This is part of a series of posts with a scene-by-scene critique, appreciation, and improvement of the 1986 TSR module B10, Night's Dark Terror.
When the adventurers find it, the lair of the Wolfskull goblins is
properly atmospheric. It's in the middle of a miles-wide petrified
forest -- not the paltry fossilized remains found on Earth, but a whole
forest turned to stone, birds, squirrels, leaves, and all. This strange
and gloomy place will attract the attention of the adventurers when they
discover it, and channel them to one of the paths that runs through it,
which all lead to the Wolfskull fort at the center.
There's a fight with some giant bats (confusingly, not the same bats that are the hobgoblin Vlack's pets), then a more consequential run-in with a goblin patrol. Although the party see the foes in time to arrange an ambush, letting just one goblin get away can mean trouble - and we can assume the foot-goblins at least are more able to scramble through the petrified underbrush than a typical adventurer.
But if the garrison isn't alerted, there are just two guards in the entrance of this memorable fort, built of and around the stone timber of frozen trees. Two guards lit by torches, who are not even looking out their one door ... OK, hold up a second. Goblins can see in the dark and wolves have a great nose, so all the fires and torches described lighting up this fort's interior are besides the point. Just make it a dark hole with two red eyes staring out that, if you're lucky, you see before they see you. And don't fall in the river moat - if cold-water piranhas are too much for you, they can always be replaced by good old mundane giant leeches.
This is a strange little castle, to be sure. It can't be defended with archers, no battlements or window slits. But actually, that suits the armaments of the Wolfskulls, which are throwing spears and axes and the jaws of their mounts. And forget the boxed text that has the goblins "rushing forward with weapons drawn." Instead, the best strategy would allow the goblins' numbers to tell by luring a force of stronger but fewer invaders inside the walls, deep ebough in to be attacked from all sides with no escape possible.
But does the fortress' layout actually support that strategy? Sort of. If the goblins abandon area c quickly, darting in and out of cover to throw spears or (in 5th edition) striking and disangaging with their hand axes, the defenders of areas d, g, and e would do best to hide away out of sight, forcing the invading vanguard to enter that room while the other areas bide their time and attack from the flank.
Then again, perhaps the goblins would absolutely slaughter a third level party, especially playing by Basic rules, if allowed to use optimal tactics. As written, the defenders are quick to attack but slow to be alerted, allowing for a series of manageable battles. Still, you might prefer balance to come from a reduction in numbers rather than from dumbing down the goblins -- perhaps subtracting one or two patrols like the ones encountered outside from the roster, to come back later and put the victors on the defensive.
A smart party will avoid Vlack's rooms across the log bridge, which have no proactive forces in them, until they've recovered from the main fight. The split skull painted on the door (why not a bloody head, the insignia of Vlack's tribe?) should be warning enough. Vlack's not home, but his pet giant weasels are in, and a pair of the most iconic Basic D&D-only monsters: thouls, those misbegotten creatures that happen when a hobgoblin, a ghoul, a troll, and an OD&D typographical error love each other very much.
There's a good mix of obvious and hidden loot in the lair, but the object of your quest - Stefan Sukiskyn - is in another castle. One of the left-behind prisoners, a Slavic granny literally called Babushka, has overheard the word "Xitaqa" as Stefan's destination. We can assume that the people who came to get him were not goblins, but servants of the Iron Ring whose description should match the attackers that start out the adventure -- that gives them a reason to speak Common and for Babushka to overhear. If you feel there should be a few more clues to what's going on, you can have some of the loot give those clues - a rough map of the raid locations in Vlack's room, or an heirloom from one of the raided settlements.
The bridge to the hobgoblins' quarters also gives the goblins a way out if the battle goes against them, assuming they follow their retreat strategy and end up concentrated in room h. But where will they go? It might be a relief that there are no goblin civilians, the traditional "women and children" of D&D moral philosophy. But it's also a puzzle, and my reckoning was that the goblins had a civilian settlement hidden away in the stone forest, not obviously at the conjunction of all the paths like the fort was. In about ten years there will be a new generation of Wolfskulls raising hell.
Some other hacks I applied to make the magic loot here more interesting:
* Whatever the potion of delusion is, it's likely the goblin king Kloss would keep it on his person. In this case it's an emperor's new invisibility potion - you can't see yourself but everyone else can.
* The shield +2 in my campaign is a heirloom of the slaughtered Segenyev family, known as the "White Wall." It is a large, heavy shield that goblins cannot use, white with a red stag, and gives resistance to cold when held but is only +2 after a combat round (turn) spent without moving, as shields with pluses are a little overpowered in 6th edition.
Next: What's a Xitaqa?
I'm finding it really interesting to see the number of projects going straight to Backerkit for funding )and totally bypassing Kickstarter). All I've heard from creators using Backerkit is simply how much better the service is.
HEROIC is a clone - of sorts - of the old Marvel SuperHeroes RPG from TSR. Famous for its color-coded charts, my experience with the system was the Conan RPG, and it worked well.
HEROIC is a Neo Clone of the old-school MSH Advanced game by TSR that combines aspects of modernization as well as parts of the Astonishing Super Heroes RPG by Tim Bannock.
In its final form it will be a 200 page full colour game book, available as PDF, as well as softcover and hardcover POD (Print on Demand) by DTRPG (Drivethrurpg). Everything you need to play will be in the book, including an introductory adventure and characters from the Zenith Comics Universe.
There are essentially three tiers for backing HEROIC - PDF at $25 - Softcover print plus PDF at $50, and hardcover plus PDF at $70, shipping not included.
I must say, I really appreciate the highlighted art, as it reminds me of the later days of the silver age of comics in the late 70s and 80s.
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A ghost is haunting the foreshores of a mountain lake, wailing despondently about his long-lost love. Eaten forty years ago by merrow, what has drawn this sad fisherman back from beyond the grave to bemoan his fate now? How will the party fare exploring a sunken fishing vessel and the labyrinthine lair of the water ogres? What is that dark, slithering doom that lies at the bottom of the cave?
This thirty page adventure presents a cave with twelve rooms. Stabbing and, potentially, talking are the orders of the day as you try to put a ghost to rest. Brief glimpses of what could be good a prevalent throughout. Expansive text for a small adventure pollutes the end result, but maybe you can ignore that?
This isn’t my style of D&D. I recognize that. It’s a kind of home-table plot D&D. You know, investigate something and end up in a lair assault killing shit. I don’t think any of it hits particularly well, in this adventure, but there are some glimpses of that OD&D style and some interesting writing here and there that I think are quite admirable and rise above the de riguour crap that floods the market today. It’s got some idea of what good is but it doesn’t really understand how to get there.
Fishing village on a BIG mountain lake. There’s a ghost been showing up lately, out on the lakeshore a bit away from town, causing some trouble. Go gettum tigers! Turns out some old lady in town is finally getting married and the ghost is the dude she loved, like sixty years earlier who died, getting eaten by merrow. Her getting married has brought him back as a ghost. That’s kind of nicely done, yeah? Oh, and now the merrow serve a dragon-thing. Oh, there’s this fucking hag in the caves also. And the shipwreck, of the ghost dudes boat, it’s got a gollum hanging out in it. Ok, I think I’ve covered everything. Go meet the ghost dude, he wants to give chickula the wedding ring he had planned for her. The merrow have it, except the dragon-thin now has it. Got it?
The first ten pages are pretty much a waste, covering the town/village. There’s a decent little timeline, of the ghost causing trouble, but that’s about it. “Townfolk drowning themselves in the lake” is a nice little bit of it. And the adventure pulls shit from time to time, really reveling in the naturalism or realism of the things going on. A lock of hair given to a ship captain, now dead, summoning a nereid, who is thankful to know what happened to her dead lover. And while this is the SECOND time this theme has happened in the adventure, it’s still nifty. When the adventure is pulling out this shit it’s doing a real good job.
But when it’s telling us about mundane shit it’s terrible. “Heimdal is the barkeep and owner of the Black Hound [Bryce-the bar]. His family once ruled over all of this region before their almost total annihilation. Heimdal is unaware of his noble blood.” That’s fucking useless. We get mundane business descriptions and NPC descriptions that don’t matter. You could have done the entire thing on one page instead of ten. The wedding is supposed to be a big deal but that’s handled in one sentence “make the upcoming wedding a big deal in the town.” Well, fuck me, how about some help and ideas making the wedding a big deal? There’s a rumour table but the rumours are a little too direct and on the noose for my tastes.
There are some really good descriptions, though, in the text. Or, close to really good anyway. The ghost is “ bloated, damp, ugly. While ethereal in nature and surrounded by a dull lambent glow, his form resembles that of a drowned corpse, and he speaks in wet, slurping tone” Not a bad monster description! Or, in a partially sunkn ship, knee-deep murky water in a bedroom with a few old bits of wood bobbing in the decaying mess. Bobbing is a great word there! A coppery stench of blood and buzzing of flies, in the cannibalistic merrows dining room. Or, in total, “The coppery stench of blood and the faint buzzing of flies conveys the ominous character of this chamber. This long room sports a sizable table atop which lay the discarded bones and scattered remains of the merrows’ previous victims” Great start to the description and a total train wreck to finish it off. Scattered remains of previous victims. Pffft. And this is what I mean when I say its got some kind of general understanding of what good is but little clue in how to get there.
Long Italics read-aloud and half page room descriptions/DM text full of mechanics. I guess I’ll ignore that for the purposes of this review.
But, the interactivity, I don’t think I can ignore. This is not a traditional dungeon. Most of the interactivity is either stabbing shit or, maybe, trying to talk to someone. Talk to gollum, maybe. Or talk to the merrow king, after hacking your way to him, so he can ask you to kill the dragon. Oh, and that fucking hag. SHe’s the dragons Mouth of Sauron. She’s got these scrolls of deals shes made with villagers. Pretty cool! She has traded shit for things like a pail full of breastmilk in return. Noice! She’ll trade with you also … which could help out with the dragon fight. Cover yourself in spikes to prevent the snake-like dragon from squeezing you, or cover yourself in milk to prevent his breath weapon (give yous a +4 to saves, not too shabby! Very folklore, and I love that! But, also, the merrow dude, the hag and the dragon are all withing earshot of each other. SO there’s no real room to breathe int he dungeon/lair. And no one really cares if the dudes next door are getting slaughtered, so no order of battle, and, worse, they explicitly DO NOT CARE if you are killing the others. That’s a little rough.
So, a kind of plot, but the details of it, and the window dressing of the village and wedding are not covered well. Beefing that up, to cement a real vibe there, would have done wonders for motivations and grounding. The shipwreck and merrow caves are a little … mundane? Typical D&D? But there are brief glimpses of something deeper and hints of folklore scattered throughout. Again, not really enough to ground the adventure in that but enough to make you wish it HAD done that.
Maybe next time?
This is $5 at DriveThru. The eleven page preview shows you town and the overview of the shipwreck. You can see some glimpses of the folklore-ish naturalism, but a page of the merrow caves, or shipwreck interior, should have been included as well to get a vibe for how the actual room encounters were handled.
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/471069/dirge-of-the-forlorn-piscator-cam1?1892600
Settings. Can you really have too many? I find that I love reading new settings, and liberally steal, or borrow, depending on your point of view, from different settings to make my own setting complete. Urban settings have their own, special appeal, as they are easier to drop into a different setting more or less whole.
Ravensrook: A Grimdark Urban Fantasy Setting is a setting suitable for both the OSR and 5e rulesets. Normally 10 bucks in PDF, Ravensrook is on sale for a mere 5 bucks until tomorrow morning, March 1st.
The Lands of the Free Lords is a patchwork of petty kingdoms, bandit lords, and misfit war camps sandwiched between evil empires, do-gooder nations, and religious zealots. While regional warlords rose and fell over the ages, there was one constant within this chaotic land - the famed city of Ravensrook. The Black-Winged City of Bandits and Brigands. The only proper city within the Lands of the Free Lords.
This supplement is fully compatible with 5th edition as well as the OSR.
Includes:
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Bao dwek Thabub (art by Steven de Waele)
Our Gnydrion game in Grok?! continued last Sunday. The group was all there:
Ensconced in a suite in the Thono Inn, expensed to the Eminent Compulsor, the group enjoys a nice dinner and a bit of rest. The next morning finds them beginning their investigations to uncover the identity of Wol Zunderbast. In doing so they encounter (and are distracted by) some of the other guests: Bao dwek Thabub, typically pungent hwaopt scholar studying something called "fey vortices" in the area; Sula Av and Tharom Welk an overly friendly couple on holiday from Ascolanth.
Finally, after leaving a message at the desk in a failed stratagem to find Zunderbast's room, they encounter the man himself:
He's intense and no nonsense but arranges a meeting later that evening with Nortin to discuss the "item" further. He also invites in the game in the casino (five frond hokus or thari or even quorn lancets) but Nortin declines.
With the meeting set, the group decides to take advantage of the famous gas bathes fed by the eldritch substance of the Lake of Vermilion Mists. They head to the bathhouse, but they are told its out of order by the inebriated engineer, Ormuz Halx, who raves at them briefly about something in caves that wants to kill everyone. Before they can dig into these remarkable claims, Gris Samber shows up to usher Halx away apologetically, citing his drunkenness as the source of his odd behavior.
Giant Zenopus
Move: 30 feet/turn land; 180 feet/turn swimmingI've known Venger for several years. We've butted heads in the past, at times quite vocally, but one thing that is consistent with V is the quality of the work he does. Love him or hate him, if you like gonzo in your OSR, few compare to V and his releases.
Venger is running a sale today for his Cha'alt setting. Physical books are 20 bucks plus 5 bucks shipping:
For one unbelievable day... February 29th, Leap Day, I'm selling the gorgeous, professionally printed, signed and numbered Cha'alt hardcover book for only $20 + $5 shipping/handling.
What is Cha'alt (in case you were sent here by a friend of a friend)? It's my eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, post-apocalypse, humor, sleaze, pop-culture, exploitation grindhouse campaign setting. It's a system-neutral OSR and 5e compatible tome of lore, factions, new races, adventures, locations, monsters, magic items, high tech, and features The Black Pyramid, a darkly weird megadungeon funhouse that's like nothing you've ever seen.
Check out the reviews, testimonials, vlogs, word of mouth, and hushed whispers of lurid illumination, unutterable chanting, and that foul piping music interspersed with foreboding drums! According to the RPG Pundit, Cha'alt is a masterpiece of stupid gonzo fantasy!
After the last sale and Kickstarter, I only have about 300 left to sell. Want your book by this time next week? Paypal me the $25 [USA only; foreign shipping is $60 for book + shipping] at...
Venger.Satanis@yahoo.com
But maybe you want to see what you are getting first. Or maybe you don't want to pay at all. In that case, V is offering Cha'alt for FREE today in PDF.
Solo gaming intrigues me, more so as a way to learn a new system - or learn a known system better. It also gives me ideas I can use in a traditional campaign, and the ideas are - somewhat - playtested.
Today's Deal of the Day is FlexTale Solo Image Oracle Omnibus (system-neutral). Normally 19.99 in PDF, but until tomorrow FlexTale Solo Image Oracle Omnibus is on sale for 8 bucks.
The FlexTale Solo Image Oracle is an innovative creative tool for solo adventurers to generate dynamic, intriguing answers to questions about your campaign and the adventures that take place within it.
A simple roll of 3d6 is all you need to generate over 5,400 answers and pieces of creative content for any campaign setting, any situation, and any level of skill as a G/DM.
Omnibus
This book is the Omnibus edition of the Solo Image Oracle. It assembles the contents of the previously-published six individual volumes. Each of those Volumes contains 36 images; this Omnibus contains all 216 images.
Free Sample Edition
Unsure, but curious? Grab the FREE Sample Edition. It contains 16 images instead of 216, and lacks the section on rules system harmonization, but is otherwise exactly the same content and massive utility as this full version.
Digital Resource Companion
You also get a Microsoft Excel file containing all 5,400 creative elements for all 216 images. This is the same content that's presented in the book, just in a format that some might enjoy using more than a PDF. You are welcome to extend, amend, or otherwise use this tool for your own personal gaming experience.
Immediately Useful
Download this book, open it up to a random page, and pick any part of that page. This book was designed so that whatever you end up pointing at, you should be able to use it in your campaign, whether you're a veteran DM of 30+ years running a published campaign for a dozen players or a brand-new player giving solo play a try.
What is This Thing?
An Oracle is a tool to provide an answer. Usually, this is in the context of a solo adventure, where you as the adventurer need to rely upon some external source of truth to keep things unpredictable and interesting. Solo Oracle tools abound, and are quite popular--it's probably safe to say that nearly every single solo adventurer uses at least one Oracle tool.
The Solo Image Oracle takes this a step further. (It wouldn't be a FlexTale book if it didn't take things an order of magnitude further!)
Three dice is all it takes: Roll one six-sided die to pick which image palette you use. Then, roll 2d6, and pick an image randomly from that grid of 36 abstract icons. You can use that simple image as a point of inspiration on its own; this approach is very similar to Rory's Story Cubes, another popular resource for solo gamers.
A Step Further in Creative Inspiration
But the FlexTale difference amplifies the utility and power of this book as an Oracle: each of those images gets its own full page.
Each of those 216 images gets over 25 different elements: specific answers to questions, creative directions, entire quest snippets, magic items, random encounters, and much, much more.
All in all, two simple dice can drive over 5,400 dynamic and creative sources of inspiration for any campaign setting.
System-Neutral, Zero-Prep
This is a common objective in FlexTale books, and I'm thrilled to say that this book was designed from the start to satisfy these as requirements, even moreso than any other book before it in the FlexTale line.
The Solo Image Oracle provides visual and text inspiration. As a result, it's system neutral, and can be easily used in any tabletop roleplaying game, though the particular answers in many cases are fantasy-oriented. For those who use 5E, Pathfinder, Pathfinder Second Edition, OSR, or DCC systems, there is an extensive 9-page description of how to use specific rules language across those systems.
The whole point of this book is that it requires no preparation to use. You can, quite literally, flip to a page completely at random, point to a place on that page, and derive inspiration for your solo adventure content.
Any Gaming Table
Although the Solo Image Oracle was designed from the ground up to be a tool to empower solo gamers, it's also an immensely powerful tool for a traditional gaming table. A time-pressed or creatively stymied G/DM can use this book exactly like a solo gamer would, and find creative drivers just as naturally and quickly.
What's Included
The Solo Image Oracle features:
Full and easy integration with other FlexTale books, in particular the FlexAI Guidebook, the Solo Adventuring Toolkit, and the Hexcrawl Toolkit
And much, much more!
Creative Elements
Each of the 216 images gets a full page's worth of content, with 25 creative Elements to help drive game content and decisions. These include the following, color-coded for ease and speed of reference:
The author is a veteran DM who cut his teeth on the BECMI boxes back in middle school. The approach taken with this book was pretty simple, but drives from decades of experience and talent:
So, obviously a D&D clone uses a d20 right?
We know there are certain expectations for certain types of games. Cyberpunk uses a d6/d10 system with edge case weirdness. Shadowrun uses giant pools of d6's. Blades in the dark, old savage worlds, d6.
But there are problems with those systems. For me; I mean, knock yourself out.
Cyberpunk uses exploding dice which create weird dead zones in success chances. This is not a big deal. Shadowrun had this cycle of design, where huge pools always succeed -> add limits -> limits are dull ->add edge, and now you're using hero points. Which again, ok, fine.
I mean, they are fine. But I felt memories of when I enjoyed d6's. Original Shadowrun picking up a ton of dice. Song of Blades and Heroes where every choice is a tactical risk. Warhammer 40k, when saving on a 2+.
I'm not a statistician. I had too many semesters of calculus at 6:30 in the morning in a basement to want to love number play-doh. I'm not afraid of math. But, you know, it's not particularly intuitive for me. I wasn't setting out to create some radical new design. I wanted something understandable, scalable, and most of all fun. I wanted it to work during play.
The normal process of seeing SinlessUnderstandable: I ran a lot of 3e Shadowrun. I have an A4 sized page that is separated into three sections: All of the target number combat modifiers, all of the target number matrix modifiers, and all the target number magic modifiers. In tiny-teensy print. Front and back. It's in a box right now, but I'll gladly take pictures next time I run across it.
So variable target numbers are right out.
Gear is a huge, part of the fun is the shopping! Cyberpunk character creation is a shopping spree for gamers. It's fun!
I wanted gear to be involved in the core of play. This would be twofold: mitigating the mechanical importance of gear to the game, and involving gear in the core mechanic.Players roll a number of dice equal to their skill plus the relevant gear feature.
Just in the realm of guns, that's some great design space. Guns with similar accuracies can vary the other features an—oh, got excited there for a second. Did you know I'm a game designer?
So let's talk about the scope of the mechanics. We don't want something that caps out. I like to run and design games that can last for 100+ sessions. I want solid feeling of advancement without it growing out of control.
So the player gets to distribute both their expertise and money across the desired features.
They roll dice versus a static target number, more successes is more good.
About that target number though.
Stable TargetsLook, I ran Shadowrun for a decade. It was a lot of work. So I took every step possible to reduce the work on the Agonarch (the person running the game) in Sinless.
Operations are organized into tiers. Veteran runs have a target number of 4+. Professional runs have better trained opponents and more expensive security measures with a target number of 5+, and Prime runs have military security and the highest levels of response and training for a difficulty of 6+.
This caused more than one person pause during development. But keep in mind
we're developing a game. If you can suspend your disbelief about the uplifts, magic particle, spirits, and cybertechtronics, but "things are harder when opponent is more powerful" is the straw, then I got nothing for you.Look at how it works for the Agonarch. It decouples length and opposition from difficulty. Players don't have to slow down to recalculate target numbers. Agonarchs can use the same statistic block and the opponent will be challenging to the players. And it works remarkable well with rolling between 1-XX d6's to accomplish a task.
Your average uplifted bear mercenary after character creation should get 1ish successes on a prime run on a roll with 8 or 9 dice, or 4ish on a veteran run. (I did a bunch of math, but we don't need to get too far into that now).
That's for the things they do. You know the Punching guy is going to take Cybertechtronic Combat at 6, the Shooting are going to take Firearms 6, hackers will have Computer: Hacking at 6. You want them to be competent.
But you don't get tested on only the things you do well on an operation.
Characters improve by spending experience to boost attributes to increase pool sizes, and increase skills up to 6.
Once you reach certain kismet (experience) thresholds (10/20) they can select boons. Boons like, Raise a skill from 6 to 7. Or raise a skill from 7 to 8. Or gain pool resilience.
Oh, right, let's talk about the pools.
Going for a SwimSo the same pools the characters use during combat to attack are the same pools they use to defend. They spend as many dice from their pools as they wish up to the limit of their skill ranking + gear.
This is an engaging decision: how far will I extend myself? what are the relevant threats to my pools? Can we focus certain types of attacks to drain prime opponent pools? How many dice can I penalize an opponent with my actions? It creates a constant variable player controlled risk/reward mechanic in combat.
E.g. You can charge to allow you to spend Brawn pool dice to add additional distance to a double move, which allows you to neutralize their firearms advantage if you get within range of the opposition. This is the same resource that allows you to soak damage.
There are not many modifiers, but you can get bonus and penalty dice rather than numbers, leading to contests over battlefield resources (Cover, network access nodes, and ley lines).
The combat cadence is similar to Warhammer 40k. Attacks hit, successes are added to weapon damage, target chooses to dodge and soak. Resolution is quick.
Pool resilience are dice that never get exhausted from the pool. This tiered system of acquiring mutually exclusive rewards at these at thresholds and certain mutually exclusive choices during character creation means we avoid the GURPS problem of point based character improvement all ultimately converging at high enough power levels.
Certain effects and tech can grant rerolls, and mechanically there's a rock/paper/scissors going on between magic/electronic/physical attacks and targets and their respective pools/vulnerabilities.
Beyond the fight
That just creates a bunch of interesting choices in combat, but that's not all.
The game contains a series of frameworks that provide a structure for the players to gather information and plan out a heist in whatever way they wish.
There's a reason Leverage and Blades in the Dark use 'flashbacks' to handle jobs. That is entirely too narrative for me. The joy is sitting there watching the players plan the operation for 3 hours. I didn't want to address the problem by ignoring it.
The problem in those old games was I had to do all the work to set the parameters and scope. Well, the frameworks do that for you. They are descriptive, not prescriptive. They are tool, not a directive. There is information about the target site. Players have a limited opportunity to gather information from their assets and skills, and then can use that information while they plan. The process is explicit, their use manifold, and most importantly, fun in play.
That's not the only way frameworks are used: how to handle character infiltration before/without triggering a fight, Information about how to price contracts the players sign to do operations, how to neutrally arbitrate the players getting targeted by opponents for kidnapping or capture, an entire exciting method of resolving car chases, bricolage to upgrade the van to make a plan come together and more!Memento MoriIs it perfect? Almost certainly not. I'm sure someone will rapidly find Sinless's Peasant Rail Gun, but it meets all my criteria. It's fast in play, encourages tactical as well as strategic thinking, and is rich in design space and character growth and development potential. It's also pretty stable, easy for people to understand what their chances are, and the mechanic can be extended to resolve situations that aren't covered by the rules. (You got a lotta nice pools over there buddy. Shame if something would happen to those. Yeah, a real shame.)
I wasn't setting out to reinvent the wheel. I'm not claiming anything in this mechanical system is particularly novel. You get two actions and a reflex action on your turn, for crying out loud. It's pretty straightforward stuff. But it's fun as hell.
People think it's pretty cool!
Hack & SlashFollow, Twitch, Newsletter, Support, Donate to end Cancer (5 Star Rating)
Gordax “The Terrible” is gone but, the ruins of his cursed castle remain. The last band of adventurers to enter the ruins met a horrible fate. Can you discover the truth of the ruins? Can you discover the treasure of Gordax?
This 46 page adventure, from … 1989? Features 76 rooms in a three level dungeon. You got nostalgia for older adventures? This will cure it. Almost exclusively stabbin with interactivity essentially “find the blue key” spread out in padded text.
Well, back in 89 SOMEONE didn’t like T$R very much! According to the adventure intro “As an avid supporter of the fantasy role playing games, I became discouraged by the lack of quality in the modules I was purchasing.” Ha! So dude went all Role Aids and did a whole “Zealots and damage points” reskin of AD&D and published this thing. A glorious mess of a thing, with the emphasis on mess rather than glorious. I salute you, Roland O’Connell, for bringing your vision to life and publishing! A fine example of Direct Action! If you want better D&D adventures then write a good D&D adventure! But, also, sometimes you want to go to a doctor who graduated from a real medical school …
“Can you discover the treasure of Gordaz?” I swear to fucking god, if its friendship or his wifes love or some ass I’m gonna loose my shit. Ok, so, Gordax the barbituate needs some help killing shit and summons Garznik the demon then fucks him over. Garznik kills his wife so Gordax kills himself, but wishes beforehand so he can come back to life and kill Garznik. That leaves us with a three level castle dungeon to explore. With “an arena where the servants of good are forced to do battle” Jesus H Christ. What is it with tests and arenas? Is this another one of those bs fantasy novel series from the 70’s that I ignored while reading Gerrold? Anyway … away we go! And no, I will not be bitching about the single column text or the weird room summary is not boxed by the DM text is boxed oh and also lets include space for notes. We’re just gonna assume everything before today is formatted terribly and everything after today is a paragon of formatting for ease of use and comprehension.
I will be complaining about the interactivity and writing. It is written casually with little focus. Some rooms get the victorian list of pantry contents. Others are full of “appears to be”. Appears to be a barracks. Appears the rooms hasn’t been entered in a long time. Just padding, with little notion how it plays out. And, backstory. “The pillars are a special type of guardian created for Gordax by the mage Septor. Their purpose here is not to keep creatures out, but rather to keep creatures in” Great. No purpose at all in the adventure though. And it’s all mixed in in a kind of conversational way “As the party enters this room they will notice that it is inhabited by several small humanoid creatures.” Just a lack of focus. A room that is all burnt up has a great detail that the party smells smoke when they approach … but then all we get is that the room has been gutted by flames long ago. Nothing more. An opportunity lost to really hammer home a vibe. And that goes for most of the descriptions. The room environments are just not present or only in a perfunctory This Is Whats In The Room way. Which was the style at the time.
“As the party traverses this hallway, they notice four bodies laying on the floor of a room ahead.”or “As the party cautiously advances they find themselves standing at the entrance of a room.”
Interactivity is mostly confined to combat. Like 95% confined to combat. A few traps (deadly as all fuck) and a hole lot of Find The Blue Key To Open The Blue Door. Or, maybe, Find the Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange, Magenta, Fuschia, Mustard, White, Bone White, and Antique White key to open the Blue door. One side effect of this is the map. While the map has some interesting features on it, it doesn’t really serve as a exploratory map because of the key thing. The party is going to have to pretty much systematically explore the dungeon to gather all of the keys. And if you have to go somewhere then its much the same as a linear dungeon: you have to go there. A little better, sure, but the outcome is the same.
And the dungeon is weird. The first level is pretty humanoid centric and pretty open to low level play. But, notice the adventure goes to level 12? The lower two levels get pretty damn fucking tough. Some nice themed areas to go with it, like an undead zone and so on, but still pretty fucking rough. This makes it almost megadungeon like. (I’m thinking of my own megadungeon world, Dungeonworld, where all of the megadungeons exist close-ish to each other.) You’re gonna explore the first level of this dungeon and then go do other things and then come back to the second level when you can and so on. There’s no explicit notice of this anywhere, but there’s no other way to tackle something like this. Which is fine, but a little support in this area, or being upfront with it as a campaign centerpiece, would have been nice.
I’m really down, though, on the lack of interactivity and exploratory elements. I don’t know what to think here. I guess I should mention one of my favorite features, which appears right in the beginning: “ About five feet inside the room lie the dead bodies. Hanging from the ceiling are three wooden bird cages with large crows in them.” That’s their alarm system, some crows in cages. Pretty sweet. Exactly the kind of naturalism I like in my dungeons. But, otherwise? An interesting footnote in history, I guess, much like Vampire Queen.
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. You get to see several rooms on the first level. While the rooms get a bit more complex the deeper you go, I think they are pretty representative of the style of the adventure. So, good preview!
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/264093/ruins-of-quinstead?1892600
I remember back in 2009 or 2010, I finally found a copy of Chivalry & Sorcery 1st Edition on eBay. I had heard so much about C&S in my early days of gaming that it was something I had had my eye on for a while. Sadly, the font size made it nigh unreadable to my aging eyes.
Chivalry & Sorcery is currently available at Bundle of Holding. It offers the latest version of Chivalry & Sorcery (2020) as well as Land of the Rising Sun (2021). 14.95 gets you the C&S Collection, and just short of 26 bucks adds in the Rising Sun Collection.
Adventurer! This new Chivalry and Rising Sun Bundle presents the Chivalry and Sorcery tabletop roleplaying game of medieval fantasy adventure from Brittannia Game Designs, along with the new 2021 version of its Land of the Rising Sun campaign setting. Among the oldest FRPGs still published, Chivalry and Sorcery depicts an authentic feudal Europe with nobles, knights, Christian priests, and medieval doctrines. The game focuses not on dungeon crawls but on the feudal system, court intrigue, tournaments and jousts, and a comprehensive catalogue of ordinary life. Want to foil an assassination plot at a royal wedding – clear a pack of bandits from Creag Hill in Somerset – or find a missing priest and recover his tithes from a haunted keep? Chivalry and Sorcery helps you tell all these stories with authority and conviction. And Land of the Rising Sun, newly expanded by Lee Gold (designer of the 1980 First Edition), brings the same historical focus to Japan's Feudal period (850-1500 CE), updated to the C&S Fifth Edition rules.
[Note: This offer's version of Land of the Rising Sun is Lee Gold's 2021 campaign supplement for Chivalry and Sorcery, not her vintage 1980 standalone game (based on C&S 1E) from Fantasy Games Unlimited. And the "Fifth Edition" of Chivalry and Sorcery refers to the fifth version (2020) of the original 1977 game, not D&D Fifth Edition.]
For just US$14.95 you get all nine titles in our Chivalry Collection (retail value $78.50) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Chivalry and Sorcery Fifth Edition corebook (along with the C&S Basic Rules and the Character Generator Excel spreadsheet); Goblins, Orcs, & Trolls; theEuropean Folklore Bestiary; three recent C&S adventures – Curse of the Casket, Facets of Fire, and The Welsh Connection; the sourcebook Castles of Britain; and the GM Screen.
And if you pay more than the threshold price of $25.72, you'll level up and also get our entire Rising Sun Collection with four more C&S supplements worth an additional $55, including the 2021 Land of the Rising Sun campaign setting and its Rising Sun Folklore Bestiary, Map Pack, and Adventure Book.
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Deal of the Day? Nope, deal of the month. Get 40% off of 5150 Star Army Total War the rest of the month on Wargames Vault.
https://www.wargamevault.com/product/404626/5150-Star-Army-Total-War