Tabletop Gaming Feeds

 A Leigh Brackett-style Mars campaign for an Old-School Renaissance (OSR) game moves away from the "superheroic" feel of John Carter and toward a gritty, "Sword & Science" noir. Her Mars is a dying, dusty world where ancient civilizations are being encroached upon by cynical Earth corporations and hard-boiled mercenaries.This blog entry picks right up from OSR Mars Campaign Update :Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Kabuki Kaiser
Self Published
OSR
Hex Crawls - Levels 1-whatever. Don’t fuck up

Danger Will Robinson! The vibe here is how I would live my life if I could. So, you know, I don’t think this is a based review but I’m aware of my love for the vibe.

Fly Me to the Moon gives you the fantastique Moon stitched into a majestic hexcrawl where each entry promises sleepless hours of adventure and d’Amberville conundrums, a moose head of a Moon in 168 hexes compatible with everything OSR from Basic to Advanced.

This 169 page hexcrawl uses about 120 pages to present about 160 hexes to explore on the moon. This is a romantic moon, with every lunar pop culture reference present. Fanciful, it remind a hex crawl, presenting situations that the party can involve themselves in. And, thusly, like most hexcrawls, you must bring to it your murderous intent to play as is. IE: hex connections/an overall thrust are weak Which isn’t a bad thing is your group like to loot The Keep in B2 cause that’s where the most XP is.

I think perhaps we need to talk about three things here. The vibe of THIS hexcrawl and then what a decent hexcrawl is in the context of if this is a decent hexcrawl. What I’m not going to do this time around is cover the evocative nature of the writing and formatting. The evocative writing is fine to good and the formatting is plain, with decent cross-references present, and at about two paragraphs to a column per, written in such a way that it is terse enough and “front loaded” enough to run pretty on the fly.

This is a romantic moon, as is romanticism, mixed in with pop culture. Every type. Cheese. Verne. About a dozen different selenites, including the Selenites, from every incarnation fo media. And, yes, this includes Apollo, the mission. Romantic as in what I’ve always wanted The Dreamlands to be. 

In one hex you stumble across a hunting party. “The party consists of eight hunters led by Turambol, a petty lord clad in a star–studded pyjama, and accompanied by two court poets, both of whom ride zebras and strum luths as they travel. Turambol himself rides a white gazelle with long horns.” Fanciful, in places. If the moon has ever had a reference, in media or culture, dating back three thousand years, then it’s probably in here. And it’s going to have a fanciful bend to it. Think slim arcing towers, silver and blue light and so on. 

We have incursions from other lands. An ambassador from other words, or references to Emperor Norton. Dreamy, but with consequences. “The Rotunda of Earthly Mirrors, a monumental structure of slate and alabaster tipped with a metallic silvery dome stands atop the Mons Piton’s highest peak here. The rotunda is visible from afar, its silhouette contrasting with the darkness of space.” Thematically pretty much everything matches perfectly here. 

A few notes on mechanics before I move on to the nature of a hex crawl. The map is nothing, really. Imagine a black page with hex numbers in it. There’s your terrain. There’s a light background image on the map but it’s artistic. What “travel type” we should consider the moon is not noted, although there are some low gravity notes. Whatever “These basaltic plains lie buried

beneath silt, ash, and black sand” is/are. Except in some places we have wildflower meadows, cultivated fields, groves of fungi and a land of chasms and canyons and the Marsh of Rot. No clue man, we’re just handwaving that. These are ten mile hexes, but mostly flat, I think? There is a landmark or two on the map, but, really, a better job at landmarks on the map would have been nice, as well as horizon stuff, to get players moving from hex to another with “in the distance you see” type of things. A better version of the map would solve most of my bitching here, maybe with a couple of travel/vision notes on it. 

And then, the nature of a hex crawl. What is its purpose? Dread has you wandering around, looking, essentially, for lairs, which contain loot, so you can level. Wilderlands, being a more platonic example of a classical hexcrawl, contains loot hexes as well as things for the party to exploit, or to get in to trouble with. More of a situational encounters, in that there is a situation to interact with … while you still look for personal gain to exploit. This is going to fall solidly in to the situational category, as you will meet a wide variety of people and encounter a large number of areas to find some gain in, either through looting or through making friends. There are lots of ogres wearing bejeweled crowns to talk to, to reference a favorite situation of mine in other adventures. Stab the potentially friendly dude to get the XP? Make friends? 

And this gets to the reference to The Keep in B2 earlier. Are you willing to murder hobo this place up? That would be a more traditional Wilderlands way to explore. Taking each hex individually and exploiting it. You’re going to need a party in the right mindset. And this succeeds admirably in that. You can rescue people/creatures and do some tasks for others if you are so inclined, and you can put the place to the sword and gather the loot also. 

What is lacking here is an overall plot. And I’m using that word very VERY loosely. Interconnections between the hexes. There are a few of those, but they feel intentional and constructed in a blunt way. 

I want to take this hex as an example: “t’s that time of the year again! Once more, the Flying Broom Acrobatics Competition has gathered next to an antique blue marble amphitheatre rising from the cloudy Mare” The Selenians here are excited about this. But no other Selenian encountered will mention it. There is no overview of a larger situations/situations going on that a DM can sprinkle in here and there to make the place seem more like the realm of intelligent beings that it is. There’s a loose “my enemy is the aphid-lord, please help me kill them”  but no larger … geopolitical context? Not in politics, perse, but in terms of larger situations to embroil yourself in. And no summary, anywhere, to help a DM toss some things in. A page of this would have really helped, and perhaps a little more work on the hexes to help connect them just a bit more. Again, some of this DOES exist, but it feels isolated. So, read a 120 pages and take some notes. 

As noted, I like this vibe/theming a lot. It’s consistent. And it provides interactivity for a party willing to mix things up. As a view of the moon, in terms of theming and encounters, I would be hard pressed to believe someone could do better. The map/mechanics are a let down, and it would be a much stronger product with a little summary of situations to help the DM interconnect things more and/or a few larger situations embedded i a stronger way. 

Experienced murder hobos are gonna have a field day. 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is listed as fourteen pages and although a few are blank pages you do indeed to get see several hexes and get a sense of the style of encounters you are to encounter, both in romanticism and in hex-crawl nature, so, good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540802/fly-me-to-the-moon?1892600

A question came to mind during this. How do you handle “hidden depth” of resources? This happened in several places in this, and in other adventures as well. A platonic example here may be some mushroom that, if you kill, you could make their large caps in to umbrellalike things that act as feather falling. How do you telegraph this to the party? I mean when you encounter a note like “The spleens can be used to make an amulet of proof against poison.” Great! How do we know that? A simple DM note to the party, maybe during combat, that they seem to fall slower than they should?

Paul Wolfe of Mystic Bull Games is starting up a Sword & Sorcery fiction magazine called Swords Against! The first issue is being crowdfunded now. It features stories by familiar names including Michael Stackpole and Dariel R. A. Quiogue, and interior art by Jason Sholtis (presumably among others).

If that alone isn't enough to convince to you, Jason and I have short comic that will appear in the issue now that that stretch goal has been surpassed. It's called Spells Against Civility. Here's the pitch:

Harken to this tale of two rival wizards, apprenticed together, now alike in Art, pettiness, and vainglory...

Marzomon, once the Golden, former hero whose reputation fell under shadow of cowardice and party abandonment. He now ekes out a living trading on his former glories and hawking dubious male enhancement magics.

Hokus the Black, who sold his soul and other vital constituencies piecemeal to various diabolic entities and must stay ahead of his creditors as he seeks to overcome his rival. 

If any of the above sounds cool to you--and particularly if all of it does--then head over to backerkit and give some support!

 Thirteen Parsecs: Beyond the Solar Frontier is a toolkit-style science fiction tabletop RPG designed by Jason Vey and published by Elf Lair Games. Released in 2024, it is the third pillar in their "trilogy" of core games, following Night Shift (modern horror) and Wasted Lands (fantasy).+1

 Mixing the "Raygun Gothic" surrealism of C.L. Moore’s North West of Earth with the grimy, claustrophobic body horror of The Red Room and The New Flesh creates a campaign setting that is essentially "Cyberpunk at the Edge of Cosmic Madness."In this world, the frontier of space isn't a high-tech utopia; it’s a decaying, visceral nightmare where the laws of physics are as fragile as the human Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The B/X Carousing Procedure

FRONT (3x5) — B/X CAROUSING (HOUSE PROCEDURE)

1) SPEND (gold is gone):

   Light:    50 gp × level

   Standard: 100 gp × level

   Hard:     200 gp × level

2) INTENT (matters on high rolls):

   Rumors / Contacts / Heat Dump / Blow Off Steam

3) ROLL:

   2d6 + CHA

4) BAND:

   2–5  TROUBLE

   6–8  MIXED

   9–11 GOOD

   12+  GREAT

5) BASE RUMORS (always, by spend):

   Light 1 / Standard 2 / Hard 3

TROUBLE (2–5): +Roll 1 Trouble

   Heat Dump: reroll Trouble once (must take new)

   Steam: roll 2 Troubles, take worse

MIXED (6–8): choose 1

   Complication OR Owed Favor OR Contact-with-a-Want

GOOD (9–11): add by Intent

   Rumors: +1 rumor OR upgrade 1 to STRONG

   Contacts: +1 Contact

   Heat Dump: reduce Heat 1 step

   Steam: small boon

GREAT (12+): add by Intent

   Rumors: +2 rumors OR (1 STRONG +1)

   Contacts: Strong Contact + boon

   Heat Dump: reduce Heat 1 step + safe contact

   Steam: bigger boon

OPTIONAL XP:

   XP = 10% of gold spent (cap 200 × level)

BACK (3x5) — QUICK TABLES

RUMORS (d12)

1 Odd coins buyer       2 Paying for fresh graves       3 Missing guide/map

4 Watch attention        5 Noble servant hiring           6 Shrine lit at night

7 Rival crew hurt         8 Healer wiped out                 9 Road “curse”

10 Locked cellar         11 Torchlight in tower            12 Bounty on the impossible

TROUBLE (d12)

1 Brawl enemy                                               2 Pickpocket (lose +10% spend)

3 Public scene (-1 reactions 1 week)            4 Owed favor (fixer)

5 Property damage (+50 gp×lvl or feud)     6 Bad bet promise

7 Offended faction                                         8 Watch questions

9 Duel challenge                                            10 Hangover day (lose morning)

11 Tagalong NPC                                          12 Marked by rivals

 Ah, the Pre-Cataclysmic Age. Before the oceans drank Atlantis, and before the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of—and a king named Kull. This blog entry picks right up from Kull era Serpent Men Relics & Treasures Table For a Sword & Sorcery Castles & Crusades rpg CampaignTo capture the specific vibe of Robert E. Howard’s Valusia, you need more than justNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

I picked up a few comics this weekend. Here they are.

I got this Toxic Avengers book because the cover looked fun. I figured why not? I do like the interior art by Tristan Wright.

Eventually I'll read it.

I will never pay money for any of these Ultraverse comics... unless they have a Dan Brereton cover. Putting his art on your cover is like reaching into my pocket and taking my money.

But the interiors... I mean, no shade the creators and all that... but this shit is shite.

I tried to read a few pages but it was difficult. I know this is like mid-story. It's just irritating to be thrown into an epic and expected to buy a whole line of comics and respect all these characters you've never seen before as if they were classic icons of superheroes. Spoiler alert: it did not work out for Malibu.

This Thundarr #1 just sang to me. I love that cover art by Michael Cho (one of MANY ALTERNATE COVERS... but that's a whole other rant).

The real treasures I found! I got that fat Nexus book for $2 and that complete Eternals for $5. Amazing. This is what flea markets and vendor malls are for. I'm actually excited to read these! I might never read any of the comics I mentioned before this, but I'll probably read Eternals (I've never read it before).

So yeah, that's my little haul. Got me in a comics mood.

 This campaign for Castles & Crusades uses the "Conquistadors of Mictlan" line by Antediluvian Miniatures to create a "Lost World" pulp-fantasy setting. This 'Lost World' Pulp setting has become an Inner Earth level. We replaced our party's numbers who had been killed last game with several explorers.  This leg of the campaign picks right up from Aethel, the Sunken Core Inner Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Original Video: https://youtu.be/npZHmv9OeNU

THE THREE QUESTIONS THAT BUILD A FACTION FAST

Whenever you make a faction—dungeon or wilderness or city—ask three questions:

What do they want?

Not “what do they believe.” Not “their backstory.”

What do they want this week?

What do they have?

Soldiers, gold, information, magic, a monster, a legal charter, the only clean well in town—something real.

What are they afraid of?

Because fear creates urgency. Urgency creates action. Action creates play.

Write those three answers on an index card and you are 80% done.

Now you add the one thing.

Who do they hate… and who do they need?

Faction Card Template (steal this):

Name (short, usable at the table)

Want (one sentence)

Have (one sentence)                                                                  

Fear (one sentence)

Tell (how the players recognize them fast)

Then add:

One ally

One enemy

One job they’d pay for

By Dale L Houston
Duck and Crow press
OSR
Level 3? Tourney/One-Shot

You have a treasure map that strongly suggests there is a pile of loot for some forgotten god just waiting to be extracted from Nightmaw Cave. The locals are all like “don’t go in there because the cave is cursed.” WHo are you going to believe? Idiot villagers or your map. Grab your sword, ready your spells, ignore all better judgement and prepare to delve!

This twenty page adventure features about 21 rooms in a vertical dungeon with … billions of bats. As a tournament adventure it succeeds well, being interesting with special mechanics and a scoring system. Nicely evocative and with special encounters that don’t feel set-piecy, I feel the designers charms are lost on the tourney market.

If I write an adventure and tell you up front its AI slop with no real value and you should not buy it, then is it fair game to review it any other way? Likewise, if someone writes a tournament/one-shot adventure and advertise it that way is it fair for Brycy Bryce to bitch/review it any other way? Fuck if I know, but I do know that I’d love to see some real adventures from this designer and/or they are doing a right bangup job in being the GOLD standard of tournament play.

Cover? Fucking great. Love that bat on the left with the red mouth and the shocked expression. The map layout here? Fucking great. It’s got verticality to it. Either small rises between rooms, think climbing up to a ledge, or shafts up/down between rooms. A traditional map is supplemented by a pointcrawl map which is one of the better uses of a pointcrawl map, in this vertical environment.

The adventure introduces two new elements. The first is climbing/up down. Securing ropes through freeclimbing and/or the people behind you climbing those ropes. Basically an unsecured vs a secured climb, that can be an easy route or a hard route. We’re making some “climbing checks” here. Clever monkey, labeling it all OSR systems and then sticking in your favorite modern contrivances. Anyway, you’re doing some climbing in places. Then we’ve got this Bat Cloud mechanic. Certain rooms have LOTS of bats in them. The more light you carry the more likely you are to set them atwitter, which results in a Take Damage Every Round system. 1 point for a PC, 1d3 if you’ve got a light. So, maybe, you cut down on your light sources in order to have a lesser chance of setting them off. So, you’re going to maybe fall in a hole in the ground or miss a ceiling hole/climb/exit, or have more trouble “searching” by increasing the difficulty. Ahum. No, I have confirmed that there is no 5e version of this. There’s a few other weird things going on mostly through the wandering table, crystal rooms, “The Song of the Night” and such. It;s a good mix of eerie and mysterious. The entire adventure is supported by a one page town, if that, with the demeanor of “defeated” and a sheriff who will pay you 1000gp to NOT go in the dungeon and just leave. Cantankerous, clever, and always eating mutton or something else greasy. That’s a great fucking NPC! Or “Morgan Krawk: Minister of the Sepulcher of the Holy Carcass. Balding with long hair. Excellent elocution. Steals from offering plate. Doesn’t like Witch Gulbon and thinks Sheriff Johns is incompetent.” man, I wish every notable NPC in an adventure were written like this! And the town is really just a blow off, a a place to enjoy the rumors and get warned off by the sheriff, which, is a great little bit of preamble to the adventure. 

Rooms have a couple of sentences up front that summative them. And they can get purple sometimes “A sour smell of guano and fear wafts from the darkness.” Sour guano is great, but fear is a bit purple, yes? “The squeak of bats is deafening. Ankle-deep guano crawling with insects covers the floor. Stalagmites dot the chamber.” Noice! How about a creature description? “A billion bats, eyes glowing red, circle a towering creature. A humanoid-bat giant, a sword jammed into each eye, pivots enormous ears, and emits a piercing shriek!” And, same dude, in the appendix “15’ tall bat-human hybrid. Eyes have been gouged out with swords, wings are ragged, covered in filth; it sheds bloated maggots.” Maggots for the win! But, nice touch with the swords jammed in his eyes bit. Moving some of the appendix description to the room would have been better, I think, so we don’t have to consult two places, but, whatever. Descriptions are solid.

Magic items are great, although, I might comment, wasted on the fact that this is a oneshot and/or tourney adventure (with scoring provided! Get loot, explore the dungeon, break the curse)

There’s a miss here and there. One room has a living statue in it. Pretty much all we get is “The living statue can barely interact, its pro- gramming corrupted with age.” t’s supposed to be “standing guard” but there’s nothing like that present. It almost feels like something was left out. 

“The Stone: The hum and vibrations emanate from the oval stone, as do slight variations in temperature. This is the stone egg-coffin of an ancient Ophidian praefectus. Opening the egg-coffin will flood the chamber with malignant energy causing 1d10+10 damage to every living thing in this chamber each Turn. The bones of the praefectus will writhe and release this poison for 1000 years.” Well, that don’t seem good! This is, I think, a decent example of the interactivity present, as well, perhaps, that statue. There are things to look at. There are things to open and search. The Man Bat is introduced to you by a bloody rabbit carcass dropping to the floor at your feet from the ceiling. Perhaps, we might call it, a great intro song to entering the ring. The adventure does a great job with that, as well as with other things that seem weird to poke and prod and look at and wonder about. Which is to say, it’s a hack. I mean, yeah, you need to navigate the ups and downs and not trigger the bats, and it’s a tourney adventure, so, you know, ok I guess. It’s it certainly not, though, and empty guard room with 6 kobolds in it. As hacks go it does a decent job of presenting an interesting environment and interesting creatures with some fun bits here and there, like the dead rabbit, to introduce the combat. But, in terms of mysteries to solve and things to do, it’s a hack.

And I don’t think I’m complaining about that, at least not in a tourney adventure and not given the quality of the window dressing. This could, however, make things difficult, in future adventures, when moving over from a tourney/one-shot framing to a more exploratory/longer-term adventure mindset. But, that’s a bitch for a future review. I’m Regerting this one, just because Tourney/one-shot is niche, IMO. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages, a good mix, and shows you encounters and some additional specials. Good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540652/bloodbath-dungeon-1-the-cursed-cave-of-one-billion-bats?1892600

 The MADOX-01 (Metal Armor Differential-Operational Experiment) is the quintessential "heavy metal" power suit. In the context of the Hostile RPG (which uses the 2D6 Cepheus Engine/Traveller framework), the MADOX-01 functions as a prototype Heavy Powered Armor unit designed for urban pacification and anti-tank roles.

 Combining the "Big Three" of planetary romance—Burroughs, Brackett, and Moore—creates a Mars (or Barsoom, or Ma'adim) that is a haunting, neon-and-dust graveyard of a world. In an OSR (Old School Essentials, Dungeon World, or Worlds Without Number) context, this is a "Science-Fantasy" setting where the "dungeons" are decaying crystal cities and the "dragons" are multi-legged predators or Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Wandering a sun-scorched wasteland shouldn't just be about thirst and exhaustion—it’s about the bizarre, the ancient, and the deadly. Here is a D100 table designed for a gritty Sword & Sorcery setting (think Conan, John Carter, or Dark Sun). This blog post picks right up here from Kull era Serpent Men Relics & Treasures Table For a Sword & Sorcery Castles & Crusades rpg Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Combining Hostile (a gritty, industrial sci-fi setting) with Alien and The Bio Booster Armor Guyver creates a terrifying "Bio-Industrial Horror" aesthetic. In this world, the "Company" isn't just looking for a biological weapon—they are looking for a way to merge human consciousness with ancient, god-like weaponry. This blog entry picks right up right from The Mission Encounter: The Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

In C&C, all class abilities and saving throws are resolved with Siege: A stat-based saving-throw and class ability/skill mechanic.

Of your core stats: Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha, two are primes and the rest are secondaries (there's an option for tertiaries as well; also of note, humans start with three primes). Primes start at 12, secondaries start at 18 (with tertiaries it is 12, 15, 18, a better option in my opinion). These are target numbers -- like classic saving throws.

To make a Siege check, you add your level and your stat bonus to a d20 roll to meet/beat that Siege target number. Further, that target number will probably be modified by the level of the threat, such as saving against a spell cast by a 7th level wizard or disarming a trap set by a 10th level NPC. In many ways, that's logical, but, as you gain levels, you will have to face tougher threats, which leads to the following reality: The more levels you gain, the more skilled you become...and...the more challenging the traps, spells, and locks also become, so... are you really improving? Sure, if you encounter a 1st-level trap, but, this has been a problem since 3rd edition.

The beauty of older systems, with regard to class abilities, is that you actually got better at what you did without the fear of encountering more complicated obstacles. Locks were locks, poison was poison, spells were spells, and traps were traps. Period. Sure, you would occasionally encounter some kind of modifier, e.g., save at -4 against this or that, but that was kind of rare. It was good to know that if you had a 70% chance to disarm a trap... you had a 70% chance to disarm a trap.

Now, I don't want to bash C&C (as I like the game) but Siege can break down, making your base primes unstoppable by around 7-9th level, practically mandating more complex obstacles.

Example: 8th level thief, 18 dex (+3) -- prime (12). That's +11 (level 8, + 3 for dex) to your d20 roll, in essence, the base target number becomes 1 (12 - 8 - 3 = 1) Unless this thief (rogue) meets more complex threats, all successes are automatic, unless you count a natural 1 as an auto-fail. Now the GM, must, to keep things interesting, assign an almost arbitrary difficulty level to your roll. "Oh btw,  that lock was built by a 15th level locksmith!" 

Yeah, no.

Another thing, I know it sounds logical that higher level wizards cast tougher spells, but better saving-throws as you leveled up was a specific counter-weight to the powerhouses that high level wizards became.

• Palladium Fantasy handles this fairly well, with wizards gradually becoming better at casting; their spell's save number improves by 1 every 3 or 4 levels of experience.

And also, should higher level wizards cast tougher spells in a game where each spell is a specific magical formula designed for a specific purpose (Vancian!) regardless of the spell-caster's experience? -- But that's a whole separate topic, because... D&D is actually quasi-Vancian; some spells do in fact scale with caster level. Otherwise, you'd have a 1d6 fireball spell, a 2d6 fireball spell, a 3d6 fireball spell, and so on.

Also, I'm a fan of the notion that if a thief makes his stealth roll, whether moving silently or hiding in shadows, then he succeeds, period. No perception checks. The thief's failure IS the perception check.

And so, here is my Save Redux for C&C (and any version of the game really)...

A more standard saving-throw/ability-check system. The target numbers start the same: Primes: 12, Secondaries: 15, Tertiaries: 18. Subtract any ability modifiers. And those are your fixed saves. These saves improve by 1 every 3 levels. Except for rare circumstances, your roll is NOT affected by caster-level, monster level, or artificially inflated locks/trap levels, etc. See below...

•  0 at levels 1-3
• -1 at levels 4-6
• -2 at levels 7-9
• -3 at levels 10-12
• -4 at levels 13-15
• -5 at levels 16-18
• -6 at levels 19-21
• -7 at levels 22-24

Your Save numbers are frozen at 24th level (and no save can ever go below 2) never to improve (unless your core stats improve, maybe). For any progression beyond this (such as an Immortal system I've fiddled around with for levels 25-36) you would roll with advantage (if for some reason you don't know what advantage is, it's rolling 2d20 and keeping the best result).
We'll use a rogue as an example since they use Siege more than any other class (with comparisons to AD&D saves): 
1st level human rogue...
                                                        New Siege Save                    AD&D

• Str:   12          Tertiary               Siege: 18                  Poison/Death:  13
• Dex: 18 (+3)  Prime                  Siege:   9                  Paralyze/Poly: 12
• Con: 13 (+1)  Secondary           Siege: 14              Rod/Staff/Wand: 14
• Int:   12          Prime                  Siege: 12                             Breath:  16
• Wis:   9          Prime                  Siege: 12                                Spell:  15
• Cha: 14 (+1)  Secondary           Siege: 14

                                                          Average: 13.1                      Average: 14

At 13th level, he looks like this:

• Str:   12          Tertiary               Siege: 14                  Poison/Death:  10
• Dex: 18 (+3)  Prime                  Siege:   5                  Paralyze/Poly:   9 
• Con: 13 (+1)  Secondary           Siege: 10              Rod/Staff/Wand:   8
• Int:   12          Prime                  Siege:   8                             Breath:  13
• Wis:   9          Prime                  Siege:   8                                Spell:   9
• Cha: 14 (+1)  Secondary           Siege: 10

                                                         Average: 9.166                      Average: 9.8

At 24th level, good for sure, but still vulnerable...

• Str:   12          Tertiary               Siege: 11                 Poison/Death:    8
• Dex: 18 (+3)  Prime                  Siege:   2                Paralyze/Poly:    7
• Con: 13 (+1)  Secondary           Siege:   7            Rod/Staff/Wand:    4
• Int:   12          Prime                  Siege:   5                            Breath:  11
• Wis:   9          Prime                  Siege:   5                               Spell:   5
• Cha: 14 (+1)  Secondary           Siege:   7

                                                        Average: 6.166                      Average: 7
Now keep in mind, C&C's saving throws categories are linked to core stats as follows (with some spells affecting different stats):

• Str:    Paralysis, Constriction
• Dex:  Breath Weapon, Traps
• Con:  Disease, Energy Drain, Poison
• Int:    Arcane Magic, Illusion
• Wis:  Divine Magic, Confusion, Gaze, Polymorph, Petrification
• Cha:  Death, Charm, Fear

(I have reworked these saves to my fit own logic, including shifting death saves to your best save and I also reassigned lock-picking and trap-removal to Intelligence; Dex is for avoiding sprung traps). My version with Death being your best save...

• Str:    Paralysis, Constriction
• Dex:  Breath Weapon, Traps
• Con:  Disease, Energy Drain, Poison, Polymorph
• Int:    Arcane Magic, Illusion & Confusion, Lock-Picking, Trap Finding/Removal, Searching
• Wis:  Divine Magic, Fear, Gaze, Petrification
• Cha:  Charm, Loyalty, Morale

C&C gives options for alternate stat bonuses, such as the more modern ones started in 3rd edition. These would only change some numbers by 1.
The above rogue is only slightly better than his AD&D counterpart because of stat bonuses, which other than wisdom, are not applied to saves in AD&D. Your typical fighter would be slightly worse off in Save Redux.
Under Save Redux™ (which can actually be applied to any version of the game) if you want to attempt something that falls under the jurisdiction of another class, like thief abilities, tracking, and other non-mystical stuff, treat all stats like tertiary stats with zero level adjustment; stat bonuses do apply though, so: 18 minus stat bonus. Also, it gets one point harder with every attempt. So a fighter with a +1 Dex bonus (I prefer Int here, but whatever) trying to pick a lock would have to roll a 17+ no matter what his level is. And if he fails, his next attempt is 18+, and if he fails again and tries again, 19+... that would be 30 minutes (3 turns) wasted, and at least one wandering monster check.; (C&C doesn't use "turns" but you probably do). And you could rule that once you hit 20, it ain't gonna happen.
And speaking of monsters...
In C&C, monsters have two saves, physical and mental; one or both can be primary (secondary takes the slot of tertiary). So, that would be 12 or 18 adjusted by the level chart above. Examples...

• Gargoyle (5HD): P:11, M:17
• Young Adult-Adult Green Dragons (10-12HD): P:9, M:9
• Titan (17HD): P:7, M:7
• Goblin (1HD): P:12, M:18

Monsters are slightly more vulnerable under Save Redux™, however, percentage-wise, they're not too far off from AD&D 1st edition.
Now just for fun, I'll take it further and give monsters three saves because a lumbering beast can have loads of fortitude but no agility, so: Fort/Reflex/Will, with varying combinations of primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries. The above four monsters perhaps now look like...

• Gargoyle (5HD): F:11, R:14, W:17
• Young Adult-Adult Green Dragons (10-12HD): F:9, R:12, W:9
• Titan (17HD): F:7, R:10, W:7
• Goblin (1HD): F:15, R:12, W:18

The beauty of Save Redux™ is that it's cleaner; there's no math, and it still gives you that collision of old and new.
All for now.

The moathouse model for the Battle for the Moathouse 

Finding myself with a some rare free time, I dove back into my unfinished blog posts, and found this one covering my highlights from the first official day of Gary Con XVII, Thursday March 19th, 2025, where I played in two wargames and ran an RPG. Better late than never...

See the preceding post in this series here: Day 0

(1) For my first game in the morning, I played in the epic Battle for the Moathouse, a Chainmail scenario that recreates  a piece of Greyhawk history; specifically, the assault that creates the Ruined Moathouse in T1 The Village of Hommlet. This was refereed by the indefatigable Paul Stormberg, who organizes the entire Legends of Wargaming hall and game series every year.

Convention event listing description:

"Legends of Wargaming event! This Chainmail fantasy battle recreates one of the battles fought in the greater struggle against the Temple of Elemental Evil. After the Battle of Emridy Meadows and the Temple itself, a small force marched on the Moathouse, an outpost of Elemental Evil. Join the forces of weal and their righteous cause or serve Elemental Evil to crush the armies of good!"

I was on the side on the Forces of Woe (Elemental Evil), defending the Moathouse against the Forces of Weal. If I recall correctly at this late date, the game fairly faithfully recreated the course of the original events, with Weal doing pretty well storming the Moathouse. Woe was still in control of the Moathouse at the end of the allotted time, which I think was technically a win for us (i.e., surviving a certain number of rounds), but if the game had gone on just a little longer our leaders would have been forced to flee.

Photos:

The lineup for the Forces of Woe

The Forces of Weal advance on the Moathouse



Woe's Troll goes down on the battlefield

(2) In the afternoon I ran my Party of Balrogs OD&D scenario, the first of two games I was scheduled to run. This was second time running Party, the first being the year before at Gary Con 2024. That game had a great group of players, but they completed the scenario more quickly than I had anticipated, so I revised/added a few things to it for this year. 

Here's my convention blurb for the game:

"The 1974 D&D rules allowed for a character to be "virtually anything", even a balrog. This adventure takes this to 11 by having *all* of the PCs be balrogs! Ensorcelled to serve a wizard deep in a megadungeon, the spell is now broken. Can you get past the other guardians and make the wizard pay? This game by the Zenopus Archives celebrates 50 years of D&D. Balrog PCs provided."

I again had a great group of players, including one fellow who had played in some of my games previously. They undertook their mission with gusto and creative play and were successful in their mission. I'm running this scenario again this year at Gary Con 2026; the event page for it is here: Party of Balrogs GC 2026.

Unfortunately, I didn't take or receive any table photos for this game.

Michael Mornard, who played the original Balrog character in Greyhawk, happened to be GMing the next game I was scheduled to play (see below). To show my appreciation for originating the concept of Balrogs as PCs, I found him before his game and was able to introduce myself and buy him a beer to thank him for his inspiration.

(3) My evening game was Michael Mornard's Battle on the Ice, another Chainmail game, but historical rather than fantasy, based on the actual battle of the same name. This was played on the famous sand table in the Legends of Wargaming hall, with white coloring added to simulate the ice. I was part of the team on the side of Prince Nevsky, who won the actual battle, but unlike the real battle, we didn't fight on the actual ice, but rather tried to defend a position on an island, which probably contributed to our loss. However, our biggest mistake was separating our commander from his cavalry troops, without realizing this would render him much more vulnerable.

Convention Blurb: 

"Legends of Wargaming sand table event! This Chainmail historical scenario will be conducted on the Gary Con Sand Table. Refight the glorious battle of the Teutonic Knights vs. Prince Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod! The referee will be none other than Michael Mornard an early participant in LGTSA games and the playtesting of the Dungeons & Dragons game."

Photos:

Mike talking about the scenario prior to us placing our forces 

My team. I think Mike took this photo. I'm on the far right, wearing a Vecna tee.

The two opposing forces facing each other across the field



The other side advancing towards our island


Mike in action refereeing

Also in this series:

Gary Con 2025: Day 0

Gary Con 2025: Day 2 (forthcoming)

Previous Gary Con convention summaries:

Gary Con 2023 (unfinished): Day 0

Gary Con 2022: Day 1 --- Day 2 --- Days 3 and 4

Gary Con 2019 (unfinished): Day 1 --- Day 2 (part 1)

By Stephen Smith
Mr Smith Design
B/X
Levels 1-3

The farms and fields around Turnip Hill are being plundered. Desperate locals need heroes to investigate—and stop whatever’s threatening their livelihoods. A straight-forward job—but things have a way of getting complicated.

This four page adventure features a fourteen room dugout cave/dungeon/warren under a hill. Nicely evocative but it’s just a hack and doesn’t really lean in to the Bone Tomahawk aesthetic. 

Fuck you. It’s my blog and I’m clearly intrigued by the possibilities that a shorter page count could imply. We all know it’s not going to fulfill all of my hopes and dreams (well, I don’t …) but we must carry on anyway, the search for meaning in a word cruelly devoid of it. I mean, how many fucking pages do you need to stab shit if you’ve got a dozen rooms and are getting eight or so to a page? Maybe six, I’ve decided. If we accept six to eight to page, with a page of monster stats and shit, then a couple of pages of Village Investigation and/or Overland Travel. Hmmm, no, I should think more about the perfect ratio of leadin/support and appendices to encounters. 

“We’re at our wit’s end. For the past few weeks something’s been making off with livestock and supplies. No tracks, no broken fences—just gone. Folks around here say they’ve seen shadows in the fields after dusk—the unnatural kind. I don’t know if I believe all that, but if we lose much more, our families won’t make it through the season” So we’re framing this as Heroes rather than adventurers, but, whatever. This isn’t bad at all, but that’s all that there is. No one to talk to, and no guidance on investigation in order to eventually find an entrance to a warren. Well, there’s a wanderer table for above ground which will lead you there, but each of the four entries literally leads you there. “You hear wind whistling from the entrance” or “You see a druid observing a hole.” And why the fuck doesn’t this fucking druid do something? Oh, because he’s a druid. Fucking neutrals. Anyway, it’s clear that I’m a little disappointed in the above ground portion. It feels like there was a page available so something was tossed in to fill it. Which means I feel like this was a stunt dungeon: majesty revealed in four pages! Look, use the page count you need to bring the work alive, just don’t fucking pad it out. That seems simple enough. 

The map here is above average for being so small. A little isometric, it gives a nice “warren under the hill” vibe via the map/art style used. There’s a great number of ramps, same level stairs, columns and such on it. It also fails somewhat in being a map, with some of the room exist not being shown in the best way, as well as a lack of walls (doors imply walls, I guess) that would get in the way of the visual impact. How close to a Rothko can you get before your patron starts to question if you’re doing a portrait of their spouse? This one is probably ok if you dig through the rooms first to better marks exits, Yeah, I do like the map even though its simple.

There’s some decent descriptions inside. The rooms all have these tree roots and things growing through the ceiling. “The air is damp, musty, and smells of soil. Footing is uncertain—shifting between eroded flagstones, soft patches of earth, and scattered debris.” or “The floor of this wide corridor is extremely broken and low-hanging roots require frequent ducking. Loose stones make the uneven stairs somewhat precarious..” That’s not terrible. “Wide” isnt great, but we’ve got low-hanging roots and loose stones on a set of stairs. It’s the modern style of presenting something that COULD be called read-aloud but isn’t labeled as such so could be DM notes. It does, in places, lead to over-reveal if used as read-aloud. “Then don’t use it as rad-aloud.” Ok. Another point toward that is the lack of creatures in the faux-read-aloud. These come later. So, in essence, this kind of room overview up top, then a little listing like “3 Giant Centipedes drop from the ceiling” and then a mechanics note or two like “-1 hit from swinging weapons” or a list of treasure to be found or something else. It’s not a bad format. The weakness, in all formats, being that they ARE formats and the designer always needs to keep a little willingness around to deviate from it in order to achieve the needs of the room/encounter/adventure/whatever. 

This is a hack. Monsters in the room attack. Not much in the way of interactivity beyond that. D&D has a long history of hacks, but the more interesting play expands upon that a bit. The hack as a fail condition is also a meme, but something closer to that. Things to explore and play with and so on. Something to discover, if only a hidden treasure behind a waterfall. 

But is it a GOOD hack? Well, there’s little in the way of an order of battle. Which means essentially no order of battle. And while the adventure makes a point of the lack of lack in this place the monsters also don’t seem to recoil to respond or get warned by light and react appropriately. Circle the wagons, do the defensive thing, use the halls to get behind people … nothing of any of that. Well, there is this: “If Chieftain loses 3 or more HP, he sends up an alarm-whistle. Any remaining Grimlings will add to the fray in 3d6 rounds.” There’s the extent. 

This thing is certainly moving in the right direction, much more than most of the endless line of adventures coming out. It’s tight, the writing tries to be evocative, the map is nicely evocative and things are least themed to a non-generic degree with the burrow/tree root/dugout thing going on. Slave to the format, be it the encounter format or the page count, means having to focus more on form over function, to the detriment of the adventure. Also, loot feels lite for B/X.

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview. I don’t care if it’s $2 and four pages, I still want a decent preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/548444/trouble-at-turnip-hill?1892600

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) through Crisis! This week, I read the comics released the week of February 14, 1985, just before my 12th birthday.

Omega Men #25: Klein and McManus/Smith are in place as the new creative team, and they start the story so in media res I had to check to make sure I hadn't missed an issue. Nimbus contends with an insane X'hal and her son Auron, while the Omega Men, now led by Kalista and Tigorr, and contending with spider-themed invaders to Vega who aren't identified in this issue, but I assume are the Spider Guild, who also appear in the back-up.
In "Tales of Vega" by Moore and O'Neil, the Spider Guilds invasion of a world is thwarted by the giant inhabitants moving too slowly to take notice of them.

Amethyst #5: Estrada is back on pencils this issue. We pick up where we left off with Amy and Emmy in the hands of a headless robot made. With the help of Taffy the dog, they managed to destroy the robot. They start investigating the device Carnelian has apparently been building, visiting an alternate Plantworld where Princess Amaryllis battles the Dark Maple. Carnelian finds them and tells them he got stuck here and has been looking for a way back to Gemworld. Carnelian and Amethyst take the path he discovered, but it's not without dangers.

Arak Son of Thunder #44: This is another issue I bought off the spinner rack back in 1985. The Thomases and DeZuniga continue Arak's and friends' voyage to North America with Captain Re-Iz Hazz. They are sailing east to circumnavigate the globe (or go under the great turtle, as Arak explains it). They make a stop at the island of al-Hind, whether they are waylaid by a pirate with a grudge against their captain. He sales them to the island's corrupt priest as sacrifices for "Shiva." The priest transforms into a multi-armed monster in a ritual, but Arak manages to defeat him. 

Batman #383: Moench and Colan/Alcala present a somewhat humorous story of Bruce Wayne just needing to get some sleep after several busy days for both him and his alter ego. Unfortunately, responsibilities to his home, business, ward, and romantic life keep getting in the way. Finally, after an unplanned night out as Batman, he leans up against a gargoyle on the side of building to at least catch a nap, forgetting he had made dates with both Julia and Vicki the following night.

Flash #345: This issue erodes what little faith I had in the Flash's lawyer, Cecile Horton, and perhaps the entirety of the legal system in Central City. The prosecutor brings a surprise witness to the stand, Kid Flash, who testifies to a number of ways the Flash could have stopped Reverse Flash without killing him. Apparently, there isn't mandatory discovery in the DCU. Cecile handles that reasonably well but treats it like some devastating blow that I just don't see it as being. Then she does something real dumb. After spying on the Allens and discovering the Flash's secret ID, she plans to reveal it in open court--without telling the Flash what she's going to do. Somehow convincing the jury he had a strong motive to kill the Reverse Flash is going to get him found innocent? Anyway, she pulls off his mask in court but he doesn't look like Barry Allen! 

Jemm, Son of Saturn #9: Synn and Tull are both confident they duped the other in their recent deal, but we don't find out this issue which of either may be right. With knowledge of New Bhok, the White Saturnians make an attack. The Bhokian military has a super-weapon it has been eager to employ to wipe out the White Saturnians once and for all. Jemm, though, views himself as having responsibility to all Saturnians and destroyed the weapon. A renegade priest inflames a mob against and soon he is strung up for execution.  

Legion of Super-Heroes #10: The candidates for President of Earth have been drafted, and the Legion has assigned one of their members to guard them which proves a prudent move as Khundian agents try to assassinate them. In the process of defending a candidate, Invisible Kid reviews new powers--maybe teleportation? It turns out though, the Khunds have also target the current President Marte Allon, who locally has her son, Colossal Boy on hand to save the day. Meanwhile, Cosmic Boy announces a leave of absence to the Legion.

Star Trek #14: Barr and Sutton/Villagran pick up where they left off last issue, with Excelsior surrounded and about to be destroyed. Kirk and crew have another trick up their sleeve, though, and that involves the two Spocks in the cloaked Klingon bird of prey causing chaos while Excelsior gets her engines ready for a transwarp dash to safety. It works, then Kirk sends the Spocks and Konom as emissaries to the Klingon Emperor, offering them the means the check the Empire. Konom has to go through a painful interrogation to prove their information is legitimate, but in the end, it works.

Superman #406: This is a done-in-one by the Conways and Novick/Hunt, and like last month's Action Comics with Captain Strong, it sort of has the feel of an inventory story. The Daily Planet crew (including Lois) is featured prominently, and no mention is made of Galaxy Broadcasting or Lana. Mr. Mxyzptlk is up to hijinks and causes a crisis with a biomechanical worm designed to aid digging that the imp enlarges into a monster. With Metropolis threatened from underground, Mxy whammies Superman so that he passes his powers to others via touch. Once they figure out what's going on, Lois, Jimmy, and Perry, have to team-up with Superman to defeat the creature, but only after Mxy gets afraid the weakened Superman will be killed and calls the others in to help.

 Combining the high-octane, neon-noir espionage of Agents of W.R.E.T.C.H. with the visceral, body-horror evolution of New Flesh creates a campaign setting that is equal parts James Bond, Akira, and The Fly.In this world, the Cold War never ended; it just moved inside the human genome. This adventure picks up two years after events at the last session. T.H.E. Cat calls in the party who have Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0