Tabletop Gaming Feeds

 Thought I would share a health update with all y'all...

After about ten rounds of chemo, at least fifteen rounds of Keytruda, and four rounds of a nuclear treatment, my most recent scans show that the nuclear treatment, Lutathera, has actually stopped the tumors from growing on my spine, ribs and pelvis, and may in fact be shrinking them. We're working on getting another round of Lutathera to see if we can make more progress, but the fact is that they have stopped my cancer from growing. My original prognosis was that I wouldn't be here today, but I've actually started to substitute teach a few days a week when I'm feeling up to it, and I have some hope for hanging around a few more years. Thanks again for all of the prayers and support that you've sent my way, and for the support you've all given Mary and Grace as well. We truly appreciate it.

 The Adventurer's Backpack from Troll Lord Games is a major expansion for the Castles & Crusades role-playing game. It is primarily designed to streamline character creation and expand player options with a focus on equipment, classes, and magic.Core Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Originally published in 1980 for 1st Edition AD&D, C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is a perfect candidate for Castles & Crusades (C&C). Because C&C is built on the "Rosetta Stone" of the Siege Engine, it is largely compatible with 1E modules with minimal on-the-fly conversion.This picks right up from Aethel, the Sunken Core Inner Earth Sword & Sorcery Campaign Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Adapting the classic C1: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan to the Barrows & Borderlands (B&B) framework requires shifting the focus from standard dungeon crawling to a high-stakes, survival-horror "extraction" crawl. This blog post picks right up from Adapting X2 Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) By Tom Moldvay For Barrows & Borderlands RpgIn B&B, the primary antagonistNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Patrice Crespy
Kabuki Kaiser
OSR
Levels 1-4

It was bound to happen. Too many relics. Too many books. Too much past stacked in one place, the Monument Valley of scrolls and mouldy tomes. The Lucubrarium of Unobsolescence has gone wrong. In Bec–de–Corbin nearby, folk forget their names mid–sentence. Chalk–pale, traits blurred by scratches and hollow wrinkles, eyes sunk. Static. Howls in the night. The militia still stands at the keep and demands tolls, then forgets what it’s doing. The rain just won’t stop. Thugs move in, bold as daylight. And when night comes, the lights go out.

This 44 page digest adventure uses seven or eight pages to describe about forty locations in a town and in a two level library/abbey. You can tell what it is trying to do, but in spite of some great specificity it mostly fails to create the environment it is going for.

There’s this library place, including relics, with a small town around it. Some kind of memory eater/void monster shows up and people start forgetting their names. Some of them no longer have faces. Others are worse, their heads a ragged black blob and howling continually. You show up in town, make it to the library/abbey, and … do whatever. Loot the place for relics I guess. 

Kabuki has some decent ideas and can conjure up some great imagery. The whole “forget your own name” is a nice touch. The ragged face monsters and howling and so on are quite appealing to me, personally (ever since The Void supplement for 3.0, I was captivated by it. Who doesn’t love Munch? At one point one of the random atmosphere tables has “A white noble dress fit for a young lady, nailed to a wall, torn. THAT’S NOT ME, written across the chest in coal.” Well now, that’s a statement, isn’t it? There are little bits and pieces of shit like this scattered throughout that are just great imagery. 

Let us transition somewhat to the following entry. This particular location is a part of the “in town” section. “Falkenrot Manor Earl Falkenrot’s a ghoul — kept secret for ages by his family. When the Faceless came, they wandered off and left him here, locked down in the cellar. Half– Faced, black pits for eyes, ravenous.” Nice concept. Decent ghoul description. Mostly backstory. As a concept for something it’s great. As an actual place, meant to adventure in, it’s pretty lousy. And there is A LOT of this.

The town map is irrelevant, just a kind of conceptual thing with some numbers on buildings. The descriptions are short and=, again, just concepts. “Watchtower Deserted. An alarm fire atop has been spent. Did anyone see it?” Well I don’t know, did they? Are there consequences one way or another to that? 

That bit at the end, it’s some kind of hipster pretension. And THAT absolutely IS prevalent everywhere. The whole “let’s put in a meaningless question under the pretext of giving the DM possibilities!”  There’s a forest wolf encounter. The wolves are hungry and want to steal food and run off, mostly. That’s great! Except we also get “No food, they come in.’ This is supposed to, I think, convey a sense of menace. It does not. Nearby this, in a description meant to be atmospheric, about the journey to the town, it ends with something meant to convey the inclusion of the party in the description. “Chatter about the heist, maps, treasure. Or dead silence. Up to the table.” Why, yes, it is up to the table. But also, what’s with the sentence “Up tp the table?” Ol Craig used a cut down sentence, with dropped words and fragments, in order to save space. Space clearly isn’t an issue here given the ‘luxurious’ room given to simple tables. A couple of pages for “Which of the six howlers show up” could be compressed to maybe six short sentences. Or, the text implies that only three howlers exist, so, perhaps not having a table at all? This sort of needless randomness drives me crazy; an adventure is almost always better when the locales are themed around the specifics of a creature rather than just giving a random determination, for these sorts of encounters. 

And how about those dungeon rooms? “Portcullis: Disjointed and stuck shut. S7 STR with up to 4 characters adding their STR to lift/bend. One attempt only.” Great! That’s how we get those thirtyish rooms down into the quite small page count devoted to locations, with the bulk of the text being other tables. The interactivity here boils down to finding, say, the wormacide that helps you fight the giant bookworms, or being confident in answering a forgetful sphinx’s riddles. 

Not Kabuki’s best work. It feels like it needs another couple of polishes to make everything come together and work as a cohesive whole. Better integration of the various major enemy groups, and a more solid effort in brining out the … joylessness? Melancholy? The forgetful nature of things.

This is $5 at DriveThru.The preview really shows off the worse parts of the adventures, the sparse table nature. Things change, the text style and descriptive style, deeper in and that, being the bulk of the adventure, is where the preview should have focused. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/556896/the-faceless-howl?1892600

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) through Crisis! This week, I read the comics released the week of April 11, 1985. 

Red Tornado #1: Busiek and Infantino/McLaughlin give Red Tornado his first solo series. It feels like this was maybe greenlit before the new Justice League as the old League shows up in it (though the story specifically says they aren't the League but the "world's major heroes.) Anyway, everyone's done on poor Tornado: Lana Lang says in a news report he can't be trusted. Kathy worries her relationship with his alter ego John Smith won't work because he's passive and unambitious. Even the League shows up to demand he cease operating as a hero. Obviously, a super-villain is beyond it. The Construct is trying to drive a wedge between Red Tornado and humanity by manipulating human thought processes with a signal. I've never been a big fan of "poor misery on the hero" stories, but ultimately it depends on where its going.

Superman #409: The first story is more Silver Age throwback goofiness from Boldman and Swan/Williamson. Ferlin Nyxly, a villain who has apparently appeared before, is up to his old tricks of stealing alien technology and using it to oppose Superman. He does so here, and due to circumstances not worth discussing, Jimmy and then Lois have to "pilot" Superman in his fight with the bad guy.
The second story by Stradley and Schaffenberger/Hunt has Superman fretting his double life, feeling he doesn't give adequate time to either. Maybe he should just be Superman and not Clark Kent? A talk with a tech at GBS convinces him Clark Kent matters too.

Amethyst #7: While traveling, Prince Garnet reveals to Amethyst both where he's been and what it has to do with Fire Jade. We learn that she is the former Lady Emerald who in her youth had been sucked into limbo with Prince Garnet, though she escaped much sooner, she had been tied to the malign creature that ruled there, and when she died of poison, her soul went there and the creature offered her the chance to rule beside him as Fire Jade rather than pass on into the realm of death.

Arak Son of Thunder #46: This was an issue I bought off the spinner rack. The Thomases/Lofficiers and DeZuniga present a story that the series was perhaps begging for: Arak Son of Thunder meets Thor (or Thunor, here) God of Thunder! Arak tells his traveling companions a tale of his time with the Norsemen. Seriously injured in a battle over a beached whale, he's taken by a Valkyrie to Valhalla. Initially, his claim of being the son of a thunder god leads to a brief fight with Thunor, but once he proves able to wield the god's hammer, he as accepted as a brother. After all that, he's returned to Earth.

Batman #385: Moench and Hoberg/Patton bring the Calendar Man case to an end with Batman and Robin apprehending him at the Gotham Zoo, and Robin playing a pivotal role. Batman and Robin reach and agreement regarding their partnership in this issue, with Jason being the voice of reason here. This and him referring to Bruce as a father and him as a son makes it all the more unfortunate that this version of the character got wiped from the comics history in exchange for the more difficult Jason Todd who will get killed by a call-in gimmick and later be resurrected as an anti-hero.

Batman Annual #9: Barr and a group of artists do a series of shorter stories meant to show different aspects of Batman. The first with art by O'Neill/Ordway is the best, with Batman tracking down the killer of the parents of a boy in Jason's class, to keep the boy from being consuming by a desire for revenge as Bruce Wayne was when his parents were killed. The second has art by Nino and has a more bloodthirsty Batman manipulating a group of bankrobbers and a violent terrorist cell into wiping out each other through use of a well-timed cracker (or the Christmas cracker variety). Jurgens/Giordano illustrated Batman solving the murder of a former tennis pro, embittered after being paralyzed in an accident. It's one of those stories that pauses in the middle to give the reader a chance to solve it. The final story with art by Smith is Rashomon-like in that a young child, a teacher, an arsonist, and Batman himself, tell different versions of just how events went done when Batman saved the child from a burning building and took a bullet form the arsonist.

Flash #347: Both sides present their closing arguments in the Flash's trial. Meanwhile, the Reverse-Flash, or someone masquerading as him is taking out the Rogues one by one. Frye decides to return to vigilantism to track the Reverse-Flash down and rashly increases the power on his never-before-mentioned nuclear pacemaker installed by his scientist brother. He manages to get film of the Reverse-Flash, though.
In another strange development, jurist Nathan Newbury appears to have powers of mind control/suggestion. I'm sure he's not going to use those to get the Flash convicted!

Jemm, Son of Saturn #11: This penultimate issue has a some really nice, dynamic work for Colan in places. The White and the Red Saturnians go to war and Jemm and friends try to get back to Earth. On Earth, the gang trying to take out Tull storms his base. Tull has outplayed everyone, though. He stops the war with the power he absorbed by draining the life of the Koolar warrior, then starts draining more White Saturnians. Jemm uses his power to stop him, but it isn't enough until Bouncer, having discovered Tull's lab, his comatose body and the machinery, throws a big piece of it to crush Tull.
Final victory isn't one though, as a Koolar with a grudge against Jemm has kidnapped Luther and taken him to Earth, demanding Jemm face her.

Legion of Super-Heroes #12: In the opening, Levitz and Lightle/Machlan have the Legionnaries taking on group of space pirates using Bgtzll phasing, but most of the issue is about the Legion election and other big changes. Everyone from the new President of Earth to the Science Police is speculating on what the outcome might be. The three founders move to a rotating advisory status and become reservists, and Element Lad again becomes leader. Despite its low-stakes premise, this is a well-done issue that interestingly showcases the importance of the Legion to their world.

Omega Men #28: Klein and McManus continued the weird tale of Wombworld. The six Omega Men scale a furry (at least it looks like it) tower complex of Psions and seem likely to be killed, until Ryand'r seems to convince another alien in the Psion's employ to help them. However, it's revealed the alien almost intended to help them and is working with the entity that runs the station to confound the Psions.
In a "Tales of Vega" short by Steve Parkhouse, two bumbling hunters encounter a crashed starship on a jungle world. The spaceship is active enough that it repeals takes actions to repel the invaders, scaring them away but starting a fire for them to cook their food with.

Star Trek #16: Barr and Sutton/Villagran have Excelsior return to their own universe, but they are hardly greeted as heroes, as Styles in the Christopher Pike backed up by a group of other ships, takes them into custody. Kirk makes a sly play to get what he wants from Starfleet. He leaks his logs to an Andorian reporter assigned to Starfleet, Lyndra Dean. She writes a story revealing the most recent Mirror Universe incursion and Kirk's role in defeating it. Kirk is again a hero, and there are protests outside of Starfleet command in his favor. Starfleet tries to pressure Dean to reveal her source but she doesn't budge.
The Admiralty agrees to give Kirk a ship again--the Excelsior, but they assign Spock to captain a science vessel, Surak. Dean is surprised when flowers are beamed into her apartment with a thank you card from Kirk.
This was a fun issue. one of the best of the week.

Last Ascendant rpg adventure on the 31 of March saw our party saving Lightwave from the machinations of Green Lizard. The PC's agreed to escort Lightwave back to San Maco out in California. The party broke off from the the Ghost of Hong Kong. We brought Lightwave to the local hospital and got her checked out after the Green Lizard had taken multiple genetic sample.  San Moros is Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Back in July 2010, I wrote a post right here on Stargazer’s World about how comic books were a parallel passion of mine and how deeply they influenced my role-playing games. As I’ve been putting together this “40 Years a Gamer” retrospective, I realized I needed to revisit that topic. It’s easy to list movies or literature as the main drivers of fantasy gaming. Still, for me, comic books provided a visual, episodic template that directly translated to how I ran my campaigns. The pacing, the larger-than-life characters, and the shifting status quo were exactly what I wanted to replicate behind the GM screen.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing these inspirations in a series of social media posts on my Facebook Page, Sunglar’s Musings. Now, I want to collect them all here into one definitive list, creating a full picture of the panels and pages that inspired my gaming over the last four decades.

The Fantasy Cornerstones

If we’re talking about the absolute bedrock of my fantasy gaming, three works shaped my love for the genre: Tolkien’s books, the Dragonlance Chronicles, and Elfquest. I discovered Elfquest through the Starblaze Graphics collections, and Wendy and Richard Pini’s work defined my conception of elves, trolls, and faeries (the Preservers in the comics) more than Professor Tolkien ever did. It gave me a template for the exact sort of fantasy story I love to tell: stories about family, love, epic themes, and, most importantly, a narrative that can have closure for some characters. At the same time, new adventurers face new challenges in a living world—a lot like a TTRPG campaign. Chaosium even published an Elfquest TTRPG in the 80s, and they crowfunded a deluxe edition a few years back.

You can read the Elfquest comics online here: https://elfquest.com/reading-room/

Then there is Groo the Wanderer. This may seem like an odd choice, but hear me out! Groo is a hilarious comic by the legendary Sergio Aragonés that brilliantly pokes fun at fantasy barbarians and countless other genre tropes. I discovered Groo directly from the creator himself while visiting a comic shop in NYC back in the 80s. He heard me speaking Spanish with my mom, called me over to his table in the back of the store, and we started chatting. I left that day with the original eight Pacific Comics issues and have been reading Groo ever since. In high school, I would sit in class and scrawl Groo’s stats in the margins of my notebooks for whatever RPG system I was playing. While I never officially introduced Groo into a campaign, his incredible cast of supporting characters provided ample inspiration for NPCs in all my games—especially The Sage, Chakaal, and Taranto. I did include a lost dog named Rufferto looking for his master in a game once, though! There should always be a little room for fun and absurdity in our fantasy games, and Groo is the perfect reminder of that.

Rounding out my early fantasy influences are Marvel’s adaptations of Robert E. Howard. I first knew Conan through the 1982 movie, which I talked my paternal grandfather and uncle into taking me to see on a summer trip to NYC. But I really got to know the mythos through the comics. In December 1983, I got my first issue, Conan #156. Soon, I was buying Savage Sword of Conan, King Conan (which shaped my ideas of domain-level D&D play), and Red Sonja. Sonja was such a strong lead that I based a major rebel leader NPC on her in my 1993 AD&D 2nd Edition homebrew; her descendants are still part of my campaign world today. And I must mention The Official Handbook of the Conan Universe. I read it repeatedly, and its format influenced how I organize my own campaign materials.

Swords, Sorcery, and the DC Universe

Over at DC, Mike Grell’s The Warlord and Paul Kupperberg and Jan Duusrsema’s Arion, Lord of Atlantis were massive for me.

My mom picked up back-issues of The Warlord on a business trip, along with a huge stack of Rom Spaceknight. I first read the adventures of Skartaris completely out of order. Still, the sword-and-sorcery elements hit so hard that in the summer of 1988, I based a homebrew NPC named Janna directly on Shakira the werecat. Janna became the love interest of Ranger Oliver (whose player was a big Green Arrow fan, particularly The Longbow Hunter, tying it right back to Mike Grell!). She was the daughter of the Cat Lord (remember him in Monster Manual II?). Eventually, she replaced her father and became the mythical ruler of all felines in my campaign.

Arion gave me a different perspective. Arion’s battle against the Lords of Chaos to protect Atlantis gave me an immediate, tangible reference point for the Law vs. Chaos alignment conflict in D&D, long before I ever read Michael Moorcock’s Elric, or learned about Poul Anderson’s influence on the development of the alignment system for D&D. I also loved the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths connections to DC lore, the Lords Chaos and Order in the DC universe. Then there is the fact that Arion’s co-creator, Jan Duursema, illustrated the original AD&D comic. Another gaming connection!

Sci-Fi, Aliens, and the Apocalypse

My sci-fi gaming drew heavily from a few specific series. First up is Atari Force. I discovered the universe in the mini comics tucked inside Atari cartridges. Still, it was the comic book series and graphic novel illustrated by José Luis García-López that truly inspired me. Many of the comic’s characters became NPCs in my high school Star Frontiers campaign and later campaigns. Some elements from the comics and the visual aesthetics still influence and inform my sci-fi games, including the Wanderers of the Outlands and the Stars Without Number campaign.

Conqueror of the Barren Earth started as a backup feature in The Warlord before getting its own four-issue mini-series. Eleven-year-old me loved this post-apocalyptic mash-up of sci-fi and fantasy. With its strong female lead, Jinal Ne’ Comarr, it became a huge reference point for me when I eventually discovered games like Gamma World and Rifts.

For the Alternity and dX campaigns I ran in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Christopher Moeller’s beautifully illustrated Iron Empires series was hugely influential. Only the first two books, Iron Empires: Faith Conquers and Sheva’s War, were out when I ran those games, but I now own all three, including volume 3, Void. There is even a TTRPG for the setting called Burning Empires, based on the Burning Wheel system. I once walked all the way across Manhattan to get a copy of it at The Complete Strategist, but I still haven’t played it!

On the weirder side of the spectrum, I devoured the Spanish editions of Gods from Outer Space (Los Dioses del Universo) when I was nine. Let’s be clear: the book these comics are based on, The Chariots of the Gods, is unscientific, Eurocentric hogwash that minimizes the achievements of other cultures. But as a kid, I knew nothing about that. They were just wild ideas that fascinated me and informed my early TTRPG worldbuilding. Today, I sometimes go back to those concepts at the table, but those meddlesome creatures from beyond the world are now cast firmly as oppressors and antagonists.

Superheroes, Cyberpunk, and Pulp Action

Regardless of the genre you are playing, your adventuring party is essentially a superhero team. Each member has their roles and powers, and the dynamics between them set the tone for the game. For me, one team in comics exemplifies that perfectly: the Legion of Super-Heroes. I read the Legion for years; the old stories in DC digests in the early 80s, the Great Darkness Saga, and the 1994 reboot. The Legion taught me, as a GM, how to handle the varied dynamics of a vast, diverse cast, proving that interpersonal relationships are what actually make a game interesting. The Five Years Later storyline also taught me not to fear tearing down a campaign and rebuilding it into something different when your stories need a reboot.

Another huge superhero influence was Hammerlocke, a 1992-1993 nine-issue series drawn by Chris Sprouse. It was a brilliant mash-up of low-power superheroes, cyberpunk sci-fi, espionage, and mystery centered on a space elevator and cyborg Archer Locke. It showed how to run superheroes in a completely different setting from the four-color mainstream adventures and directly influenced how I construct those sorts of stories.

Finally, let me tell you about an old character whose current adventures are my favorite comic being produced today: Flash Gordon. For years, Dan Jurgens’ DC mini-series adaptation (where Flash was a washed-out basketball player) was my benchmark for a modern version of the character. But then came Dan Schkade. As the creator of the current daily strip, he tells refreshing stories that respect and build on the classic mythology while making it feel completely new. He inspires my gaming by showing how to create fresh content that builds naturally on the work that came before it. Reading his strip makes me want to run games based on pulp characters, a reimagined Defenders of the Earth, and it really makes me want to finally run that Mystara game I’ve always dreamed of playing.

Looking back, these comics taught me pacing, worldbuilding, and how to create larger-than-life situations that still felt grounded in character relationships.

What comic books shaped your time at the table? Let me know in the comments.

 Creating a d100 encounter table for Castles & Crusades requires a mix of gritty realism, ancient mystery, and the "weird" elements typical of the Swords & Sorcery genre. In this style, magic is often dangerous or corruptive, and the environment is as much an enemy as the monsters.Below is a table designed for wilderness travel, ruins, or borderlands. This blog entry picks right up Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Daniel Hicks
Self Published
ACKS
Levels 4-6

Warning! Barrier Peaks is my all time nostalgia favorite. 

A spaceship was transferring dangerous exotic lifeforms for sale at another point. A defective containment unit released one avid Hund, which quickly killed those present and set about freeing its kin. The acid hounds killed or fatally wounded every passenger and member of the ship’s crew in short order. Unfortunately, this occurred while the pilot was making manual course corrections in the outskirts of this solar system and with the autopilot disabled the ship drifted off course for weeks. More recently, she ship has crash-landed, and

presents a hazard if approached.

This five page adventure uses about two pages to present about thirteen rooms in a crashed flying saucer. Basic descriptions, simple map, not much beyond the most basic of encounter structures. And, of course, too small for its theme. But, hey, it’s got more rooms than pages, so there’s that!

A classic flying saucer has crash landed, so imagine a circle layout, about a dozen rooms along the edge and one or to interior, with a circle hallway in between. It crashed because some Acid Hounds got loose. You’ll find all seven of those 3 HD dudes in the first room you encounter after entering through the hole in the side, the cargo hold. At some point you’ll also face a nanite cloud in one of the rooms. This is the extent of your actual challenges. Otherwise you find the door bracelets and collect the blasters and auto-heal patches. IE: the usual. There are more than a few missed opportunities here, like “The ship’s main reactor (‘captive-star’), centrally

located, has burned out, and cannot be restarted without the aid of a similar vessel.” You can self-destruct the ship from here, and you can loot some platinum wiring. But, no word on what looting the captive-star is/does. Sad. No green slime in the shower. No malfunctioning auto-doc. There’s just nothing involved at all going on in this. I mean, even combat, after that first room, except for the nanite swarm. You gotta have some shit to fuck around with in an adventure. Grave tubes. The jungle level. Wait, I’m describing Barrier Peaks….

These small page count adventures have a real problem with matching their theming to their size. The Lost City of Infintium! Two pages. The Endless Maze of Nilhelm. Four pages. If you’re going to theme your adventure to something that really needs more pages and has endless possibilities then you really need to make it more than the five pages, for example, that this one is. 

Descriptions here are sparse. “Shower’ A small area for changing clothes sits outside the two shower stalls. Two dials are in each shower: one to turn it one and off, one for water temperature (a range from freezing to brisk).” There are also some general notes in the beginning about lighting and doors, but no real evocative descriptions are present, even for the Acid Hounds.”Acid hounds have pale green skin and a tripartite jaw.” Ok. Drooling acid? Foaming at the mouth? Mangy fur? Allof the descriptions are very businesslike with little to inspire here.

The map, here, is not great. It’s black on white. The room numbers are in a light blue that doesn’t stand out real great. But also there are other notations on the map. B, P, b, c, 3C, C. These are quite dense, nothing which kind of bracelet gets you through a door, a sub-ro number and the location of bodies. Yes, you can figure it out. No, it is not the most cognitively easy thing you’ll ever look at. If you can light blue the font then the door codes could be in a different color, and if you can put symbols on the map then you can put body outlines on the map, all of which is easier to look at tell what is going on at a glance. 

There’s not really much here of interest, if anything.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/558966/chipped-saucer?1892600

 Bringing the "Prince of Panache" into the Cepheus Engine (or similar 2D6-based OGL systems) requires balancing his high-camp theatricality with his legitimate genius. In the 1966 series, Vincent Price played Egghead as a "self-styled smartest man in the world" who spoke in egg-based puns and relied on chemistry and gadgets rather than brute force.Here is the profile for Egghead, tailored Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 Adapting a character like Claw the Unconquered—the cursed, demon-handed barbarian of DC Comics fame—requires balancing his immense physical prowess with the unpredictable nature of his magical affliction.In Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition, Claw fits the Barbarian or Gladiator career paths perfectly. Below are the mechanical details to bring him into your campaign.Claw the Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Long-time readers of my blog know I have a long-standing abiding interest in space exploration. One of my hobbies is flying space simulators and writing realistic add-ons for them.  Artemis II launched a few days ago and is now heading to the moon for a fly-by. The flight's purpose is to check out the Orion capsule on a multi-day mission. Rather than just orbit the Earth the whole time like Apollo 7, NASA decided to use the time to perform a flyby of the Moon. The mission's various orbits have been cleverly designed so that, even if the capsule's propulsion system failed, the crew could return to Earth, including the lunar fly-by.

Because of the mission profile, the only time of the month Artemis II can be launched during this part of the year is during the full moon, as that is when the moon's orbit places it closest to Earth. Because of the the astronaut had a first-of-its-kind opportunity to take a picture of the entire Earth.

What you are seeing is a photograph of the entire Earth. It is not lit by the sun, which is behind our planet. But lit by moonlight. The camera settings were set to longer shutter times and other settings to allow more detail to be visible in the photo.

Some unique features you can see in the picture include the stars surrounding Earth. And you can see city lights as well. In the lower right, you can see the zodiacal light. At the bottom and top, you can see the green auroras hovering above the poles. And looking carefully at the edge of the Earth, you can see the edge of the atmosphere outlined by the sodium line caused by meteors burning up in thin air.

Enjoy, and Godspeed, the crew of Artemis II

Link to the Photo

Dark Tower (1979) by Paul (now Jennell) Jaquays is widely considered one of the "holy grails" of old-school dungeon design. Originally published by Judges Guild for AD&D, it earned a legendary reputation for its complex verticality, non-linear exploration, and faction-based gameplay.For Castles & Crusades (C&C) players, the module is a natural fit because C&C is designed to be Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Heidi Gygax Garland, Erik Garland, Adapted by Bill Silvey
GAXLAND
1e
Levels 5-7

The mission: A local elder dwarf has commissioned you to find the long abandoned underground tomb of the legendary Dundel Chief, R?ta V?kara. As no dwarven folk are allowed beyond the South Gate of the city of Sørholde, you have been entrusted to retrieve a long lost and priceless document that your benefactor maintains would free the dwarven folk from their obligation to maintain the city of Sørholde and reinstate the great dwarven mines of the Dundel once again.

This 64 page adventure presents what is essentially a linear tomb with around forty rooms. Very long winded, lots of read-aloud, and no real interactivity beyond traps and combat. It is quite the amateurish effort for $35.

I’m gong to start by saying something nice. “Thieves’ Tools can always be improvised with items from the adventuring packs (i.e. a hammer and piton) but the improvised tools and lock will be destroyed in the process.” I like this kind of framing about thieves tools. I think the natural assumption is thieves tools are lockpics and other delicate instruments. I don’t really like thieves as written in most (all?) systems and this aligns with my view of crowbars and sledgehammers being standard dungeon equipment. One day maybe I’ll work up a thief class in which their find/remove abilities are just rerolls, given anyone can find/remove a traps, open doors, etc. Anyway, thieves tools being higher quality crowbars and sledgehammers make sense to me, lasting more than one attempt, etc. 

Otherwise, man, this thing is rough. Lots of read-aloud, mounds of paddings, a mostly linear dungeon and low-powered opponents. I shall assume the best of intentions and these are just enthusiastic amateurs who wrote for, say, 5e, and had Bill localize it to 1e. But that localize was just not done well at all.

The adventure starts off in medias res with the parties wagon train being attacked by five skeletons. Yes, five skeletons. At levels five through seven. This is a recurring problem with the adventure. Very low level enemies, in small quantities, in general, but skeletons in particular. Oh, but these are special skeletons! They have TWO HD!!!!! Level five is an auto-turn and level seven is an auto destroy. So, yes, please, put in five skeletons. Or some giant rats. Yeah, sure, something like a hundred or a thousand skeletons, rats, stirge, et, can become an obstacle for the party, A hazard or environmental feature if not a straight up combat. When you finally make it to the last room of the dungeon you face off against the titular undead Dundel chief himself! Who I’m pretty sure is a 2HD skeleton. The read-aloud says he rises to attack. And that other skeletons nearby rise to attack. And it gives us stats for a 2HD skeleton right there. And no stats for the chieftain. Was there supposed to be stats for the big bad? Did they all fuck this up? Both writers credited? Both editors credited? The conversion person credited? The two proofreaders credited? Or is he supposed to be a 2HD skeleton? I wonder if anyone cared?

It engages in LONG, like, REALLY LONG sections of read-aloud. For everything. Once again, no one wants long read-aloud. Nobody cares about it. The DM doesn’t. The players HATE it. That’s when the phones come out. If you don’t run a shitty shitty game then people will be engaged and the phones will NOT come out. More than two or three sentences of read-aloud, SHORT sentences, is all you can get away with. If half your page is read-aloud text, as it is here in a not uncommon occurrence, then you are CLEARLY FAILING. In many pages there is far FAR less DM text on a page then there is read-aloud. 

Second person read-aloud. Don’t do that. Don’t make assumptions about the party. They are all 50’ tall and incorporeal in my game, so your shitty long second-person read-aloud doesn’t fucking apply. This also applies to that shtity in medias res opening. You’re part of a caravan, a wagon train, to the tomb. Earthquakes! Skeleton attacks! “Uh, we flew there.” Uh huh. Unspeakable Oath did an CoC adventure that started with the lights out in the players actual game space, then the DM flicked them on and one of them spat out a piece of hotdog. (His tongue, as it turns out.) THAT was a fucking in medias res fucking openening! For a one shot. If you are not the Unspeakable Oath and doing a one shot then maybe think twice before doing this.

You are on your way to the tomb of the dundel chief. Some dwarves hired you. They want you to go find a deed in it that gives them the right to open a mine and they are not allowed in/through the gateway city. A piece of paper. The dwarves think that a piece of paper is what they need. To coopt a quote, who, exactly, is going to enforce the judiciaries decision? Jesus gonna come down and smite the city elders for not obeying the piece of paper? Emperor Whatits, that maybe both the city and the dwarves pay homage to (If that were the case?) WHo does he like best? Is he trying to curry favor with one or the other party? But, sure, whatever. That’s a dwarf probem, I guess, YOUVE got a piece of paper that lets you go explore the tomb. That doesn’t belong to the dwarves. 

Strangely, the dundel people, who still exist and are all around, are ok with you plundering and robbing and desecrating the tomb of their greatest chief. “The Dundel people will be friendly and will answer questions if able.” Like, in ALL ways. Sure thing man, plunder away! 

DM text is quite poor. ‘Wait, we just started and we already have earthquakes and are under attack by the undead? Let’s go back a few days for a bit of a flashback.” Wonderful. Conversational. “If gear is left in the tunnel above or a rope is left hanging into the chamber it will be untouched when the time comes to return to the surface.” Is the sun still burning when we return? Is the air outside still breathable when we return? Room names are that cringe stuff that turns punny sometimes like “Encounter 3F: What’s Down Here?” 

Mechanics wise get things like a column of text to describe a pit trap. A simple pit trap with a clowning lid. A column of text. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how you used to get away with just drawing an X on the map and saying nothing about it. 

“The slabs are extremely heavy and cannot be moved or damaged in any meaningful way.” Uh huh. How about “The padlock cannot be broken, but it may be picked” I think, perhaps, you underestimate my players. One of my proudest moments as a father is when my kids, knowing there was a basement to a house but not being able to find a way in, pulled out their tools and started to work on the wood floor. And those were first level tweens. I think my aging level seven wizard can find a way through, if not the bevy of magic items the level five through sevens carry. It’s fucking absurd. Half the fucking spell lists in 1e are devoted to shit like this.

One room takes three pages to describe.

The dungeon is linear. You come down in to a room with eight doors, one open. You explore that section of the dungeon and at the end of it you can then go explore the next section of the dungeon and so on. IE: linear. Of those eight sections, about halfway through the text, you get an interlude that describes the nomad camp outside the dungeon that you camp in. Seriously. Like, after room twenty, here’s a description of the nomad camp outside, and then it starts in on room 21. No, this was not an editing or layout error. It was intentional. Because just sticking rando shit in the middle of other rando shit is CLEARLY the best way to organize things. That’s my, in my own dictionary, the letters M are placed between the letters Q and D. 

Quantum rooms? IE: the dreaded if/then padding? Check. “If the party explores to the North, they will find the walkway leads to a section of bridge that crosses to a door. If they continue North, they find a dead end and the source of the fast- moving stream, emerging through a heavy iron grate from the darkness beyond.” 

Dumb ass interactivity/? Check. “The answer to the riddle is: Eye. As soon as the answer is spoken …” No sphynx there. Just a room. Yu’re just saying the answer out loud. 

The final insult may be the hyperlink included at the end for downloadable content. It’s broken. Doesn’t work. As in it takes you a page on their website that says “No page found.” I went digging elsewhere on their website for the content. It’s not present. 

It’s linear, stuffed with excessive read-aloud, DM notes that are excessive in some places and lacking in other place, to the point I’m questioning if there was a layout/edit error that removed information that was supposed to be present. It is essentially traps and combat with a lot of irrelevant combat encounters and a few 7 HD dudes here and there. This is not a strong showing. For $35.

This is $35 at DriveThru. The preview is only three pages with none of the dungeon. A good preview should show a potential buyer what to expect, and the core encounters are a part of that. Still, you get a look at the read-aloud on a couple of the lighter pages. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/446899/tomb-of-the-dundel-chief-1e-special-edition?1892600

Echoes From Fomalhaut #14I am pleased to announce the publication of the fourteenth issue of my fanzine, Echoes From Fomalhaut. This is a 52-page zine dedicated to adventures and GM-friendly campaign materials for OSRIC and other old-school systems (this issue has a scenario for Swords & Wizardry). The cover art was provided by Vincentas Saladis, and the interiors by Cameron Hawkey, Graphite Prime, Jason Blasso, Ferenc Fabian, and the Dead Victorians. The current issue features two larger and two smaller scenarios, all of which are sandbox components. The following materials are included:
Dragon Isle (levels 2–4, 15 keyed areas), a complex Swords & Wizardry wilderness mini-sandbox by Istvan Boldog-Bernad. The scenario describes an island ruled by a proud society of militaristic halfling colonists. Things are of course not easy in this bucolic realm: dangerous things lurk in the hinterlands, while the halflings’ society is one where slavery is as accepted tradition as hospitality, and visitors must watch their every step. Things could go anywhere, and this is also a good base region to extend with further adventures.
The Gates of Velkos Vel (levels 4–6, 18+10+34 keyed areas), the issue’s centrepiece. Mighty Velkos Vel, stone fortress of the wasteland barbarians, rises unconquered on the edge of a region of deep canyons and rocky mesas – but there are some who would brave it still! This is a complex wilderness and dungeon scenario describing the fortress, the ancient tunnel system underneath it, as well as the surrounding wilderness. This adventure combines well with Tower of the Mad Satrap from Issue #13, or Khosura: King of the Wastelands, both located fairly close by.
The Charming Princess (levels 2–5, 15 keyed areas) is a small, modular adventure set on a plague ship that could come to any port... your port! The ship, its crew, and sinister cargo are described. “Echoes From Fomalhaut gives you the plague, you give it to your players, everyone wins.”™
The Garden of Love (levels 1–3, 13+11 keyed areas) – idyllic wine-growing village on the coast or hotbed of deceit and treachery? Picturesque art colony or Mansonesque hippy cult? And what of the nearby Canine Caverns? The scenario provides a low-level infiltration adventure in the village of Faund, suitable for all sorts of skullduggery. This is the place where the first player character died on Fomalhaut, and he is still there – sort of.
Two foldout map sheets with player and GM maps, including a full-colour players’ map of Dragon Isle by Istvan Boldog-Bernad.

NOTE: I have rather low inventory from a few other items, but reprints are on the way. Check back in a few days if you are missing something. 

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The print version of the zine is available from my Bigcartel store; the PDF edition will be published through DriveThruRPG with a few months’ delay. As always, customers who buy the print edition will receive the PDF version free of charge.

NOTE TO US CUSTOMERS: Unfortunately, the US postal situation has not yet been resolved to complete satisfaction. Thus, this zine is not yet available to US customers through my online storefront until commercial mail becomes available again. As an alternative, I can recommend checking out Dark Future PDX, where this product will be available in a few weeks. A different workaround may also become available. If you would like to be notified when the seas are open again for orders through my store, please mail me at beyond.fomalhaut@gmail.com, and I will put you on the notification list.

There Will Be a Shire, Pippin,
and It Will be Won With the Sword.
Their Poppy Fields Shall Burn!

 In the world of Barrows & Borderlands, the "Beast" isn't just a monster; it’s a living relic of a prehistoric age, awakened by the hubris of modern alchemy or arcane blasting. It represents the unstoppable force of nature reclaimed from the depths. This blog post post picks right up from Barrows and Borderlands New Monster - Cultclassic Movie Monster - Pod People From Invasion of Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

If I’ve been quiet on this blog for a while, it’s because I’ve been filling my hours with a lot of RPG design: D&D, A5E, Pathfinder, and, increasingly, Draw Steel (I’ve been doing freelance work on the game back from when it was MCDM RPG). And now it’s official! I’m starting a job as Draw Steel line developer at MCDM. I’m incredibly proud that this amazing company is letting me play with their toys.

I have tons and tons of praise for MCDM that I basically can’t say now, because as a MCDM company man it will seem like I’m praising myself. But I will allow myself this: MCDM is an exemplar of ethical conduct in the hobby space, which is tremendously important to me. And everyone who works there (myself excluded) are geniuses: the more I work with each of them, the more awed I am. I’m lucky to land here, and excited to invent a lot of crazy new stuff together. Let’s draw steel!

My earlier post on the new setting I'm working on drew some questions related to the uninvolved gods and how the cleric class would work. I thought it was worth a post of its own. 

When the gods withdrew from the world it was no particular impediment to organized religion. To the contrary, priests could now make whatever pronouncements or demands they wanted without fear of divine contradiction or rebuke. The populace, worried at what the loss of the gods' favor might portend for the future, were eager for any message than offered hope or a path to the gods' return. In this period, the power of the temples increased, but so did conflict between them and various self-proclaimed prophets and spiritual teachers. 

This situation didn't last, thanks to the devastation of the Demon Wars and the invasion by the demons' monstrous allies. Human civilization was devastated, and cities became isolated. The society that had sustained and supported the temples and the priesthoods faltered, and once again faith in the gods was shown to be no protection against calamity. 

The priests and temples remain, though, particularly in the major city-states. The gods are real, after all, and no one expects them to return to a world that doesn't honor them or keep their ritual observances. Certain rituals, too, perform an important civic function and rulers rely on their observance to perpetuate their legitimacy.

In the smaller villages and hinterlands, though, the temples and shrines were mostly abandoned, the priests fleeing to the cities or killed in the conflict along with much of the rest of the population. As time passed, and these regions became (somewhat) safer, the common folk returned, but the priests often didn't.

Into this void strode another form of clergy. Those who, without official blessing or ordination, were able to wield a portion of divine power. They roam from village to village performing spiritual important services. They officiate marriages and civic ceremonies and conduct community rituals at festivals. They mediate between villagers and the spirits or the dead and perform exorcisms when necessary. Joining with other adventuring sorts, they also kill monsters threatening the people. These individuals are often called "Shepherds." They are the most common representatives of the absent gods encountered outside of the city-states.

Shepherd is the name used by the Nimble rpg for its "mostly cleric, but some druid concepts" class. It seemed a good as name as any to use here. 

 We pick right up from March 22 game session right here on the blog.  We were racing against time as a rival party of adventurers was on their way to the "The Weeping Monolith of the Silt-King," We were right on the edge of the Ruined Ziggurat territory. Events and the jungle was tense around us.  Gemini saidThis encounter, "The Weeping Monolith of the Silt-KingNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0