity, and the ability to pick locks and pockets at a success rate equal to five times dexterity (this can be modified downwards in exceptionally difficult circumstances as adjudicated by the GM). Once a day an infernal cloud of darkness can be summoned in a 15’ radius circle surrounding the pact maker (who is the only one capable of seeing in this magical darkness). Valefor demands 1/4 the total value of all treasure gained using the abilities granted by his pact. This treasure must be placed inside the inscribed symbol of Valefor within 24 hours of being obtained or the pact is broken.

Level 2: +15% to pick locks and pockets

Level 3: The ability to speak to and give simple commands to vermin (up to rat size)

Level 4: The ability to speak with, give complex commands to and receive back reports from birds (up to crow size)

Level 5: The ability to climb on vertical surfaces and ceilings like a spider.

Level 6: The ability to automatically open all non-magical locks and have the regular % chance to open even magically sealed locks and wards.

Level 7: The ability to walk through walls of up to 3’ in thickness and to walk on water.

Level 8: The ability to temporarily change the physical composition of a metal into any other metal for 24 hours by touch (affects up to 25 pounds per round of metal, and even very large objects can be affected over multiple rounds)

3: Forneus
Forneus takes the form of a sea-monster, with the exact details of his appearance changing with each summoning. One feature remains the same; Forneus has a melodious voice and an extremely persuasive speaking manner. He grants +1 to Charisma and the ability to understand and speak fluently all spoken languages. Once per day a Charisma Attack may be made to attempt to charm an intelligent target within hearing distance; once charmed, the target will obey all non-suicidal orders. This charm effect lasts for 24 hours at which time a new Charisma Attack must be made to sustain it or the target is no longer charmed (the target will have full memory of being charmed). Forneus is a master negotiator; he never fails to secure the rights to the eternal souls of those who sign a pact with him. Upon the body reaching 0 HP, the soul immediately becomes the property of Forneus rendering all attempts to revive the dead character ineffective. In addition, animals will be distrustful of and act hostile towards the character even in life.

Level 2: The charm ability may be used twice per day on two different targets.

Level 3: Calm the Mob - once per day, the pact grants the ability to stop all within a 25’ radius from fighting or arguing for 1d6 rounds. During this time those affected will civilly respond to questions, defend themselves and attack if attacked, but will not initiate hostilities of either the physical or verbal kind for the duration.

Level 4: Silver Tongue - grants the ability to make a Charisma attack against any intelligent target within earshot - a success means that any request that is not patently absurd or directly life threatening will be granted by the target. The target will instantly rationalize this event and within 1d4 hours will be unable to remember any specifics of the encounter.

Level 5: The ability to summon and command lesser devils or imps (5 HD or fewer, 2d6 total HD each day). Summoned devils remain until dismissed or killed.

Level 9 (levels 6-8 are required to be dedicated without reward but at no ritual cost to furthering the relationship with Forneus for Level 9 to be attained): The ability to summon any devil (total of 4d6 HD a day, no other limit on HD of summonable devils) and attempt to negotiate for its services. This requires a successful Charisma Attack and a successful Willpower Attack. It also requires an expensive summoning circle (20,000 GP cost) to have any chance of succeeding. Summoned devils remain until dismissed or killed.

4: Bune
Bune appears as a dragon with one human head and two dragon heads. He takes a portion of the life essence of those who make a pact with him, resulting in a -2 penalty to Constitution (and resulting permanent loss of 2d6 HP). He also requires the physical body after death of those who deal with him; when a character who has made a pact with Bune dies, the body is immediately animated as a zombie of HD equal to 1/2 the character’s Constitution (rounded down) and is now controlled by Bune. Any undead controlled by the character at the time of death are also now controlled by Bune.
Bune grants the ability to animate and control up to 2d6 HD a day of skeletons or zombies. The maximum number of HD of undead that can be controlled at any one time is 24 HD. Older creations become free-willed if new undead are animated that put the total amount over 24 HD of undead controlled. Orders are given telepathically within visual range and will be followed to the ends of the earth.

Level 2: At will, can see through the eyes of any controlled undead and can give telepathic directions with no range limitations now. In addition, can speak through the mouths of any controlled undead.

Level 3: The ability to speak with a corpse as long as most of its skull is present. The corpse will answer truthfully but only knows what it knew in life. Each corpse can be asked 1d6 questions.

Level 4: Up to 4d6 HD a day of skeletons or zombies can be animated and the maximum number of HD of undead that can be controlled at any one time is now 48 HD.

Level 5: Draining Bite - a Reflex Attack can be made to successfully bite a target for 4d6 damage OR 1d6 Strength damage. Any HP or Strength lost in this manner become temporary HP or Strength for the biter that last for one hour. Any controlled undead gain the ability to make this attack as well as the character, but only one such attack can be made in any given round regardless of who makes it. Any target slain by this attack instantly animates as a zombie under the control of the character.

Level 6: Touch of the Grave - any normal melee attack that hits also paralyzes the target for 1d6+1 rounds if they fail a save vs. Death . Any controlled undead gain the ability to make this attack as well as the character, but only one such attack can be made in any given round regardless of who makes it.

Level 7: The ability to control and command even greater undead such as vampires. Any greater undead reduced to zero HP by the character or an undead under the character’s control is instantly restored to full HP and is now under the command of the character. The greater undead’s HD count as normal towards the max number of HD that can be controlled by the character.

Level 8: There is no limit to the total number of HD of undead that can be controlled by the character at any one time.

5: Astaroth/Astarte
Appears most often in male guise as Astaroth, seeming to be a singularly unattractive angel, or sometimes as Astarte, a female form with the head of a young cow. In either form, a viper is wielded in the left hand as a weapon. Both forms emit such a foul stench that precautions must be taken to even think coherently in their presence. Astaroth is a fallen angel who dreams one day of returning to the celestial ranks; he demands one boon from each pact follower, a boon that will surely be claimed some day in an effort to further his plots. In addition, a pact with Astaroth results in a -1 penalty to Charisma and a permanent foul odor. Astaroth grants +1d8 extra magical poison damage to all melee or ranged attacks and the ability to emit a 10’ radius noxious cloud at will which has the following effects; all within its radius must Save vs. Poison or flee for 1d4 rounds. Those that remain take 1d8 poison damage a round and suffer a -2 penalty to all rolls (the character is immune to these effects).

Level 2: Living Weapon - any single weapon within 20’ turns into a snake and bites its wielder with its wielder’s normal chance to hit, doing 3d8 poison damage.

Level 3: Once a day, Astaroth may be called upon for the correct answer to a “yes or no” question (as adjudicated by the GM).

Level 4: The ability to speak with and understand all serpents and dragons. A Willpower attack may be made to attempt to charm a serpent or dragon of HD less than 1/2 the character’s Willpower (rounded down) - the charmed ophidian will obey any orders that do not involve surrendering treasure or direct physical harm to itself, and the charm lasts for one week unless renewed. The total number of charmed serpents or dragons under the control of the character at any one time may not exceed the character’s Willpower.

Level 5: The ability to transform once a day for up to 1d4 hours into a serpent with a colored tail, two small feet, a chestnut neck and spines similar to hedgehog. In this form (another aspect of Astaroth/Astarte), the character gains a flight speed of 240’ (excellent maneuverability), an AC bonus of +4, the ability to breathe a noxious cloud once every 1d4 rounds that is a cone 30’ long and 10’ at its apex doing 6d6 poison damage (Save vs. Poison for 1/2 damage), and the ability to shoot 1d4 spines a round to a range of 100’ (each requiring a ranged attack roll) that do 3d8 poison damage each. All personal equipment merges into the new form, which lacks hands and is correspondingly handicapped.

6: Marax
Appearing as a bull with a man’s face, Marax is an extremely learned devil. He consumes the Willpower of those who deal with him (-2 to Willpower) but grants amazing knowledge of plants, stones and the stars and the ability to synthesize this new information (+1 to Intelligence). This knowledge allows for brewing of simple healing potions and poisons (1d4 days gathering and preparation required, chance of success equals five times Intelligence, produces 1d6 doses): healing potions cure 1d6 damage per dose and poisons do 3d6 damage/dose if activated on contact, 4d6 damage/dose if introduced through a wound or 5d6 damage/dose if ingested (Save vs. Poison prevents all damage). The true composition and value of any stone, mineral or gem can be determined with 100% accuracy. Stars can be used to navigate by with no chance of getting lost, and auspicious dates can be chosen for specific tasks (the GM will determine what the exact benefits of attempting a task on an auspicious date are).

Level 2: Can make a protective plant-based oil using the same rules given for creating potions above; this oil grants a non-cumulative +2 bonus to AC per dose if applied to the skin, clothing or armor and lasts for 1 hour.

Level 3: Can brew a potion of strength using the same rules given above; this potion grants a non-cumulative +4 bonus to Strength per dose and lasts for 1 hour.

Level 4: A powder can be made of crushed gemstones, each dose requiring 500 GP worth of gems in its creation. This powder when sniffed grants the ability to see and hear the events of the past in the present location of the character as if the last 1d4 years had been recorded from this very vantage point. This takes total concentration and nothing else can be attempted besides looking into the past. Finding a specific incident or moment in time farther back than 1 week takes 6d10 minutes, while reviewing the past week takes only six minutes.

Level 5: Can brew a potion of invisibility using the same rules above, this potion renders the imbiber invisible for 1 hour per dose (note this invisibility is not dispelled by attacking).

Level 6: Can brew a potion that raises the dead. This potion takes rare alchemical and plant ingredients that either cost 5d6 x100 GP or involve an expedition into the wilderness in search of them. Only one dose at a time may be produced. The potion must be poured into the mouth of the recently deceased within 24 hours of death, and its chance of success equals five times the Constitution of the deceased. This potion retains its potency for exactly 12 months from the date of its creation.

7: Seere
Normally seen taking the form of a beautiful man on a winged horse, Seere is an unusually good natured free spirit for a devil. He requires only the eternal loyalty of those who make a pact with him, and seems to be creating a large loosely organized coalition for some purpose. Seere may demand a service at some point in exchange for his pact, and if this service is not provided, the pact is broken.
+1 to Dexterity. Seere grants a 240’ movement rate across any surfaces or through any conditions, including over water, up a wall or through a bramble patch. This increased speed results in one extra attack a round. Seere also grants the ability to escape from any non-magical bonds in 1d4 rounds.

Level 2: A single charging melee attack can be made against a target at least 10’ away. This attack does triple normal damage. If the attack is successful, the character can continue to move up to her full movement rate away without prompting a return attack.
Level 3: Seere grants an instinctual knowledge of the presence of precious metals or gems. The more valuable the item, the farther away this presence can be felt (10’ per 100 GP of value as a rough rule of thumb). The general direction in a straight line to the item is known. This ability does not require concentration, as soon as the pact maker enters within the radius that a valuable item could be felt in, she is aware of its presence and has a relative idea of its composition, value and distance.
Level 4: +1 to Dexterity, the ability to run on air as if it were solid ground, and the ability to make a charging attack against two separate opponents in a single round. These are Dexterity attacks and if successful they do 2d6 damage and knock the wind out of the target, stunning them for 1d4 rounds.

8: GaapGaap only appears at high noon and in the guise of a mighty human king. He demands constant sacrifices and burnt offerings to be made in his honor at noon of every fifth day. If these offerings are late or do not meet with Gaap’s approval, he may appear to exact a terrible price (1 in 6 chance, GM adjudicates what happens when Gaap visits - the first time should be a truly memorable “warning”). Those who make a pact with Gaap have their passions of love and anger intensified. +2 to Charisma and Strength, -2 to Willpower. Those meeting the pact maker’s eyes must make a Save vs. Magic to disobey anything they are told to do (obviously suicidal or other extremely out of the ordinary requests may grant the victim a second Save vs. Magic to resist the order at the GM’s discretion). The pact maker sees the world clearly in black and white, either loving something or hating it. A Charisma attack may be made during an opponent’s turn, once before the beginning of the character’s next turn, against a target that is attacking a comrade of the pact maker. If this Charisma attack is successful, the target takes 1d6 damage and its attack against the comrade fails. The devotee of Gaap may call out one enemy by name at a time as the special target of her wrath. Melee attacks against the Wrath Target receive +2 to hit and do double damage.

Level 2: The Wrath Target is magically held in place, unable to move in any direction but still able to attack and defend. A frenzy of four Strength attacks may be made against the Wrath Target for 3d6 damage each.

Level 3: The pact maker can pass strength on to a loved comrade, healing by laying on hands for 3d6 HP. This ability can only be used on each comrade once per day.

Level 4: The pact maker can instantly teleport to the side of any loved one or hated enemy no matter the intervening distance and without knowing the current whereabouts of the person.

Level 5: +2 to Strength. A frenzy of six Strength attacks may be made against the Wrath Target for 4d6 damage each. The Devotee of Gaap must make a Willpower attack against Gaap (21 Willpower) when Gaap appears during the ritual to attain this Level 5 power. If this attack fails, the pact maker loses touch with reality and becomes drunk with the power of Gaap. At the beginning of any melee, the pact maker must roll under their Willpower on 3d6 or she will make a randomly determined target her Wrath Target and proceed to focus her attacks on that target (friend or foe). At the GM’s discretion, other events may also trigger this same uncontrolled aggression, such as improper sacrifices to Gaap or a willingness to use the Anger powers granted by Gaap more than the helpful powers fueled by the emotion of Love.

After the Flood and Channeling the Plant God

2010-07-20T23:26:00.000-07:00

(more material from my defunct 3e campaign, slightly edited to remove specific references to the party I ran through this setup)

This occurred as the party was caught in a farmland below a dam when the dam was broken. In my campaign world the dam and farmland are on a high plateau with sheer cliffs falling thousands of feet to an uncivilized wild coastline below.

“The surge of flood water sweeps you up and rapidly carries you across the now ruined and flooded farmlands. With hardly any warning, you realize that the waters have found or created a path over the great cliffs and are spilling out into the savage wilderness thousands of feet below.”

If the characters fail to somehow extricate themselves from the rapidly moving floodwaters (no easy task as they find themselves in a body of water nearly a mile wide and rapidly rising as the waters continue to flood out of the dam through the burst gates):

“Your efforts are useless as the powerful current whisks you over the edge and you find yourself in terrifying free fall, caught in a monumental waterfall dropping several thousand feet vertically. “

The newly created waterfall falls over the cliff for a total of 3,000 feet of elevation loss. This is divided into two sections:

several short falls at the beginning that should tumble and damage the characters with a chance of killing them (perhaps some kind of dexterity check to avoid a save vs. death situation, along with 3d6 damage from tumbling and rocks - a kind DM might allow for a character that dies during the fall to be merely unconscious with water in their lungs, and any attempt to get them to spit the water out and breath would revive them with 1d4 HP);

and one long 2,500 foot uninterrupted fall into a huge and newly created pool of water. A natural depression at the base of the cliff formed by the fault line has become a very deep and turbulent pool. The 2,640’ free fall takes only 14 and half seconds (assuming a terminal velocity of a human body in free fall of 182.414 feet per second) so give the players a chance to try something QUICK or nothing at all.

The water level continues to rise for a half hour after the PCs arrive, raising from 2 to 4 feet deep in most places, then gradually dropping at the rate of 2” per hour after that (in two days, it will have mostly drained, leaving swampy ground and pools wherever there were depressions and a lake over the fault line rift that will persist for decades ).

If a Random Encounter is called for, roll 1d8

1: angry dire brown bear, splashing across the landscape, with a raw wound and broken off sapling in it in its flank (-15 HP). It is angry and confused and likely to attack. Somehow removing the wound and helping the bear might be worth extra experience for a nature oriented character. The bear might shadow the party through the flooded zone and assist them in a later encounter if they run into trouble...

2: 5 owlbears with 10 young in tow, searching for a new home. They are not quiet moving across the flooded landscape. They are also looking for a meal and the biggest three will attack if they find a sitting target, with two hanging back with the young and the entire group fleeing if the combat turns against them.

3-5: Multiple splashdowns into unseen pits. They can just be a nuisance, they can function as an attack against the leading member of the party as if the hidden pit under the water was a 3 HD monster, combining a fall with jagged broken logs to do 2d4 damage, they can swallow the victim in choking mud, they can be the home of a frightened giant sturgeon that was washed out from the dam in the flooding...

6: Shambling mound ambush. One pile of uprooted debris left from the flood is not what it seems...

7. Swarm of biting flies follows the party. Can be driven off with smoke, certain plant oils or some kind of creative PC tactic that might work with a swarm of thousands of little biting flies. PCs that do not take special measures to clean and avoid itching the fly bites run the risk of infection in the dirty water.

8. A displaced and angry dragon is sitting on a patch of high ground near its flooded caverns, looking for answers and someone to pay. Not necessarily a combat encounter, unless you are feeling mean!

As evening arrives:

“ The waning light illuminates the undersides of the leaves and casts a red glow on the tree trunks protruding from the muddy brown, sediment filled water. “

When the characters start looking for a place to camp, or soon after in any case:

Read the following to a player whose character has high wisdom or is particularly in tune with nature:

“You feel compelled to stop and look at a vine growing up the side of an immense dead stump; the vine has oddly shaped leaves which resemble a 9 pointed star, deep green in color with intense red veins.”

If the vine is touched, it communicates with the toucher telepathically:

“I am Haoma. I am the god of the vine, the lord of green growing things and the Prince of the Dark Realm beneath the Soil. Drink the milk squeezed from the roots of my vine-body and know the wisdom of Haoma...”

Each Vine of Haoma yields enough juice for 2d6 doses. A 1' section of the vine yields one dose when squeezed. The milk must be imbibed within 10 minutes of cutting the section of the vine, and there is no way to preserve the vine or milk for later consumption once the vine has been cut. Uprooting the plant proves... difficult. Each Vine of Haoma grows in a place sacred to Haoma and will grow there as long as Haoma is a power in the dark places. Attempts to uproot the plant or destroy its roots will be met by progressively more severe responses by Haoma’s insect minions. The roots themselves are incredibly tough and hardy, taking hundreds of HP of damage and dulling many normal swords or axes before they would be cut. They will die if removed from their sacred location and a new vine will sprout forth.

Channeling the Plant God:

If the milk of the vine is drunk, the imbiber is possessed by Haoma. The possession lasts for 1d6 minutes +1 per point of wisdom above 16. The character remains under control of its player but some personality changes may be evident. In some cases special cases the possession can last indefinitely as long as the imbiber is carrying out Haoma’s wishes (in such cases, the Earthswim ability can be used once a day and the imbiber can cast a number of spells from the spell list equal to the number a cleric of the same level could cast – these spells do not in any way effect the number of spells the imbiber could otherwise cast in a day).

During the possession the imbiber will know that he or she is God of the Vine, Lord of Plants, Prince of the Dirt and all the bugs and mushrooms and other creatures and things that inhabit the soil. Any actions that would be contrary to this god are incredibly difficult to take, requiring a roll of 19 or 20 on a d20 with the roll modified by +1 per point of wisdom above 15 possessed by the imbiber. Haoma has little concern with human (or demihuman) squabbles, but anyone possessed by Haoma would have a hard time taking actions that would render any natural habitat unfit for plant and animal life. Note that in many cases, Haoma would not oppose destroying plant life if it opened up new living spaces for other plants and insects, but paving paradise and putting up a parking lot would be next to impossible to undertake while possessed by Haoma.

Haoma grants many powers during a possession but all are contingent on being barefoot and contacting the earth directly:

+6 to AC, +4 to Constitution (and any related bonus HP, if any), +2 to hit and damage, the ability to speak with and understand replies from plants and insects, and the ability to animate plants and control them in a 30’ radius (1 large (small tree, large cactus), 2 medium (bush, large vine), or 4 small (flowering plant, small vine, mushroom, etc) plants animated per level, e.g. a second level imbiber could animate a tree and two bushes). These plants will generally have 1-4 HD, with exceptionally large trees counting as two or more trees for the purposes of animating them and having up to 20 HD (a forest giant worth five regular trees). They can attack as a monster of their HD and do damage appropriate to the type of plant as adjudicated by the DM. Poisonous plants and mushrooms can include their poison in attacks as appropriate. Any animated plants return to their normal condition (first returning to their former position if they have uprooted and wandered away during their animation) at the end of the possession.

The following special ability can also be used (which ends the possession) at any time;

Earthswim: You and anyone you are holding hands with sink into the earth and gain the ability to “swim” like a mole through the dirt, at the rate of 300’ per minute (slightly faster than average adult walking speed). This ability lasts 1 minute per level.

Casting a spell will also end the possession – the imbiber casts spells as a cleric of the same level for purposes of determining access to and effects of the following spells:

Spell List:

1^{st Level}:animate wood (animate a small wooden object and it attacks a foe of your choice), branch to branch (+10 to climb checks in trees and can brachiate hand to hand like a monkey), camouflage (+10 bonus to hide checks), wood wose (summons translucent green nature spirit which will do simple tasks that do not involve knowledge of technology. It can fly, lift 20 pounds and drag 100 pounds. It cannot attack. It cannot move more than 25’ +5’/2 levels away from you. Duration:1 hour/level)

2^{nd Level}:brambles (wooden weapon grows spikes that deal +1 damage/level), briar web (area slows creatures and thorns deal 1 point of damage/5’ moved, area:40’ spread, duration: 1 minute per level), camouflage, mass (as camouflage but multiple subjects), earthbind (subject creature can’t fly), earthen grace (subject takes only non-lethal damage from stone and earth), easy trail (you make a temporary trail through any kind of undergrowth), embrace the wild (you gain an animal’s senses for 10 minutes/level), mountain stance (subject becomes hard to move), one with the land (link with nature gives a +2 bonus on nature-related skill checks),

3^{rd Level}:crumble ( you erode building or other structure), entangling staff (quarterstaff can grapple and constrict foes, forestfold (gain +10 bonus to hide and move silently checks in one type of terrain), giant’s wrath (pebbles you throw become boulders), nature’s rampart (you mold the terrain to provide fortifications), primal form (you change into earth elemental form, gain damage reduction 5, 25% chance of negating critical hits and sneak attacks on you, duration 1 minute /level), spikes (wooden weapon gains spikes which do +1 dmg/ level, weapon gets +2 bonus to hit, and doubles threat range), thornskin (your unarmed attacks deal +1d6 damage, natural and unarmed attacks against you take 5 damage), vine mine (vines grow rapidly, can use as climbing aid, to bind helpless targets, to hamper movement, or to camouflage/+4 on hide checks, vines grow in a spread, 10’ radius/level, range 100’+10’/level, duration 10 minutes/level

Using Haoma in Play - I leave it up to the DM to determine what if anything Haoma wanted to accomplish by reaching out to contact the PC. Obviously, Haoma can be removed from the flooded landscape that my PCs encountered the vine in and placed nearly anywhere in the wilderness. Vines of Haoma can become a strategic resource if an enemy can be lured within range to use the power of the short lasting possession on them. Alternatively, a druid could protect the section of the wilderness that the PCs are intruding into and uses the power of the milk of the vine against the PCs unless they prove themselves to be friends of Haoma.

The Church of the Triumvirate part one

2010-06-22T23:18:00.000-07:00

The "official religion" of the western empire:

At the most basic level of understanding, the Church of the Triumvirate is the worship of three gods: Aceola (the masculine essence, the sun), Alunia (the feminine essence, the moon) and Dormun (a sexually ambiguous nature spirit depicted as the union of earth and water)

Few remember that worship of Dormun is far older in this land than the worship of Aceola and Alunia that was introduced by an invading mounted horde from the southern steppes. The followers of Dormun were farmers who saw the divine in the union of earth and water that each spring brought their crops forth and began the harvest cycle anew. Pockets of the old religion still exist in certain remote areas, and many of the fertility rites survive to the present day in altered form in official church ceremonies.

In the modern Church of the Triumvirate, Aceola is normally portrayed as the dominant figure, the masculine sun god, the shining symbol of light, virtue and strength in battle. Alunia is a secondary figure, feminine, symbolic of quiet supple durability, magic, the moon, the night and the sky in general. Dormun is a tertiary figure, often overshadowed in the iconography of the church and the sermons of the priests. Dormun is portrayed as the union of the earth and water, god of plants and fertility. While the moon in sun symbol of Aceola and Alunia serves as the holy symbol for most clerics of the triumvirate and their gospel speaks to the well heeled elite of an agricultural society, Dormun’s blue and black circle is more common among low ranking rural priests and the poorer lay worshipers who appreciate the simplicity of Dormun’s message.

The Gospel of Aceola:

There are two distinct gospels of Aceola:

The Vedena

One is an ancient text known as the Vedena that is inscribed on five sacred rocks and is among the holiest relics of the church, and the other is the relatively recent revelation of Sidonean the Elder which led to the Church attaining its present form.

The Vedena, which means ritual lore or knowledge in an ancient form of the modern language, contains many of the prayers and rituals still performed by the church today. Some of the more demanding sacrifices are no longer fashionable, but during several particularly trying periods in recent memory an orthodox priest has conducted them in an attempt to win divine favor. The message of the Vedena can be summed up simply as follows: worshipers of Aceola must constantly prove their devotion to the sun through costly sacrifice and rigid adherence to ritual prescriptions, and non-believers must be converted or perish in the light of the sun.

The Gospel of Aceola according to Sidonean the Elder

Sidonean the elder is the pivotal figure in the early history of the Church of the Triumvirate. The grandson of the tribal leader who led the invasion into the fertile farmlands, Sidonean grew up watching his people treat the earth worshiping farmers that they had subjugated worse than they treated the village dogs. His people had long worshipped the sun and the moon in the persons of Aceola and Alunia, and they understood Aceola to be a harsh and uncompromising god who demanded of his followers to conquer and convert any unbelievers. Those that refused to convert were enslaved and worked to death. When a young man, Sidonean had the first of a series of prophetic revelations that took the form of a waking dream in which he conversed with Aceola. Aceola revealed to him that his followers had misinterpreted his desires; he wished to convert new followers by setting a shining example, not through brute force and the threat of enslavement. Aceola related to Sidonean that a series of terrible tragedies would befall the tribe unless they reformed their ways. First, a drought would decimate the croplands. Then, a strange wasting sickness would claim the tribe’s prized horses. Finally, the women of the tribe would become barren and the tribe would slowly disappear into the long sunset. Sidonean was deeply shaken by this conversation with his god, and sincerely tried to convince his people that they were on the precipice, teetering on the brink of a great disaster. But his grandfather laughed, and the tribe continued to revel in the bounty provided by the enslaved earth-worshipers. Sidonean finally retreated into the mountains, to purify himself through ritual fasting and meditation. Over the five years that he spent in the mountains he composed a series of poems and hymns inspired by his understanding of Aceola which, along with his later teachings, are known as The Gospel of Aceola according to Sidonean the Elder.

When each of the curses that he had foretold befell the worshipers of the sun god, Sidonean was sought out by the terrified population and made high priest and ruler. He quickly lifted his people out of the darkness by including the subjugated earth spirit worshiping population in the organized religious expressions of the church. Dormun was worshiped alongside Aceola and Alunia by order of Sidonean, and the long aggrieved population was granted many civil rights in a series of far reaching reforms that Sidonean embarked upon. The strict ethnic and class boundaries that had prevented vital new blood from reaching the long inbred horsemen dissolved, and over generations a new society was forged with a common heritage and a shared religion. While the mountain of theology that has arisen since Sidonean's original burst of revelation comprises the bulk of the texts used in the modern church, it is to Sidonean that both the church and the western empire in its current form owe their existences.

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(This post is another snippet of material I created for and about my 3e campaign world. I will try to scan and post some pictures of the holy symbols and some of the iconography of the church before I leave for my honeymoon on Thursday, but I make no promises... the Church of the Triumvirate will also feature prominently in the forthcoming posts about Gragon city).