Why I Use the Classic Saving Throw System

September 21, 2014, 9:22 pm

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SAVE vs. NOVELTY

Saving Throws are an iconic element of table top  roleplaying games, that likely has its roots in the First Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, those Little Brown Books (well before that really) .  Saving Throws are still a part of Dungeons & Dragons 5^th edition, but frankly I think they’ve lost something.  Don’t get me wrong, I like 5^thedition a lot, and have enjoyed the flexibility of the character generation, the careful balancing of armor class (a real problem area if one is trying to limit power creep) and how despite its heroic elements 5e has maintained much of the feeling of character peril one might get from Basic/Expert style D&D.

Yet 5e does something strange with Saving Throws, something I think is a holdover from newer editions of D&D, in that it links them to character statistics.  This is a huge departure from the LBB’s and the editions that followed them.  In early editions saving throws are static based on level (with a bonus for a high Wisdom in some editions).  I like this system; I also like the eclectic names of the classic saving throws “Death Ray or Poison, All Wands Including Polymorph and Paralization, Stone, Dragon Breath and Staves & Spells”.  I like the way Saving Throws are managed in the LBB’s (and similar systems) because they are related to class and level, without consideration for ability scores.  Likewise the variety of saving throws are bizarre, but clearly they all relate to terrible, likely deadly effects and seem so specific that they encourage adventure designers and GMs to expand their use into other areas/against other dangers.

WHY I LIKE LEVEL BASED SAVING THROWS

This classic system of Saving Throws makes them something of dire consequence, and indeed the name implies this.  The player is offered a single roll with a (fairly small to begin with) chance to ‘save’ the character.  I always saw this in the manner of Conan or a similar swords & sorcery hero resisting the vile magic of some evil sorcerer, much to the surprise of the sorcerer, and largely because they were the hero in the story, able to withstand  magics and trials beyond those of normal men to face. Yes, the Saving Throw is a weak form of plot immunity, based on how accomplished and long played a character is. This is just the diegetic understanding of the saving throw, but mechanically it has a similar purpose.

Saving Throws become terribly important in Mid-Level games, especially in systems with higher hit-point and Armor Class Progressions.  This isn’t to say physical Hit Point damage isn’t a danger in games with mid-level characters, but it’s not as much an immediate danger as in a game where one has 5D6+1 HP (A 5^th level LBB fighter – and the LBBs are stingy with HP compared to later editions) and normal attacks do 1D6 damage, including such attacks as a dragon’s bite.  In games like this melee may be dangerous, but it’s a predictable danger at higher levels with damage slowly wearing down HP (unlike first level when fighter have 2-7 HP) – another resource to track.  Attacks like dragon breath (apparently inflicting the full HP of the dragon), lightning bolt and fire ball are some of the few attacks that do greater than 1D6 damage, and can be quite catastrophic in this system.  Likewise monster poison, polymorph and petrification (wand, stave or otherwise) result in immediate death or removal from play.  At mid-levels however these sorts of effects become more common, as monstrous opposition increases in potency and right around the time that normal melee become less immediately dangerous.  The Saving Throw effectively creates a great deal of the character risk in a mid-level game. 

Additionally, if one is running the LBBs by the book, it’s at sixth level that the raise dead spell becomes available, and hence poison and death by assorted spell become less permanent. Remove Curse and Neutralize Poison are available to Clerics at 5^th level, so poison and polymorph are less dangerous to a well prepared party as well.  Only petrification requires the high level spell “Stone to Flesh” which a wizard can learn at 12^th level, but a character reduced to statuary is less permanently dead and more a logistical and patronage problem for the party to revive.  

THE CLASIC CATEGORIES ARE Idiosyncratic OR SILLY

In a recent post on another blog I saw someone bemoaning the existence of a separate “stone” Saving Throw, apparently because beside the singular Medusa there aren’t any/many mythical creatures of legend that turn people to stone.  While this is the sort of gripe that I find absurd when discussing a table top game about fighting strange creatures in inexplicable labyrinths, it’s true that the classic saving throws are a bit bizarre.  Yet this isn’t a complaint worth addressing at length, any more than complaints about the need for variable weapon damage or other ‘realism’ based rules modification are – it’s a game (largely about exploring strange labyrinths, recovering enormous amounts of gold and fighting strange mythical creatures) and its mechanics are rules, not simulation.

Poison/Death (though I use a separate death save – but that’s a different story), Wand, Stone, Breath and Spell are silly names, but they aren’t required to be exacting categories, what they really model are different character classes ability to withstand different types of danger.  Magic-Users are susceptible to Poison and Wands while Clerics are more resistant, but Magic-Users have the best ability to withstand being turned to Stone and are good at mitigating spell damage.  Fighters on the other hand are best against Breath and worst against Spells.  The Saving Throw then is a means of creating class difference in a system with very few other distinctions.  If one doesn’t like the ‘silly’ names, perhaps rename them, “Stone” can become “Wyrd” and “Poison” become “Natural Physical” or whatever else feels properly serious.  The distinction here isn’t really between type of risk, it’s between the character class taking that risk and so a Saving Throw table can become an excellent additional mean of distinguishing a class (great saving throws are one of the halfling’s best abilities in Basic and similar systems for example). 

It’s tempting when examining the classic Saving Throw system to create a single save (as in Swords and Wizardry) with modifications by race or class, or to tie Saving Throws into character statistics (after all is resisting poison is a measure of health and endurance, shouldn’t it be effected by Constitution?), but in doing so one removes a useful tool. Saving Throws, as broken out in the traditional categories provide an important rules mechanic that is different from and independent of other ‘survival mechanics’, such as the combat mechanic of Hit Points and Armor Class, or the general mechanic of Ability Score checks.  By providing another metric entirely based around level and class, reserved for dread dangers and dependent on a single roll, the Saving Throw adds something to the game by providing a GM or adventure design tool that differentiates challenges and creates a different kind of player reaction.  There is a reason that players often look aghast when the GM says “I need a save vs. poison” and it’s because the default use for the poison Saving Throw is for the character to avoid death for guessing wrong about a risk, or otherwise engaging in some dangerous task (like fighting a giant spider) and performing less than optimally. 

Apparently while I was writing this up the fellow over at B/X Blackrazor has been thinking about similar things, and come to an alternate and perhaps entirely opposite conclusion.  I will keep the classic Saving Throws in my games, and have done so, re-purposing them to cover more areas (Wands is also the standard save in HMS Apollyon against small bombs, shotgun and automatic weapon fire – including the instantly deadly heavy machine gun, while Breath is reserved for large explosions and artillery bursts), though I have been considering a rewrite of the Saving Throw tables for some of the classes to create more variation, especially amongst demi-humans.  The key for me in deciding to stick with the classic category based Saving Throw is that not only does it provide a different metric based on class and level, but that the progression can be different.  Stat based saves will average out, as do 3D6 statistics, and rarely increase (unless you use 5E’s stat increase system), while ones based on class and level can be modified both by level progression and modifier depending on the needs of setting or GM.  For example, Flying Monkeys aboard the Apollyon are very potent characters, with almost the full abilities of fighters, several thief skills and the ability to fly – yet being part of a species designed and conditioned as magical thralls has it’s downsides and the Flying Monkey always remains susceptible to spells, especially mid effecting ones thanks to the design of their saving throw table.

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HMS Apollyon Maps & Other Things

September 23, 2014, 9:24 am

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Some doodling that's gone on in the past few days.  First I got some nice new pens, a very good deal on 24 grey (though several of them tend towards sepia) first rate art markers and need to try them out.

This is an elevation map of the HMS Apollyon, my nautical mega dungeon.  Each square is about 350 feet, so the whole think is approximately 3 miles long.  Decks are broken into hundred foot sections, though there is plenty of space taken up by architectural elements and ship systems between those decks so it's not an exact thing.

This is a map of Deck 5 of the Apollyon, where much of the adventuring has taken place. I have included a key for Sterntown, and the Ship Spirit Shrine's "New Lands Colony" is clearly visible bow-ward from the Rust Gates.  Likewise the Marine controlled, but still dangerous "Sigil Maze" is evident aft of Fort Defeat.  This map shows almost every location where adventuring parties have traveled in my game, as well as some additional expected hull features such as the Spinal Rail system and its major stations.

Here's an overland map for the wilderness around my Dread Engine Adventure - Wyvern is not to scale.

Also a horrible nuisance encounter for the same overland beast, the semi-intelligent burrowing Shun Beast.

"The Shun Beast is a pack predator of the Dust Wastes and Yellow Lands.  Farmers keep their numbers down near the settlements, as the burrowers raid  goat herd and tuber fields whenever they can.  It's unclear exactly how intelligent the Shun are, and if their yipping and low rumbling growls constitute a rudimentary language.

Shun Beasts inhabit sprawling claustrophobic warrens of packed dirt barely large enough for their shelled 4' tall bodies, but are mostly encountered when they ambush travelers, springing from subterranean hides or undermining whole camps and dropping the sleepers into pits where they can be seized by an entire pack of baying Shun Beasts.

The Shun Beasts love of prisoners is well known, as if there tendency to fatten them on the hallucinogenic milk of their brood mothers, great hunched backed Shun that can barely move, before devouring them in ritual bacchanals.

Orcs are a Disease, a look at the Little Brown Book Orc.

September 23, 2014, 4:06 pm

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ANCIENT ORCS

Disney's  to Blame/Thank for the Pig Nosed Orc

I was reading through the Little Brown Books, yesterday, specifically  from the 6^th edition of the Dungeons and Dragons “White Box”, which still has the 1974 copyright (but came out later) and the strange combination of absurd detail, messy layout and bizarre inexplicable rules that mark it as an idiosyncratic hobby project, rather than something designed for a sophisticated market.  Specifically I was flipping through “Volume 2 of Three Booklets” (see idiosyncratic) – Monsters & Treasure, and came across the paragraphs about orcs.

It’s worth noting that many of the monster entries in Monsters & Treasure are minimal, i.e the 30 word entry for “cavemen”, the “Orcs” entry is not and takes up almost a full page (the longest entry is for “Dragons” and takes up almost two and a half pages).  Going with the idea that monster manuals are de-facto setting books, and that what inhabits a setting defines it, orcs seem clearly to matter in the world of the LBB’s, and are certainly one of the most iconic monsters of table-top fantasy games.  They’re also famously badly defined, even if popular culture currently understands them as some sort of WOW derived noble savage version of the Warhammer universe “Greenskin” (a fine bit of fantasy worldbuilding there both in Warhammer and Warhammer 40K)

Yet, what does Monsters & Treasure imply about setting with its specific Orcs, having been written at a time when really the only model for the creatures was J.R.R Tolkiens anti-elves, or perhaps (no not really) Blake’s Promethean spirit of creativity.  The LBB describes Orcs as follows:

ORCS: The number of different tribes of Orcs can be as varied as desired.  Once decided upon, simply generate a random number whenever Orcs are encountered, the number generated telling which tribe they belong to, keeping in mind inter-tribal hostility.  When found in their “lair” it will either be a cave complex (die 1-4) or a village (die 5-6).  The cave complex will be guarded by sentries.  A village will be protected by a ditch and palisade defenses, 1 light catapult per 50 Orcs, and a high central tower of some kind. Orcs found in a cave will possibly have strong leader protector types , as will those in villages:

                                                             Cave Complex                                   Village

7^th– 9^thlevel Fighting Man                        Nil                                         25%/100 Orcs

11^th Level Magic User                                Nil                                         10%/100 Orcs

Dragon                                                  10%/100 Orcs                                      Nil

1 – 6 Ogres                                           10%/50 Orcs                                15%/50 Orcs

1 – 4 Trolls                                           10%/100 Orcs                                       Nil

Orcs will defend their lair without morale checks until they are outnumbered by 3 - 1.

If fought other than in their lair Orcs may be escorting a wagon train of 1-8 wagons.  There is a 50% chance for this.  Each wagon will be carrying from 200 – 1,200 Gold Pieces.  Wagon trains will have additional Orcs guarding them, 10 per wagon, and be lead by either a Fighting-Man (die 1 = Champion, die 2-4 = Super-hero, die 5-6 = Lord) or Magic-User (die 1 = Sorcerer, die 2-4 = Necromancer, die 5,6 = Wizard), 50% chance for either (die 1-3 = fighter, die 4-6 = magical type.)

Note that is Orcs are encountered in an area which is part of a regular campaign map their location and tribal affiliation should be recorded, and other Orcs located in the same general area will be of the same tribe.

Orcs do not like full sunlight, reacting as do Goblins.  They attack Orcs of different tribes on sight unless they are under command of a stronger monster and can score better than 50% on an obedience check (4-6 with a six-sided die for example).

It should be noted that these LBB orcs appear in groups of 30 – 300 and are in their lair 50% of the time.

The above page of a zine style booklet is all we have to go on for what an LBB orc might be, and unless one wants to pull in other sources, it paints a pretty odd picture.  What does the Monsters and Treasure description suggest about the Orc and its place in the default campaign world of the LBBs?  A few things that stand out for me are:

1)              Orcs are tribal– it’s noted a lot in even the short description that orcs live in tribes, and how it’s worth keeping track of these tribes.  This is not something noted for goblins (maybe in chainmail?), hobgoblins or gnolls who simply have a tougher local “king” in each lair.

2)            Orcs are homogenous - Orc tribes aren’t ruled by orcs, they are led by powerful warriors, wizards or monsters, but are a homogeneous body of monsters otherwise.  It’s possible that the warrior and wizard leaders of orcs are orcs themselves, but this seems unlikely given that humanoid kings are routinely mentioned in the LBB’s other examples of humanoids.

3)            Orcs aren’t completely uncivilized– they (1/3 of the time) build villages and have technological defenses, such as catapults. Even the more common cave dwelling orc  post sentries,

4)            Orcs like to fight and have strong animosities towards other orcs– The orc tribe will attack other orcs, seemingly more readily then they will attack anyone else, and often even against the urging of their overlords. Likewise they will defend their homes far past sanity (until outnumbered 3 to 1).

5)            Orcs are like humans, but off- Orcs don’t like sunlight, but are otherwise equivalent to humans with leather armor and shields (or with chain armor). Yet orcs don’t have a force composition like actual human encounters (nomads & bandits) and don’t seem to employ missile troops.  They have some rudiment of tactics (guards, sentries, caravans) but the only weapons they use at range are catapults, while the rest of them are strictly melee fighters.

6)            Orcs travel with wagons filled with treasure or goods– Wandering orcs aren’t just gallivanting about, hunting or out on a raid, half the time they are escorting wagons filled with treasure, often at least as much treasure as is found in their lairs, and are always accompanied by very powerful leaders at these times.  This suggests either trade or expansiveness – presumably these orc caravans are on their way to set up a new tribal offshoot somewhere, or fleeing a lair that has been threatened (not attacked, because they don’t flee or surrender very easily).  The other possibility is of course nomadic orc tribes, not wagons so much as gers and tents packed as the orc band follows some kind of planned route (of course there is no mention of orc cavalry, so presumably these ‘wagons’ are pulled by orcs themselves).

Mechanically LBB orcs are strange, they are driven by a violent hatred of other orcs, afflicted as a race with both a universal sameness and a willingness/need to work for stronger creatures and yet neither foolish or tactically unwise.

WHAT ARE ORCS?  

Sure, pig faced, militaristic, barbarian humanoids is the general answer here.  Ravening, almost elemental forces of destruction and avarice unleashed is an equally popular view, but the first of these is boring and leaves some elements of the description unexamined (why the human and monster leaders?), and the second doesn’t really work for these creatures that seem to be both very tractable (nothing suggests that the Lords an Wizards ruling these orc villages/caravans are always evil) and tend to be homebodies, within their own little tribal regions rather than raiders, travelling in ordered caravans.

Evil cave dwelling elf things is also a possibility if one wishes to hove close to Tolkien (and the orcish need for servitude seems to suggest this ), but is unsatisfying as it doesn’t offer any real evocative reason for the homogeneity of orcs.

In the past Tolkien scholars have suggested that the orc is some sort of symbolic representation of the enemy (or less charitably Germans) as seen from the perspective of a World War One era soldier (Tolkien was a WW1 veteran) – a homogeneous mass that seems subhuman, incomprehensible and relentlessly deadly.  The orc then could be the fantasy embodiment of modern (20^th century at least) warfare, where individual men are reduced to the thralls of the war machines (both literal and political) that command them.   Likewise orcs could be a colonialist stand in for colonized peoples who seek to resist the inevitable “progress” offered by the colonizer.   I don’t fully accept this version of orcs though, either as a view of Tolkien’s, or as an interesting way of reading the LBB orc (it’s pretty ugly and not fun all around).  Gygax certainly isn’t shy about putting evil men (bandits, buccaneers and pirates) into the game as enemies, nor is he reluctant to put in foreign peoples (in the form of dervishes and nomads) or humans lacking technological culture (cavemen) on the monster list.  Orcs aren’t even just soldiers driven mad by war, the sort of nihilistic marauding mercenary psychopath created by prolonged conflicts from the 100 years war  to pre-Taliban Afghanistan.  General Buck Naked, Yoshio Tachibana, Tilly’s mercenariesand all the other blood crazed, war maniacs of history are however on the Little Brown Books’ monster list - in the form of Berserkers. 

Orcs are something different then these, something worth considering and incorporating into a setting with more care then the devotion to simple genre clichés.

ORCS ARE A DISEASE

Orcs are men and women, corrupted by magical disease, generally known as the “Orc Blight” and transformed into something both lesser and greater than the individuals they once were.  The physical symptoms of the blight suggest a charitable source of the ailment, as once afflicted a person becomes steadily healthier, stronger and resistant to other ailments until they peak near the normal human maximum for health and physical ability.  The only physical side effect of the Orc Blight is a susceptibility to bright light, but this is hardly debilitating, given the advantages the disease provides.  Orcs then look like humans, very fit humans, with a few minor symptoms (alopecipa or excessive hair, strange eye colors, pallor, boney growths and horns) that very depending on the strain of Blight involved, but all share a certain slackness of affect that marks them as lacking fundamental humanity.

Also perhaps Orcs - Guildwars 2 Promotional Material I Think

Beyond the generally positive physical effects, the Orc Blight is much much worse, at least from the perspective of  most humans, as it opens the minds portals to a gestalt consciousness  where individual will and mind is almost entirely lost, submerging within an ocean that contains the thoughts and goals of all others afflicted with the same strain of Orc Blight.   The orc gestalt is human in many ways, wanting safety and plenty, and willing to kill or fight to obtain it.  The individual lost within it however, now fully an “orc”, is a docile appendage of the disorganized gestalt mind, capable of acting intelligently only when the greater mind focuses its attention on him as a temporary leader or agent.  Otherwise the orc is a docile enough pack creatures, content to meet its own needs simply, affectionate and peaceable amongst others of its gestalt, but capable of vicious territoriality when confronted with outsiders.   This may be an unintended consequence of the Blight’s efforts to improve humanity’s mental powers as it does the physical, or it may be the intentional effect of the creator who wished a tractable populace.  Indeed orcs are usually happy to take direction from a strong leader, in a way that seems almost contrary to the baser elements of the human spirit that usually predominate it. 

Orc gesalts continue to operate much in the same way that the human societies they replace did, though specialization and craft sink to a functional, but lower level, as expertise is a diffuse understanding of many things, and individual artistry is lost.  Every orc can farm (if the gesalt contained farmers), every orc can work metal (assuming there were metal workers amongst the gesalt’s sample population and every orc can build, mine, craft or hunt with the skills of a not especially inspired or competent member of the craft.   An orc gestalt is generally willing to negotiate, though it has little understanding of individual value and tends to address threats by throwing waves of orcs at them until they are dead, flee or force the orcs to flee.  Likewise orcs tend towards expansionism, as their populations grow quickly, both by natural reproduction and forced conversion of captives (the Blight cannot be passed on at birth, but who ingests a suitable amount of orc blood or milk will likely contract the disease).     

While the natural culture of an orc gestalt is placid enough, slowly spreading and sending out new tribal colonies (in the form of great wagon trains) when they grow too far or too fast for local resources, a singular great hatred animates orc tribes, the hatred of all orcs resulting from a different strain of Blight.  Perhaps orc gestalt’s cannot see non-gestalt entities as threats, or perhaps the magical disease itself was created by competing factions, but whatever the cause the animosity between blight tribes is so great that even powerful leaders can rarely hold them back from violent aggression.  This factor alone inhibits the spread of the Orc Blight as more orcs cannot be infected from those already afflicted with the Blight, and the endless total war between orc tribes generally keeps orc numbers down and the gestalt consciousness occupied.

M3 Twilight Calling - Review

September 28, 2014, 1:38 pm

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THE MASTER GAME

I have been thinking about high level games, how bizarre and impossible they seem now, when I mostly want to play and run games where tragically human, limited and fragile characters face off against the mythic underworld or cunning and merciless over-world factions dependent less on the dice then on player wit.  Yet, high level play was a staple of my pre-teen D&D adventures, characters of 20^th and 30^thlevel fighting hordes of lichs riding red dragons, polymorph spells on every magic user's tongue, and a plus five holy avenger in every fighter’s fist.

TSR recognized this style of play, and produced product for it, specifically the ”black box” Master Set (levels 25 -35) of D&D in 1985, followed by the Immortal set in 1986 for characters that have ascended to demigod status.  These are still strange rulesets, especially the Immortal Set, which while a good idea, appears to have completely changed the rules of D&D and is complex and strange. The Master Set though struggles with the hard questions of terribly powerful characters and appears to fall back on the answer of limiting casting ability, but which I otherwise remember as having sound advice.  This anti-magic bent isn't a surprise, as I suppose the another method is to simply allow everyone/everything in the game to cast as a 35^th level magic-user, making a game similar to the board game Nuclear War, where fights end as spheres of annihilation and disintegration rays leap from either side, pass in the air, and end the campaign.  I doubt there’s much need for high level play advice in the OSR circles I frequent (though Simon at… and the sky full of dust has just finished Session 127 of his Against the Giant’sCampaign and it looks like things are getting Spelljammer). Still the Master set poses interesting questions, and the Immortal Set is tempting -  I find myself drawn to see how these old TSR sets tried to handle the difficulties of high level games.

TWILIGHT CALLING

Twilight Calling, is a “Master Game Adventure”, written by Tom Moldvay in 1986, as a way to bring the overpowered adventure party (levels 30 -35) into the Immortals game, and it actually has some interesting elements for high level play as well as a an eminently steal-able set of basic premises for any level of play.  I’m surprised by this, Twilight is a post Dragonlance production and the production quality looks like those modules, but it has few of the marks of TSR’s mid-late 80’s shift from swords and sorcery freebooting sandbox play to directed, morally pedantic high fantasy.  Perhaps this is because it’s from 1986, the same year as B10 Night’s Dark Terror, and Twilight is written by Moldvay with design credits to Paul Jaquays and Bruce Heard.  This isn’t to say Twilight Calling is amazing, but it does manage to ramp up the strange to a level appropriate to near immortal characters messing with the machinery of the divine, and it’s problems (linearity, some anti-magic tricks, over reliance on combat and a certain frustrating disjointed episodic quality) are at least partially the result of an extremely strange setting and the difficulty of providing a challenge to 35^thlevel characters.

It might be interesting to note that Twilight Calling's chromatic worlds are based on Alchemical Allegory of planets, colors, humors and metals.  This product was published in 1986, a year after Mazes and Monsters was released and in the midst of the 'Satanic Panic' and controversy surrounding Dungeons and Dragons as an enticement to witchcraft.  As silly as this seems now, this module is the only D&D product I've ever seen that actively and explicitly references real world superstitions about magic. It doesn't do it especially well, and Alchemy seems to have been more about spiritual transcendence within a Christian world view then diabolism, but consider the ramifications here and take a moment to cheer Moldvay's enormous hobbyist chutzpah.

AN IMMORTAL PLOT  

Shouldn't a PC be Weirder at 35th Level?

One of the lesser deities of chaos has decided to rise in the hierarchies of the night by tricking a band of powerful mortals into releasing an ancient evil locked away in a pocket universe, behind several other pocket universes.  He selects the party as the instrument of his plan, because only ‘good’ mortals can break the various barriers that prevent the escape of an ancient race of evil dinosaur sorcerers from their endlessly falling stone citadel amidst the void of an empty pocket universe (alright, it actually floats there, and would be better if it was made from magic and the bones of the dinosaur wizards' dead).  To do so the evil godling (I’m not using the horrible D&D names of anything from the module in this review – the dino-sorcerers are called ‘Carnifex’ for example – ugh) send a mad prophet tossing about gems to the PCs' stronghold.  The lunatic utters a prophecy about a gateway and the return of the dinosaur wizards, telling the characters just enough to research the gateway’s location, implying that it’s full of treasure and warning the danger of the trapped evil, while hinting it is about to return.  The messenger then crumbles to dust and if speak with dead is used on him the evil god replies, trying to trick the party into going to the gate and entering, while imploring them to travel into the prison dimension and destroy the evil there.

The party can then do a bunch of library research at an ancient library and gather an extremely large number of useful clues and rumors.   Entering the chromatic realms that guard the prison universe is itself a bit of an adventure, a few days of overland travel to an ancient stone circle and then discovering references to the seven color themed realms ruling symbols (which must be recovered from their masters before entering the prison universe).  Each of the realms is fairly interesting, and claim to be drawn from Medieval, likely alchemical, allegory.  That’s a pretty great idea for a setting.  It also is basically the plot of Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain, but who am I to complain if TSR’s mid 80’s writers went beyond Tolkien for once looking for inspiration.  The realms can be entered in any order and include:

The Rainbow Realm (Mercury - Quicksilver) is pretty much full of bad jokes and decent riddles, but it has some very strange monsters, stained glass knights and a lake of living poisonous quicksilver guarding an artifact wand.  It’s generally a realm of mists and air, though not especially well described.  None of the realms are really well described, a fact which should be rectified to push the otherworldly aspect of this adventure to a higher level, even if the module itself contains sufficient inspiration.

The Green Realm (Venus - Copper) is a place where good but aggressive elves linger in a wild forest and the realm’s corrupted elf queen lurks at the center of a formal garden.  She’s very mythical seeming, guarded by swan Valkyries and attacking by charming the characters, but she must be fought. Once defeated the forest overtakes the garden, breaking insane queen's attempt at forcing nature into stasis for great allegorical pay off.

The Red Realm (Mars - Iron) is a world of war, with a roughly described Martian plain inhabited by monstrous representations of militarism, and a lunatic master whose blood turns into myrmidons. This is good stuff, if a bit clichéd (well all these realms are perhaps, but we can call it mythic instead), and what’s best about the Red Realm is that it doesn't emphasize fighting.   The horrible monsters can be fought (and one or two  guardians must) but the really dangerous ones - an enormous rushing war machine that is something like an entire weapon spouting army of soldiers fused together, and the realm’s mad charioteer master are best if avoided or allowed to attack until he gets bored and leave, having transfixed a character with the realm's magic symbol.

The Black Realm (Saturn - Lead) is a vile swamp, with some interesting encounters and a brooding master who sits on his own coffin in an obsidian pyramid. The realm’s inhabitants all evoke age and decay quite nicely, but sadly everything here attacks: blind ancient god-serpent, hag priestess, a huge basilisk and the strange philosophical master himself.

The Blue Realm (Jupiter –Tin) has been pulled straight from the Golden Bough, and can be mastered without combat, which is not a bad thing.  It’s a plain of mannered fields and very lawful, with corn spirits that demand sacrifice and archons that will gift the players with flaming angelic swords if they behave.  

The White Realm (Moon – Silver) A sea devoted of strange magic and seafoam horses, with an island at its center.  This is another area where combat is constant and the realm’s strange inhabitants (giant mermen and white dragons), but its master is pretty cool, offering an archery contest or bargaining for a party member in exchange for her symbol.  There’s also a small chance a party member will end up with a silver limb which is a nice touch.

The Yellow Realm (Sun- Gold)  The first encounter is with a wounded gold dragon that is threatening, prideful and annoying, but won’t attack if ignored or helped. After that there’s a trapped cave (really the first trap so far), a curious phoenix and a powerful immortal sculptor who wants to spend years sculpting one of the characters.

Once the symbols have been collected the party can travel to the prison dimension where they get to explore a castle full of evil dinosaurs.  This is the weakest part of the adventure, with a set of lame cooking themed traps (the dinowizards are cannibals and obsessed with cooking) and a room of undead (presumably undead dinowizards).  There’s a final battle where the party must fight their own doubles which is nice enough, but really the castle itself feels like an aftermath.

Bad Design 

This is What Twilight Calling Should Aim For

When Twilight Calling decides a fight is in order, a fight will happen.  To some extent this is reasonable, when trying to steal the heart/treasure from a magically animate quicksilver lake for example, and ultimately that sort of fight can be avoided by not trying to take the treasure.  Yet Twilight goes too far to encourage combat, and when it does so it often does it after pointless parleys.  This isn’t to say there aren’t good examples of almost certain fights in Twilight, the mad sculptor who will attack if the party refuses to leave one of its members behind as a subject for his art is one, as this encounter contains a choice, it’s a bad one, but it’s there.   

The creatures of the Green and Black realms however just have to fight, no matter what.  This is made doubly annoying because they are cool mythical enemies (especially in the Black Realm) and would be interesting. That the denizens of these realms are interesting is a double shame, because Twilight Calling almost asks for faction conflict between the realms: Red vs. Blue, Green vs. Yellow and White vs. Black, perhaps – or all out for themselves, offering their symbols in exchange for the destruction or torment of their immortal foes. 

The failure to capitalize on the iconic conflicts between the chromatic/alchemical/planetary realms in Twilight is compounded by their physical separation from each other and by bad maps.  Well not bad maps exactly, the realm maps are simplistic and often pointless.  It’s a shame really, because a single chromatic pocket universe could have offered a really fine sandboxinstead of a couple of light sandboxes and some real railroads, complete with quantum ogres.  Some of the realms, the green and red, appear to be sandboxes to a degree and their are random encounters, but they are always very small sandboxes and the random encounters are all of the 2 in 6 chance of encountering a giant dragon.  At least the decision about what order the realms can be addressed in is open and many of the individual encounters are quite interesting.

The castle of evil in the prison void is also under realized and it’s cooking puns really detract from the strange mythic feel of the rest of Twilight.  Now I like a bit of humor hereand there, but a pit of poisonous barbeque sauce followed by a hall of red hot grills is Castle Greyhawk level gonzo stupid (as opposed to gonzo smart), and all the more because it’s the climax of an adventure that has a very different dream-like mythic feel.  The dinosaur castle just needs to be removed or replaced. In general Twilight’s problems could be solved by allowing it to become the dreamscape sandbox that it seems to make gestures towards, and to really embrace the possibility that this is an adventure where the party will be immortal or retired at its end. 

GOOD DECISIONS

The overall hook of Twilight is not sound, evil gods trying to trick powerful heroes into releasing ancient evils is a pretty compelling and very mythical classic.  The way the hook is set up with a large (30 entry) table of clues from strange books in an ancient library (and the table notes each book as well, which is a nice touch) and a portal to some pocket universes is also pretty good.  It doesn’t force the party into the chromatic realms, but what party will pass up a dude who turns to dust after a prophetic warning and the chance at godhood.

The pocket universes, and their chromatic themes are also really evocative.  The module could have gone further in this direction and some of the realms (Green and Yellow) are a bit devoid of real crazed alchemical mythic flavor, but overall this is a great idea that really gives the module the feel of treading into the realms of the gods and machinery of the universe.  Some of the results of the players' actions, specifically breaking the Green world’s stasis and destroying it’s beautiful garden in a sudden flurry of accelerated seasons, are excellent as well, giving a sense of dramatic change and the high stakes of immortal shenanigans.

The inhabitants of the various chromatic realms are also good fun, there is a reliance on too many giant dragons for basic enemies, but the unique monsters are interesting and appropriately strange.  More importantly the enemies situational powers and abilities offer nice in game puzzles, including many enemies that need not, and likely shouldn’t, be confronted in combat - especially the red world’s fused legion monster that can be dodged, and offers no reason to fight it.  It’s also good that it (and other non-combat designed encounters) can be fought, and likely defeated at the cost of burning large amounts of character resources, which the module carefully limits with some dull (but setting appropriate enough) prohibitions on spell and HP recovery.  Monsters you can’t fight are boring, but monsters that you shouldn’t fight and needn’t fight are a good addition, especially in a high level game.

A BETTER TWILIGHT

This isn’t a bad module, it’s just a bit sketchy in places and doesn’t really want to embrace what it is – the twilight of a super powerful party's adventuring days.  I like the choice of retire or ascend to the godhead for extraordinary heroes, and at level 35 there can’t be too many terrestrial foes left in the game world.

Properly Mythical and Esoteric

I’d bend the hook a little to have the trapped dino-sorcerers be an alternate pantheon of evil gods (not the space tentacle variety, just some old gods trapped too long in a void and gone cruel, cannibal and strange). The evil gods' influence has been leaking into the guardians of chromatic realms and corrupting their perfect masters, until sometime soon they will themselves release the evil pantheon unto the world.  The prison dimension could then become an optional part of the adventure, and the fundamental question for the party would be A) collect all the chromatic realm’s tokens and return them to the terrestrial world to trap the mad masters and mad pantheon in the chromatic realms and prison universe, retiring knowing they have saved the game world, or B) let out the mad gods, and seize the artifacts they leave behind, damning the game world, but promoting themselves to divinity and possibly allowing them to battle those they’ve released – and the current pantheon they’ve pissed off – because a three way divine war starts like a way to start an immortals campaign.

With the premise elevated to a game breaking/transforming level, I’d also join the chromatic realms into a single wheel like pocket universe, divided into pie slices with the portal to the prison dimension at its center.  Each of the individual chromatic realms is pushing its borders against its others, the sanguinary red bleeding into the hopeless of the black swamp and honor of the yellow domain for example.  Each of the more or less corrupted despots of the realms and the other immortal powers within the chromatic domains would desire to conquer or destroy their enemies.  Suddenly there’s a seven faction allegorical conflict that does the subject material (alchemical mysticism) justice and allows the players to decide what sort of divine presences there characters might become by which allies they choose, which masters they replace and what artifacts they seize.  The realms are largely allegorical: rainbow = magic, red = war, yellow = wealth/commerce, green=nature, blue=civilization, white=the sea/deception, black=death and seizing the symbol of each would mark a character with certain related powers, that could be elevated to divine power by using the power of the prison dimension and re-crafting the chromatic realms into their own.

tentacled space monsters, more likely the gods of a prior empire, gone cannibal and insane in their prison dimension) and allow the players to gradually figure out what they might be releasing for the chance at real power and immortality hidden in the prison dimension.

This larger map would allow a single map and related sandbox, with border regions, spreading central corruption, factions and random encounter tables.  It might make the module larger, but at this point the module is a quest for immortality, or at least a conclusion where the characters accept their mortality, as Gilgamesh must at the end of his epic. It would also offer the space to really make these universes evocative and strange, even if one kept the overall map fairly small.

Likewise the central fortress of the fallen, trapped gods needs a full redesign.  Presumably once opened the gods themselves leave behind the fortress, crafted from the bones of their devoured fellows, because an abandoned fortress city of cannibalized divine skeletons has the mythical stature this adventure needs.  The only inhabitants are the corrupted and mad servants and creations of the gods whose corpses make up the fortress, abandoned like rats in the walls when the surviving deities are released.  Either a point crawling ruined city (the better choice I think) or an actual dungeon map would work well for this area.

Ultimately, Twilight Calling is a good module, a surprisingly good module, offering a large amount of mystical, mythical weirdness with a minimum of the late 80’s TSR moralism and presenting an esoteric convoluted vision of fantasy divinity that could make for a very fun cap to a campaign.  It could use some mechanical fixes, as it suffers a bit from size constraints and a trend towards railroading, but it’s evocative and properly mythical in scale as written, with plenty of ideas worth stealing.  The imagery within the module is a bit inconsistent and some of it (green realm, I’m looking at you especially) is trite fantasy cliché, but given that the module is largely about presenting these classic allegorical visions of the universe as playable scenarios and environments it makes a laudable effort at a very hard task.

The Pretender's Dread Machine - Adventure PDF

October 4, 2014, 5:35 pm

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The Dread Machine

The project I’ve previously hinted at in finally finished.  A classic module length adventure that relates to, but is in no way a direct sequel my previously written Prison of the Hated Pretender.  Designed to be used in any fantasy setting, it is not intended to be especially strange or outside the norms for most traditional fantasy adventure games.

I’ve written the adventure  using the Labyrinth Lord system, but it should be easy enough to adapt to anything similar. 

DREAD MACHINE PDF  

A Set of Regional Maps

October 12, 2014, 12:02 pm

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I've been taking it easy with creating game content this week, but I did draw up these maps for Sorcerer's Skull.  I don't know what his plans are for them exactly, but it was nice to draw a sea monster.

First one is hand done with minimal treatment, the one below has been messed with via some filters.

Also I'm kinda trying to figure out what the next project should be.  I've got a couple of plans, but not sure what I want to do.  First, finish Tomb of the Rocketmen, and put it out as a bare-bones PDF (it's similar in scope to Dread Machine) and then maybe put it together in with rewrites of the other ASE Denethix Marches projects (perhaps including a redone Obelisk and Red Demon).  Second, finish up another ASE adventure that I wrote 80% of and dropped - the Old Brewery as the basis of a few ASE urban adventures (Old Brewery, The Grunky Escapade and Tower Adventure I wrote up with a zombie version of He-Man's Two-Bad.  Lastly abandon these old projects and jump full bore into A big Fallen Empire project - I'll call it "The Verdant Vaults" and it's an experiment in building a dungeon that changes (specifically becomes more alive and overgrown) as the players explore it.  It starts a desolate space almost empty of encounters, but the longer it's explored the more it wakes up, and grows.  I like the idea of the project, but I'm not sure if it's viable.  Any of these three would likely end up on RPGnow - despite my dislike for charging for hobby products, I think I need a bit more exposure on these things, and that seems to be that way.  Plus I might be able to hire someone else to do art that way, and I rather hate drawing.

Everyone Hates Halflings

October 21, 2014, 9:24 am

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A Most Reviled People

A companion piece to "Demons of the North" and "Dwarves are Horrible" discussing the oddities and inhuman awfulness that I like to give to demihumans when I run Anomolous Subsurface Environment. Vanilla Halflings aren't perhaps as bad as Dwarves in thier boring almost featureless description, which universally (except for Darksun's jungle dwelling cannibals) seems a pallid and half-hearted copy of the Shire's Hobbits.  In a lot of games lately halflings seem to be the first demihuman race to get replaced - with anthropomorphic animal people usually, or with goblins - this isn't a bad thing, but it certainly shows a certain exhaustion or disdain within the tabletop hobby for halflings.  ASE keeps halflings fairly close to the vanilla D&D norm, but like dwarves and elves it adds the twist that halflings are the result of ancient goblin genetic muckery (goblins being the debased descendents of 'grey' aliens).  I expand on this idea and have recast ASE's Halflings as an oppressed but internal (they have no culture or homeland to return to) minority within Denethix.

“Are Halflings even a people?  More a plague, like poverty or the weeping cysts  - another blight of these cursed times, roiling across the land and lingering to choke the life out of anywhere it has taken root, much like the cloud so sick rock gas that used to boil from the Lanthanide Wastes” – Ray 4375 Beta, field researcher 3^rd form – Temple of Science

 

A pair of Classic Jeff Dee Halfling

Halflings have it bad, and most, both halfling and other think they deserve it. 

Halflings are a demihuman race, standing from 2’ – 4’ tall with largely human features, they lack the glossy black pupil and irises of elves or dwarfs (and their broad spectrum vision) as well as grey skin or other overt signs of goblinoid heritage.  Yet halflings are the most reviled of the demihuman races.  Most humans in the Land of the Thousand Towers view halflings as a species of sentient vermin – a promiscuous, dishonest, thieving, violent multitude.  More than any other race of demihuman, even the brutish Moktar (who is at least respected for his strength) halflings are an oppressed minority.  In Denethix, the halfling population, numerous and long a part of the cities fabric, are largely tolerated as long as they remain in subservient positions or within their own clearly delineated neighborhoods.  A halfling wandering outside the Street of Industrious efforts or the Street of the Alien will be viewed suspiciously and suspected of being either a prostitute or thief, and if unaccompanied by a human, is likely to draw the ire of any passing Unyielding Fist patrol or even a mob of outraged citizens.

While the disdain for halflings among Denethix’s human population is largely unwarranted as most halflings a peaceable toilers, especially in the municipal sewer service and similar unpopular jobs,  there are distinct elements of halflings’ demihuman nature that lend the stereotype of the lusty gluttonous thieving Halfling an air of truth.  These factors stem largely from halfling’s goblinoid heritage, for like dwarf and elves, halflings are a product of an ancient crossbreed of human and goblin.  While this goblin heritiage is perhaps most obvious in elves, with their gray skin, black soulless eyes and sharp teeth, halflings, despite their relatively human appearance (like short large headed humans, with a tendency towards baldness and slightly elongated incisors) halflings biology is far closer to that of goblins then either of the other major demihuman races.  

Most importantly halflings breed from spawn sacs much like goblins (though unlike goblins halflings are not all functional self-fertilizing hermaphrodites) and halflings have little regard for their offspring.  It is possible that this general lack of parental impulse is cultural, but even then this  is understandable, as a halfling spawn are self-sufficent (if stupid, animalistic and vicious) within hours after birth, scurrying about on all fours and almost immediately hunting small animals and insects to devour.  In Denethix and other large human towns this means that the attics, basements and alleys of halfling neighborhoods are often filled with spawn sacks and cruel little pods of cannibalistic halfling infants.  The same holds with most rural areas, except spawn sacs cluster in out of the way hollows or copses of trees that are unwise to venture into unless one is prepared to fight a pack of snarling children.  Halfing childhood is dangerous, and few survive the predations of their older siblings, wild animals or the harsh life of small fleshy creatures living in the open.  Yet this may be a good thing, as otherwise halflings would vastly outnumber the other races of man, and spread locust like, depleting land after land in their hungry hordes.

At about four years of age the feral halfling infant has developed enough to begin skulking around the fringes of civilized society and while living as a scavenger and hunter of alley cats, pick up the rudiments of language and behavior.  By the age of ten most halfling infants have mimicked enough culture to become beggars and street thieves, running with a pack of their own kind until they are strong and smart enough to be noticed by older halflings and drafted into the adult halfling community as something other than vermin. The halflings’ feral childhood, a product of alien biology, explains much of the scandalous rumor about halflings and is the basis of many of their bizarre behaviors.

Every halfling, having raised him or herself as a cunning beast in the sewers, alleys or verges, is an atomized and selfish individual, without the bonds of family, and most halflings never understand the idea of friendship beyond mutual benefit or passing acquaintance.  This doesn’t mean they aren’t friendly folk, for the most part they are as they live in the moment and to excess when it is available, because childhood has taught them that life is short and brutal.  However, even amongst peace and plenty halflings never really let their guard down, scarred by their feral youth, and having learned early to live for the moment and rely only on themselves.  Every halfling is at heart a street urchin, and underneath whatever veneer of respectability they have adopted every halfling is a snarling beast, ready to rip out the throat of his rivals over a perceived slight or from simple hunger.  Likewise without the bonds of family or many of the downsides of mammanlian reproduction or child rearing, halflings are generally promiscuous, placing little value on intimacy or love, but happy to gratify their base desires whenever the chance arises.  

Halfling society’s general lack of community institutions, after all the family is the first model for most such things, results in social mimicry.  Halflings generally learn about social norms during their teenage years, lurking at the fringes of society or running in small packs like wild dogs. These youth packs are adaptable as they are dangerous, and ape the mannerisms and practices they observe in an effort to ingratiate themselves with society and so gain access to the rewards of safety and plenty that it offers.  This practice means that halflings universally lack a unique culture.  Those of Denethix act like the great city’s human population, though they tend to do so without reference to human morality, modeling the merciless behaviors of Denethix’s wealthy predatory class far more often than they do the stolid propriety of its yeomanry (or perhaps there is no stolid goodness among the working class of Denethix and this is just a sterotype that helps repress the popular voice and will – a farce that halflings, as abused outsiders see through). Among the gauchos of the Certopsian halflings become nomads, camp followers or ranch hands (though their small size prevents them from being real dinosaur wranglers) and especially large number of halflings are currently found among the workers and camps of the Denethix  Track and Engine company, slowly expanding its web of rail connections over the savannah.

Halflings in smaller human settlements, where most halflings cluster, are archetypes of the rural bumpkin, but underneath their poorly acted yokel demeanor is always the cruelty and violence of a trapped wild animals. Only in dwarf communities do halflings truly thrive and become something unique, as without the bonds of family that make every dwarf a debt slave, halflings are free agents of chaos and commerce and many become successful entrepreneurs or middlemen standing between the dwarfish mass and the creditor elite. If left alone in the wilderness adult halflings do eventually form small communities of hunter gatherers,  though these groups are universally savage and often the only difference between goblins and wild halflings is that halflings enjoy more exotic tortures and will cook their captives before devouring them.

Both because of their depredation in the wilds and their seemingly slavish, but imperfect adoption of local ways halflings are discriminated against rather heavily in human lands, but the greatest source of this oppression is the (not entirely incorrect) suspicion that all halflings are thieves.  Both halfling youth gangs (and the adult gangs that sometimes replace them) as well as the mercenary morality and base individualistic selfishness of your average halfling often lead to theft, robbery and violence, while the carefully honed skills of halfling childhood make most halflings rather adept at sneaking and pilfering.   Yet despite these tendencies it is worth remembering that halflings are adaptable mimics , and if those in Denethix seem an army of crime, this is perhaps more a reflection on the lessons they were taught as they scurried about it’s street taking in impressions of society at large and trying to carve a space within it for themselves.  As such organizations such as Dr. Bondills Home for the Scholastic Rehabilitation of the Lesser Peoplesand Madam Tunmuffin’s Academy for Wayward Spawn, both located on the Street of Industrious Efforts, will take in halfling spawn of under three years of age, to educate and raise in a productive and safe environment and to this end occasionally hire adventurers and street toughs to collect net bags full of the dangerous infants from the city’s alleys and rookeries.  

HMS Apollyon Exploration Rules and My take on the Overloaded Encounter Die

October 22, 2014, 6:49 pm

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The Overloaded Encounter Die (and several other rules below) is an idea stolen directly from Brendan at Necropraxis, and one that I first enjoyed in his “Finchbox” game – a vaguely ancient Chinese sandbox populated with Matt Finch modules.  I have since adopted the die in my own Apollyon game, and it may be the single best element of that game, because it makes exploration tense/interesting, encourages player activity and allows disorganized GMs like myself to ‘keep track’ of several variables without complex GM facing subsystems.  It may be worth noting that this idea seems to have its origins in Torchbearer, which simply puts everything on a brutally efficient timer, so that player resources rapidly diminish.  

Weights and Measures for Scavengers Aboard the HMS Apollyon

As a system or a ‘hack’ of 1970’s era D&D The HMS APOLLYON aims for relatively flat power curves (for both characters and monsters) and a focus on survival exploration and treasure hunting rather than combat and heroics.  At the same time it’s the goal of the setting to focus on atmosphere and character development through play rather than mechanics, and so I have tried to use simple abstract mechanics rather than complex simulations for as many elements as possible.  

In exploration two, perhaps counter intuitive, subsystems work to increase the tension of delving into new areas, and atmosphere and simplify record keeping for both player and GM.  The first of these is an encumbrance system that may seem strict, or possibly ridiculous at first, but has in play proven to be helpful at giving explorer’s meaningful choices about what they choose to take with them into the hull, without requiring the sort of calculations by coin weight that classic D&D encumbrance either rapidly fall to the side or turn the game into an exercise in spreadsheet use.

The Second Element is the use of an “overloaded encounter” die for random encounters, where every exploration turn (traditionally 10 minutes of character time) results in something happening.  Each pip on the traditional D6 random encounter check (rolled every turn) has a result, and while one of those results is a random encounter, the other five represent either environmental events or a depletion of party resources.  Combined with an encumbrance system that makes resource management an actual element of gameplay and makes Strength a useful statistic for all sorts of adventurers.  

Encumbrance

Rather than  tracking weight and size for each item carried by a character, HMS Apollyon uses a ‘significant item’ system of encumbrance.  Each item or small number of certain items carried by a character counts as a significant item for encumbrance purposes.  A character may carry as many significant items as their points of Strength.   This should make tracking items easy, and allow players and GMs the joy of dealing with actual decisions and risks based on what the party takes into the dungeon. 

Specific Item Considerations

Armor– Armor is a single significant item, as are helmets and shields.  Any penalties to movement or initiative are based on armor type and character armor skills, and are cumulative with any encumbrance penalties.

Specialist’s Tools– Kits of Specialist Tools (alchemist’s kits, doctor’s bags, thieves tools and engineer’s kits) take up a single significant item slot and are useful because they contain many small useful items.  If a player searches their specialist’s equipment for a specific item they will likely find it if it is something fairly commonplace and reasonable for the profession or specialty to possesses.  A scholar’s kit will have writing materials, chalk, charcoal for rubbings and a magnifying glass.  A doctor’s bag will contain scalpels, sedatives, sutures, scissors and bandages.  Rarer, valuable or less likely items (does an alchemist have quicksilver or is a doctor carrying poison?) require a Wisdom check and ultimately GM approval.  These items are available in a limited number, and for each item taken out and used the kit will be diminished by one point (all kits start with 10 points) which can be replenished for 10GP in a civilized area. Secondly, a specialist’s kit does not contain extraordinary amounts of these items, for example, an Engineer’s toolbox, will certainly have an oilcan and enough oil to grease the hinges on a near infinite number of doors, it is unlikely to contain enough oil to cover more then a single 10’ x 10’ area with slippery grease.

Coins and Gems– Small items (usually of value) such as coins are not especially encumbering, something that makes them much more desirable to Scavengers then large works of art ort industrial materials. Scavengers are assumed to each carry a purse, money belt or similar item, and unless they are carrying more than 1,000 coins and gems this is not a significant item. Each 1,000 coins (or fraction of 1,000 coins after the first 1,000) is a significant item for encumbrance purposes.  Jewelry is likewise an insignificant item, unless it’s something big and special (like a heavy crown), as it can usually be worn and is rarely very heavy. 

Firearms– It should be noted that Firearms, especially the readily available black powder weapons, are significant item intensive.  Black powder weapons require a powder horn or flask in addition to their ball ammunition.  Even bullets are perhaps unrealistically space consuming, a deliberate mechanical dodge to make firearm usage a choice to weigh rather than a necessity or unalloyed benefit. 

Bulky Items– Large Items such as statuary, rolled up carpets or crates of canned food will take up multiple ‘significant items slots’ or if big and bulky enough simply grant the character encumbered or even burdened status.

Exhaustion and Encumbrance

A character is ‘encumbered’ when they are carrying more than their Strength score in in items.  This results in a -1 to initiative and a minus 2 to any Dexterity checks to flee combat.  I a chase these characters will be assumed to be slower than unencumbered enemies and will likely be caught. A character carrying more than 1.5 times their Strength worth of significant items is ‘burdened’ and fights at a -2 to all rolls and -2 to armor class.  They cannot disengage from melee combat or flee effectively in this state.

Characters who are ‘exhausted are treated as if they are ‘encumbered’ and if they keep moving after exhaustion on the next exhaustion roll (see below) will become enfeebled, as if they were ‘burdened’.

Lighting

A single lantern or torch will rarely provide enough light for an adventuring party, as a general rule a torch allows visibility for 30’ and lantern 40’ and a candle 10’, but to effectively fight and explore scavenger’s (at least those who lack dark vision) require sufficient light.  A lantern provides sufficient light for four, a torch three and a candle only for one.  Fighting in dim light (if the party lacks sufficient light sources for some reason) gives a -1 to all melee rolls and a -2 to all ranged attacks (Just as blindness or complete darkness gives a -4 to all ranged attacks and causes ranged attacks to automatically miss).

Light sources are also visible at a distance, but luckily the gangways of the Apollyon tend to have frequent turns and the air is rarely free of obscuring dust, fog or mist so players should expect that there light sources will be visible for only twice the distance they provide vision (i.e. only 20 feet for a candle, and 80 feet for a lantern). 

Random Encounters

The Random Encounter die is simple, and covers not only encounters with monsters but: light sources, character exhaustion, spell duration, and external events. 

1D6	Event	Effect
1	Encounter	Roll on Random Encounter table for wandering monster.  Roll for surprise, encounter range (1D4 -1 melee, 2-short, 3-medium, 4 long), and monster reaction.
2	Environmental	Roll on Random Encounter table for clue, non-combat encounter  or event and incorporate it immediately (if a sound or similar indication of outside activity) or place it in a nearby location as appropriate.
3	Light Exhaustion (torch)	A randomly determined torch, candle or other improvised light source gutters and burns out.
4	Light Exhaustion (lantern)	A randomly determined lantern or other advanced light source is depleted or burns out (lanterns require two Light exhaustion rolls before they are empty)
5	Spell Exhaustion	Any and all active short duration spells are exhausted, long duration spells are reduced by one duration point.
6	Character Exhaustion	The party is tired and one of its (usually three before exhaustion sets in) exhaustion points is lost.  Exhaustion may be recovered from with two turns of safe rest for each pip if the character has food and drink available (does not deplete water skins or rations), or by the use of a full ration and a turn of rest.

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Another list of HMS Apollyon Magic Items - Necromantic Boons

October 23, 2014, 10:26 pm

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Horrors from the UMENTIONABLE’s Collection

A lich, but not the Unmentionable

The Scavengers in the last game of HMS Apollyon broke the only real law aboard the vessel and did a big favor for the 'kindly' old lich known as "The Unmentionable".  In return Mr. Unmentionable has taken a break from his process of stitching various cadaverous limbs onto animated shark corpses to allow them to rummage through a crate of magical items and take one each as a reward.  It's likely that Unmentionable doesn't know or much care about the value of these items, he's that kind of obsessed academic, or maybe he's started to see the party as a valuable set of catspaws?

1. Meathook Flail

A length of corroded steel chain, interwoven with dried cracked sinews, the very rust of its surface marking them with jagged glyphs of power.  The 6’ long chain is both effectively unbreakable without magical aid, and topped with a ghastly array of age pocked hooks.  Beside looking intimidating this flail is a magical weapon with two necromantic powers.  First, any living creature slain by the flail will be raised as a zombie in D4 turns to wander the area it was created in and attack any but the flail’s wielder.  These (base: 2HD, ATK Bonus 0, -2 to Initiative, AC 13) creatures are beyond communication except for the occasional moan of affection for their creator or anger at anyone else.  They won’t follow commands or move from the immediate sight of their death and will decay into uselessness after several sessions of play. The flail’s more terrible power is the ability, once per session to animate into a writhing, clawing hydra of metal and rust, attacking any the wielder commands it to for 1d6 rounds.  The spirit animating the flail will require only 1 HD of damage to drive off (temporarily it can be summoned anew next session)  but is immune to normal weapons and attacks with an ATK bonus of +4 and an AC of 15.   

2. Heart of Undeath

Wrapped in a shark hide box stuffed with stained paper is a putrid looking human heart.  This blackened relic still beats slowly, it’s cracked leathery surface leaking a vile greenish ichor.  Despite it’s disgusting appearance the heart has the power to restore life.  If the heart of a recently dead sentient (dead within the last week) is replaced with the Heart of Undeath the victim/patient will rise again as a living human.  At first they will be weak and bed ridden (for the next session) but soon the heart will itself rejuvenate as it’s necromantically charged flesh is replaced by the healthy tissues of the living body. 

3. Angel Feather

Stuffed in the bottom of a rotten cardboard crate box is a thin tarnished silver case engraved with swirls and chevrons. Opening the case produces the distant sound of a choir and the tinkling of tiny bells, but reveals only a long decaying feather.  The feather is the pinion of an archangel, blessed an enchanted however, and despite its bedraggled (and likely misused) state it is a powerful ward against the living dead.  The feather contains 12 charges that can be expended for a variety of tasks.  A single charge will turn undead as if the caster was a cleric of 5^thlevel, while touching the dead with the feather (a close weapon) and expending its energy will do 2D6 damage per charge expended.  One charge will also exorcise necromantic effects (with a successful WIS check) or act to consecrate up to 5 bodies at a time, preventing them from rising and granting their spirit’s rest.   

5. Slaughterhouse Crown

A skull cap of tanned flesh crudely stitched with crawling glyphs in red died gut.  The ‘crown’ renders the wearer effectively invisible to undead unless the wearer attacks them.  Unfortunately not only is it an unsightly head covering  but is creates an aura of filth and degeneracy that most find off-putting (-1 Chr).

6. Bone Splinter Shot

A broken dueling pistol, it’s  wheellock fused into a corroded lump, and fine bone handle cracked.  The octagonal barrel is bent, but triple charged with  balls of wickedly carved bone that glitter with power.  These items will fit suspiciously well in any muzzle loading pistol and are deadly magical ammunition.  When fired at an enemy they will home in, screeching with evil, as the bound spirit within seeks a target.  They are +3 to hit and each will produce an explosion of cold, necromantic energy and bone splinters that does 3D6 damage with a burst value of 6.

7. Ghostly Essence

A strange silver decanter (worth 400 GP itself), tarnished and dented, but in the shape of three robed damsels, each of whose head can be unscrewed to reveal a space filled with sweet clear liquid.  Each of the three linked figures (counts as one item) contains a magical essence distilled from the spirits of the honored dead.  The first, whose face appears to be robust and healthy is a potion of extra healing, allowing the imbiber to reroll their full HP. The second, whose screw top head is only a skull with a main of carved hair contains an essence of ghostly presence, rendering the drinker invisible until they attack or a spell exhaustion result on the encounter die.  The last figure of the decanter’s triptych is cowled and the face is an empty void.  This most powerful essence will render the drinker ethereal, both immune to all non-magical attacks, capable of walking through walls and able to physically attack incorporeal beings until it expires with a spell exhaustion result on the encounter die.  Drinkign any of these potions results in unsettling visions and emotional volatility for a few hours afterward as the drinker’s body and soul try to process the spirit that the drinker has just consumed.

8.  Seal of the Schodel Family

A heavy silver ring, topped with an inch thick a block of sickly pus yellow gemstone. The gem is carved with a Sigil of three leg bones, the center one aflame.  It is the mark of the long extinct Schodel Family of Uptown.  Once powerful passenger class sorcerers, the dispute between the Schodel’s and the Al Ghuli is an old whispered story.  The best of the Schodel’s were exiled into the hull (or left voluntarily to start their own town) over an eon ago, and those that remained were mercilessly hounded by the Al Ghuli and their allies.  The Schodel’s were powerful and vastly wealthy, allied by blood and pacts with Orcus (odd as demon princes are not popular amongst the Apollyon’s elite – but it was a different time) and it took 700 years before the last Schodel scion was sent to an orphanage in Pickbone Square at the age of 12 after her uncle and guardian was ‘killed by ruffians while betting on fighting hounds’ and the families estates were seized to pay obviously false letters of credit. The ring isn’t magic, but it’s certainly something one could cause a lot of mischief with, or sell for at least 1,000 GP.

9.  Spectral Companion

A large comb carved from yellowed bone and set with green stones, this item contains the soul of a pouty and beautiful youth, who will be friendly towards the comb’s owner.  Martel is appears as a ghostly teenager with soft good looks, clad in a variety of absurd, costly items of leisure wear.  He may be reliably summoned once per session to serve his owner or to possess human enemies.  When summoned Martel will often be pouty and sulky, as if he has much better things to do, and he will express distaste at the crude manners and lifestyle of most scavengers.  However, despite his petulance, Martel is loyal, and will act as a loyalty 12 henchman until he is either asked to attack or the spell exhaustion result on the encounter die is rolled (when he will disappear back to whatever phantom seraglio spawned him).  Martel is limited however, in that he is made of cool white smoke, and can neither effect or be effected by the material world beyond causing a slight breeze.  Martel can however speak, is bright, if distractible and can pass through even the smallest cracks, making him an excellent scout.  If asked to attack, Martel will only attack humans, and he will try a single possession attack before dissipating.  The target must save vs. spells or Martel will be able to take over their body, which he will usually do gleefully (he does not like possessing the ugly, deformed or obese) inhabiting his puppet until it is killed or until the end of the session.  While possessed by Martel, puppets cannot use any skills or magical abilities, but retain their muscle memory and hence combat abilities.

HMS Apollyon Player Manual - Turning Rules

October 25, 2014, 11:41 am

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A PDF OF THESE RULES

I have always thought that the ability to turn undead was one of a cleric's most powerful skills, given the number of skeletons and zombies that seem to crawl about in the average D&D game. Yet I often find players have a good deal of confusion about how turning works, especially against a mixed group of undead or large numbers of the things.  I've written up some turning rules with a long example that cover most of the oddities I tend to find in my games, and while it's nothing new or groundbreaking I believe this codification will benefit the players of clerics in my Apollyon game.

CLERICAL MAGIC

Can your Cleric Turn this - possibly

Divine Magic is different from arcane magic in that it depends on the channeling of external power and grace from powerful otherworldly entities rather than the caster’s own will and knowledge to manipulate or overturn the static nature of the universe.  Mechanically there are two systems of Clerical Magic aboard the HMS Apollyon: Monistic practices, which behave mechanically much like arcane magic, with a wide variety of spells that may be cast a limited number of times, and Ecstatic practice which provides a smaller list of spells, which do not always work and may fail catastrophically, but which may be cast almost at will.

Despite mechanical differences they employ, all divine traditions grant the power to hold at bay or even control certain varieties of unnatural entities. While both the Temple of Lyriss and the Church of the Queen are opposed to the undead, demonic, or diabolic in the case of the Temple, the Ship Spirits oppose corruption and demonic influence and the Cult of Leviathan may command the loyalty of sea creatures or drive off Devils.

Turning

The control, destruction or holding off of unnatural (or natural in the case of the Cult of the Leviathan) entities falls under the category of turning regardless of the type of creature shunned.  Clerics roll 2D6 and compare their result to the following table. Note that some creatures (such as those with class levels), receive a saving throw against the effects of turning, and any turned creature may still find way to oppose the party.

On a successful turning attempt up to 2D8 creatures will be effected – turned creatures will either flee to at least long range if shunned, or stop and obey simple commands from the cleric (in the case of sea life commanded by a cult devotee) as long as the cleric remains concentrating on the turning effect to the exclusion of other actions (including turning additional creatures). The ‘T’ result means the creatures will be automatically effected, while a ‘D’ result means that they are destroyed or respond enthusiastically to the control of the Cleric without a continued effort of will, leaving the cleric to act freely the next round.  Control is not permanent and eventually sea creatures will wander off when their natural needs reassert themselves.

to Turn	1 hd	2 hd	3 hd	4 hd	5 hd	6 hd	7 hd	8 hd	9 hd	10 hd
Cl Lvl 1	6	8	10	12	-	-	-	-	-	-
Cl Lvl 2	4	6	8	10	12	-	-	-	-	-
Cl Lvl 3	2	4	6	8	10	12	-	-	-	-
Cl Lvl 4	T	2	4	6	8	10	12	-	-	-
Cl Lvl 5	T	T	2	4	6	8	10	12	-	-
Cl Lvl 6	D	T	T	2	4	6	8	10	12	-
Cl Lvl 7	D	D	T	T	2	4	6	8	10	12
Cl Lvl 8	D	D	D	T	T	2	4	6	8	10
Cl Lvl 9	D	D	D	D	T	T	2	4	6	8
Cl Lvl 10	D	D	D	D	D	T	T	2	4	6

Clerical Tradition	Monsters Effected by Turning
Church of the Queen	Undead and Demons (as if Cleric is two levels lower)
Temple of Lyriss	Undead and Devils (as if Cleric is two levels lower)
Cult of the Leviathan	Sea Creatures (may be controlled) and Devils (as if Cleric is two levels lower)
Shrine of the Ship Spirits	Demons and Automata (as if Cleric is two levels lower)

Turning multiple types of creatures can be a complex process, but in general only two rolls and adherence to the simple rule that the weakest creature is effected first are needed.

Turning Example

Piston Triumph, Servant of the Prime Engine, is a powerful (6^th level) Houngan of the Ship Spirits.  While cleansing an ancient Tennis court of vile creatures of decay (demonic interventions) and a putrescent Frog Demon his fanatic band is faced with a large pack of animated horrors infused with abyssal fungus:

«Twelve 2-Hit Die fungal zombies, their moldering whites stained unholy pink from the bubbling abyssal fungus within.  

«Two 5-Hit Die fungally infected feral engines, former massive industrial washers, now skittering on pink tendrils of slime like giant rusting hermit crabs with claws of jagged piping.

«One 8-Hit Die Frog Demon, its bloated body leaking and spraying gouts of chalky pink abyssal fungus as it surges forward intent on swallowing Piston whole.

Piston calls on the Prime Engine, and the ancient machine spirit rides him, enraged by the twisted machines and decay facing the Cleric.  Piston’s player rolls an ‘12’ on his 2D6, but the 2D8 indicates that the Engine’s power is channeled narrowly, blasting only 6 of the creatures of decay.  Six fungal zombies melt, their ancient mummified flesh scoured clean of abyssal taint with a wave of propriety and reason. Note that this roll would have allowed Piston to turn even the Frog Demon, but the weaker creatures were effected first, a lesson that all necromancers, lichs and summoners should take to heart when facing enemies with divine aid.  The remaining six zombies crash into Piston’s guard of howling ship spirit fanatics, and bronze crowbar meets caustic slime encrusted flesh. Peppered by rifle fire from Piston’s bodyguard the Feral Engines advance directly towards the houngan, throwing aside the broken bodies of several fanatic warriors, while the Frog Demon begins to incant a gurgling blasphemy that fills his forces with demonic vigor. 

When the second round of combat begins Piston finds his party surrounded by four zombies (two having been smashed apart by fanatics), the feral engines and the frog demon, which sits back and uses its black barbed tongue to reel Piston’s bodyguard towards a cavernous mouth.  Piston again calls on the Prime Engine, but rolls a ‘4’ exhausted from the efforts of the prior round.  The string of numbers the houngan broadcasts are unavoidable however, and lash the scavengers’ demonic opponents.  With a roll of ‘14’ all of the monsters will be effected. Luckily a ‘4’ is just enough to send the feral engines stumbling  back towards the darkened niches they came from, as well as destroying the remaining zombies.  The Frog Demon is annoyed as the rationality and stolid order of the Prime Engine’s words buffet it, but it resists.

As the third round of combat begins, Piston’s bodyguard vanishes into the demon’s crushing jaws along with one of the two magical weapons (a voltaic cutlass) that the scavengers possess, the other being Piston’s namesake pneumatic hammer.  The fanatics surge forward, but besides impeding the demon’s advance are unable to harm it with their mundane war crowbars and boarding axes.  Piston must decide, should he renew his turning efforts, leap forward to smite the bloated demon in melee, or perhaps cast a spell, the last two of which will free the feral engines from the houngan’s power allowing them to charge back into combat. Not wanting his overtaxed guard force to face two charging scythe-limbed horrors as well as the invulnerable demon, Piston decides to renew his turning effort (he could also simply maintain it driving the feral engines back but allowing the frog demon to run amok). The power of the Prime Engine is not enough to drive off the Demon however, as Piston rolls only a ‘6’, but at least the feral engines are forced back a few more feet (note no roll was needed here for number of creatures effected as there were only two targets subject to the turning.)

The combat continues as the fanatics spend their lives beneath the demon’s crushing claws or melt from its vile acidic spew.  Piston almost despairs, but he again tries to drive of the Demon with divine power, and this time he succeeds, rolling an ‘11’ and a ‘9’.  All the corrupt creatures are forced back, and Piston is able to maintain his turning, striding forward to chase the demon and its feral engines from their lair while his remaining guards grab valuables, consecrate the ancient tennis court to the Ship Spirits and anoint the dead with holy oil. 

Clerical Spell Research

Clerics do not research spells in the manner of Arcane Casters or scribe the spells of others, they ask their gods to allow them to wield power in new ways, or seek to make pacts on ensnare new spirits with different powers.  The process of Clerical Spell Research is more a process of discovery or questing then one of research.

Clerics of monistic traditions will go through a process of intense prayer and meditation, burning valuable incense, donning fine vestments and using other luxurious components, sometimes commissioning art work or making sacrifices to glorify their deities before they beseech their gods’ intervention on an issue or challenge (for example: a prayer for the ability to smite the ungodly might result in a combat spell, a strength blessing, or a protection spell).  Depending on the scope of the offerings and the cleric’s past loyalty to the divine cause the god will either ignore the plea of the Cleric or provide a spell appropriate to the Cleric’s request.

Ecstatic Traditions do not gain new spells individually as each spirit or aspect called has only a small selection of powers.  As they level, cultists of the Leviathan pay vast sums of money to be inducted into further mysteries, and so gain the ability to summon new avatars of the god, while mambos and houngans of the Spirits use scavenged artifacts and valuables to build shrines to new spirits.  In both these cases an investment of money, or money and magical artifacts/trophies (in the case of the Ship Spirits) will grant the cleric an entire new set of spells at specific levels that can either be selected from the lists in this volume or adapted by the GM.   

HMS Apollyon Maps & Other Things

September 23, 2014, 9:24 am

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Some doodling that's gone on in the past few days.  First I got some nice new pens, a very good deal on 24 grey (though several of them tend towards sepia) first rate art markers and need to try them out.

This is an elevation map of the HMS Apollyon, my nautical mega dungeon.  Each square is about 350 feet, so the whole think is approximately 3 miles long.  Decks are broken into hundred foot sections, though there is plenty of space taken up by architectural elements and ship systems between those decks so it's not an exact thing.

This is a map of Deck 5 of the Apollyon, where much of the adventuring has taken place. I have included a key for Sterntown, and the Ship Spirit Shrine's "New Lands Colony" is clearly visible bow-ward from the Rust Gates.  Likewise the Marine controlled, but still dangerous "Sigil Maze" is evident aft of Fort Defeat.  This map shows almost every location where adventuring parties have traveled in my game, as well as some additional expected hull features such as the Spinal Rail system and its major stations.

Here's an overland map for the wilderness around my Dread Engine Adventure - Wyvern is not to scale.

Also a horrible nuisance encounter for the same overland beast, the semi-intelligent burrowing Shun Beast.

"The Shun Beast is a pack predator of the Dust Wastes and Yellow Lands.  Farmers keep their numbers down near the settlements, as the burrowers raid  goat herd and tuber fields whenever they can.  It's unclear exactly how intelligent the Shun are, and if their yipping and low rumbling growls constitute a rudimentary language.

Shun Beasts inhabit sprawling claustrophobic warrens of packed dirt barely large enough for their shelled 4' tall bodies, but are mostly encountered when they ambush travelers, springing from subterranean hides or undermining whole camps and dropping the sleepers into pits where they can be seized by an entire pack of baying Shun Beasts.

The Shun Beasts love of prisoners is well known, as if there tendency to fatten them on the hallucinogenic milk of their brood mothers, great hunched backed Shun that can barely move, before devouring them in ritual bacchanals.

A Strange and Wonderful Bleakness - Deep Carbon Observatory Review

July 16, 2014, 12:12 pm

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deep caRbon observAtory

I have read Patrick of False Machine’s Deep Carbon Observatory, an adventure, or setting, or even campaign.The module compares favorably with other contemporary offerings, such as the better LOTFP modules, but has its own approach and unique feel. The adventure focuses on a riverine expedition in a sort of point based sandbox, suddenly flooded by the collapse of an ancient dam.  Rumors of mountains of ancient gold beneath the recently collapsed dam’s (now drained) lake have presumably drawn the party, as they have other (horrible) NPC treasure hunters.  Beyond the dung-ages horror of a flooded and starving landscape is an upriver journey through a variety of creepy nautical monsters (crabs, cuttlefish, pike, frogs) all subtly warped and horrifically described.  The journey leads to the dam, its dying guardian golems and ultimately a lake bed of ancient and unnatural weirdness that hides the “Deep Carbon Observatory” itself.  The observatory is an entrance to the Underdark, and not Gygax’s glowing mushrooms and petulant Drow Underdark, but False Machine’s utterly alien, beautifully psychotic Underdark.

A Suitable Cover

Broken into four rough sections (A town, a point crawl, the dam/lake, and the observatory) Deep Carbon has plenty of room for adventure, and the only limit on this is the presumed success of a very nasty NPC party if the PCs don’t push onward at a furious pace.  I like the scale of the adventure, especially because so many of the individual vignettes presented are compelling enough that I think a group of players could enjoyably spend at least a session on many of them.  This makes me ambivalent about the NPC party, who while one of the best (ok one of many wonderful) elements in the adventure could act to force the players’ hands.  The NPC party and its place in Deep Carbon Observatory is also somewhat hard to pin down without some page flipping, but that's a minor concern, and their inclusion creates a powerful and compelling enemy for the party.

Ultimately Deep Carbon Observatory is a thought provoking and wonderful adventure, almost novelistic in its scope and strangeness.  The author drops magnificent ideas and imagery haphazardly on every page of a quality that many adventure designer would convert into an entire campaign. Additionally there are some novel approaches to town encounters in the first section of the adventure that are thought provoking as a means of creating tension, and cause and effect without minimizing player agency.  Sadly Deep Carbon Observatory suffers a bit from a slavishness to the DIY aesthetic and a lack of polish, but other than some aggravating page transitions this is easily ignored. Additionally, the module’s scope makes it feel fragmentary (perhaps unavoidable given its size) at times and it repeatedly includes the lamentable sin of confusing maps. 

stoRy

The reader of Deep Carbon Observatory will need to tease the story out of the text and tables that the adventure immediately pours forth.  There is an ancient dam at the head of a river that is rumored to hide the valuable secrets of an ancient civilization. The adventurers arrive at the river mouth in the aftermath of the dam’s failure, meaning that the lost treasures are now free for the taking, but that the region is devastated.  The flood has created complications, mainly masses of desperate, starving refugees and a drowned land covered in strange monstrous life. The town of Carrowmore is dying in a frenzy and walking into it the party will be confronted with a series of situations that they will need to resolve. 

The mechanic here is worth mentioning, as it appears useful for creating scenes of wild energy and action where the party is only a small part of a larger situation (like a battle perhaps).  The events of Carrowmere are provided as three columns of encounters, each of which will evolve if the players don’t intervene.  Stepping into Carrowmere the party will find all three before them (a man dragging a his dead wife from the river, a drowning priest swept from upriver, and a raft of wailing children about to be lost in the flood).  How the players interact with these events will have consequences in the adventure, introduces individual NPCs (the ones whose plight is ignored tend to die) and provides rumors, hooks and clues. The hopelessness and human scale of the situation is also noteworthy, as regardless of player actions some bad events occur. I want to point out that human scale here as it runs through the adventure. Dragons of Despair, and Dragonlance in general, has a similar apocalyptic feel, but fails partially because it remains at the level of epic heroism, and uses human tragedy as background dressing.  Deep Carbon Observatory never does that and the characters will make moral choices that feel very real but are ultimately tragic.  For example, saving a 5D8 orphans and a school teacher in Carrowmere has no positive effect, except perhaps to drain character resources, but I don't see many players who won't be drawn to do it. A latter example involves a roc, dying in a horrible fashion, and while it can be saved, the giant predatory bird remains a giant predatory bird.

Navigating the tragedy of Carrowmere, the party will obtain a boat to head up the overflowing river.  The flooded land is blanketed with various strange and grotesque point encounters, my favorite being a field of giant toads, so bloated from eating the drowned that they will burst open if struck forcefully. This encounter is typical of the adventure, a very visual description of a strangely bleak and horrific event, written in an economical and evocative way, with only a bare stat line and a simple situational rule or two to set the scene.  Encounters and descriptions might seem perversely terse at first glance, but the information is sufficient and the minimal writing so rich that any GM could run these encounters. The paucity of stats and mechanics might also benefit Deep Carbon Observatory, as it seems easily adaptable to other systems, and its focus on interactions other than combat with both monsters and desperate NPCs might appeal to people who play some of the more modern variations on tabletop roleplaying.  A Torchbearer conversion of Deep Carbon Observatory for example might result in something so weirdly horrific and bleak that it would transcend that system’s meta-game with wonderment and sadness.

After wandering the drowned lands and uncovering some mysteries there is a dungeon tomb filled with ancient guardians, traps and strange treasure, followed by another small point crawl across the reservoir beyond. There are factions among the former lake dwellers to help or hinder and the remnants of an ancient civilization to marvel at. Among these relics is the entrance to the Deep Carbon Observatory, a giant stalactite that juts into the under dark, and once acted as a trading post/scientific exchange between the surface and the deep empires of Drow and dark dwarves.  The observatory has many secrets and every room contains strange and wonderful things to plunder, interact with or avoid. I am intentionally limiting my discussion of this section (and the rest of the module) because reading Deep Carbon Observatory and discovering its bizarre, compelling encounters page after page is a great deal of fun, made more enjoyable by piecing together the mysteries involved.  It might be worth noting that the title of the module is taken from an international science project that seeks to understand life and energy cycles in inhospitable places such as the depths of the ocean and interior of the earth.

suCCesSES

Deep Carbon Observatory is filled with evocative and wonderful writing.  The setting is strange and bleak, but in such a novel way that it doesn’t feel clichéd.  Deep Carbon Observatory compares favorably with the better of the LOTFP adventures but lacks the feeling of a slasher or horror movie that these adventures can sometimes give, focusing on the weird and strange more than the gory or horrific - It creates wonder and tension rather than fear and anxiety. Yet, even with this tone, Deep Carbon Observatory is relentlessly bleak, and while the players may do heroic deeds, saving some of the troubled people of Carrowmere in the long run, during the course of the adventure there are many tragic situations where the players assistance will provide little help and deplete their resources to almost no benefit.  Not everyone can be saved, and saving some will ultimately lead to greater trouble.

With the quality of the writing and evocative encounters it is no surprise that the treasures, traps, monsters and especially the magic items within Deep Carbon Observatory are of great quality.  I especially enjoyed the magical items as they are unique, inventively useful, and not extremely powerful. The art, by Scrap Princess in her unique scribbled style, is also great and while it won’t appeal to everyone, it certainly compliments the writing and general sensibility of Deep Carbon Observatory. 

Monster design in Deep Carbon Observatory is generally excellent, using a few standbys, especially undead, and reskinning or creating new monsters for almost every encounter.  Notably these aren’t full designs of strange beasts, but largely simple descriptive tweaks with minimal stat lines and an occasional special power.  Such monster modifications are great, as they provide enough uniqueness to keep the players wondering about what they face, but don’t demand incredible descriptive skills of the GM.

PrOblems

Despite my affection for the creators of Deep Carbon Observatory it has troubles.  I don’t want to make these troubles into anything big but I want to address them out of fairness to future buyers.

First, there is something a bit goofy about Deep Carbon Observatory’s layout.  I don’t mind the giant text and oddly sized pages so much, or even the fair number of typographical errors (I have a fair number of that sort of flaw in my own PDFs, but then mine are free).  The real problem is that Deep Carbon Observatory’s design is sometimes hard to use.  Part of the issue is that there is so much and such varied content, but part is poor design choices and execution. Finding things within the PDF is hard, and while in actual play this might not matter so much as players will move slowly through the adventure in distinct sections, the module definitely demands a great deal of GM prep to run to keep the sections and sessions of play part of a whole.  Each five pages/three encounters might provide a session of gaming, but these fragments need to be placed within the module’s larger context and the text largely fails to facilitate this.

While the problems of layout and usability are minimal, the maps provided in Deep Carbon Observatory are frustrating and flawed.  Nicely drawn in the style of pencil sketches, largely isometric and evocative enough to provide an overall sense of the keyed location, they are nearly impossible to read because of size and because the keying is hand drawn in the same sketchy style as the rest of the map.  This itself would be forgivable if the maps weren’t attempting to visually describe complex areas, spanning multiple levels and with many traps that depend on location and space. The elevation map of the Observatory itself is pretty, useful and interesting, but difficult to read, and a lack of a supplementary traditional ‘top down’ maps turn it, and the other dungeon areas, into chains of rooms and encounters that are hard to connect together as a meaningful whole.  This may be a general problem with complex, vertically interesting maps, but Deep Carbon Observatory doesn’t make much effort to solve it.  

Maps are important in published adventures as by reviewing them and placing the keyed locations in context with each other the GM can understand the flow of the module, the purpose of and interrelations within it and perhaps an ecology.  These factors allow adaption and pacing at the table, and without them a module can become a string of unconnected encounters. As a general theory I think isometric maps are rarely ideal, because despite their appearance of 3D it is hard to actually layer multiple levels atop one another without creating an unreadable and tangled mess.  Isometric maps look great, but only really seem to work for relatively simple structures or those with widely placed rooms and in almost all cases an isometric map is best supplemented by a traditional top down map.  Similarly, elevation maps are very useful at defining the interrelation of complex vertical spaces but they don’t allow much detail or depth on the individual levels unless they are coupled with more traditional maps.  I do hope that Patrick and Scrap Princess will provide a supplemental map pack for Deep Carbon Observatory, because this would greatly improve the module, and such maps are not hard to make or difficult to find artists for. 

conclusion

While I may complain about certain aspects of Deep Carbon Observatory, most of these are technical or design related.  I don’t want to minimize my complaints because my frustration with these shortcomings is enough to make me think it would be hard to run this adventure without a great deal of work, but at the same time Deep Carbon Observatory represents the best of the contemporary DIY/older D&D scene.  It is imaginative, evocative, presents haunting wondrous imagery, demands that the players make ethical decisions with consequences, and provides many opportunities for participatory world building. The clumsy editing and layout are completely forgivable in this light, even charming (what is the Dex of the sinister NPC leader? You decide!), but I still I simply cannot forgive the lack of good maps, especially in light of the complex spaces Deep Carbon Observatory thrives on. None of these errors matter, because I have absurdly high standards for paid published content, and because Deep Carbon Observatory is some sort of beautiful Frankenstien’s monster grafted from: B4-Lost City, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Death Frost Doom (albeit where the party can actually prevent the final horror – they won’t but they might).  The module wins me over, and even if I can’t run it (not because of its flaws, but because of my own entrenched campaign settings) I can plunder it for so much amazing content: magical items, npcs, treasure, monsters, location imagery, and an approach to tension building town encounters.  What I mean is, buy this thing if you want to make you game more interesting, because reading it will give a GM ideas, even a GM who finds the vanilla new 5e content proper and compelling.

Reputation and Factions Aboard the HMS APOLLYON

July 24, 2014, 2:23 pm

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I've Long claimed that my HMS Apollyon game at least a good part about negotiating the characters' place amongst the factions in its "safe" area.  In the past I've done this primarily via roleplaying encounters and a vague sense of how each faction feels about the PCs.  I've tried to transform this into a more mechanical system that allows something more than simple GM whim to determine what a specific faction might provide and how a character may gain that faction's favor.

Below is an excerpt from the Players manual I am slowly piecing together that explains how the reputation system functions.  The link to the full PDF from the manual is also below and contains a great deal of additional information about the individual factions of Sterntown.  It's pretty much a gazetteer of Sterntown so it may be of some interest.

PDF OF REPUTATION, FACTION & MORALITY PORTION OF THE HMS APOLLYON MANUAL

MORALITY & REPUTATION

Sterntown is a place of painful scarcity and great wealth, with a wide disparity between the two.  The armored elevators to Uptown are guarded below by the best equipped of Steward units, and above by shackled devils and the fierce house guards of the great Passenger houses.  The rookeries and favelas of Pickbone Square and the Rust Gates are equally well protected by the legions of the demimonde, from Vory enforcers to the shamanistic fighting moieties of Frogtown. Despite the abundance of distrust and armed factions, Sterntown has not collapsed into civil war, and the social and economic pressures are locked in an odd equilibrium.  The Fishers, Tillers and Froglings produce food that the factors can, preserve and distribute.  Factors and craftsmen maintain the old machines and produce new goods from raw materials that the Scavengers recover from the hull.  The Vory and Stewards both keep lawlessness to a minimum and insure so variety of fair dealings. The Passengers’ sorceries and Stewards’ guns are respected as protection against outside forces, and as much as the various classes and organizations within the city hate or fear each other, they also recognize their interdependence.   

The heart of survival in Sterntown is knowledge of where one fits into its hierarchy and who one can count on for protection, succor and identity.  Reputation and faction respect are in many ways more important than wealth (though not unrelated) as almost regardless of personal power an unaligned individual will be prey for everyone from urchin gangs seeking to draw the sponsorship of the local Vory to Al Ghuli summoners in need of a soul offering for their otherworldly allies.  Conversely the most savage and greedy Steward Brute Squad is more likely to tip their hats then beat and rob a gold bearing messenger in the livery of a Factor combine, and even the writhing tattoos of a Krab Brother Lieutenant stand for something among the Houses of Uptown.

Morality

There is no alignment in the traditional table top game sense aboard the Apollyon.  Certain groups may forbid actions or approve of others, but the players will have to act as their character’s moral compass.  There is draconian law within Sterntown that covers the normal laws of civilization and on the books it’s relatively egalitarian.  However, the main enforcers of morality and law among the crew caste are the Vory syndicates, while the Stewards maintain bare social order.  Both of these groups have their own idea of right and wrong, and while they generally behave respectably enough toward individuals affiliated with and protected by Sterntown’s various factions, both groups can be violent and destructive if their authority is challenged, and exploitive of those who they perceive as weak, unprotected or acting beyond their place in the social hierarchy. 

Despite the relative lack of honest law enforcement on the streets of Sterntown, there are courts, located in the Steward’s fortress, the Bleeding Gaol, where private parties may bring actions against each other or defend themselves against criminal charges.  Both civil and criminal courts are reserved for individual of wealth or power, especially those whose disputes might cause social unrest, while crimes by lesser  folks, or those committed in less wealthy areas are dealt with more summarily.  Strangely this maintains a social order in Sterntown, with the factions’ power balancing to keep the town relatively peaceful and business reasonable honest.

The only law universally enforced regardless of class or wealth is a strict prohibition on the arts of necromancy.  Those accused of necromantic magic are generally fined of all wealth, and impressed into the scavengers on even the slightest shred of evidence.  Those who are convicted of necromancy are cast into or from the hull after being subjected to elinguationto prevent spell use. 

Reputation

Reputation is a form of currency in Sterntown.  Characters can build reputation with certain factions (at the cost of reputation with others) and use reputation to do many useful things such as gaining access to better equipment and hiring competent henchman.  Reputation is tracked as a simple modifier, of -5 to +5 with each point of reputation acting as a bonus or penalty on the standard 2D6 reaction roll. Remember CHR bonuses or penalties also modify this roll.

2 or less	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12 or more
violent	angry	threat	warning	guarded	Neutral	neutral	positive	helpful	amicable	friendly

These reactions define the general feelings of the NPC encountered.  A pack of Crayhounds that has an amicable reaction may give the adventures sporting warning with a display of clattering claws, allowing them a chance to run before the hounds tear the scavengers to pieces, while a violent reaction from a shopkeeper will be to refuse service and possibly call the Stewards or local enforcers.

Earning Reputation

Earning Reputation is not an exact process as reputation points are awarded like treasure or experience based on in game events, but each faction has some default ways to earn or repair basic reputation. 

Donation:  Providing Money or goods is an excellent way to improve one’s relationship with and prove ones value to a group.  Often donation will be labeled something else: religious tithe, membership dues or “the vig”.

Mission:  Doing meaningful favors, confounding or destroying enemies, recovering artifacts and information from the hull and generally furthering the goals of a faction is almost always a way to gain status and reputation.  

Loyalty:  Higher levels of reputation will require the character to pledge loyalty to the specific faction, renouncing all other factions (reducing one’s reputation with all other factions to 2, though it may be regained).  Specific Factions will have more or less elaborate rituals associated with this level of reputation, Vory tattooing, religious conversion or even dynastic marriage. A character may only be loyal to one faction at a time.

The level of reputation needed a declaration of Loyalty is also effectively the reputation a character can advance to in a faction through membership with an friendly faction.

Status:  There are some factions that won’t trust an individual beyond a certain level regardless of their behaviours or loyalty unless they are a certain type of person.  Most relgions are less receptive to aiding lay members then clergy, and racial factions such as the Uptown families and Frogtown  are xenophobic to lesser or greater degrees.

Friends and Enemies: Reputation has a cascading effect, as factions are allied and opposed to each other, in general, for every two points of reputation with one faction a positive and negative point of ‘unearned’ reputation is added with other factions.  This sort of reputation is of course capped at the level an organization demands “Loyalty” from its adherents as an individual may only be loyal to one faction at a time.

Spending Reputation

Reputation is a currency, and the greater reputation one has with a faction the more likely that faction is two help.  There are generally two ways to use Reputation points, wagering or spending them for boons.  Wagering means that the character presents his or her credentials as a friend or member of the faction and asks for a boon.  The GM makes a reaction roll adding or subtracting any reputation over/under the number required to buy access to a specific boon and any Charisma bonus or penalty.  On a result better then ‘neutral’ (8 or above) the petition is granted and the reputation point preserved.  On a roll of neutral or less (7 or less) the character has offended the faction and loses the reputation point without gaining any benefit.

Purchasing boons with reputation is easier, a point of reputation may be exchanged for the boon once the character has enough reputation to qualify. Once in possession of a boon reputation may be spent in lieu of gold to hire henchmen, obtain spells or purchase items at a value of 1,000 GP per point of reputation spent (thus a suit of full plate costs 3 reputation points).  Once gained boons can only be lost if the character drops below a reputation of one with the faction, or renounces it. 

Specific boons vary from faction to faction, and their quality does as well, but general types are as follows from easiest to hardest to obtain:

Information:  Access to the knowledge and rumors available to the faction.  This almost always includes sage services, though the ability of faction sages will depend on the type of knowledge sought and the nature of the faction.  I.E. Vory sages will be able to cheaply and easily provide information on poisons, but are unlikely to be much help in unraveling diabolic spells scrolls.

Armory and Equipment: Access to the specialized equipment of the faction including higher quality weaponry and armor then is normally available.

Normal Henchmen:  1^st level henchman capable of leveling, with appropriate skills and equipment related to the faction may be hired for 50GP a session these henchmen have a base loyalty of 7 as opposed to 5.  If too many faction henchmen die or if they are used callously it may affect the character’s reputation with the faction.

Intervention: Faction leaders will intervene with other factions on behalf of the character to protect them from repercussions, arrange meetings or negotiate deals.

Spells: Faction will provide access to its unique spell knowledge and instruction in special magical disciplines

Specialists and Craftsmen: The ability to use faction prestige to have the best sorts of equipment and armaments manufactured or procured.  It also includes faction specialists such as enchanters or healers. 

Elite Henchmen:  The ability to hire specialist henchmen, usually for a ½ share of loot from an expedition or 500GP per level.  These henchmen include both specialists such as magsmen, and simply powerful faction members.  In general such elite henchmen will be of a level one less than the hiring character. Such elite henchman take pride in their skills and have a base loyalty of 10.

Soldiery:  The ability to hire one or more squads of military type assistance from the faction.  These squads will generally work for 100 GP each season for guard duty and the like, but may demand more for combat against monstrous foes, entering unknown areas of the hull or otherwise taking greater risks.  Most factions will not allow the use of their soldiers for tasks that do not benefit the faction.

Artifacts:  Many factions have access to collections of unique or magical items, and the use of these objects is limited to the faction’s most valued members.

Deep Carbon Observatory - Maps

July 26, 2014, 9:52 am

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DEEP CARBON OBSERVATORY MAPS

A few posts ago I lamented the fact that the excellent adventure Deep Carbon Observatory (link to purchase on RPGNOW) lacked classic top down maps, because it was hard for me to visualize running a couple of its areas using only the elevation or isometric maps provided.  Since I like the adventure, like drawing maps, like the author, like the artist and especially like the strange and evocative environment that the adventure manages to create without departing too far from a standard fantasy world, I have decided to draft maps for the Deep Carbon Observatory.

I chose the adventure’s ultimate destination and location because it seemed the most complex and most in need of reference.  This becomes especially true as there’s a good chance that the observatory will end up being run as a chase.  The map is nicely set up for this, with only a few dead ends and many loops.

I was not able to replicate the measurements described in the  adventure itself, as these would make some areas very very small and others oddly huge.  Instead I tried to keep my scale in line with that of the elevation map.  

 

DCO - Lvl 1

 Level 1 – AREAS 1,2 , 26 and 39 – 44

DCO - Lvl 2

Level 2 AREAS 3-12, 26 – 28

DCO - Lvl 3

 Level 3 RIGHT STALACTITE, AREAS 13 -17

DCO - Lvl 4

Level 4 RIGHT STALACTITE, AREAS 18 -21

DCO lvl 5

 Level 5 AREAS 22 – 25, 29

DCO - Lvl 6

Level 6 LEFT STALACTITE, AREAS 30 -32

 

DCO - Lvl 6

Level 7 LEFT STALACTITE, AREAS 33 -34

DCO - Level 8

Level 8 LEFT STALACTITE, AREAS 35-37

DCO - Lvl 9

Level 9 LEFT STALACTITE, AREA 38

The Engineer - HMS Apollyon subclass

July 28, 2014, 2:58 pm

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As the new campaign running the HMS Apollyon begins to happen regularly I've started trying to complete sections of my player guide as they are needed.  It's not an easy process.  Still below is the subclass/aptitude page for the Engineer.  Engineers have proven popular amongst players, I think as they fit with the aesthetic of the game, but they have proven to be interesting and useful in their own right.  The ability to catch a third target in the splash from an oil bomb is reasonably potent, and while the Engineering skill hasn't come up in play yet, I believe it will have as much or more benefit as the skills traditionally given to dwarfs in other games.  The Apollyon has two interlocking skill systems: skills, borrowed from LOTFP, are based on a X in D6 chance, while Aptitudes are a tiered system that grants specific bonuses (and often skills).  The Engineer is a fighter subclass that has more skills then general modifiers and doesn't become as effective in melee as other fighter types will - except under the specialized circumstances of wearing, heavy, unwieldy power armor or operating a piece of crew served heavy weaponry.  

As with my other Player's Guide items the Engineer is also available here as a PDF

Engineer

The long tradition of the use of mechanical and technological weapons by the humans of the HMS Apollyon is fading as the factories and other means of production amidship have slowly worn down or been conquered by other races of humanoids, outsiders and even the ship’s own automatons.  The arts of explosives, mechanics and the use of heavy weapons are in decline now, though they still appeal to many warriors out of practicality.  Engineers are an asset on the battlefield and supporting other troops as they can better understand the artificial environment of the Apollyon (With Engineering), direct crews of heavy weapons, plant explosives and use war machines (With Piloting).  Some skill in Engineering is required to repair any generation of Boilermail while piloting is necessary to properly operate it.

Tier 1	Grenadier – All area effect weapons, such as explosives, oil bombs or artillery gain an additional point of ‘splash’ meaning they can effect another target.  Engineering - 2, Piloting - 2 , Force – 3
Tier 2	Boilermail Pilot – Experience piloting or even a better understanding of and constant tinkering on any suit of boiler mail the Engineer has access to will grant the Engineer +1/per die to melee damage while piloting boilermail or similar powered armor.  Additionally long practice and experience with explosives and heavy weapons means that should the engineer fumble with a heavy weapon or explosive any damage inflicting fumble will be treated as a jammed/dud weapon result. Engineering - 3, Piloting – 3
Tier 3	Scarred Veteran – The powder burned face of the dedicated engineer is a mark of deeper reserves of toughness and resistance resulting from years of labor and toil around heavy and unforgiving machines and deadly explosives.  The Engineer has become somewhat inured to pain and minor inconveniences gaining +1 HP per die and a -1/per die to fire and electricity damage.  Engineering - 4, Piloting – 4
Tier 4	Boilermail Ace – The Engineer has become almost one with their power armor or artillery and is able to squeeze unexpected heights of performance out of even the balkiest suit or most cumbersome cannon.  Engineer gains a +1 hit with boilermail and targets of heavy weapons or explosives used, planted or crewed by the Engineer receive a -1 to save vs. their effects.  Additionally the Engineer has become so adept that they no longer receive any initiative penalty while operating powered armor or heavy weapons. Engineering – 5, Piloting - 5

Engineering:  Engineering is a specialized but broad skill relating to the use, repair and understanding of technological items and structures.  Aboard the Apollyon an Engineering test is appropriate in a wide variety of circumstances such as investigating the structural integrity, age and peculiarities of almost any environment, repairing malfunctioning or damaged mechanical devices, demolitions, and bomb or other explosive disposal.

 

Piloting:Piloting represents the ability to properly use and understand mechanical vehicles, especially boilermail.  In the context of boilermail use piloting skill provides a bonus to suit reliability on a point for point basis.

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Along the Road of Tombs - PDF Adventure Locale

July 31, 2014, 4:10 pm

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Recently the Tenkar's Tavern wrapped up a competition called OSR Superstar.  Perhaps it's a silly name but I figured I'd enter and managed to keep going until the final round.  The final round was completing a map by Matt over at msjx.org (who's Maps for Heroes campaign is wrapping up today and could use some support - it's got some cool maps in it and supports the Wounded Warrior project) and then keying it.  I finished a map but went a bit beyond my original intent.  Below is a 42 page adventure set in the Fallen Empire setting that I've mused about here before.  It's a fairly vanilla setting, and stated up for Sword's and Wizardy Complete.  Anyhow hope people like this adventure - it's a romp about bandits, cults and slumber ancient war machines.

ALONG THE ROAD OF TOMBS

This version is far better edited then the one submitted to the contest, and I've added some art - sadly no my own, but some of the plates by Piranesi that inspired this adventure.  Also special thanks to the folks who took a look at this a few days ago and let me know what else I might want to include.

In Search of the Unknown - B1 Review

August 3, 2014, 10:37 pm

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How does one review an adventure that is designed to be different each time it’s played?   B1 – In Search of the Unknown, written in 1979 by Mike Carr for inclusion in the D&D basic set, is exactly such a module, with partially keyed areas on a large dungeon map meant to be completed by the GM from existing tables.  In not sure if this represents an authentic alternative to the method of adventure writing that has become standard, a template for a GM’s own design and imagination (perhaps a later version of this tradition might be the recently released Seclusium of the Orphone an LOTFP ‘module’ by Vincent Baker) rather than a complete  pregenerated ready to play location or scenario.  It might also be a messy gimmick that failed to catch on.  Without a consideration of its place in the history of table top games, In Search of the Unknown has some fun set pieces, and a far more evocative setting than one might expect from such an early effort. The module is an unabashed dungeon crawl and one that, in the manner of early D&D, is fairly empty of inhabitants and treasure, but not a bad one, thanks to some classic but well done setting elements and a real dungeon history that is both easy to grasp and helpful at defining areas.

The cover I remember promised Fungal Caverns

A STARTING MODULE

Like many of the TSR introductory products, In Search of the Unknown leads off with a few pages of advice about running a game.  The advice in B1 is similar to that in B2 but a bit more wordy and focused on the areas or retainers, time keeping and party organization.  This advice is all pretty solid, as is the general sense that the dungeon should be “fair” and “challenging” which will undoubtedly lead to character deaths.  Yet there is nothing novel in this advice, though maxims like “First, it is crucial to keep in mind that this is a game based on player interaction and player choice” still seem worthy of repetition.

The inevitability of character death is something that the older game embrace, thinking of characters less as individual avatars to express the players’ concept of their fantastical selves, and more as game pieces.  I like this view, but recognize the difficulty in it, players grow attached to their characters, especially as they do cool things and grow in stature from in game experiences.  Personally, the disposable hero is hard for me to play, but definitely the idea of the party as the central narrative character in a tabletop game can help, as might the use of a ‘company’ style game with a pool of characters to draw from shared amongst the players.  

One other element worth noting is that B1 has a nice long list of hireling names by class and some of these are great.  I would love to spring an NPC cleric on a party named “Famed of the Great Church” or “Seeful the Unforgiving”.  Included with these names are stat lines that look very normal for 3D6 in order characters and a nice little trait generator for hirelings.

THE ADVENTURE

A pair of adventuring types, a fighter and a wizard, poured their plundered treasure into building a strange underground fortress they named “Quasqueton”.  It’s not clear if the adventures were good or evil, they were cruel and greedy, but did save the region around their fortress more than once.  Eventually the adventurers disappeared in an ill-considered attack on distant barbarians. Quasqueton remains, and is a popular destination for treasure hunters as its labyrinthine passages represent 20 years of obsessive building, and it is rumored to hold the treasures of its former masters.

That’s it, a flimsy seeming premise, but quite a solid one allowing the dungeon to have some flavor as an abandoned home to powerful adventures, the central mystery of its former residents’ alignment, goals and pasts to investigate and the added flavor of the remains of past expeditions. Quasqueton itself is two levels, the first of long looping corridors and scattered rooms, many hidden by secret doors, and the second a set of caves.  One of the key elements of B1 is that the adventure is set up to be stocked by the individual referee.  This makes it hard to describe the exact encounters or rooms to a degree as every use of B1 is going to be different.  There are a few special chambers: the room of pools, a magical stone and cavern of agitated bats that are interesting and well place, but the majority of the adventure will depend on how the referee prepares.  Some rooms, like a cave full of webs call out for certain types of encounters, but the majority of them could be filled by random treasure and monster placement.  Yet this would be a mistake, as the monster list is a funhouse of classic low level beasts in small numbers, and treasure list mostly mundane items of low value.

There is no real goal or purpose to exploring the fortress of Quasqueton besides adventure and plunder, and unraveling the lives of its residents offers little reward.  This isn’t a bad thing, there’s a purity to a plain dungeon crawl, and it’s done properly with Quasqueton in that the past of the place is clearly visible in its current state.  Unfortunately, the random monster and treasure placement provides for neither evocative monsters nor treasure (though some of the treasure is decently described and I like the inclusion of the poorly drawn map) and far too much magic treasure compared to the paucity of mundane items.

THE GOOD  

As mentioned above I like the premise of B1, Quasqueton has about the right level of mystery associated with it for a well know, sinister spot that has been previously explored.  The NPC generator (Especially the names) is also nice, useful enough and most importantly gives the idea that the game isn’t supposed to be some sort of dead serious Tolkien style epic meditation on mythic themes.  It’s a tabletop game where characters have silly names and are grubbing for treasure in a dank pit.  This alone is a winning inclusion for an introductory module, something that B11 King’s Festival lacks terribly (it being the last of the B-series true introductory modules), and which really sets the whole tone of how D&D is played – a black comedy about luckless and sometimes crafty dungeon delvers or a fantasy epic about serious heroes on a serious battle against ‘evil’.   I prefer the first, and the rules don’t seem to support the second.  The rumor table itself is large, as it should be, and contains some useful rumors, but also holds a few too many dumb false rumors for a location that seems well known and previously explored.

The original cover also promised a mushroom forest

The maps of In Search of the Unknown also look pretty good, the top level doesn’t feel rational exactly for an underground fortress (too many pointless secret doors and winding endless passages) but it makes for a good adventure map and has lots of ways to get from one place to another. There are a few interesting rooms, and many that seem like they might contain interesting secrets (though ultimately few do). The cave map for the second level is rather strong, having two large loops and a few interesting chambers.  The maps suffer a bit from their age, the upper level especially resembling something drawn on a single sheet of paper with the mapper giving more effort to filling all the squares than creating a comprehensible space.  Still even the upper level map does a nice job of creating both mapping challenges for a classic game (where player’s must map or get lost) and avoiding the mapping pitfall of too much symmetry.

Many of the rooms themselves are quite well done in a weird swords and sorcery sort of way.  The Pool Room is especially wonderful and must be the centerpiece of a lot of memories about playing D&D.  It has enough description and strangeness to feel like exploration and create wonder, while mostly remaining comprehensible.  There are some dangerous effects and some beneficial effects, but nothing that will overwhelm the game.   Other locations are quite interesting as well, the dangerous, but not deadly, trap of the bat chamber, the near impossible to move but valuable statute chamber and the use of various treasure illusions.

THE BAD 

B1’s experiment with random stocking seems to be a didactic effort but is more frustrating than useful.  While the room descriptions are strong overall, the random or is based stocking mechanic provides a strange set of creatures and treasures with little direction or sense of what is where and why.  Rumors hint of a few monsters – troglodytes and guards (presumably berserkers).  Yet neither of these monsters features much (berserkers are a mere random encounter). With encounters limited to a few goblins or crab spiders tossed mostly at random into rooms, B1 potentially suffers from two problems that are often associated with older dungeon crawls and come from the lack of any sort of ecological narrative for the dungeon.  First there’s the issue of the ‘bad neighbor’s’ problem, where the unrelated and inexplicably placed encounters have no interaction with each other.  Goblins in one room wait to be massacred after they have their door busted down, and are unlikely to interact with the bandits or spiders next door.  This works fine with unintelligent monsters, dungeon vermin, but even these creatures need sensible placement for best effect.  The second issue is a lack of factions, not all monsters should be evil, and if using the reaction roll as it’s suggested in older editions of Basic (such as the one B1 was boxed with) many may even be friendly.  In a dungeon where there aren’t real factions or relationships between the denizens it’s hard to come up with non-combat encounters. What do the goblins want that makes them friendly?   This problem could be fixed by a decent GM, and maybe the authors of B1 felt it was sufficiently obvious that anyone stocking the fortress would fix it, but at least a few words to that effect, laying out factions and potential relationships, along with more attention to the stocking tables creating a potential theme would have been a great improvement.  As it is, the carefully constructed room descriptions and haphazard treasure/encounter design conspire to make Quasquedon feel empty.

Some of the special rooms don't help with this empty feeling.  I specifically want to mention the "mushroom forest" because this is one of the coolest ideas in D&D exploration, but B1 just squanders it.  There's a cave of fungal oddities, but nothing really to it.  The cave contains random plants and is hard to walk through.  Eating any of the fungus has a 30% of being poisonous and that's it.  I want something more, I want this room to be the equivalent of a Serengeti watering hole, at least.  The party enter a huge cave of strange lights, fungal spires and various dungeon denizens and factions calmly collecting mushrooms.  The horrible monsters ignore the party and each other, as this source of food is too good for any one group to claim and a sort of silent peace rules it. If the party attacks anyone or even acts too odd they get jumped, because the mushroom forest is also too valuable to allow strangers to endanger and no matter their enmity all the dungeon factions will unite to preserve it.  All we get in B1 though for this flagship locale is a description and a poison percentage. This alone ruined this module for me as a kid, and it still grates.

The second major problem with B1 is hinted at above in the way it’s placed in the game world. Quasquedon is simply their ready to be looted.  It doesn’t interact with anything outside of itself in any way.  It doesn’t raise the threat of a united humanoid army behind an evil cult (like the Caves of Chaos in B2) and it isn’t the locus of strange phenomena and a mystery (Like B3’s Palace of the Silver Princess), Quasquedon simply sits, filled with a few thousand GP worth of treasure waiting to be explored.  This isn’t bad, but I would like a few hooks leading out of it, even if it’s just plunder that pulls the party in.  

At least there is the vague possibility of Troglodytes

HOW I’D RUN IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN      

B1 In Search of the Unknown is a perfect hex map filler, it has no background story, provides some clever tricks and is its existence should only need minimal modification to fit most campaign worlds.  No ancient mysteries to unveil, just a former lair of a pair of eclectic and powerful adventurers who are now presumed dead.  Most of the changes needed to use B1 result from trying to fix the bland encounters and poor treasure placement created by its novel gestures towards modular adventure design.  

I delayed reading this module for reviews as there was talk of a Wampus County skinned ongoing Quasqadon exploration.  We had one session which was excellently Wampus County including conversations with a family of halfling sized hedgehogs and a pack of weird hermit crab things hiding in a nest of junk with domestic detritus as their shells (goblins and giant rats perhaps).  A set of marble thrones and some dead monster trophies were looted.  It’s noteworthy that these fixtures (both heavy treasure with somewhat low value) were not listed treasure, as B1 is rather sparse on treasure.  

This points to the basic change I’d make to B1, a better understanding of what’s valuable and listed values for a lot of the less choice loot in Quasqadon.  There are several rooms of preserved supplies and a tool room packed with useful items.  While these objects might be heavy, they also must have value, and by including them while seriously considering their value a GM can emphasize the other aspect of Quasqadon – it’s already been largely looted and explored.  Beside encouraging the party to tear the dungeon apart like copper thieves in an abandoned house (it’s a worthwhile addition to any dungeon delve), limiting treasure to the bulky, the hard to remove, the overlooked and the personal possessions of enemies adds to the feeling that B1 is the remains of a living fortress from recent times and that expeditions to it are more salvaging then tomb plundering.
 

A lack of easily portable valuables also opens the dungeon up to having lots of evidence of other expeditions.  B1 suggests this in its first encounter, the remains of an adventuring party and their enemies (berserker guards), but doesn’t really follow it up.  I would sprinkle the interior with abandoned camp sites, dead adventurers and equipment.  Living adventurers would form either a dangerous random encounter or perhaps even the inhabitants of one of the more defensible chambers, a gang of destructive louts intent on plunder and experience.

Quasqadon needs factions (I know I say this about every dungeon, but it’s still true), and I’d make them locally applicable.  The berserker guards hinted at are a good start.  Yet to have factions we need setting, and B1 manages not to suggest one, being open to almost any setting, consequently I’d be able to run this in one of my favorite settings – The Land of 1,000 Towers, where the Anomalous Subsurface Environment is located.

With ASE’s world mythology B1 makes a lot of sense, the adventurers who built it were another of the 1,000 wizards who rule the Land of 1,000 Towers, power mad brutes, but better than most, who ruled a domain near the barbarian infested lands of the Worthless North.  Denethix’s growing legions would have driven them out eventually, but the two Wizards who ruled Quasqadon decided to head into the waste instead, fighting and seeking to conquer the barbarian hordes and vault dwellers that roam its salt plains and fens.  Now abandoned, Quasqadon presents a haven for explorers.  The first level contains both a band of mercenary dwarfs, led by a young headstrong debtor noble.  They are 20 strong and fighting a cruel war of attrition a,gainst the drug crazed remnants of the garrison.  One might think the dwarves are a better ally but this is not the case.  Given that the dwarven leader is a debtor noble, personally holding the indentures of the rest, and he’s a neatly mustached greed fueled bastard, while the other dwarves are the worst of their race – unspeakably bloodthirsty and arrogant to non-dwarves and so greedy that they will rob even their allies.  The berserkers of course are mad, and confused, but at least they just want to be left alone.   In the midst of this there’s a general lack of upkeep and a lot of dungeon vermin, including a band of waste goblins.  ASE’s goblins are garden pests of a flesh eating and murderous variety and these are no different, skulking on the fringes os the dungeon.  Quasqadon’s first level is a constant warfare with berserker and dwarf fighting, only to have the survivors of these skirmishes picked off by goblins. 

The second level is worse, there are more berserkers, but grown weird and ghoulish in the dark, plus the remnants of the wizard’s efforts to find new allies - a variety of newly awakened primitive serpent men.  This way the entire B1 is filled with incompetent factions, and is some of them win (dwarfs or serpent men)  the place might require a return visit when it either becomes a raiding serpent man hole (with the associated Denethix bounties for serpent man heads) or the base for a clan of dwarves who think nothing of robbing and murdering anyone they come across to increase their credit rating.

B1 is a good module, with strong maps, nice, albeit generic descriptions and a high level of adaptability to any setting.  It also encourages exploration and discovery, though it will need work by the GM to make it interesting and might be best served as the introduction to a strange and wonderful setting for players used to more mundane D&D.  It also allows itself to be placed as a random hex content, and can easily be adapted to any level of PC (its guards had a nasty lycanthropy outbreak, not just berserking).  Still, alone it is bland and a good amount of prep work, without anything to lead to prolonged player interest (no real mysteries or hooks).

HMS APOLLYON PLAYERS MANUAL - Ship Spirit Spells

August 7, 2014, 3:52 pm

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I've gone and written up the spell lists for the three Ship Spirit patrons available to thier Clerics aboard the Apollyon.  The Lists themselves are in a fromat that doesn't transfer too well to Blogger, but the gist of the casting system is below along with descriptions of the three powers available to 1st level clerics.  The spells themselves are in the PDF.



PDF HERE - including actual Spell lists

THE SHIP SPIRITS

The Ship Spirits represent the larger and more popular of Sterntown’s two ecstatic religions.  The Religion itself is loosely organized with various devotees banding together to share space in its shrine houses, which contain many shrines and crèches to individual spirits representing the various aspects of the Apollyon itself.  Each shrine is tended by one or two houngans or mambos who can invoke aspects of the spirit they specially revere and perform magic based on the spirit’s specific nature.

Collecting spirits, Gaining Power

A houngan or mambo of the ship spirits will begin with a pact to one of the following three major Spirits: The Happy Sailor, The Prime Engine or Winding Gear.  At this time the houngan will not be in charge of his own shrine, but will be expected to make donations and bring sacrifices (holy oil, scavenged valuables, and trophies from creatures of chaos) that build up the shrine he helps maintain.

In order to gain the sympathy of more than one spirit (or perhaps additional aspects of the same spirit – it is rumored that the Happy Sailor has a destructive twin know as Tar Barratry) the mambo must build her own shrine to this new deity.  The cost of such a shrine is considerable (1,000 GP to gain a place in the Shrine hall, plus at least 1,000 GP per level of the mambo in materials), but more difficult is discovering an object of devotion to house the spirit.  Such artifacts can only be scavenged from the hull, though a mambo will surely hear a new spirit calling from within them. Upon building a 2^nd shrine the mambo must both placate her two Spirits with sacrifices of equal value to the cost of the shrine and obtain another houngan or mambo of at least 1^stlevel as a follower to maintain the shrine.  Shrines may be built at 3^rd level, a second a 6^thand a third at 9^th.

Invoking The Spirits   

The houngan, mambo or shaman calls the power of their patron very differently then the priests of a monastic religion.  The Ship Spirits are mercurial and sometimes misunderstand or rejct the pleas of their servants, and it is only a mambo’s force of will that calls them to do her bidding.

At the start of a session, or any time after a day of rest, clerics of an ecstatic religion such as the Ship Spirits perform ritual obsequiences to their patron spirit and channel a specific entity’s power until another set of rituals are performed (assuming the houngan or mambo has contact with multiple spirits).  Once in touch, or ridden, by the Ship Spirit patron the cleric can call its power at will, casting any of the spells the specific spirit is offers.  The effort to invoke a spirit’s power is a difficult one however, often failing and occasionally back firing to harm the houngan.  To invoke a specific spell the cleric must roll a D20 +WIS Bonus + Level and meet or surpass the invocation number listed with the spell.  A normal failure (less than 5 under the target number) means that the houngan wasted his efforts but may try again in the next round or turn. A catastrophic failure (5 or more under the target, and anytime a natural ‘1’ is rolled) will have negative effects most likely to prevent additional casting, at least for a while.

The Happy Sailor

The Happy Sailor is the great Ancestor spirit of the crew, and the souls of all crew caste humans who have died aboard the Apollyon over the eons are gathered in the Sailor’s merry mess for eternity.  The Sailor is a largely helpful spirit, easily enticed with rum or promises to aid one’s fellow crew, and  appears more often (either as a spectral sailor or in mortal disguise) then other spirits.  He is not unalloyed good however and can be mischievous at times and sometimes punishes to those who invoke him too regularly, are too familiar with the passenger caste, or fail to show the proper willingness to aid their fellows.  Some of the lesser spirits of the dead he leads, and who respond to his devotees’ summons, are worse and can even be cruel or hostile.  Despite these dangers the Happy Sailor is one of the more loved of the Ship Spirits, especially as his special devotees often minister to the poor or injured as charity.

Prime Engine

The vessel is only a shell without the great machines within, from the ever-burning star furnaces in the ship’s deep decks, to the simple gears that dog a hatch, without its machinery the HMS Apollyon would be nothing.  So great and so many are the machine spirits, that they have their own courts and king.  This mechanical king is the Prime Engine (not to be confused with the legendary thinking machine the ‘CENT-ORD’) and it is a haughty friend of its people’s now fallen creators.  The Prime Engine’s powers allow it to restore temporary life to broken machines, animate automatons and encourage the vessel to aid the houngan.

Winding Gear 

One of the most distant of the Ship Spirits, Winding Gear cannot be spoken to directly.  Its gospel is written on crumbling fragments of ancient grandeur and its demands found buried in the shiny iron that lurks under the rust.  The Gear isn’t a spirit of the Ship’s present, but primarily an echo of its past. Those mambos who invite it within them and consort with it are the most notable of the Ship Spirit holy women as they soon affect the speech, mannerism and dress of the past.  The powers of the Gear are vague and primarily focused on transformation, memory and illusion.  The Winding Gear is a distant spirit, not uncaring, but hard to reach through the haze of eons, and evoking its powers are harder than most of common Ship Spirits.

Trust The Random Encounter table

August 19, 2014, 8:45 pm

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When one cracks open the hoary spine of the “Underworld and Wilderness Adventures” (well not spine, they are zine like pamphlets, stapled together) one almost immediately finds a set of dungeon encounter tables.  They look 'normal' at first, table 1 contains low hit dice dungeon vermin (giant rats, centipedes, spiders) and sniveling humanoids like kobolds.  Table 2 starts to get some real opposition on it: hobgoblins, gnolls, berserkers and ghouls.  By the time you’re on table three and four there are the sort of monsters that can really spell danger to a low level party, such as wights, wraiths and giant animals.  This might seem reasonable, even conservative if these tables were broken down by dungeon level, but they are explicitly not by dungeon level.  On the first level of the dungeon there is a 1 in 6 chance of encountering one of the horrors off of table four, and this includes ogres (which are reasonable enough) but also wraiths and gargoyles.  I focus here on gargoyles because they are utterly immune to normal weapon damage in most version of the rules, including silver weapons.

Characters fresh from generation, at best armed with a silver dagger (which won’t hurt a gargoyle) or two and maybe a magic missile (which won’t kill a gargoyle, but can injure it), have a chance of running into a gargoyle or a of group of them as soon as they enter the mythic underworld to seek treasures and glory. Now this might appear at first to be absurd, cruel and an arbitrary way to massacre player characters.  This sort of thinking is what’s made the idea of ‘challenge levels’ for monsters popular and ultimately raised the sort of concern that leads to campaign railroads as opposed to open worlds. This isn’t to say that there aren’t places for worrying about balance in tabletop games, but those places are games where tactical challenges and solutions in combat are heavily ruled and mechanically complex. In many video games this sort of staging and challenge level is the basis of all combat – a 1 st level character should only fight 1^st (and maybe 2^ndlevel) monsters or the math will destroy them.  There is no need to apply that to tabletop games, the math of OD&D is very simple, there are few skills, cooldowns and such to keep track of and the players’ combat options are limited only by their imaginations which can radically change the way combat is managed.  Old School combats frequently involve the use of nets, greased steps, bags of marbles, trip wires and false or real retreats that mean that a party of clever players can kill, bypass or defeat creatures that they have no chance against in a straight fight much of the time.  In other words, there is nothing wrong with including a gargoyle as an enemy for a first level party. Furthermore there are several elements that are emphasized that started to fall by the wayside in the post Dragonlance era when Dungeon and Dragon’s switched its focus from the treasure hunting scoundrels of Swords and Sorcery to heroes battling against evil and chaos.  This change is dramatic in the modules of the era, with notes on many encounters that the creatures immediately attack and an increased dependence on Experience Points from combat.

In early editions of D&D there are rules that mitigate the need for combat, and emphasize that fighting fantastic creatures is rarely an optimal solution.  The danger of the 1^stlevel wandering monster chart emphasizes this – there are some encounters (say kobolds) where combat is not an especially bad option (though even kobolds can do in 2^nd or 3^rd level characters if they get lucky), and others (gargoyles, wraiths, ogres) where it’s a terrible one.  Even in the easy encounters, bypassing them is almost always a better option than combat - a band of kobolds willing to trade/hire on as scouts/provide information is better asset then a pile of dead kobolds. Furthermore wandering monsters don’t guard significant treasure, and random encounters ideally exist to both give the flavor of the dungeon (factions, other invaders from the surface, specific kinds of vermin) and most importantly as the primary limiting factor for careful dungeon explorers.   

TIMEKEEPING - The random encounter table exists to put time pressure on exploration and caution.  A thoughtful group of players is a fine, thing - probing with spears and poles, checking for traps, listening at every door. This is also boring, and ideally there should be some risk associated with extreme caution. This risk is the chance of a random encounter, and for this risk to have meaning it's best if it's occasionally more than the mere inconvenience of a giant rat.  If the player's know (best provided by rumors, prior encounters, and even clues [I give clues of nearby monster inhabitants on a '2' on the encounter die]) that there are dangerous, even deadly creatures roaming about the decision to search for secret doors becomes a meaningful balancing, not simply a rote activity, and builds tension not boredom.  Likewise smashing open doors, listening and other typical dungeoneer safety precautions. furthermore, it's important that the hyper dangerous monsters for the level are random, and not placed, because they cannot create permanent obstacles and are much less likely to force the characters into an unwinnable fight, being themselves transient and largely uninvolved in dungeon level factions.

XP for GP– This is the biggest factor making the dangerous random encounter reasonable.  When XP is given only for gold recovered, combat is almost always the less favored option. This also has the nice side effect of discouraging psychotic bloodthirsty player behavior (if one cares about such things), at least when it’s not based on an in-game rationale, because there’s nothing to be gained from fighting if treasure can be obtained in another way. Without the expectation that combat is the method to achieve success in the game, players are more likely to recognize that there are encounters they should avoid.

REACTION ROLLS/LANGUAGE SKILLS– Reaction Rolls with every random encounter mean that many encounters won’t result in combat.  The 2D6 reaction roll doesn’t have a high chance of resulting in a friendly reaction, but it doesn’t result in an immediate attack that often either. The reaction roll usually ends up at about a 6 or 7 – resulting in the monster being “uncertain”.  Now admittedly this is said to only apply to monsters that are intelligent and outmatched, but I like using it for all monsters, most wild creatures don’t attack immediately, unless they’re hunting.  I’ve backed away from a last mountain lion on a sunny rock in real life, and it thankfully didn’t look like it want to attack. This is of course a place for ‘GM Fait’.  I always roll reaction checks for every encounter, but I bend them to my conception of the specific monster’s psychology.  This isn’t hard – wild beasts are hunting most the time, but when they know they’ve been spotted they usually will make an aggressive display before attacking as they don’t want to fight, they want to ambush something.  On a friendly roll it means they don’t see the party as either prey or a threat, but they certainly don’t want the characters around will be annoyed if they don’t leave quickly. Intelligent monsters are easier, a positive roll encounter roll means that they have a deal for the party – of course it’s not often a deal the party really wants to make, and making friends with to many monsters limits the chance of treasure recovery.  I also tend to assume on a successful surprise roll (2 in 6) that the monsters are ambushing the party. Still this provides an additional chance that many encounters that aren’t going to end in parlay.

SIMPLE COMBAT– The simple nature of OD&D combat means that almost any action other than an attack with a weapon requires either a house rule or an ad hoc ruling.  Yet this is a tabletop game, so players are limited only by their imaginations, and there are several mechanics that can easily be adapted to various combat situations (stat checks, saving throws, force checks etc.) meaning that the players and the GM always have a palette of options to deal creatively with monsters they cannot/do not want to fight in regular combat.  Understanding this it’s important for the GM to willingly allow novel solutions and tricks, rather than force everything into a set system.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to test this idea a couple times in my Apollyon game, introducing a chance of encountering 1D4 re-skinned gargoyles in the form of diabolic scouts for the Golden Teeth faction of devils. Two bands of adventurers have encountered the re-skinned gargoyles, and one managed to physically combat one.  The other encounter ended with retreat and the sacrifice of a henchmen (which will have some pretty negative consequences next time those PCs look for henchmen).   

HMS APPOLLYON PLAY REPORT SESSION 3 HIGHLIGHTS 

Groob the Steamfitter (Fighter), The Masked Scholar Nelson (MU), Peepers the Flying Monkey Scoundrel(Halfling) and Aristocratic Mario(Elf) had finally prevailed.  They’d taken three trips to the abandoned black iron customs station two hundred feet down into the Fetid Pit, and it’s secrets were finally revealing themselves.  The sad guardian golem that still stalked the halls had recognized the scavengers as militia and believed they were defending the bastion from invasion, the fungal zombies of ancient guards had all been destroyed in an inferno of firebombs that cost the life of the Gladiator Briney and every foor of the station was mapped and explored.  Only environmental hazards remained, and it was these same hazards (toxic mold, dripping acidic slime and other remnants of ancient demonic corruption) had provided protection for the stations goods.  

As the scavengers were hunkering under their vulcanized cloaks with water soaked scraps as facemasks and using Mario’s crystalline familiar to drag ancient crates of trade goods from a spore filled storage room a sudden scrabbling clatter came from the corrugated metal roof above.  Some flying creature had landed, perhaps drawn by the flickering light of the scavenger’s lamps, barely visible through the station’s steel shuttered embrasures. Whatever it was walked and scurried above, and soon strange gurgling cries were added to the sounds of its movements.  Groob peeked from the door and saw the creature, a dream horror of some sort, a man-sized infant with ragged black wings, twisted above it’s ruddy fat flesh.  The horror clung to the wall head down with all four pudgy limbs, peering through one of the narrow windows into the storeroom , it’s fat digits seeming to dig into the tough black iron of the fortress.  As Groob saw the thing, it saw him, a round head with giant oil black eyes twitching with insectile precision to stare at the armored engineer.  As Mr. Groob backed away and the unnatural beast, he drew his holdout pistol, a cheap smoothbore muzzle loading flintlock, dependent on the size of its ball and the startling amount of smoke it produced rather than accuracy or power.  In response the baby-thing simply cooed, and smiled to reveal rows of serrated golden teeth that curled in shark-like ranks behind its pink gums.

Groob backed away, panic and disgust rising as the otherworldy abomination crept down the wall, he fired his pistol as soon as he was sure the creature was close enough for even a poorly cast ball to hit, and for once the poorly made gun worked perfectly, and the ball splatted directly between the wide staring eyes of the scurry monster.  Splatted and sparked, leaving a vague smear of lead, and raising a hissing giggle of rage from the devil baby.  Groob stumbled back babbling about the creature to his companions, who had barely enough time to ready their weapons before it burst through the unlocked door.  Peeper’s crossbow snapped into the unnatural creature’s shoulder and the short steel bolt fractured into shards against soft looking pink flesh. 

As the cooing monster advanced gnashing it’s deadly golden smile and it began to dawn on the scavengers that not only were they trapped in a between a room of toxic spores and a diabolic opponent, but that none of their weapons would harm the creature.  Nelson shouted ‘run’ and leaped towards the monster’s head, trying to wrestle it into the ground.  Fury and terror drove the slight academic and he managed to grasp the creature firmly by one arm, restraining it’s movement.  Mario’s familiar also leaped forward, only to be bitten nearly in two by a serpent quick slash of the creature’s teeth.   The wizard and his companions wrestled with the infernal baby, it’s teeth slashing and gnawing right and left, but with the band of adventurers piling on they were able to restrain the horror.  Just as the tightening loops of climbing rope finally restrained the monster it leaned in towards Nelson, and in a moment of distraction bit deep into the flesh of his face and neck, the rows of gold teeth parting his steel mask like paper.  The remaining adventurers were able to struggle with the laughing least devil, and shove it into an empty metal crate removed from the storeroom.  Dragging the crate and monster up thirty feet of stairs proved difficult, but anger and fear lent the party strength and with a mighty heave, infernal infant and storage case went over the side of the stairs and plummeted into the inky bioluminescent lit depths of the pit.

This was a fight with a single gargoyle, and from the GM’s side it looked like this (using the Apollyon house ruled OD&D):

A. Random encounter die indicates monster(1 in 6 per turn).  An 8 indicates 1-4 Gold Teeth Least Devils (gargoyle), and lack of surprise. Luckily there's only one.  Since the parties are indoors and the thing is flying, I figure it’s heard the noise they are making, and come to scout out the situation.

B. The reaction roll comes up a ‘12’, which is a universally positive reaction.  The Devil is an actual diabolic outsider that collects mortal souls to improve its lot, so that' snot going to be especially positive no matter what - it's also a stupid one.  Yet, devils are creatures of order the thing would rather trick people into giving up their souls in exchange for promises of wealth and power - it wants to parley and trade souls for bad promises.

C. One of the party members decides to attack the thing because it’s creepy rather then parley.  Hits it dead on as well, and does no damage.  The gargoyle decides to barrel in after it’s prey, knowing it’s immune to weapons and suffers a reactive crossbow shot that doesn’t phase it.  Most of the party wins initiative and realizes they can’t actually do anything to harm the devil with their weapons. 

D. The party wizard shouts out to grapple the thing and using the grapple rules it gets a reactive attack against the first person charging it (the elemental) and manages to reduce the elemental to 0HP.  Three other party members grapple the creature, but it’s really strong. 
E. I decide that three successful grapples can restrain the creature, this is complicated because the gargoyle has a bite attack, which is a close weapon, meaning it automatically hits in grapple.  So the gargoyle gets to bite one grappler per round.

F. It takes three rounds to successfully tie up the creature, in these three rounds in mauls the party fighter and bites off the wizard’s face. After it’s restrained the party realizes that their rope won’t hold a screaming laughing devil with an unnatural strength very long. They stuff it in a box and drop it over the side of the pit.   

HMS Apollyon - Necromancer Subclass

August 21, 2014, 3:16 pm

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Necromancy

The history of Sterntown and fear of the Ash Plague has made necromancy a forbidden art in Sterntown, and its practice is punishable by the most severe and gruesome of sentences.  Still the power over the dead and the lure of immortality that the dark art offers draws adherents who must conceal their research and take great efforts to disguise their creations.  Because of the fear of discovery that hangs over every necromancer they tend to be reclusive, at first skulking and scurry about and as they grow more accomplished learning to hide in plain sight through disguising their powers and adopting mannerisms that deflect suspicion.  Necromancers are rare, but the last two powerful ones ferreted out by the Church of the Queen’s witch smellers have been sorcerer with social grace, the most vibrant dress, and foppish manners, as far from the black-clad and cadaverous stereotype as possible. 

PDF Link to class guide 

 

Tier 1	Lesser Reanimation – Necromancer may build and reanimate unintelligent and spiteful creations of ½ HD per level of spell slot dissipated.
Tier 2	Speak with Dead– The skilled necromancer can speak with the dead and undead, compelling corpses to talk and understand regardless of their age.  At least the skull of the creature is needed for this power to work, and the ability does not compel the dead to answer questions or behave in a friendly manner. Legerdemain 2 in 6
Tier 3	Greater Reanimation– Necromancer may build and reanimate undead thralls of limited intelligence and will of up to 1 HD per level of spell slot dissipated.  Banishment– The necromancer may drive off and hold hostile undead at bay with his will alone.  Necromancers turn undead as a cleric of ½ his or her level.  This ability will not destroy undead, only cause them to flee or cover defensively.
Tier 4	Raise Dead– Necromancer reach through the veil of death and return souls to their mortal bodies.  A person less than 5 days dead can be raised by the necromancer with this ability.  This action takes a session of downtime, and requires a roll under Constitution on the part of both the necromancer and subject.  A failure by the necromancer means a permanent 1 point Constitution loss to the necromancer, while a failure by the resurrection’s subject results in permanent death.  Individuals raised by necromancers are effectively undead, suffering the effects of turning and damage from holy water, as well as the inability to heal by non-magical means and a permanent loss of 1D6/2 Constitution. Lich Process – A Necromancer may begin the process of transforming themselves into a Lich at this level of power.  This should be treated as spell research of the Maximum level,  with failure resulting in the Necromancer’s destruction/death and success transformation into to a near immortal undead creature. Legerdemain 3 in 6

 

 Spells

Legerdemain– The skill of fast talk and deception, an individual successfully using this skill may concoct disguises, take on fake accents and manipulate the emotions of their targets.  Successful use of the skill will allow a user to conceal their true identity or disguise themselves, avoiding potential reputation related penalties, and even calm a violent situation (unless combat has already begun) or mend a poor reaction roll.  If a character with legerdemain successfully attempts to manipulate or fast talk their target this causes another reaction roll with a bonus equal to ½ the manipulator’s legerdemain skill.   

Reanimation– By investing a greater or smaller portion of their magical energy a necromancer may create and command undead thralls.  By giving up one or more spell slots the Necromancer may empower undead servants, entirely loyal but very unintelligent and inclined towards evil and mayhem.  The basic undead thrall is something akin to a zombie or skeleton, but by investing greater or lesser amounts of power they may be given special abilities and intelligence.  A basic thrall will have AC 17, and one attack with a trained attack bonus structure for Hit Dice.

Thrall Special Abilities
Spell Level Cost	Effect
Intelligence
1 Spell Level	Basic Intelligence (INT 4) (Morale 12)
2 Spell Level	Moderate Intelligence (INT 11) (Morale 10)
Offensive
1 Spell Level	Warrior Attack Bonus
1 Spell Level	Additional Attack
1 Spell Level	Dangerous Attack - Attack  does Damage as 2-Handed Weapon
2 Spell Level	Attack Drains Levels
2 Spell Level	Paralyzing Attack
Defensive
1 Spell Level	Additional Armor (AC 15)
2 Spell Level	Heavy Armor (AC 18)
3 Spell Level	Normal Weapon Immunity

Skills and Abilities

A Necromancer’s first and most basic spell is Momento Mori, and in addition to this basic spell the Necromancer gains one of the following spells, determined randomly.

Momento Mori

Be performing a short ritual the Necromancer wraps herself in a lasting enchantment, which will endure until a single ‘dissipation’ result on the event die.  Suffused with the essence of death, the necromancer makes undead nearby accepting of her presence.  It is not clear if this is a form of invisibility or simply a charm that calms the angry dead, but undead creatures will generally ignore the Necromancer and any of her own undead thralls while the necromancer is under the effect of this spell, unless they attack or otherwise make efforts to make themselves known.  Sentient and powerful undead (Over 4 HD) may still detect the caster, as if she had a 5 in 6 stealth skill. 

In addition to Momento Mori a starting Necromancer will have one of the following spells scribed in her spellbook:

1D6	Introductory Necromantic Magics
1	Ghostly Presence– Magic User is shielded from harm by a ghostly presence.  This spirit creates a fairly ineffective shield in front of the caster, using it’s somewhat insubstantial form to swap aside blows and missiles, granting an AC of 15 for the 1D6+Level rounds that the spirit is summoned.  Additionally the ghostly presence will absorb any magic missile attack directed against the necromancer during this time
2	Charm Undead– Using this spell the  necromancer may charm or shift the allegiance of an undead creature that can understand the Necromancer.  Charmed creatures may save v. spells to resist the charm on it’s initial application and then upon every ‘dissipation’ roll on the encounter day.  A charmed undead may be made into a necromancer’s thrall if the necromancer has enough available spell slots to reanimate such a creature (in which case controlling it uses those spell slots as if the necromancer had reanimated the creature).
3	Magic Missile– The necromancer manifests a magical attack that will automatically strike a single target.  The attack has no physical force but will do 1D6 points of damage.  An additional missile can be created for every tier of Necromantic power possessed by the caster.  Necromancer’s magic missile can take many forms, though the most common are unerring ghostly birds, flying skulls or rays of necrotizing power.
4	Talking Skull - When this spell is cast, a necromancer can enchant a skull with jaw bone to move and speaks any message the caster desire up to three sentences in length over a 1 turn period from start to finish. It cannot speak magic spells. The spell can be triggered by any simple occurrence according to the command of the necromancer.  Once the skull speaks this enchantment will expire.
5	Darkness – The necromancer can create globe of darkness that obscures all light within a 10’ radius that will last for three rolls of the ‘dissipate’ result on the random encounter check.  This darkness is impervious to normal light sources, can will extinguish magic lights (both spells consuming one another).  The spell may be cast on the eyes of a living creature, and if they fail to save vs. spells will result in blindness.
6	Miasma of Fear– Pulling the vaguest reflections and whispers of existence from nearby spirits the necromancer creates a region around themselves (a 10’ square centered on the caster) that reeks of death and whispers with the agonies of the death.  Any living, natural creature entering the miasma (including the caster’s allies) must save vs. spells or flee for 1D6/2 rounds.  The miasma does not move with the caster but will persist for one dissipation roll.