Doff Holtzwagger

This is my character, Doff Holtzwagger, from Mike Evans' DIY game. He's a real asshole. He might die, and that's probably ok. (Doff, not Mike. Mike is good.)

Benny "The Device" Frank

Bad seeds grow weeds... Crispin Glover

This is my character in Dyson Logos' Top Secret game, Benny "The Device" Frank. He's a surveillance specialist with paranoia and general fear but an offputting physical presence (tall, wiry, strong).

I am enjoying our exploration of Sprechenhaltestelle and the act of unraveling the mechanics of this old game. But I can't say yet if I actually LIKE the game itself. It was far too unfathomable at first to get any sense of what it was supposed to be. If you go into it thinking of James Bond or almost any spy movie of the last few decades you'll be supremely disappointed. You really cannot do slick spy shit that looks choreographed. Most of the time you'll find yourself fumbling to lie or cheat your way into the massage parlor, engaging in petty theft, and wrestling for possession of peoples' .22 ball point pens while bleeding from switchblade wounds and searching for a safe place to recover.

If the mechanics were quicker and simpler, I'd say this was more Snatch than Goldeneye. Which sounds pretty dope to me.

Will The Device live through this mission? Hard to say. We get lucky a bit. But I have this weird feeling he's going to take a few rounds from a 9mm FN Browning High-Powered self-load (Belgium) before this is all over. He certainly believes it.

Lesser Gods Session Zero

Art © Glen Michael Angus, R.I.P.

BX D&D STUFF

We had session zero of Lesser Gods of Rone Monday night. We spent most of it making characters, discussing the setting, and sort of figuring things out. We got into the adventure for about half an hour - long enough that all the PCs are now in the same boat. Literally. Except the Lake Thing swimming near it.

We do have a Wizard in the party, so here's that character class. It's essentially the BX Magic-User with a few tweaks. Unless we run into any serious issues, this class will replace the MU in all my D&D games.

What's different about the Wizard vs. the BX Magic-User?

-Penalty to reaction rolls. Because wizards are weird and nobody should trust them.

-Fewer weapon restrictions. Because it's silly to limit them to a dagger. Just silly.

-You can wear armor, but it makes casting hard. Because it's more interesting that way. Most PCs will avoid it because of the difficulty. But hey... maybe you want to put some on because you're out of spell slots and you need to make it through this risky pass.

-MU and Cleric spells. This is just because I am not using Clerics in this campaign. Cult leaders can be Wizards. Or a special class. I never liked the basic Cleric anyway. (I'm also disallowing the memorization of the same spell more than once. So even if you do have a Cure Light Wounds spell you only have one of them.)

-Potion brewing. With an adequate lab, of course.

-Magical research emphasized (X51 needs love). And no need to wait until level 9 to create magic items.

-You begin play with a cool item. Because it's more fun that way. Show up on day one with a hat that sings.

-Disregard for spell level slots. This is just a house rule that I prefer. You just add up all spell slots and that's how many spells per day you can cast. You can't cast any spell level higher than your class level. Done.

This class was an amalgam of how I tend to treat MUs anyway + some inspiration from Stuart Robertson's BX Witch - one of the most elegant BX classes I found in the OSR circles. I was gonna have Wizard and Witch but decided there's really no need for both when a Wizard class with enough wiggle room can serve nearly all  your wizarding needs.

If you dislike this kind of thing because it makes the fighter less interesting to play, you could just give the fighter some love. I love the barebones BX game as much as anyone, but all of us house rule it. Nobody runs it truly RAW.

So... The party includes a Wizard (Jayne X Praxis), Lake Thing, Medusa (modified Black Pudding version, Dyson Logos), Nightkind (a piece of the night that woke up), and a Mariner (Andy Solberg). I'll post up all the classes eventually.

The Wizard is searching for their lost dad and the Nightkind is accompanying them, perhaps to understand a weird dream power they seem to be manifesting. They got a ride from the Mariner and picked up the Medusa as her island sank into the drink (related to the campaign? hmmmm...). The Lake Thing approaches because someone has been poaching gators from his swamp island and maybe it's this weird bunch in the rowboat.

The session ended with the PCs approaching the island of Knobbybones where a huge harpoon ballista was pointed at their rowboat by some unknown entities.

Psi Battle

I drew this for Dyson Logos' Psi World zine Communiques From the Psi Underground. This came about because one day I happened upon some Psi World art and within a day or so I had purchased the PDFs and we were playing the game.

Here's the thing we've learned about this game. It doesn't want you to do psionics. I know this because if you create new characters by the book and you try to use your powers in the game you will very very quickly run out of juice. It feels like the starting Power Points are just too low for lots of psi action. Characters tend to have 20 or 30 PP, but even relatively minor powers often eat up 10-20 points per use. It feels like the equivalent of an old school D&D first level Magic-User... one zap and you need 8 hours sleep.

There are other weird things about the game. For example, the power called Detect Emotion costs 5 PP and lasts for a minute. Which sounds OK, except that you can't just detect emotions in general. You have to name an emotion and then detect it. So if you say "fear" and the GM decides the NPC is not afraid but is angry, you won't detect anything at all. Which, to me, seems to fly in the face of classic psychic characters. I want my PC to pick up on emotions in general. I want to scan a person and say "He's feeling scared, but more so... angry!". You can't do that with rules as written.

They do not want you to use psionics. They make the game very punishing to Psis.

Oh there are other oddities. The hit point calculation system is bonkers, for example. But overall it's a fine little game. It runs pretty smoothly. Just has some hiccups.

DCC: Chainbound

During the old 'Rona, I started running a new DCC RPG campaign for a few family and friends via Skype. This is maybe the fourth DCC campaign I've ran (?). Anyway... this game always brings out the "let's just roll with it" in me. I don't do a lot of planning. I allow myself to grab any ole thing that looks like fun and toss it into the mix. I have never written a DCC-based book, so I never think about it as a playtest.

This time I started with one of the dungeons from Black Pudding #1, replacing the stinking nobberlochs with hideous mutant spiders. The tomb was hidden in the sand until the zero-levels dug it up, acting against their will as slaves to the tyrannical Mad King of Zyrrum. I grabbed an old, unused map I drew years ago and plopped it down as the known world for the campaign. Zyrrum is the southernmost city, on the edge of a great desert. The PCs, slaves, won their freedom in the funnel.

Next up they set spent a year apart and came back together as level one PCs in order to rid themselves of the Mad King's slave mark. This mark, magical in nature, is very hard to remove. The PCs have discovered that they must embark on a quest to find the Lost Treasure Vaults of Zadabad in order to find the phylacteries of the Mad King and destroy him, giving them their final freedom.

So far they have spent most of their time in Zyrrum hitting up the local sages and sorcerers to learn all this information. It has been fun. Some heads have been busted.

Notably, one of the players is new to RPGs. This is his first game. So imagine my surprise when, in the first combat as a level one warrior, he fucking died. Like, instantly. Brutally. I rolled two natural 20s against him as the PCs were ambushed in an alley by men trying to capture and return escaped slaves. I gave him a Luck check to survive, which he failed.

But hey... death is not the only way to have a good time. It's DCC. The PCs were whispered to by an old witch in a nearby hovel (this was the sage and seer district). They were instructed to bring in their dead friend, which they decided to do.

The witch used wicked magic to bring him back to life. I gave him another Luck check, which he failed again. This meant the witch had complete control over his soul. She could end his life at her will. She controlled him. So she set him and his allies on a task. "Go and slay the master of the Red Brick Tower... so that my soul can be freed!"

Needless to say they hiked it on over the two day foot journey to the Red Brick Tower, killed a couple of man-bats, and defeated a mad, crazy old wizard who kept shards of his soul in various statues... one of which was an old witch.

Now the PCs have boarded the Soulcatcher on the river and are headed out to sea to find the location of the Rod of the Crescent Moon and, ultimately, the key to freeing themselves of their slaver marks.

Good times indeed.

I used a Dyson Logos map for the Red Brick Tower and for the life of me I cannot find the original link. So go to Dyson's blog and check out about a zillion awesome maps.

Dyson Logos draws a lot of towers.

Psi World Slam

I ran session three of Psi World tonight. The PCs are all Psis (but no precogs!) who have been drawn to the small town of Enclave after a teenager with psionic abilities allegedly blew up the heads of seven people in a hospital. Gerry Muntrell, the teen, is said to have "went crazy" and killed several of his friends and a few doctors during a perfectly safe and routine medical study.

But there's more to this story. The players decided Gerry was innocent and needed to be freed from his prison in the basement of the Enclave Memorial Hospital. Upon discovering a sub-basement level reminiscent of a James Bond villain's lair, their suspicions may be proven correct.

Tonight they busted Gerry out and nobody got killed. It was a stealth mission and was successful, with the alarms going off just as they made their getaway with the young man.

I am off-book a little bit with the setting. I set my game early in the timeline so that the PCs are basically among the first generation of Psis to come out. Corporations run the world through a quasi-government known as IPEG (International Protectorate of Economic Growth). Many corporations are at the heart of IPEG and one of them, the Ranseur Pharmaceutical Company, is somehow associated with the hospital. Is it possible that the "special services" wing of the hospital is conducting illegal experiments on people with psionic abilities?

We're going to find out.

So far the system isn't getting in the way. Many people said this game's mechanics were a nightmare. I agree they are obtuse, but they aren't impenetrable. I have yet to run into a situation where I need to make a ruling and I don't have the tools to do it. The Attribute Saving Throws alone pretty much ensure that won't happen. But, to be fair, the game has been mostly about investigation and dialog and lots and lots of analysis paralysis (my Monday night friends are really good at going over ideas and plans for what might be called a minute or two). We have had at least one real combat and a few uses of psi powers. But I think we've had more skill checks and ASTs that anything.

Enjoying this old game quite a bit. It was a sudden move to run it and I'm glad I made that move. Especially since the group is really into it and Dyson Logos is even working on some super secret sauce related to the game as a result. Hmmmmm.

The Wonderful & Terrible Things That Effervesced in the OSR Scene, Part 2

Where was I? Oh right. I was supposed to be talking about the OSR scene. More-or-less. Sorry about the lengthy DCC RPG campaign posts. I gotta do it though.

Around April 2014, within 2 years of my getting into the old school RPG scene, I started up an online group. We met one Monday night at 9:30 PM, EST, for 2 hours. We are still to this day meeting every Monday night at 9:30 PM, EST. This is a net good in the world.

This group consists of one of my oldest and dearest friends named Jayne as well as four others that I have only met/known through the Monday game and/or other RPG scenes: Andy, Bill, Dyson, and Matt. These I now also call great friends.

Sometimes I call this group the Doomslakers, whether they like it or not.

The whole thing started because god damn it to fucking shit I wanted to run some old school D&D. I was running DCC RPG in my face-to-face games but I had this burning itch to run D&D. I got the group together to play Labyrinth Lord, which had quickly become my absolute darling by 2014. Here was a game that was basically exactly the D&D rules I used to play when I was young. It was a mix of basic and advanced... the same shit I always did! Someone had put it in a book, slapped the best name on it since D&D, and gave an open license to let me make shit up and publish it. I was in.

To start out, I ran a Labyrinth Lord campaign for the group and it lasted somewhere around 50 sessions. I kept copious notes. I tracked XP. The entire campaign was original and I eventually published one module born from it: Winds of the Ice Forest, which got a very nice review on my favorite podcast Save or Die. It was a wonderful little moment in time in this tiny niche hobby.

My second module!

The campaign was tons of fun for me. At the time, the players were Andy, Jayne, Bill and Matt with an occasional fifth player (I think we had 2 or 3 who popped in and out). It was a strongly northern-themed game with lots of snow and ice and it culminated in the party battling a tremendous purple worm monster that killed one of the PCs in an epic moment. The materials I created for the campaign are still in my folders waiting for me to write the god damned follow-up modules Ur-Kak the Swine and Shrine of Worms. (I will write them, I tell you!)

After the Labyrinth Lord campaign we played DCC RPG, Star Frontiers, Bean!, The Black Hack, and others I cannot remember. The group plays on to this day, thankfully.

Labyrinth Lord is crack cocaine for someone like me who just really really wanted to write D&D stuff. Leading up to the time when I discovered the OSR scene, I was creating RPG materials in a vacuum and they were largely meant to satisfy my desire to make D&D stuff. In fact, in the year prior to 2012 (see here) I was writing a funny animals RPG that was explicitly riffing on the D&D tropes that we all know and love. Zyn Dweomer, which was a webcomic I was doing at the time, was the precursor to Rabbits & Rangers. It was talking D&D animals.

My first module!

Anyway, I wrote my first OSR module, Howler, as an OSRIC adventure first then converted it to Labyrinth Lord once I realized the truth. I was blown away by the amount of material that had already been created specifically for Labyrinth Lord. Some of it was brilliant, such as Barrowmaze (I'll get around to that soon). Some of it was just kinda OK. I won't call out specific books that were just OK (or worse), but they do exist. It's damn easy and fast to crank out a Labyrinth Lord adventure that has no sizzle. Just a few rooms on a crude map, some orc stat blocks, a treasure horde, give it a bit of Microsoft Word layout and call it done.

And yeah sure that's really all you need in order to run a fun little dungeon crawl. I totally get that. Hell you don't even need that. You can crank that shit out in a few minutes. But it is nice when someone else does the work. And let's face it... that's the nature of DIY publishing. Very little gatekeeping means you get the good and the bad...

The DCC RPG Tangent Part 3

One more DCC post. Short and sweet to finish this bastard up because I feel like I'm in the "long winded description of your game" territory. And nobody wants that.

The PCs had to deal with The Blue Queen. They found themselves back in their native village, 150 years later. And it was a winter hellscape. They fought some wicked ice witches, contended with a foul witch who gave them some guidance, and somehow ended up on X1: The Isle of Dread... but the island was caught in a time storm and all the dinosaurs were undead. The pirates they encountered (there were pirates) were the ones described in the DCC RPG rulebook... on flying boats. And of course they captured a flying boat and kept it for the next 2 or 3 game sessions.

After escaping the Isle of Dread, they finally confronted The Blue Queen and her 50' ape protector. The wheel of fortune from Hole in the Sky was back, which resulted in one PC becoming a cyborg and another PC becoming a monkey. Which he liked very much.

They killed The Blue Queen. They were now level 4 PCs. I then ran the DCC RPG adventure The Making of the Ghost Ring and we left the campaign as the PCs attained level 5. We have not revisited in over 2 years. Maybe we never will. I don't know. But the entire campaign left me with lots of great RP memories and some new friends. How can you go wrong when your campaign involves space-faring Viking ships, ninja monkeys, cyborgs with chainsaw-action battle axes, and undead T-Rex?

DCC RPG is fucking awesome. It was awesome for me particularly because it did exactly the thing Goodman advertised on the tin... it brought me back to a time when gaming was fun and imagination was king. I was ripe for it too. Like so many other people my age who played RPGs when we were young, this was a thing we badly wanted, and badly needed. It was a net good. DCC RPG told me it was OK to be wildly creative, mixing genres like peanut butter and chocolate, killing characters like a madman, and getting people excited at the table again. And like it or not, sometimes you really gotta be told that shit. It's not always enough to be neutral in game design. Say what you mean, mean what you say.

Of course DCC isn't all good for me. I could nitpick and quibble about the system. While I love the many funky dice I also fucking hate them. I still can't quickly grab a d24 or d16 without carefully examining them. And one of the main reasons I never really got into designing stuff for DCC is because the god damn spell descriptions alone are a huge endeavor. Whereas I could write a B/X style spell in two sentences, you need a solid page or two to write a good DCC spell. And don't even think about patrons. I wrote one patron, which I handed out at Gary Con in the form of a little zine. Hella Nor was her name and I used her in my other DCC RPG campaign which I ran online in my Monday night sessions. It was a bit of a chore. I don't particularly enjoy that side of DCC and perhaps that is one reason the published materials are so popular? Someone else did the labor? I'm not sure.

Anyway. DCC RPG = big fun. 'Nuff said.

The DCC RPG Tangent Part 2

EDIT: Changed the title of this because it's kind of its own thing. I also know how to use "its" and "it's" correctly so blow me.

Continuing what I was saying earlier about my first DCC RPG campaign... no juicy bits here. Apparently I really really want to talk about my DCC game for a minute.

Peril on the Lost City!

The PCs had crashed their cool new Viking ship on a purple planet next to a big pyramid thing. I was only loosely using the content from Peril on the Purple Planet so I made the atmosphere outside absolutely toxic. They got out and realized very quickly that as the weirding sun faded, the air became less breathable. There was a realization that if they didn't find shelter soon they'd die. So they immediately made for the pyramid.

(Sneaky of me, right?)

They ascended to the summit looking for a way in and found it. A trap door. They entered the pyramid and I used the map from B4: The Lost City for the remainder of the adventure. I only vaguely used the contents of B4, allowing the room contents to guide me in certain directions. They were searching for one of the Blue Queen's generals, a demon whose name I cannot remember. They found him locked in a bird cage in the pyramid. Between fighting some kith and dealing with the machinations of the demon in the cage, they eventually set the thing free (something they also did in Hole in the Sky). It didn't help matters.

I don't recall all the events but the culmination of the adventure had them facing a cult of sorcerers devoted to the green stones and the death orms. The green stones, it turns out, were the crystals used to power the Viking ship. But more importantly, the great death orm mother was being summoned in a ritual and, with some clever use of green stones, the PCs were able to sort of take control of the orm (after slaying the entire cult) and took it on a magic carpet ride across the cosmos back to their own home world.

Naturally they crash landed the great, dying death orm in a fury of exploding bits. Plot twist: Their long distance adventure resulted in a huge time lensing effect. They arrived back home after merely 3 days as they experienced it but some 150 years per home time. The Blue Queen had taken over the entire world and was turning it into an ice planet. It was the PCs' actions that allowed her to do this.

Of course they vowed to depose her and stop the madness.

The DCC RPG Tangent Part 1

EDIT: Changed the name of this DCC RPG sub-thread.

These posts are going to be all over the fucking place, so pardon me ahead of time. This is an act of stream-of-consciousness commentary to summarize/explore my experiences in the gaming community since 2012 (and maybe before). This time it seems that I'm writing mostly about DCC RPG, my entry point to the old school scene. This post has little or no juicy "terrible things about the OSR" bits. If you're here for the controversies all you'll find is my gushing on and on about my first DCC RPG campaign. Maybe next time I'll bitch.

In 2012 I distinctly remember being super-duper inspired to get a local gaming group together and play some DCC RPG. I didn't buy the book until I listened to a couple of episodes of Spellburn, then I pulled that trigger pretty fast. I got the wizard cover because it's the most badass.

It was totally the enthusiasm of Judges Jen, Jeffrey, Jim, and Jobe that got me to buy that book. It was a $50 investment, after all. And I had never held it in my hands. But their description of the rules compelled me. I was all in.

As soon as the book arrived I started pouring over it and I got a group together to play. The first game I ran was with 3 players at my house and the very first die roll of the night killed a zero level character. I think everyone at the table fell in love immediately. It was Portal Under the Stars, the zero level adventure that was in the original printings of the book. It's a solid adventure that you can run in a few hours so I highly recommend it as a starter.

After that we got together relatively regularly with 4-7 players each night. I ran a campaign that got it's start initially with Portal, then with Sailors on the Starless Sea when others joined in. Of course that adventure was memorable and one of my players still to this day mentions his poor little female halfling who was yanked off the ship into the deep where the leviathan waited. He had high hopes for her.

We went from Sailors to Hole in the Sky... this was shortly after I got back from my trip to Gary Con (was it V? I can't remember!). Hole in the Sky had just been published and I snagged it at the con. It was a huge hit with the group and a huge blast to run. By this time our core group was fairly well established and we had a nice party of level 1 PCs.

From that point I started mixing it up with old TSR modules as well as Goodman Games adventures and some homebrewed ones as well. During this time I was creating and publishing materials for Labyrinth Lord more than anything, and playing that game online. But locally, face-to-face, it was mostly DCC RPG. I allowed

myself to just play and have fun with DCC rather than worrying about creating publishable materials.

I used certain items and ideas from those funnel adventures to form the basis for the entire campaign. The key NPC from Hole in the Sky became The Blue Queen, the chief villain of the game. The PCs "worked" for her several times (whose gonna say no?) and eventually became her mortal enemies. I went from Hole in the Sky to the classic D&D module B4: The Lost City... which I mashed up with DCC's Peril on the Purple Planet box set. I had snagged that lovely treasure via the Kickstarter and was eager to give it a spin.

I mean come on. Have you seen Peril on the Purple Planet? It's lovely. So much gamable stuff in that box, so I gamed some of it. Not all of it, not by a stretch. But enough.

I know you're going to ask me, so here is how I mashed it up. If you weren't going to ask and don't care, just fuck right off for a minute while I spew my fanboyish gamer squelchies.

The PCs got the boat from Sailors but didn't get to keep it for some reason. I cannot remember why. Anyway, after Hole they found the boat again or another boat. Again, I'm old and I take shitty notes. The point is they found a Viking style ship. There were some undead monsters too. They had been set on a task by The Blue Queen to find one of her warlords, a demon who had been locked up someplace far away. They had a clue about the location of the ship, which would help them find him.

So they find the ship and it's got this funky crystal-based control panel at the helm instead of a wheel. One of the part members, perhaps Nando the Thief, was able to ascertain its usage. There was a helmet he put on and was shown a vast panoramic view of the cosmos. He made some nice saves and was not driven insane and was in fact able to activate the ship which proceeded to propel them through space at warp speed. It was an epic little session and I remember being quite proud of how I described this event and the players seemed to be hugely into it.

Nando wasn't a good pilot and didn't land very smoothly. The party crash landed on a purple world near a large purple ziggurat. This was, in fact, the pyramid from B4.

Here's Part 1 of this meandering series if you're a completist.

The Pool vs. The Questing Beast

Ron Edwards has another Pool-related post up, with a video. I love reading Ron's insights into the game. I try to remember my thoughts at the time I wrote TQB and why I made the changes I did, but I fail to remember. This is because I tend to do everything more-or-less while inspiration strikes and very often if I think too long about it I just won't do it.

Anyway, if you want to understand The Pool and The Questing Beast, go check out his post. Read the comment section for a clear explanation of how the games work.

Lost Land of Zkoth 1

In October 2017 I started a campaign for my local group wherein they were in the service of the Jade Prince, consigned to go on a 7 galley sea voyage to explore a lost land known as Zkoth. We played a few sessions then the schedule fell apart, as it often does, and the campaign went into hiatus.

Recently I was given the chance to run public games a local brewing company called Jarfly. Last night the new campaign began, mostly with the original players, but also open to the public as a drop in/drop out game.

The venue worked out very nicely. It wasn't nearly as noisy as expected, probably owing to the frigid temperatures which kept the crowd down. The proprietor Daniel, also a part time player, and I agreed to do the game every other Wed.

It's a clip art panther!

In this session the players took on new roles, following up on an interesting quest their original PCs discovered. They set out around a large salt lake in the humid, warm country to find a doorway at the base of a low, bald mountain. The creepy lake was still as death, with no telltale signs of fish or other life... except the ubiquitous serpentine form the cleric, Clarus of the Eternal Eye, spotted 100' offshore. But it wasn't from the lake that danger arose. Instead, they were harassed by six jet black panthers. The attacks of the panthers caused "negative energy" to invade bodies and non-magical weapons to be destroyed. The battle was fierce and one of the fighters, Mongore, was badly wounded. But they triumphed in the end, thanks largely to a level 3 NPC who was slated to be played by a random patron of the bar who had to leave early.

They found their secret door and, after dispatching an owlbear sentry (the only monster so far encountered that they recognized as being native to their homeland), they entered a seemingly abandoned rough-hewn temple complex. This lead to a pool of lava, a strange goddess statue, and a black pudding (yay!).

The session ended with the PCs banged up and out of magic power, resting near the temple entrance, plotting their scheme to re-enter and explore the 13 mysterious doors they didn't dare touch while avoiding the black pudding along with whatever thing created the burnt footsteps leading out of and into the lava pool.

Fun times!

Rule set is B/X D&D using B/X Essentials and house rules. All PCs started at level 3.

Meandering Commentary on Dwarves in My Campaign World

I was never a huge fan of dwarves. Or at least that's what I said. But when I started peopling my gaming world of Yria (Old Gnarl) I quickly realized that I must love the bearded bastards. When I ran my first Labyrinth Lord game dwarves turned out to be a key component.

The dwarves of Yria are of two varieties: western Rock Hardy dwarves and eastern Lightning Spire dwarves.

The western mountains are the Rock Hardies and those are populated by redneck dwarves who love to fight. Each mountaintop is dominated by a clan and the clans stage elaborate battles with one another over unclaimed hills and mountains... or just for fun. Dwarves here, a place just south of Frimmsreach (where the Ice Forest would be found), have names that are fun to make up. Here are some names of dwarves that appeared as NPCs in my first LabLord campaign:

Boomer Earthcleaver

Zapper Earthcleaver

Shank Earthcleaver

Bart Barrackbomb

Loots Doorbreaker

Brickwallow Stormshot

Tankfellow Stormshot

Hulktall Stormshot

Bruiser Barrackbomb

Killminster Barrackbomb

Urfnozzle Doorbreaker

Nabby Doorbreaker

Brickwallow Stormshot was the leader of the dwarves. I think only 1 or 2 of them were still alive by the end of it, but there was a cool episode in which the party's dwarven cleric, Frothgar, summoned the slain spirits of this party of dwarves for an epic battle against an army of trolls and giants.

Now, the eastern dwarves dwell in the great Lightning Spires, a range of thunderous mountains that dwarfs the Rock Hardies (pun intended). These are your aloof, snotty dwarves. They have high standards. They have culture and learning and are exceedingly concerned with craft and tradition. They don't actually interact much with the rest of the world and thus I have no fun things to say about them. But they would have names like Dalan of the Silver Sky or Myyra the Masterworker. None of this Doorbreaker bullshit.

On my good days I think about doing a comic strip series to explore the world of Yria. And in fact I've stuck my toes into that water more than once. Having done a lot of comics and comic strips over the years I'm stymied by one great obstacle... comics are a lot of work.

Seriously. If you know a person who makes a lot of comics or manages to do a "regularly scheduled" comic, you need to give 'em a big hug. If you are that person, here's a virtual hug: [hug].

Rabbits & Rangers: Sheep on the Borderland

My Monday group finished the first playtest adventure for Rabbits & Rangers, a Labyrinth Lord based guide to running cartoon animal campaigns. I cobbled the adventure together without writing much down. I decided to riff on B2: Keep on the Borderlands and I called it “Sheep on the Borderland” (naturally).

The gist was this. A band of adventurers called the Sheeple (all Sheep) went missing after making a journey to an ancient ruined keep northwest of the great city of Zyn Dweomer. The sister of the Sheeple’s leader enlisted the PCs to help her find her lost brother. Her name was Bree Arkus.

I took the map of the Keep and drew a ruined sketch of it. I put a huge rift in the earth next to the Keep, related to the dark magics that were at work in the area.

The PCs explored the surface of the ruin, where nearly all the walls and buildings were reduced to rubble. They fought hammerhands, who were responsible for most of the smashing of walls. It’s kinda like cats clawing… they gotta smash stuff.

Anyway, the culmination of the adventure was an encounter in the only remaining intact structure… the Chapel. So here’s a sketch of the Chapel layout.

There were stinky diseased goblins, Sheep, Monkeys, giant spiders, giant snakes, slithering snake people, and a half bull half sheep demon. It was fun. I learned a great deal about the tension between cartoon style mechanics and straight Labyrinth Lord play.

Next playtest begins Monday… In the Castle of Count Drake-Yulla! I hope to write this one up as a module to supplement the book.

The text for Rabbits & Rangers is finished. Right now I’m focused on playtesting and doing art for the book. I do not have a release date yet. It will depend on when I get the drawings done.

DCC Mood

I'm usually thinking about BX or Labyrinth Lord but lately I've had DCC RPG on the brain. I've been running it with fair regularity since I bought the boss wizard cover rulebook in 2013 (2014?). I guess all told I've ran about 30 sessions with maybe 6 or 7 of those being funnels. Among the official adventures and third party adventures I've ran Sailors twice, Hole in the Sky, Portal Under the Stars twice, Escape From the Purple Planet, Ruins of Ramat, and one of the Sunken City adventures. All great fun!

Right now I'm in the middle of a campaign for my local group and they all just hit level 3 after finally escaping the Lost Pyramid on the Purple Planet. I basically took B4: the Lost City and molded it into a Purple Planet adventure. At first I was just subbing kith for the various factions but very quickly I took the whole thing in my own direction and abandoned most of the content of B4 and most of the Purple Planet material. I used B4's maps and invented a death orm cult lead by a half-kith-half-human priestess (with no actual powers) who the players slew in the last adventure.

The orm they worshiped was a well. It looked like a well, anyway. It's mouth was the ring and its gullet the shaft. It required greenstones to animate and upon animation it could potentially be controlled by a powerful enough wizard making a good enough spellcheck.

The party wizard, who is well known for hiding and not casting spells, managed to gain control of the orm after replacing the last greenstone. The orm turned out to be the mysterious "Ship of Stars" and could navigate the astral plane, taking the PCs as passengers. Thus they were able to make it home.

Upon reaching home the orm was in its death throes, being an ancient and weakened worm. But the wizard scored a nat 20 on a check to regain full control and managed to steer the dying beast to the ground without the DC 15 Ref saves I was going to require to avoid the 6d6 points of damage from the inevitable crash.

*sigh*

Good game. Fun times. DCC is a blast to run.

"Howler" Actual Play

Christopher Stogdill started running his group through my module Howler. Can't wait to hear how this plays out.

DCC #...um...

Yeah, so the Labyrinth Lord campaign I ran I did this weekly episode notes thingie. I'm not doing that with DCC. I started out that way but rolled a 1 on my spellcheck.

Here's what's going on in the campaign in a nutshell:

The PCs are working for a devil woman named Hella Nor. One PC, named Oryx, has taken Hella as a patron to his wizardly ways. Hella has sent the PCs on a couple of missions to reclaim her lost crystal balls.

In the second mission to retrieve a ball they ended up on a magical ship that dropped them on a purple planet. Trapped in a prison beneath an arena of warring kith the PCs freed a witch named Irene and piloted another ship off the purple planet. Things went awry and now they have crashed and are stranded on a hostile jungle island in an unknown world.

The meta plot seems to be unraveling the doings of the War Wizard, who seems to have more tombs and ruined fortresses than you can shake a lightning spear at. And the few PCs who survive from the funnel know that their entire memories prior to that first adventure are somewhat suspect. It seems they lived in a bottle city, possibly because of the machinations of the War Wizard or a mysterious figure known as the Mind Master.

Current roster of characters:

Artifus (level 2 botten): Once a brave squire named Ammet, Artifus died in the War Wizard's tomb and was brought back to life through sorcerous science as a cyborg...a botten!

Oryx (level 2 wizard): The son of the ill-fated heavy drinking monk Voss, Oryx has become a fanatical devotee of Hella Nor and...unfortunately...a terrible wizard whose spellchecks never seem to break 7. He is the PC most likely to die, by all reasonable measures. Yet he lives on...

Parsley (level 2 cleric): This happy-go-lucky girl doesn't have an ability score higher than her shoe size but she was chosen by Shul, god of the moon, to be his earthly troubadour. Hey...she killed the Master of Eyes almost by herself.

Jo Bobbius (level 2 ranger): Not too bright, not too strong...this ranger's arrows strike true.

Billy Bobbius (level 2 druid): Nearly as smart as his brother, the druid feels nature in his veins and possibly other body parts.

Bishop (level 2 warrior): This sea-faring salty dog hitched a ride on the ship that carried the PCs away from the destruction of the underground ziggurat of the Master of Eyes. He's tough and has a way with the ladies (ships).

Smoke (level 2 thief): She's tough as nails and silent as a mouse. She's thick and smokey and badass...can she keep these other guys alive on the island of certain death?

Cezra (level 2 paladin): He's got a strange and storied past and a zealous devotion to the ways of mighty Cthulhu. His paladin's blade strikes true against the enemies of his god!

DCC #4.5

The B Team

As a spur-of-the-moment thing I ran a short DCC adventure funnel for some 0-level nobodies. I used a severely truncated version of Purple Sorcerer's Perils of the Sunken City, specifically Madazkan's dungeon. But instead of Madazkan, I used the War Wizard alluded to in Portal Under the Stars.

The PCs wake up in a dungeon, chains lying all around. Skeletons lying about. They remember being captured by the War Wizard to be used in sport. They do not remember falling asleep. And things look different...much time has passed. What happened?

Exploring the dungeon they battle chain-toting skeletons and eventually come into the chamber of Malloc. Razz Snagglesnatch the lizard man is pulled into the tree and ripped apart...blood satisfies Malloc and he offers his blessing. Only one PC refuses...Jera Syn's loyalties lie with other gods!

This was a very short crawl for 8 PCs. 5 characters made it out alive, thanks in part to some healing waters.

Fun times. Now we have some B-listers that might come into the main game as needed.

Also: I decided that gnomes of the city of Seapath (where this campaign is focused) take great pride in their pointy hats. Those with a hat: +1 to Luck. Those without a hat: -1 to Luck. One player refused the hat for his gnome...she ain't a team player and ain't wearing no stinking pointy hat!

DCC #4

In our fourth session the PCs make their way deeper into the war wizard's tomb, discovering a strange shallow pool of water. The floor of the pool is dotted with small gems arranged in the pattern of the night sky they saw outside. A shattered robot lies in the pool. Brave (or stupid?) Jo Bobbius climbs into the pool to test the gems and discovers the robot's bronze spear. Messing around with it he gets lucky and figures out the spear can issue a blast of energy to strike distant targets.

Soon a procession of weird men of metal come into the room. In the lead are two broken and busted up robots. They are followed by what can only be described as men half of metal and half of flesh. The PCs realize suddenly that they are looking at their former allies...now dead...now walking around again!

A few of the re-animated have a flash of awareness and memory upon seeing the faces of their allies. They shake off the strange magic working to assimilate them into the robot matrix. Battle ensues as the other bots realize what has happened.

The PCs are victorious against the bots and in the end Ammet, Aiken, and Arble rejoin the party...albeit with robot parts. Can the day get any stranger for these poor schmucks?

A door is opened and down they go to discover weird treasures. Oryx, opening an arcane looking book, is blinded by it. His father Voss, considering Oryx to be a weakling, essentially abandons his son for dead. Only a fool would let himself get blinded. And where is the booze around here?

They discover an army of over 60 robots standing in silence in the lower chamber. Leading them is a giant figure similar to the war wizard's statue upstairs that burned so many of them to a crisp! Previous battles with bots demonstrated that water causes them serious harm. And wait...what is that sparkling on the ceiling? The gems from the pool above!

Voss shoves his blind son into the room in anger, then rushes up the stairs to pluck the gems from the floor, hoping to flood the chamber with water. The robots awaken! They begin to ambulate.

The team rush up to help with the gems, poking and prying at them furiously. Soon they have removed dozens and the floor begins to crack. They run, though it is too late for Voss, Einstenius, Wandius, and Calliope. They fall through the floor helplessly to their doom.

The flood of water takes it toll on the ancient robots and they begin to pop and crack and explode. The army is defeated! And Voss, tough old bastard that he is, climbs out of the wreckage and up upon the throne of the war wizard at the head of the room...there is the crystal ball Hella Nor sent them to fetch!

Upstairs the team faces a few robots that made it out of the pool and defeat them with surprise and force.

Voss rubs the ball and Hella Nor's face appears in it.

"Nice work, losers. But see I only need to bring out the guy holding the ball. Why would I waste energy on the rest of you?"

Oh no. But wait, these poor bastards can offer something surely. They agree to help Hella with a future project and she then whisks them all out of the tomb and plops them down on the roof of the Four Winds Bar in the great city of Seapath...a place as alien to them as anything can be.

What will become of these disparate bandits? What of their fields of corn back home? What is home? Hella said their home city was a sham, an illusion, a "city in a bottle"...what does that mean?

No time to think about it. That crazy devil girl will return in a few months and expects them to do something even crazier. Best get ready...

DCC #3

The party of newbs, having found their way into the war wizard's tomb, faced spear-throwing statues and a fire-spurting statue of the great wizard himself.

They discovered a room which appeared to be a workshop with piles of metal and wire and half-finished men of metal. Along the walls in 7 alcoves were colorful buttons...some flashing. Naturally some buttons were pressed. Soon a group of 3 metal men entered threateningly and cut down one of the PCs after a valiant battle. One lone hero named Calliope bested two of the robots on her own.

Enter: the Surgeon. This tall robot, named Sararug, was the war wizard's surgeon. He lead the PCs to his chamber and assured them that he would "transform their frail bodies into perfection". No one accepted his invitation to become immortal men of metal and the Surgeon grew angry. A very well placed spear by big-boned Wandius took the Surgeon down and Einstenius the sage discovered an alien weapon in Sasarug's possession. Could this device be usable?

Ammet, Aiken, Yosemite, and Harry all met their makers in this week's episode. Mostly by fire.