Draft from the Past

Today I decided to flip through the old drafts laying about my blogger account.  This one, entitled "Secrets of Cinder, part 4" dates back to '07 or '08.  My old World of Cinder campaign setting was more overtly gonzo than Wessex and this is piece is a pretty good example of that fact.  What it isn't is original in anyway, which is probably why I didn't post it all those moons ago.  Still, I kinda like it.

Sufficiently advanced magic
Although you might not be able to tell it, Cinder is a post-apocalyptic world. Settled during an age of prodigious wonders, the planet suffered much during a galactic cataclysm. Much was forgotten and now the Cinderians ignorantly look upon the ashes and dust of that bygone age and think they still see greatness. Who among them remembers that all the various Interfertile Races were all once a single thin thread of humanity? Even the long-lived elves have forgotten this genetic diaspora, though they retain much secret knowledge. Their legends tell of the Clock at the Center of the World, which is doubtless a muddled memory of the planetary computer that guided Cinder’s welfare before the galactic tachyon network fell. The tachyon net fell once and remained down forever and the results were disastrous. The planetary computers had never known isolation, having always existed in the communion of saints that was the galactic metamind of shared computing power. Many went insane, some committing suicide. Others found themselves trapped in distributed processing functions, unable to break free of the chains of calculating pi to the final decimal place.

Cinder faired better than most, allowing for several centuries of technological luxury before lack of software maintenance started to take its toll. It was a long silver twilight following an interstellar golden age. But eventually the machine became unreliable, errors compounded upon errors, and eventually the computer stopped responding to inquiries at all. The air trains fell from the skies, the autoweather failed, the robo-farms stopped planting, and Cinderian society was 404’ed back to the stone age. But the computer never failed completely. Even today, it still responds to some user commands, but access to the system remains limited to the few who know the secrets.

Today these Cinderian computer nerds are called warlocks, wizards, etc. None of them understand that they are accessing an invisible, planet-wide computer, that the phrases they mutter are in a machine command language or that the gestures they make are manipulating a virtual GUI environment projected upon an airborne nanotech medium. No wizard today knows that guardian daemons are security programs made flesh. They mumble the mumbo jumbo and make the signs and passes and the fireball incinerates their foes. Many wizards are much too busy cackling in glee and incinerating foes to question the why’s and how’s of this arrangement, and those that do have come up with many different theories, few of which talk about computers. In the Age of Clerics no human has ever heard of a computer, whereas in the Age of Robodroids computers are multi-ton blocks of metal with cathode-ray viewscreens and mechanical keyboards.

a grab-bag post

The PDF version of The Miscellaneum of Cinder, my 2009 compendium of random tables, will no longer be listed for sale at lulu.com.  Instead, a free version is now listed at the OSR Conservation Process.  If you want the print version, that is still available at lulu via this link. Note that the OSR-CP version lacks the much-maligned purple cover.

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You know what's missing from standard D&D character sheets? A spot for an animal companion.  Even if you don't have a familiar or a magical talking dog or psionic chameleon, there ought to be a place for your donkey or warhorse.

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Do class abilities migrate in FLAILSNAILS games? For example, I let a Lamentations of the Flame Princess-derived magic-user fire a bow and wear leather in my Wessex campaign, since Raggi's rules allow that. Should I have enforced the BX rules on that guy?  And if not, does that mean my PC gets the funky bonus die from his one level as a DCC warrior and the cleave ability standard to fighters in Outland?  I kinda like the idea of adventurers collecting weird abilities based upon where they were when they leveled up, but I don't want things to get out of control either.

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I've re-read a bit of Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed the past couple of days.  I don't really have any more to add to that.  I just think that it was a pretty cool idea. It seemed daunting at the time to replace all the standard 3e classes and races with new ones.  Would it be easier for me to pull off today?  I dunno.

One Issue Campaign, part 4

Time to continue plundering Dragon #69 to build a campaign from whatever we find inside. Today we're looking at this totally awesome ad for an old Atari computer game. Speaking of Atari personal computers, have you seen this new Atari style USB keyboard? I never owned an Atari PC but that looks sweet as hell.

FACT #1: If your campaign does not already have a haunted cemetery full of draculas, wolfmen and other unsavories then you either need to add one ASAP or come up with a darn good explanation why your world does not include such things.

But why is this graveyard haunted?  Is every cemetery in the campaign world a hang-out spot for the undead?  That's my assumption in the World of Cinder.  Graveyards there are basically segregated housing for the living impaired.  Or is there something particular jacked up about this one bone zone?  Maybe some sort of evil artifact or lingering curse powers the undead-ification and the PCs can do something about all these spooky monsters. 

I remember reading somewhere (an old MERP module or maybe right there in Tolkien) that the whole problem with the Barrow Wights was that the Necromancer was waking them up.  Perhaps an agent of the the Iron Wind (as mentioned in part 2) who was a student of Circe Doombringer (part 1) is running around stirring up the dead as a sort of macabre fifth column.

FACT #2: Starting a game by waking up in a coffin is totally rad.

Seriously, can you think of a better way to deliver an in media res upside the players' heads than "SUDDENLY you awaken in a coffin surrounded by a vast graveyard"?  Forget scoring goldpieces, just get me the crap outta here!

Perhaps all the PCs in the campaign are folks from the Real World who wake up in coffins!  It would be the fantasy equivalent of starting the campaign by getting out of cryofreeze like in The Morrow Project or "An Alternate Beginning Sequence for Metamorphosis Alpha" (Guy W. McLimore, Jr., Dragon #6).  Players could even run D&D-ified versions of themselves in the vein of the D&D cartoon or Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series.  The latter, incidentally, is one of the few fantasy novel franchises of which I was ever able to get through more than one book.  The rape sequence in book 2 or 3 put me off the whole thing, though.

Getting killed by a kobold while playing yourself would be a bummer.  But you'd also get the opportunity to try to figure out what character class best suits you.  Unless like Mark Barrowcliffe, the author of The Elfish Gene, you figured that out when you were a kid.  Mr. Barrowcliffe decided as a lad that he was obviously a druid.  I never went to the Mazes & Monsters-esque level of actually acting out some of these fantasies the way he did, but I was convinced at one point that I would be a kickass wizard if only magic was real.  By the way The Elfish Gene has some pretty neat stuff about the early British D&D scene, if you can get over the fact that the author seems to despise anyone who might be reading this post.

So this post is getting rambly.  To get back on track, let's run with the idea that every PC in the campaign is from Earth Prime (or whatever) and enters play by waking up in a coffin, tomb, open grave, etc.  That establishes a nice little overarching mystery: What the crap is going on?  Were those wacky medieval theologians right about the existence of Purgatory and that realm just happens to look like a cheesy 80's fantasy movie?  Are the jerks behind Riverworld also at work here?  Did all the PCs go into some sort of capsule-less cryofreeze only to wake up in the distant and weird future?  Obviously the whole campaign doesn't have to center around this mystery, but it certainly adds a little flavor.

So next installment of this series we will finally get to the first article in the mag: "Runes".

Cinder campaign update

Two weeks ago the party was victorious in the Unknown Dungeon's annual Chaos Parade. Obviously the next logical thing for them to do would be to go into business as purveyors of pornographic vampire novels.  Click to embiggen the frontispiece of the new bestseller in the Kingdom of Verbosh.

It all started with Our Heroes in dungeon approaching a vampire lair. The key says there's a single vampire with no treasure. Boring. I reach for my favorite oracular die, Big Red. Hey, Big Red, is this one of the vampires the party pissed off last run? 1-3 Yes, 4-6 No. Big Red says yes. Is it Vampirella or one of the two Draculas? 1-2 Vampirella, 4-6 Dracula. Big Red says Vampirella.

So now I've got a sexy vampire babe in an empty room.  Nature abhors a vacuum and I feel the same way about empty dungeon rooms.  I have great trouble leaving well enough alone when the key says no treasure and doesn't list any contents.  So of course I put in a coffin.  And I decide that under the pillow of the coffin is her steamy diary, written in Draculese.  I made up the language based upon the fact that Vampirella is not native to Cinder, but rather an immigrant from planet Draculon (it's a fact, you can look it up).

So the party makes its usual fiasco of opening the door to Vampirella's lair, so she turns to mist and floats up to the ceiling.  No one ever specifically looks up while searching the room and the extra roll I secretly threw on their behalf came up empty.  Vampirella is not amused when Orleck the MU horks her diary into his backpack, but she doesn't immediately attack.  Half the party is waiving around obviously badass magical swords.  The other half of the party is a dire wolf, a grizzly bear and an ape.  Oh and the guy with a chainsaw for a hand is riding the Silver Surfer's board through the dungeon.  A little planning seems to be in order rather than a full out attack.

So she floats just outside of visual range, still in mist form, near the peak of the arched-ceilinged chamber, until the party opens the room of her pet ghoul.  I decide the ghoul next door is a Renfieldesque nerd but also perverted.  I describe/demonstrate how he's hunched over in a corner of the room, sloppily chowing down on some dude's arm and covering his face with blood in the process.  He's wearing a sweater vest, a bow tie and nothing else.  Needless to say they waste little time in icing this freak.  While the party is distracted by this vile wretch Vampirella coalesces into her corporeal form and attacks the rear guard of the party.   That happens to be Orleck the diary thief and his pet bear Sasha.

Two things save the party from energy-draining annihilation at this point.  One is a series of utter crap rolls on my party.  The other is Kelgar the dwarf's magic sword, with which he manages to impale Vampy right through the heart.  But I had a lot of fun chasing Orleck the magic-user and Albert the elf around the dungeon before that happened.  Albert's player seemed particularly terrified of a vampire attack and the elf ran away screaming like a little girl.  I found that hilarious, as Albert was a first level elf with one hit point max.  He probably should scream and run from anything larger than a gnat, but he waits until the sexy lady in the skimpy swimsuit shows up to freak out.

So now the owner of the diary is dispatched and Orleck uses comprehend languages to discover that the contents are rather explicit in detailing the author's dalliances.  So the party decides to go into business.  While Orleck translates the contents into the Common Tongue the rest of the party lines up a print run.  They of course already know some printers, the halfling Chaos Party agitators.  A bookbinder can be located in Verbosh City.  After meeting with the showrunner at the Royal Theater of Verbosh they line up both a saucy illustrator and sell rights to produce a stage version.  Meanwhile the party cleric researches a new spell, a medieval copy protection curse that actually works called copyright plague.  After finishing the translation Orleck researches a variant of continual light he calls continual pillowbook illuminator, which enchants books with their own integral nightlight.  An initial print run of 100 leatherbound, doubly enchanted and lavishly illustrated codices of Confessions of a Damned Lady is ready to go on sale just a few days after the opening performance of Strumpet of Blood.

Our heroes of course get free tickets to opening night.  Sir Roi of Cribbet is invited to sit with his liege King Verbosh XXXI, whose box is in a terrible location because the actual ruler of the realm is a different guy, Lord Hagor.  He just holds onto the family title and a few meager royal rights.  Sir Roi bought his knighthood from him for five bucks, if I remember correctly.  Attendance is brisk opening night and the play is a hit.  The next night the house is packed but that's the last night of the play as the moralistic types in the city convince Lord Hagor to shut it down.  But all 100 books become available for sale the next day and they quickly sell out with enough interest to do a second print run.  They quickly sell through 62 more copies then get out of town, their pockets fat with gold, just before mob justice catches up with them.

And since the book needed an ending, Orleck writes a few additional pages where Vampirella falls madly in love with him.  So now anyone who has seen the play or read the book will probably think twice before messing with him.

The Bestiary of Liff

As a bit of a folow-up to my last post, here are three monsters inspired by The Deeper Meaning of Liff.

Bog Hag
# Encountered:  1(d3)
Alignment: Chaos
Movement: 90'(30')
AC: 6 [13]
HD: 3
Attacks: 1 wicked slap
Damage:  d6
Save as:  Magic-User 3
Morale: 8
Hoard Class:  XX + 1,000gp

Bog hags are swamp-dwelling radical feminist ogresses, rejecting male-dominated ogrish family life in favor of lonely seclusion or covening with sister hags. Every bog hag knows a single curse, which they can inflict once per week (save allowed).  One hag might be able to turn you into a frog, while another causes all your iron to rust, etc.  1 in 6 of these creatures also cast spells as a magic-user.  Roll d6 for level of ability.

All bog hags keep d4 lap pets, usually either mangy wolves or psychotic mountain lions.

Horned Umberly
# Encountered:  d2(d2)
Alignment: Chaos
Movement: 90'(30')
AC: 6 [13]
HD: 7
Attacks: 2 claws and 1 gore
Damage:  d6/d6/2d4
Save as: Fighter 7
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: XVIII

These shaggy three-eyed beasts are non-burrowing cave-dwelling relatives of the common umber hulk.  Every other combat round they can focus all three eyes on a single target, shooting them with a lightning bolt for 3d6 damage (save for half).  This lightning attack may be combined with their melee routine if all attacks are directed at a single target, otherwise they may opt to zap a foe up to 240' away.

Horned umberlies are of nearly average intelligence and not always immediately hostile.  They are susceptible to bribery with food and drink if hungry (4 in 6 chance) or treasure.

Ballycumber Wyrm

The lair next to my comfy chair. 

# Encountered:  1(0)
Alignment:  Neutral
Movement:  90'(30') or fly 180'(60')
AC:  3 [16]
HD:  1+1
Attacks:  1 bite
Damage:  d3
Save as:  Fighter 1
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: 2d6+4 books of various sorts

A member of the same family of drakes as the pseudodragon and faerie dragon, these creatures take up lair on a stack of books numbering at least 6 volumes.  Some wizards use a variant of the find familiar spell to summon a ballycumber wyrm to guard their spellbooks.  Volumes may be removed from the wyrm's stack as long as alternative books are provided to keep the total number of books constant and the swap is made while the ballycumber wyrm is elsewhere.

Three times per day a ballycrumber wyrm may breath a small gout of fire for 2d6 damage (save for half).  Books are normally not affected by the magical fire of the wyrm, unless its lair has been disturbed or some other offense has angered it.  In which case it will burn all the books in the immediate vicinity and seek a new lair elsewhere.  A ballycumber wyrm has the intelligence, habits and attitude of a housecat.

black hobbits

So once upon a time I bought a module called Rat On A Stick, based solely on the name and cover art.  Turned out it was a dungeon adventure for Tunnels & Trolls and/or Monsters! Monsters!, the obscure T&T variant where you play the bad guys.  I really dig this module.  It's not perfect by any means, but it combines wholesome silliness and deadly danger in a way that greatly amuses me.  I've run it a few times here and there, never once getting too worked up about the fact that the T&T stats don't jibe well with running the adventure under D&D.

But one thing that haunted me for my first couple of runs of Rat On A Stick was the black hobbits.  These creatures inhabit a couple three rooms on the first level of the Rat dungeon.  I wasn't sure what to do with them.  They look to be bad guys, but why use black hobbits as opposed to, say, kobolds?  It took me a good long while to figure out what to do with these little guys.  But eventually I got a copy of the Monsters! Monsters! rules and it all came together.

One of my favorite bits in M!M! is the way you select your race.  Pick a card from an ordinary deck.  Ten of spades?  You're an orc.  Queen of hearts?  Lamia.  King of Diamonds?  Full on badass balrog.  Black hobbits come up on a Five of Spades.  It's a fun little system and one of the reason why some days I ache to run a con game of Monsters! Monsters! that includes chargen.  "Two slimes, an evil wizard and a giant walk into a bar" isn't the opening of a joke, but a distinctly possible course of events in this game.

Anyway, each of the 52 monster types gets a sentence or two of description.  For black hobbits the write goes like this:  "BLACK HOBBITS: This does not refer to their skin tone, but rather to their political affiliations."  That sentence is the secret origin of the halfings of the Chaos Party in my current campaign.  My thinking is basically "What if black hobbits were like all the ordinary stay-at-home middle class people of the Shire, except they lived in a dungeon and on election day they voted Chaos?"  They're perfectly ordinary chaps you can have over for tea and pipes, they just favor the social and/or economic initiatives of the Evil Overlord to the present administration.

The next part of my thinking on the black hobbits comes as a result of the level one map in Rat On A Stick.  In the middle of the map behind some double doors can be found a vast chamber with big honkin' pillars and a raised dais at one end.  According to the key a half dozen black hobbits are hanging out there.  It became my self appointed task to have these guys always Up To Something.  The first time the PCs visited this room the little guys were putting up folding chairs and arranging the podium for a Chaos Party rally.  Last night, as the party is marching toward the double doors I decide that the Chaos Halflings are building a parade float.

This snap decision leads to one of the best runs I have ever had as a DM.  The party chats up the halflings and find out that once a year a parade is held on level one and each level enters a float.  They make a large circuit around the dungeon and one chamber on the route has bleachers and a judges booth.  The halflings never win Best Float, but this year they're excited about their prospects with their new "Skull Shooting Fire Out of Its Eyes" theme float.

There's a little discussion about taking advantage of the parade to scout out depopulated lower levels of the dungeon.  But in the end the party decides that they'd rather help their buddies win the competition, via turning the float into an Animal House-style Deth Machine.

IT WAS AWESOME.

They juryrig a small ballista into the mouth of the skull, launching jugs of oil.  The eyes are upgrated from Rock Concert Pyro Effects to Actual Frickin' Flamethrowers.  A cow-catcher was slung under the skull and 20 shields were used to armor up the structure.

As the players are talking out there mad plans I am flipping through the module as cooly as possible trying to come up with a list of monsters from each level, what floats they show up with and who might be in the stands and/or judging the competition.  Here are the monsters in the parade and their floats:

• 20 skeletons with Bat Shooting Fire Out Its Eyes (one drunken halfling "Oy!  They stole our idea for fire coming out the eyes!")
• A couple of trolls with a float depicting elves on Vlad the Impaler style stakes (using actual elf corpses for maximum realism).
• A trio of vampires (two Draculas and a Vampirella) with a float that actually floats, depicting the sun with a bleeding spear wound
• A pair of shoggoths with an indescribable float that existed in more than three dimensions
• Two anthro-Gnus whose float I can't recall at the moment
• Three ogres with a Hanged Wizard themed float (a midget in the crowd was wearing the same robe as the effigy wizard, he was not amused)
• Four elementals (one of each type) hauling a Shrine to Elemental Evil.
• A group of mysterious plant men, with a float showing their opposition to all forms of animal life

The crowd watching is a just as motley, with a mummy and a female balrog for the judges.  Tobin the drunken dwarf considers hitting on the balrog, but after a quick scale drawing on the whiteboard the idea is abandoned as non-feasible.

I expected the party to throw in the towel once they saw the opposition.  Sure my house rules are player friendly, sure they've got a few sticks of dynamite and some artifact quality swords, and they've got a pet bear and an amored gorilla.  But for Frigg's sake, these guys are first through third level.  They have no business fighting most of the monsters on this list!

Man, I wish I could give all y'all a play-by-play.  That parade was quite possibly the craziest combat encounter I have ever refereed.  The PCs set themselves up to be at the end of the parade line and I rolled dice for the placement of the others.  As luck would have it, they started right behind the skeletons, who were behind the trolls.  The skeletons are incinerated in two rounds and the trolls panic at the sight of the fire.  They try to run away, knocking over the vampire float.  The vampires take umbrage at this turn of events and start fighting the trolls.  Both the vamps and trolls are doused in oil and lit up, with the trolls running around in a panic and the vampires turning to mist and floating away.  The plant men eventually route as well, as they don't dig much on being set ablaze either.  The elementals quit the field of battle when Edgar the Gorilla activates his Protection from Elementals rune on his elf-blade.  That blocks them from meleeing the party, who lob missiles over Edgar's head.

The nearest this plan comes to going completely pear-shaped is the shoggoths.  I wanted to turn to Tim and say "What are you thinking, man?  You're in a fight against shoggoths and your elf has ONE HIT POINT!!!"  Last night was Tim's first session in the campaign.  Despite each possessing 20 hit dice, the party eventually defeated the shoggoths in a pitch battle, thanks largely to Sir Roi of Cribbet's Sword of the Lightning Kings zapping the crap out of one shoggoth and my current house rule for PCs rolling natural 20 (20 = monster dead) taking care of the other one.

Did I mention that this battle runs down the length of the dungeon, with crowds of monsters cheering everyone on the whole time?  It ends with the PCs and the last surviving halfling pushing the burnt, battered framework of the float to the end of the route, making them the only entry this year to actually reach the judge's booth.  We close the session with the party reenacting the final scene of Star Wars, except instead of Princess Leia it's a balrog babe and instead of the Rebel Alliance's Medal of Bravery they receive Best Float in Chaos Parade '057.  Oh, and Sir Roi somehow ended up with the Silver Surfer's cosmic surfboard.

weirdest death in recent memory

So last night Loric the Bard, Kelgar the Dwarf and the two junior magic-users Orlen and Bob visited the Dungeon of the Unknown (i.e. the dungeon I have located at the Cave of the Unknown on the wilderness map for the Keep on the Borderlands).  They pondered some minotaur poop, visited the halfling political agitators for the Chaos Party (who foisted some lapel buttons and pamphlets upon them) and fought a quick pair of battles with an ogre and a ghoul.

They then entered a 50' by 40' room pretty much identical to the lairs of the chaos halflings, ogre and ghoul but strewn with wrecked furniture and filth.  So of course they start sifting through this stuff.  Some day I really ought to put a dumpster full of garbage in a dungeon, just to see whether anybody would look for treasure in it.  Anyway, they find on the north wall, opposite where they came in, a tiny door.  It looks just like the other doors they've seen so far in this dungeon, but it's only 6 inches high or so and a couple inches wide, with a teeny-tiny door knob.  One PC inquires if there are any cakes or vials labeled 'drink me' laying about and I reply in the negative.

Orlen the Magic-User (played by Nick, who just joined this session) tries to open the door, figuring even though his wizard is a Str 8 wimp, he ought to be able to open the world's tiniest secret door.  Here's the breakdown of the die rolls I force upon Nick:

1-5  Door opens.  Of course it opens.  It's like a friggin' dollhouse door, for cryin' out loud.
6 Roll again, you putz, and see below
       1-3 Door opens despite blowing the previous roll
       4-6 Door is still stuck and you totally suck

So Nick rolls a 6 then a 5, utterly humiliating Orlen in front of his new adventuring buddies.  Kelgar is sickened by this display of weakness and frustrated by the time Orlen has wasted attempting to open the damn thing, so he waltzes over to the door and kicks it in.  Immediately the southern door (where the party came in) smashes open, with the titanic toe of a titanic boot thrusting through the opening.  Kelgar spins around to battle a hugeass giant then realizes a second later that was his toe he saw smashing through the southern door.  Bob's player completely freaks out at the non-Euclidean geometry of the situation.

Let me take you into the mind of the DM for just a moment.  When I built this little trap I had great hopes of poking out the eye of one of the PCs.  They open the tiny door and peer in the mousehole.  I then tell one of the other PCs that the south door has opened and a giant eye monster is glaring balefully at them.  The second PC overreacts and pokes the first guy's eye out.  And a good time was had by all.  The end.  Instead, I manage to doom two PCs with this little magic door.

Though I suppose you could blame Carl instead of me.  It was his PC who wanted to see what would happen if he casually flicked a gold piece into the opening of the tiny door.  Of course the result was that a giant gold coin, the size of wagon wheel, came flying out of the southern door, careening about the room wildly.  Saving throws are rolled and before the titanic shiny disc comes to a rest it pulps Loric and Orlen.  I honestly hadn't seen that one coming.

Kelgar immediately strips Loric of all his cool gear and then tries to figure out how to get the world's largest GP out of the dungeon.  Given the size and weight involved, I am utterly unconvinced he can move it at all.  Eventually the two survivors settle on carving off the biggest hunk of gold they can each carry and putting it in their backpacks.  Of course when they exit the room the shavings from the coin shrink back down to normal size, adding sprinkles of utter futility to the sundae made out two scoops of PC death.

Carl and Nick are good sports are start whipping up some new PCs.  At this point I discover much to my dismay that sometime since last session I have misplaced the Deck O' Stuff, so I can't give them random custom goodies like I normally do.  But I do find index cards with the stats for a white ape and a grizzly bear written on them, so the replacement PCs each get a pet for no apparent reason.  Carl names his gorilla buddy Edgar and later gets him equipped with a kickass magic sword and some oversized chainmail stolen from the corpse of a larger-than-usual orc.

things learned this week about the World of Cinder

• When dwarves build a magic weapon they construct it such that it will function perfectly after a millennium being used as an otyugh's toothbrush.
• Elves, on the other hand, make uber-powerful magic swords that start to malfunction wildly if you forget to rotate the tires annually.
• Fire can't kill a lycanthrope, but it sure can hurt it.
• Most lycanthropes only change into monster form when the big moon is full (as opposed to the two little martian-style jobbies).  Most.
• Trolls live under bridges because they're the ones who build them.  They usually get a franchise from a local ruler to charge fixed tolls in exchange for rights to build and operate them in choice locations.
• Dwarves don't brew beer in barrels, they grow barrels full of beer on vines.  Like in a pumpkin patch but for drunkards.  Charles came up with this one and I totally ran with it.
• The Lawful temple of Tyr will hand out free healing to folks who are fighting monsters threatening the city.  The Chaotic temple of the Spider God still charges full price.
• Halflings like to hold family reunions in human cities.  The primary activity of the reunion is a multi-day, sometimes weeks-long, pub crawl.

Cinder II: Electric Bugaloo, session 1

So Wednesday I got my regulars at the Armored Gopher to agree to taking a break from Mutant Future to play some more straight-up D&D/Labyrinth Lord in my World of Cinder setting. I was greatly enjoying the Mutant Future game but I was getting to the point where I was trying to play "top that" with myself every session. That's a dangerous mindset because it usually leads to either rampant Monty Haulism, depressing total party kills, or things just getting way out of control. So I felt like I needed a break.

Cinder II takes the basic campaign world concepts previously explored in the World of Cinder and puts them through the filter of an alchemical mash-up of old gaming junk, particularly the first Arduin Grimoire, the Dungeoneer Compendium, Unknown Gods, Verbosh, Rat on a Stick, the Ready Ref Sheets, and the Keep on the Borderlands. So last night we made up some new character and set off for the Keep on the Borderlands. The initial PC group consisted of the following:

• Charles is Tobin of the Silver Sledge, a drunken dwarf and member of the only notable dwarf-clan in the region.  It was established early on that his character is a drunkard, but an amusing one.
• Wheelz is Kelgar, another dwarf but an outsider to the region. He's in the Kingdom of Verbosh searching for the Bonnie Prince Charlie/Strider style Lost Dwarf King.  Incidentally, Kelgar ended up starting play with the Sword of Shiva (+3, whirlwind like a djinn 1/day) because of a lucky draw out of the Deck O' Stuff.  Oddly, he never drew it during the run.
• Carl started as Olf, dimwitted cleric of St. Carmichael. But he got killed by a goblin spear in the first battle of the campaign. So he rolled up Brett the Bold, cleric of Irshar the Blind Gardener. My new 'How To Make A PC' hand-out really did the trick in speeding up chargen, as Brett was actually able to join in the last couple of rounds of the fight where Olf bought the farm.
• Ria is the Mysterious Unnamed Thief. She told the folks working the gate to the Keep that her name was Adele, but that was just a pseudonym. This thief is such an enigma Ria actually left the Name field of charsheet blank.
• And Dane is playing Roi Cribbet, traveller from another time and another world. Using Jamie Mal's Stranger class, Roi is basically the 1st level D&D version of this guy:

Yes, Roi has a chainsaw for a hand.

Did I mention that I worked out charts for the lineages of PC fighters of a knightly persuasion as well as a list of possible mentors for newly minted MUs.  So no one opted to play either class.  That's DM prep for you.  So anyway these folks start out on the road to the Keep, looking for adventure in whatever comes there way.

I have a confession. I absolutely could not help myself last night. When I described the guards at the outer gate to the keep I specified they were the dudes guarding the entrance to the wedding in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  They get into the joint and give their names to the vaguely incompetent scribe who records all persons passing through the gates.  Mystery Thief tells him her name is Adelle.  We'll see if she remembers that next session.

The party ends up at the Dew Drop Inn where the proprietor Gustav gives them the obligatory Caves of Chaos adventure leave, despite Roi trying to pay for a beer with his MasterCard.  When that doesn't work he tries cash, to which Gustav replies "We don't take that Verbosh City stuff here."  The party also meet Mohag the Wanderer, a seasoned adventurer who agrees to join the group for 25% of the take, and five mercenaries looking for work.  They pass on both offers.  They might've taken the mercenaries on, but my starting equipment charts end up with most PCs beginning play pretty dang poor.  Yes, in my game you can enter play with an awesome magic sword but not have lunch money.  You're supposed to use the one to get the other.  Some of the party members end up sleeping in the stables because they can't afford the silver piece for the flophouse.

We ended up exploring all of three rooms in the Caves of Chaos, but they were pretty fun rooms.  They entered the goblin caves and had a knockdown drag-out fight with six goblin guards.  It was a pretty sweet fight.  Mystery Thief was setting goblins alight with her torch, Roi cut through spear-hafts with his chainsaw, and Tobin was shieldbashing the little mofos like crazy.  One goblin ran up some stairs to ask the hobgoblins on the level above for some help, but I rolled a die to see if the hobgobs gave a crap.  They didn't, so the poor little bugger ended up speared through the back and pinned to the door.

Roi decided to chainsaw through the door to the hobgoblins, giving them plenty of time to evacuate the non-combatants and set-up an ambush with their bows.  Dude was nearly pincushioned the moment he finished sawing his way in.  Two of the hobgoblins were killed and morale broke for the rest, who fled through a door on the opposite side of the room.  The party opted to search for loot before following the routed baddies.  Eventually they end up at the hobgoblin Torture Chamber/Food Storage/Rumpus Room, where the hobgoblin torturers are whipping the bejeesus out of a gnoll with several other prisoners chained up nearby.  These particular hobgoblins are big tough sons of bitches and take several rounds to dispatch.

Roi then frees the gnoll, who of course has been whipped to the point of berserk insanity.  One dead gnoll later and the party is arguing over whether to free the four humans and one orc chained to the wall.  Tobin and Brett end up murdering the orc while Roi is distracted talking to the humans, who they eventually free. The merchant and his wife reward the party when they get back to the keep, while the two caravan guards agree to serve as torchbearers/packbearers for the party.

I'm really looking forward to next session.

This could make things interesting.

Here's a chart for newly minted knight PCs to roll on in my new mash-up campaign.

Chivalrous Household of Origin (d20)
1.  Rollo, Castellan of the Keep
2.  King Verbosh
3.  Earl Warren
4.  Baron Krake (skip chart 2, you are the heir to the lost barony)
5.  Lord Hargor
6.  Duke Carth
7.  Baron Vargo
8.  Baron Haygar (skip chart 2, you are the heir to the lost barony)
9-11.  Manorial Knight in service to Warren
12-14.  Manorial Knight in service to Hargor
15-17.  Manorial Knight in service to Carth (d6, on a 6 it's actually a vassal Baron)
18-20.  Manorial Knight in service to Vargo

Relationship to Head of House (d6)
1. Child
2. Child, bastard
3. Nephew/niece
4. Younger sibling
5. Younger sibling, bastard
6. Cousin

Random Wilderness 'Specials'

Working off the top of my head to expand on yesterday's post.  Please suggest other ideas in the comments below.

1. Statue - see Ready Ref Sheets
2. Ravaged Ruins - see Ready Ref Sheets
3. Picturesque Scenery
4. Special Agricultural Asset (E.g. a mango grove, good fishing)
5. Entrance to Faerie Realm, an Unknown Hell or some other supernatural region
6. Tomb - see Best of Dragon, vol 1
7. Local Weather Conditions (unusually windy, foggy, etc.)
8. Frontier Fort of Kelnore
9. Disputed territory (stock with two monster rolls or look at nearby hexes for disputants)
10. Historical site (probably an old battlefield, may or may not have a marker)
11. Old Lava Flow (anything underneath it?)
12. Titan Corpse (Some of them are still laying around from the Titanomachy.  They rot very slowly.)

wilderness stocking

Back in December Orion Cooper over at the Moldy Vale wrote a neat little piece about randomly stocking hexes on your wilderness map.  I've been looking at various random wilderness stocking techniques because the map I'm trying to fill has about 2,400 hexes.  Without random generation and computer assistance stocking that bad boy would take friggin' forever.  Besides, I love random generation, as it forces me to work with results outside the meager scope of things I could come up with on my own.

After looking over some alternatives, I decided to start with the random dungeon stocking chart on page B54 of Moldvay Basic D&D.

Assume "Monster" lairs include things like Old Man Jenkins, the grumpy turnip farmer, and change "Trap" to "Hazard" and you're good to go.  Next steps include developing random Hazards and Special charts and automating the wilderness encounter charts in the Expert rules.

The Wonderful Scrolls of Doctor Holmes

Over the weekend I was flipping around in the blue Basic D&D rulebook edited by J. Eric Holmes. One of the better-known quirks about the Holmes edit of D&D is the easy scroll rules. Any magic-user, starting right from first level, can make spell scrolls at the cost of only 100gp and 1 week per spell level. No doubt you can see the big gain here for MUs: once the party lands 100gp or more in loot they can dramatically increase the number and variety of spells available to the one shot wonder in the pointy hat. I adopted this rule in my first World of Cinder campaign and one of the most successful characters of that venture was a scroll-wielding magic-user. At one point Carl, the player of the magic-user, took a wad of cash and whipped up one of every spell he could cast, thereby avoiding the "Aargh! If only I had memorized X!" effect that often bedevils magic-users. 3.x D&D's Scribe Scroll feat was basically the same mechanic, so I wouldn't be surprised if that part of the system was suggested by someone who started with Holmes Basic.

The treasure section of Holmes Basic also has a couple neat bits about scrolls in it. The random scrolls section provides the possibility of finding spells scroll of one to three spells each, cursed scrolls, and three kinds of protection scrolls (vs. lycanthropes, undead & magic). According to the text following the magic item tables all spell scrolls are for magic-users only. Clerics are out of luck, except for the protection scrolls that anyone can use. One interesting lacuna is that the rules don't specify how to generate which spells are on the scrolls, allowing for the possibility of putting cleric spells on magic-user scrolls.

"Ridiculous!", you may scoff, "Dr. Holmes never intended the DM to put cure light wounds in the hands of M-Us!" Maybe, maybe not. Check out this next part. Here's the last three items on d10 chart for generating random scrolls:

8 Any potion spell except delusion or poison
9 Any ring spell except wishes or regeneration
0 Any wand spell

First off, the terms "potion spell", "ring spell" and "wand spell" sound like a lot of fun. Under this set-up the wand spells that can be found on scrolls are magic detection, secret door & trap detection, [cone of] fear, [cone of] cold, [cone of] paralyzation and fire ball. The 'ring spell' scrolls are invisibility, animal control, plant control, weakness, protection +1, water walking, fire resistance and contrariness. For 'potion spells' we get growth, diminution, giant strength, invisibility, gaseous form, speed, flying and healing.

There's lots of juice in those 'spell' lists. Here are some random thoughts:

• Because of the four attack wands, the chance of getting a scroll you can use to zap enemies with is higher than it appears from just glancing at the random scroll chart. Ditto your chances of getting a Scroll of Invisibility, since both potions and rings come in that variety.
• A Scroll of Healing is the same as Cure Light Wounds in effectiveness. A first level magic-user with one of those babies is actually a better healer than a first level cleric, who gets no spells under the Holmes rules.
• If I was playing an M-U and I found a Scroll of Secret Door & Trap Detection I'd immediately ask the DM if I could put that spell into my spellbook. If the DM said no, I'd then ask if I could use it to make researching such a spell easier.
• On the other hand, maybe magic shops might sell scrolls that magic-users can use but they can't put the spells into their spellbook. Sounds like a good way to keep the magic shops in business. "Sorry, but that Scroll of Cold comes with DRM, so you can't put it in your spellbook."
• A Scroll of Contrariness and Scroll of Weakness look like curse scrolls, but what if you could cast those effects onto other targets? Making the evil wizard's pet minotaur Contrary seems like a cool thing to do.
• Wouldn't it be even cooler to use a Scroll of Gaseous Form on a dragon and the poor vaporous beast is forced to watch while you loot it's hoard?

Holmes isn't my favorite version of the game, but I'm really digging on these scroll rules.

Sandboxes & Dragons

Here's something that I found interesting as I've been working on the Blitzkrieg Peninsula of my World of Cinder: placing dragons. According to the chart on page 16 of OD&D volume 2, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, dragons can fly 24 five mile hexes per day. That's a 12 hex round trip. So assuming that dragons are territorial apex predators (which I do), that places a hard limit on how many flying dragons you can fit on any particular sandbox map. And looking over my particular map I can eyeball maybe three good places for dragon lairs. So from the moment this sandbox is put onto the table I'll be able to tell the players likely places they could hunt for dragon hoards. "Yeah, the Draco Mountains are called that for a reason." Stuff like that.

Of course those three lairs don't include long-hibernating wyrms forgotten by the races with shorter memories, dragons that have burrowed deep into the bowels of the earth or the Common Purple Land-dragon.

What's up with those crazy nobles, anyway?

I've decided that for my next non-mutated D&D outing I want more Excalibur/You Know Who & The Holy Grail/Princess Bride style knights, castles, princesses with pointy hats and such. That's why I'm drawing up a list of all the major noble houses of the realm and giving them coats of arms. I want to make sure that arriving at the Thane of Mno's castle isn't just a cookie cutter duplicate of a visit to the castle of the Baron of Kishur. Obviously, a big random chart is in order.

Random Castle Shenanigans (d20)

1. Romance - A member of the household is interested in one of the PCs. One night stand? Stupid crush? Eternal love?

2. Haunting - The unquiet ghost of an ancestor prowls the halls on certain nights.

3. Hidden Catacombs - The place is built over a dungeon.

4. Knight Errancy - One or more of the younger sons are wandering adventurers, possibly off on a crusade.

5. Widow - A higher ranked noble is adjudicating the disposition of the dead lord's affairs, possibly to his own advantage.

6. Damaged Castle - Wreckage caused by last year's siege/monster attack/earthquake still being repaired.

7. Sibling Rivalry - Brothers and/or sisters engaged in petty mischief, may boil over to outright violence.

8. Amazons - The ladies wear the platemail in this family.

9. Family Curse - Lycanthropy? Innsmouth taint?

10. Keepers of the Flame - Protectors of the secret hiding spot of some artifact of the Old Kingdom.

11. Heretics - One or more members of the household not orthodox in their religious views.

12. Festival - Celebration of a wedding, birth, knighting or perhaps a fair or tourney.

13. Rowdy Lads - The lords younger sons and/or bastards are a rough and tumble bunch. Hard to control, but would make for brave adventuring companions.

14. Lurking Monster - Some mankiller has made a lair in the same hex.

15. Black Magic - Someone in the family secretly studies sorcery.

16. Secret Society - One or more members of the household belong to a secret political party, witches coven, etc.

17. Petty War - The barony down the road is getting too uppity, I tells you.

18. Blood Feud - A random noble house are mortal enemies.

19. Strong Ally - Another noble house? A wizard? Some creature?

20. Prisoner - either a member of the household is being held elsewhere or the locals are holding someone of note, awaiting ransom

The Blitzkrieg Peninsula

So I've been doing some initial work on turning my old Blitzkrieg board into a sandbox wilderness. It's been slow so far because I'm trying to develop a method rather than simply diving in by slinging stuff onto hexes. The first step is simply a listing of what is already to be found in each hex and naming major physical features. Here's what a sample of the Southwest Region (pictured above) looks like right now:

B31 - coast (Duchy of Splitfang), rivermouth (Hurwood Seaway)
B32 - coast (Duchy of Splitfang), water (Western Sea)
B33 - water (Western Sea)
C17 - light terrain
C18 - light terrain
C19 - light terrain (Abbey of St. Jacob)
C20 - coast, cultivated (Abbey of St. Jacob), water (Kurtz Bay), St. Jacob Abbey

Hex C20 is the home of the Abbey of St. Jacob, while C19 contains farms and hamlets that are part of the Abbot's feudal territory. "Light terrain" is my term for an unmarked land hex, which can contain hills, forest, swamps, streams, etc., just not enough such terrain to amount to anything on the 5 mile/hex scale of the board. Each lone hex of cultivated land indicates a barony, probably with a village (100-900 people). Two adjacent cultivated hexes are a county, probably with a town (1,000-9,000 people). Three hexes indicates a duchy with a city (10,000-19,000), while the Red and Blue capitals are cities of at least 20,000.

The northern regions of the peninsula are mildly temperate, shading into semi-tropical in the south. Fashions in the north tend towards renaissance fair garb, while clothing can reach Hyborian levels of scantiness in the far south. Dress in the southwest tends to be less skimpy, as the Church of the Great Gold Dragon dominates religious life in the western regions. The central map regions feature an uneasy mixing of faiths, while the east is full of unrepentant pagans of the neutral and chaotic pantheons.

One neat thing about this top-down approach is that I'm slowly building a list of all the noble families in the region:

Counts of Burbiko
Barons of St. Hubbins
Barons of Finduncle
Counts Deathsinger
Barons of Amphert
Dukes of Auren
Thanes of Eterond
Thanes of Mno
Thanes Starchanger
Barons of Redlash
Barons of Gantar
Dukes of Splitfang
Thanes of Teresha
Counts of Donnan
Barons of Vostorra
Grand Dukes of Cerulea
Thanes of Heriwic
Thanes of Bearhammer
Thanes of Ernforth
Barons of Kertsam
Barons of Kishur

Barons of Swithoo

I made up some of the names for the places and families, others came from my big pile of randomly generated names, which features a vast quantity of print outs from Chris Pound's pages.

The Wilderlands of Blitzkrieg

The original D&D rules instruct referees to use the mapboard for the old Avalon Hill game Outdoor Survival when you want to go on spur-of-the-moment exploration adventures. There's nothing particularly special about the Outdoor Survival board, other than it's got some varied terrain and not a lot of other stuff junking up the display.


This here graphic is a small piece of the gameboard for the classic Avalon Hill wargame Blitzkrieg. The crisscrossed hexes are urban areas, the graphic effect used meant to suggest intersecting city streets. I happen to own a copy of the Blitzkrieg board but not the game itself. A couple of days ago I was looking at this map and it occurred to me that I should be looking at the white squares on those hexes instead of the black lines. As a series of crowded white squares those hexes look kinda like a patchwork of cultivated farmland. In other words, imagine those hexes are where farms are clustered around villages or castles. Bam! Instant D&D campaign map.

I've never been completely satisfied with the results of my original World of Cinder sandbox map. I can't draw for anything and as much as I like the paper I used (an original Judges Guild blank wilderness hexmap), the hexes are just a smidgeon too small to comfortably fit counters. So maybe this old board could be drafted into use as another part of my campaign setting.

Meet the Weefellows

Weefellow

# Enc: 1d4 (2d12)
AL: Neutral
Move: 120'(40')
AC: 5
HD: 1+1
Attacks: 1 (small weapon)
Damage: d4
Save as: Elf 1
Morale: 8
Treasure Type: 18/E in lair, individuals 4/S & 5/T

Standing no taller than a halfling or goblin, these nocturnal fay would be mistaken for human children if it were not for their green mustaches. Their well-concealed lairs are always found within a few miles of a small settlement of humans or halflings, whom they envy for their great art of baking. The technology behind the application of yeast and the use of ovens is beyond the capabilities of their fairy minds. Once they have adopted a village they will expect fresh baked goods to be left out for them every full moon (their feast-time). Villages that are generous in the monthly supply of breads, muffins, cookies, etc., will be protected by the Weefellows from predators and such. Those who skimp on tasty treats will be subject to all sorts of nocturnal harassment, beginning with harmless pranks but escalating in a few months time to an outright campaign of terror. A poor harvest will not be considered a legitimate excuse, so famines are doubly bad times for villages haunted by these creatures.

Each Weefellow knows one tiny bit of magic they can use once per day. Roll d12 below if specifics are needed. Or make something up.

1. Shine shoes
2. Compel fish to leap into net
3. Start small fire in any conditions
4. Turn one gem to glass
5. Shapeshift to green-striped housecat
6. Refill empty wineskin
7. Turn Cleric
8. Brick to mud
9. Panic farm animals
10. Whither tree
11. Blunt blade
12. Roll random first level MU spell.

For every four Weefellows encountered their will be one leader-type with 2 hit dice, a weapon capable of doing d6 damage, and a random first level MU spell in addition to the magic determined above. The leader's mustache will be noticeably more elaborate than run-of-the-mill Weefellows. A Weefellow lair will also contain a chieftain with three hit dice and a second level MU spell or unique magic of equivalent power. The chieftain's mustache will be absolutely ridiculous in size, shape and ornamentation.

Common folklore holds that these creatures are all male, but certain bards and druids know that to be untrue. Both the males and females of the species possess the same green facial hair, leading some to speculate a distant kinship to the dwarf-folk.

All Weefellows are subjects of a single suzerain, the legendary Lord of the Verdant Beard. He in turn is a minor vassal of the Faery Queen (or the goddess of magic, the witch queen, or whatever suits your campaign).

[These guys were inspired by an operatic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that had a fairy chorus of children in green fake mustaches.]

The Alphabet of the Damned

On backwards planets it is thought that the true name of a demon can be used to summon and bind them. The warlocks of Cinder know the real truth: The name is the Demon! Just as people are made of elements, so demons are constructed of the Alphabet of the Damned. Both existences are equally real, though the psycholinguistic composition of demons is often less persistent in form on this plane, with demons fading into and out of existence more readily than ordinary matter.

The 27 letters of the Alphabet of the Damned are normally translated as A, Æ, B, Ch, D, E, G, H, I, J, K, L, N, O, OO, P, Q, R, S, T, Þ (sometimes written Th), U, V, W, X, Y, and Z. Nothing can be constructed with the runes of the original Alphabet except for the names of demons. Legend has it the original language of the Unknown Hells uses it; all words other than names would be at least 14 letters in length. Smaller words are all devoted to the names of demons, broken down in a rough hierarchy:

13 letters - Manes, Demonic Pollywog

12 letters - Type I, Quasit, Dretch, Rutterkin, Croaking Demon
11 letters - Type II, Bar-Lgura, Shadow Salamander

10 letters - Type III, Babau, Chasme, Tentacle Toad
9 letters - Type IV, Nabassu, Slime Frog
8 letters - Succubus, Hopping Machinist
7 letters - Type V, Mezzodaemon, Amphibitaur
6 letters - Type VI, Nycadaemon
5 letters - Lord, Mistress
4 letters - Queen
3 Letters - Prince

2 letters - ?

Thus if you know the true name of a demonic being you can roughly gauge its potency by the numbers of letters. Certain sages of Cinder attempt to assign meaning to the various letters. For example, the Damned letter normally written as P seems to only be used in the names of ice demons of various sorts.

Some letters seem to follow certain rules of name construction, such as the letter OO (Double O) only appearing in names of seven letters or greater. Two O's may appear side-by-side in the name of more powerful demons (such as the Lord VEQOO or the Mistress VEChOO, considered by some authorities to be siblings) but the distinction between Double O and two O's is important. In summonings and other demonological work the Alphabet actually becomes a syllabary, each letter being separately vocalized. During the summoning of TLAP, the Queen that Curses the Stars, her name is fully vocalized as Tay-Loo-Ai-Poy, to give one example. To fail to distinguish between two O's and Double O under such conditions would be disastrous. Similarly, the K and Q of the Alphabet are pronounced much the same in ordinary speech, but their ritual vocalizations are distinct.

a random XP chart

I really love the random NPC level chart from volume I of the Field Guide to Encounters and I am seriously considering trying something like it in my next World of Cinder outing. For starting PCs, no less! But there are two things I don't like about that chart. First, rolling d00000 is a terrible pain in the ass (and no, I'm not buying the special HackMaster crit dice) and second, a random table that hands out levels does not take into account wonky XP charts. I don't think it's fair that a Thief (xp to level two: 1,251) and an Elf (needs 4,065 for L2) both would have the same chances of starting out at high level. So here's a first stab at an alternative chart.

Random Starting XP Chart (d100)
01 - 0xp
02-09 - 2,100xp
10-27 - 4,200xp
28-63 - 8,400xp
64-81 - 16,800xp
82-90 - 33,600xp
91-95 - 67,200xp
96-98 - 135,000xp
99-00 - Roll again on Chart 2 below.

Random Starting XP Chart 2 (d100)
01-30 270,000xp
31-55 400,000xp
56-75 500,000xp
76-85 600,000xp
86-90 750,000xp
91-94 900,000xp
95-97 1,000,000xp
98-99 1,100,000xp
00 1,200,000xp

This chart lines up pretty closely with the Field Guide version, if you play a fighter. Basically, each step on the chart is +1 level if you play a fighter, with a couple of exceptions on chart 2 where you are actually 1xp short of leveling.

If I implemented this chart there would be one downside to starting with a big ol' pile of XPs. Characters that level up in play would be allowed to roll on something like the Mutant Future Experience Level Bonuses chart:

d100 roll - bonus
01-10 +1 damage in melee combat
11-20 +1 attack per round
21-00 +1 to a random ability (Str, Dex, Con, etc.)

So you might have a party with a wide level spread, but as the wimps catch up they will pick up some bonuses that the top dogs will not have.