Vaults of Nagoh

[ACKS] Reagents and Dungeon Farming

2012-02-13T18:42:00.001Z

[note: I'm not saying the Autarchs are "doing it wrang!" in their clever little book, I'm just offering a couple of unoriginal ideas to expand on their mechanics.]

Questing for Reagents/Special Components
Suggestion: Instead of cutting out hellhound hearts to the value of so many XP the PC gets the value as quest treasure for achieving something unique and campaign-specific during an actual adventure in search of reagents.
Benefit to the GM: creating a magic item costs not only time and gold, but actual player attention too.

For example, instead of trawling the Caverns of Howling Flame waiting for the WM check to come up hellhound for the dozenth time the would-be item crafter might instead learn through research (ACKS, p117) that he can gain a similar effect by plunging his half-forged pet project into the Flame Everburning at the heart of the Pyrovaults. Oh, and the Pyrovaults haven’t been looted for a century or more, so it looks like the expedition will pay for itself too.

"Igor! Send word to my companions and round up the henchies. We’re going on a spree!"

This gets Crafty McWizardington out of the tower and off on an adventure; no Final Fantasy-style hellhound whack-a-mole required.

When he finally reaches the Flame Everburning his item-to-be benefits from an XP-value equivalent to that earned in the adventure it took to get there. You might want to think of this mana (*wince* I know, I know) in terms of 4E's residuum, except not sucky, or in terms of the Tome Series high-value, high-magic planar currencies, but not so fungible. The player gets item creation value directly tied to his character’s in-game exploits.

Limitations:

You cannot buy this kind of mojo on the open market (it doesn't travel well).
*This* particular thing is usable only to create *that* type of effect. Primal Shadow is only good for stealthy items; the heart of a star is good for illumination, prophecy or navigation magic; the fires of Orodruin are only good for invisibility and/or mind control effects, etc.
You have to batter your way through substantial opposition (i.e. have an adventure!) to gain any value from it.

[I’m sure Alex and the lads already have something like this in mind for their magic sourcebook. But this will do me until they drop paper on the subject.]

Creating Magic Architecture
I was reading an old thread on The Gaming Den (caveat lector) the other day about instituting themed Dungeon Heart-style power fonts as features of a fantasy campaign. These sounded pretty cool; basically monster-and-arcane-weirdness generators that popped up in the most dangerous, inhospitable places that could be tapped for power by someone who met the correct criteria. What are the correct criteria? Consult your GM for details. For example, the Master of Snake Mountain gets a bunch of lizardmen minions, can add snaky powers to his tamed monsters, and might have unique magic or lore at his command, but he has to meet some odd fairy tale requirement - like having a serpent's heart - in order to do so.

Although it doesn’t look like the mechanics side of this ever got off the ground it might have potential as source material for old school games that uses the ACKS dungeon harvesting idea (ACKS, pp141-142), maybe tied in with the modified reagent gathering idea suggested above.

For example, Crafty McWizardington wants to set up a regular supply of (for example) necromantic item-creation mojo, rather than exploiting an existing one-off circumstance. Fine. He just needs to make sure he matches the pre-requisites for mastery of the Well of Forlorn Souls, then make his way there, knock over any existing occupants, and set himself up as the new landlord.

If you want to extend this arcane warlording mini-game further you could even have wizards create their own power fonts. The easiest(!) way to do this would be to delve a dungeon and fit it out to meet certain criteria:

Arcane Resonance: First find your site of infamous death and horror. You can’t built a necromancy-enhancing necropolis in the Heart of Sunny Pixie Valley or on the flank of the Volcano of Eternal Burnination: it just doesn’t work that way. The local ambiance has to be specifically aspected to the type of magic you want to exploit.
Traditional Design: You have to build it to certain - less than optimally efficient - designs. These might form gigantic arcane runes, generate/run along/block necromantic ley lines, draw and channel the innate qualities of the Void Between, or whatever. Plot out your dungeon to be as awesome-looking as possible, ok it with the GM, then get them peons a-digging! ("The contractor want five silver per cubic foot?! My counter-offer is ‘I’m a goddamn wizard who can kill his entire family with my mind and then reanimate their corpses to work for free.’ How does that affect the quoted cost for the work?")
Decorate Appropriately: Sure, the traditional dressed masonry is a classic look, but it doesn’t conduct death magic especially well. You’ll probably have to plate the walls with expensive obsidian and onyx, and trick the place out with baroque skull carvings, bone sculptures and fountains of blood. Oh, and ramming the point home by recruiting some undead for local colour won’t hurt either.
Blasphemous Rites: This is why you keep those scheming snot-nosed apprentices around. It is also a chance to break out the Ritual Magic research rules and send the wizard off on more reagent quests.
Campaign-specific Criteria: This last should be something unique and memorable: mythic/fairy-tale stuff, like keeping a lovelorn noble scion* trapped there in a nightmare dream-state between the boundaries between life and death. (Maleficent: dungeon-builder)

* Princesses are traditional here, although I'm sure a suitably winsome prince would also be acceptable in these enlightened modern times.

Meet all required criteria to the GM’s satisfaction and Crafty McWizardington reaps the benefits:

so much item and/or undead creation mana per month,
the chance that random monsters turn up in his trendy new dungeon,
he gets to call himself Magus of the Nightmare Labyrinth (or something equally grandiose).

Of course, your own dungeon may - and likely should - provide additional advantages to the player character who owns it. Building your own arcane conduit dungeon from scratch should be a bigger, more impressive achievement than simply wandering over to someone else's patch, kicking them in the teeth and proclaiming "Right! I'm the daddy now." Reward player investment. Maybe building your own thaumo-generator is a requirement for lichdom (or godhood, or whatever) in a way that simple control of one isn't.

Now this ‘item XP for free’ mechanic might look like it contradicts my earlier assertion that such things should only be available as a pay-off of actual adventuring. Of course, nothing in life is free. (No keister-sitting rent-seeking on my watch, thankee very much!)

Your surreal reign as Psychopomp of the Oneiric NetherManse or Arch-Arsonist of the Pyrovaults is all gravy until word gets around and adventurers turn up to trash the place, greyhawk the fixtures, and leech your mana for their own purposes (see Reagents, above). To my mind 1,000XP-equivalent of creation mana a month implies that roughly 12,000XP-worth of adventure-worthy complications (hostile WMs, adventurers, etc.) turn up at your doorstep over the course of a game year. Whether you want to use the standard Wandering Monster tables, or something like Charlatan's (thanks to Blizack for the catch ) Dungeon Notoriety interloper generator, or GM fiat is up to you, but sitting on a power source should attract scavengers.

And that's why you stock your dungeon with fearsome monsters and killer traps keyed to your particular decorative theme: when you set up a dungeon adventure comes looking for you. It’s practically a law of nature.

(Not at all a) Spoiler: this is totally what the Vaults of Nagoh were set up to do. A bunch of mad wizard kings pooled their resources to harvest vast amounts of magic in various flavours. Of course, wizards being wizards, this master plan underwent phase change from ‘visionary’ to “We meddled too far! AGH!!!” quickly and messily. Cue Strangelovian explosions.

So, reagents and harvesting. You can either repeat some of the most facile, grindy fetch quest elements of WOW; or you can do something flavourful and specific to your game that also answers the old vexed question of 'Dungeons: WHY?!'

23 Stoopid Answers to 23 Sensible Questions

2012-02-08T17:06:00.000Z

(JOESKY Tax content at bottom of post for those who don't fancy reading a bunch of egoblogging wordswordswords.)

In accordance with my informal policy of leaving no passing bandwagon unmolested, and because I need to type something to get my fingers limbered up, I hereby present my answers in brief to the open interview questionnaire posed by that odd arty bloke with the eyebrow-raising resume. Thus spaketh the Zak:

Repost and answer. Or, if you don't have a blog, answer in the comments. Or be a big rebel and do neither.

1. If you had to pick a single invention in a game you were most proud of what would it be?
I don't invent. I steal, file off the serial numbers, and exploit to the hilt. Original ideas are things that happen to other people.
I am quietly pleased with the Chambers of Devouring Night though. I've had to institute a Jeff-style XPloration bonus just to get people to set foot in them, the cowards.

2. When was the last time you GMed?

Sunday 22th Jan. GCX playtest. I learned many valuable lessons in 'theory != practise' and 'the wastepaper basket is your best friend' that day.

"Why did you think I meant critique when I said critique? Don't you know that's code for 'massage my ego subcreature'?"

3. When was the last time you played?

An RPG? September 2011.
Any fantasy game? Sunday 29th Jan.

4. Give us a one-sentence pitch for an adventure you haven't run but would like to.

Spelljammer Ulysses 31 using a Terminal Space/Mazes+Minotaurs mash-up system.

5. What do you do while you wait for players to do things?

Scribble notes. Smile enigmatically. Roll dice for the noise they make.

6. What, if anything, do you eat while you play?

Wine gums or hard candy. I'm a bit of a stickler for no crumbly foods (and no glasses!) at the table. Children get food on their books, adults should not. Especially not my books. I will use a cigar trimmer to take fingers in payment!

7. Do you find GMing physically exhausting?

Mentally draining, yes. Hell on the vocal chords, yes. Physically exhausting, no.

8. What was the last interesting (to you, anyway) thing you remember a PC you were running doing?

Pass. It's been entirely too long since I've played in a truly memorable game. We had fun a lot of fun with moral dilemmas in an L5R game a few years back...

9. Do your players take your serious setting and make it unserious? Vice versa? Neither?

Everything turns into Nextwave or Metalocalypse in the grubby hands of my players. Everything. Nothing is sacred; everything is there to be mocked, then stolen or destroyed.

10. What do you do with goblins?

Nothing! Any rumours you have heard to the contrary are scurrilous calumnies on my good character. Srsly? Generally they turn into a vicious version of Froud's "Labyrinth" goblins, or possibly L5R's bakemono: funny right up until their clownish antics turn nasty and start downing PCs.

11. What was the last non-RPG thing you saw that you converted into game material (background, setting, trap, etc.)?

A lot of the gadgets and gimmicks from issues 1-24 of "Transmetropolitan" (yes, people still read that).

12. What's the funniest table moment you can remember right now?

In-game: Possibly the First Annual Vaults Spontaneous Mook Convention. You know the situation, it was that one time that *every* WM roll came up a 1 (memo to self: check Eye of Sauron d6 for excessive evilness). Halfway through a pretty standard fight more creatures turned up.
"Uh oh!"
The fight continued. Check for racket: more monsters.
"Fight on!"
Check again (#=1) And more...
(#=1) and more...
(#=1) and more...
Eventually the party clear the area, settle down to bind their wounds and loot the dead. I tick off the turn and note it's time for another WM check. *clatter, clatter* "Hey, guess what lads..."
"Don't care. Routing. Dump the swag. Leave the dying. Devil take the hindmost!"
They hared it back to the surface like rats out of a drainpipe. First time I've used the pursuit rules in a while...

Meta/Tabletalk: The Manifestation of the OmniFred. It was deemed by the usual decision-making process (hubbub and half-heard drunken inferences) that individuality was merely an illusion, and that all people and objects were actually aspects of Fred. Our apprehension of the inherent Fredness of all things lasted the rest of the evening. It got very weird. Thankfully no pianos required shifting.

13. What was the last game book you looked at--aside from things you referenced in a game--why were you looking at it?

Chaosium/GW "Stormbringer". I was looking at it coz that's what was propped on my printer.

14. Who's your idea of the perfect RPG illustrator?

John f***ing Blanche and his scritchy, mad, fever-dream art.

15. Does your game ever make your players genuinely afraid?

No. Only my arousal.

16. What was the best time you ever had running an adventure you didn't write? (If ever)

It was a TSR adventure we played back in the day. I vaguely remember it being some "But thou must..." Dragonlance railroad. The players - trained in the school of hard knocks (and sly shankings) that is WFRP - said "screw the plot" and instead set about harvesting wandering monsters for their skin and organ resale value (weasel fur, fire beetle glowpods, Vilstrak gullet gems, etc). Fine by me; I'd only read a couple of pages ahead anyway. IIRC it all went TPK when they decided to raid a Roc's nest to steal the eggs.

And that is why you do not play Dragonlance ~~ever!~~ after immersing yourself in wildlife documentaries for an extended period.

17. What would be the ideal physical set up to run a game in?

Semi-circle of sofas with a large low table in the middle. Side table for refreshments. Good lighting. Instrumental background music turned low. No TV. Phones set to silent/emergency only, thank you.

18. If you had to think of the two most disparate games or game products that you like what would they be?

K.A.Pendragon and HoL. One is a serious-minded evocation of myth and literature; other is like someone made the inside of my nasty bogmonkey head into a game.

19. If you had to think of the most disparate influences overall on your game, what would they be?

Terry Gilliam films, HMHB, 2000AD, Cinnabar, Gear World

20. As a GM, what kind of player do you want at your table?
People who don't take themselves too seriously. We're adults playing Lets Pretend with our toy soldiers FFS! Punctuality (the courtesy of princes), attention to the matter at hand, and not being a rowdy attention hog are also appreciated. People bothering to learn the rules seems to be a hopeless pipe dream though...

21. What's a real life experience you've translated into game terms?

My fear of centipedes. Although I've yet to introduce my players to the recurring nightmare of having one hatch out through your eye...

22. Is there an RPG product that you wish existed but doesn't?

The Concordance of Riskail by Netherwerks - the only role-playing product transmitted back to the Toxic Era by a surrealism-loving insectile hivemind. I would buy it SO HARD! And so would all other right-thinking people.

23. Is there anyone you know who you talk about RPGs with who doesn't play? How do those conversations go?

Lisa (Mrs Chris). Her geekery is Errol Flynn films, baking and arts-&-crafts, she's only ever played Heroquest, and she doesn't read extruded genre product. She understands the appeal of creating emergent improvised adventure stories, but has no desire to partake. All this - combined with a patient, understanding nature and a dry sense of humour - makes her a fantastic 'outside the bubble' sounding board for ideas.

-----

JOESKY TAX:

Spell: Deliquescent Transition (Wiz2)
Caster's body, clothing and held items melt into a varicoloured fleshy ooze. In this form the caster may squeeze through any non-air/watertight space at 1/2 normal speed. Yes, they can climb walls and ventilation pipes. 1 Round to dissolve flesh, 1 round to travel, 1 to reform. While in ooze form caster is AC 9[10], no Dex bonus.
Additional complication: encountered dungeon oozes think the caster has a purty mouth.

(yeah, like a potion of gaseous form, only less so.)

ACKS Eats 5E's Lunch, Belches Heartily

2012-02-03T13:30:00.001Z

[All content-creating efforts are going into another project ATM. Breaking blog silence only to post an opinion piece/review.]

Note: this is based entirely upon the PDF version of ACKS, released 01/02/2012.

Adventurer Conqueror King System
Authors: Alex Macris, Tavis Allison, Greg Tito
Publisher: Autarch.co
Format: 8.5" x 11", pp270.
Colour cover, black-and-white illos throughout.

Adventurer Conqueror King System (hereafter ACKS) is a Kickstarter funded semi-retro-clone that basically does what WOTC want to do with 5E: namely, nick the best elements from preceding editions of D&D and kludge them into one (hopefully) all-conquering whole. That said; ACKS does borrow more from some versions of D&D than from others.

Expected Elements
ACKS is basically the BEC- of BECMI, with mechanics rationalised and extended to suit authorial taste.

Most of the mechanical chassis - classes, spells, proficiencies, equipment, adventuring mechanics, monsters, magic items, stocking dungeons, encounter tables - will be pretty much home ground to any fan of Classic D&D. Even ACKS' (well-executed) new classes will look more than a little familiar.
The integrated 'roll over' core mechanic of ACKS owes something to the SRD. Where ACKS differs is in being a close-ended system: you always roll your d20 hoping to exceed the target number. This puts a hard cap on difficulty and keeps bonus inflation within the bounds of sanity. No one "falls off the RNG" in ACKS.
Magic item creation looks to be straight from 3E, albeit with a BECMI-style success roll required.

Nice Touches
There's a lot to like in ACKS, though it does tend to conceal the more subtle system interactions which illustrate its cleverness. I don't want to derail myself by talking about those, go see the games' developer blog for that.

My personal favourite take aways are things that look - at least in isolation - like simple, elegant "I wish I'd thought of that" house rules:

The formalisation of the 'henchmen as vassal' idea, and accompanying henchmen-of-henchmen trees as the basis for a feudal structure, is an ingenious idea.
Carousing (blow stacks of cash to no benefit) as an XP bank for your next character.
Abstract combat you can either keep simple or complicate as much as you like.
Grapple rules? Sure. One paragraph. And you can boil them down further to: "roll to hit, he saves vs. paralysis or ends up pinned."
High level magic (L6+) is situational one-shot rituals. No wish-per-day breaking of the setting.
Created monsters - wanna make constructs, undead, or hideous hybrid monstrosities? Certainly Mr Mad Wizard, here are the rules. Go crazy you cackling maniac you...
Tapping the faith of the masses and/or sacrificing them on unholy altars for magic makes Cleric happy.
Hijinks and skullduggery rules for when the Thief gets back to civilisation.
Build dungeons, then exploit their monster infestations for XP and reagents.
Rule tribal humanoid domains (poor and backward, but swarming with Orcy cannon fodder).
Gain XP from your profits as a merchant prince, feudal lord or arcane experimenter, but only over a certain threshold (dependent on character level). You can do much more than just adventure, but adventuring still gives the best XP return on effort invested.
All magic items require reagents in their creation.
Formalised rules for creating PCs above level 1, along with equipment, batcaves, and accompanying cadres of vassals and pet monsters.
Sharktipedes.

Niggles
My ACKS niggles are totally matters of taste. What bugs me will probably make the next gamer priapic with joy.

The sections on arbitrage trading, generating a setting, determining local trade goods and suchlike are comprehensive and appear to scale well. But they are a bit, well, spreadsheety for my tastes. Less BECMI domain system, more Birthright-style abstraction would have been nice here. But then I consider anything more complex than counting on my fingers just too damn fiddly.
My old bete noire of Treasure Types ("Five types of coin? GTFO!") rear their ugly head, albeit rationalised somewhat for the 2010s. Type A is least valuable, R most. Statistical average value is given right there on the table. Supplementary gem, jewellery and "replace cash type with equivalent value in trade goods" sub-tables are good. The same treature types are used to generate monster swag and dungeon loot. Believe me, it's high praise when I say that I probably hate this take on Treasure Types the least.
The suggested magic item reagents are sadly WoW-esque ("bring me a dozen troll hearts") rather than mythic ("bring me the sound of a shadow"). But that's easily amended...
I'd love to have seen some of the inevitable D&D standby monsters - especially the interchangeable humanoids ("Kobold, Goblin, Morlock, Orc, Hobgoblin, Gnoll, Neanderthal..." *snore*), scaling animals (bears, big cats, crocs, non-giant snakes, rodents, birds of prey, etc.) and niche-encroaching wastes of space (*cough* hippogriff, caecilian) - dropped or rationalised in favour of new Auran Empire beasties.
I know the writers were limited by page count, but it would have been nice if they'd been able to include a couple of their excellent ACKS blog articles (economics from the ground up, the magic ratio of worldbuilding, etc.) in the book as sidebars. It would have made some of the figures generated by the system a little more transparent to the casual reader. Don't hide the clever, dammit!

Easter Eggs
Things that tickled me, because I am small of brain and easily pleased.

I'm not sure why a sheep (80lbs) is considered a form of lodging (p42). I don't know, and I don't want to know.
Spotted on the ACKS patron list: the name Mike Mearls. Nah. It couldn’t be that Mike Mearls, surely? Must be some other guy. ;)

Is ACKS worth the money? Well, it's no Vornheim in terms of immediate open-and-play utility (what is?), but I still bought it sight unseen on the strength of a few developer articles. The lads at Autarch talked a good fight, and they delivered. The book appears well laid-out, well cross-referenced, the writing is clear and coherent, the artwork thematically unified without being straitjacketed by a corporate 'house style'.

Issues of taste and "I wouldn't have done it like that" aside ACKS is a damn fine distillation and extension of Classic D&D. The writers manage to integrate the rulership end game into the main killing-and-theft game without having the economy go to pot. As anyone who's played 3E knows: that's an achievement in itself.

So, ACKS scales all the way up without breaking, gives us new mechanical toys to play with, and it still looks like D&D. Your move WOTC...

Puritans &... Pleistocene?

2011-08-12T21:00:00.007+01:00

A half-formed thought inspired by notes on The New World for SBVD, by re-reading Marvel's 1601 comic, and by a thread at alternatehistory.com entitled No Megafauna Extinction (in between threads entitled "Cato's Cavalry" and "A Long and Flowing Whig" - those AH guys are nuts. Erudite, but nuts).

So Daniel Boone crossed into the bluegrass country of Kentuckee.
Only to happen upon...

From the originating thread:

I see there being a market for Glyptotherium and D. clavicaudatus shells as curios in europe, along with Ivory, utterly massive furs, from Arctodus, Castoroides ohioensis and C. leiseyorum, and various fibers from all the different Camelids. F***! It'd be like a treasure trove for anyone stupid or desperate enough to try and set up shop there.

Hell, in the Caribbean, where things aren't as deadly, you've still got miniature ground sloths, Flightless Owls and rather interesting parrots (that might revive the fashion for parrots among the nobility back in Europe,) plus all the stuff that drove settlement IOTL.

We have scads of Pleistocene beasty stats in B/X; we have our grungy, low-powered D&D modcops; and between ckutalik's Hill Cantons Domain Game and Autarch's forthcoming ACKS we have our colony-builder systems. This is just crazy enough to work!

And lo! The gods did look upon the ravings of the fog-addled bogmonkey, and decreed that Mammoths and Muskets (or Brutes & Buckskins? or Settlers & Smilodons?) was a stupid idea, but one that might have legs, so don't knock it on the head just yet. :)

Edit: You know, I should probably split all this non-Vaults stuff off into another blog. Or would that just be annoying and fiddly?

Pic Source
Frank Frazetta (of course), found in the Comic Art Community Frazetta gallery.

[SBVD] Crime and Punishment

2011-08-09T20:00:00.002+01:00

Note: the topicality of this post in the light of recent events in the UK is entirely accidental.

Sooner or later our brave heroes (such as they are) are going to fall afoul of the law (such as it is). Here are some half-formed thoughts on making their big day in court fittingly Kafkaesque and memorably unjust.

Detection and Detention
Thanks to the thieving antics of travelling vagabonds, gypsies and suchlike sturdy beggars (*cough* adventurers *cough*) outsiders are generally the first to fall under suspicion when a crime occurs. Many jurisdictions still hold to the old legal principle that if no one is punished for a detected crime then the elected headmen of the community are guilty of conspiracy with the criminals. This tends to concentrate the mind on finding anyone to punish, rather than the right person.

There are no police as we understand the term in the world of SBVD: no CID, no CSI, no Special Branch. There are civil watchmen and rural road wardens, but these are paramilitary peacekeeping organisations with no interest in helping recover your stolen purse. Privately hired watchmen are common in cities, but their effectiveness as deterrent to criminal activity is limited by the innate venality and cynicism of the breed. [1]

Unless someone is actually caught red handed and captured by an initial hue-and-cry [2] the best way to bring someone to trial is to either: 1) hunt them down yourself, or 2) hire a professional thief taker (prototypical bounty hunters and/or private detectives) to bring them in. Struggling artists and jobbing printers do a roaring trade in lurid Wanted! posters commissioned by clubs of vengeful private citizens.

1] Many (most?) private watch organisations are little more than local mafias operating on a "Shame if anything happened to your place..." protection racket basis.

2] This is the common term for the ever-present pitchfork-wielding mob in vigilante mode. The more archaic and formal term posse comitatis is used by highfalutin, la-di-da legal types.

Trial
Once captured, stripped of their goods and remanded into custody in the filthy local cells (save vs. poison or contract a random disease) a defendant will have to wait 1d20 days before being dragged before the beak. The concept of bail (remanding into the care of an appointed custodian) is gradually evolving in the cities.

The trial system in SBVD is archaic, arbitrary, chaotic and entirely dependent on how bored or dyspeptic the judge feels today. Half-forgotten centuries-old traditions and ridiculous practices are rife, and illogical - but procedurally correct and thus technically legal - decisions are the norm. Think in terms of the Red Queen’s Court in Alice in Wonderland, rather than the stately gravity of contemporary courtroom dramas.

Outrageous as it may seem to people raised under the aegis of Common Law, but the society of SBVD works on a quasi-European inquisitorial system of law. The magistrate hears the evidence he wants to hear, and then passes judgement based on his personal prejudices and/or knowledge of precedent and case law. Judges to the busy, important urban courts are appointed either by the civic council or Imperial decree, but many rural courts are still feudal, presided over by whatever semi-educated local toff feels like wearing the big wig for a while.

If a jury is convened to pass judgement (common in the big city, less so in the boondocks) they're more likely to be there to get out of the rain than to deliberate with wisdom and discretion. Most juries will either be prejudiced against the defendant ("He's in the dock; he must be guilty"), or liable to use the case to address longstanding local grievances ("Can't let rich toffs think they're above the law").

Travellers are warned that the old customs of trial by combat or ordeal are still on the books. These expedients are resorted to if the judge just can’t be bothered and fancies livening up proceedings with a bit of bloodshed.

The outcome of a trial can be decided either by GM fiat, or, more fittingly, by a 2d6 Reaction Roll:

2d6	Result
2	"Pass me the black cloth cap. I might be needing it..." Found guilty. Punished with all the harshness and imagination the GM can muster.
3-5	"Hand me that book, that I may throw it at the wretch." Found guilty. Sentenced to something harsh and onerous, but usually non-fatal.
6-8	"The court requires further evidence. Now, what's for lunch?" Remanded in custody for another 1d10 days.
9-11	"Not proven. Now stop wasting my time." Let off with a warning to quit town/be on best behaviour.
12	"This was obviously all a dreadful misunderstanding." Exonerated with an apology and testimonial to good character signed by the judge.

If the GM desires, the following situational modifiers may adjust the reaction roll:

+1 for each that applies
Respectable defendant
You didn't do it
...and you have an alibi
You bribed the judge
Your lawyer is a shark
Minor offence

-1 for each that applies
Respectable victim
You did it
...and witnesses saw you
Hanging judge
Your lawyer is an idiot
Outrageous crime

What About My Defence?
Oh, the cost of hiring a lawyer? This is very much a "What you got?" situation, but most decent lawyers won’t get out of bed for less than 50GC/day. They’ll expect payment whether or not they get to present their evidence in your defence: lawyers might be venal, ethically flexible logic-choppers, but they’re not stupid.

In cases of trial by ordeal/combat a retained lawyer will offer advice on procedure, and the name of a good doctor or judicial protagonist (if required), but won’t waive his fee. ("It’s not my fault the judge decided to revive the ancient tradition of ‘trial by flaming tarred pants’ just for you. I recommend running for that pond over there as fast as you can...")

A word of warning about lawyers: watch out for the keen-eyed pro bono crusading ones out to make a name for themselves. Their grandstanding antics are just as likely to annoy the judge and get you hanged on a technicality as to get you off with a virtuoso display of logic and rhetoric. Young, fast and fiery are fine qualities in a racehorse, but less than ideal in an advocate.

Punishment
Judicial punishment is harsh, exemplary, and usually ironic in nature. Incarceration is rare and special, reserved for valuable hostages or those who someone with an oubliette wants lost and forgotten. Most punishment involves some form of violence, public humiliation or hard labour. Debtors are put to work in chain gangs; givers of short weight are forced to wear a locked cartwheel around their neck; thieves and fraudsters are fined and lose a finger; seditionists get their tongues clipped or their lips seared; rapists are castrated; grave robbers are buried alive; murderers get the rope or axe, or occasionally, a ‘Ketch Special’.

Public headsmen are a wickedly inventive breed, constantly in competition to produce the most interesting and spectacular forms of public execution. Throwing to the dogs has fallen out of fashion as cruel and barbaric; the current fad is a spectacularly pyrotechnic form of breaking on the wheel called 'the flaming Katrin'. Such spectaculars make a great day out for the whole family.

Exceptions to the Rule
There is no equality before the law in SBVD. Some people are simply above it; others aren’t even considered legal persons. In many jurisdictions a nobleman, wizard or clergyman can only be bought to book by his social peers. Yes, this means that the upper classes can literally get away with murder, so long as they don’t pick on anyone liable to arouse the sentiments of the mob. There are also places where serfs, foreigners and/or non-humans are considered legal minors or chattel, legally the responsibility of the respectable types they accompany.

Mutants, warlocks and the like rarely even get to trial: the angry mob tends to skip straight to punishment. Such cancers to the body politic commonly ‘die of injuries sustained resisting apprehension’. Creatures entirely outside society (NPC races like beastmen, orcs, giants, etc.) are deemed outlaw and thus fair game for anyone with the ability to take them down. You don’t bring an action for damages against a giant eating your sheep; you apply to the army, or that gang of passing heroes.

Pic Source: Breaking on the Wheel, courtesy of seiyaku.com

[SBVD] Pretty Pictures Edition

2011-08-07T01:35:00.009+01:00

Note your humble author in yellow

Sorry for the long silence: it's been all about Dark Heresy (using the RT/Necromunda-derived Book of the Arbitrator fan rules) around our way recently, and InquisiMunda - although fun - is Off Topic for a Classic D&D blog.

New and improved version of SBVD (ver0.3) uploaded. Thanks again for downloading, perusing, using and feeding back.

Tweaks include:

+ switched to pdf format.
+ prettificated with public domain pics.
+ Added Social Injustice rules.
+ Experimented with Drugs and Poisons.
+ Played with Madness.
+ Split off Encumbrance.
+ Acquired Retainers.
+ Dabbled in higher Magic.
+ Obsessed over Treasure.
+ Extended the Menagerie.
+ Opinionated waffle given free rein in the footnotes.

++ SBVD character sheet.

If interest is expressed I'm happy to reformat the game for the OSR's preferred Format of Awesome (A5, 8.5" x 5.5").

Possibly of interest to those who remember White Dwarf back when it was good: Gobbledegook skirmish game by Sean Patten. My impressions on a first read: lotsa zoggin' fun! Take a couple of minutes to look over his other homebrew games and his fantastic scenery collection (including "how to" guides).

Edit: also of possible interest. Noisms' dungeoneering dog breeds and dog quirks-and-traits table.

Pic Source: detail of "Landscape with Blind Orion Seeking the Sun" by Nicolas Poussin, courtesy of sightswithin.com

Games: Ruined by Gamers

2011-07-11T19:00:00.010+01:00

Sorry in advance to post this unfocused, content-free rant in public. I just need to exorcise this in a place where people will understand my (temporary) disillusionment.

Played a game of vanilla Labyrinth Lord on Saturday with a couple of my regular group and a few casual gamer mates who'd expressed an interest.

Having an inkling of what I was in for (Saturday night pick-up game? Of course there'll be Monty Python quotes and "I attack the darkness!" antics) I printed some How To Play This Game sheets, shelved the Vaults for the night, and used Amityville Mike Curtis' Stonehell.

Pretty much bulletproof, right? I thought so.

How little I knew.

It was all kinds of not good.

I haven't seen such a car crash of a session since my teens. The level of play was appalling. I mean "Beavis and Butthead play D&D" low. And I wasn't gaming with BIFF from shop class; I was gaming with mature(?) people in their 20s and 30s.

They got through 5 rooms of section 1A of Stonehell in 3+1/2 hours.

One casual appeared to have screaming ADD and an inability to wait their turn. Another decided that a balloon of pikey cider was a perfect accompaniment to the game. One of the serious players was suffering from gamer's bored girlfriend. And the fourth player was just overwhelmed by the horror of what was going on around him and politely left early.

Silly voices were persisted in beyond the bounds of good manners. Rules calls were argued. My GMing ability was called into question by people who don't even know which dice to throw. And then it all went PvP over an out-of-game inter-player argument.

I am disappoint.

"Your performing monkey has had QUITE ENOUGH!"

[SBVD] Toffs and Toadys

2011-07-07T20:00:00.003+01:00

First off, thanks to everyone who posted about, tweeted, commented on and critiqued SBVD. Your time and effort are appreciated.

Now content. Further to the posting of the Small But Vicious Dog draft earlier in the week, here's some stuff that occurred to me in light of feedback.

Social Status

Climbing to the top over a heap of looted bodies doesn’t just advance personal power; it also advances your place in society. Instead of representing vast disparities in clout and authority with higher character levels, here’s a fix inspired by the hilarious and under-rated GURPS Goblins sourcebook.

These rules are entirely optional, and supersede the existing rule that The Gods Hate You! (see Resolution, p7) only where appropriate.

The world of SBVD is hopelessly caste-ridden. The law is entirely weighted in favour of the rich and well bred (which is, of course, entirely as it should be; only a fool writes laws against his own interests), as are tax codes, military obligations and even social mores. In civilised parts of the world it's still considered perfectly acceptable to roger the serving girls, or to viciously horsewhip insolent underlings (where 'insolent' = 'didn't avert his gaze quickly enough' or 'coughed in my presence').

Social position affects all dice rolls made directly against a particular character. Hit rolls, Ability Score checks, Saving Throws; they’re all affected by the modifier given on the table below.

Your Position	What Your Kind Do For a Living	Mod.
Highborn Titled	toffs, merchant princes, emissaries, etc.	+3
Pillars of Society	Burghers, guild notables, Collegiate wizards, etc.	+2
Respectable Types	Lawyers, physicians, priests, engineers, etc.	+1
People of the Middling Sort	Apothecaries, initiates, roadwardens, etc.	+0
Humble Folk	Scribes, militia, peddlers, bounty hunters, etc.	-2
The Lowly Hoi Polloi	Poor-but-honest farmers, ratcatchers, day labourers, etc.	-4
The Vile Underclass	Thieves, gypsies, corpse pickers and similar.	-6

For example, if Reinhard the Ratcatcher decides to take his ratting shovel to Hans von Schnitzelgruber, Grand Duke of Burgdorf-Hossenpfeffer, he’s laying himself open to a world of hurt. All his rolls against the Duke will be at –4; all the Duke’s rolls against Reinhard will be at +3!

Similar modifiers cancel each other out: the lowly batter one another on roughly even terms, as do the rich and powerful. So if Stinking Aggie the Puregrubber, doyenne of the Vile Underclass, decides to shiv Reinhard for his hard-earned loot she’ll suffer a net –2 to all rolls (6-4 being, yep, 2). Reinhard suffers no penalties beyond those the GM in his mercy and wisdom sees fit to inflict.

Exactly how and why this works is something of a mystery: the general consensus is that it’s rather difficult to beat the crap out of someone while you're malnourished and/or busy doffing your cap. Either way, this rule prevents some dirty oiks with rusty knives and a plan from opportunistically assassinating the Kaiser.

I am Huge of Moustache. You Must Obey!
When a character is able to pull rank by virtue of position he may elect to use social clout in lieu of Fellowship. People might not respect the man, but they do respect the office. Likewise lowly characters attempting to wheedle their betters must use the lower of their social standing or Fellowship in reaction rolls.

Pull Rank	(high status vs. lower)	= best of Fel mod. ~or~ Social Standing mod.
Toadying	(low status vs. higher)	= worst of Fel mod. ~or~ ½ of Social Standing mod.

Your Ways Are Strange And I Mock Them, Puny Weaky Man
Relative status has no effect whatsoever on creatures that don’t respect social niceties. Grumblefimwanger the Giant doesn’t care if you’re a big noise socially: to him you’re just another uppity runt to be trampled. Nor are a gang of rampaging Beastmen likely to be awed into submission by your cultivated cut-glass accent and the exquisitely fashionable cut of your coat. Suchlike non-human yahoos should be taught respect the old fashioned way: cold steel, hot lead and arcane fire.

The Greasy Pole: Gaining and Losing Status
All 1st level characters start out in the hoi polloi (-4), rising in position through graft, backstabbing and low cunning. An adventurer claws his way into the ranks of the Humble Folk (-2) at level 2, and may pass as A Person of the Middling Sort (+0) at level 3. This ‘gentrification’ only applies if the character dresses and comports himself in a befitting manner; if he dresses and acts like a common thug, he will be treated as one.

Adventurers may climb further in status through conspicuous consumption, politic toadying, bribery, largesse and charitable donations, but this is all considered tres nouveau. Real class, like good furniture, is inherited.

Characters of any standing can fall into the Vile Underclass by acting in a despicable manner. The usual routes to infamy are 1) committing detected crime against people who actually matter, or 2) engaging in certain ‘untouchable’ trades. Recovery of lost caste - if possible at all - should be a long and torturous affair.

--end--

Small But Vicious Dog Steals Hearts, Humps Leg

2011-07-02T13:26:00.006+01:00

Remember that ill-advised B/X-WFRP hack I wurbled about a couple of months back? Done (apart from the last few magic item and monster descriptions).

All the other WFRP-ish goodness - drugs, diseases, insanity, mutation, gunpowder, chaotic magic, dorfs with mohawks, hot pies, giant angry puffins and so forth - is in there. Heck, I've even included rules to model that special WFRP "gods hate you; failure is law!" atmosphere.

Have a download, see what you think (critique and comment welcomed and appreciated):

Small But Vicious Dog ver0.2: Cover and Contents page
Small But Vicious Dog ver 0.2: The Gubbins

Also useful:
Chaos Mutations compilation by Andrew Fawcett

Small But Vicious Dog is dedicated to:

Erin "Taichara" Bisson for giving me the idea with the FF Red Box Hack,

Owen "Coopdevil" Cooper - the psychopomp of the Brit OSR,

and

Kelvin "brainsplurge" Green for mooting the idea of a B/X-WFRP modcop in the first place.

Oh, while I was pecking away at SBVD I discovered Warheart, a WFRP-style mod for the d20 system. It's pretty cool, but you can't call it a *proper* WFRP clone: there's no ratcatcher career FFS! *Tsk* Schoolboy error.

Tangentially related: Seeing as my long-time favourites the Fimir are finally getting some love (both from the grassroots, and from the Evil Empire itself*) after 20 years spend in the Squat Zone, you might be interested in this: Mr Saturday's Fimir army for WFB.

-----

* GW shamelessly mining their old IP instead of having a single new idea? Nah, never happen. ;)

AtoZ April - Z is for Zarathustra

2011-04-30T20:00:00.001+01:00

Day 26 of 26.

"Dangerous creatures lurk here.

Dangerous creatures with a highly developed aesthetic sense,

a lot of patience and good hand-eye co-ordination."

Eozorartas, Inhuman Mystics of the High Mountains

High in the mountains of the Wilds dwell strange insectile creatures from beyond the bounds of this world. Their booming voices echo across the valleys of the Nornmounts, and their outlandish boundary markers warn away travellers from the lands of the Eozorartas, ice-bugs who have claimed the mountain heights that they might better communicate with their prophesied messiah figure.

Reports describe the Eozorartas as prawn-like crustacean with dozens of delicate limbs and vividly coloured carapaces (described as "...like an explosion in a painter’s workshop"). They speak Common through translation devices, communicating among themselves with a sophisticated combination of clicks, squawks and gestures.

From what little scholars have been able to glean the Eozorartas are refugees from a sunless world in another universe. They elect to live high in the mountains (preferably just below the snow line) not for aesthetic reasons, but because they suffer horrific burns from salt-water. The further from the sea they are the more comfortable the Eozorartas feel.

Eozorartas are noted for their seemingly perfect sense of balance, both personal, and in any object they handle. They make excellent acrobats and tightrope walkers, but regard these skills as no more impressive in themselves than the act of breathing. Even the most skilled Jengameisters of the Wilds refuse to play against an Eozorartas. The mountain lairs of these creatures are protected by a combination of inaccessibility and altitude, by the wildly dangerous rope bridges used to access them, and by numerous deadfall traps set up on their approaches (actually carefully stacked Eozorartas materials depots, or possibly folk art).

According to the most reliable reports the Eozorartas ‘worship’ a shimmering fire embedded in a giant opal, which they say is the voice of their as-yet unborn god echoing backwards through time to the present. Their racial name stems from their repeated assertion that "I belong Eozorartas". The Eozorartas openly trade lesser copies of their fire opals; unabashedly admitting that they hope these will spread the influence of their god. They are especially enamoured of silken thread, gyroscopes and mercury, paying wildly over the odds for any such goods.

There is a curious exception to the racial thalassophobia which afflicts the Eozorartas. On rare occasion one of their number will feel the need to ritually drown itself in the sea. The large, heavily armed funerary processions accompanying these, seemingly elective, suicides will always travel to the sea by the most direct route possible, regardless of hazards, prevailing terrain or social norms. The Eozorartas will accompany their doomed member to the seashore to witness his self-sacrifice, and then return home by slower, more meandering routes, trading and freely exchanging lore all the way.

Eozorartas (colloquially star prawns)

No. Enc.: 2-12	Alignment: N
Movement: 150'	Armour Class: 4
Hit Dice: 5-8
Attacks: 1-6 or 1	Damage: 1-6 or by weapon
Save: F5-8	Morale: 8
HC: VIII(x3), XI(x10)

Thanks to their wildly vivid coloration and raucous voices Eozorartas surprise only on a 1in6.
Eozorartas are possessed of perfect balance. They can’t be knocked prone or overborne and they are able to climb solid surfaces less than vertical and/or perfectly smooth at full speed.
Vulnerable to salt water, harms them as holy water does undead.

The strange jewel-like weapons of the Eozorartas work with a seemingly casual disregard for the laws of nature as commonly understood.

An Eozorartas may appear to strike wide or when hopelessly out of range, yet his strike will hit home. The species draw no distinction between missile and melee weapon. Eozorartas weapons ignore bonuses to AC from Dex or displacement effects, and are able to strike at creatures lurking in the Ethereal Margins without penalty.
Their large panel-like shields seem flimsy and flexible but grant a +2 to AC for 2-12 rounds when activated. Their power can be discharged all at once to forcibly repel an opponent (as repulsion spell effect)

-----

Yes, there are Zarathustra connections in there.
No, I didn't get the 'D&D with Star Prawns' gag until after I'd written these idiots.

Pic Source
Zen rocks from Brentwood Consulting Group website.

AtoZ April - Y is for Yew

2011-04-29T21:00:00.001+01:00

Day 25, and migellito cunningly wrong foots me with that classic biology exam nightmare question "Discuss trees".

Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! -a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed.
[...]
...beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked
With unrejoicing berries -ghostly Shapes
May meet at noontide:
-- Yew Trees, William Wordsworth

Uneasy lie the dead in the soil of the Wilds. Even those buried with all due ceremony sometimes return to haunt and harry the living. Since time immemorial the people of the Wilds have warded against the malice of the departed by erecting yew trees - renowned in both superstition and sacred lore for their connection with dead - at the entrances to graveyards and necropoli.

Over the long years of their lives these trees sometimes grow strange and active ...and more than a little house proud.

"Hoom-hoom-baroom-hoom. Get back in the ground you!"

The Warding Idho
The gnarled and ancients yews found at the entrances to graveyards have a curious habit of growing faces in knots and recesses of their broad boles. Locals will swear that particular faces are "the spit and image of old so-and-so, who died a few years back", and many come to regard the Idho as the caretaker of the graveyard it stands in. The presence of an Idho tree doubles the effectiveness of speak with dead spells, provided the interrogated dead is buried in the graveyard the Idho wards.

On rare occasions Warding Idhos have been known to rouse themselves to restore orderly peace to their homes. Funerals and sincere mourners have nothing to fear from the wrath of the Idho, but grave robbers and persistent vandals are terrorised and given a stern thrashing. Interloping undead are regarded as a significant annoyance, and will be forcibly returned to their rightful (dead) state with a minimum of fuss.

Treat Warding Idho as Treants able to turn undead as clerics of half their HD.

Pic Source
Samhain Yew Portal by Paul Atlas-Saunders

Small But Vicious Dog

2011-04-28T23:00:00.034+01:00

With A to Z April nearly over (*shudders* never again!) I've decided on my project for May.

"Don't fall for the soulful expression.

He'll have your throat out as soon as look at you..."

An exhaustive and thorough-going study of the utility of the various breeds of hunting dogs (to whit: hounds, setters, pointers, retrievers, spaniels, terriers) in both general adventuring and dungeoneering contexts.

(and not all one gibbering idiot's ill-advised homebrew abomination mash-up of two well-loved and finely crafted game systems)

All blame attaches to kelvingreen, who puts words in my head with lasers fired from his magical palace on the moon.

Pic Source
Cute little dawgie from British Dogs: Their Varieties, History, Characteristics, Breeding, Management, And Exhibition by Hugh Dalziel, curated online by chestofbooks.com

AtoZ April - X is for Xenium

2011-04-28T17:08:00.000+01:00

Day 24. Blame Byron for this one, the shady Hellespont-swimming wife-abandoner.

Jack Kirby does The Iliad? *Nerdgasms*

A xenium is a gift to a visitor or stranger. That's dead easy then. One table of aggressive hospitality, potlatching and Indian giving coming up.

They express joy at your safe arrival and present to you as a token of their abiding affection and respect a fine... (d4-12, depending on level of esteem and/or how outlandish you're willing to be).

Rat or piece of mouldering food (no apparent value)
Trinket, cheap or Pelt, common (~1gp value)
Trinket, humble or Pelt, valuable (5gp value)
Bauble, shiny or Pelt, exotic (10gp value)
Enamelled weapon or fine quality tool (25gp value)
Silver plate, glasswear, riding horse, fine costume (100gp value)
Silver crater (250gp value)
Gold plate (500gp value)
Elaborate gift - warhorse horse, suit of plate armour, splendid costume (1000+gp value*)
Kingly gift - string of fine horses, valuable slaves, gold and jewels, etc. (2000+gp value*)
Appears to be (roll), is actually (re-roll).
Is (re-roll) but has a catch.**

* Check for increase in value as for gems.
** Valuable, but has a catch:

curséd (the accent makes is so much worse)
culturally offensive to (roll or select faction/monster)
lost, sought by (roll or select faction/monster)
stolen, sought by (roll or select faction/monster)
intelligent/self-willed
roll twice on this table

There is a 1in6 chance that any xenium proffered has value or significance beyond that readily apparent. Decide for yourself if the donors are aware of this, and whether it constitutes some sort of test, has some specific cultural symbolism ("You accepted the Otyugh Queen's dower gift..."), or whatever.

Pic Source
Jack Kirby Iliad from Cartoon SNAP blog

AtoZ April - W is for Wafting & Werefolk

2011-04-27T17:00:00.047+01:00

Day 23, and Bryon and Trey won't stop touching my imagination in dirty, bad ways.

Werefolk and Wafting? Sounds like some terrible animu-infused D&D/WoD mash-up about a bunch of shapeshifters who run a perfumery. (note to Joss Whedon: my idea!)

Wafting

Among the odder things found in the wunderkammer of absurdity, strangeness and illogic that are the Vaults are the Potted Wafters. Decorative plants with a marked similarity to the cheese plants of the surface world, albeit with leaf edges tinged in lurid hues of mauve and violet, potted wafters sway slowly back-and-forth in breezes unfelt by mortal men, gently re-circulating and refreshing the air. No-one's quite sure where these curious plants originate, or exactly why they waft as they do; they just seem to like it.

Many inhabitants of the Vaults value Potted Wafters for their ability to clear the periodically miasmas which afflict the underworld (gust of wind/clear air effect, 1/day), and for the relaxing sway of their fronds (as calm emotions, see SRD). Others consider them annoyingly twee and will smash them wherever they find them.

GM: "It waves its fronds at you slowly and gently."
Players: "AGH! Kill it with fire and salt the ground!"

(note: latin name for the cheese plant is monstera delicosa. How could I not use that?!)

The Festival of the Grand Wafting is held annually in Netesh, although the exact calculation of the correct date is a matter of violent argument amongst the populace. The festival is held in memory of those who have travelled far from their city and cannot find their way home. For three days and nights the doors of the city’s houses are thrown open to all visitors. Everyone from visiting adventurers, through vermin and down to the restless dead, are clad in fine raiment, anointed with balms (whether they want to be or not) and offered kingly hospitality in the hope that this will be reciprocated to wandering Neteshans.

On the final eve of the festival the people of Netesha release thousands upon thousands of small balloons and papercrafted flying machines into the air. These are wafted off the tops of buildings and float away filled with smoking incense and messages of well-wishing to absent kinfolk. Entire sections of the city, and broad swathes of the lands over which it roams, have repeatedly been burnt to a crisp by the flaming wreckage of all these thoughtful gestures.

The perfumers and incense-mixers of Netesh spend all year concocting their unique mixtures for the Grand Wafting. Some few among them are supposedly able to mix aromatics whose delicate scent can be used to convey messages to the far-travelled.

-----

Werefolk

I don't like were{*}s in D&D: they're a cheap "gotcha!" puzzle monster that's so old and well-known it isn't even a puzzle any more.

"Oh noes, teh werewolf culd be enywonz!!!1!"

*yawn* Old. And when furboy finally makes an appearance everyone and their kid sister knows the rote:

Were[w/e] appears > Adventurer uses Silver > It's Super Effective.

So, yeah. Overexposure. That's one strike against werefolk of all stripes.

I think another part of the problem is that I never really 'got' the whole lycanthrope thing, either in D&D or in pop culture. In cinematic stakes I didn't see The Wolfman or American Werewolf in London at a formative age. I do like Dog Soldiers, but that's because it's Aliens remade with British squaddies; not because it has werewolves in it. In fantasy fiction terms I didn't read Fritz Leiber's Swords against Ratty early enough for it to stick in my head in the way it perhaps should. I'd already played WFRP by the time I read it, and WFRP has the Skaven.

"Yes-yes, memorable are we foolish manthings"

I don't care if Fritz Leiber wrote you, or if DAT did your 8x10 back in 1977; a bunch of bonkers ratboys with radioactive green space cheese that falls from the moon, giant rat-ogres, wacky Teslaverse/WW1 weaponry and all the sly British humour you can eat are still a tough act to follow.

And then there's the 800lb gorilla of lycanthropy in nerd culture: White Wolf and their Werewolf: the Ecoterrorising. Argh! That game could have been so much more than it was, but between the heavy-handed 'crying Indian in a fursuit' thing and the unfortunate implications of the 'miscegenate or die' subtext, that whole thing was a wallbanger for me. The White Wolf-isation of horror also gave us the Ultraviolet films. Just think on that for a second...

I know, I know. The werewolf should, by rights, be rich gaming fodder. It's symbolic of man's essentially bestial nature and part of a cultural continuity with The Big Bad Wolf of the Brothers Grimm. And then there's the whole lunar/menstrual cycle thing. Yes, I know there are rich veins of cultural, social and sexual subtext waiting to be explored. But then I don’t really ‘do’ subtext. We beat allegory in the head and rifle its pockets 'round here.

Unfortunately, because the beastman archetype is so deeply embedded in the pop culture zeitgeist there's very little conceptual wiggle room left with lycanthropes as D&D antagonists.

So, werecreatures in the Vaults game:

As far as I'm concerned lycanthropes (not 'lycans' <= that there word: instant numpty signifier) in the Vaults game are just unwelcome intruders from another world. They should be shanked and dumped in a ditch with extreme prejudice. Heck, I hereby decree that the moon god gave man the secret of silver weapons just to dispose of these furry wastes of time coz he was so damn sick of their constant howling and yowling disturbing his book time.*

* Vorynn (knocked off from the Birthright setting): god of the moon, knowledge, imprisonment, lighthouse-keepers, and of people who burn the midnight oil before a deadline. Symbol is an owl, of course.

More specifically (i.e. by flavour of affliction):

Wereboar?
Sorry baconface, but Orcs, Atavisms and their sick-ass Demon Boar warlords already occupy the transformative body horror pigmen conceptual space. If I'm going to exploit wereboars (4+1HD) at all, it'll probably be in the 4HD Orc chieftain niche.

Wererat?
Skaven stole your thunder (and, knowing them, weaponised it). Besides, people find it difficult to get worked up about conniving ratmen subverting the world when a substantial proportion of the 'halflings' in the Vaults setting are actually Ratty, Moley and Mr Toad, and they stand their round at the bar just like everyone else. Yeah, Reepicheep (and his evil Driverian twin) is a playable option in the Vaults game.

Werewolves?
Intelligent, malign wolves (either goblin-toting Wargs, or icy-cold breath stealing Winter Wolves) trump some guy with snaggly teeth, excess body hair and an attitude problem IMO. Even the whole Viking wolfwarrior thing is a bit *meh*...

Werebear?
Erm, Bjorn was cool in The Hobbit. Ditto berserkers. Problem is you can only have one. Before Bjorn: baresarks were the very epitome of Chaos as face-gnawing RAEG!!! After Bjorn: Gentle Ben.

Weretiger?
I actually had to look this guy up; that's how little impression it's made on me in 20+ years of gaming! Conniving cat people conceptual space is already squeezed between Rakshasas and Malcolm McDowell in that sucky psycho-sexual cat people movie. Bast is disappoint!

Wereraven, -bat, -croc, -sharks, -godknowswhat...
Butter spread too thin. We get it already!

Jackalweres?
An notable exception to my normal loathing for shapeshifting animal people. These guys get no respect and have very little traction as a monster in gamer culture. Which is a shame, given that RETs in the DMG & FF say that 10% of any encounters with jackals are with these nasty shape-changing versions. Let me reiterate that: 10% of jackals will turn into half-men, stare you to sleep and then cheerfully murderize you!

Probably the only way for me to make use of Were-creatures without feeling dirty about it is to reskin them as something other than were-creatures. Which misses the point more than a little. Having a werejaguar (or whatever) manifest at night as the vengeful, free-roving spirit form of a Howardian evil shaman, and hoping the player's don't twig to the statline you're using, might just about do it. But, in that case, you might just as well pick a statline at random...

Werefolk. In the immortal words of Spoon: "I hope I give you the shits, you f***ing WIMP!"

AtoZ April - V is for Vermin and Vagabonds

2011-04-26T17:00:00.004+01:00

Vermin & Vagabonds? Hmmm, I think the thrumming brainhive just dished out the perfect name for a B/X-WFRP modcop. Well done ideogenerative node designations Byron and Trey. Requisition an extra portion of synth-gruel.

Turned up lots of good gameable stuff during my browsy-research, including links to the old Chaplain film The Vagabond and a manga called Vagabond based on the life of Miyamoto "sword? I'm gonna whomp you with this here oar" Musashi. Oddly enough I've recently been re-reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which has a picaresque self-styled King of the Vagabonds as a protagonist...

Vermin: not so much. *shudder*

A lot of settled people in the Wilds consider adventurers (at least, ones without a lot of money) to be either vagabonds or vermin, if not both. This is naught but a vicious calumny against the heroic warrior-scholars and action archaeologists who brave the mythic underworld for loot and glory. There are out there much worse than mere adventurers, however rough-hewn and scarred by their experiences they may be.

"Great holes secret are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice. Things have learnt to walk which ought to crawl..."
-- H.P.Lovecraft, The Festival

"Nice crops. Be a real shame if something were to happen to them..."

The Insectilocutors (aka the Bug-Talkers)
Sect of wierd evil hoboes affiliated to the alien inhabitants of the distant once-world of Yuggoth. They believe virtue can only be attained through hunger. Deliberately infest croplands with locusts, ankhegs and suchlike insectile horrors, sabotage food stores with vermin. Their higher orders are the vermin-priests, obsessives who have given themselves over to possession by insectile alien intelligences. What the priests want, beyond ruining the lives of farmers, is as yet undetermined.

JLCC:

Insectilocutor Vermin Priest
Variant cleric/cultist class whose patron powers are the alien horrors of Yuggoth. Use the cleric class with +10% to XP required for advancement at each level. Cannot turn undead, instead command insects. All their cast spells, beneficial or harmful, have grotesquely visceral and creepy insect-themed FX (as scare, LLAEC p75).

Vermin priests gain the following abilities as they level:

Level 1: command insectile vermin, swarm or giant (successful turn attempt, Level vs HD)
Level 2: speak through the swarm - as whispering wind or clairaudience 1/day
Level 3: see with myriad eyes - never surprised
Level 4: gaseous form (well, swarm of insects) 1/day
Level 5: create vermin husks 1/day - as zombie, releases insect swarm when killed
Level 6: cast insect plague (as the spell, LL p23) 1/day
Level 7: toxic touch (save or die, as spider or scorpion vemon)
Level 8: insectile possession (as magic jar) 1/day
Level 9: creeping doom (as the spell, LLAEC p42) 1/day
Level 10: insectile transformation - becomes Mi-go or Worm that Walks (see Goblinoid Games Realm of Crawling Chaos or Mythos Creatures for LL), etc.

If you have access to Carcosa, ROCC or COC d20 I'm sure there'll be some relevant material in those unhallowed tomes.

Pic Source
Put upon farmer image from imageshack

AtoZ April - U is for Unsettling

2011-04-25T17:00:00.000+01:00

Day 20, and the flickering things in the corner of my vision grow more overt and hungrier...

"Hello? Anybody home?"

It's axiomatic (and perhaps fortunate for the sanity of the human race) that one man's nightmare fuel is another man's narm. Personally I'm freaked out of all proportion by centipedes, mirrors in darkened rooms and unprotected precipices. You probably aren't. Individually, they're all pretty *meh* as D&D fodder. Combine them all and you've got quite a fun dungeon set piece, but (outside of a game of Call of Cthulhu) not really the stuff of creeping horror.

So I'm going to cheat and talk about a less-common use of the word "unsettling", which is connected to the idea of decolonisation. No, not as in empires contracting, but as in the "Daddy, where do ghost towns come from?" sense of people upping sticks and moving away from a place.

Even mundane reasons for depopulation and unsettlement are rich adventure fodder:

Resource Exhaustion - water, crop failures, mines tapped out, etc.
Pollution - Mmmmm, delicious side-effect of settlement and industry. Often self-inflicted, sometimes not.
Threat - the tribe over the hill want you dead. Or maybe the ankhegs are bad this year. Or maybe the local volcano just went *burp*...
Better offer - the tribe over the hill are onto a good thing and are looking for more workers.
Religious/Ideological (un)reasons - freedom from, or freedom to, [whatever].

Of course, in the wacky and wonderful world of the Wilds mundane reasons to up sticks and leave the old place to rot are supplemented by arcane influence, mass hysteria and long-forgotten curses. Maybe there was an outbreak of Iconoclasmism, maybe that old curse came true, maybe...

The Celadon Blight, aka The Moonbats
Ideocult affected by a strain of Demolishing Mania. The Celadon Blight are maniacally dedicated to the systematic dismantling and removal of everything their predecessors established. This goes beyond their simply dismantling, obsessively sorting and then dumping the physical infrastructure of their homes, through book-burning and illogical inversion of existing mores (largely for the sake of inversion), into witch-hunts of dissenters and deliberate infection campaigns against those who do not share their particular memestorm. Some Celadon Blighters go so far as to drive their own families into the Wilds to starve, or spend their time obsessively dusting away their own footprints.

JLCC

RATD: Unsettlements

Who lived in the spooky deserted village?
When was it deserted, and why?
Who (or what) lurks there now?

Pic Source
Deserted Agdam from Urban Ghosts site

AtoZ April - T is for Thulsa Doom

2011-04-23T17:00:00.013+01:00

Spot the real Thulsa Doom

Was ever a potentially great villain ever more let down by his appearances?

Skull face; laughs off sword blows; belittling monologues; overcomplex schemes; designated nemesis and arch-enemy of an barbarian Atlantean king. That's gold standard pulp background that is!

Thulsa Doom is probably the prototypical pin-up boy for the classic D&D lich look (although Sauron still has the edge in trappings and cronies). By rights Thulsa (or 'Thulses' to his friends) and not some Ruritanian neurotic in a tin suit, should have a lock on the Doom surname in pop-culture. Instead the vengeful hand of the serpent gods is little more than a pop-culture footnote remembered from some 70s comics. He's second in the skull-faced villain recognition stakes to Skeletor. Even Klytus steals his shtick!

I blame Milius and Kevin Sorbo ...and Dynamite Entertainment with their Imaro Doom comics. Although Thulsa didn't really help himself with his cat ventriloquism misdirection antics in The Cat and the Skull. Have some self-respect man!

Poor old Thulsa Doom. Is it any wonder that he retired from the villainy lark to write a gaming blog under an assumed name?

-----

JLCC:

The True Face of Thulsa Doom [Wondrous Item]
A full face skull mask with wickedly gleaming eye spots. Wearer must save vs. device or have their alignment changed to Ineffectual Overcomplicated Evil (or just Chaotic with trimmings in LL).

The True Face confers the following abilities:

Wards its wearer from harm as a cloak of protection (randomly determine power)
Hold person on all within earshot for as long as the wearer maintains a belittling monologue.
Teleport 1/day, conditional on the wearer being able to move through a doorway.
Lazer eye-beams! These cause a random effect generated on the Riskail Random Eyebeam Generator Table unless they are directed against snake cultists or a character who could be apostrophised as "black Conan". Against such wannabes and imposters the beams cause a well-deserved and agonising death, no save.

Skull-face Thulsa Doom: accept no substitutes.

I seem to have a thing for masks recently...

Pic Source
Odd Thulsa Out from Sherdog.net forum
Hero Pose Thulsa from Marvunapp.com

AtoZ April - S is for Silver & Syzygy

2011-04-22T17:00:00.004+01:00

Day 19, and I would like to cite "silver" (David) and "syzygy" (Erin) as words I never want to think about again.

Silver first I think.

The shiny metal (no lie, that's what Aργυρος meant) is another one of those recurring motifs that keep worming their way into my game from the pool of cultural referents that all gamers bob around in. It's easy to see why; in the ~5-6,000 years that people have been playing with the stuff silver has picked up both a myriad of practical uses and a boatload of associated cultural baggage.

Silver is cash.
It's shiny; that makes it covetable. It's durable; that makes it concealable. Silver is the basis of the cash economy in the Vaults game, just as it was historically. Greek drachma, Roman sesterci, pennies, pieces of eight: silver, not gold.
Silver cures disease.
Turns out the old folk remedies of putting silver pennies in a jar to ward off diseases had some basis in fact. It's probable that at least one of the active ingredients in potions of healing is powdered silver.
Silver represents the moon.
It's the old alchemical 'as above, so below' symbolism and "stands to reason, dunnit" logic. Shiny, white, round; what else is the moon going to be? Supposedly silver was created when moonlight percolated into the earth. In accordance with the "Sure, why not?" attitude of the Vaults game, this is indeed the case. The secret of refining silver into truesilver (aka mithril*) has been lost though, shame that.
Silver kills weres and demons.
Lunar symbolism + disease-killing properties + symbolic purity (see also: any and all references to near eastern lunar goddesses, but especially Artemis) = obvious connection in terms of sympathetic magic. I'm thinking of giving silver weapons special properties against the various annoying oozes and molds that infest the underworld. Silver weapons hit taintbeasts for full damage perhaps?
Silver represents lightning.
Amulets of Thor, Jove's lightning bolts, Artemis arrows. How early did people realise that silver was a phenomenally good electrical conductor?

* Stronger than steel, lighter than steel, doesn't corrode. What's the betting the "secret dwarvish name" of mithril is titanium?

Enough general musing about silver though. Here's something specific to the Vaults game.

Seraglio of Silver Masques (Level 5-6)

Deep within the madness and savagery of the Vaults lies a half-forgotten haven of elegance, sophistication and glamour. Whether a remnant of the lost culture that created the Vaults, or merely a spontaneous reaction against the barbarism that surrounds them, the inhabitants of the Seraglio have determined that nothing ugly or inelegant will be tolerated in their midst, and that their days will be spent in ever-more elaborate spectacle and ritual.

The Seraglio of Silver Masques is the general name given to an extended series of galleries, halls, theatres, pavilions and chambers interwoven with numerous secret, semi-secret and intermittent areas which sprawl across the fifth and sixth levels of the Vaults. Although particular rooms are often deserted or forgotten for years on end the area as a whole is dominated by the perpetual revels, soirées and events of the Argent Odalisques.

All visitors to the seraglio, whatever their origin, are expected to don symbolic masks and play their appointed role, however absurd and out-of-character it might normally be. The willingness to enter into the games of the Seraglio is the price of admission; the wit and elegance of one's performance is a measure of one's standing. Illusions, deceptions and mistaken identity are the norm, and the prevailing conceit is that no-one knows who anyone else is. Think one of those period dramas set in Venice or Versailles (Chocolat, Ridicule, Dangerous Liaisons, anything with Casanova or Byron in it, etc) if it was illustrated by Druillet.

There is no evidence that the masks proferred to guests in the seraglio have any connection at all to those worn by the Masked Sleepers of the upper Vaults. Nor is there any evidence at all that these delightfully crafted objects d'art steal knowledge from the minds of wearers, or control their will, or alter their faces, or anything else at all like that, at all.

The native cunning, personal power and political connections of the Argent Odalisques ensure that the Seraglio is neutral ground in the violence and chaos of the Vaults. Rest, pleasant conversation, esoteric lore and pleasures unimagined by the unwashed groundlings of the surface world are all available here for the right price, promise or favour. Refusal to play along will get you shunned, ejected and/or turned into a decorative feature.

Inhabitants
The odalisques of the Seraglio are a mixed group of near-humans possessed of ancient power. Each is the egotistical queen of her own petty demesne, emulous and eager for the envy, respect and grudging approval her peers. Unwitting visitors are likely to be treated as pawns in the long-running political games of the seraglio, wily ones may be able to turn their extensive connections to the power blocs within the Vaults to advantage.
In game terms the odalisques should be treated as harpys, lamia, medusae, nymphs, and/or sirens.

The odalisques amuse themselves with a variety of exotic pets (phase tigers, cockatrice, basilisks, giant serpents, etc), playthings and breeding projects (Eloi boytoys, man-bull hybrids, miscegenetic things from the Fiend Folio or the inside of Clive Barker's head), with magical research, and with their endless spectacles, extravaganzas and politicking. Each protects her sanctum as best she sees fit, but there is a commonality in the use of Ogre harem guards, Ogre magi major domos, troll assassin/saboteurs, and Masked Herald messengers (treat as Cloakers, see It Came From The SRD).

GM Note
This is my equivalent of the Drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu from D3 Vault of the Drow. The party can come crashing in like the heavy mob, killing and stealing as they go, but they're liable to take a kicking from the various "Save or [Suck/Lose/Die]" powers of the residents. If they comport themselves with a modicum of grace they might actually be able to turn the intrigues of the Argent Odalisques to their advantage.

-----

And now, syzygy.

Syzygy (the short word version): it's when three celestial bodies line up, or - more rarely - any pair, usually of opposites. The word comes from the Greek for "yoked together".

Solar and lunar eclipses are interesting times in the Wilds. All those celestial bodies pulling on one another means that it's entirely too easy for things to move from one world to another. That's why you don't go poking around those rings of trilithons at symbolically important times; the various conjunctions, transits, occultations and eclipses are when it's entirely too easy to launch yourself into space (by strapping a few cannisters of dew to your belt) and also when horrible alien s**t that poisons sane life with its very presence is most likely to fall from the horror-filled vile moon that flies across the night skies of the Wilds.

All this means that astronomers are people who inspire strong reactions in the populace. Sometimes they're respected as sages, scholars and early-warning devices; other times they're despised as harbingers of doom. ("You predicted it; that means you caused it!" - Nothing quite like the good old unreason of magic thinking, is there?)

-----

Pic Sources
Masked figures by Phillipe Druillet
Syzygy Hangman from Brown Sharpie by Courtney Gibbons

Smell Like an Elf? Srsly?

2011-04-21T16:46:00.001+01:00

RPG-themed perfumes? Really?

My thoughts on this:

In b4 WOTC lean on creator demanding their cut.
I thought we'd plumbed the collective depths with the D&D sodas.
Needs moar Old Spice parody:

“Hello, ladies. Look at your elf, now back to me. Now back at your elf, now back to me.
[...]
Anything is possible when your elf smells like Stygian Black Lotus and not a soft-handed gurlyman. I’m on a unicorn.”

Dammit capitalism! You used to be cool.

AtoZ April - R is for Ransack

2011-04-21T12:00:00.018+01:00

Day 21^H^H 18, and it is time to invoke the power of Giant Frog!

Self-mobile bag of loot? Probably best to leave it to its own devices...

The Ran Sack [Magic Item/Trick]
A unique object (entity?) sacred to the enigmatic toad gods of Chaos. It takes the form of a self-mobile small sack made of frogskin. The Ran Sack crawls slowly (<30'/round) around the Vaults blithely disregarding the laws of nature and burping temporary objects and beings into the world.

Think of anything you like, the more outlandish and lolrandom the better. Sooner or later the ransack will spew up a protomatter version to make life a little more interesting for 1d12 rounds, perhaps longer.* The Ran Sack can disgorge living entities, impossible objects and non-physical magical effects if so desired.

* On a 12 the period of time for which the latest enigmatic horfing of the Ran Sack endures increases to 1d12 of the next higher bracket. Round > Minute > Turn > Hour > Watch (4 hour overland turn) > Day > Week > Month > etc. At the end of the allotted period the protomatter dissipates. No mortal magic can prevent this. Divine magic might, but the gods are loath to get involved in the antics of the toad gods.

Yes, you can put things in the Ran Sack. You can also root around in it. And it is large enough to put over your head. (I dare you... :) )

The Ran Sack has the self-preservation instincts of a dozy farm animal, but no real sense of intelligent thought. It can be destroyed by many of the same means as a normal sack. However the whimsical wrath of the toad gods will likely fall upon those who harm their favourite relic. (herald? avatar? plaything? pet?)

Sects and ideocults of the Wilds beyond the obvious Chaos cults would pay handsomely for possession of the Ran Sack. Some for its experimental value, others for its totemic nature. Of course, they'd likely also kill to prevent such a thing from falling into the hands of their rivals.

-----

Not Related:

Did you know the British Royal Mail had their own dungeon, and they decided they were bored with it in 2002.

"They were simple hipsters before the inexplicable power

of the carmine oculus took possession of them.
We should probably kill them anyway."

Pic Source
Bowing sack of flour from Tall Grass Studios blog
Lamp guy in tunnel from silentuk.com

AtoZ April - Q is for Quarrel

2011-04-20T12:00:00.004+01:00

Day 20, wherein your humble scribe match wits with the most inscrutable of Scribble tiles.

First an aside.

You know, among all the varieties of Classic D&D it was only BECMI that offered magical arrows/bolts the chance to be anything more than "slaying or '+n', your choice". The D&D Bumper Fun Book offered no less than a score of missile weapon properties (Missile Weapon Talents, pp243-244) with which to garnish your flying wooden sticks of death. There was still one oversight in the list though. Where was the quarrel of quarreling? A simple little one shot gag which causes the target to turn on his allies when it hits (save vs. spell/device negates).

Yes, I know it's a howler...

Waffle aside, on with the content.

Quarrel acrobats, yesterday.

Quarrel [wondrous item]
Individual 1' square panels of glass. Some are found mounted in windows, others shuffled in with job lots of valuable, but otherwise non-magical, glassware. Quarrels detect as magical but are just as fragile as normal glass. Each has a single inherent detection effects usable 1/day be someone attuned to the quarrel.

Sample Quarrel Powers (d12)

1	see invisible
2	see ethereal
3	see kirlian aura
4	as eye of magnification
5	predict weather
6	lens of read languages
7	clairvoyance
8	true seeing
9	as gem of seeing
10	Cavorite effect
11	visual psychometry
12	Cycling phantasmal force illusion of [GMs choice]

Self-Perpetuating Quarrel [creature]
If six quarrels are arranged into a cube and the correct incantations performed (research into the lost art of vitromancy will be required) a glimmering mist fills the box and the quarrel animates. Long, multi-jointed limbs of vitreous-looking ectoplasm coalesce from each of its eight corners. These limbs have immense strength and tireless endurance, but only manifest in the absence of sunlight.

There is a 90% likelihood that the creation will obey verbal orders given by anyone attuned to the individual quarrels that make up its structure. Some self-perpetuating quarrels (the remaining 10%) instead ignore their assemblers and storm off to further an undisclosed agenda.

Self-perpetuating quarrels usually seek to avoid conflict and will skitter away from aggressive opponents at up to 180'/round. If cornered they will hurl heavy objects or swipe at any who pose a threat to them. The pseudopod arms are powerful (attack as 6HD creature for 2d6 damage, 4 attacks/rnd, max 2 per target) and difficult to damage (AC5, require 10 points in a single strike to sever). The stubs of severed limbs will sprout two pseudopods (treat as severing the heads of a lernean hydra) in the following round. The box itself is flat panels of glass, exactly as fragile and vulnerable as that implies. Most attacks will affect the flailing arms and ectoplasmic integument, but a critical hit/natural 20 with a piercing/missile weapon will instantly destroy a quarrel, reducing the creature to shards of glass and a rapidly evaporating mist.

A self-perpetuating quarrel has the general immunity to magic typical of golems. Most spells will simply pass through its translucent form without effect. There are a few notable exceptions to this: any of the mage's hand series of spells allows the caster to control the gross movement, but not the fine manipulations, of the quarrel. Shatter (or a horn of blasting or similar sound-based attack) destroys it instantly. Glass like steel improves the AC of both the glass box and the pseudopod arms to 0. Fire does no damage to these creatures.

The self-perpetuating quarrel cannot communicate verbally, but makes expressive indicative gestures.

-----

Ha! 'Q' ain't so tough without his sidekick 'U' backing him up.

Pic Source
Glass cube by Larry Bell, courtesy of askart.com

AtoZ April - P is for Plenary of Polysyllables

2011-04-19T12:00:00.003+01:00

P is for "putrescence" or "pandemonium" (Flynn) or "parallax" (Carter Soles).

"It's not the leering and winking of the moon I mind.

It's the sibilant whisperings underlying its blandishments..."

It is an open secret among the learned that the skies that whirl above the Wilds are full of secrets and strange wisdom mortal men are not fitted to know. But even among the sodality of squint-eyed sages and sleepless stargazers circulate stories of men who looked into the darkness too hard and too long.

Rumour speaks of deeper voids in the void of space where certain ill-omened stars shine either intermittently, or in colours visible only to those with correctly attuned sight. It is said (although said by exactly whom is disputed) that the flickering light of these unknown luminaries is hypnotic, and that extended study somehow conveys mind of the observer instruction from beyond the bounds of the world as we know it.

What is known for certain is that occasionally eminent astronomers disappear overnight; their notes destroyed or incomprehensible; their telescopes still fixed on empty areas of the night sky. Sometimes travellers matching - at least in some particulars - the descriptions of the missing men are seen traversing unsettled areas of the Wilds; at other times they are encountered lurking in the lowest stews and dives of the cities. None initiate communication and most shun human contact, but their repeated mumbling of a particular mantra ("Gli-oo-aff-cuff, gli-oo-aff-cuff, gli-oo-aff-cuff...") is noted.

Left untreated these unfortunates soon succumb to any one of a variety of misfortunes or infections. More than once a body garbed in academic robes has been found in some overlooked corner, seedbed to a fungal garden of unusual richness and variety. The fruiting bodies of these fungi are much sought after by the less squeamish among the wizardly fraternity.

Sources
Astronomer image from Cornell University Library Collection
Glyuathk'th is an original creation of 'Carcosa' Geoffrey McKinley.

AtoZ April - O is for Orgasmatron

2011-04-18T12:00:00.002+01:00

Day 15, and it's all getting a bit psycho-sexual around here.

The Smart Patrol: they will give you unsolicited multiple orgasms.

Many, cunning and varied are the means by which the eccentric dynasts of the Wilds retain their hard-won thrones. One of the most curious of these is the strategy of the hermaphrodite Emperoress of Throx. Long a scholar of human psychology the Emperoress has determined that the most certain, least objectionable way to ensure the obedience and loyalty of his/her/its power-base is to weaponise sexual pleasure.

The wielders of this power are the infamous Smart Patrol, creatures which may, or may not, be men as commonly understood. Lairing in a windowless circular ziggurat the Smart Patrol emerge at irregular intervals to scour the street-tubes of Throx of dissenters, thoughtcriminals and strangely-dressed foreigners. The fates of those spirited away behind their ziggurat's massive gates of steel are unknown, but rumoured to be horrific.

Orgasmatrons [magic item - wondrous item]
Biotech blobs floating in fishbowls embedded in overcomplex weird-tech. The mechanisms are fragile, requiring two hands to carry. Orgasmatrons fire a puce beam of orgone energy able to reduce targets to helpless status orgasmus. If hit by the beam (to-hit roll ignoring physical armour) the target must save vs. paralysis or suffer (enjoy?) a hold person/monster effect for 1d20 minutes, followed by 1d3 turns under a wobbly-kneed slow effect. It is rumoured that orgasmatrons also have a secondary, weather-modifying effect.

An unfortunate few become addicted to the effects of the orgasmatron, and seek to deliberately provoke the Smart Patrol into targeting them. Unfortunately the Smart Patrol also wield big sticks with nails in them for just such eventualities...

It is speculated that the Smart Patrol have mastered the art of implanting the active orgonotech component of their orgasmatrons directly into living humans. This snippet of information (as yet unconfirmed) is the source of much speculation, conjecture and heated fantasy among aesthetes, cult leaders and mad wizards of the Wilds.

Pic Source
Mysterious helmed men expropriated from the archives of trakMarx ezine

AtoZ April - N is for Nostalgia

2011-04-16T17:00:00.004+01:00

Nostalgia? The OSR? I have no idea from whence you might derive the idea that the two are in any way connected. ;)

That said. Yes, I has it. I like old stuff. I like reminiscing about 'back in the day'. I have no shame in playing things - be the things in question games or music - for nostalgic reasons (mainly I play them because 20+ years later, they still rock!).

And yes, I have used nostalgia to hook players. Never underestimate the power of

"Oh wow! Old D&D! I used to love this back in the day. You're still playing it now? Not Pathfinder or 4E? That is so retro. So - and I'm just asking out of politeness mind - where and when are you playing?"

The nostalgia might hook them; but it's the game itself that keeps them coming back.

That out of the way, JLCC. Also cake:

Madeleine of Lost Time
Curious confectioneries baked with long-undisturbed dust retrieved from deep within ancient ruins.
Eating a madeleine of lost time unleashes the visions and memories baked into it, sometimes merely in the form of dissociated visions, sometimes in the form of contextually meaningful clues. On rare occasions the eater takes on aspects of some long-dead personality.
The reverie induced by a madeleine of lost time lasts 1d6x1d6 minutes.

Random Effect (d6)
1. stone dust - stone tell effect
2. plant dust - speak with plant effect
3. fossilised crumbs - clue (as commune or contact other plane spell)
4. book dust - textual information
5. grave dust - personality (as speak with dead spell)
6. thaumically charged dust - randomly determined magical effect

Pic Source
Topically relevant cakes from chestofbooks.com

AtoZ April - M is for Maenad

2011-04-15T12:00:00.149+01:00

This picture is a lie. A lie that will get you killed. Horribly and bloodily.

The maenads are a recurrent phenomenon born of the memestorms that plague the Wilds. The true origin and meaning of their name has been lost, but the agonised screams of "Argh! My nads!" that announces the presence of these women haunts the imagination of male auditors. Part ideocult, part force of nature, maenads labour under a strange, sex-specific memestorm of mysterious origin and terrifying effect.

There is a possibility that this memestorm will take root wherever a woman of the Wilds has been emotionally or physically abused over an extended period. If the injustice is not taken in hand and redressed (formally or privately), maenadism suddenly takes hold of a community like some dark judgement. The stew of psychic suffering and unspoken discontent provides rich soil indeed for the horror that follows.

Almost without preamble the characteristic "Ia! Ia!" war cry of the maenads will be heard, and in one sudden upwelling of violence and horror women lash out. Bonds of familiarity, affection and kinship are forgotten; fathers, sons and lovers, all die in a welter of blood and madness. Hardened soldiers have been known to vomit and suffer night terrors after happening across the aftermath of an outbreak of maenadism.

When all the males they can reach - down to the very cattle and dogs - lie dead and dismembered, the maenads set fire to their former homes and swarm en masse into the Wilds looking for other men to punish. Some among the maenad packs retain their native cunning, luring men to their deaths slowly and carefully; others are reduced to a state of uncontrollable screaming rage, running through the Wilds on all fours, killing with unnaturally hardened tooth and claw. There is no reasoning or negotiating with a pack of maenads. Men are their prey; women either potential recruits or obstacles.

Whether maenads can - or even should - be cured of their specific madness is a source of urgent and heated dbate among the learned. Some cultures, notably the Amazons and Ganymedeans, consider them a form of spiritual harbinger; either divine retribution for wickedness, or sign of insufficient rigour in social control. The nature of any relationship between these wild memestorm-afflicted woman and the origins of such creatures as harpies, lamia and medusae, is undetermined.

JOESKY'S LAW compliance content
[content here]

Pic Source
Bacchante by William-Adolphe Bouguereau from Wikimedia Commons.

AtoZ April - L is for Lopsided

2011-04-14T12:00:00.003+01:00

Day 12, and Sham strikes again.

Lopsided monsters? Nah. That whole "asymmetrical = weird or evil or unhealthy" trope has been exploited good and hard already, and then inverted/subverted by everything from The Elephant Man to Sloth from The Goonies.

WD Fiend Factory: some hits, but plenty of misses too

(and *rassa frassa* Teleleli beating me to quarterlings. Having an idea first like it's his or something...)

So let's talk about Lopside.

Lopside is where you go when you want something separated or rendered down quickly and discretely. It's another of those odd rustic backwaters that are so typical of the Wilds, inhabited by people with thick accents, goggly eyes and an extra toe or two. They don't like outsiders here, and even expected visitors are treated with the barest minimum of courtesy.

The dominant feature of Lopside is the Weirdmills, strangely toadstool-looking mills that infest the hilltops. Through some strange pact or quirk of the land, the millers of Lopside have somehow gained the ability to render anything down into a processed form, with each mill having its particular speciality. The fees (a proportion of the final milled product) charged by the millers are always high, and usually extortionate.

Sickle of Expropriation
Invented by a mad wizard affected by Red Star Fever this curious object separates those struck by it from their value. Any character struck by the sickle (damage as dagger) suffers extra damage equal to his HD/level - attacker's HD/level and loses a percentage of his carried wealth equal to 10% x his HD - attacker's HD. The sickle is incapable of injuring anyone devoid of any wealth.
Once per day the sickle can render the person struck incapable of independent action (as hold person, save negates). Rumours persist that, if the correct formulae are incanted over it, the sickle becomes capable of creating a temporal stasis effect.

Pic Source
Nasnas from White Dwarf Fiend Factory pdf (courtesy of the electrowubz)
Windmills by Jaroslav Panuska from Monster Brains

AtoZ April - K is for Kibble

2011-04-13T12:00:00.012+01:00

Day 11, and I would like it on record that Dave "Sham" Bowman is an evil, evil man whose choice of words hurtses my delicate brain.

"K is for kibble" commandeth the Sham, and lo was my confidence knocked, my crest fallen and my urb entirely purt-ed.
"Kibble" asked I "what is this kibble? Quick! To the dictionaries!"

Kibble is the act of coarsely grinding something such as grain.

Kibble may also refer to:
* Kibble, a component of dog food or cat food, as in Kibbles 'n Bits
* Chris Kibble (born 1963), British jazz musician
* Kibble Palace, a greenhouse in Glasgow
* Tom W. B. Kibble (born 1932), British physicist
* Bucket, as used by a water well
* Large bucket, as used to raise ore from a mine shaft
* Chalk and flint rubble, also known as kibble in East Devon, used to consolidate ground

So, as I know little enough about physics or Glaswegian greenhouses (where weegies isolate vegetables that their food supply might not be tainted by dangerous foreign innovations like vitamins), and nothing at all about jazz , that'll be one post on large buckets in the Vaults coming up.

Specifically industrial-sized buckets on aerial ropeways.

"We're perfectly safe. Just pull on that rope there..."

Delvers who survive their time in the Vaults report infrequently discovering large oak and iron buckets suspended from massive brunellian chains or thick-thick ropes. These curious arrangements are hoisted hither and yon for purposes opaque or forgotten by the massive engines of the Gearworks. Some buckets travel through tunnels, others hurtle across huge open voids in the high vaulted spaces above keyed areas.

Bucketway travel is wildly popular with goblin population of the Vaults. Some take this fascination to a strange extent, giving rise to a caste of so-called 'bucket spotters' dedicated to travelling on and recording all the bucketway routes they can find.

Whereas the Ferris Wheel of Doom is a way of travelling between levels (and worlds if someone presses the wrong button) rapidly and relatively safely, the bucketways of the Vaults are a way of getting from A to B while having the party exposed to all the local colour and nastiness in between. They're in one or more buckets being hoisted through the darkness of the mythic underworld. Any true GM will be rubbing their hands in evil glee at this...

Riding the Bucketway

Each bucket can carry up to 4 human-sized creatures and their carried gear, or up to 6 if they pack in like the occupants of a clown car. Strenuous activity (like dodging or fighting off attackers) makes the bucket sway and tilt wildly. Dex checks to hold on. Being thrown out of the bucket requires saves vs. paralysation to avoid falling out and either being left behind to be clocked by the next bucket to hurtle along (knocked flying, 1d10 damage, save vs breath weapon for half) or plummeting to a horrible squishy doom far, far below.

Appearance
"You happen upon a big bucket that looks like [d10]"

...the lower half of a large transparent hamster ball
...an oversized bowl/cauldron
...a big bucket/tub (1-5 oaken staves, 6 made of some strange brightly coloured flexible material like horn or shaped resin)
...an iron mine cart/skip
...a small boat (1in6 chance swan-headed and winged)
... a metal cage, elevator or cart-mounted (You can’t fall out; can’t jump out without re-opening the door. You did check the lock before you slammed it shut, right?)
... a gigantic open-topped humanoid skull (1in6 chance burning eye socket lamps)
... an inverted giant turtle shell
... a triangular hod (link to pic)
... an excavator scoop (open-fronted, likely designed to tilt)

Detail
The massive chains and tarred hawsers forming the bucketway are generally in good nick, but the buckets themselves show often signs of wear and tear. Roll for as many pieces of dressing as you fancy.

Grody	- 3in6 chance substantial rust/dirt/waste indicating former or current function. Possibly dangerous; definitely unpleasant.
Ooh shiny!	- 2in6 chance object trouve (roll on preferred random dungeon dressing object table)
Rusty POS	- 1in6 chance that the floor, an exterior panel or (if the GM’s in a really playful mood) a supporting member is dangerously rotted or rusted.
Occupado!	- 1in6 chance already occupied (by vermin, ooze, goblins, humanoid toads voiced by David Jason who declare the bucketway "...the only way to travel!", etc.)
Safety First!	- 1in6 chance emergency stop lever (50% lever is purely decorative)
Unbalanced	- 1in6 chance rotates slowly during travel. Especially likely to tilt if weight isn’t distributed evenly.

Where does it go?
Unless guided by a native who already knows the route a randomly encountered bucketway could end up almost anywhere in the Vaults. The direction of the main chain will generally provide some clue, although these can change direction with little warning.

1-3	Lateral	stays on the same level - 2d6 rooms in d8 direction (1 = N, 2 = NE, etc.)
4-5	Vertical	travels +/- 1d3 dungeon levels
6	Inclined	combines Lateral and Vertical, possibly an access route to an otherwise isolated sub-level

Pleasingly Touristic - additional 2in6 chance that the bucketway connects to/crosses one of the major named features of the level.

Tunnel Details
Width of transit tunnel: bucket width + 1d10 feet. If more than 5’ clearance there may be an additional walkway running parallel to the bucketway route.
1in10 chance of some obstruction poking up from the floor (check only once per journey). Not immediately lethal, but likely to keep life interesting.

How do we get off this thing?

1-2	Controlled start/stop	jerky and uncomfortable, but you stop.
3-4	Continual loop	no stopping, possible slowing or change of direction (like a ski lift). Jump!
5-6	Automatic dump	upon reaching a particular point in its journey the bucket tilts in its frame and dumps its contents. Hopefully not into a furnace, grinder or sump.

So please hold tight and keep all extremities, children, halflings and squishy wizards inside the car at all times.

Pic Source
Ropeway pic from Low-tech Magazine

AtoZ April - J is for Jungian

2011-04-12T12:00:00.001+01:00

"Yes. Look deep into the mirror, you in your anachronistic clothing. What do you see?"

Only recently a new power has appeared in the Wilds, yet already fearful rumour and impossible tales already surround the whispered name of Jun Gyan the Oneiriotect, a strange outlander who makes his living selling rare, exotic drugs to the wealthy and jaded.

Clad always in sumptuously embroidered silken robes and residing either in a richly decorated pavilion or a townhouse the interior of which is swathed in hangings, curtains, veils and canopies Jun Gyan takes any one of a number of disparate form. Sometimes he seems to be an aged sallow-skinned human of exotic appearance and strange habits, at other times he seems a fox-faced humanoid of great personal power, and at still others he appears as a masked figure whose voluminous robes flow and pulsate unsettlingly. It is likely that all his many forms are false faces, mere masks disguising the truth from the eyes of the unworthy.

Jun Gyan possesses a unique artefact, a magic mirror able to craft personal hells of ironic punishment from the mindscapes and dark secrets of the morally bankrupt. Full-length silvered mirror with an elaborate thaumo-alchemical distillery built into the supporting frame. The outlet tube of this drips gradually into delicately chased glass-and-silver vials which are periodically changed and spirited away by veiled and silent servants.

Although some come to Jun Gyan willingly, staring into his mirror under the influence of a variety of emotions (jaded or morbid curiosity, self-loathing, or sheer bravado), many others are compelled to look therein either by judicial commandment or as a result of the machinations of their enemies. Jun Gyan is notably even-handed in such matters, turning away none.

Upon gazing into the mirror the victim must make a save vs. spell each round. On failing a saving throw the victim is forced to enter their own mindscape, their body falling into a lifeless state similar to that encountered under the effect of a magic jar spell (LL p34).

The Mirrorscapes of Jun Gyan

Anyone who falls under the influence of the silver mirror finds themself alone in a pocket universe of peculiar and distinctive form. Survivors of the experience unanimously describe the world within the mirror as an empty grey plain ridged with deep trenches and pervaded with a clammy mist. The foreshortened horizon and perceptible curvature of the surface indicate how small this self-contained world is. Teleporting and spells that allow transportation to, or communication with, other planes simply do not work here. Flying away from the small grey world will result in it re-appearing ahead. Dawdling on the surface attracts strange spectral entities (treat as Shadows) which seek to consume life force. The only escape is to head deeper, into one of the several cave/tomb entrance in the deepest channels.

[The dungeon faced by the character is a linear one-shot funnel dungeon in the Five Room Dungeon mould.

Room 1	Entrance and Guardian
Room 2	Puzzle or Role-playing Challenge
Room 3	Red Herring
Room 4	Climax, Big Battle or Conflict
Room 5	Plot Twist

Theme and forms? Well, the clue is in the title. ;)]

Each room is a regressed, more primitive form of its predecessor, gradually more derelict and ruinous. The first room will be full of wildly over-decorated celebrations of the character, with each successive chamber being gradually more derelict, ruinous and openly mocking of the his achievements, attainments and precious self-image. The first room might have an overdone triumphal statue or pompous portrait, the second a scarecrow erected to ape the preceding statue, the third no more than scurrilous graffitos and crudely scrawled caricatures.

The final area of the mindscape is invariably a womb-like, network of irregularly shaped and seemingly unbounded tunnels and caves wherein lurk the character's personal demons. Whatever it was that drove them to manifest their wickedness on the world will be faced herein, albeit in a twisted form.

My preferred scheme is to model each chamber in the mindscape after various parts of the human brain. The strange lunar landscape with the hungry shadows lurking about (80s electro music optional ;)) being the first. IMG this is succeeded by:

Chamber of the Telencophalon (forebrain) - Domed chamber glittering with subtle lights and bisected by a fissure running directly down the centre. In one half (revealed by experimentation, or at the most inopportune moment) of the room no magic works, in the other half physical damage cannot be inflicted.

Broad staircase leads down to...

Chamber of the Diencephalon (forebrain) - Mirror-image chamber: one wall entirely mirrored? Every creature here is treated as being under the effect of a mirror image spell. Resident creature can elect to blink using mirrors.

Spiral stair leads down to the edge of...

Chamber of the Midbrain - Wall-less mesa of unworked grey stone surrounded by a thick mist of a lighter, dove-grey shade. The staircase by which the character descended spirals away impossibly high into the darkling sky above. Sensory distortions and psychosomatic symptoms galore.

Cave opening and crawlway leads down to...

Chamber of the Hindbrain - rhombus-shaped chamber, like being inside one's own tomb. Deep thrumming, like a heartbeat. Surges of emotion, sense of things lurking unseen.

If you feel all Mr Clever-clogs about it you might even want to map the dungeon from a map of the brain. I'm not that cunning though.

Although the gross form of the successive chamber might remain constant between visitors (again, see the title) room contents can and should be tailored to the vices, flaws, inadequacies and dirty secrets of the character being emulated. The particular nature of the allegorical (*spits*) trials might be specifically tailored to the character, or the GM may prefer to fill the successive areas according to the Five Room form, or determined by oracular roll on the classic Dungeon Stocking Chart (reproduced below).

1-2	Monster
3	Trap
4	Special
5-6	Empty

Any roll of "Empty" shouldn't be interpreted as "nothing here", but rather that the chamber contains some form of active, existential emptiness; something that battens upon the character and slowly negates some aspect of him unless he puzzles out a means of escape.

Acquisitiveness might be represented by a pack of gaggling of strutting and preening cockatrices which turn those affected by their stoning pecks into worthless pyrites. Death spiral mechanic, -1 TH per strike. Or possibly by a locked room trap which slowly fills with gold coins, slowly crushing and drowning the avaricious.

Viciousness might be represented by a colossal, excessively-armoured warrior with the squalling face of a child throwing a tantrum and a nasty line in fear-effect attacks. Or by a selection of level-draining undead, each with the face and general appearance of an NPC tortured or mutilated by the character in his adventuring career.

Callousness might be represented by a series of weeping, rag-clad persons being tormented by imps or vicious animals. The creatures will make no aggressive move against the focal character, but ignored the plight of these symbolic eidolons will see the character gradually sinking deeper and deeper into the surface of the room.

Those who are unsuccessful in their confrontations with their inner demons are rendering into Jun's mind-affecting drugs. Those who defeat their baser instincts earn experience and are restored to their bodies having learned a valuable lesson about their own natures.

JLCC

Dream Elixiers of Jun Gyan
Distilled from the hopes, dreams and fears of the heedlessly proud, these precious vials of narcotic fluid grant rich visions of private worlds. Sought after by the rich decadents of the Wilds, who have little understanding of their origin or true power, only a delirious appreciation of the sensations and inspirations they enjoy. A correctly-trained mind under the influence of the Dream Elixirs is able to access the universal mindscape of the Astral Realm almost at will.
Price: If sir has to ask...

Pic Source
Dead of Night (1945) image from Werewolves on the Moon blog

AtoZ April - I is for Immortality

2011-04-11T12:00:00.004+01:00

[This is a "blahblah"-heavy post amplifying some hashed out ideas about high-level play IMG. The JLCC is at the bottom if you want to skip ahead.]

Achilles: "Do you know what lies there, beyond that ridge? Immortality. Take it! It's yours!"
Sensible Myrmidon: "See him there? He's the kind of noisy arrow-magnet you kill before you get within earshot of the enemy."

Immortal Fame
"By this axe I rule! Well, partially by this axe, but more generally because I’m just so-o-o-o Howardian."

Attaining enduring fame in the Wilds is easily achieved. Kill dudes; take their stuff; hire bards to sing your praises; erect massive phallic monuments to self in conspicuous places. You might also want to work on some pithy one-liners (it worked for Genghis Khan and Kull of Valusia). Simple.

The hard mode/self-imposed challenge version of the above is known as the 'just rulership' model. This is the one in which your name becomes a byword for a golden age that everyone looks back on with nostalgia and longing. Your personal qualities are remembered with awe and affection, your achievements with pride and reverence, and your name becomes a byword for honesty, mercy, generosity, truth, justice and other such apple pie qualities. What are the chances of that though? Everyone knows that none of the cool kids like the big blue Boy Scout archetype. ;)

Oh, you mean *real* immortality. As in 'not dying and getting to enjoy all the good stuff you centuries beyond your allotted span' immortality. Well, that's slightly less non-trivial.

Transformative Immortality
"Power, respect and longevity. Why yes, that does sound like an interesting package deal. Please tell me more."

Gaining the attention of - and hashing out a bargain with - powerful inhuman entities from beyond the bounds of the known realities is pretty much a known quantity in popular culture, going back to Faustus and before. AD&D had whole panoplies of spells dedicated to wringing concessions out of the inhuman (often overlooked in favour of the more immediately useful "destroy it! with fire" or "destroy it! with no save" spells, but they were in there).

Making such a pact for power will get you beyond the 10th level soft cap on (demi-)human ability. Doing so turns you from a guy with a magic sword/wand and a reputation into a power in your own right. In essence you jump from the Conan/Theseus/Druss "chew-toy of fate" tier to the Elric/Hercules/Shef Sigvarthson "tells fate to sit down and wait until he's ready" tier.

Transformative immortality is the realm of altered states like lichdom, worm-that-walks-ery, heartless mage-hood, plated mages and suchlike Baxa-illustrated oddness. Characters follow this route forgo their humanity in search of greater power. In accordance with the law of the conservation of bad-ass each of these guys is much more interesting and memorable if they are a unique entity. There might be any number of undead in the world, but it's just cooler if there is only one Koschei the Heartless; one Worm That Walks; one primal vampire, and so forth. Being unique has its privileges.

Done wrong this whole mode of play is just going to degenerate into numberwank and munchkinry; a relentless storm of egotistical cheese on a par with the most nakedly power-worshipping Saturday morning cartoons. We've all had games like that, and it's not my intention to visit such things again (fun as they were when I was 13 or so). Done right however, and the tensions and trade-offs from such a pact is likely to be an interesting play option. Think Moorcock at his best, or WoD played as intended by people who ain't darker than thou.

The whole process of bargaining for and attaining unearthly power is liable to be a role-played situation, possibly with heavy use of all the nasty demon-summoning tropes that gave D&D its scary reputation back in the 80s. All the usual "Mature content", "Player discretion is advised" and "Don't weird the normals" caveats apply. As implied above, the pact puts your character in long-term hock to some inhuman power that wants to use you as a glove puppet to further its inscrutable alien agenda. The character gets to channel unearthly power and summon (un)holy aid from the worlds beyond, all in return for blood and souls (sometimes others; more often their own). Not an ideal long-term situation, n'est-ce pas?

True Immortality/Divinity
"Power corrupts: absolute power . . . is much more fun."

The big time. The real deal. Immortality with all the trimmings. This is what humans have longed for since the days of Gilgamesh and the Greek myths. It is the dream of every Nietzsche wannabe and the cynosure of every munchkin. It's even been the stuff of children's films. The whole point of The Dark Crystal is reunion/apotheosis of the Urskeks and the healing of the world by the Grand Conjunction.

To partake of divinity in the world of the Vaults is to become, in some respects, an eternal verity. The gods are immortal and worshipped because they command, epitomise, or otherwise ideally represent, a substantial fact of life. Of course, a good press office (in the form of temples and clerics) really helps to spread word of their might and majesty and extend divine market share. Agni is the god of fire because he’s recognised and revered as such; Demogorgon draws power from being the Prince of Demons because cults worship him and numerous tales speak of his terrible power; Utravit is the goddess of the sea because every sailor in the world fears her hungry attentions.

The best way to cut the Gordian Knot of the Faustian pact for power is to become the public face of a concept in the popular imagination. The existing gods, being obsessively focused on their field of interest, are likely to be really touchy and jealous of their patch: jealous like psychotic mobsters with countless fanatical followers, diplomatic immunity and a nuke in their sidecar. Set yourself up as god of fire and (whether you manage to grant spells to your clerics or not) you’re likely to kick off a holy war with the existing holder of that franchise. But, if you’re lucky, and cunning, and careful, you might be able to carve out an overlooked niche somewhere. Many of the small gods achieve this (either through obscurity, divine grandfather clauses or the fact that they're big crayfish who don't play silly human god games), but being ‘god of that rock’ doesn't have many growth prospects in the long term.

Fortunately for adventuring types the quickest, surest way to achieve the end of having a shining halo of power and adoring worshippers galore is the same means they got famous and wealthy in the first place: killing, theft and self-glorification. The idea is to gain sufficient clout and name recognition in a certain field to force your way through the metaphorical velvet rope and into Club Olympus before all the hostility, envy and general bad karma you've heedlessly cultivated catches up with you. This has an implicit (although probably unintended) part of the D&D endgame ever since the original Heroes and Demi-Gods first statted the gods and made them stabbable.

Remember though: Bellerephon didn’t fall off Pegasus coz he failed a Dex check. Despite (or perhaps because of?) the adulation of their sycophants the gods are jealous, petty, vindictive, and possessed of a wicked sense of humour. Well, how could they be anything else when their actions are adjudicated by your GM?

A player who wants his PC to ascend to the top table has to do enough in the context of the game to profoundly change the game world. The changes have to be something more lasting and profound than ‘founded a dynasty’. Any schmoe with functioning genitalia and a knack for exploiting inheritance laws can manage that. Setting up an empire won’t be enough to ensure godhood, but it might be a good start.

So what is sufficient to merit ascension? This could involve breaking the game world as written (the Elric model), purifying it (the Imajica or von Bek model), or changing the underlying assumptions of the setting (The Matrix model). The player's reward for winning D&D is that his character wins D&D and gets to be one of those annoying ascended PC demigods from the Greyhawk boxed set.

Routes to Divinity
"Where do I get a cool hat like that?"

Even moreso than bullying power out of demons, elementals, world spirits, dark godlings or who-knows-what, the path of ascent to godhead should be determined by the player and GM in accordance with the needs, requirement and limitations of the setting. Sometimes, and in some places, such a thing simply won't be possible; other times (as in the Vaults game) it might one of the intended long-term possibilities of play from the outset.

d10

Genocide - Kill everything in your path and set up your throne on the mountain of skulls. That'll get you remembered. Maybe not in a nice way, but remembered nonetheless. Examples: Yama, Iskander, The Steel Tsar
Golden Age - People wish you'd come back, because life under your merciless iron rule was just so much better. The harvest was good, the animals fat, the enemy far away. Examples: Yellow Emperor, Osiris
Empire Builder - Before you there was chaos, after you there was peace and order. People seem to like that. Examples: Marduk, Augustus
Theocrat - You are that to which all eyes turn; the font of all virtue; the last court of appeal and the guarantor of prosperity. You can give or take life without apology or explanation. Sounds pretty godlike to me. Examples:???
Steal it! - You remember Prometheus? Yeah, like that. Only godly power for self instead of Robin Hooding fire for humanity. Examples: Prometheus, Ranald (WFRP universe)
Archetype - You're so identified with a particular thing that people confuse you with it. They say thunder is your footsteps, storms are you pitching a fit or a heatwave is you glaring. Examples: Thor, Ra, Poseidon.
Exemplar - You are remembered as the ultimate (builder/warrior/wizard/whatever). People pray to you for help when they're doing what you used to do. Examples: Imhotep, Kwan Yi(?)
Scholar/Nietzschean Superman - You learned enough that the universe reforms itself to your will. You can do what gods do; that pretty much makes you one of the club. Examples: Karsus (for all of 6 seconds)
Sacrifice - They kill gods you know. Getting killed for a powerful symbolic reason might be enough to catapult you up to the big chair. Examples: Orisis, Adonis, Saints.
Explorer - After a long quest that left the world profoundly changed you found the fount of godhead and took a long, deep draught. Divinity tastes good. Examples: ???

JOESKY'S LAW Compliance Content

Divine Vestige - The Living Shadow
Deep within a far-away cave in the most hostile of lands exists a curious thing; the enduring shadow of a great sage now long departed from the world. Some claim that this ancient teacher became too pure for the world and transubstantiated in a flash of light so powerful as to drive all his sins out of his body and into his shadow. Others maintain that the shadow maintains contact with its progenitor as an emissary to the world left behind. Disputes over these matters have long divided sages and theologians of the Wilds, but at least the disputation keeps such dangerously curious minds occupied.

The shadow may be consulted once by any person able to make the journey through the monster-infested wilderness and down the voice-haunted tunnel network of which the shadow's cave is part. To the best of mortal knowledge the shadow answers the question put to it fully and truthfully, seemingly asking nothing in return. A small but lucrative pilgrim trade has grown up around the shadow, and some skin-inkers claim to know the secret of tattooing with the blessed darkness of the living shadow.

Random Living Shadow Tattoo Table
1. Increases hide in shadows chance to 5in6
2. Acts as locate object, one time only
3. Allows wearer to reach through shadowed objects as if hollow
4. Acts as contact other place, one time only
5. Grants unusual sense (GM's option)
6. Allows wearer to carry objects (of reasonable size. No ships!) within his shadow

Links and Material of Possible Interest

Jeff's Imperishable Fame series
Dark Dungeons - BECMI retroclone
High-Level Play in Runequest - Soltakss website
Lords of Creation
Amber Diceless
WoD Vampire & Mummy
Ravenloft

AtoZ April - H is for Haze

2011-04-09T12:00:00.005+01:00

Day 8, and the madness imps are rearranging the furniture behind my eyes.
[It was this, or a riff on Jimmy Hendrix as the Trimurti of the Wilds]

The Merelunds

There is a place so horrible, so reviled by the gods and devoid of civilisation that sane men speak of it with loathing, if at all. A place where women suckle leeches and the demented cackling of the fog-maddened inhabitants echo through reeking valleys. Travellers passing through this desolation close the curtains of their carriages and pray for their lives and sanity.

Prevailing Conditions

The Merelunds are a mist-shrouded tract of bogs and meres set in rocky basins and vlleys between lowering mountains. The area has proverbially inclement weather and an ill-omened reputation which transcends the merely physical deficiencies of the land.

Overland Travel
It's all swamps, lakes, hills and mountains. All wreathed in miasmic fogs and continual drizzle. If the party insist on hiking through here without a (weirdly inbred, jabbering) yokel guide to show them the easiest way then throw the book at them in the Getting Lost and Catching Nasty Infections stakes.

Fog
To most people "merelunds = fog". It's a constant nuisance which reduces visibility and increases the chance of getting lost or suffering surprise over and above the norm for the (unpleasant) terrain.

Haze - Encounter range 2/3 normal
Mist - Encounter range 1/2 normal
Fog - Encounter range as dungeon
Gloom - Low cloud cover reduces visibility to twilight levels.
Murk - Can't see sh*t - visibility d6x10 feet at most.
Miasma - Can't see sh*t - as above, and this air is doing you (*kaf kaf*) no good.

Rain
The rain of the Merelunds is what has been typified as 'lazy rain', as it it doesn't go around when it can go through. This seemingly malignant precipitation revels in ruining rations and bowstrings, slowing travel, lowering morale, and granting the gift of trench foot.

Overcast - "Could be worse."
Showers - "It's worse." 10% chance/day of some unpleasant incident (lamed horse, slipping off track, rotten food, etc.)
Constant drizzle - everyone gets tetchy (-1 morale).
Constant Light - travel speed 2/3 normal. everyone tetchy (-1 morale/Encounter Reaction).
Constant Heavy - travel speed 1/2 normal. everyone gets stroppy (-2 morale/Encounter Reaction).
Torrential - travel an adventure in itself.

Magic that alters the weather cannot improve prevailing conditions in the Merelunds, only make them worse than they would be otherwise.

Inhabitants and Hazards of the Merelunds

The Ullswater Squid

The Ullswater Squid lacks the visceral hatred of boats shared by other giant squid. Tentacles shoot from lake dragging people under, or throwing them about in a playful manner. When bored the creature goes on a wander, tottering about the place on the tips of its tentacles, and causing all sorts of havoc. The squid typically place cows in trees and rip the roof off huts and sheepfolds to get at the delicious humans and lambs inside.

The Ullswater Squid can magically disguise itself by picking up and carrying a sheep around with its two leading tentacles. While it does so most observers will simply disregard the colossal monstrosity and treat its talismanic (and very confused) sheep as an ordinary straying ovine.

Treat as 9HD Giant Squid with the following additional abilities:

moves overland as fast as a running horse
generates an aura of inconspicuousness if it holds a sheep aloft (save vs. spell negates).

The Lake of Swords
A cursed lake that throws swords at people. The first most visitors know of it is when a balde hurled by more-than-mortal force comes winging towards them out of the mists (the lake attacks anyone within range once per round, striking as a 4HD creature for 1d8 damage). Community of crazy-brave sword harvesters from the margins of the Merelunds (identifiable by their fur-covered barrows) make a meagre living provoking the lake and harvesting the swords it hurls, ducking for cover behind large menhirs they've erected in the mists.

Lake Pirates
Lunatics affected by the maddening mists of the Merelunds. A group of pirates who realised that a single lake is an absurdly limited field of operations, and decided that the logical progression was to diversify into overland piracy. The lake pirates ravage the villages of the Merelunds in mighty landships hauled by giant amphibious pirahnas which they disguise under stolen oxhides.

Deathodils
Beautiful bright yellow flowers growing in the most aesthetically pleasing locations.

"...and all at once I happed upon
Aaaaargh! My face!!!"

Rottors
Plague-bearing crimson otters. One cavorts and dances in an apparently friendly manner, the others in the pack maneuvre to ambush.

White Doe of Rylstone
Last survivor of a rebellion against the Mad King cursed to be hunted and slain by the wicked courtiers of the Mad King, only to be endlessly reborn at each full moon. Bestows blessings upon the virtuous.

Egotistical Sublimes
Thin-faced pale-skinned men who wander the Merelunds on the mysterious errands of their master. A race of ego eaters, the sublimes opportunistically leach life and volition from those people foolish enough to do them a good turn.

The Mad King
A tatterdemalion tyrant, terror of all around him. Egotistical in the extreme the Mad King demands that all things in his domain be marked with his crest and holds that getting your head chopped off is a positive thing. The Mad King inhabits a roofless, but richly decorated abbey somewhere in the heart of the Merelunds. Surrounded by scores of cackling and cavorting courtiers, whose emulous madness is matched only by their savagery, the King weaves endless plans of war against surrounding lands to regain "the light that never was, on sea or land". The courtiers of the king swarm across the Merelunds in press-gangs, drafting men into their masters senseless wars and leaving in their wake widows off whose sorrow and gradual wasting diminution their master is rumoured to feed.
(Stats as rakshasa)

The Clouded Queen
Prophetic, weird woman exiled by the Mad King. Her moods appear to reflect (or perhaps create?) the weather of the Merelands. Served/guarded by scores of faery foxes.

The Dreaming King under the Hill
The common folk tell stories of the true lord of the Merelunds who sleeps imprisoned beneath one or other of the cloud-wreathed mountains or icy tarns of this gods-forsaken place. They say that the Mad King is one of his nightmares, which has gone awandering. But then the common people also say that smearing yourself in excrement staves off the murrain...

Merelunds Encounter table

d20

Ullswater Squid
Lake Pirates (as men, pirate)
Sword harvesters (as men, merchant)
Leech herders (as men, nomad)
Yokels (as Morlocks)
Herd Animal (mangy)
NPC party
Land piranha (as giant piranha, 180' land move)
Rottor (as giant weasels)
Deathodil patch (as glue flowers, MF p73)
Toad, giant
Tick, giant
Leeches, giant
Leech Queen (as Spirit Naga, LLAEC p131)
Trull of the Mire (treat as Sea Hag, LLAEC 135)
The White Doe
Courtiers of the Mad King (men, berserks)
Egotistical Sublimes (as Wraiths, immune to turning)
Fae foxes (Wererats appearing as foxes)
Sending of the Sleeping King (treat as Slithering Tracker, LLAEC p136)

Pic Source
Pirates of the Eastern Plains by Tacticangel

Knocking the Thief on the Head, Again

2011-04-08T23:30:00.087+01:00

"Hide in shadows? Find/remove traps? I should cocoa!"

This was partially inspired by the "naked warrior" idea that has been doing the rounds (hat-tip Aeons & Auguries and Mythmere), and partially by Taichara's FF Red Box Hack.

For a while now I've been desirous of killing off the thief in my Labyrinth Lord games. Sure, I like having sneaky, acquisitive reprobates lurking about the place as much as anyone. But having a dedicated sneaky trapspringer just treads on too many toes for my liking. It kind of leaves the demi-humans as walking detection arrays that *ping* potential hazards, but then sit back to let the skinny human with no obvious career skills deal with them.

In my ideal (game)world everyone from the fighter to the wizard to the grotty little halfling would be taking their turn climbing sheer walls, lunging from the shadows and/or trying to unpick that lock as the walls closed in. Sure, characters would still have their own specialities, but there wouldn't be a general attitude of "send in the canary" as soon as the party bumped into a location where Trap come up on the random stocking table.

That said the light-armed, Dex-focused combatant niche in D&D is a flavourful one. I'm sure you can name as many cool fantasy thieves as I can, and - let's be honest - in D&D terms any character played by Errol Flynn or Harrison Ford was a thief.

But (and here we leave the blahblah behind) why not get rid of that jobsworth-ish little "Can't do that. Niche-protection innit squire..." oik and make 'fighting in frilly shirt' a function of the fighter class?

Check out the thief write up from the Labyrinth Lord book:

"...thieves cannot wear armor heavier than leather, and they cannot use shields. They have a need for using diverse weapons, and are able to use any kind."
-- LL, p12

Once you get away from the strict "fighter = knight in shining armour" archetype that actually sounds pretty fighterly to me. Everything from Celtic warriors to Shaolin monks to Zulu warriors can fit into the light-armoured fighter archetype.

Knock off the thief and your 'man who pushes sharp objects into people' can suit up as either:

a) the classic heavily-armoured lumbering tank, or
b) a deft nuisance in light armour with a rapier and a winning smile.

The game maths seems (based on my back-of-an-envelope calculation) to stay roughly in balance if you take certain factors and edge cases into account:

Backstab
Limit this to "while in light armour" only. Deft fencing moves and opportunistic shankings aren't really possible in 40-60lbs of ironmongery.

Armour Class Disparities
Level 1 str fighter = chainmail, shield, Dex 13 = AC 3
Level 1 dex fighter = leather, Dex 16 = AC 5

Level 10 str fighter = plate +2, shield +3, Dex 13 (+1) = AC -5
Level 10 dex fighter = leather +3, Dex 16 (+2) = AC 2

Note: these raw numbers are exclusive of any wacky gear the character may be packing (like cloaks of [displacement/the mountebank/shadows], rings of invisibility, oils of etherealness, etc.)

So over the course of his adventuring career Captain Tightpants has fallen a bit behind Sir Slashstab in the "Agh! Not the face!" stakes. How about allowing the light-armoured fighter a class-ability bonus to AC?

"I'm Not Wearing Any Pants!"-jutsu
Light armoured fighters gain a non-magical bonus to their AC based on their level. From whence does this bonus derive? Same place as the incidental music, the perfectly tailored costumes and the energy used to power all the wizard's FX. :p

1-3 +1
4-6 +2
7-9 +3
10+ +4

This per-level AC bonus idea was introduced to reduce the likelihood of the lightly-armoured Dex-fighter bogarting all the bracers of armour and cloaks/rings of protection the party might happen across. The implementation was ripped off partly from the BECMI Mystic, partly from the much-maligned 3E Swashbuckler class (which actually works pretty well in Classic D&D).

Mesh with the LotFP-derived thiefless dnd skill rules (2 dots/level (2/level after first if front-loaded demi-human), divided as the player sees fit), or just ability checks, for great simplification justice.

Read language/use scroll?
Throw those in as another Xin6 skill option if you like. Possibly with a minimum level requirement. If it's good enough for Red Kane and the Grey Mouser...

-----

Semi-New Labyrinth Lord class

Swashbuckler
(or Barbarian, or Shaolin Monk, or Action Archaeologist, or Warrior Nudist of the Cult of Vallejo, or...)
Requirements: None
Prime Req.: DEX
Hit Dice: 1d8
Weapons: Any
Armour: Leather only, no shield.
Attack: as Fighter
Saves: as Fighter (or Thief, it really makes no odds...)
Advancement: as Fighter

Special Abilities:

Backstab (as LL Thief class, requirements as SRD Rogue Sneak Attack ability)
AC bonus (+1/3 levels, non-magical)
Cleaving Strikes - drop enemy, attack again (as Dave Arneson's house rule)
Some sort of acrobatic antics ability. I'm thinking reduced difficulty penalties to Dex checks or something. Something better than this derptastic mess..

I'm not sure whether Cleaving Strikes and Backstab should stack. My sense of good taste say no, but my Ninja Scroll-loving inner munchkin says yes.

-----

Yeah, yeah. Reinventing the wheel again. A simple AC tweak would do all this and more. S+W and Carcosa sit there saying "Oh hi. What kept you?" Etc.

Pic Source
Errol Flynn as Captain Blood (F17/T10/Cl8 my Aunt Fanny!) from Devilish Pictures blog

AtoZ April - G is for Geometry

2011-04-08T12:00:00.006+01:00

"Fleeing? Fleeing!"

"There's a ghost with a conscience, a bridge full of nonsense.
(incoherent mumbling) Say that again and I'll generalise you!"
-- Dammaki Half-a-Man*

* with apologies to HMHB

Deep in the Vaults are places where the structure of the world itself breaks down. Lacunae in the ordered universe with which only the greediest and most power-hungry would dare tinker. Hushed voices in the bars and dives of Adburg speak of friends and allies lost to such twisted loci as Zeno's Dollhouse, the Chambers of Devouring Night, or the Hall of Blind Windows. Among these places - fearsome even to the jaded treasure seekers who trawl the underworld in search of power and wealth - is ranked the enigmatic Euclidrome.

The aftermath of an abortive attempt to fully integrate the timeless purity of the Astral Realm with the material world, the Euclidrome is a profoundly alien space unsuited for normal human life. It is a place where the Ideal intrudes into the grubby, violent, compromised lives of adventurers, with often irrevocable consequences.

The area of the Vaults around the entrance to the Euclidrome is haunted by a tormented, grieving spirit that attempts to warn people away from the horrors therein. The very presence of this roving spirit gradually morphs its environs from the customary 'monstrous Gothic' of the Vaults into a sleek minimalist aesthetic in smooth and shining white. General rule: if Kevin McLeod would rhapsodise over the area: run away!

The entrance to the Euclidrome proper appears to be a tunnel opening out onto a narrow, rail-less bridge spanning a fathomless chasm (Oooh, Jungian!). The chasm is not a physical space, more a disruption in ordered reality. As such the bridge is infested with gaps, illusions, hallucinatory terrain and distance distortion effects (q.v. spells of the same name in LLAEC). Falling off the bridge drops the poor sucker out of the created world and into the Void Between, likely unprotected, and with their warm, life-filled body glowing like a flare in the hungry darkness. "Bye bye."

Beyond the chasm the prevailing 'monstrous Gothic' masonry of the Vaults is replaced by a smooth white minimalism in all things. Even visitors find themselves becoming sleeker, glossier and more 'airbrushed'. The largely interchangable chambers (the walls of which seem to repel, absorb or otherwise erase directional markings left upon then) each contain a single unique abstract sculpture on a pedastal. The sculptures gradually morph from complex to simple forms and back again over time. What exactly these things do, and whether they can be removed from the Euclidrome, is entirely at the GM's option.

As one travels deeper into the Euclidrome things become ever more abstracted. Unique objects lose their uniqueness and all things are gradually simplified to their platonic forms. The evenly-spaced blue lines that underlie the world become more apparent. Impossible objects and solidified concepts can be found scattered about like disregarded toys and seemingly surruptitious movement can occasionally be seen out of the corner of one's eye.

Rumour has it that those who find the centre of the Euclidrome are abstracted away entirely and irrevocably.

Intruding on Perfection

The Euclidrome is a soft place where the Astral Realm intrudes on the Material plane. Upon entering the Euclidrome the very laws that govern the world become simplified and idealised. In game terms this means pulling out your copy of OD&D and utilising the rules therein for the duration. ;)

All weapon damage is reduced to d6 damage. Yep, this boosts daggers, darts and the like.
Bonuses from stats are limited to +1 max.
Hit advances per the table on p19 of M+M (similar to the LL hit tables).
All class abilities not listed in Men and Magic are off limits for the duration.
Casters are limited to spells from the OD&D Men And Magic lists.

To some (e.g. players and GMs of Swords and Wizardry White Box) this may not be a big deal. But I use LL with added -AECisms and a bunch of magpied house rules thrown in. As you might imagine, there were tears before bedtime. ;)

Continue deeper into the area and characters will be gradually abstracted away. As I previously wrote in connection with the Astral Realm:

...long-term visitors may find themselves slowly losing their individuality (keepsakes, memories, quirks of character, etc.) and becoming ever more notional versions of themselves over time.

Attempts to interfere with the warped space at the centre of the Euclidrome without protection of extreme puissance will result in characters being abstracted away entirely and irrevocably. A wish might save you, but restoring a character from abstraction is otherwise all but impossible. It's like trying to restore a picture from a low-resolution, VGA-colour copy: the original data is so degraded there's very little left to restore.

I'm sure that analogy will be of some comfort to the players as they roll 3d6 in order.

Inhabitants of the Euclidrome

Ghost with a Conscience
Sole survivor of the event that created the Eudlidrome.Treat as ghost (LLAEC, p127). It will attempt to use its fear effect and magic jar ability to drive interlopers away from the area without killing them if possible. If defeated through magic or dismissed by clerical turning the ghost will return to its protective role in 1d6 days. It will continue to return so long as the effect maintaining the Euclidrome endures.

Geometric People
Vestiges of the original experimenters who wanted to integrate the Ideal Realm of the Astral with the material world. Undifferentiated, interchangeable and really abstract, the geometric people tend to blur into their environment when not carefully observed. They are opportunistic scavengers which lure interlopers into ambushes in hope of stealing their 'real-ness'.

Stats: as Wights under a permanent duo-dimension effect (see LLAEC). Geometric people seek to steal life energy (1 level per hit), attempt to flee the Euclidrome across the chasm and re-enter the mundane world. Thus far there is no record of any succeeding.

Others
Few other creatures are unable to survive the unusual conditions of the Euclidrome for any length of time. Explorers may encounter some strangely distorted phase tigers, blink dogs and other creatures capable of existing in several planes simultaneously (the reports of survivors typify these unfortunate beings as "sketchy").

JLCC

Treasures of the Euclidrome
Why the hell would anyone enter this deathtrap? Well, where do you think all that highly magical, supremely lucrative reified stuff (like liquid time) comes from? This place should be paydirt for wizards interested in extra-dimensional spaces, planar travel and the like.

Roll (almost) All The Dice: Euclidrome Sculpture Interaction Generator

[error in the RATD:ESIG - the d8 is maligned as being non-Platonic while the d10 gets a pass. I'll settle his snidey decima-faced hash!]

Pic Source
Geometric People from Ptak Science Books blog

AtoZ April - F is for Fisticuffs

2011-04-07T12:00:00.011+01:00

Day 6, and F is also for "feeble effort on Weds there. Try harder".

"Come on you! Fight like a squamous tentacled man-thing!"

Living as they do Hobbesian lives in a world of monsters, magic and insane godlings, the people of the Wilds have a much more casual attitude to interpersonal violence than do we pansified cubicle mice of the 21st century West. The 'civilised' societies of the Wilds exist in a barely restrained state of violent semi-anarchy at the best of times. Even in the big cities it's perfectly acceptable to call someone out for a fight, either over a point of principle, or to establish superiority in a non-lethal manner, or just to pass the time if bored.

However, in order to prevent people being killed left, right and centre over inconsequentials, a simple fight etiquette has evolved. This etiquette is understood and adhered to by most intelligent, non-inimical races. So a hobgoblin or ogre will understand (and may respond in kind) if you put up your dooks; but a manticore, troglodyte, brain flayer or memory fish will just shrug at your antics and eat/enslave you. Cave pugil.

The commonly understood "Marksburg Rules" run thus:

One-on-one. First come, first served.
No weapons.
No magic.
It ends when he cries uncle or passes out.

A lot of the non-human races consider surrender in a fistfight to be tantamount to agreement to get in the cooking pot, or worse, the Orcish pleasure barrel.

Breaching these rules can do anything from escalate the fight to an outright brawl or full-on melee, or, in especially egregious breaches of the rules, to extended mutual raiding and skirmishing. So SRS BZNZ.

There are a few wrinkles to the simple code that stop people from taking up all your time with pointless brawls in the street. Wealth and status are, as in all things, a major factor, as is profession:

If he's of markedly higher status or level than you (see Fame article) then he's perfectly entitled to have his man (henchman, hired thug, pet fighting ape) beat you to a pulp for wasting his time.
"Do you know who I am sonny? You can't even stand up to my valet; what chance do you think you'd have against me?"
If he's of markedly lower status or level than you, then you look like a fool and a bully for calling him out instead of just sending your man to beat him to a pulp. Expect snide comments from people you meet, and sarcastic songs about "the man who took a sledge to crush an egg" to make the rounds.
Constantly calling people out for little or no reason will get you a reputation as a "vexatious pugilist". People like that are surprisingly prone to having the roof of their house catch fire in the middle of the night...

Also taken into consideration in the "who gets to punch who in the face" decision-making process are profession, sex and caste:

It's not done to call out members of the local Watch. An assault on someone wearing the local lord's colour is lese majeste, and the Powers That Be tend to look dimly on such things. As in 'heads on pikes' dimly.
If he's a wizard or priest, then you're a damn fool! Everyone knows these guys think mortal rules don't apply to them. What, you like the idea of life as a toad/pillar of salt?
If you're a wizard or priest, then you're a damn fool! Generations of your predecessors have spent their lives making the pointy hat/mitre a symbol of "touch it not" sacrosanctity. You have better things to do than grub in the gutter with scruffy plebians.
No women, no kids. Amazons are a source of endless disputation, havering, logic-chopping and categorical tip-toeing here.
No hitting beggars, cripples, weaklings, halfwits, slaves and halflings. Beating up on someone unable to fight back is just bad form. Beating up on a Halfling ditto, and its unhygenic to boot.

Some adventurers make it a point of pride to do things the hard way in their professional capacity. More than one would-be hero has met his end by drunkenly bragging that he'll "...beat [such-and-such a creature] to within an inch of it's life with my bare hands...". Most such braggarts end up dead and flattened/eaten/cremated for their bravado, but the renown to be garnered from dragging a hog-tied, punch-drunk monster back to town (and the big stacks of cash to be made selling it off alive) mean that a crazy-brave few continue to chance their arms against the horrors of the Wilds.

-----

Rules for Punchan Peeps dans la mush

I never got into the two pages of (Boot Hill-derived?) pummelling, grappling and overbearing rules in the 1E DMG, or the three pages of same in the BECMI RC. And don’t even ask about the swamp of needless complexity that was the 3E grappling rules. For me they were all too much wordswordswords, and not enough "I whack 'im!"

For the past while now I’ve used Sham's WPG? grappling rules for OD&D, taking great delight in their ease and lightness. Each side rolls 2d6 (adding mods for Str, level/HD, dagger, magic, and additional attackers). High roll wins. Boxcars wins doubleplusgood. Simple.

The above, or more commonly the LL unarmed combat rules (reproduced below in full), are about the limit of what I can stand.

Unarmed Combat
Unarmed combat is the same as melee combat, but all damage is 1-2+Str modifiers.

My Modifications to LL Unarmed Combat

This subsystem can be used to model grappling or strangulation (and any other "I wanna get my hands dirty..." kinky sh*t styles of fighting) as well as representing the manly art of boxing.

Increase unarmed damage to 1d4+Str per strike.
Only 1/4 of damage taken from unarmed strikes is actual hp damage, the remainder is just bruising.*
When 100% of damage is taken the excess divided over the starting hp score and used as a percentage chance per round that the target will fall unconscious when next struck**
If a person passes out, you can elect to beat them to death; but it takes some kind of vile psycho to do that...

* Bruising damage is healed by a night's rest. You're "gonna be sore in the mornin'" (pace Hellboy), but that's it.
** per the AD&D rules for subduing dragons. So, if a person has taken 150% their starting hp in unarmed damaged they've a 50% chance of going down. When they do they'll have taken (150%/4 =) 38% of their hp in actual damage.

[Yeah, the rules will likely lead to long, drawn out fights. But unless you have total mastery of the situation that's what trying to beat a person unconscious is like; they fight back. You might want to use morale rules to indicate will to continue a fight and/or model glass-jawed loudmouths who crumple at the first blow.]

Modification: I use an EPT-derived Additional Damage Dice from HD chart IMG. In unarmed combat extra dice added are d4. This prevents a solitary 1HD goblin from ducking-and-weaving a Superhero-type to a standstill so easily.

-----

JLCC

Fighting Apes of the Wilds

Rich, high-status people usually have bodyguards to deal with challenges from low-status oiks, but a recent fashion is to have trained fighting apes as champions. As people are only supposed to fight their social equals in effect a noble who answers your challenge by calling for his fighting ape is saying - in no uncertain terms - that he doesn’t consider you a civilised being, let alone an equal. The custom of dressing the fighting ape in an parody of the challengers' preferred garb is just adding insult to injury.

These intelligent, well-disciplined animals (obeying orders as well as smart dogs) can be purchased fully trained from the beast pens of the animal trainers in most major cities of the Wilds.

Boxing Chimp - treat as Higher Baboon (200gp)
Fighting Great Ape - treat as Albino Ape (500gp)

Attack with unarmed combat strikes (25% real damage). Treat as having +3 Str bonus to damage.
Drawing a weapon on one will result in either cowering surrender (25% chance small ape, 50% large ape) or berserk assault (small: 75%, large: 50%) for full damage.

The finest trainer of fighting apes is the grim-faced, rye-soused Nagai Plainsman Oliph Eddwob. A former adventurer who tired of a nameless, drifting life scraping after a few silvers, Oliph can usually be found drowning his (unexpressed) sorrows in the company of his favourite red ape Leith.

Sir Oran Haut Ton (known to his intimates as Pongo) is a former fighting ape raised to the nobility by the whimsical will of the Apostarch of Netesh. The chivalrous Sir Oran is held as a model of aristocratic dignity; grave of countenance, abstemious in habit and unimpeachable in his discretion.

Pic Source
Cthulhu vs the Flying Nun by Kelly 'Coelasquid' Turnbull

AtoZ April - E is for Equinox

2011-04-06T12:00:00.003+01:00

Winter Solstice is the time of darkness and encroaching death (see "use it or lose it" rule). Bar the windows, pile high the fires and all that...
Summer Solstice is the time of light and excessive growth. Yes, the light of the daystar the source of all life, but it also kills you through dehydration and gives you cancer. Why? Because it hates you.

What then are the equinoxes? In a word: Balance. Equal parts light and dark. Not too hot; not too cold. The dead aren't tearing out of their tombs hoping to chow down on the great-grandkids; the ankhegs aren't running wild in the fields and the old dears aren't keeling over in the heat. The equinoxes are a time for man and all his works.

Vernal equinox is (traditionally) when the shipping, adventuring and campaigning season traditionally start. Everyone shakes off the langour of winter, kisses the wife and pats the livestock (or vice versa), and heads out anew to make their mark on the world.
Autumnal equinox is when harvest is taken in, when taxes and debts are settled and, traditionally, when the livestock is butchered for the long winter ahead. Some isolated northern tribes bury their wives and children under the first hard snows for the winter.

All this overlapping activity at a symbolically significant time means adventure!

Of course, in the crapsack, gnawed-at-the-edges, plaything-of-idiot-godlings world of the Wilds (where 'reified' isn't just a six-buck word; it's a survival hazard), it's never entirely that simple. Balance implies an inherent tension, which can be tilted in one way or another really easily. So the equinoxes are when all the Chaotic big bads schedule for their crazy power-garnering, world-wrecking schemes to come to fruition, revelling in the irony of using a time of balance as the power source of their plans. So, yeah. Hectic.

10 Equinoctal WTFs?

d10

"...the charioteer of the sun/winter moon is [held prisoner/AWOL/drunk/sulking/up for retirement]. We need someone to climb the Mountains of Dawn and volunteer as a replacement."
"...King Winter is refusing to relinquish his throne in the Temple of the Seasons, as usual. Queen Summer is throwing a snit over it, as usual. We're going to need a bunch of mugs to straighten them out, again."
"...so it looks like we're going to have to go straight from spring to autumn for tax purposes. No summer adventuring season this year I'm afraid [link to suggestion]."
"...the particoloured priests of the Twins are threatening to hold the equinox hostage this year. You can imagine the loss of public confidence such ontological terrorism will cause if it's allowed to continue. Try and resolve it without a sectarian massacre."
"...in accordance with the prophecy I, and I alone, will enact the Rite to bring about The Summer Unending/The Fumbulwinter!"
"...of course, the Five Worlds are especially close at such a cosmologically significant time. An excellent time to change the spirit of the age for one more congenial (?)."
"...whole new mirror areas of the Vaults open up at the equinox. Only for a limited time, mind you."
"...flip this coin. Gold on one side; silver the other. Such a pretty thing. Where could be the harm?"
"...blood for the gods! Blood alone makes the crops grow/keeps the frost wolves at bay!"
"...then, at the height of the spring festival parade, the Galvanic Blood Engine will fire, tearing a rift to the Demon Realms. I /hate/ parades."

JLCC

Skunk-horse
(aka Mustinks, rouncids, palfreeks, pongys)

Horizontally-streaked wild horses which appear similar to zebras. That is until you get downwind of them. At that point the unbelievably foul reek of these creatures assaults the nose, irritating the muscous membranes and causing eyes to water uncontrollably. Toxic stink discourages predators, makes area noxious enough to sicken or kill other livestock over extended period. Troglodytes don't mind it.

Treat as normal wild horse which exudes a constant stinking cloud effect (LLAEC, p77)?

[Surprisingly there's no Skunk in the LL/-AEC/MF bestiary, or in the otherwise intimidatingly comprehensive OSRIC. The Companion Expansion (available from barrataria.com) has both normal and giant skunks listed.]

Pic Source
Equinox Celebration 3D Tarot Set by Amir Bey from New Times Holler

AtoZ April - D is for Destiny

2011-04-05T12:00:00.005+01:00

Day 4, and there is no fate but what we make ...unless there is.

Charlatans will claim that for silver they can predict your fortune in love; wizards claim to see the future in their shewstones and scrying pools; the votaries of the gods and demon lords claim that their patrons alone shape the destinies of men. Beyond predictions so vague as to be truisms, so specific as to be useless, or so contrived as to be nonsensical, all are liars.

In the Five Worlds there is no destiny other than what people make for themselves. Of course, as the wise say:

"There is an exception to every rule (including this one)."

"You know how a sundial or waterclock tells you what time it is? Well, them Deus Tines, they tell time what it is. No? Well can you tell me what time is?"
-- Dammaki Half-a-Man, village idiot or visionary seer (opinion is divided) of Adburg

Alone in the desolation of the Nagai Plains stand the Deus Tines: five gigantic metallic spikes furlongs high set in a straight line, but curving at a slight angle from the vertical like upraised tusks. Massive, starkly undecorated and seemingly unaffected by mortal or godly power, these ranked monoliths act as the gnomon of a vastly complex collection of interlocking solar calendars erected around their base.

Several of the shadows cast by the Deus Tines do not appear to conform to the movement of the sun of Nagoh. Crypto-astrologers of the Wilds theorize (endlessly, and with soporific detail) that these shadows are the echoes or conjoined twins of shadows cast by the solar luminaries of Nagoh's sister worlds. None have yet offered a plausible explanation for what exactly is casting the shadow which (supposedly) represents the sunless realm of Ghoan.

The solar intersections of the shadows on the multifarious sigils and symbols carved and erected across the Field of Calendars are supposedly the entire plan for the Five Worlds and all that is attached to them. Popular legend has it that anyone who can interpret the sigils correctly, and modify the shadows cast (even by an expedient as simple as standing on the dial, or placing a stone in the correct place) a means of predicting or modifying the future, or even of subverting that which has already past.

The skuzzy, improvised settlement which has grown up beyond the northern (shadowed) side of the Deus Tines is home to numerous religious sects and ideocults which fight ongoing ideological skirmishes over the right to place markers at - or stand in - certain shadows during crypto-astrologically significant times; over the interpretation of the sigils; over whether knowledge of the future by other than the gods is hubristic and dangerous; and over whether the shadows cast by the Deus Tines actively shape, or merely express in symbolic fashion, the current state and intended future of the Five Worlds. As is so often the case, the more esoteric and abstruse the conjecture; the more vicious the fighting.

Ideocults and Idiot Sects of Shadowside
(representative sample only. Subject to schism, revolt, doctrinal change and/or self-immolation without warning ...or apparent logic)

d12

Chronominceurs - badly-dressed wannabe time wizards who just won't shut up. Talk a good fight, but that's it. The vast majority of their 'time relics' have drearily mundane origins.
The Brethren of the Unbeheld - cult who believe their god has been imprisoned/unmade in a fold in time; seek to liberate/recreate him. Obvious lunatics, but their leaders get spells from somewhere. Rivals of #6.
Retrogressivists - Seek to travel back to a mythical Golden Age; either of the past, or of their own devising; they seem unsure which. Hate #4 like poison.
Blessed Enactors of the Restoration - Seek to turn time back to the mythical Golden Age. Vague over how this will affect the passage of time or causality in the past/present/future. Get very angry if you point out that there's no historical record of them succeeding in their endeavour... Hate #3 like poison.
Redeemers of the Lost - seek to return dead loved ones (carried like relics in urns, coffins, shrouds, etc) to life. A little too bright-eyed and keen for most people.
The Preceptors of Fate - Seek to prevent all interference with the Deus Tines in favour of study and measurement. Especially hate #5, have surprisingly good relations with #10...
The Tinebenders - believe their curious rites gradually reshape the Deus Tines, thus restructuring the fate of the world in their favour. Hate #6.
The Bentines - People apparently adrift from their 'proper' time and place. Communicate in gnomic non-sequiturs. Sometimes display uncanny predictive abilities, at other times just seem helpless goons. Dislike #2 ...sometimes.
Rhonastokers - Acolytes of their living prophet Rhonastok, an orange-faced Hobgoblin who they claim invented time when he came to Nagoh from a distant world. Prone to stoning heretics, dissenters, unbelievers, passing animals, and so on. Seem casually unaffected by the intermittent presence of ghostly conjurings from their addled imaginations... #1 put them on edge.
Horologeisten - Apostate monks who consider the Deus Tines nothing but a dangerous distraction from the contemplation of True Time. Appear to mimic the abilities of phase tigers. Hate #9, sundials and waterclocks with a cold passion.
Eschatists - Nihilists who want it over with. All of it. Forever. Study the Deus Tines to find the secret of bringing about the eschaton as soon as possible. Surprisingly cheerful when off the clock. Hate #12.
Covey of the Jade Hag - Seek to bring about the triumph of Law by establishing the Primacy of Universal Time (yeah, they pronounce the caps) over the Five Worlds. Really mean, with a nasty habit of immolating captured heretics to death under large solar lenses. Really annoyed by #8.

Treat the ideocults and sectaries as nomads or berserks led by all sorts of unusual leaders. Use the NPC Reaction Table and the Castle Encounter Tables individually for each group to see how they react to any intrusion by nosey PCs into 'their' patch.

JOESKY'S LAW Compliance Content:

Liquid Time [Magic Item - Potion/Artefact]
A transparent glutinous fluid with a slight rainbow tinge at its edges. Very difficult to sever into pieces (some speculate that all samples of liquid time are just aspects or temporal 'shapshots' of a unity). Very, very difficult to store; it tends to flow to a when that the container wasn't there. Nearly priceless to people who know what they're doing with it. Insanely dangerous to those who don't.

[Want a truly universal alkahest? Want a material component for a resurrection effect, or a time machine, or a truly unbreakable prison? Want an "I wish none of this had happened" undo button? Want to make the DM cry by putting it in the Universal Combiner? You get the idea.]

AtoZ April - C is for Courtesy

2011-04-04T12:00:00.003+01:00

Day 3 and "Dahling, all this herd-like behaviour is simply too, too dreary." ;)

Veriest byword for the niceties of polite behaviour is Kuartsey, mist-shrouded Island of the Faceless King. The ever-changing and cryptic edicts of this unspeaking, always-hooded autocrat are relayed to his adoring subjects by a decennial succession of symbolic brides. Each of these women - mysterious in origin, although speculation is universally scurrilous - is an absurdly over-painted harlot-queen who spends much of her time lolling in a drugged stupor.

Around these last pathetic vestiges of an ancient and once-proud dynasty orbit the ever-shifting cliques and circles of the Chateau d'Kuartsey; a veritable finishing school of spite, back-biting, political infighting and sybaritic self-indulgence. In accordance with a system of absurdly elaborate treaties and ties of honour dating back centuries many lords of the Wilds send their heirs-apparent out to Kuartsey. Partially this is to put some polish on their manners; partially so randy young bucks can sow their oats elsewhere than among the servants at home; and partially so that the various hotspurs and heiresses can get to know (and cordially despise) one another in a neutral environment.

The squat and universally short-sighted inhabitants of the Isle see these visiting nobles and gaggles of superannuated former harlot-queens as something between a recurrent plague and/or a seasonal windfall. The wittily vicious antics of the lordlings are applauded, abetted and even emulated by the locals, albeit as a way of emptying the fat purses of the visitors more rapidly. The ever-shifting array of young dumb rich kids makes the island a market for some pretty outlandish goods and services.

Thanks to the half-earned, half-mythic reputation of their homeland as a cradle of exquisitely refined manners and sophisticated etiquette Kuartseyan expatriates are favoured as arbiters of taste in mainland courts. More than one absurdly unsuited islander has found himself hired as masters of revels purely on the strength of his nationality. ("But I'm just a fisherman. What do I know about the relative status, ritual dress or place in correct precedence of the second cousin of a Grand Duke. I hate all this la-di-da stuff. I just want to go home!")

JOESKY'S LAW Compliance Content:

Random Encounters at the Chateau d'Kuartsey

d20    (In order of increasing precedence)
1-3    Put-upon local minding own business - 0-level NPC, 10% classed character
4-6    Busy messenger/errand boy seeking [absurd requirement] - 0-level NPC
7-8    Crier proclaiming new edict (roll on RATD: Court Fad of the Day)
9-10    Discrete gentleman (25% chance incognito princling on their way to [GM decides])
11-12    Ceremonial procession in honour of the Faceless King - 3d6 dervishes
13-14    Roistering aristocrats - as NPC party
15    Princeling in full pomp - classed character, 1d6 levels + 1d6 hangers-on/toadies/bodyguards
17-18    Litter of dowager harlot-queen ("Bring that supple young man over here.")
19    Bong-litter of the current harlot-queen ("[lunatic jabbering of choice]")
20    The Holy Palanquin of the Faceless King ("Make Way!")

Bonus Content:

What's de rigueur among the fops, toadies and talentless-shits-with-an-ancestor today?

Roll All the Dice: Court Fad of the Day

Yes, this particular RATD can turn up some seemingly nonsensical results. But then a time-specific blindness to absurdity is the very essence of fashion.

Pic Source
Palanquin of the Strangled Thane by Keith Thompson

AtoZ April - B is for Broth

2011-04-02T12:00:00.023+01:00

Day 2 of the challenge. The distant cries of "Tekelili! A... B... C..." grow ever louder and more annoying...

B is for Broth

Some non-typical stuff. I did think of doing a random Goblin Stew table, or a soup golem, or riffing on the stone soup fairy tale. But nah...

Broth of Oblivion
Deep in the Vaults of Nagoh, although no one has reliably established exactly how deep, lies a long-deserted and shunned antechamber to the sealed area known as the Hundred-Fold Hells of Expiation.

The walls of this large galleried chamber are decorated with elaborate bas-reliefs in a stylised, almost Egyptian, artistic style. They appear to show the funerary practises of a long-forgotten society or sect.

The dominating features of the chamber are two-fold. The first is an everfull font (or possibly a turreen) of oily fluid held aloft by massively sculpted inhuman figures. The second is a monstrous stone wheel mounted vertically on a raised dais. Verdigrised bronze shackles are attached to the wheel, which spins as if well-oiled at even the lightest touch.

"Sure, I'll take a drink. What could possibly go wrong..."

Broth of Oblivion - drinking it wipes memory (as feeblemind spell).
Wheel of Transmigration - If a dead, undead or feebleminded creature is strapped into the wheel: treat as reincarnate spell. If used by a living, non-feebleminded creature: 25% chance of death (along with horrible screaming, torn flesh and smoking eye-sockets), 50% chance lasting insanity (treat as permanent confusion effect), 25% chance of recieving some distorted vision from a previous or future life.

[Yeah. Its basically a Raggian Green Devil Face based on a Toaist myth]

The Gloop Sea

Far away in the southernmost stony deserts of the Wilds lies the strange result of an ancient magical accident committed by ancient twin sorcerers remembered in folklore as The Myanicux. It is believed the Myanicux intended to banish hunger from the world forever; instead they destroyed both their own intertwined towers and ultimately their entire homeland, all of which now lie buried beneath their infamous gooey legacy. The lasting symbol of their ancient error is a broad expanse of gloopy water heavily polluted with decomposing organic material.

To those rare creatures able to stomach its disease-infested, peculiar-smelling waters the Gloop Sea is a rich source of nourishment. Warped leviathans and schools of what may once have been either fish (or possibly land-bound herd animals) swim in its nutritious depths, perpetually feeding and growing, they in their turn are perpetually fed upon by exotic micro-ecologies of lesser entities.

The dour half-human race known as the Gloopsiders (less familiarly known as Myanicuxii or as The Expectant Apostles of the Egg) eke out a scanty living harvesting the shallows of this strange sea. Sexes are strictly segregated in dress and social role. The womenfolk flatly refuse to speak to outsiders, and spend their days paddling in clumsy round-hulled scows to harvest the bizarre bounty of the shoreline reefs and shoals. The whistles and hoots they use to communicate between boats are often wafted ashore by the fitful breezes of the Gloop Sea. The men of the tribes remain ashore, variously carving their strange statues, dragging the excess of their women’s catches to the nearest trading post, or (when all the women are absent) sitting about engaged in those universal masculine pastimes: drinking, gambling and bragging.

Gloopsider women braving the gloilpy tides and gurgling eddies of the Gloop Sea

The Gloopsiders pray unceasingly for a prophesied event they call The Descent of the Cosmic Egg. Their fatalistic religion holds that this event will herald first the draining away of the Gloop Sea and then, in the subsequent Great Scouring, the wiping away and consumption of all unrighteous (i.e. non-Gloopsider) life. So thankless are their lives that many Gloopsiders look forward to this coming apocalypse with a morbid avidity, carving worryingly elaborate statuary of their personal visions of the long-anticipated horrible deaths of everyone else.

Natural Hazards of the Gloop Sea

Quite apart from the traditional hazards to navigation (storms, tides, rocks, etc.) and the elaborate ecosystem of unique diseases, parasites, macro-protozoans (oozes) and bizarre aquatic lifeforms that have evolved in this ideal - well, ideal for them – environment, the Gloop Sea has its own strange tides and hazards to navigation.

"Flub" - methane bubbles erupt from deep beneath the surface. Gas effect, danger of explosion. 50% chance gas has a strange effect on normal life (causing "Marie Celeste" syndrome or the like)
"Bloilp" - Single large bubble (1d6x5ft diameter) of pressurised gas erupts 0-90ft from the travellers. May rock or tip small boats.
"Pwook" - The implosion of a vast bubble, or possibly just some random tidal effect, cause vicious waves to lash the area. Ships may be capsized; shore side settlement may find themselves afflicted by tsunami of gloop.
"Scluck" - Sargasso of organic matter. Rate of travel slowed substantially.
"Slurp!" - whirlpool caused by the feeding of one of the larger, deeper-swimming natives. Causes hull Point damage, may suck down unlucky vessels.
"Pfuuuurb" - parting of the Gloop Sea. Massive upheavals in the depths open a deep rift in the surface of the water. This endures for 1d6 hours and has a 50% chance of revealing some long-inundated ruin, vehicle or other find.

Pic Sources
Silver porringer from chestofbooks.com
The Jumblies from Project Guttenburg

Vornheim City Kit - I Has It

2011-04-01T14:10:00.016+01:00

Well, the PDF at least. The Finns doing the hard copy layout are probably still busy failing their San checks.

Those who do not speak fluent Blithering Echo-Chamber Idiot-ese may be wondering exactly what am I raving about now. Why, the Vornheim: the Complete City Kit by Zak S[-mith/-abbath].

First Impressions

Remember HOL? Remember the mad layout, the bizarrely evocative art and characterful writing with all those demented ideas poking out at odd angles?

Yeah.

Now cross all that you loved about HOL* with the aesthetic sense that gave us stuff like the Skrath, Road of Knives (sample pic: The Clairvoyant Naga Queen Is Shocked by the Incompetence of Her Subordinates) and Illustrations for Every Page of Gravity's Rainbow.

Yeah.

(Chris nods and grins like Alan Tudyk threatening to fong someone in Knights Tale.)

* Advisory: If you did not love HOL then you have no soul!

Visual Sample: The Contents Page

I chose the contents page so as to give 1) an impression of the layout and 2) a sense of the content, but without giving away on the theftoweb substantial chunks of material that Zak S[-mith/-abbath] created with honest toil.

Format

64 pages, 6" x 8.4"
B+W art throughout. Colour cover and map. No graph paper or hex-grid in sight.
PDF contains download link to additional digital content.

As you can see from the pic above Vornheim is laid out in a two-column format with tight margins and heavy black page borders. You definitely get your money's worth in ink. Each page has the page number and title in the outside margin in big blocky no-farting-about white lettering you can read from across the room. Sub-sections within pages are denoted by para breaks and boldface headers.Table entries alternate white and grey backgrounds.

A random selection of Vornish oddments

All cakes must be tasted by the oldest person in the room first, or else they will taste like fish. Except fishcakes, which will taste like rye.
-- p10, Superstitions of Vornheim

Unsettling Toad
This small toad is so disturbing to look at that its victims go blind. It cannot speak but can sing with the voice of a young girl.
-- p21, Immortal Zoo of Ping Feng

Oblong Rug
(para 3 of 3)
Continued examination of the rug after that will result in a rupture in space/time with catastrophically bizarre consequences, causing thorough and permanent alterations to the character and campaign. (GM should decide what these are, since s/he will likely have to deal with them for many sessions to come.)
-- p28, Library of Zorlac

SP: Surviving in Vornheim. Rule #1, 3, 32 & 59: Do not get drunk, tipsy, trip on drugs, or alter your perception in any way. You could be assaulted at any time by anything.
Also, avoid speaking to anyone if you do find yourself drunk, tipsy, tripping on drugs or altering your perception in any way.
-- p33, Player Commentaries

13: Trial by pie: The defendant and prosecutor have 24 hours to prepare as many pies (1 foot diameter) as possible. The accuser then consumes any one of his/her pies as quickly as possible. The defendant must then consume any one of his/her own pies as fast or faster. The accuser then must eat any one of the defendant’s pies as fast as that or faster, and then vice versa and then the sequence starts over until one party or the other is unable to finish a pie in time (and therefore loses) or runs out of pies (and therefore loses). The winner is entitled to any and all remaining pies.
-- p59, Legal Situations

Truth or Challenge: As the child’s game “truth or dare” – only the honesty of the “truths” is enforced by carefully observing color changes in a hybrid orchid that eats lies.
-- p62, Notes on Unusual Games

The book is chock full of fun and evocative stuff like this.

Overall Impression

Hmm. Is it only me who sees a passing resemblance to classic 2000AD layout in Vornheim: the Complete City Kit?

No. Wait. I've seen this look before. Blocky edging; dense text; weird artwork; seemingly nonsensical (but actually useful) table entries: he's only gone and created a loving homage to the look-and-feel of the Realm of Chaos books and original WH40K: Rogue Trader. Conscious allusion? Very probably. Artists are a perfidious and cunning breed of pop-culture referent magpies, and Zak is known to be a fan of old GW stuff.

Shades of HOL, 2000AD, RoC and RT all in one book? That's just filth that is!

"So Mr Sabbath, when exactly did you work out the formula for weaponised Brit-gamer catnip?"

Conclusion

On first reading I like this book. It's exactly what it says on the tin: a thunk-provoking tool kit that'll probably be great fun to unleash on the players. I'm especially looking forward to playing with all the clever features Zak has included in the hard copy. Heck, he even gave it all-black borders to hide Cheeto stains. The man thinks of everything!

I LOLed. I chuckled the Evil DM laugh. I went "bastard! I wish I'd thought of that".

Zak (and James Raggi) did good. You should give them your money.

PS: This is not an April Fool's gag. I don't 'do' April Fools.

Pic Source
Cartoon - Philip M. "Jolly Jack" Jackson
Image of Vornheim index page - Zak S and James E. Raggi IV

AtoZ April - A is for Atrophy

2011-04-01T12:00:00.070+01:00

Day 1 of the April A to Z Challenge. Here goes nuthin'.

A is for Atrophy

The Wilds are in a universal state of decay. Civilisation has fallen from its former heights; disease and degenerative conditions are rampant among the poor and unfortunate; and the world itself has been broken into fragments floating in a corrosive sea of unbeing. Rather than innovating the scholars and explorers of contemporary societies scavenge for lost lore in cyclopean ruins overlooked by entire mountains carved in the unseeing likenesses of forgotten god-kings.

This wider malaise is reflected on a personal level: strength fails; cunning falls into dotage; faith crumbles in the face of self-absorbed godlings and an uncaring universe; even the seemingly limitless power of magic atrophies over time. As wizards grow older and more eccentric, time and magic taking their toll on raw animal vitality and sanity, the ability of mind and will to control the massive arcane energies they channel slowly grows weaker. In especially long-lived wizards this can take the form of arcane atrophy; an inability to cast spells that came easily in their younger days, and a corresponding greater reliance on created items and magically bound servitors. (There's a reason all those high wizards in towers don't just fling fireballs at the least provocation. "The greatest master expends the least power to accomplish his goals." my arse!)

It's all rotten and getting worse. What are you going to do about it?

JOESKY’S LAW Compliance Content

Arcane Atrophy: The 'Use It or Lose It' Rule of Character Power

When you stop gaining levels (either through hitting the 10th level 'soft cap', or when you retire from constant adventuring) your accumulated personal power begins to slowly, inexorably wither away. Save vs death once per game year (probably on Halloween or the winter equinox) or lose a level, exactly as if leeched by a level-draining undead. Yes, this can lead to a 'death spiral' effect as saving throws worsen with lowered levels.

Channelling otherworldly power into oneself acts like arcane Viagra: it staves off the effects of living in a battered, worn-out body in a slowly decaying world, and allows mortals to transcend the normal limits of human ability.

Ever wondered why that retired adventurer barman/sage/merchant isn't worlord of somewhere-or-other in his own right, and why Faustian pacts are so popular with the Powers That Be? This rule is why. It's intended to concentrate the minds of players when they've 'made it' in the game. Do they want to:

a) retire their land-holding character to NPC status and have him raise a successor before he gets too old and decrepit?
or
b) jump into that font of unholy power and make a transition to the post-B/X Epic scene?

Bonus content:

New Monster/Disease: Wither Imps

Cute, chubby and EVIL!

These invisible lurkers in the Ethereal Margins latch onto a person who draws their attention and over time parasitically suck away his vitality. Detect invisible will not detect the imps, although magical effects that allow the caster to see into the ethereal realm will. Cure disease will heal the damage caused by the imp, but will leave the creature in contact with its host. Dispel Evil (LLAEC) will drive the creature away, but won't heal the damage already caused.

Fighting them on the Ethereal? Treat as a swarm of Stirges harmed only by magic or magical weapons.

Roll on the table below to determine what sort of imp has latched onto the character:

1-2. Imp of Withering Sickness - Str or Con
3-4. Imp of Grey Mist - Int or Wis
5. Imp of The Shakes - Dex
6. Imp of The Stammers - Cha

Save vs. poison or death once per week or lose 1 point from a characteristic (depending on the type of Wither Imp). 25% chance/week of infection that the presence of one imp will attract further imps, accelerating the degeneration of the host. If an infestation of wither imps kill their host they will latch onto the next most powerful source of life energy in the vicinity (measure by HD/levels, favouring PCs and those they care about).

The symptoms of Wither Imps are obvious and horrific, but may take time to correctly diagnose.

[Yeah, horrible parasitic Thought Eater-type nuisances to wanderers in the Ethereal. Reified demons of cancer in the medieval "disease is caused by evil" mode.]

A to Z April - Introduction and Explanation

2011-03-31T16:04:00.007+01:00

Explanation For New Readers Who've Wandered in by Accident

Hi, and welcome to the Vaults of Nagoh. This is where I irregularly post about a game I run using old DnD. You remember the red box with the big dragon on it from back in the 80s? That kind of DnD; not the shiny new stuff Hasbro make.

Yes, people still play old DnD in the second decade of the 21st century. They get paper, pencils and dice, sit down together and talk about the made-up adventures of their pretend elf for hours and hours.

Why do they do it? Some do it because they're mad-eyed hermits who consider any game made after 1990 or so to be decadent lunacy. Others play it because they think old DnD is funk as puck (and a nice break from the porn-starring and high art); or because it allows them to use words like exegesis in polite conversation; or because they are inscrutable alien hiveminds from the future; or for any one of a hundred other reasons. Some few (like yours truly) play old DnD because we're too damn busy (or lazy) to keep up with the hundreds of pages of wordswordswords in the latest shiny newness. We're a broad church like that.

The people who play old DnD have so much fun doing it that some feel the need to write all about it on the electrowubz. In fact there's a whole cottage industry of people who legally make new versions of old DnD so new people can play the game. Some of them charge for books and pdfs. Others give their rules away free (yes, "free" as in "beer"). Why do they do it? Because they love the game so much they want a whole new bunch of people - even ones who weren't born first time around! - to have a chance to play it.

Just Google D&D retro-clone; it'll give you dozens of leads.

A to Z April at the Vaults of Nagoh

The white hair. The madness. The endless screaming. It's all their fault!

This whole thing is entirely the fault of Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out.

Over the next month I (and a bunch of other game bloggers) will be producing A to Z series of posts at a rate of 1/day. Other people have other methods for deciding what their topics are, but the subjects of my precious snowflake opinion-pieces were picked for me by (sexy, stylish) readers of this blog.

A is for "atrophy"
B is for "broth" (dodged a bullet there methinks...)
C is for "curtsey"
D is for "destiny" (Geordie Racer)
E is for "equinox" (Geordie Racer)
F is for "fisticuffs" (Geordie Racer)
G is for "geometry" (Ragnorakk)
H is for "haze" (Ragnorakk)
I is for "immortality" (Ragnorakk)
J is for "Jungian" (Sham, aka Dave)
K is for "kibble" (Sham, aka Dave)
L is for "lopsided" (Sham, aka Dave)
M is for "Maenad" (ckutalik)
N is for "nostalgia" (ckutalik)
O is for "orgasmatron" (ckutalik)
P is for "putrescence" or "pandemonium" (Flynn) or "parallax" (Carter Soles)
Q is for "quarrel" (Stuart)
R is for "ransack" (Stuart)
S is for "silver" (David) or "syzygy" (Erin Palette)
T is for "Thulsa Doom" (David)
U is for "unsettling" (Stuart)
V is for "vermin" (Byron) or "vagabond" (Trey)
W is for "wafting" (Byron) or "were-folk" (Trey)
X is for "xenium" (Byron)
Y is for "yew" (migellito)
Z is for "Zarathustra" (migellito)

Pretty trumps Utility: Spiky Dice and Bony Cutlery

2011-03-30T12:48:00.004+01:00

Oh dear, oh dear.

And I thought the Gamescience D-Total was an invention in search of a role.

Feast your eyes on these little beauties(?):

"Sure, I like the busyness and illegibility of Pathfinder dice sets. But what I'd really want is over-sculpted, likely-to-be-irregular dice reminiscent of bundles of barbed wire. That would really represent me as a gamer."

You can get them here. $28 a set. Also available in metal for anything up to $200 per set if you really want to scratch up your table.

Edit: Also in the "excessively baroque much?" category: skeleton cutlery by Raven Armoury.

Right-hand skeleton: "Peg legs? They are for pussies and part-timers!"

These might actually make for fun treasure/monsters. Something like animated cutlery scaled for giants and made from the screaming skeletons of halflings.

Party: "So, do we give them a decent burial, or sell them as curios?"

Pic Source
Vendor's website.

Bestiary of the Vaults: Stonebonkers, Corngits and such

2011-03-29T17:23:00.010+01:00

Just a couple of creatures from my game. I didn't realise until compiling them into a post quite how 'adversarial GM' they actually are. I am a bad man.

Stonebonkers

"Oh dear squire. See all the holes in the facade? Looks like a bad infestation of stonebonkers you've got there. The little buggers've wormed their way in good and proper. It'll take specialist squeezeboxjacks and stiltnetters to shift 'em, and they don't come cheap..."

Small, grey-feathered birds similar in appearance to woodpeckers, which famously make their nests in stone. Stonebonkers consume burrowing vermin, and will steal and eat small metal items (coins, buttons, seal rings, keys, etc.) to replace their rapidly-eroding beaks. Aggressive and territorial, stonebonkers are a totem symbol of war for certain tribes of the Wilds. The augurs of these tribes have developed a complex system of psycho-thaumic correspondences known as Stonebonking Mentalism.

Stonebonkers are no smarter than non-magical birds, and can be captured easily enough in nets and snares. Keeping them caged is another matter however... They are used as a status symbol by master masons of the city states. Having a perch-stave with an ankle-chained stonebonker roosting on it is a mark of personal and professional success, as well as a handy protection against ruffians and yokels. Having a stonebonker with silvery or gold-tinged beak and claws (achieved by feeding them soft, beak-weakening precious metals over an extended period) is either cruelty or showing off.

Stats: Appear in swarms. 1/2 HD, good AC and morale, treat physical armour as 2 points less. Repelled by the sound of accordions.

Corngits

"That corn sure do got a purdy mouth."

Stocky, staring-eyed fey with more than a passing resemblance to Dwarves. They dwell in drainage ditches and hold farmers to ransom, threatening to blight crops and inflict horrible 'accidents' unless they are paid a tithe of the harvest. Especially fond of hanging around in wheat fields, although they like to infest fields of any grain which turn golden when ripe.

Corngits can be driven off by the presence of a "scaregit", a particularly horrific and old-school type of scarecrow usually made from the remains of an executed criminal.

Zoidergits are a particularly unkempt, rowdy variant that lurks in orchards.
Millgits infest local mills, and use the proverbial dishonesty of millers as cover for their greed.

Stats: Treat as 1HD Brownie 3' or so in height (LLAEC, p107)

Facethief

"Dough-face, no-face,
Has no mouth or eyes.
There he lurks in the ground
'til the daylight dies

Dough-face, no-face,
Hiding from the light.
Tip-toes into your room
In the middle of the night

Dough-face, no-face,
Creeps up as you dream;
Takes your face and runs away
You can't even scream"
-- children's nursery rhyme

Doughy-faced humanoid night-creepers who do exactly what it says on the tin. Attempt to grapple and overbear humanoid opponents, then shove their blank, mushy faces against their foes to rob them of their features. This takes two rounds of uninterrupted face-glomphing. Save vs. p[olymorph/-aralysis/-etrifaction] or lose your face; full-face helmet gives a +2 bonus to the save.

While face stolen the character is blind, mute and unable to ingest sustenance. Their face is reduced to a featureless palimsest of skin. They can still breath, albeit with some difficulty, and can hear and respond through pantomime.

The stolen face endures on the skull of the facethief for about a month, during which time it either gleefully runs amok in polite society or spends hours obsessing in the mirror (50% chance of either). Killing a facethief will restore the face it wears to the nearest face-stolen person. You get your face back if you're lucky; that of a dead person, hunted fugitive, or member of the opposite sex if not. Whether magic can restore a stolen face is entirely at the GM's option (heal or regenerate *might* work).

Stories of cunning and ancient facethieves who can take your face from afar with no more than a gesture, and who have wormed their way into the highest echelons of human society, are naught but unsubstantiated rumour and scaremongering. Nose-stealers though: they're entirely too real; and the squat little horrors like preying on children best.

Stats: Closet trolls. Fast-moving and stealthy with some form of entangling attack or paralysing touch. Stat as ~~Thoul~~ (ahem) Throghrin

The People That Life Forgot

"They welcome you with broken arms
And wary eyes to stave off harm
And they move around exactly like we do.
They're paranoid, they keep their space;
They live in dreams they can't erase;
They carry ghosts around the place like glue."
-- "The People That Life Forgot", The Wildhearts

No. Enc.: 2-12	Alignment: C
Movement: 90'/Special	Armour Class: 4
Hit Dice: 5
Attacks: 1	Damage: 1-8
Save: E5	Morale: 6
Hoard Class: ???

Emaciated, demi-dead scavengers dressed in mouldering tatters of once-sumptuous garb. The repetitive tap-tap-tapping of canes precedes them. Generally enervated and incapable of innovation, they are reduced to endlessly repeating rote behaviours, pausing only to rob and kill weaker creatures for what they need.

Cowardly - low morale, generally non-hostile
Symmetric movement - can elect to move in synchronicity with a selected opponent. However and wherever the opponent moves, the Forgotten does the same maintaining a constant distance between the two creatures.
Repelling gaze - save vs. spell or suffer antipathy effect (as the spell, LLAEC)
Oneiric - if agitated a Forgotten has a 50% chance of acting as if under the effects of a confusion spell.
Haunted by their own semi-departed souls - appearance causes fear (as the spell), attack at range of up to 30 feet from their bodies with a chill touch (ignores physical armour, causes 1d8 damage).

Despite all this weirdness they're not undead. Just rather more than halfway to it.

Pic Sources
Woodpecker, public domain image from karenswhimsy.com
Corngit by Boris Zaborokhin from Monster Brains post on the artist
People That Life Forgot from Project Aon: Lone Wolf gamebooks

Roll a d10 and Blog Puny Human!

2011-03-26T19:33:00.004Z

Random table of bloggydoitnowness? Sounds like the rumble of a bandwagon to me.

Random.org tells me to do number 2. (dammit! I was hoping for 10)

"Add something to the wiki, then explain why it was influential enough to you that you added it."

I took the liberty of adding a link to Dave "Sham" Bowman's OD&D Cover-to-Cover posts.

It might not seem directly applicable to a lot of people's games, but I found it a useful exploration of why (often otherwise unexplained) different game mechanics work the way they do in later editions of Classic D&D.

Dave's extended close examination of the original texts is classic Renaissance behaviour in the best sense. Go back to the original sources and re-examine what they actually say (not what received wisdom says they do), then decide if you should do things differently based on your new insights.

I commend this series to the House.

The Universal Combiner

2011-03-22T00:15:00.003Z

A simple enough trick I'm going to add into an as yet unexplored section of the Gearworks (level 3 of the Vaults).

Like this, only minus wheels, plus hoodoo

This immense, room-sized mechanism has two input hoppers at one end (each large enough to take something 2' x2' in size), a bunch of Willy Wonka odd-tech pistons, gauges, levers and gears on its body, and a large output hopper at the other. Simply put any two things in the input hopper, pull the lever and stand well back. The selected objects will be slowly, inexorably drawn into the machine, exiting the output hopper irrevocably fused into one. Whether the new object is usable, and to what end, is entirely dependent upon the whim of the GM and the ingenuity of the players.

The racket of the machine's operation requires a wandering monster check.

Putting a living thing through the machine? I'd say a save vs. death (or perhaps "vs polymorph" is more fitting?) to come out relatively unharmed. Well, apart from their bizarre new appendage and a lasting grudge against the person who pushed them in*... Failed save: they're a mangled wreck of meat and organs.

* What? You thought the sullen-faced winged baby-head gargoyles were just a decorative feature?

Simple enough then. That is until your players get cocky and start dumping things like corpses, henchmen, magic items, the odd magical substances of a fantasy world (solid shadows, reified memory/sorrow/true love, etc.), and/or clever-clogs dichotomous oddnesses (a living being in one hopper; an undead in the other) into the machine. The cleverness and inquiring natures of such players should be rewarded in the customary manner (I believe "worlds of hurt" is the operative phrase).

Of course, if there's a universal combining machine, it stands to (un)reason that somewhere in the Vaults there's also a universal divider/renderer/refiner of some kind...

(I'm certain I've nicked this from someone, but for the life of me I don't know who. Any help with attribution appreciated.)

Pic Source
Victorian thresher from fotolibra.com

Rubblecrawl? Ruincrawl? *crawl, in a dead city.

2011-03-09T17:04:00.045Z

"Yep. Looks like a massive 'X marks the spot' to me."

Inspired in part by Zak's excellent urbancrawl ideas, here are a few half-formed thoughts on a quick ruined city generator.

[note: This is a work in progress piece. I'll probably be tinkering with it and adding more stuff as it occurs to me]

Draw a flow chart of interesting, lootable places in your city (in the case of my own Ruined City of Nagoh this would include such cheesy soubriqued sites as the Toppled Colossus, the Intermittent Tower, the Electric Eye, the Ruined Palace, the Verdant Ziggurat, the Grand Gate, the Necropolis of Certain and Horrific Death, the Valley of the Wang, etc).

Make each such ‘tourist attraction’ the focal point of its own neighbourhood/ward, then arrange them in kind of a spider-web looking diagram of how everything relates together. Don't draw out every street or building, because that’s simply not important. Oh, and don’t forget to merrily cut some geographically nearer locations off from easy access, simply because you are a GM and being a difficult bastard is your calling and vocation. ("You can get there, if you swing past the harpy-infested Throne-Temple of the Triple Goddess. Can’t go directly, unless you fancy running the gauntlet through the Ghoultracts, then climbing the Sanguine Cliffs into the upper city while the Hivers bombard you with rocks...")

Getting from A to B
Sure, you could just decree that there are vast unobstructed Parisian boulevards between the major attractions, but how dull is that? Far more fun to make the PCs slog their way through furlongs of devastated, overgrown ruinscape on their way to wherever they’ve decided to Greyhawk first. Try and get the music from the early scenes of Wall-E gets stuck in their heads...

Make an encounter table of things that could happen on the way to the next major landmark. Either a simple big table, or a convoluted series of same, as you prefer. Add trap/trick/terrain hazard stuff like:

Looters (not upstanding scholars of the past like our heroes)
Wandering monsters
Small lairs/shanties
Avenues of foreboding statues
Fallen buildings blocking the path
Overgrown gardens/parks
Flooded decorative pools/fountains
Massive sinkholes into the sewers/undercity
Magical effects gone bad over time
Inexplicable Wacky Crap [I like the Wilderlands of High Sorcery tables and/or BTBG’s Random Ruins]

Whether you elect to roll for random events/encounters/complication per turn (as in a dungeon), or per exploration turn (4 hours – after MF), or per hour, or every time the players say a particular word, is entirely your business.

Detours Along the Way
If the party decide to nose around in ruined buildings then use the tables below to work out what the hell they used to be, and if there’s anything entertaining/lucrative still in there. Roll or pick for Function, Layout and Style, Structural Features, Condition, Contents:

Function
What was this place? Choose, or consult the random building table in your preferred city sourcebook.

~Civic~
Temple/shrine
Monument/mausoleum
Museum/library
Basilica/council law/courts
Exchange/bank
Theatre/auditorium/arena
Aviary/menagerie
Guildhall/office/embassy
Hospital/mortuary
Hospice/lazar house
Guard post/barracks

~Commercial~
Shop, merchant*
Shop, craftsman*
Shopping Arcade
Inn/tavern/caravanserai
Slaughterhouse
Masons/builders yard
Warehouse

* See list of example trades and services at the end of this article.

~Residential~
Hovel
Slave Pens
Dormitory
Insula/Tenement
Town house
Urban estate

Layout and Style (choose, then d8)
What does this place look like? Pick a letter or random syllable (jab your finger into a block of text or something...). The shapes of the letters, flipped and mashed together however you choose, define the general floor plan of the building. Rationalised rectilinear blocks? Sooooo 20th century.

Block off rooms, corridors, passages, staircases and such based on function, or as you see fit. This can end up with such apparent incongruities as a big old multi-floored palace divided up into loads of tiny, awkwardly-shaped rooms, blind staircases and voids. But there's nothing to say that this wasn't either: 1) intentional on the part of the designer (architects are nigh-on mad wizardly raving egotists at the best of times), or 2) a building repurposed halfway through its working life by a bunch of guys lacking access to the original blueprints.

(This section is partially urbancrawl's 'numbers as roads' idea, partially leximorph mapping as popularised by John of Nine-and-Thirty Kingdoms. Why re-invent the wheel?)

What architectural form does the building take within the footprint established? Roll d8:

1 Tower house (1d4+3 floors)
2 Insula/Block (1d6+4 floors)
3 Courtyard building (1d3 floors)
4 Terrace (1d3 floors)
5 Hall/Longhouse (1d2 floors)
6 Gable End building (1d4+3 floors)
7 Kraal/Ringhouse (1d3 floors)
8 Other

Structural Features (d8)
1 Balconies
2 Garrets
3 Turret/Belfry
4 Fortified ground floor
5 Overhanging upper floors
6 Colonnades
7 Atrium/Impluvium Pool
8 Other

Sub-basement?
50% 1-2 levels
1in6 chance dungeon/sewer/tunnel entryway

Condition (d6)
Is it still standing, and does it look safe? Or is heading in there tantamount to signing your own death warrant?

1 - Rubble (3in6 unstable)
2 - Dangerous Ruin (risk of cave-ins, possibility of deliberate traps)
3-5 - Ruin
6 - Partial Ruin (3in6 occupied)

Floor cave in: risk of collapsing floor 2in6, take 2d6 damage and make 2in6 chance again. Yes, this can lead to a cascade effect...
Wall/roof cave-in: 2in6, [1d6]d6 as it caves in, save for half. 2in6 chance of any remaining roof collapsing if a wall goes.
Rubble-slide: 2in6 chance, 2d6 damage (save for half)

So, yeah, pack a sacrificial dwarf or two to check the quality of the stonework.

Contents (d6)
"Little pigs, little pigs. We've come to nick yer stereo." -- Dog Soldiers

1 Monster
2 Monster + loot
3-5 Empty
6 Empty (3in6 hidden/unusual feature)

Bear in mind that most of the original movables, fixtures, and fittings will have been looted or rotted away over time.

Backstreets/Alleys/Slums
If the party decide to head deeper into the ruins, away from all the big, shiny feature you've spent hours detailing, they're probably going to end up in the remains of the low-rent areas that all cities try and airbrush away. Assume these are present by the hectare, and that they've got even more run-down and desolate than the rest of the city.

If you want, you can use them as 'rough terrain' to get the party moving in the direction you desire. Heading into uncharted, organically-developed slums should be tantamount to asking the GM to roll extra 'Getting Lost' rolls, just as if the party were out in the wilderness. Either use a random dungeon generator or some urban geomorphs (the old Lankhmar, City of Adventure book had some ones). Do they want to risk climbing a building to get their bearings?

Example Trades and Services
(reproduced from Noonan & Wyatt - "Building a City")
A list of trades found in cities. Reproduced here because I have no intention of reinventing a well-researched wheel.

~Trades, Exotic~
Alchemist, art dealer, calligrapher, costumer, imported goods dealer, magic armour dealer, magic item dealer (general), magic weapon dealer, pet merchant, potion dealer, rare wood merchant, scroll merchant, soap maker, spice merchant, trapmaker, wand merchant.

~Trades, Upscale~
Antique dealer, bookbinder, bookseller, candy maker, clockmaker, cosmetics dealer, curio dealer, dice maker, distiller, fine clothier, gemcutter, glassblower, glazier, goldsmith, inkmaker, jeweller, map seller, papermaker, perfumer, pewterer, sculptor, sealmaker, silversmith, slave trader, toymaker, trinkets purveyor, vintner, wiresmith.

~Trades, Average~
Armourer, baker, bazaar merchant, blacksmith, bonecarver, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carpet maker, cartwright, chandler, cheesemaker, cobbler, cooper, coppersmith, dairy merchant, fletcher, florist, furniture maker, furrier, grocer, haberdasher, hardware seller, herbalist, joiner, lampmaker, locksmith, mason, merchant, music dealer, outfitter, potter, provisioner, religious items dealer, roofer, ropemaker, saddler, sailmaker, seamstress, shipwright, stonecutter, tailor, tapestry maker, taxidermist, thatcher, tilemaker, tinker, weaponsmith, weaver, wheelwright, whipmaker, wigmaker, woodworker.

~Trades, Poor~
Bait & tackle dealer, basketweaver, brickmaker, broom maker, candlemaker, charcoal burner, dyer, firewood seller, fishmonger, fuller, leatherworker, livestock handler, lumberer, miller, netmaker, tanner.

~Services, Upscale~
Animal trainer, apothecary, architect, assassin, banker, barrister, bounty hunter, cartographer, dentist, engraver, illuminator, kennel master, masseur, mewskeeper, moneychanger, sage, scribe, spellcaster for hire, tutor.

~Services, Average~
Auctioneer, barber, bookkeeper, brothel owner, clerk, engineer, fortuneteller, freight shipper, guide, healer, horse trainer, interpreter, laundress, messenger, minstrel, navigator, painter, physician, public bath owner, sharpener, stable owner, tattooer, undertaker, veterinarian.

~Services, Poor~
Acrobat, actor, boater, buffoon, building painter, burglar, carter, fence, gambling hall owner, juggler, laborer, limner, linkboy, moneylender, nursemaid, pawnshop, porter, ship painter, teamster, warehouse owner.

Sources
S John Ross - Medieval Demographics Made Easy
Noonan & Wyatt - Building a City (DMG 3E web supplement)
Legoman of the GITP forums for his instant city builder method

Lost Empires of Faerun by WOTC
Lankhmar, City of Adventure by TSR
Warhammer City of Chaos by Games Workshop
Pathfinder: Spires of Xin-Shalast (Rise of the Runelords #6) by Paizo

Pic Source
Wayne Barlowe

The Storied Mageries of Lux Familiar

2011-03-08T17:03:00.009Z

The Vaults of Nagoh are an infamous weak spot in the fabric of the world, a place where echoes of things, creatures and people from numerous other worlds take on horribly distorted physical forms. Among the reified cosmic echoes uncovered by greedy, crazy-brave explorers are the enigmatic and disparate objects collectively known as the Mageries of Lux Familiar. Who (or what) the name Lux Familiar originally applied to is unclear, although rumours of a semi-human nature and a terrible auto-cannibalistic end have attached to this ill-omened moniker.

Annals of Pyares
This richly decorated tome initially appears to be nothing more than the records and membership list of a long-defunct bardic college. More thorough investigation reveals it to be an artefact of substantial but unpredictable power.
Treat as Artefact (per "Eldritch Wizardry", AD&D DMG, etc) with 4 Minor, 2 Major powers. The book also allows a character to act as a sage expert in the fields of human and demi-human art and music.
Malevolent Power: when a major power is used there is a 1 in 10 chance of the book’s wielder coming under a delusion effect which makes dangerous situations appear to be a source of delicious savoury snacks (save vs spell, or throw self into harm's way to get at them).
Side effect: While the book is possessed by a party castle encounters never have a reaction more positive than "Neutral/Ignore"; the default response of inhabitants to the appearance of the party becomes "Quick! The drawbridge!"

Azure Sigil of Abuse
This small rectangular device composed of paper and magically treated cellulose allows the wielder to simply get away with almost anything, so long as the sigil is presented openly and confidently. Onlookers do gain as a save vs spell/device against this effect (test once against the best chance of all onlookers). Those unaffected by the magic of the sigil, or who recover from its effects (1-3 turns after the sigil and bearer leave their view) will in future automatically be suspicious of - or even openly hostile to - the wielder. The Azure Sigil of Abuse does not affect mindless creatures, intelligent undead, or creatures viciously evil by nature (devils, demons, etc).

Blessed Aircloth of Equanimity
Small sheets of clear membrane, the bubbles of which are filled with a generally harmless gas noted for its profound calming effect when released (bursting aircloth bulbs acts as a calm emotions spell). Sheets have a curious secondary enchantment, in that they are regarded as a perfectly fungible medium of exchange by almost all intelligent creatures. A person offered the aircloth in trade must save vs spell or consider it a reasonable exchange (demands for magic items, daughters, or other outrageously unequal trades grant a bonus to the save).

Dead Man’s Season Ticket
This small cardboard rectangle allows the holder to return from the dead, one time only. There is a non-trivial likelihood of weird sh*t following them back from the land of the dead.

Depressed Beyond Tablets
One of these acrid-tasting pastilles (treat as potion) will transport the ingester to a sunless pocket universe of chasms and abysms ruled by change and indifference. If they fail a save vs spell they are affected as maze spell (LLAEC, p52), if the save is passed they are able to exit the gloomy realm at a point corresponding to a position of their choice in the ‘real’ world. Move as per ~~potion of ethereality~~ oil of etherealness.

Dukla Prague Away Kit
A maroon singlet with short yellow sleeves protects its wearer as leather armour. Once a week the wearer is able to invoke what chroniclers have described as “a travelling army of synthetic supporters”, an array of 10-100 minuscule humanoid servants who will labour or spy for their master to the best of their abilities. They work at the same rate as full-sized human labour, but only when entirely unsupervised by human eyes. The supporters will not fight under any circumstances, returning from whence they came if commanded to do so.

Equilateral Chainsaw
A large and clumsy melee weapon, -2 to hit, although it can hit creatures affected only by magical weapons (“Ain’t nothing immune to chainsaws!”). The whirling, screeching teeth of the triangular blade do 2d6 damage per hit. The wielder can elect to inflict this damage on two or more separate melee opponents within reach at a cost of themselves taking the same amount of damage.

Existential Limeade
This lurid green potion causes the imbiber to doubt both own existence and that of reality itself. So profound is this anomie that they are rendered wholly immune to harm from any source no less than 50% of the time. However, the mind-expanding effect of the concoction also renders the drinker prone to distraction (50% chance of foregoing action in a round).

Joy Division Oven Gloves
These thick fingerless black-and-grey gloves are almost limitlessly heat resistant; although unable to use their hands for fine work (picking locks, etc) the wearer is able to safely put their fingers in fire, handle hot coals, scoop up lava, etc. The gloves have a secondary effect of increasing a wearer’s equanimity towards terrifying or aggregating situations (wearer enjoys +4 to saves vs. fear-causing effects). Unfortunately the gloves carry a curse that reduces the wearer’s capacity for settled happiness. So long as the gloves are possessed the owner becomes obsessed with wearing them in previously unvisited places (treat as geas effect).

Non-Organic Food
These curious foodstuffs from deep within the earth look like nothing so much as vividly coloured pebbles and are usually found in small paper bags. A bag will contain 3d6 lumps of inorganic food, each of which – if recognised as edibles rather than misshapen and rather ugly decorative stones – will act as rations for one day. Children and Xorn are especially delighted by these strange, sweet comestibles. Inorganic food doesn’t go off, ever.

Perpetual Biscuit
A perfectly mundane-looking twice-baked biscuit, probably with some form of embossed decoration and a dry crème filling. Detects as magic. A source of never-ending rations, the Perpetual biscuit doesn’t entirely replace mundane food, but does supplement other foods (reduce to half requirements/day).
Note: a Perpetual Biscuit can only reduce the food requirements of a single person per day. Why? Duh! Everyone knows that biscuits contain no calories if shared...

Piccalilli’s Shinpads
Tiny hand-long greaves of verdigrised bronze decorated with rich art nouveau engraving detailing.* The greaves are far too small to fit even the puny legs of a halfling, but may be strapped onto the legs by humanoids of any size (provided they don’t mind looking a little... silly). These shin guards provide a +1 to AC, allow the wearer to pass without trace in sylvan environments 3/day, and improve Reaction Rolls from all encountered non-evil fey creatures by one bracket.

* Wishing I had Taichara’s way with descriptors about now.

Post-punk Postcard
Small flat card, the edges of which are decorated with blotchy, low-quality woodcut art. Usable only after backstab. The thief smears their bloodied weapon across the face of the card and - unless the intended victim saves vs. spell – it bodily draws them into itself over the next round, reducing them to a moody-faced stylised monochrome portrait. The captive can be released from the card at any time by tearing it in half. There is a 50% chance that a random creature (type limited by backstab rules) is trapped in the card when it is found.

Sea Bass Man Bag
Appears to be a satchel in the shape of a fish (the shoulder straps attaching at the fish’s mouth and tail). If emptied of its contents (50% chance of 1d6 random pieces of non-magical dungeoneering kit when found) the bag can be pulled entirely over the head and provides air and resistance to pressure as a Helm of Underwater Action.
Note: the wearer’s vision is obscured by the bag.

Shining Singlet of the King of Hyviz
Brightly coloured over-garment decorated with silvery straps. The singlet greatly increases the likelihood of the wearer being noticed (no Hide in Shadows possible) but all viewers who fail save vs spell believe (and act as if) the wearer is perfectly entitled to be wherever they are as a normal part of their duties. Save may be taken again if the wearer does something outrageously suspicious.

Sign of Deceitful Enticement
Viewers of this crudely hand-lettered sign must save vs spell, those who fail feel compelled to follow the seemingly nonsensical directions on the sign (“Asparagus Next Left”, etc.) for 2d6 turns (or until the GM becomes bored with it). Usually this merely results in exasperating detours to recover hypnotised party members, but there is a 10% chance that the sign instead creates a dirt track to a darker place (Bottomless Perdition).

Studious Banjo
All auditors must save vs spell or descend into a reverie of well-loved memories, initiating no hostile actions for as long as the banjo is played. 1in6 chance of acting as drums of panic instead. Playing the banjo requires both hands.

Surcoat of the Knight of the Shining Dome
This long, shabby duster coat improves NPC reactions to the wearer by one bracket, and acts as Scarab of Protection on the wearer, but increases rates of WM encounter. Wearable by any class, although thieves, dwarves and Halflings are likely to find in annoyingly billowy...

The 'Roids
Potion, appears to be potion of Giant Strength. Actually acts as cursed berserking (as the sword) potion of Giant Strength.

Ultimate Gorilla Gig
A small, lightly built one horse trap. Bodywork, wheel hubs and traces are elaborately decorated with motifs of lachrymose apes. The runabout is capable of seating two people in comfort (four if they’re prepared to get cosy).
The coachman of this buggy can cast implant emotions (despair) 3/day and summon 1d6 white apes 1/week; the primates act as the master of the gig commands.

Wai-phur Hanging Baskets
These small, chain-suspended planters allow the possessor to use Contact Other Plane 1/week if filled with soil and carefully tended. The medium of communication is a human-sized mouth composed of roots and leaves which grows from the soil. Contact is always with a malignant other-planar vegetable intelligence that answers questions in cryptic euphemisms.

(Yes, the Perpetual Biscuit Reference is intentional.)

Super-Simple Stat Advances

2011-03-06T17:18:00.004Z

Inspired by something read in the Humanspace Adventures playtest document, although I vaguely recall seeing similar in a blog comment somewhere, or possibly in the multi-layered morass of detail that is HackMaster...

Each time your character levels up pick one ability score.
Roll higher than the current score on a d20 to advance it by 1 point (max 18).
(note: this doesn't count as being during gameplay, so Jeff's Big Purple d30 Rule doesn't apply.)

Intent: this little gimmick models increasing capability as characters gain progressively more experience and versatility. The 'roll over' mechanic makes it easy to improve on a gimp ability score, but offers less chance of improving those lovingly polished Prime Requisites.

Yeah, it's a little bit Runequest for some tastes, and a shuffle away from the strict purity of "3d6, in order", but I'm an obsessive user of Ability Checks (LL, p55).

Pic Source
Randy Glasberg, syndicated cartoonist

Simple Mass Combat - Birthright Style

2011-03-04T23:30:00.033Z

[Please excuse the re-post. Blogger decided that Edit is synonymous with Send To Memory Hole.]

"Fool! You cannot harm me. I am protected by tons of ferociously loyal ablative meat!"

"Eh? Is he raving about us?"

Our games are getting close to the 'evict Team Monster, take their land, build immense phallic memorials to self' end game stage. With the spectre of mass combat looming I thought I'd share my preferred swarm fightan system.

This is, in essence, a B/X-ified version of the super-simple AD&D Birthright skirmish system (which appears to be a simplified take on Battlesystem 2E, which in turn was more or less good old Perren+Gygax Chainmail in a party frock). Some bits and wrinkles come from WFB, others from the general sea of unattributable common references in which all gamers seem to float. BECMI War Machine gets no love; it's naught but a monstrous spreadsheet-requiring mess IMO.

This system isn't set up to cope with magic-heavy combats or packs of monsters with special attacks. It's meant to resolve what the kind of havoc the non-speaking extras are inflicting on one another in a die roll or two so we can all get back to the cool stuff (i.e. the PCs single out enemy generals, casters or monsters for their personal attention).

Initiative
1d6 each side. Winner chooses whether to move first or second.

Movement
As normal, or per GM discretion.
Units moved in order of increasing agility: infantry > then cavalry > then fliers.

Hits
Treat HD in the group as hp total. Ignore "+n" hit point adds.
So 60 hobgoblins (1+1HD) has 60 HD, as do a unit of 20 F3 (3HD). Ditto a herd of ten rhinos (6HD) or a gang of four Storm Giants (15HD)...

Damage
Damage per Round = HD up to 7 (then +1/2 HD over 7, "+n" to die = +1 HD) +/- opponents' AC

Multiple attacks/round = +100% to DPR
Max damage/round >12 = +100% to DPR

Fighting
Each side rolls die, higher wins.

Winner only adds difference between rolls to the DPR.
Loser inflicts DPR only.
Both sides lose on a tied roll.

HD remaining	Resolution Die
Full to 3/4	1d10
Full to 3/4	1d8
1/2 to 1/4	1d6, half DPR
1/4 or less	1d4, half DPR

+1 to die per 2 combat-relevant spell levels cast by side that round
+1 bonus if side has PC/unique NPCs
+2 bonus (one round only) if ambushing
-1 penalty if enemy has terrain advantage

Engaged Groups
Normal engagement rules usually apply: group engages with group on 1 for 1 basis. Leftover groups can choose where they engage for maximum effect.
If multiple groups attack one group, roll 1 resolution die per group. Total the side's dice then compare scores.

Morale
Morale checks per B/X, because 2d6 Reaction Rolls are the path of righteousness. ;)

Check after losing first round of combat;
Check again at 1/2 starting HD.
Fearsome monstrous enemies may require a Morale check to charge, or if they charge (no one wants to be the first to face *that*).

What happens:

Pass one morale check = "Fight on!"
Pass to morale checks = "To the death!"
Fail first morale check = shaken (fighting withdrawal)
Fail second moral check = "Leggit lads!" (rout)

Fleeing Combat
1 unopposed strike (DPR, no dice roll) against routing side.

Routs and Pursuit
Pursuit comes down to relative speeds.
Base speed in tens of feet/inches +1d6 (+2d6 if cavalry, +3d6 if flying).

Fleeing side wins: no damage inflicted.
Pursuing side wins: inflicts DPR.

Casualties
Half of casualties are deaths, the remainder wounded/incapacitated. Victors can recover their wounded, take prisoners and hostages, butcher their foes, etc.

Advanced
Not really advanced, more 'one step up from basic mutual face-stabbery'.

Missile Weapons: DPR inflicted automatically. Melee-armed troops can't counter attack until range is closed.
Lances or charge attack: double damage 1st round only.
Reach weapons: double damage if charged.
Mamuk-riders: archers riding gigantic beasts should be treated as a separate unit of archers unengaged by non-archer troops until their mount is slain.
Aerial Troops: flying troops should be treated as having terrain advantage vs non-fliers. Fliers can't be pursued by non-fliers if they rout from combat.

Sieges
The long slow slog of blockade and barrage aren't covered here. Consult your GM.

Sallies: resolve as normal.
Mining: no reinforcing groups can be added to a combat in progress.
Escalades: land-bound assaulters roll 1d4 to defender's 1d10 until they win a round of combat; defender enjoys terrain advantage. Aerial attackers fight as normal. Yes, this makes escalades a slog requiring overwhelming numbers and a run of good luck. I'd call that accurate.
Storming: assaulting a breach should be resolved as normal, with defender having terrain advantage.

Monstrous Creatures and NPCs
These brutes will generally just munch their way through spear-carriers (don't even roll for them, just inflict DPR and describe the carnage) until PCs get in their way.

Monstrous creatures with special attacks (basilisk, dragons, wraiths, medusae, etc) should be treated as casting one or more appropriate spells each round (flesh to stone, cause fear, fireball, death spell, etc).
Monstrous creatures with special defences can either be treated as casting spells per round (couerl, troglodytes, etc) or as ignoring mundane damage entirely (shadows, wraiths, elementals, etc).
Troll units regain 1HD per troll every other round of combat.
Hydras and similar multi-attacking but essentialy non-magic-using brutes can be fought as a unit in their own right.

Thoughts?

JOESKY'S LAW Compliance Content:
Not applicable. This post is about mechanics for stabbing large quantities of dudes in the face at once, and is thus already relevant to The Mighty One's interests.

Further Reading
Nine and Thirty Kingdoms on non-mass mass combat
Grendelwulfs Combat Scale mass combat system (simple and elegant)

Pic Source
The inimitable Ian Miller (purveyor of only the finest nightmare fuel) of course.

-----

Appendix: Examples
(This is just me thinking aloud and getting a handle on relative balance. You'll probably want to skip this entirely.)
Note: the DPR figures used here are exclusive of any modifications from Resolution Dice.

Knight vs. Giant Gobo-Ninjas
30 1HD knights (30HD, AC3, +1 TH, lances)
vs. 12 3+1HD bugbears (36HD, AC6, +4TH, axes).

The knights will inflict (1+6=) 14 DPR in round 1, 7 DPR in subsequent rounds.
The bugbears will inflict (4+3=) 7 DPR.

This is likely to be a close fight, with the outcome heavily affected by situational factors (Are the bugbears ambushing or in good cover? How good is the relative morale of the two sides?), or by the luck of the dice.

Phalanx vs. Lucanian Cows
2 9HD war elephants (18HD, AC5, +9 TH, trample 2x2d8)
vs. 100 1HD spearmen (100HD, AC6, +1TH, spears)

The elephants will inflict (8+6 x3=) 42 DPR plus (1+6=) 7 DPR from archers in the howdahs.
The spearmen will inflict (1+5=) 12 DPR if charged, 6 DPR otherwise.

This is likely to be a squash match with Dumbo and Babar curbstomping the poor bloody infantry unless they can either panic the pachyderms or skewer them like pincushions as they charge. There's a reason that elephants were used as shock troops by any army that had access to them for nigh-on 2000 years...

The Legion of Blue-Nosed Doom vs. Old Ten Heads
A ten-headed Hydra in a swamp (10HD, AC5, +8 TH, multiple attacks, terrain advantage)
vs. 80 Hobgoblin legionaries (80HD, AC6, +2TH, melee weapons)

The hydra will inflict (9+6 x2=) 32 DPR.
The hobgoblins will inflict (2+5=) 7 DPR.

The hobs probably have the sheer numbers to beat Old Ten Heads to death, but they'll lose dozens of warriors doing so. This type of "No time to wait for the archers. Drown the beast beneath our dead!" situation is what Morale checks were created for...

Orcs vs. The Mighty Orcgrinder
1 Superhero (8HD, AC-1, +6 TH, sword)
vs. 15 Orcs (15HD, AC 6, +1TH)

Superhero will inflict (6+6=) 14 DPR exclusive of magical effects.
Orcs will inflict (1-1=) 0 DPR

A one-sided 'buzzsaw through raw meat' situation. The Orcs will be relying on luck alone (the score from their die roll) to come out ahead. They should also probably roll a Morale check when they see their opponent hove into view (as the Chainmail rule). Let's face it; he's only leaving that last survivor alive to spread the tale...

Gnawers,shield vs. Gnawers,flesh
10 2HD Ghouls (20HD, AC6, +2 TH, multiple attacks, paralysis)
vs. 30 Berserks (30HD, AC7, +2 TH, never check morale)

Ghouls will inflict (2+7 x2=) 18 DPR.
Berserkers will inflict (2+6=) 12 DPR.

A surprisingly close fight. Ghoul paralysis (treated as Hold Person cast each round) and multiple attacks will tip the balance against the berserkers, not that they're likely to care less. In the immortal words of Spoon: "I hope I give you the shits you WIMP!"

End.

The Map Knows More Than I Do

2011-03-01T23:30:00.011Z

Doing a bit of random hex-map generation this evening (using a tinkered-with version of Victor Raymond's Wilderness Architect method from Fight On! #2).

Here's the generated terrain in question (just so the following makes at least a little sense).

It's supposed to be the Vorra River Valley, south of Adburg and the ruined City of Nagoh. Yes, I called my adventureburg Adburg. It's easy to remember in the heat of play.

So, yer pretty boggo area of forested hills descending from mountains to a well-watered plain; so far, so fantastic realism. But suddenly the dice decree that there's a 5-mile diameter desert in the middle of this verdant landscape. Wuh?!

Now, to me an out-of-place desert hex that just screams adventure hook. I'd be totally remiss as a GM if I just left this as a blank space on the map. A few quick rolls on the appropriate tables in the ever-handy Ready Reference Sheets reveal the salient feature of this particular hex is a keep, ash-covered, and situated on a rocky outcrop. The environs are crystallised and petrified and the local inhabitants are Giants.

Ashes, crystals, keep and giants says to me the obvious: Fire Giants. Probably digging in to protect/exploit something of use in their forthcoming runt-squishing crusade.* They've likely happened upon (or been sent down by some Big Bad to secure) some form of climate-altering artefact or heat-based weapon that, even inactive, is able to create a microclimate hot and arid enough to bake the land for miles around. All that crystallised, petrified stuff is probably the result of this mini Death Valley effect: roasted trees and dried out ponds and the like. Sounds like a proper nasty place that eats adventurers for lunch. *grin*

* There's always a runt-squishing crusade in the offing for giants IMG; it's kind of a default state of existence for them in a world which - from their elevated perspective - is over-run with tiny, hyperactive vermin.

And blow me down if that doesn't also explain the sparse settlements and assorted ruins the dice have decreed shall be scattered around what should - in any sane world - be a densely populated area of settlement. Obviously the giants have already made a start on clearing the surrounding areas of its infestation of annoyingly short people. ("You must be THIS tall to continue living. Surtr commands it!")

I picture them rocking up 13th Warrior style (hellhounds, salamanders and fire imps in tow) and setting fire to local villages at night. Or standing on a rise hurling lava bombs (treat as fireball or something) down on unsuspecting bargemen plying their trade. A few instances of that is going to have refugees fleeing the area and will royally screw the economy of everywhere along the river: crops from the farming villages and recovered artefacts from the Vaults can't get down the river to the cities; manufactured and luxury goods can't get up-river to Adburg.

I'm already getting a wacky War of the Triple Alliance meets Against the Giants vibe off the situation...

"We want you to head up-river and dispose of the crazy fanatics blocking river traffic."
"Sure, we'll set out right away. Should have them run off by the end of the week."
"Oh, by the way; they're Fire Giants..."

All that from one hex! Random terrain generation: giving you more than you expected since 1974.

Pic Source:
Me, with a little help from AKS Hexmapper

Inheritance and Dynastic Succession in Classic DnD

2011-02-28T01:00:00.030Z

Henry 1/8: "One day kids, this rainy island full of sheep

and short-tempered drunks will be all yours."

Junior Tudors: "Erm, yay?"

Q: How do you get hereditary dynasties (even short-lived ones) in a world where killing fools and taking their stuff doesn't just make you an infamous serial killer, it makes you The Goddamn Batman? How do you stop the first King Conan wannabe from waltzing in and kicking your designated successor off the throne his dad worked so hard to acquire?

A: Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a character has effectively 'won' Classic D&D.
He's 10th level or so; rides around on griffon-back wielding a sword of fire, a lance made of lightning and a bow that shoots homing piranhas; and has a fine castle full of swag, blow and harem girls in the midst of an rich province sitting at the heart of an extended network of friends, allies and trade partners. It'd sure be nice for the character to be able to pass this on to a successor of his choice, rather than having all that hard work fall prey to the first gang of lean-and-hungry murderous hobos to wander along.

Well, the wise fathers of our game - as with so much else - already had the possibility of ensuring a bit of dynastic continuity within gameworlds covered. Behold! the Henchmen and Inheritance rules of B/X D&D.

When Junior (be he lineal son-and-heir or favoured apprentice/acolyte) comes of age his father/mentor/patron can use the rules on acquiring Henchmen to (NPC Reaction Check permitting*) designate Junior - a well-bought up boy who's had the advantage of the best training that unlimited money, favours and fear of magical retribution can buy - a bona fide henchmen in good standing, with all the benefits and appurtenances thereof.

* all those disgruntled "I'll make my own way dammit!" noble sons adventuring incognito, thieving apprentices who steal spellbooks, and neophytes suffering crises of faith have to come from somewhere...

Pops can drag Junior off on a few ‘bonding with the old man’ adventures, doling out 50% “turning up and holding the torch” XP to the young'un as he passes on those hard-learned wyvern-wrangling and vampire-ganking techniques. Heck, it he wants to be all Edward III about it Pa can just sit back to “let the boy earn his spurs” as a {knight/wizard/priest} errant, likely garnering full XP from his time in the finishing school of hard knocks. Rinse and repeat a few times and when the gaffer finally decides to jack it all in and (*ahem ahem*) retire to a monastery Junior is already man enough to stand up for himself against the local troublemakers.

Per the Inheritance rule, Junior then pays the customary 10% inheritance tax (either as tribute to the local overlord, or bribes to the neighbours and followers) and inherits dad's gear and title as Lord Warden of the Spongmires free and clear. Thanks to his foresighted old man, the new lord of the manor has the personal clout (i.e. levels) and reputation to back up his newly acquired title. Instead of being some 1HD eggshell armed with a hammer the rightful heir* can use all the sweet adventuring gear he's inherited without the danger of some bandit chief lucking into asymmetric power by doing a William Rufus on him.

* for a given value of 'rightful', seeing as all political legitimacy in D&D-land stems directly from personal power. One man's "rightful heir" is invariably another's "spawn of the vile usurper"...

And that, dear readers, is why - contrary to expectations - you rarely find a mere F1 as lord of that castle that just hove into view, and why death in harness among the land-holding classes only rarely ("Like, less than 50%: hardly at all really...") sets off a frenzy of internecine war and backstabbing.

(Inspired by Keith and Frank's thoughts on dynastic inheritance in 3E.)

-----

JOESKY'S LAW compliance content

Divine the Ancestral Will (Arcane Spell)
Level: 2 Dur: see Speak with Dead
A restricted form of the clerical spell Speak with Dead. Requires rare and expensive unguents, incenses and the like.
No limit on time since death, but can only be performed in the presence of the honoured remains and/or expensive memorial of a lineal ancestor. The ancestor will be the spirit interrogated. 1in20 chance that the caster is geased to avenge some slight to the ancestor, or to perform some task to the benefit of their family line, in return for the knowledge acquired.

(inspired by the Manja ancestor worship rites from Fading Suns "Dark Between the Stars")

Pic Source
Henry VIII and his children (and his jester) from Medieval and Renaissance Material Culture site

Fame and All the Benefits Thereof

2011-02-26T23:59:00.011Z

"No you jackasses! Kleos; not campness..."

As Tim of Gothridge Manor argued some time back, adventurers can be seen as the big-spending, high-living, tall-tale-telling rockstars of the fantasy world. Kids play out their adventures; swains and maidens have woodcuts of them on their hovel walls; bards sing of their loves, losses and achievements; innkeepers give thanks to the gods when they see them walk through the door. So why not have that social stature reflected in the game? All too often I've seen mid-high level adventurers treated as no-account bums by vendors and functionaries who, by rights, should be licking boots and sucking up.

The K.A.Pendragon game uses Glory (the sum of a knight's personal accomplishments) as its XP equivalent. The more Glory you have, the status you will have among your peers. Why not adapt this, or something like it, to D&D?

Ok, here's a table. Whenever the party first saunter into a new burg roll a level check (d*, equal or less than level = success) to if their reputations precede them (for good or ill). What size die is rolled depends on how big and busy the locale is, and on how far the characters are from home.

Hometown - d6

Other town - d8

Local City - d10

Distant City - d12

'Overseas' - d20

Offworld/Other plane - d30

If the character is a regular patron of bards, or a big man on the local social scene; shift the die down a size.
If the character lives abstemiously or anonymously (like, for example, a lot of thieves); shift the die up a size.

Why a level check? Because XP in D&D is garnered by doing macho, lucrative stuff that gets you talked about: killing monsters, stealing swag, paying your bar tab with a fistful of rubies.Fame and public recognition will be an emergent effect of the things you do to garner XP (and more personal power) in the first place.

Why scale the dice? Because being 'hometown famous' likely doesn't mean a thing in a big, jaded city like Viridia, but almost everyone in the Wilds has heard at least a few stories about the Heptarchs of Aftane or the Emperoress of Throx (high-level doodz with lotsa kills and big rep). Someone/thing like Demogorgon? He's famous all across the planes.

If the level check is a success the character is recognised as noteworthy. Roll, or choose (as appropriate) public reaction to his presence:

     1-3    Positive impression (brave, learned, generous, etc.)
     4-5    Negative impression (cowardly, cheapstake, braggard, etc.)
     6    False impression (mistaken identity, mis-attributed deeds or scandal, etc.)

Positive and Negative impressions modify NPC reactions by moving them up by one band on the NPC Reaction Table (Unfriendly to Neutral, Indifferent to Friendly, etc.) for Positive reactions; down by one band for Negative.

Positive impressions might get you exclusive invitations, discounts, free stuff, convivial company, etc. All as the GM decides.
Negative impressions will get you barred from entry (to the baths/palace/city...), sudden outbreaks of "Sorry sir, out of stock/price went up.", surly service, hired thugs gunning for you, and/or the traditional urchins throwning clods of dirt.
False impressions should involve any hilarious, farcical complications the GM can devise ("Why are they cheering us/smiling in that sickly manner/chasing us with pitchforks and torches?") Claiming credit for things you haven't actuallt done (or not correcting misattributions from others) can result in unearned gifts and adulation, but expect Lord Slashstab to be more than a little angry when word gets out that a bunch of no-account punks are getting props for supposedly killing a dragon he slew/unhorsing him in battle/cuckolding him...

You might also elect to apply this fame effect to the morale of encountered monsters. Where appropriate use a level check to see if the monsters have heard camp fire tales of these guys (the deeper into the dungeon/wilderness, the larger the die used). If yes, modify their reaction and/or combat morale accordingly.

This last tweak ain't crazy innovation for the sake of it; there was actually something similar in Gygax & Perren's "Chainmail" (see page 30, under the entry for Superhero). Lowly 1HD oiks had to make a morale check if a Superhero even ambled within charge distance of them. Totally reasonable IMO. I mean, you've heard stories about that wild-eyed albino guy with the burning runesword and the bat-winged helm; do you really want to be the first one to go up against him today?

Sources:
Header pic from What's On TV?

The Footprints of Ayrvaat

2011-02-25T23:59:00.006Z

"Oh Gods it's horrible here!
Please can we go back to the dungeon?!"

Some ancient and broken roads in the Wilds lead nowhere. Literally nowhere. They terminate not in settlements inhabited, deserted or even ruined and monster-haunted, but in badlands that even the jaded natives of the Wilds consider unnaturally twisted and hostile. Even more so than dungeons, these are places shunned by the sane and sensible. The men of the Nagai Plains call these ill-omened lands names that variously translate as "Befouled Domain of the Dead", "Tangled Vista of Misery", "Place to Which Only a Damn Fool Goes" and collectively "The Footprints of Ayrvaat".

Traveller's tales concerning these places are universally cautionary and grim in tone. Asking around the learned sages or craggier, more travel worn habitués of the bars and bordellos of Adburg will produce an unchanging unity of tone in responses: "The Footprints of Ayrvaat? Stay away. You won't find treasure; you won't find glory; you'll just find a slow, painful, ignominious death." Few, and of little credence, are stories of lost treasure in these dread places.

Whatever the prevailing terrain the environs of Footprints of Ayrvaat are difficult going. The land becomes ever more broken, directions and distances ever more deceptive. Prevailing weather within several hours travel of a Footprint is almost universally bad, with vicious crosswind and limited visibility the norm, and dire rains unpleasantly common.

The outermost peripheries of the Footprints are invariably composed of stony fellfields bisected by long berms and hillocks, all of which point back in the direction from which the traveller has come. There are numerous erratics and a great deal of broken, vitrified ground. The little water that can be found is brackish and unpleasant at best, and more often dangerously toxic. The terrain is sparsely scattered with remnants of what may once have been crafted metal and stone crafted to an inhuman aesthetic, but might just as easily be naturally-occurring materials heated and shaped by immense, alien forces.

The broken, cliff-scarred lands at the heart of the fellfields, surrounding a Footprint of Ayrvaat proper, will be scattered with stark, sharp-edged monoliths and rows of sculpted rocks positioned to form mile-long stretches of wall or dragons teeth blocking forward progress in the most awkward manner possible. Numerous unburied humanoid skeletons of strange form lie unburied around the monoliths and fellfields.

The monoliths - all prominently situated - variously resemble spiked trees or vast lightning bolts flung into the ground at crazy angles. Some are solid; others contain seemingly random hollows and voids.

The (obviously artificial) walls and dragon’s teeth are composed of strangely-angled blocks of hard-wearing stone, deliberately positioned so that only difficult to find narrow, twisted pathways exist between them.

Within the broken rings of the monoliths and walls are found the foci of the Footprints. These are invariably vast depressions furlongs across. These vitrified and blasted badlands are most commonly bone dry and afflicted with constant dust storms, but some are partially filled by miasmal toxic lakes. Intruders rapidly become prone to progressive malaise and wasting sickness. Dead organic materials (leather, wood, paper, etc.) begin to decay at an accelerated rate. Metal radiates a strange form of St Elmo's Fire which streams away from the centre of the Footprint. Nothing good grows here; normal life rapidly sickens and dies.

The inner reaches of Footprints of Ayrvaat are devoid of any by the most stubborn life; a few warped mewling blasphemies of life crawl across the landscape scrounging whatever meagre sustenance they can from the strangely fleshy ground-hugging plant life that struggles to survive here. As if the attenuated ecosystem were not stressor enough, living creatures are further afflicted by both wildly unnatural environmental conditions and insanely howling spectres of the long dead.

At the very centre of each Footprint is a strange area of tortured space. Gravity, space, time and magic all become unpredictable in the vicinity of these Twists. Normal sight and darkvision simply refuse to register whatever is at the focal point of a Footprint, treating it almost as a blind spot. Magical probes blink out of existence, register contradictory information or react in unexpected ways, often driving those investigating them insane. Approaching these strange cankers in the substance of things is generally fatal, even to the best-protected explorers.

All who have survived a journey to a Footprint of Ayrvaat agree: there is nothing of value, only a lethal enigma.

Footprints of Ayrvaat, Notes and Rules

Yeah, the Footprints of Ayrvaat are my attempt to add a little Gamma Wastes/Cacotopic Stain/Chaos Wastes/Mournlands vibe to the Wilds. They’re not exciting treasure- and danger-filled focuses of excitement; they’re a (pretty heavy-handed) reminder that the Wilds are a post-apocalyptic setting which eats unique and special snowflakes for breakfast.

This link on Warning People Away from RL Bad Mojo should be of interest.

Locating a Footprint of Ayrvaat
There should be a non-trivial chance (my pref. 50%) that any large town or city rolled on your preferred random terrain generator is instead a Footprint of Ayrvaat. The hex containing the Footprint of Ayrvaat, and all surrounding hexes, will be considered very difficult/badlands terrain for purposes of overland movement.

General Rules for the Footprints of Ayrvaat

Divination magic ("commune", "contact other plane", etc.) generally yields little information beyond a general theme of "We have no desire to talk about that. Stay away."

In Proximity to a Footprint

Living creatures take periodic radiation damage (see below). Check once per 4 hours in the outer reaches of a Footprint (within 10 miles of the Footprint proper, but if outside the monolith walls)
Inhabitants? Break out Mutant Future or your preferred random beasty generator. Low frequency of encounters.
Compasses and dead reckoning navigation work erratically, if at all (increase chances to become lost by as much as you see fit).
Weather is invariably bad, with occasional unnatural storms pouring out of the Footprint in defiance of prevailing winds. Fun Fortean storm chart here.
Quality of hunting is poor and foraging for food is nigh impossible.
Animals are skittish and unruly.
Intelligent summoned entities are sullen, nervous and keen to leave as quickly as possible.

Within a Footprint of Ayrvaat

Living creatures take increasingly large doses of radiation damage. Check once per turn within the crater, and immediately if anyone is foolish enough to drink from a toxic pool.
Inhabitants? Swarms of screaming incorporeal undead. In between fending off the howling dead sprinkle with Mutant Future, or your preferred random beasty generator. Don't spare the rod.
Natural items decay at an accelerated rate (Item saves per hour?).
Food sours, or picks up radiation. Enjoy those rations folks.
Magic has a 50% chance of misfiring (effects at GM's discretion, although invariably malign).
Magic which allows instantaneous transportation (teleport) or which uses/allows travel to other planes as a means of transit (ethereality, shadow-walking, etc) tends to backfire horribly.
Most summoning spells either do not work, or work in a horribly unexpected manner.
Summoned elementals are entirely uncontrollable and invariably hostile within a Footprint.
Animals absolutely will not enter a Footprint, and will turn on masters who attempt to compel them by force.
Other effects as the GM's evil mind decides.

At the Loci of Footprints

Living creatures are bathed in dangerous radiation. Check once per round, increasing minimum intensity as distance closes.
Coming into direct contact with the locus of a Footprint should be impossible. Anyone foolish enough to have attempted it should be torn to pieces by arcane physics gone berserk before getting within reach.
Using divination magic on a locus causes the scyrer to suffer a random effect:

1-3 - Cause Fear
4-5 - Feeblemind
6 - Symbol of Stunning
7 - Symbol of Blindness
8 - Symbol of Insanity

All effects as the spell of the same name (see LL & LLAEC, or equivalent book of your choice). Save at –2. No save allowed if the spell true seeing was used to scry.

Radiation in the Vaults Game

Generally, as Mutant Future pp50-51.
Roll d6 for intensity; d10 if the PCs have wandered into somewhere horribly dangerous... or if you're in a bad mood.
Failing a string of saving throws against radiation (treat as Save vs. Wands, per MF 145) doesn't result in glamorous new mutations; it results in death.
Radiation damage cannot be healed naturally; bed rest is no help, ditto macho pulp hero slugs of alcohol. Hit points lost to radiation damage can be regained only through the use of magical healing (yeah, as 3E's Vile damage type).

It's an established trope of the Vaults game that large amounts of magic does bad sh*t to you. I'll be using these rules for areas of unnatural (often sickly-green or lurid purple) high-magic radiance.

Sources:
Header image from The Wandering Scot blog
Landscape of Thorns and Forbidding Wall images from Excerpts from Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Sandia National Laboratories report SAND92-1382

A-to-Z All Killer, No Filler Challenge (Prelim)

2011-02-24T23:59:00.036Z

(Me, some time hence, when

I realise just what I've agreed to)

Here's something I spotted in a blogroll and snuffled out at the (rather unfortunately named) Tossing It Out blog:

The premise of the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge is to post something on your blog every day in April except for Sundays. In doing this you will have 26 blog posts -- one for each letter of the alphabet. Each day you will theme your post according to a letter of the alphabet.

You will only be limited by your own imagination in this challenge. There is an unlimited universe of possibilities. You can post essays, short pieces of fiction, poetry, recipes, travel sketches, or anything else you would like to write about. You don't have to be a writer to do this. You can post photos, including samples of your own art or craftwork. Everyone who blogs can post from A to Z.

So, bandwagon ahoy then.

I'll be needing 26 subjects on which to exude brain custard throughout the month. I could just pick them myself, but, in my unlimited masochism, I've decided to let my esteemed (well-groomed, erudite, and not at all prone to the cheap gag, or to inflicting nigh impossible and hilariously ironic Sisyphean punishment) readership use me as their personal performing monkey-cum-sideshow geek.

Pick any word you like, post it in the comments (along with any additional conditions you elect to impose) and I'll blog on it in connection with the Vaults setting. In accordance with JOESKY'S LAW each post will contain actual substantive game-able content.

I'll start the game by doing A to C (picked entirely at random from the Collin's Concise English Dictionary):

A is for "atrophy"
B is for "broth" (dodged a bullet there methinks...)
C is for "curtsey"
D is for "destiny" (Geordie Racer)
E is for "equinox" (Geordie Racer)
F is for "fisticuffs" (Geordie Racer)
G is for "geometry" (Ragnorakk)
H is for "haze" (Ragnorakk)
I is for "immortality" (Ragnorakk)
J is for "Jungian" (Sham, aka Dave)
K is for "kibble" (Sham, aka Dave)
L is for "lopsided" (Sham, aka Dave)
M is for "Maenad" (ckutalik)
N is for "nostalgia" (ckutalik)
O is for "orgasmatron" (ckutalik)
P is for "putrescence" or "pandemonium" (Flynn) or "parallax" (Carter Soles)
Q is for "quarrel" (Stuart)
R is for "ransack" (Stuart)
S is for "silver" (David) or "syzygy" (Erin Palette)
T is for "Thulsa Doom" (David)
U is for "unsettling" (Stuart)
V is for "vermin" (Byron) or "vagabond" (Trey)
W is for "wafting" (Byron) or "were-folk" (Trey)
X is for "xenium" (Byron)
Y is for "yew" (migellito)
Z is for "Zarathustra" (migellito)

Note: due to insufficient days in the month of April this challenge will not include the full richness and variety of the Suessian Reformed Latin alphabet.

Image source: Booklust blog

Broad-Brush Human Cultures of Nagoh

2011-02-22T14:04:00.003Z

Just a quick-and-dirty cultural origins table for humans IMG. Differentiates them nicely from one another, gives new players a handle on what the world is like, and keeps distressingly cliché RL archetypes ("Oh, a Viking named Olaf. How... unexpected.") to a minimum.

Game-mechanical effects? None as written. This is classic D&D. It's intended as nothing more than a hook for the player to hang characterisation on. If the players whine (and I'm feeling generous) I *might* allow some minor mechanical benefits.

Roll d8:
1-3 Urban
4-6 Rural
7-8 Oddland

Urban (d8)

Cinnabarite - You come from solipsistic Cinnabar, City at the Centre of Time. Your physique is godlike, your skin golden, your self-satisfaction total.
Elsweran - You come from the misty city of Els. Your eyes are unusually large and you have feathers rather than hair.
Tarasqualtan - You come from Tarasqualta, City of the Godbeast. Your teeth are disconcertingly sharp, your nails are iron-hard black claws.
Throxian Vatborn - You come from the Dome City of the Emperoress, where men are created rather than born. Your flesh is hairless and ghoulishly pale, your mien distant.
Viridian - You are a descendent of the mighty sea-kings of Viridia the Ever-Glorious. Your skin is green-tinged, your eyes black and slightly bulbous.
Aftani - You come from far Aftane, City of the Seven Red Kings. Your hair blows in unseen winds. Your voice echoes strangely.
Adari - You come from Adar, Temple City of the Ten Thousand Gods. Your neck is elongated, your eyes slanted. Your skin is tattooed with scriptural passages.
Neteshan - You come from Netesh the Damned, Peripatetic City of the Apostarch. Your red limbs are short but sturdy, your face unusually flat. You're not sure how to get home...

Rural (d8)

Nagai Plainsman - You come from the wind-swept plains beyond the Nagai Pass. Your eyes are narrowed, your blue-tinged skin weathered. You call no man master.
Nagai Hillsman - You come from mining country. Your hands are large, your eyes beady, your skin ingrained with soot. Things can only possibly get worse...
Nornmonter - You come from the Nornmounts, the cursed mountains beyond the ruined City of Nagoh. You have an unusual number of fingers and a tendency to flinch from things others can't quite see.
Toxfeller - You come from the cratered, sinkhole-infested Toxfells around the ruined City of Nagoh. Your features are malleable, your limbs oddly articulated. You don't like to be out after dark.
Funglan - You come from the outlying areas of the Fungal Forest. Your features are strangely elfin, and you are carry curious infections. You are also prone to periods of vacancy.
Vorran - You come from the rich downlands of the Vorra River. You are broad-beamed and web-footed, and you like livestock entirely too much.
Islander - You come from one of the islands of the Sea of O'sr. Your people are unique and especially marked by the gods; not like all those other islanders, who are merely inbred arrogant weirdoes.
Hexlander - You come from the mysterious Hexlands, where the ground falls away and men are prey to alien beasts. Your arms are long, your skin radiates a subtle orange glow.

Oddlands (d10)

Ganymedean - You come from the Gandymedean Marches, where true warriors ride the mighty Men-o-War in glorious aerial combat. Your skin is bronzed, your voice LOUD!, your mettle true.
Crab Dancer - You come from the shoals of Thadamkrabh. You wear garments of coral and shell. Your feet are strangely jointed and your eyes retract rather than blink.
Anachron - You come from the land of Anachronia, where the impossible is everyday. You carry in your body artefacts of strange make and obscure function.
Janus - You come from the land of the Januses, where men have two faces. Some call you dishonest, you prefer to think of yourself as multi-faceted.
Amazon - You come from the land of the amazons, where men are slaves or sacrifices. Sharp-edged stony shards grow from your shoulders.
Pan - You hail from the idyllic hill-country of Panistan. You are goat-legged and sybaritic.You do not answer to 'Mr Tumnus'.
Stiffneck - You hail from the fog-shrouded Vergrun. Your neck is thickly-muscled and rigid, your eyes wide-set. The Mindslugs of Shgaxx are your ancient enemy and rightful prey.
Shug - You come from the eastern margins of the infamous Iron Forest. Your extremities are disproportiately large. Your mouth is in your belly.
Resonite - You come from the sulphur swamps of Mokad'nar. Your face is eyeless, your head crowned with antlers. You don't seem to bump into things...
Merelunder - You come from the ever-damp Merelands, domain of the Sleeping King. Benign leeches suckle your blood and feed you exotic drugs. Your eyes are close-set, your legs long and gangling.

Sources:
image from The Book Palace Moebius gallery
Tarasqualta from The City Built Around the Tarrasque by various
Cinnabar from "Cinnabar" by Edward Bryant
Throx from World of Thool by Scott Driver
Viridia from Majestic Wilderlands by Rob Conley
Aftane from Birthright by Rich Baker, et al.
Sea of O'sr from Sea of Os'R Adventure Path by Carter Soles and others
Oddlands from Map of Mosaic from DC's Green Lantern

Lance!

2011-02-05T12:00:00.014Z

Cripes it's dusty in here! I was temporarily seduced away from the path of (hairy, mad-eyed) gaming righteousness by the Evil Empire and Eurogames, and that's all I'm saying.

Just emerging from lurkitude to waffle about a small change to rules for charging with lances. This was inspired by Delta's notes on lancers as kinetic weapons and by the gift-that-keeps-on-giving that is the K.A.Pendragon RPG.

"I'm 9th level and right now my cat-bird
does more damage than me. Sad that."

IMO a high-level griffon-mounted fighter should be doing bad-ass, thematically appropriate stuff like swooping down on his foe and stapling varlets to the ground St George-style.

Suggested changes:

Movement stays as is.
No change to weapon reach priority (lance and spear/polearm cancel each other's First Strike).
Roll To Hit stays as is, at least for the mo'.
Damage on a charge changed to 2x(d* + mount's HD), rather than 2x(d* + Str).
Mounts make only 1 attack/round in melee. Usually a trample or hoof/claw attack.

So Sir Boggo on his warhorse does 2x(1d*+3), while Sir Shinypants de Railroad on his dragon does 2x(1d*+10-12). Horrible overkill for low-HD opponents, but enough to give even big beasts like sabretooth cats and wyverns something to think about. And yes, you can try to train a purple worm (15HD) or whale (36HD) as a lancing mount if your DM is demented enough to allow it.

* I always thought lance damage was a d8 in B/X D&D. It turns out that LL says d6 and BECMI says d10...

This doesn't have much mechanical effect on 1HD nameless dudes on horseback, but hopefully it keeps lances interesting for higher level fighters.

-----

Right. I shall now revert to my accustomed existence as the Drive-By Abuser ("Discussing D&D on the internet? Looks like it and all") of other peoples comment thread. ;)

Hex Mapping the World mwah hah hah

2010-05-24T00:01:00.001+01:00

I'm sure this is old hat to many of you, but I recently found a thread on boardgamegeek about mapping a sphere with hexes. Post 11 is the real meat of it.

Apparently you use an icosahedron as the base, then divide each triangular face into hexes, dymaxion map style. The points where the three faces meet? They're always going to be pentagons, although that might come in handy if you want particular nodes of power at certain places in the game world.

Of course, no mention of such a project in our circles would be complete without a suitable link to the Tao of D&D (just for the passing few who haven't yet stood stunned at the sight of a man gradually hexmaking an entire fantasy Earth, and then using those maps to model pre-modern systems of trade on a planetary scale).

Related, but less likely to be of interest to anyone other than me. Awww, what a cute little hex map of England. Anyone know how I can blow that up to a useful size without it pixelating horribly?

Cinnabar: Mapping the Infinite City

2010-05-23T00:01:00.037+01:00

"Cinnabar? It's no Utopia. There are more options here than you've had before. That's all. There's diversity on an asymptotic curve that never quite touches total breakdown."

Curse you, Tom Fitzgerald! Your mention of extropian science fantasy in the comments to my last post got me thinking about what use one of my favourite New Wave sci-fi novels might be in my game. How could you possibly know that was my Achilles Heel?!

M. John Harrison's Viriconium, China Mieville's Bas-Lag and Jeff Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen (one word review: over-rated) seem to get all the love in the esoteric urban fantasy stakes, but Edward Bryant's Cinnabar stories beat them to it by years, and did it with style too. Fine by me, it keeps Cinnabar more of a well-kept secret that I can mine for my own dirty purposes without others calling me on my packrat-ism.

What good then is The City at the Centre of Time for an old school D&D game? Well, in accordance with my recently evolved idea that "the right answer is always the wilder and more audacious of those on offer" (didn't Feynman say something similar?), I think the answer is: plenty.

Cinnabar is a city built around a time vortex and governed by an AI going slowly mad from the strain of synchronising itself across helical time. The burg is described as:

"...a flux of glass towers and metal walls perched atop red cliff crumbling down to a narrow strand of beach..."

and is a post-scarcity dream of genteel urbanism filled with Clarkean sufficiently advanced science (bioengineering, time travel and outright weird sh*t), helical time distortions, and an array of characters bored to the edge of madness by the ennui of their immortal lives.

"And this" said Timnath Obregon "is the device I have invented to edit time."
The quartet of faded and blurred ladies from the Craterside Park Circle of Aesthetes made appreciative noises; the sound of a dry wind riffling the plates of a long-out-of-print art folio.

A few of the more memorable/exploitable elements of the setting:

Parlours filled with generations of embalmed ancestors.
Giant ravens and revived prehistoric sharks acting as spies and proxies for warring omnidisciplinary scientists (*cough* wizards).
Memory scrubbing and personality overwriting.
Factional strife between bio-modified heterogynes and Luddite natural birth fanatics (the Neo-Creelists)
Intra-city teleportals (known as the Klein Expressway)
Living animal statues embedded in concrete to stop them from wandering off.
The Network, a combination public infrastructure/entertainment system, which hosts shows by sex star Tourmaline Hayes and action star Jack Burton (famous for doing all his own stunts).
Cougar Lou Landis - a deconstruction of the heroic archetype in a city that only looks to heroes to provide some variety in an interminable existence.
Catmothers - Nanny/bodyguards for the children of the elites. Genetically modified cats with their maternal instincts refocused on human children.

There's no way I'm not going to rip all this off with the greatest of glee!

Perhaps the oddest thing about the city is that it is described as becoming wilder and ever more expansive the further in toward the centre one travels. Birds are described as travelling in widening gyres to avoid the confusion brought on by time distortions, and characters talk about time compression as one approaches the singularity at the heart of Cinnabar:

"Its the same phenomenon that would make Anita and the others in Craterside Park think we'd have been gone only a short while, regardless of whether we've spent several subjective years at City Centre."

This is the exact opposite of the time dilation which supposedly occurs in a singularity in the real world and, combined with all the other elements involved, makes Cinnabar something of a challenge to map.

Whether you want to use the Cinnabar singularity as written, or make a journey to the centre of the city a one way trip into a timelike infinity (as in the Stephen Baxter short story Pilot, reprinted in the Vacuum Diagrams collection) is up to you. I'm torn between the Narnia/Oz conceit of no time having passed at home, or having ancient and long-forgotten things from the distant past erupt from the inner regions of the city at irregular intervals.

Perhaps the simplest way of doing so would be to treat the wild reaches at the centre of Cinnabar as an inverted wilderness map, with the city as centre point for expansive exploration of its TARDIS-like forgotten areas. Given how big a factor the warped nature of space and time in the city is, this isn't as absurd an idea as it might first sound.

Picture your classic hex map (the one here is from turn-based card PC game Armageddon Empires, chosen purely for prettiness):

The centre hex, rather than representing the city itself, represents the entire world beyond Cinnabar. The wider world receives short shrift in the original book, being described as comprising no more than "The desert. The greenbelt. The city. The sea", and a disused elevated railway to a long-unvisited city known only as Els (I'm sure the striking resemblance between this far-future SoCal and the self-absorbed worldview of La-la-land is no coincidence...). As the city acts as the gateway between the two wildernesses ("beyond Cinnabar" and "within Cinnabar") it really makes no odds.

The robot-groomed greenbelt surrounding the city would be the ring of hexes surrounding this solitary central hex. The greenbelt might need to be modified slightly for the chaotic and hostile conditions of a D&D world; perhaps into the kind of active defence/free fire area the Neo-Victorian enclave of New Chusan had in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. After all, one can't have riff-raff turning up uninvited...

Surrounding the greenbelt hexes on the map, but within them in terms of topography on the ground, would be the commonly visited, inhabited areas of Cinnabar itself in all their ferment and glory:

"The Tancarae Institute, Craterside Park, the Neontolorium, Serene Village - where the irredeemably elderly live, the Klein Expressway, the Balloonworks-"

Take your favourite fantasy city sourcebook (or better still, a sci-fi one) and crank the whimsy, spectacle and self-indulgence knobs up until they break off. Cinnabar should be thrilling, OTT and always full of the next big thing. The inhabitants crave novelty to the point of mania. Don't forget the dark undercurrent of ennui, despair and casual cruelty though. Citizens may be inviolate under city law, but you do know how they discipline Catmothers, right?

Spoiler: Implanted memories of the litters of kittens these hybrids could never have. At any time their masters can have their mind replay the memories as if the death of their litter was happening all over again.

Beyond the ring (outlying in terms of topography, innermost in terms of cartography) comprising the currently active areas of the city would lie the largely unfrequented centre; interior suburbs inhabited by people tired of the bustle of Cinnabar proper or opposed to the omnipresent panopticon of the Network, or left deserted on human life by the changing tides of ideology and fashion:

"The capacity of Cinnabar is so much greater than its actual population. I assume the inhabitants of Cairngorm grew weary of this austerity millennia ago and simply moved on."

Things would gradually becoming more desolate, outlandish and seemingly impossible as one travelled further in. The Klein Expressway connections would become ever patchier, and things out of their rightful place and time would become more commonplace.

"It appears to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. They're presumed extinct."
[...]
"Obregon peered over the lip of the chasm; he could not see the bottom. He looked to the sides and saw that the abyss had no apparent limit in either direction. Directly ahead, the other side of the chasm was about ten metres distant. "This is impossible" he said "There's go geologic feature like this in Cinnabar."

This is where all the post-apoc ape world, transhumanist dystopia and alternate evolutionary history fanfic stuff you feel ashamed to include in an otherwise fine and upstanding D&D game can hang out. Me? I just consider it another vista to be tainted with my own grimdark gonzo vision. ;)

Ultimately, after as much travel, adventure and confusion in the laws of nature as the DM finds entertaining, travellers would (Terminus* willing) reach the singularity which powers Cinnabar and creates the space-time distortions characteristic of the city. This would be the functional and philosophical area beyond the edge of the map; but not, however, the end of the line:

"What you see is the innermost point of the time vortex over Cinnabar. Yet this is not in itself the destination of the time flow; the anomaly is both hole and tunnel, exiting somewhere and somewhen else."

* A ruling singularity AI called Terminus: did the people who designed the city never hear about the power of names? Did they really expect that to end well? Bloody urban planners and their (apparent) failure to understand the importance of mythic resonance...

So, Cinnabar. That (or a decadent, introverted city state so similar as to be its' near-identical twin) is definitely being included as part of the wider Wilds when (if) I ever get around to mapping them. See it while access is cheap, and while it's still there.

"It's a tall mountain."
"Well that can't be helped" said the double helix "Dream quests are known for their arduousness"

edit: feel the power of the grogblog hivemind! Posted at about the same time as my half-formed brainwurble:

Netherworks on synthecosms in Riskail
Zak on Weird vs. Noir (interestingly he considers urban fantasy a cousin of noir)
Trey on hardboiled urban fantasy in a weird world setting

Memestorms and Ideocults

2010-05-22T00:01:00.019+01:00

The folk of the Wilds of Nagoh seem almost uniquely prone to outbursts of religious or socio-cultural hysteria, and to infection with a wide variety of passing fads, quixotic ideals, and other such hobby horses. For every pseudo-medieval castle town or classical city state on the map there will be a dozen or more nomadic tribes, eremitic communities, utopian communes and personality cults, each with its own strange ideology.

Part of this tendency towards apparently insane behaviour can be ascribed to living in a post-apocalyptic world where magic, monsters and interfering godlings are facts of life. In a world gone mad, sometimes madness is the right survival trait. But there are also other, oft-overlooked, founts of strangeness in the Wilds.

Memestorms

Mind-affecting haunts, infectious curses tailored by long-dead geniuses of the biothaumic arts, or a form of free-floating psychic mass hysteria (as ever, the scholars are divided on the exact nature of the phenomenon), memestorms can lie dormant in unknowing host populations for generations before taking effect. Although these infections sometimes cause physical symptoms similar to more mundane diseases, and many also result in gross morphological changes, the primary and characteristic effect is infection with outlandish - but sometimes beneficial - neurochemically-enforced behaviour patterns.

Most memestorms are highly infectious to humans and kindred races, requiring those exposed to carriers of the sickness to make a save vs. poison/death or suffer the effects themselves. Their removal requires the casting of both remove curse (to undo the neurological changes wrought on the sufferer) and cure disease (to kill the infection). Either/or casting will result only in healthy carriers of still active and infectious memestorm strains, or non-infectious sufferers.

16 Sample Memestorms

1. Giving Plague - The sufferer feels driven to divest themself of all worldly goods.

2. Excelsior Fever - Typified by soulful staring at the skies in its initial stages, and later by an unshakable desire to ascend ever higher. Infections generally end tragically in steeple-jacking and mountaineering accidents, or when ramshackle towers and flying machines fail catastrophically.

3. Jabbering Ague - Sufferers become prone to fits during which they they suffer from outbursts of speech in ancient languages. When translated some of these are useless, others are snippets of information about the ancient past, or post-hypnotically encoded secrets, or spell formulae.

4. Builder Frenzy - Infectees labout under an unwavering compulsion to assemble objects into abstract symbolic or representational patterns. Anything that comes to hand will be pressed into service (potato mountain in Close Encounter)

5. Demolishing Mania (aka Iconoclasmiasm) - The antithesis of Builder Frenzy. Sufferers are overcome with the compulsion to tear it all down and flee the wreckage of their former homes in search of who knows what. Highly infectious, entire villages and towns have been known to succumb in a single night of wild-eyed mania.

6. Migratory Compulsion - "Go into the water. Go into the water."

7. Immuring Frenzy - "We have to get under the earth. It's not safe on the surface!" The subject begins compulsively digging, either with their bare hands, or with whatever tool comes to hand. A nuisance to the neighbours if they live on the upper storey, and a disruption to trade if they start in on the market place. Potentially deadly if they succumb while on soft earth.

8. Wainbrurm - The sufferer becomes fixated on low-toned, repetitive rumbling sounds. They will spend all their time obsessively following farm carts, or do themselves lasting serious injury by placing their heads against the wrong parts of mill wheels or trip hammers.

9. Sanguinary Quietism - Sufferers won't initiate violence, and become distressed and sickened by the sight of blood. The infestion is bloodborne, and easily transmitted by the spray of fluids caused by violence. Catastrophic for predators if it enters their food source animals.

10. Slayid - The sufferer becomes fixated on aural stimulation, constantly drummming and hammering. Those sufferers most far gone yowl and screech at unpredictable intervals. Some lucky few are able to lead semi-normal lives, but the worst cases are horrible indeed.

11. Acquired Corporeal Revulsion Syndrome - Some part of the sufferer's body becomes abhorrent to them. They become convinced that they can only survive if it is surgically removed. Quite how heartless or liverless sufferers manage to survive the voluntary renunciation of their vital organs is unknown, but, through some quirk of fate, magical or biological in nature, survive some do.

12. Red Star Fever - Sufferers forcibly share all goods with those around them, giving and taking as they require with no regard for social or legal norms. A viral form of "to each according to his need". Many Goblins suffer this.

13. Communicable Ahistoric Bias - A viral psychosis triggered by the smell of decomposition attendent upon death. Sufferers entirely forget about the deceased, regarding them as fictions rather than real people and their mortal remains as loathsome trash.

14. Asocial Demophobia - A visceral loathing of crowds, and of the urban areas they inhabit. The longer the infection persists, the smaller a group needed to trigger the violent withdrawl from society. Sufferers tend to flee their homes, ending up either as misanthropic trap-setting hermits, or as dinner for the crows.

15. Nam Shub - The sufferer lacks self-will. They will obey the instructions of the last person to speak to them to the best of their ability to understand. In advanced cases even the most self-destructive commands will be mindlessly obeyed.

16. Cleromantic Compulsive Syndrome - The sufferer entirely abdicates personal decision-making responsibility, instead obeying the divinatory properties of dice, coin tosses, or other totemic objects. Sufferers of similar strains will be uncannily in accord over what their divinatory devices tell them. Those infected with different strains will argue viciously and interminably over the correct interpretation of same.

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IdeoCults of the Wilds

So what becomes of the disease-ridden lunatics affected by the memestorms? Although many die or are incarnerated for the protection of themselves, their kin and neighbours, others escape into the Wilds, scraping a living among others of their own strange, outcast kind

Gun Eunuchs of Draozz - A large, evangelical group suffering from a particular strains of Acquired Corporeal Repulsion Syndrome (or, as they argue, 'liberated from carnal hunger thereby') the infamous Gun Eunuchs have found meaning as self-emasculated worshippers of a giant gun-spewing stone head. Their raiding and slaving parties are led by Taks Eksile, a sword-wielding, moustachioed warlord whose accent never matches his stated origins.

The Henon - Singlehandedly give the lie to "the wisdom of crowds" and living embodiments of the proverbial madness of same, the Henon are a floating carnival of social levelling and mob rule. A rigidly anarchistic group of transvestite mummers, the Henon chant obscure slogans, commit nonsensical and sometimes dangerous pranks, and assault any percieved authority figure who crosses their path.

The Slayidheads - hammer-wielding louts in bizarre costumes, led by a loud-voiced captain possessed of unnatural charisma. Slayidheads are hopelessly fixated on the repetitious pounding noises of their hammers, often to the detriment of their health. They are sometimes pressed into service as cheap labour when roadbeds or building foundations require flattening.

Circoncellionites - A quasi-religious body, all of whose members are deliberately infected with Sanguinary Quietism during indoctrination. Dedicated to spreading their creed of universal pacifism through the swords of others...

Sunny May Afternoon Link Dump

2010-05-21T16:19:00.003+01:00

It's too nice a day to blog, so have some random links instead:

Mikhail Belomlinskiy Hobbit Illos (@ Monster Brains) - lizardiest Gollum I've ever seen.

The Cards of Wu (@ ellisnadler.com) - bizarre woodcut divinatory cards. Yep, these are definitely the major arcana used IMG.

Paper Ashes (@ A Journey Round My Skull) - abstract art by Bette Burgoyne. Really rather cool.

The Witless Warrior (@ Pre-Gebelin Tarot History blog) - Snail fights: srs bzns. Looks like Greg Stafford was onto something with Runequest's Dragonsnails.

"Graaaaaar!" went the snail

The Demon-Haunted World (@ Slideshare.net) - Matt Jones' 2009 talk on practical city magic. His argument that "people are walking architecture" makes me think immediately of Greg Bear's dystopian Strength of Stones (cities using people as tools: you know it'll happen, once they wake up).

Odd Map Symbols (@ Tom Gauld's website) - inc. icons for Wicker Man, Angry Birds, Sacrificial Altar and Spooky Tree. He also outlines the perfect gamer future.

52 Ways to Die in a Cave (James Tabor @ Srcibd) - forget monsters, traps and the hostility of a mythic underworld! Caving is inherently a kamikaze hobby.

bonus links: Radium Age Eco-Catastrophes (@ Hilobrow) - If that title doesn't make your heart beat a little faster, then you may not be a true geek.

Chomsky and Zinn on The War of the Ring (@McSweeney's Internet Tendency) - Gondor-centrism, Gandalf the drug-addicted gun runner and a war "all about pipe-weed"

Bookcrossing Gaming Materials

2010-05-18T01:11:00.004+01:00

(Prompted by a post over at Dungeons and Digressions)

Books can, and often do, outlast life with their original purchasers. The wonderful cultural tradition of the secondhand and antique book trades is proof enough of this. As is the strange pleasure of finding a dedication or an ex libris stamp inscribed by an original owner or gift-giver.

Want to still keep track of old gaming books when they get begged, stolen, borrowed, or sold on?

Click over to bookcrossing.com
Tap in the ISBN of your book
Get a bookcrossing number
Stick it on the frontispiece along with a URL
Release into the wild

Hopefully the kind soul who now has custody of your (erstwhile) possession will take a second to brave the swirling hive of dreamcatcher-loving hippy sentiment that is the bookcrossing community, update the location of the book, and let you know where in the world it's ended up.

I understand Bookmooch.com and Read It Swap It (UK) provide similar facilities.

Who knows, you might make some new gaming contacts along the way. Then again...

“Uh, what’s that you say? You’ve got an old D&D book of mine and you want to know if I want back? No thanks Mr. Maniac, and please don’t call here again!”
-- ze bulette

Sunday Link Dump

2010-05-16T18:05:00.002+01:00

Radium Age Telepaths (@ HiLoBrow) - Author's personal Top Ten (and a wider bibliography) of spooky mind powers in early speculative fiction. They also do podcast readings of pulp classics.

Der Andere Seite (Flickr gallery) - scritchy B+W artwork by Austrian Expressionist Alfred Kubin.

Soul Catcher (@ Fortean Times) - the fringe science "21 Grams" antics of Dr MacDougall.

Jerry Building (4 parts) & Joe Building (8 parts) (@ YouTube MeadesShrine) - Jonathan Meades explores the pomposity, banality and cod-mysticism of totalitarian architecture.

Also: the finest creation myth ever vouchsafed unto man:

(Though, wouldn't you know it, Dennis at What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse beats me to it when it comes to adulation for Journey to the West as gaming source material)