Gothic Greyhawk Game 33 - Ravenloft!

Cast of Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-5: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf-4: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-5: Mike
Soap the Wizard, Magic User-4:  Nogal
Barzai, a Cleric-4:  Ben
Shy, a Fighter-4:  JR
Arden, an Elf-1:  Z

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf-4
Zeke, a Fighter-4
Starkweather, a Thief-4
Grumble the Smug, Halfling-4
Serge, a Fighter-4

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AD&D 1E, I6 Ravenloft
=========================================

The previous game ended shortly after the group arrived at Castle Ravenloft, meeting a mannequin of the vampire lord and then battling a bunch of Strahd zombies.  We resumed.

The castle is a sprawling Gothic structure with intricate spiral staircases and towers, and it's very easy to change levels within the structure - finding the right stairs hidden in a  niche or down a side passage seems to be a main way to get around.  Down a secret hall, they took such a winding stair up and entered a dusty audience chamber.  Track marks in the dust led to a locked side door, and while the thief searched the door and started getting his tools ready to pick the lock, a pair of monsters climbed a far set of stairs.  They looked like squat armadillos with bushy antennae.

Rust monsters.

Some monsters evoke an inordinate amount of fear and terror.  I mean, rust monsters don't even do damage, and here is a group of 40 year olds squealing like frightened pigs and calling me "cheesy" for sending rust monsters after them.  (I'm sure Strahd has these pet rust monsters wandering the castle specifically to strip would-be invaders of some arms and armor).  Anyway, the rust monsters charged, and Kobra's armor was struck - his +1 plate mail was drained of magic, and was ready to rust next turn.  But one of the magic users webbed the rust monsters to the ground, and the group was able to step back and kill them easily at range.

The track marks they were following in the dust led to a room inhabited by a human - a villager chained to a desk who was laboring as the vampire's accountant.  He clutched a rope hanging through a hole in the ceiling, which he threatened would ring a gong that would bring a horde of monsters if the players threatened him.  At the same time, he wanted to help them (as long as he could maintain some deniability) since he only agreed to do the monster's accounting to avoid being eaten.  But all his chips were on Strahd.  "You're not the first group that's come to the castle looking to put a stake in the Lord".

They talked for a while, and the players got another perspective on the return of the vampire, the disappearance of so many villagers, and how the accountant came to be a servant.  He ended up drawing for the group a basic map on how to get into the crypts and find the tomb of Strahd, with the caveat that he had no idea what kind of traps or guardians could be on the way.

"No problem, it's a straight shot to the crypt", they said.  "But for now, we'll head out the castle front door, walk back down to the village, stay there in safety overnight, and come back tomorrow to finish off the vampire".

"Um, you can't leave the castle.  The red dragons will eat you first".

What?

Yes, so the players learned that the huge stone dragons that guarded the entry chamber would animate into ferocious man-eating red dragons if they tried to leave.  Slight change of plans.  "We're going over the wall", said Mister Moore.  "Get ropes".

They left the accountant to his work, who wished them well: "Go team-vampire-slayers, go", as they left.

They did in fact rappel down the walls of the keep into the courtyard, bypassing the guardian red dragon statues.  Now they were faced with clearing the outer walls by dealing with the raised draw bridge, dropped portcullis, and a series of heavy (magical) locks on the drawbridge mechanisms.  They ended up burning a memorized knock spell (Soap) and digging for a knock spell scroll (Mister Moore) to get the draw bridge mechanisms unlocked and lowered.  Then there was the matter of the green slime, the loose boards on the draw bridge over the 1,000' drop, the howling winds beyond the walls… Strahd really didn't want people leaving.

By the time they were descending the mountain, the sky was gloomy and daylight was waning.  When they came to the castle earlier that day, it was at breakneck speed riding as passengers in Strahd's enchanted carriages.  How long would it take to walk down the switchback mountain trails?

It took too long - it was well past dark when they made it to the halfway point, a major stone bridge across a gushing mountain stream.  The gypsy camp wasn't far, but beasts were in the woods, pacing them, and the howls of wolves were everywhere.

When they made it to the gypsies, they learned there would be no sanctuary there.  "We survive because we are on neutral terms with the Lord of the Castle", pointed out one of the gypsy leaders.  "You can camp with us, share our fires and food, but should the master come from you, we won't protect you".  The camp wasn't very defensible, so they decided to walk the rest of the way back to town (another hour and a half).

A bad night became worse when a ragged female thing dropped from an overhanging tree and savaged the characters, claws, fangs and manic undead strength - one of Strahd's many vampire spawn.  "So hungry, so cold… hold me." it cried.  The thing connected with Starkweather and the group looked on in horror as he lost two life energy levels to level drain, and then they unloaded on it with magic missiles and Ghostcutter (Shy's sword against the undead).  The vampire was quickly dissipated, but they watched as it reformed as mist and flitted across the ground, back towards the safety of its lair.  They had the choice of pursuing the fleeing mist across foggy countryside in the dark, or limping to the "safety" of the village.  They went for the village.

This session ended with the group realizing that leaving the castle before each nightfall would be resource intensive - especially if the night time countryside is crawling with wolves and vampire spawn.  "It's going to wear us down".

Whew - almost caught up!  I'm still one session behind (from last week), hope to get that one done in the next day or so before we play Sunday.

Fear in a handful of pages...

Chances are you've already seen this collection promoted on another site, but if not - go ahead and get 13 Flavors of Fear, a free download that contains over a dozen campaign setting ideas for a Weird fiction game (a couple of download options are in the RPG net post).  Get it, read it, be inspired.  Jack and Jeremy did an awesome job.

I already want to create a mash-up of a number of sub settings in a macro-setting.  One of my ideas for the future is to do a weird horror/Rome type setting like Cthulhu Invictus (or just convert Invictus to D&D).  I'd borrow heavily from the Weird Rome here in 13 Flavors of Fear, and then build out a few borderlands areas where the Weird is encountered more directly.

On the northern frontier - perhaps border encampments on the Rhine in the dark woods of Germania, or in northern Brittania along Hadrian's Wall - you could have something like 'The Cold Northern Wind'.  Rome is ideal for the contrast of civilization to the dangerous lands beyond the rule of law where things go bump in the night.

"Behind the Façade of the Seaside Town" could be placed anywhere along the Italian coast or any number of islands in the Mediterranean - Mare Internum Nostrum.  Just why did the ancient Phoenicians conquer sea travel so well?

Legionaries mustering out as farmers to the provinces, and wealthy landowners creating their massive plantations (latifundia), would encounter plenty of indigenous people - as would anyone in a remote trade town or seat of government in the wilds of Roman Europe - providing opportunities for Weird scenarios like 'Pilgrims in a Strange Land' or 'Pagan Outskirts'.

I'm going to file this in the Junkyard so I return to it for brainstorming and development - I even know what I'd call the setting - Terra Incognita.  I love it!

Ape Men of the Black City

The happiest White Ape

I started to put my notes together for the Ape Men of the Black City, and realized - there's probably a line being crossed in my thinking, and I wanted to get some reader feedback on what would fly in their own games.  (And remember, I game with kids, so there's going to be some things in the Black City manuscript that wouldn't be fully expressed if one of the kids is playing - I don't have the luxury of running 100% adult content these days…)

In the Hippodrome section of the city, there is the crumbling ruins of an ancient coliseum that's been inhabited by different troops of White Apes that live near the surface.  The apes live near the frozen surface, but hunt and gather food down in the fecund warrens of level 2.

Here's the thing - the literary references to white apes involve seedy ape-human interbreeding.  There's the Tarzan story about the lost city of Opar that has ape-human inbreeding (such that all the men of the city are misshapen ape hybrids).  The other famous tale I can think of is Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family, by Lovecraft.  Your momma was an ape!  Or in Arthur's case, great grandmother.  Ack, I must now go immolate myself.

So how to use these ideas in the Black City?  The ape men will be related to humans; both races having been genetically tinkered by the city founders  in the distant past.  I'm thinking the ape men were humans that were devolved by Grey bio-engineering to create a more durable, physical slave race for the aliens, and furred to withstand the climate.  Descendants have continued to inhabit the ruins and some of the nearby mountains and glaciers. (I'm sure there will be a  'devolution tank' in the city like the sensory deprivation tank in the movie Altered States, that can devolve a normal person into a White Ape hominid).

The dictates of good taste would leave things there.  But there will be some unscrupulous (human) raiders that have beaten down some of the tribes, taken 'ape wives' and fathered hybrid children in the ruins.  There's a dark exploitation theme regarding more sophisticated cultures taking advantage of the unsophisticated one that still plays out today in the third world - in this case, it's cross-species.  Most gamers "tolerate" half-orcs because orcs are monsters and "do that kind of stuff".  Orcs are just born bad.  And some folks like to play bad-dark-angsty anti-heroes - my daddy was an orc.  Even Lovecraft's deep one hybrids are inflicted on humanity by monsters.  It's awful, but humans are the victims.  But what about the callous, uncaring crew of some adventuring rivals being the abusers?  It's about looking into the mirror and realizing the monsters are us.

I'll see where the comments go - there's certainly a literary precedence for cross-species relations in horror.  White Apes and White Ape hybrids are race-class choices in Realms of Crawling Chaos, one of the supplements I'm using for inspiration.  Hybrids had to come from somewhere...  It lets me put some ugly secrets into Trade Town that some of the other adventuring groups would kill to keep secret.

I wonder what my players would do, if they discovered another crew of adventurers had done "bad things" to a bunch of simple primitives?   Not exactly sure, but I think it would involve axes and swords and a heap of frontier justice.

Note:  A radically different approach would be something like the Great White Ape of Mars and make these guys massive, carnivorous and ultra-violent, but so many things in the Black City already want to eat you, and it seems more interesting to make the White Apes into a bunch of peace-loving hippy primitive hominids.

Firmly Grasp Your Staff, Brave Cleric

Or… how my group's humor operates on the level of an 8th grader

In classic D&D, Moldvay BX, the staff of healing is the best early magic item in the game, able to bestow a cure light wounds to each person once per day - no charges, no bookkeeping, it just keeps on working.  The thing is money.  In a party of characters and retainers, that could be a dozen cures a day!

But let's not overlook the other benefit - touching everyone in the group with the magic staff each day provides an endless supply of dick jokes.

Let's see, it started with simple snickers and giggles months ago whenever the cleric said things like this:

"I will touch him with my staff."
"Let me whip out the staff and lay it on you."

After 8-10 months of having the staff of healing around, the dick jokes never seem to get old to the players.

I brandish the staff in my hand...
Slip him the wood, Brother...
...Come, rub your hands on my magic staff and be healed.
I will bestow the gift of the wood...
Let me whip out my staff and take care of that for you…
Touched again with the magic wood...
Magic wood to the rescue...

They took it to a new high (low?) the other night with these choice innuendoes:

Phat Kobra the dwarf held off getting healed until they were turning in for the night, then he finally said:

"Make sure you give me the magic staff before bed, I want to wake up healed and refreshed."  Snickers all around.

Then, after the cleric healed himself with the staff:

"You can do it to yourself?"

"Oh yes, when it comes to working the staff, sometime it's best just to take it into your own hands.  I slide my hands on the staff and it works just as well on me as it does on you."

The cleric player was laughing the whole time he said that one.  Yep, playing D&D with 40 year olds, with the humor of a bunch of 13 year olds.  Unfortunately, pretty soon the (actual) 9 year olds at the table are going to figure out what all the 'staff of healing' laughter has really been about.

I don't look forward to the day the party gets a Rod of Lordly Might.

Beedo's Hierarchy of Campaign Needs

With apologies to Maszlow

Some things over the weekend got me thinking about where D&D and the OSR thing is going.  Folks have noticed that rules guys are moving beyond retro clones to keep the old games in print; designers are publishing new formulations that aim to smooth over some of the rough spots, incarnate common house rules into the base rules, or otherwise reflect the writer's take on the genre.  More rules are fine, but I'd also like to see the creation of more tools to help the DM run a better game.

The hierarchy chart is how I want my campaigns to go - start with a rules set I like and some monsters I like.  Present compelling adventures.  The setting isn't that important if the first two needs aren't met, but once you've got the basics out of the way - yeah, it's good to have a nice setting with some history and depth.  Then the goal is to see a campaign live long enough to reach name level.  The 1970's rules have some support for castle building and attracting followers, but it's limited - it's hard to go further and reach that pinnacle of the pyramid without making up a whole lot of stuff.

I used to love Mentzer's BECMI because it was an all-in-one system that included army building, mass combat, naval warfare, sieges, and economics, but then I realized my campaigns don't last more than a year or two on average, and no one was getting to level 36.  And the economics are a bit off.

Domain level play is an end goal each time out - I've talked here about converting all the Greyhawk armies to War Machine and statting out some of the nations with the dominion economic rules (I only got as far as Sterich for the current campaign).  The ghoul war has been played out using War Machine - so even in Gothic Greyhawk, I have that end-game in sight.

Isn't that how we should view a campaign - start by making sure the basic adventuring needs are met and the game runs well and folks are having fun, then focus on the long range goals - building out the setting and providing a framework for the players to seize ruler ship?  After all, Kings are for Killing.

As I look out onto the OSR publishing landscape, it seem like folks are starting to move up the pyramid with their projects.

Taking a look at my book shelf, here are the products I see on it that light up the pyramid for me - you've got 2nd generation rules items, like the LOTFP game or supplements like Realms of Crawling Chaos.  For adventures, my reviews page has a number of things in the 4-5 star range that have broken new ground and demonstrated some OSR muscle.

How about campaign support products?  I'm seeing lots of cool hex crawl books.  I liked the random ruin hex generation in Lesserton and Mor, and the urban crawl rules in Vornheim.  I seem to remember the Dungeon Alphabet just got an award, too.  I still keep Kellri's huge compilation of random encounter tables and NPCs handy.  So there have been some tools that support campaign play.  I'm not recalling any new settings that lit the world on fire, though.

I don't know that any other recently published rules have taken on the economics of D&D, yet, which is the lynchpin to getting army building (and ultimately mass combat) to work as a game element and not a story element.  Economics seems like a rabbit hole.  Every once in a while I check in on the Tao guy's place and see that he's still building spreadsheets that calculate the price of imported walrus tusks from Greenland to Central Asia in the 17th century, down to the penny, and I despair.  Oh that way madness lies, says good King Lear.  Or at least, if I tried to run my campaign with that level of detail, I'd lose my job and be divorced for neglect.  Perfectionism or OCD, right there.

What are you guys seeing as far as new projects out there that are developing campaign supplements and tools?  I'll be following the progress of the Domain Game effort over at Hill Cantons and the ACKS game over on the Autarch blog (Adventurer Conqueror King).  There's a trade off between minimal bookkeeping and abstraction, and realism.  If you go for minimal bookkeeping and abstraction, you get War Machine and the Companion set economics approach.  Or you could have oodles of spreadsheets calculating free market commodoties from the 17th century.  Not an easy balance to maintain without making the game Papers and Paychecks.

Seems like a good time for a poll.  How far up  the hierarchy of needs do you focus your campaigns?

ACK! Adventurer Conqueror King (System)

ACK - it was inevitable...

ACK - Adventure Conqueror King System, another wordy sounding "I'm not a retro clone" game has shown up on the radar, with a name almost as unfortunate as Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplaying - which I tend to just abbreviate as LOTFP these days, and refer to it as Lamentations with the group - as in, "When we're done with this campaign, the next one will be back to using Lamentations rules".  So now I can foresee a future where we're referring to the ACK rules like so; "We're still using Lamentations for classes, but I love the ACK system for economics and dominions".  Maybe saying it A-C-K (Ay-See-Kay) will work.  (Hopefully it's as good as LOTFP too).

After seeing a note on Mule Abides, I started following the new blog for it here (
http://www.autarch.co/blog/ ).  It's been super interesting reading so far and I highly recommend checking it out; as a world builder I love systems that address background demographics and economics, and so far the designer has focused on tackling those issues right up front.  The post on "The demographics of heroism" is excellent.

It's funny, a few weeks ago I remarked how this is such an amazing time in the RPG hobby for D&D players - the suits have left the building, and in the post-OGL world we can build the games we want and redress the omissions perpetrated by the corporate machinery.  James can put his frisky Medusa art in LOTFP, and build a better thief and a better magic-user spell list and beat the tar out of the cleric with the nerf bat, and Goodman can wallpaper Rolemaster-style critical and spell effect tables all over the place, and now these ACK guys can put together a rules set that fulfills D&D's early promise about castle building and army building and ruling your own kingdom and having it all make sense.

Anyway - it's way too early to say whether we'd play ACKS or just borrow from it, and it's even unclear if they'll get off the ground (unlike a lot of hobbyists, they're going with a kickstarter event up front to raise money).  But I'm willing to check out any rules-set that marries old school D&D classes, sandbox gaming support, beaucoup random tables, and dominion economics (done right).  After playing LOTFP, the old school percentile-based thief is a drag, and so is old style encumbrance - I want to port that stuff into every D&D game I play.  I foresee people's home games becoming more and more like "Frankensteins", as designers create incremental improvements to old school D&D - we'll pick and choose the best rules bits and subsystems for home use, not married to any one rules set.

Good luck ACKS guys, it looks promising so far.

PS:  I didn't realize the Hill Cantons domain game was going to be a print product too - looks like there will be two supplements in the near future that support name level dominion play!

Gothic Greyhawk Game 32 - Ravenloft!

Cast of Characters:
Mordecai, a Cleric-5: Adam
Forlorn, an Elf-4: Bo
Mister Moore, Magic User-5: Mike
Soap the Wizard, Magic User-4:  Nogal
Barzai, a Cleric-4:  Ben
Shy, a Fighter-4:  JR
Arden, an Elf-1:  Z

Henchmen:
Phat Kobra, a Dwarf-4
Zeke, a Fighter-4
Starkweather, a Thief-4
Grumble the Smug, Halfling-4
Serge, a Fighter-4

=========================================
AD&D 1E, I6 Ravenloft
=========================================

Our second episode of Ravenloft in Gothic Greyhawk began with the burning of the mayor.  His corpse was reanimated by the vampire during the previous evening's attack, and all agreed it was best just to burn bodies from here on out.  A pyre was built out behind the mayor's mansion.

The mayor's daughter, Ireena, attached herself to the group, which they didn't mind, seeing as she was, you know, quite beautiful - in an 80's feathered bangs kind of way.  Except that she claimed to have been bitten by the vampire.  Mister Moore began to wonder if there could be a Mrs Moore in his future and decided to take the comfort of Ireena as his secondary mission in life.  Primary was staying alive, which involved not getting so close to Ireena that she could bite him, if she were a vampire-in-training.  A dilemma.

They were off to see the gypsies outside of town - Madame Eva would know what to do with Ismark's magic sword and how it would help defeat Strahd.  Compared to the dreary, deserted town, the camp was vibrant - a half dozen covered wagons, at least 20 men tending camp and a few standing guard.  Madame Eva's wagon was the archetypical fortune teller's domicile - dark interior, velvet curtains, candles and a card table.  Not big enough for 12 people to enter, so 5 of the main characters got the reading.

This is one of the nifty things in the old I6 Ravenloft module - a number of the important elements to the adventure are randomized through the card reading.  I had a prepared deck and ran it straight up, but I can't really repeat the results here - one or two of the guys read the blog, and if they don't have good notes already, too bad.  But they learned that the sword had a missing piece (some place in the castle) and that the strongest weapon against the vampire, a holy artifact, was likely in his crypt.  I think the rest went over their heads or was promptly forgotten.  "Clues, blah blah blah!  Let's get to the killing."

Some gypsies had reported that Strahd's carriages had descended from the castle earlier that morning and were waiting  by the bridge up the trail - it was the master's classic invitation to visitors.  Willing to follow the script, the characters hopped in to the two horse drawn carriages and were taken on a hair-raising ride along twisting mountain paths, before crossing a drawbridge over a deep chasm, and finally ending in the courtyard of Castle Ravenloft.  The main doors of the keep were open, warm light spilled out from within, and the sound of baroque organ music.  (I had Bach's Toccata and Fugue playing in the background).

They followed the music and line of lit torches through some entry chambers and down a hall to a room with a sumptuous feast.  Across the room, a caped figure pounded the organ keys before bringing the piece to a suitable close, standing, and addressing the party.  "Velkome to my castle", spoken in a ridiculous vampire accent (more German than Romanian).  "You have something that I vant.  I vill see you this evening, and ask you for it, and you vill give it to me, or you vill die.  Until then, gut eating, and auf wiedersehen…"

The figure disappeared in a puff of smoke, and all the lights went out.  A wind roared through the castle, doors slammed, and a piercing scream echoed.  It was on.

The action started with a Scooby Doo moment.  Stuck in the dark, the characters debated the best way to start a light - rummage for flint and steel and light a torch, or just cast a light spell?  There was the sound of shuffling feet and a putrid smell overpowered the aroma of the feast - and what was that new noise?  Teeth chattering and champing?  (In Scooby Doo terms, the 12 pairs of eyeballs in the dark - the party - was joined by like a dozen more pairs of bloodshot glassy eyes all around them.  Everybody blinked.)

Mordecai cast a light spell and the group was face to face with a dozen twitching zombie villagers.  Fun!  "C'mon, this is easy, we totally got this one," said the fighters, and they waded into combat, forming a loose front line while the clerics 'turned'.  That's odd, remarked the clerics - we can usually turn zombies.  Mordecai banged his holy symbol on the side, is this thing on?  Batteries dead?  It got stranger when the hacked off limbs of the zombies kept moving, wriggling on the ground and grabbing ankles and legs in an iron grip.  "Definitely not regular zombies".

That's right, bitches, welcome to Ravenloft!  Where even the zombies are 4th and 5th level monsters… and they just keep coming.  Muhahahaha hahahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahahaha hahahahaha hahahaha.

Maybe I didn't laugh that much - they beat down the souped-up zombies fairly quickly, and then scouted the nearby areas - including finding a secret door behind the pipe organ, and a floating vampire mannequin that was also totally ripped off from a Scooby Doo episode.

Our second night ended with some basic exploration, and a discussion about what Fred and Daphne would *really* be doing when the Scooby crew split up to explore a haunted house.  (If the Mystery Machine is a rockin', don't come a knockin').  That inspired Moore to chime in, "If we split up to explore, I'm with Ireena".

See you next time.