Charts

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!

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

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.

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...

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

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

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)

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])

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

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.