Secrets of Spirit Island

Here's my preliminary concept for the campaign; in this bloody time of civil war, a dying warlord has a battlefield vision of the Sun warning him that blood will continue to soak the soil of the provinces until the sword of the last shogun, lost for a hundred years, is rediscovered; she promises that her brother, the Moon, will reveal the secret to a worthy champion who solves the riddle of the lost sword; the answer lies on Spirit Island.

As rumors of this unearthly vision spread around the countryside, many of the lords and daimyos scoff at the fanciful tale and continue to build their power and maneuver their forces for war.  But there are sentimentalists that send agents to the coast to secure passage to mist-shrouded Spirit Island seeking answers.  Spirit Island is rugged and has little arable land; the indigent people are gaijin or barbarians who live by fishing and hunting.  Tradition holds that in the distant past, powerful shrines to the kami and the elements once existed there, but the locations of these secret places are now lost to memory.

In this way, adventurers that explore Spirit Island might discover 5 hidden dungeons (and/or shrines and temples) each themed after an element - wood, fire, water, earth, and metal; the island is inhabited by a mix of hostile native folks and peaceful nature spirits, priests, holy sites, angry kami, duplicitous demons, vengeful ghosts, rival adventurers, spies, and bandits.  In terms of campaign play, characters that manage to explore the 5 sites would be in the mid-levels (levels 5-6), just in time for the domain play and mass combat on the mainland to become super interesting and relevant to them.

DM Notes - a defense and explanation of some of these ideas.

Putting most of the early adventuring on an island helps limit the initial creation scope; there's the coastal town or city to create as a home base, some indigenous settlements on the island, and then the wilds and dungeons themselves.

Another reason for starting with the D&D style play up front - exploration, puzzle solving, crawling ruins, fighting monsters, and so on - allows me to ease in the 'feudal Japan' cultural stuff, which helps limit info dumps and gives players time to adjust to the culture - including the DM!  Feudal Japan is like an alien planet to a western gamer, and this type of campaign risks becoming a "sword & planet" game because the setting is so removed from our regular experience… too much, 'No no no, your character wouldn't do that in this culture...', so introducing the cultural details over an extended period makes a lot of sense to me.  Heck, that reminds me - I sat in on a history seminar at Gencon that discussed these issues quite a bit, and I took a lot of notes - it warrants a post.

The politics and clans of the main islands of the country will be loosely adapted from historical sources.  By the time characters are in the mid-levels, they have reputations and are able to do the things that distinguish the Japan-inspired setting - courtly intrigue, battlefield command, duels of honor, service to a powerful lord.  Plus all the things you expect in a samurai-themed game that you see in the movies… iaijutsu showdowns, one-against-many, flashing katanas, the struggle between duty and obligation and choosing sides.

Readers here have been super supportive and helpful with these brainstorming sessions - it's much appreciated!  If I could be so bold to ask, where is a good location for "Spirit Island" and what might make a good departure port for characters wishing to sail there?  I had considered making it the main section of Hokkaido island, or something further north in the chain.  I'm sure ideas will lend themselves to me as I get more period reading under my belt.  While Hokkaido or one of the northern islands seems to fit the bill as remote, mountainous, forested, misty, and populated with potentially hostile indigenous people, there's an appeal to placing the island a bit closer to the political action, too.

It may be a few weeks before I have anything next; I'm reading Sengoku and Bushido, as well as the Turnbull book, and starting to watch Moribito (really great so far!)  I can see that I should track down a book of folklore or fairy tales that has ghost stories and tales of spirits so I can develop a sizeable alternative bestiary for the island.  I'll keep making notes and let these ideas simmer and percolate in the back of my head; many of my best ideas come after I set things down and return to them.  This is a great project for whenever I get writer's block or burnout on the Black City.

What do you think of 'Secrets of Spirit Island' as the name of the campaign?




*The picture is an example of a misty Shinto shrine on a mountain top, the kinds I envision hidden away all over Spirit Island.  The owner retains all copyrights in the picture.

Arthur and the Samurai

I've been starting to jot notes about the future Oriental Adventures setting.  I mentioned previously I wanted to mash up elements of Arthurian myth with samurai cinema.  I'm thinking the setting will be during the 'Warring States' period, when powerful families and clans vie to unite the country.  That seems to be a time that would allow mid-level adventurers to follow the 'adventurer, conqueror, king' path to gain and expand their own holdings, and it should be straightforward to get ideas from history and other RPGs.  Meanwhile, a commenter on one of the other posts (eldersprig) suggested an island as the ideal place for adventures, and I'm warming to the idea.  The main islands are rife with "mundane" politics, warfare, and strife, and the mist-shrouded island(s) off the shore is where the walls between the real world and the spirit world are thin, and monsters and ghosts roam the night.

So why would I incorporate Arthurian myth with the samurai?  Some of the central themes in Arthur, such as the ownership of Excalibur and the image of the questing knight, port very well into a samurai age constantly on the verge of civil war.  "Shogun as military dictator" sounds pejorative, but let's say the previous position was ordained, and the grant of the sword of legend symbolized the acquiescence of the heavenly world.  The death of the last shogun and the long years of civil war that have followed place the land in chaotic, violent conditions similar to pre-Arthurian England. Sentimentalists continue the quest for the legendary sword that was lost, believing that whatever shugo or daimyo proves their worth by finding the sword, will be able to unite the country.  Pragmatists continue to field their armies and maneuver politically to gain power directly.

Doomed love triangles, ala Lancelot and Guinevere or Tristan and Isolde, port equally well.  It's not a major change to flip the axes of virtue and sin from the chivalric tales to reflect reputation and shame and oaths of loyalty challenged by love.  A character like the Fisher King also ports well, the story highlighting the problem of proper behavior versus wisdom in a hidebound society.  Figures like the Cornwall sisters (Morgan Le Fay and Morgause), powerful faeries and enchantresses, have their roles replaced by powerful but fickle spirit beings in this setting, tricksters that lead questing warriors astray.  Avalon and Faerie are replaced by the spirit world and the resident Kami.

I'm starting to like the sound of an island for other reasons; it lends itself to a 'West Marches' style campaign, where the deeper one travels on the island (or the higher one climbs the island's slopes) the more dangerous the encounters.  The strong demarcation between the mundane world and the Otherworld of the island, is aesthetically pleasing.  There appear to be many games and history books that have covered feudal Japan, making the job of adapting it for campaign use (hopefully) straightforward.  I've started reading Turnbull's Warriors of Medieval Japan, and FGU's game Bushido, to start building a knowledge base.

Here's another question for readers familiar with genres of Japanese fantasy and horror:  What are good inspirations for depictions of the mist-shrouded island and the Spirit World?  I plead near total ignorance; my exposure to Japanese Kami comes from Miyazaki films like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke or Howell's Moving Castle, and their blends of trippy spirits and general weirdness; from The Last Airbender (the cool animated show, not the awful M Night movie), with its frequent interludes where the avatar encounters the spirit world, and deals with horrible beasties like Koh the Face-Stealer.  Any suggestions on film, shows, anime, games, comics, etc, that would help populate the island with spirit creatures or provide inspiration for the Otherworld would be appreciated - thanks!  I'm hoping to track down a good book on folklore, weird tales like Kaidan, and learning more about J-horror themes.

Although I don't see how I can go wrong if I cover it with mist-shrouded shrines, ruined Japanese castles, gigantic trees, rival samurai questing for the last shogun's sword, and the occasional creepy humongous talking centipede.

Review: Dungeon Command D&D Miniatures

Dungeon Command:  Sting of Lolth set

One of the big new games we came home with from Gencon was Dungeon Command.  My kiddo was obsessed with getting it after seeing one of the sets was Drow-themed (I'm beginning to think he's RA Salvatore's number one fan amongst 10 year olds), and after getting in a handful of games with the system, I can heartily endorse it.  Most of my reviews are RPG books, but this has enough nexus with D&D, Wizards of the Coast, and gaming, such that I don't mind stretching the bounds.

In Dungeon Command, you play out a miniatures battle on a board made out of dungeon tiles, snapped together like puzzle pieces.  There are configurations for 2, 3, and 4 player games, although each player needs their own tile set and figures.  Game play mixes traditional D&D miniatures style combat with a card mechanic reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering.  The whole is greater than the parts.

As a player, you take on the role of a battlefield leader, and each set gives you a choice of two personae from which to choose.  The leader cards govern things like creatures in hand, life (morale), mana (leadership ability), and each has other special abilities that modify game play.  Creatures are represented by D&D minis, with stats on creature cards.  Special game play effects are managed by "Order Cards' drawn from an Order deck.  There is a tapping mechanic for attacking or using special abilities granted by the cards.

The game has a compelling mix of physical bits that make it part board game, part card game, and part minis game.  As I said, the battlefield is built from a mix of tiles provided by each player, giving you some control over the placement of terrain and obstacles.  "Treasure chest" are seeded on the battlefield, and they can be used by creatures to heal the player's life (morale) in lieu of attacking.  Creatures have resource costs that limit how many can be in play at a time.  Cards are another expendable resource that can let creatures attack multiple times, do extra damage, dodge attacks, or perform spell-like effects.  There's a system of key words that govern which creatures can perform actions with the cards; fighters can't use spell-like cards, for instance.

Various well-known D&D spells and magic items look like they'll be making appearances as cards; Potion of Healing is a minor effect that heals a creature's life; Fireball is a standard attack card that can be cast by an Int-based creature (like the War Mage or Copper Dragon in the Cormyr set); Faerie Fire is an enchantment-type card the Drow can attach to an enemy, making that creature more vulnerable to attacks.

Dungeon Command was released in late July with two initial sets - Sting of Lolth, a Drow-themed set, and Heart of Cormyr, knights, dwarves, and mages.  I don't pay close attention to WOTC releases these days so this one flew under my radar.  5th Edition isn't supposed to be out until 2014, after all, so there are still a wide range of outcomes for that particular project.  In the meantime, here's Dungeon Command, mining the D&D brand and product identity, as well as WOTC's deep in-house expertise on card games, to build a really great game.  There are upcoming releases planned for September and November; a goblin-themed seat featuring a troll as the big monster, and an undead-themed set featuring a dracolich.  One of the best parts:  the game is non-collectible.  There's no headache around random booster packs of cards or miniatures.  Every set is a fixed roster of cards and figures.

If you like both D&D minis and card games, this is a can't miss game for you.  The cards and special abilities add a dramatic amount of strategy and ensure a high replay value.  Traditional war gamers may not enjoy the randomness and surprise created by the card mechanic; well-planned attacks can be foiled by counter cards that block damage, like a magic user's Shield spell.  If you were a heavy collector of D&D miniatures from some of the previous incarnations of the line, you probably have all the figure sculpts already; WOTC is using existing molds to fill out the new game.  Like I said, this is a clever product to fill the gap between now and 5E, since it leverages previous R&D dollars from the minis game, leverages the D&D brand for concepts, and pulls in expertise from the M:TG side of the house.  It's shrewd business.  The game offers no insight to me whether 5E will be good or bad; it does demonstrate that the designers at WOTC can still make really fun games.  This is a bit of a premium product; a single set of Dungeon Command sells for $26-$30 online, or msrp $40 if you're lucky enough to still have a brick-and-mortar game store in your area.

Any questions, fire away in the comments!

Mythos Expeditions as a D&D Campaign

See the world, visit interesting places, and loot them.

One of Pelgrane's upcoming books is called Mythos Expeditions, and it involves a central organization (in this case, Miskatonic University) sponsoring expeditions to far flung places, where a group of intrepid scholars and professors can ostensibly encounter Lovecraftian horrors.  I'm struck by how well this would work as a campaign style for an early modern D&D campaign - horror themed or otherwise.

Some of the challenges running a quasi-historical game is the need to make magic, monsters, and eldritch horrors rare and unusual - just like if you're running a Cthulhu game, whether it's modern day or 1920's.  So you push the horror to the fringes, and draw a strong demarcation between the civilized world and the realm of nightmares that exists hidden just below the surface.  There might still be monsters hiding in plain sight, but adventures involving lost cultures and ancient secrets are frequently pushed out to the fringe - rugged frontiers, where primitive cults and sleeping gods still hold sway, archaeological marvels wait to be discovered, and ancient ruins have escaped plunder.

I love the idea of putting together a similar 17th century investigative organization - scholars, academics, hermetic investigators, perhaps even the church - and letting the players act as agents and soldiers that plan and carry out the field operations of such a group in the D&D context.  It could be a mercantile venture, interested in looting ancient places and recovering lost treasures and artifacts.  The Age of Sail allows you to surface rumors all over the Caribbean and the Americas, as well as introducing ruins throughout North Africa and the mid-East, not forgetting all of the great opportunities for crumbling European castles dating back a few hundred years.

D&D is mostly about kicking down doors, stabbing monsters in the face, and getting paid.  But instead of wandering outside the local village and mugging a bunch of goblins in the woods for their coppers, the quest becomes a multi-staged voyage to the deserts of North Africa to discover the lost tomb of the Black Pharaoh Nephren-Ka.  Exotic locales, isolation, and mythic grandeur make all the difference.  Let's put some lipstick on that pig.

This isn't exactly a new idea for me; many of my undeveloped ideas have involved one campaign or another in the early modern - the Colonial Hex Crawl, Harrow Home Manor, Library of De La Torre, the Wide Area Sandbox, and so on (all labeled somewhere here on the blog).  Ultimately, the reason I haven't fully moved forward with one is that I'm still enamored with the pure hex crawl and site-based exploration that works so well in D&D's typical micro-setting.  Providing the players absolute freedom to go anywhere is much simpler when 'anywhere' is constrained to how far the characters can walk in a day.  I haven't gotten my head around finding the balance between detail and scope in a large macro setting. The tools used for Sci Fi gaming sandboxes must have the answer.  Traveller or Stars Without Number is pretty much the Age of Sail, In Spaaaaace...

If the players buy into the premise that the game is more akin to a Cthulhu game, with stronger elements of investigation and exploration, the question of agency shifts from "Which plot hook or idea do we prosecute?" to "We’re prosecuting this idea, and now we have great freedom to find the approach that works best for us."  That seems very manageable indeed, and frees the game master up to developing one intricate site-based location at a time, akin to a classic TSR 'module'.

Pent Up Reading

I've been slogging though a technical SAP manual, which I've wisely left behind on numerous vacations and breaks; however, I've also made a commitment to finish it before diving into more interesting (gaming-related) reading.  I took a look at the pile of game books accumulating in the queue, and the list is becoming daunting!  With any luck, I'll start on the fun stuff in another week.

Too much to read, never enough time - in this hobby, tell me you can't relate.

The List
For the future Oriental Adventures D&D game:
Bushido
Sengoku
Warriors of Medieval Japan
Strongholds of the Samurai
…sundry recommendations yet to be obtained

For our next Cthulhu change of pace:
Bumps in the Night
Mysteries of Mesoamerica
Delta Green
Night's Black Agents
The Zalozhniy Quartet
Delta Green: Eyes Only

General Cool Stuff:
Weird Adventures
Other Dust
Dungeon Crawl Classics
The Monolith Beyond Space & Time
Death Love Doom
Various Osprey Pirates books...

Numerous fiction books hanging out looking even more sad than the game books... The Black Company is probably the next major fantasy book.

*Image is from "Time Enough At Last", one of the best Twilight Zones... I'll be feeling a bit like Henry Bemis if I'm not careful.

Game Master or Player?

You read gaming blogs, so here's a simple question:  Are you a game master or player?  I've added a new poll to the right.

I was talking to my players about a recent topic out here, 'The importance of game mechanics', and how the poll came in nearly 75% of the folks saying mechanics weren't that important for character differentiation.  The poll asked if the classic D&D fighter class could properly represent a knight, samurai, musketeer, horse archer, Roman legionaire, and so on, without any mechanical differentiaton like prestige classes, special abilities, feats, and so on.  I'm wondering how much the results represent a gap between how players and DM's view the question, or new school vs old school players.  Full disclosure:  I'm a DM, I run a lot of old school D&D, and I'm comfortable representing those fighting man archetypes in the game without any specialized game mechanics.  But since 2E AD&D, a sizable portion of the published works is dedicated to providing those little mechanical bits to support players that want that kind of stuff.

Cthulhu Gaming Roundup: Pelgrane and Chaosium news

Here is some hearsay and news coming out of the Pelgrane and Chaosium booths at Gencon, as well as a reader request for more Pagan Publishing news.

Pelgrane Press
I spent some time at the Pelgrane booth, and Simon Rogers, the owner of the company, is always approachable.  Rumors on the message boards have been swirling of excellent play test reports about Pelgrane's epic sized Trail of Cthulhu campaign, Eternal Lies.  They've been suggesting a publishing date of November 2012.  The new piece I heard is that Pelgrane is considering a slip case with multiple books, since boxed sets would move it into a different tax classification.  Personally, I'd much prefer a slip case for multiple books than a boxed set, so that's all good.

Kenneth Hite was at the booth and was willing to discuss his upcoming projects.  Mythos Expeditions is a campaign frame where a university group, like Miskatonic University, sponsors archaeological expeditions to far off places.  I'm stunned it's taken 30+ years for someone to build out a published campaign around this theme of exploration, and I can't overstate how much I'm looking forward to this one.  Many of Lovecraft's best stories invoke the theme; At the Mountains of Madness, The Nameless City, The Shadow Out of Time.  It should be full of ideas that are useable across game systems and genres.  Ken indicated he's wrapping up the rules, initial scenario, and scenario guidelines, and then the Pelgrane freelancers would fill out the remaining scenarios.

Being an OSR aficionado myself, I had to ask about the LOFTP adventure in Ken's queue.  (Mr Raggi roped in Ken to write an adventure as part of his hardcover LOTFP indiegogo campaign a few months back).  Ken described it as a mashup between Apocalypse Now, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; an adventure across a scarred battleground in a fantastic war between godly arcane wizards.   Sounds intriguing;  we don't have a lot of fantasy adventures with the horrors of war in the backdrop, and earth-blasting magic is a viable stand-in for the destructive power of 20th century technology.  Queue Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries".

A few other Pelgrane projects were discussed; Dreamhounds of Paris is underway, Robin Laws is writing that one.  Although I enjoyed Bookhounds, I find I'm much more interested in Pelgrane's adventures than settings, so I'm cautiously interested.  For Night's Black Agents, Ken is working on The Dracular Dossier, a book similar in theme and approach to The Armitage Files, but involving a hunt for Dracula in the modern world, using NBA's spy thriller rules set.  Gareth Hanrahan will take it forward.  My need to mash up Delta Green and Night's Black Agents is currently a faint siren song in a distant room; soon it will be an unavoidable symphony, driving me to madness.  I better start reading Night's Black Agents in earnest.

Chaosium News
The big news is that Chaosium has launched a Kickstarter.  A few days ago, they announced a push to get Horror on the Orient Express, a classic boxed set campaign that's been out of print for 20+ years, updated and back in circulation.  View it here:  Orient Express Kickstarter.  They've neared $40k in two days with a month and a half to go, doubling their $20k goal.  Good to see.

I never owned Orient Express myself, so it'll be excellent to get a shiny new copy of one of Chaosium's classic campaigns.  More importantly, it shows that Chaosium is paying attention to the game-o-sphere and willing to crowd fund some much-sought after reprints.  One can only hope an updated, deluxe version of Beyond the Mountains of Madness is next in the queue.  Alas, Orient Express is targeted to be ready for Gencon 2013, a year away.  Better funding won't necessarily improve their production times.

Pagan Publishing
The guys at the Pagan booth were chatty and willing to talk about various Delta Green campaigns and adventures, but very noncommittal about the timing of the reboot.  (On various podcasts and going back to Gencon 2011, Pagan has been discussing a new version of Delta Green that updates the setting for the post-911 world scene and the USA's 'War on Terror').  My appeal to readers is whether anyone made it to the Pagan Publishing seminar Saturday night and could post some news?  My group hit the road after dinner Saturday, and I had to miss it; there's still a chance it was recorded and will make it out on a podcast feed.