The Falling Dominoes of World Design

One of the major features in Weaverham is the road West. The discovery of the route west through the mountains was one of the defining features of the town. When I came up with this distinctive feature, there wasn't really anything on the other end of that route, it just existed as a point of interest. Now, the players haven't questioned this; however, it's not something that could stand for long. So the Walled City of Mirandir came into being as something Worth Going To, in this case, a strange city with a lot of wealth and access to exotic stuff, justifying the existence of trade caravans.

Then, there was another issue. Considering that there was a medium-sized city on a major river flowing west just a few days march south of Weaverham, why was that route through the mountains so important, especially considering that it was only open during the non-winter months? Why wouldn't merchants just jump in their boats, sail down the river, then cut north back up the coast to Mirandir?

The answer clearly was that there was something bad in the way, something terrifying enough that only the extremely foolhardy would risk sailing that route. Now, that something could be on the coast itself because the current state of sailing in the Weaverham campaign is such that few people have the technology or the cojones to sail out of sight of land.

Originally, the answer was: pirates. An established camp of them preying on water traffic -- everybody likes a pirate city and that would certainly "work" within the established world. That doesn't really have the "oomph" to it that I'd like, especially if we were talking about something that had been around for generations.

Add in another bit of world background, the Hyperborean ruins scattered around, roughly equivalent to those left behind by the Afternoon Cultures in M. John Harrison's Viriconium series. In this case then, there is a port/castle complex on the north lip of the river entrance, mostly destroyed; however, some towers and halls still remain and in them dwell a clan of mutated pirates, warped by their surroundings and granted power due to their possession of what they refer to as a "firelance", a cannon mounted in one of the towers and capable of splitting ships in half from miles away.

Results:

- Since few, if any, ships dare to sail past their hideout, the pirates make their bones by raiding Mirandir and the shipping going into the river mouth (the south part of the river delta being outside of the range of the firelance). They strike quickly and then retreat.

- The mutating effects of the ruins have the effect, aside from making the pirates gruesome in appearance, of rendering the inhabitants sterile. The pirates then rely on increasing their numbers through abductions, either through their shipping raids or attacks on nearby settlements. For obvious reasons, children are preferred targets, although young males work well too.

- It's probable that the pirates have some way of dredging stuff off the ocean floor. Maybe some kind of Hyperborean submersible. Maybe some of the mutants have gills. Maybe they have a deal with some undersea dwellers who give them a cut of the detritus that showers onto them from above. Lots of possibilities.

The Heroes of Weaverham, cont.

Our Heroes continued north from the bandit encounter and the next day found a large gathering of nobles and men-at-arms camped around a small tower-and-bailey castle. The servants collecting water and washing clothing in the nearby stream were happy to inform the party that the group, about a hundred strong, were holding a tournament to decide who was worthy to lead the small army into battle against the brigands of the woods, who apparently had a large hideout and numbered twice as many as the men in this camp. The party decided to continue north to Stavros with their caravan.

After successfully seeing the caravan to the Trade Syndicate warehouse, the party took a few days to procure goods and then leave Nyxa, the girl who was ravished by the goat-beast, with the priestesses of  the local church of Tittivila. It was decided that the group would head back to Weaverham with the goal of getting the fourth stone skull that they knew to be in the possession of the sheriff and then see what happened when all the skulls were placed on the pedestals in the goblin caves west of town. The journey south involved repeated encounters with a group of savage men living in the woods who made hit-and-run attacks over multiple days. One of the wizard's hirelings was killed and a near-TPK loomed at one point; however, clever use of a light spell and the net they'd carried out of the goblin cave turned the tide enough for the party to escape mainly unscathed.

Reaching Weaverham safely, a successful Charm Person from Brains resulted in the sheriff happily handing over the skull and when placed upon the pedastal, the group found a secret entrance into a long-forgotten Duvan'ku hideout. Brief exploration led to a few traps being successfully triggered from distance by the thief and while the party avoided touching the various unsettling objects within, they did find a secret door in the chapel that revealed a relative mother lode of treasure in the form of tithed silver coins. Deciding to get out while the getting was good, the party returned to Weaverham and promptly caroused with their newfound wealth. Only one major mishap occurred (Olin got a pretty cool looking tattoo) as Forest Woodtwig was compelled to go on a quest by his gods, Dogar and Kazon.

(A reminder: Forest Woodtwig is an Elf that was raised by Orcs who told him they were Elves and then taught him a falsified version of Elvish culture as a joke. Part of this apparently was teaching him to worship nonexistent terrible gods. We decided that what he thinks are Dogar and Kazon is actually Tsathogga.)

The quest in question is to go down to the swamps south of Larm (itself 3 days south of Weaverham), recover a frog idol and return it to its proper place. The journey south involved a couple of encounters with hostile orcs in which one of Brains' followers died again, now making him 4/4 for deaths of hired infantrymen. He's already paying double rates for hirelings in Weaverham and he's likely to get outright refusals soon.

Arriving in Larm, the party again hit the local merchants and searched around for a good base of operations. Carousing again (our sessions wind up being pretty short and there was plenty of discussion before decamping for Larm) led to Forest insulting Lady Orchid, one of the town's nobles and a mysterious figure from the exotic West. While Forest went into hiding, the remaining party members took part in the local Rat Festival, in which armed men compete to see how many swamp rats they can kill. The party wound up being 2 rats short of the eventual winners, which they accepted as a decent result considering their lack of knowledge of the surrounding terrain. As the last session ended, the rest of the party was preparing to meet Forest at the Gallow Middens outside of town before setting out in search of the frog idol.

The Hyperliving

Right now the Heroes of Weaverham are exploring a small Duvan'ku crypt/dungeon hidden in the back of a larger cave complex. It's situated about 4 days of travel away from where Death Frost Doom is set and I was envisioning it as some sort of hidey-hole for the Death Cultists away from their main base -- so the question is: why this particular cave/area in particular? Is there something special in here?

Fortuitously, Zak S.was doing a RPG Magic 8 ball routine on G+ this week and I was able to ask him what one of the mysteries hidden away in this crypt was. His answer was as follows:


"THE HYPERLIVING. YOU THINK "OH, THE OPPOSITE OF THE UNDEAD, I'M SURE THAT MEANS THEY'RE TOTALLY NICE AND COOL" BUT NO, YOU'D BE WRONG.?"


My interpretation of this answer was that the Hyperliving are beings that have been extended into a higher plane of sensory input and experience, with a corresponding intensity of mental processes. Or, to put it another way, remember when you were 13 and things happened that made you really really angry or sad and how your body would do weird wooshing warm spells/chills/fuzzy bits and it was just INTENSE*? Well, multiply that shit by like, x1000. And add to that the self-knowledge that you've got a lifespan about as long as the replicants from Blade Runner.

So there you have the hyperliving, a bunch of over-excited, extremely emotional, basically manic nihilists, who predominately live for sensory experiences. You know, like feeling the wind on your face. Or the still-quivering warm flesh of the recently slain on your face. Either or.

So were the Duvan'ku creating these guys? I didn't think so, it doesn't really seem to be their style, they're a bit too grimdark and the hyperliving have a definite Viriconium vibe to me, so instead I think they're products of the long-lost Hyperborean civilization, whose eons-old existence has mostly been wiped away (either by their own collapse or by other hands) except for odd remnants found in the more remote and inaccessible parts of the world.

One of which is here, specifically, a strange room obviously not of Duvan'ku construction, either in terms of construction or materials, containing a half-dozen stasis chambers -- bodies suspended within multi-faceted prismatic columns. Several of them have been opened or are at least empty. Could that possibly be related to the adjacent room, the one with all the aging torture equipment and scattered bones?

SIGNS POINT TO YES

* - Maybe this was just me, dunno.

Using Dungeon Crawl Classix Magic Sword Generator and also Some Rambling

I haven't bothered up typing a session report yet; we did manage to play a game using a Dungeon Crawl Classix-style magic system in our Labyrinth Lord campaign and it worked out pretty well. The elf decided not to opt in; the cleric and the magic-user did though and they did alright, the cleric in particular rolling a natural 20 on a Lay on Hands roll and off-the-cuff I decided that doing so when healing a minor shrapnel wound would cause an unrelated bonus of granting the cleric a D&D Type Five "advantage" mechanic for the next d6 turns because her god was so hyped with her.

(This works better than you might think it would because the cleric's god is Abtu, the capricious monkey god of luck. He is typically represented in one of two aspects, the first, the Warrior, is vaguely analogous to the Monkey King,  in the second, the Trickster, he is a normal-sized monkey wearing a fez and smoking a cigar. While keeping watch on a recent journey, the elf whittled the cleric a small totem of Abtu as the Trickster in which he is furiously masturbating.)

Anyway, so I decided to use the magic sword generation table to create some treasure in the dungeon that my party is currently exploring -- a small catacomb/temple of Duvan'ku* hidden away in a larger cavern complex in the mountains west of Weaverham.

Here's what it came up with (all fluff by me, base mechanics from the DCC generation table).

The Magistrate's Nail:
Longsword +1 (+2 damage against Men), Int 8, communicates through Basic Urges, purpose is to uphold Law, can Locate Object x2/day
A blade of antique design (a sage or an especially well-educated swordsmith could identify the style as that of the Eastern Empire, although not those used by the Imperial army), The Nail is an investigator's weapon, forged in order to bring criminals to bay, including aiding in the gathering of evidence. It is dedicated to bringing the Guilty to light and if wielded by a Chaotic individual, it will act capriciously, putting the wielder at a Disadvantage at the most inopportune times as well as attempting to take advantage of situations where the blade might be lost by the wielder. Any Chaotic individual taking the blade up will feel nauseous and uncomfortable so long as they hold it. If the blade is naked when a crime is taken place, the Nail will urge the wielder to strike down whoever is committing the crime. If the Nail is being used to commit a crime, it must make a save versus Death as a first-level fighter or shatter.

* - As an aside, as much as I love Death Frost Doom, I'm going to give Death Love Doom a miss. I'm generally fine with extreme content; however, I give anything that involves children in that vein a wide berth. This wouldn't have been the case before I became a parent; now that I have, I'm utterly incapable of approaching this sort of material rationally, it just sets off an incredibly impressive series of emotional chain reactions that just make me angry and sad. This is not to say that people shouldn't buy the module. They should! And I hope they have some great game sessions with it. It's just a case where you have to be able to say This Isn't For Me, And That's Fine**.

** - This goes double for some of my players, who are not only parents; they also work with local child abuse organizations and have had to become involved with some truly hellish real-world situations; I don't think sitting down and playing through fantastic scenarios involving horrible things happening to children is exactly what they're looking for on their days off.

Adapting the DCC Magic System to Labyrinth Lord

After getting the main Dugeon Crawl Classics rulebook in the mail earlier this week and reading it before I go to bed, I had two thoughts about the magic system:

1) This is pretty neat.

2) This is actually pretty similar to what's been suggested for Type 5 D&D cantrips, which I have previously derided in casual conversation.

The reconciliation between these two is a matter of the proposed Type 5 cantrips and the DCC magic system having the same basic philosophy and slightly different implementations -- the key here is that while both systems allow for repeated casting of spells over the course of the day, there is more risk to the DCC system, where even if Magic Missile always hits, you still have to roll to be able to cast it, with the possibility of wiping out your capacity to cast Magic Missile for the rest of the day.

(Obviously D&D Next is still in the playtesting phase and it's quite possible that they'll move to something similar to the DCC implementation.)

So, I've been thinking about making spell-casting in my Labyrinth Lord campaign more like DCC spell-casting. Because of the differences between the systems, a straight transfer of the mechanics won't work. Here's what I've come up with as a compromise:

Casting a spell involves rolling a d20 + either your Int bonus (magic-user, elf) or your Wis bonus (cleric).

Results go as follows:

1 - Spell has a Catastrophic Failure, is lost for day

2-5 - Spell Fails, is lost for day

6-9 - Spell Fails

10-15 - Spell Success

16-19 - Excellent Spell Success, caster can increase one aspect of the spell (i.e. choose one from does one more die-step of damage/healing, increased range, increased area of effect, more difficult to save against, etc.)

20 - Amazing Spell Success, select three from the above list or describe something aaaaaaaawesome

One thing that I've been thinking about is having healing/laying on of hands exempt from the "lost for the day" stipulation, under the theory that just having a chance of the spell failing is enough of a risk, plus the possibility of a Catastrophic Failure (which would almost certainly be deity disapproval) and having it lost would lead to too much "well we retreat and wait" activity. Although this makes me worried about the Cleric becoming too medic-ized, really, I don't think it can be worse than the shotgun-spell approach. I think it'll help with magic-users and elves as well, since now they won't be one-shot Sleep merchants and if they do lose Sleep, they'll be more likely to continue, just being more flexible with their other spells.

Heroes of Weaverham, Parts 5 and 6

It was decided that the best way to deal with the problem of the town sheriff apparently owning the skull that the party was after was to have Hankella, the female warrior with a Tom Selleck mustache, attempt to seduce him. To aid her in this endeavor, she purchased a love potion from the local shady apothecary. Upon arriving for dinner, she began discussing how she had been involved in wiping out a local nest of bandits while he showed her his old adventuring trophies. Remembering that she had brought a bottle of fine wine, she excused herself to pour them both a glass, slipping the love potion into his. Afterward, she regretted not pilfering the skull (which was sitting on a wooden pedestal in his study) while everybody was distracted with his projectile vomiting and getting him into bed (it must have been a bad reaction to the wine).

This episode unnerved the party so much regarding retrieving the skull that they decided to head out of town for a bit, finally deciding on hiring themselves out as caravan escorts, again contracted through Drask of the Trade Syndicate and his caravan master, Greta.

They set forth as follows:

• Hankella, heart-broken and hirsute warrior
• Brains, a suspicious (in both senses) magic-user, along with his hired help - Olga, Shield-maiden; Ursula, Bow-maiden; and Werner, Carrier-boy and Party-insulter 
• Forest Woodtwig, an elf, who, unbeknownst to the other party members, has actually been raised by orcs wearing pointy ears who, for their own amusement, gave Forest erroneous information regarding what it means to be an elf, which would explain why he talks about cannibalism so much
• Olin, who is quite happy that both the elf and the magic-user can both cast sleep - for slitting the throats of sleeping people is Totally His Thing

On their way North, they survived a nighttime attack by starving wolves, were warned about a castle by a prickish knight, stayed at said castle anyway and had a fine time, including talking with the court mage (one of four people in the whole place) who seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with the so-called "cursed mountain" to the East and was willing to pay good coin for anything unearthed from the ancient death-cult headquarters on said mountain (they might have to check that out on the way back, the party said). On their way out they ran into some pilgrims of the Sun God, heading south for some sort of festival.

A day's travel north from the castle and things got interesting. First of all, they were attacked by a small group of giant rattlesnakes. Second of all, Olga died. Third of all, Hankella should have died, except that when she appeared to be on the brink of death from rattlesnake venom, Forest remembered that he had that mysterious necklace from the goblin shaman and put it on her. Which seemed to put her into some sort of coma, which is better than dead. A horse and rider were sent back towards the Sun God pilgrims and returned that night with a priest capable of removing the poison from Hankella's body, although he was visibly disturbed by the necklace. Forest and Olin volunteered to escort the priest back to his group and the latter, perhaps unwisely, attempted to backstab the priest (as he explained, the 200gp "donation" for removing the poison meant that he had at least 200 gold on him). He was held personed for his troubles and then summarily cursed such that he cannot attack Lawful creatures until he properly atones (Forest assured the priest that there would be additional punishments for the "brigand in our midst" -- a handy bit of quick thinking given an earlier conversation upon his arrival).

(Hankella was at this point made into the thrall of a vampire who had made the necklace out of a portion of his life-essence -- he needs somebody's help to unseal his tomb, which is contained within the Halls of the Red Queen.)

Continuing North, the party came across a small village. Invited to dinner at the headman's house, they discovered that there was some tension between the villagers, a young cleric named Desmond who was earning his apprenticeship in the area and the Sun God pilgrims that had just passed through town. Before things came to a head, a distraught villager broke into the hall wailing that an evil spirit had come out of the woods and taken his daughter. Quickly downing a "strength draught" offered to them by the headman (only Hankella and Brains actually drank it, with the others feigning to do so), the party picked up their weapons and headed into the moonlit woods.

Hearing a scream from an upcoming clearing, the party burst into it to the horrible sight of a twisted half-goat, half-man creature coupling with the kidnapped girl. Engaging the creature in combat, the party was then also ambushed from behind by a group of the headman's guards, seemingly intent on taking the party alive. A quick Sleep spell dealt with the treacherous villagers; unfortunately, disaster then struck as the demon spirit delivered a crunching headbutt that folded Hankella's torso in half and the party was stunned as she fell dead to the ground and the creature rushed off into the night.

After dispatching the fallen villagers (and discovering that the hooded figure in the rear of the group was the girl's father), the party tracked the goal spirit to its lair in the ancient ruins on the other side of the clearing. A choice use of the Big d30 by Olin on a damage roll left the goat-being dead in a phantasmagorical display based on the doctor's account from The Great God Pan and the party could relax for approximately 5 seconds before releasing that the floor of the chamber in which this creature had fled was almost entirely covered in silver coins.

A clinking dash through the woods later, the party rejoined the caravan and got the hell out of dodge. The next day, a group of 20-strong brigands would have been very happy to see all the silver they would have taken possession of if both spellcasters hadn't re-memorized sleep, leaving all except 3 highwaymen asleep (well, before their throats were cut, at least) at the side of the road. The party is now only a day-and-a-half from their destination and we take our leave from them as they debate trying to track down the brigand's presumed lair.

Heroes of Weaverham, Parts 3 and 4

I'm switching the session report up from the "narrator" style to running over the fourth wall and backing over it a few times with a backhoe because 1. I'm not sure how long I'd be able to keep it up and 2. the reports would have become increasingly cryptic/short on content as the party spends extended sections of time outside of town.

The group:

• Beefcake Piledriver, charismatic dwarf (earlier I identified this character as "Beefsteak Piledriver", my mistake, as "Beefcake" is correct)
• Forest Woodtwig, elf with Buddy Holly glasses
• Olin, who delights in attacking the helpless
• Hankella, hirsute warrior and Brazz, her hireling who is beginning to think that he should have included some terms on harassment in his contract

After some discussion and hitting up of bars, the party decided to head out to the ogre cave, where they'd previously discovered that the cave continued past the initial chamber; however, they also discovered that it was dark and that while they had plenty of torches, they didn't actually have anything to light the torches with.

This time, they remembered to bring some flint and steel and upon heading deeper into the cave, they discovered a large flat rock that uncovered the "backdoor" to The Goblin Hideout. After heading down into the hideout, they openly assaulted the goblins in the kitchen and when the noise brought shouts from goblins elsewhere in the complex, the party had the dwarf reply in Goblin to try and put them off. This wound up with the dwarf antagonizing the other goblins, leading to another melee at the top of the ledge above the mushroom cavern. The party killed these goblins without taking much damage, although a couple goblins ran away, now in the knowledge that there were intruders in the cave.

The party reacted to this by going down to the mushroom cavern and investigating the hanging cage. An extended argument on what to do with the myconid followed, only interrupted by an ambush led by the goblin shaman, who had some nasty spells that required only a successful touch attack. After killing Brazz, the goblins started rolling terribly, with only the dwarf suffering significant wounds and the shaman failing completely to touch any PCs. Again, a handful of goblins fled once it was clear the battle was turning against them. The party celebrated by having Hankella sample some of the local fungi, resulting in her falling unconscious.

And so ended the third session.

The fourth session picked up with the party trying to remember the basic layout of the caverns and exactly what had happened. They decided to free the myconid using the key that they found on the shaman and were rewarded with the myconid presenting them with three healing (1d4+1) chunks of mushroom. Hankella regained conciousness soon after and hearing snarling and growling to the north, they moved to investigate, finding the wargs barricaded in a room. Noting their apparent hunger, the party hid random bits of mushroom inside random bits of goblin, which they then flung into the room until the wargs ate the right combination of mushrooms to render them unconscious, at which the party entered and slew them.

After investigating the equipment in the "foyer" room, the party returned to the mushroom cavern with the goal of hunting down the remaining goblins (the amount of equipment indicated that there were more of them than they had killed before). Heading down to the shaman's room (the shaman and one of his bodyguards having been killed already) the party discovered the scroll cases, took the scrolls without even glancing at them, threw all the small stones into the pool, tried to plumb its depths with a rope and debated having the dwarf swim down it before grumbling about the lack of treasure and preparing to return to the unexplored areas off the foyer.

Upon leaving the bodyguard's room, they were ambushed by the remaining 5 goblins, including one of the bodyguards. The goblins tried to use a net and failed, although Beefcake was reduced to near-death by a mighty blow from the bodyguard. Hankella then threw the net back at them with spectacular results, taking out three of the goblins in a single attack. The bodyguard was quickly felled and the remaining goblin attempted to flee before being cut down from the shadows by Olin, who had sneaked past the melee in order to coup de grace the goblins stuck in the net.

The party then discovered the skull/pedestal room, where the thief made his Dex check upon attempting to remove one of the skulls and avoided the poison needle trap. More careful investigation ensued, until one of the party members remembered that there were a number of skulls worked into the walls on the way down to the shaman's room. They figured that one or both of the stone skulls might be among those and since I hadn't decided on a place for the second skull, I decided that this was an excellent piece of logic on their part and they thus found the dwarf skull in the shaman's corridor, although they were still missing the skull (which they correctly guessed should be an elf skull).

Trying to force the final pedestal with use of clay molded into the depression and applying force did nothing, so the party decided to take the other three skulls and go back to town. The half-day of travel went uneventfully and a night out carousing and questioning resulted in the discovery that some folks remember seeing a stone skull in the trophy collection of the town sheriff, dating back to his adventuring days. The fourth session then came to a close, with the party discussing how best to progress.