Harrow Home Manor

I've been casting around lately for an early modern setting that would work for D&D, something with guns and flashing blades.  My recent interest in distilling the essence of a good campaign setting has been bent towards this goal, and further evidenced by some of my recent ideas such as the "Colonial Hexcrawl" or "Goblins of the Spanish Main".  Fear not for the Black City, it trundles towards playtesting, hopefully as soon as after our next Cthulhu scenarios (unless the players clamor for more of the AD&D game first).  But since I'm tossing things against the wall, here’s another early modern setting kicking around the cranium:  a sprawling Gothic ruin I call "Harrow Home".

When the fires of the auto-da-fé burned across Europe, witches and warlocks gathered in the highlands of dread Albion to escape the noose and pyre.  The cellars and dungeon beneath the old manse were greatly extended downward into the earth, giving these foul necromancers solitude far from the prying eyes of the church.  In time, fewer and fewer visit were made to the little villages beyond the moors, and Harrow Home fell into disrepair.  But the old manor was never truly abandoned.

100 years have passed, and the  castle manor has tumbled into ruin.  But the moorland surrounding the fallen manse has an ill reputation.  Shepherds go missing on the moors, and travelers disappear by night.  Dark deals are consummated at lonely cross-roads, and it's not uncommon for a hunter or farmer to discover a new cave entrance where none existed, with a reek that seems to come from the pits of hell itself.

The dungeons and caverns beneath Harrow Home draw inspiration from gothic horror and place it in the early modern setting.  Source materials would include the tales of Edgar Allen Poe, Lovecraft's story "The Festival", and the classic black and white horror films of the 1930's.  The byzantine politics and tortuous relationships of the wizards living beneath Harrow Home recall classic D&D adventures like Castle Amber, Tegel Manor, or Mervyn Peake's excellent novel, Gormenghast.  I might even watch Clive Barker's Nightbreed again.

The back story of occult characters and families retreating to the haunted moors of Elizabethan England provides a fiction to populate the depths of Harrow Home with ghoul cults and witch's covens, servants of the mummy, soul-jumping body thieves, devil worshipers, degenerate serpent people left over from Pictish times, and perhaps even the odd vampire from the Old Country or a mad scientist bent on re-animating the dead.  What's not to love about it?

Next up, I think I'll match a few of these ideas up against my 'criteria for a good campaign' and see which one has the most promise.


*Image is Slain's Castle from here, with a simple sepia filter applied

The Crowd Funding Revolution Continues

What an interesting turn of events has developed in our part of the hobby!  In the space of just a few years, do-it-yourself publishers and small presses have gone from creating home made PDFs available with print-on-demand services, to full-blown print runs funded in advance through crowd-funding services like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.  The need for an overarching corporation maintaining the game is quickly dwindling.

There are plenty of interesting funding campaigns underway for some upcoming games.  Here are a few I'm watching:

Barrowmaze 2
I loved Barrowmaze 1 - there's a review kicking around on the blog here somewhere - (Review of Barrowmaze) - so I'm looking forward to the sequel.  This one is already funded, but gets over in June - I'll be signing up for at least the PDF.  I find I actually like putting megadungeons in binders (easier to lay flat) and just writing notes on the map and margins of the print outs.  I don't think I'd do that to a nice hardcover.

Rappan Athuk
Holy moly!  An old school product breaking the $75k marker.  Ah, on closer look, you can see it's split between Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry.  That right there gives you an idea on the popularity of Pathfinder.  I would love to have a copy of Rappan Athuk, but I don't know if I can see myself spending $40 for a PDF.  This is one to pop a reminder on the calendar to see how my funds are looking in late June and decide then if the hardcover is worth it.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess
I've been clamoring for a hardcover copy of the LOTFP rules, so this one is a must-do.  I'll have to chat with my group if anyone else wants a copy of the hardcover - the deal where you get 4 copies for a group is enticing.  Here's the main thing:  I'd love to see the Ken Hite LOTFP adventure get funded, so expect to see me make some noise as this one gets closer to D-Day.  Maybe we'd see more premiere horror adventure creators dip back into the world of D&D and bring the fear.

Weird West Miniatures
I have no interest in lead painted miniatures, but this is a fascinating campaign because it shows the democratization that's happening with production - we're seeing dice, miniatures, all sorts of nifty gaming accoutrements getting created without a big company sponsor.  Even if you don't want the miniatures, there's an option to get the Weird West book printed and sent out.  I'll be sending $5 that way.

What are the downsides of the crowd-funding madness?  The first issue I'm seeing is wallet fatigue - I've got a limited gaming budget so I have to be selective.  There's the risk of vaporware.  I haven't heard of a major campaign that failed to deliver anything, but the risk is out there.  Which project will be the first to go 'poof'?  I'll probably stick with publishers that have a track record of success, or invest at the lower levels if it's a product in development or a newer publisher - just common sense precautions.

I'm also seeing more established publishers and authors moving to the crowd funding.  I keep thinking it's only a matter of time before Chaosium or some of the other Cthulhu publishers start pre-selling or funding their print runs this way, too.

The crowd funding revolution is a big problem for WOTC.  If their stated goal is to develop a future D&D that appeals to old school players, it's got to be good enough to lure us away from rules that work, and the wide choice of adventures and published supplements for those rules coming from DIY and self-publishing campaigns.  I just don't see it happening.  Creation by committee (or public tally) doesn't work.  I hope they're successful, because retail and big box stores are ways to reach new gamers, and the big companies have that reach.  That 5E open play test is in a few weeks; it will surely be worth perusing.

D&D Campaign Criteria Redux

I've been trying to articulate criteria on what makes for a good campaign setting for D&D to make it easier for me to determine which of my half-baked campaign elevator pitches have a chance.  The list is evolving to be a blend of what makes for good adventures, and what are the mechanics in D&D that imply things about how the world works, that should also be addressed.

After yesterday's thought experiment on "Goblins of the Spanish Main" - a suggested D&D setting placed in a fantastic version of the Caribbean - I can add some more things to the list.

Autonomy
The fundamental unit in D&D is the small troupe of adventurers, the party, and enjoyment of the game requires a great degree of party autonomy.  Regardless how players choose their plot hooks or go seeking adventure, before the action gets going, they need to be on their own for planning, strategy and decision making.

Adventures and Frontiers
Advancement in the game is based on wealth acquisition, so the default mode for adventuring is looting.  There's also combat, so the wealth tends to be guarded by something.  Unless it’s war, fighting other people is usually against the law, but that doesn't apply to monsters.

Combining these elements quickly brings in to focus why the monster filled hex crawl or dungeon crawl is such an ideal adventure structure; it allows a small troupe of adventurers autonomy to loot and battle monsters while acquiring wealth.

For that reason, a good campaign setting needs to have that dividing line between civilization and the wilds; the border areas beyond civilization are the lawless frontiers that support classic D&D style adventures.

People have certainly tried to take D&D's rules engine and use it in other contexts - urban noir investigations like Eberron,  Game of Thrones-style political intrigues, horror games.  I can't say how well they all work, but that does seem to be getting away from the core D&D experience or exploring and looting.

One other item to add the list is Treasure and Magic Items - in addition to explaining the existence of dungeons, the fiction or story behind the setting needs to address why they're filled with gold coins and magic sword.

So my revised list of setting criteria to address or explain is looking more like this:

• Adventures and Frontiers
• Autonomy
• Dungeons
• XP for Gold
• Treasure and Magic Items
• Classes and Levels
• NPC Classes and Levels
• Alignment
• High Magic
• Humanoids and Monsters
• The End Game
• Demi-Humans
• Clerical Magic
• Vancian Magic

I added one more regarding NPC classes and levels.  It's fairly important for the referee to consider the demographics of adventurers and the nature of classes and levels in the campaign setting.  A decision needs to be made whether the populations of the world are mostly zero level people, or whether characters with classes are fairly common. There's quite a big difference if the world is rugged and medieval, where most rulers are also field generals, so lords and nobles are high level fighters.  Are clerics common, meaning healing is common and folks come back from the dead?  Think how different a PC cleric would be perceived if clerics were extremely rare and their spells were miraculous?  Certainly the default approach - as seen in various published settings - is that rulers are powerful and high level, and clerical and arcane magic is common.

Anyway, that's a big topic - whether the rules and capabilities that apply to PC's also govern the NPC's in the world - I just wanted to point out why I'm adding it to the list as something the designer should address.

Thanks everyone who chimed in on the list the other day, or gave some feedback to "Goblins of the Spanish Main".  I don't know that I'm done, I'll probably toss out a few more elevator pitches or thought experiment settings to test the list further and apply some word smithing.

You can see why "points of light" is such an enduring campaign frame for D&D; a fantasy dark ages setting after the fall of a great empire provides justifications for frontiers, lawlessness, dungeons, treasure and loot, and self-made rulers.

Goblins of the Spanish Main

Yesterday, I was suggesting some elements that are core to D&D that need to be addressed by the campaign setting.  The more of these elements that work in the setting "as is", the better is the fit between the setting idea and D&D; the closer it is to a core D&D experience.  Just to try it out, I thought I'd come up with a random half-baked idea and see how it tests as a D&D setting.

Yo Ho, me hearties!  Let's set sail for a fantastic version of the Gulf of Mexico and trawl the waters of the Spanish Main during the golden age of piracy - buried treasure, bottles of rum, and 15 men on a dead man's chest.  And monsters.

First up, dungeons and adventure sites.  How could you handle dungeons in a "saltbox"?  Exploring a wild stretch of sea, it's got to be sprinkled with islands.  Each island could be a simple hex crawl.  You could arrange the islands by distance, such that the furthest islands are more dangerous - a bit like dungeon levels.  Some of the islands themselves could have a few simple ruins on them, or basic sea caves.  You're not going to have anything quite like a traditional dungeon, though you could have ancient Atlantean ruins or something similar.

I don't see any problems using the following D&D tropes on the Spanish Main - classes, levels, alignment, high magic, and XP for gold.  One could even place demi-humans back in folkloric Europe and have the odd halfling, dwarf or elf in a crew.

It's not hard to imagine populating the mythic Caribbean with various monsters from the bestiaries, both sea monsters of nautical lore and monsters appropriate for the tropics.  A dinosaur-filled "lost world" like the Isle of Dread seems de rigueur.  What about two-legged opponents?  There'd be no end of foreign nationals, opposing pirates and buccaneers, or hostile natives that could be found on the islands - assuming you want to stay away from using traditional D&D-style humanoids.

If you cared about "domain level play", what would the end-game be like here?  Maybe mid-level to high-level characters buy their own ships instead of building castles.  I seem to recall Pirate Lords are like 11th level fighters in the Expert set, so you could adapt the end-game to a maritime milieu.

Actually, the biggest issue I see in adapting the tropes of the D&D campaign to such a setting is the fact that those NPC ships are commanded by high level characters!

The party is the unit of autonomy and exploration in the dungeon, and the idea behind the setting needs to support these small groups of picaresque adventurers setting out to scrabble for loot.  It's a bit hard to plan your own capers when you're on board a ship commanded by someone else.  This could be a fatal flaw.

Maybe the adventuring "unit" in such a campaign would be the longboat - just large enough for the players, their gear, and retainers, and once they get to shore they're on their own to plan and explore.  From that perspective, the ship becomes the local "town", the place the adventurers return to drink some rum, hear rumors, and plan their next expedition.  A tidy sum of loot is "taxed" back to the captain.

That's a potential solution - still doesn't provide a satisfactory solution for piloting the ship and crew from place to place, or how combat on the high seas would work when the players are a small group of pirates on a much larger ship.  I've got to think about it some more - the list was skewed towards mechanical elements and adherence to a core D&D experience, but there clearly needs to be some things on the list that address these non-mechanical concerns, like the importance of planning, autonomy, and small group play in the setting.  Playing the role of minions at the whim of a high level NPC is not a great recipe for D&D.


*Picture is NC Wyeth Treasure Island

Criteria for a Good D&D Setting

I'm always kicking around these "elevator pitches" in my head for some upcoming D&D setting.  I develop bas cases of the Gamer Attention Deficit Disorder… ideas accumulate in the back of my brain like flotsam and jetsam.  Just to get them out of there and put them down on paper, I created a section of the blog, The Junkyard, just for dumping ideas (hopefully, it becomes my place to go scavenge for ideas in the future).  Like the man said, an idea is the most resilient parasite - it's impossible to eradicate - but maybe you can park it somewhere to cool off.

One of the problems with these half-baked settings mash-ups is that once you take them out and really look at them, half the time I realize they're not really good fits for a D&D campaign after all.  Which kind of begs the question, What are the criteria for a good D&D setting?

You would think that some hoary elder of the D&D blogosphere would have established the definitive criteria for the ideal D&D setting some time ago, but alas, I cannot seem to recall seeing such a list.  Don't get your hopes up for seeing one here.

The problem is this:  Dungeons & Dragons is a game, with elements that appeal on the level of a game.  It also generates fantastic stories.  I'm not a story-oriented DM; my D&D style is to throw stuff on the table, play the game, and the story is what you have after all the game elements come together after a night of play.  But somewhere along the line, a lot of us started treating D&D more like an emulation of fantasy literature, and less like a game that had some fantasy inspirations.

The problem of designing a good campaign setting requires coming to terms with the game-oriented elements of D&D, and making sure they work in the context of the setting.  Many times, house rules and similar changes are foisted on the game to minimize or remove game elements that are perceived to get in the way of the fiction.  Sometimes these changes to D&D are only cosmetic, but other times they're major surgerry.

Let's start with the perspective that D&D is Always Right.  If that's true, what are the core game elements that need to be accounted for in the setting?

Here's the list I have so far:

Dungeons
Let's face it, a D&D world is crawling with these underworld locations filled with traps, weird magic "specials", monsters, and lots and lots of loot.  Ideally, the setting should support a mega dungeon concept, too.  Where'd they come from?

Classes and Levels
The D&D world is one where there are clear demarcations between different approaches to adventuring, as embodied by the four base classes, and where experienced characters and rulers wield vast power compared to their zero-level brethren.

Alignment
Powerful and far-reaching game effects are keyed off whether someone is good or evil, or at a minimum, Lawful or Chaotic.

High Magic
The D&D world is one where folks with the requisite intelligence (and perhaps money) can study magic, learn to fly around, and toss fireballs.  You can come back from the dead, too, if you know a high level cleric with a good wisdom.

Humanoids and Monsters
The wilds are crawling with talking, anthropomorphic furries that want to eat people.  Just where do all those humanoids and monsters come from?

XP for Gold
The whole paradigm of gold = experience means there's likely an "adventurer class" in society that specializes in exploring old ruins, and successful adventurers can amass fortunes in wealth.  Which brings me to my next point...

The End Game
Default D&D assumes an end-game where high level characters can take their vast fortunes and carve out small kingdoms with their many followers.  This implies a degree of wilderness or borderland, ideally in the form of a hex crawl.

Demi-Humans
Characters in the D&D world rub shoulders with these curious pseudo-humans with pointy ears and funny accents that live in the woods or the hills.

Added:
Clerical Magic
The default D&D setting assumes clerics gain their powers from deities, which implies quite a bit about the nature of the cosmology and humanity.

Vancian Magic
Spell books, spell memorization, and flashy combat magic create a set of expectations about the world and how arcane magic functions.

Please suggest more to add to the list if there's some I missed.

My goal is to have a small checklist of things to address when I'm kicking around alternative campaign ideas.   It'll help keep my ideas grounded, or at least ensure I'm addressing core elements of the game or developing suitable equivalents.

SCD GAME 2 - Showdown on Beacon Hill

Previously:  The strange murder of a beat cop led the group to a house in the Bronx belonging to Bernard Corbitt, a mild-mannered gardener and good neighbor… who apparently harvested illegal body parts from a run-down Hell's Kitchen hospital and patched them together in the basement using re-animator fluid.  The first report is here:  SCD game 1, An Arm and a Leg

Cast of Characters

Detective Snyder, officer in the SCD (police detective):  Smitty
Father Vinny, trained psychiatrist and church exorcist (clergy):  Mike
O'Grady, burglar turned SCD informant (criminal):  Adam
Trevor, professional occult debunker (dilettante):  Keyser
Meg Meadows, forensic scientist:  Olivia


When Game 2 started, Corbitt was in lock up and the group returned to his house to look around.  "This is a horror game, so it would be best if we split up," quipped one of the players.  Well said.

But first, they waited for the arrival of Meg Meadows, a forensic scientist with botany experience called in by Detective Snyder.  Meg had the chance to do some library research before driving over, and was able to give a report on Corbitt's import business, his wife's obituary, and the death of his father, all culled from the archives of the paper.

Then Meg and O'Grady went to the dark greenhouse while the others searched the house itself.  In addition to finding various narcotic's plants, Corbitt was growing some otherworldly plants like a white-flowered bush that sprayed pollen at them.  They fled before they were coated by the spray and reduced to a rapidly decomposing pile of fertilizer.

In the house, Corbitt's study was piled with interesting books - a Sanskrit tome named The Key and the Gate, covered in cobra skin; a 17th century grimoire on devil worship, True Magick; Corbitt's botanical notes; 14 years of Corbitt's journals.

While the players got the dramatic approach to learning the facts - handouts and madness-tinged 1st person journal entries - here's the basic fact dump:  Corbitt became a worshipper of a Hindu demon called Rama Sekva on a trip to the wilds of India; Rama Sekva ate his father but granted Corbitt power as a wizard.  Corbitt was a failed med student that knew enough about pharmacology to eventually synthesize Soma, a drug that allowed him to commune with his demon god.  Rama Sekva's guidance helped him create the alchemical formulae to graft together dead flesh into living constructs.  Worst of all, the demon spawned a child on Corbitt's wife, who died in childbirth; the horrible thing was still living in the basement, and Corbitt was grafting body parts onto the child as it grew!

The descent into the basement revealed the creepy alchemical lab, the rudimentary surgery with it's operating lamps and bone saws, and the whimpering gurgling sound coming from a hidden panel in the basement's false wall.  In the secret room behind the wall was this thing:

The Child-Thing, from Mansions of Madness

It gurgled toward the players, "Papa, Papa…" blowing out of its sphincter mouth, and they started blasting it with pistols.  It barreled through the door, grappling with multiple limbs and attempting to slurp flesh off the bone using those sphincter mouths.  There were sanity rolls, stability checks, guns blazing, and Trevor the dilettante running the thing through with his sword cane.  O'Grady needed quite a bit of first aid after getting pulled into one of the mouths and slurped.

"We need to burn this place to the ground," was Snyder's opinion.  I've observed that arson is a Cthulhu gamer's good friend when they need to hide evidence of occult horror from an innocent world.  While the group loaded Snyder's trunk with things they wanted to salvage from Corbitt's house, like the rare books, a message blared over the radio - "Corbitt is on the loose!  Floyd (the desk sergeant) is dead, Corbitt's stolen a car, and be on alert, he's probably on the way home!"

In the journals, Corbitt had mentioned a few times that the when the time was right, he'd climb to the top of Beacon Hill in the nearby Jamaica Park north of Fordham and call out to the thing's father, Rama Sekva, to return to the world.  Lightning and flashes of light swirled to the north in the area of the park, and the group piled into their cars and sped off into the night to stop a summoning.

Snyder was an excellent driver, and Trevor sprinted up the side of Beacon Hill; the other guys weren't as athletic.  Meg and Father Vinnie followed in the other car.

Trevor avoided looking at the swirling vortex above the hill where the six-armed god slowly descended a wormhole tunnel toward the mortal plane, and he stabbed Corbitt with his sword cane.  The sorcerer, oblivious to the intruder while he chanted the sanskrit spell, was only grazed by the thrust, and he turned to face Trevor.  By the time the others got near the hill top, Trevor was on the ground, blood coming out of his eyes and nose because Corbitt was cooking his brain by revealing to him the last syllable of the Dread Name of Azathoth.

Snyder dropped to a knee, took careful aim, and shot the sorcerer in the head before he could completely fry poor Trevor's mind.  O'Grady managed to avoid looking up into the vortex and seeing the 6-armed demon quickly scurry back along the tunnel like a spider, and with the death of Corbitt, the unsustained ritual dissipated into the night air.  Case closed, except for the clean up and filing the false reports with the department.

That's pretty much where we needed to end things - it was getting late.  I took a quick straw poll to decide if we should resume the AD&D game for a bit or play another Trail of Cthulhu scenario set in the Big Apple, and the group voted for another Trail game.  So it'll be at least a few more weeks before we get back to Gothic Greyhawk.  See you next time.

Keeper's Notes:
This was an adaptation of "Mister Corbitt", from Mansions of Madness (a Chaosium book for Call of Cthulhu).  If folks are interested, I'm glad to put my Trail conversion notes together, but it was pretty basic stuff.  Since these are meant to be episodic one-offs, we'll probably run something from Stunning Eldritch Tales or Arkham Detective Tales next.

Viva Los Vengadores, Amigos

Are any readers out there IT consultants who travel most of the time?  After spending the better part of last week in Mexico City living out of a suit case on an implementation, I can appreciate the strain.  Despite a week sans children,  I didn't get in any blogging.  I did make it out to Teotihuacan, however, so I'll have some nifty photos to post in the next day or so.

Made it back last night and the family had reserved tickets for The Avengers - or should I say, Los Vengadores.  It really is a great superhero movie.  Ensembles are difficult to pull off, but The Avengers was excellent; it's hard to tell if The Avengers worked so well for me because I saw all the solo movies or the script was just that good.  The Hulk stole the movie for me with his blend of horror and laughs, and I really loved the new direction for the character.  Mark Ruffalo brought a degree of weariness to the portrayal of Banner that emphasized the anxiety of trying to hold back a monster.  Hulk is the modern wolf-man.

My only gripe was a bit of minor nerd-dom.  The Chitauri are the "ultimate universe" version of the Skrulls, so I kept expecting to see some shape changing Skrull infiltration.  Hopefully they're just holding that back for the sequel.  It's a bit puzzling how the movies have all been themed after the "ultimate universe".  I guess it's due to the edgier, updated costumes and accelerated story lines.  Why else would they insist on calling it the tesseract instead of the Cosmic Cube?  Very cool that the mysterious voice instructing Loki at the beginning of the movie was the big T-Man himself.

Gaming posts to resume shortly, starting with a recap of our last Cthulhu game.