WE ARE KABUKI KAISER

MESSING AROUND: WHEN A STAR FALLS

The whole UK adventures series were, as an Amazon reviewer said, well ahead of their time. Most of them involve a strong railroading, but not much more than the one you get in your usual Pathfinder Adventure Path. You're railroaded okay, but you don't quite feel like it and there's a bit of space for different options if you want to somewhat derail: that's railroading with a leeway, which I will coin as rollercoasting for future debates and blog posts. Now that rollercoasting has become the standard for many players, these adventures shine as brilliant precursors.

In most of them, and When a Star Falls is no exception, you begin somewhere in the wilderness or in a settlement, usually a small town or village, and get to crawl into 2-3 dungeons in a defined order before unveiling an overarching plot and solving it. Usually, these dungeons are original enough to generate an atmosphere that sets the adventure apart from, say, the Caverns of Quasqueton: an abandoned villa, a derro lair that's full of strange machines, a fallen monastery, etc.

The adventure starts in the moors when the player characters stumble across a memory web, a creature that feeds upon memories. Killing it releases all the memories that filled it in a blast, effectively providing the players with enough minimal information to start the adventure.

Messing around: The web could provide the player characters will all the relevant information from the start instead of just giving them starting bits. The adventure would then be all laid bare up front and rely upon their choices as advised in this post. The Spawn of Azathot campaign uses this logic a lot: you've got everything into your hands, and I have 5 adventures ready for you, which one do you choose? The only issue a D&D game, or a “fixed” When a Star Falls adventure would have with this approach is that it would be difficult to scale the adventures according to the character level. What I mean is that the level system implies a progression in adventures that befits more the rollercoaster approach than the wide-open sandbox one. Let me sort this out: okay you don't care about balance, you play OSR, fine. The party goes to some place that's too strong for them to tackle? No big deal, let them flee or die. I'm fine with that. Yet, what will happen is that clever parties will automatically stick with places they belong to level-wise. Hint: it's just the same as rollercoasting. So the level system is a limit here and the rules have to be changed to address it. Make all the places more or less the same in level and cut the progression? Or make level progression ultra-quick in order to let the party explore everything freely? Leave it as it is and have it all fall into place by itself – a.k.a. rollercoasting?

With the memory web, the adventurers learn that a star fell, changing the land as it did. That's the good old cataclysm thing. They then explore the land, and fix what the star has done, helping a new condition to emerge. End of the story.

Messing around: Use the How to Host a Dungeon logic. Create a land, a hexcrawl, a place, a dungeon, whatever. Hit it with a cataclysm. It's like when you launch Godzilla into your Sim City. Change the place accordingly and guess how the inhabitants react. Are the monsters changing? Do some rise in power or go extinct? Create a continent. Hit it with a thousand stars, make a sandbox setting with it. Be careful of the level cap of the zones in the sandbox, you don't want your sandbox to become a rollercoaster.

At the end, you meet derros and machine creatures in a minimal Gnomeregan dungeon.

Messing around: Go further, take the Psychic powers from Stars Without Numbers straight into the campaign, use the radioactive rocks from the Anomalous Subsurface Experiment, Mutant Future or whatever, go for the OSR Megamix.

THE GREAT SCUM HACK 3: THE BEST PARTS

Instead of a detailed actual play report, I'd like to focus on the best parts of our first two sessions. You don't care much about what The Scum is and what is its connection to Rudingoz and you can feel free to read even if you'd like to play it someday because the adventure you'll play is bound to be very different.

After Hor Brazzth, Edouard's fighter, managed to flee from Tilnur's Bronze Palace, the main seat of power of The Scum — the shantytown setting of the adventure — where he was looking for a missing child (yes, with painted pictures on milk bottles and all), the party decided to try something subtler than entering by the front door. Those sad clowns had been bitches with all this dagger tossing, hideous laughter tricks, sword slashes and stupid puns. While it was Brazzth's idea to get inside alone, invited as he was because the tall jesters at the door thought it would be fun to have someone dumb and mute for dinner, he was reluctant to try again.

Led by Seb Ram's character, Solon Söln, an elven fighter/thief, they crept inside the dome at the top of the palace in Tower of the Elephant mode, only to find themselves in a huge attic whose different sections were separated by carpets hanging from the dome's ceiling. After having triggered a laughing magic mouth, a few sad clowns came in. They dispatched them after a short fight, and made a hell of a noise by trying to secure the trap in the floor through which they came with huge barrels of liquor they found on the spot. Of course, they've attracted a lot more by doing so.

When more clowns came and began to bang at the trap, they all ran everywhere in the attic to look for a place to hide — I hardly see the point after having made such a noise, but they seemed to think that it would work. Brazzth changed its hiding place twice, the first time because he was under the ogre-sized four poster bed with Birlga, the assassin Nikos plays and Birlga was there before, the second because he was sitting squat near Solon and Ter Elwy, an OD&D elf played by Cedric, and endangered their cover. Eventually, he ran under the last separating carpet of the room into a space of the attic they hadn't explored before, taking Gryselda, the cursed and slightly overweighted poetess, a cleric, with him — probably to touch her boobs.

Thing is, the clowns didn't come alone, but with Tilnur's lieutenant, a half-orc fighter in black plate mail with a weighted lucern hammer and a boar-headed and fanged full helm. Since they had to topple the liquor barrels in order to come in, the room was soaked, they were soaked, Birlga was soaked under the bed, the carpets were soaked — we're talking 600 liters of liquor here. And that's just where Ter Elwyn thought that it would be a good idea to throw a lit flask of oil — who needs a fireball when you're smart enough?! I suspect panic here.

So that's pretty much oil flask damage for ev-ery-bo-dy, excepted Brazzth and Gryselda maybe, and no save for poor Birlga under the bed. Next round was pretty much spent running everywhere, forfeiting hiding positions, screaming at Cedric and laughing nervously. The clowns and the half-orc were surprised okay, but so were the other player characters. The fight thus began in the open, with fire damage every round for friends and foes alike. It began to look grim, since nobody managed to hit the plate-clad half-orc and Birlga fell down (0 hit points sharp) in a corner he was running to. The poetess-cleric, her clothes on fire, ran nakedly to heal him and he struggled back to his feet the next round. This is where he saved the day, sneaking to the half-orc and scoring a hit. He had 35% to kill him on the spot and the whole party knew that the game would end in TPK the next round if he failed. He rolled, and succeeded with a 27!

A lot of shouting and congratulations followed, with high-fives, a bit of samba dancing and whistles. This felt a bit like a crowd after a goal in a soccer match. To my neighbors as well.

From now onwards, Brazzth, which was barely wearing sandals and a loincloth, wears the boar-faced fanged black metal helmet as well, which makes him look a bit like a catch wrestler.   

Next session, our party's inside the cray-like undergound bowels of a Bene Geserit-styled temple full of cleric/nuns clad in red robes, the Caecilian Sisterhood. After having learnt that their high priestess went mad after exploring a distant dimension the sisters have a permanent gate to down below, they agreed to meet her — maybe she knows where the child is? When the squealing high priestess tried to attack them with her strange dagger of pink metal, they managed to disarm her and took the dagger away — Brazzth did. Okay, the sisters said, we can help you but we first need help: see our high priestess? She went through the gate we keep below and came back like this. If you agree to go there, you could maybe find a cure for her? And the party answered “oh sure, where's this gate?”. Like that. No trying to check whether they lied or not, no asking why they didn't go themselves, nothing, just “Oh, right, we're adventurers you know, we love going to the sort of places you go to and come back squealing for the rest of your life. Funny that you have this gate just below your nice Bene Geserit temple”.

Just a word: the dagger Brazzth has kept is a +1 charming dagger. That means that every hit it makes, its target needs to make a save or become charmed by the wielder, one person at a time. Of course, it gets a bonus equal to the damage it receives this round and it's not possible to use this charm with a gentle touch, it has to be a good old strong attack. Ed doesn't know anything about the dagger's power.

Thing is, the gate is at the bottom of a 30' deep pit full of writhing giant Caecilian worms. After checking ropes, weighting chances of success and a lot of talking, the party decided that Ter Elwy has to do something, like trying this new Lamentations of the Flame Princess summon spell, for instance. Well, he did, and failed to control the demon he's summoned — a slime creature impervious to normal weapons and gifted with strong telekinesis power. Moreover, it looked like the demon intended to stay in the material reality and had the power to do so. Just for fun, I ruled that instead of having normal weapons bouncing upon it, they would be stuck in the slime and instantly corroded. Things looked grim once again, until Brazzth tried to hit it with the pink +1 charming dagger. He did, and the demon rolled a natural “1” on its save. I was dubious about a demon being charmed, but there's nothing you can do against a natural “1”, sometimes, the dice talk or you don't roll them (yes, Noisms). “Help us down below up to the reddish gate you see at the bottom, and send me last in” and “Yes, my good friend” answered the demon and so did they cross the mist-robed gate in the cave of the slithering silkworms with the telekinetic powers of a slime demon.

What will they find behind the gate? What the demon will do in the convent? Will they find the child? Are they even looking for him? This all will receive due answer in The Great Scum Hack 4: MORE BEST PARTS.

THE GREAT SCUM HACK 2: SAY THE F*** WORD

There's a lot of excellent posts about what being a good DM is about lately. There's manuals as well, like the Lamentations of the Flame Princess referee guide and the advice section of the 4^th Edition DMG, which both are really, really brilliant.

It's all about letting go of your babies — settings, adventures, preplanned ideas, whatever — and accepting to give the main drive to your players. You do so by saying yes, jumping on contradictions, escalating like in Dogs in the Vineyard, and more generally, using what the players give you to propel the adventure forward instead of trying to push it yourself. You set the tone, the pace and the atmosphere, you run the show for everyone's fun, one-fourth teacher, one-fourth referee, one-fourth clown and one-forth epic storyteller. You make sure the shy guy gets into the spotlight and weave the plots emerging from what they've chosen. Why? Because they probably choose what they'd like to play and have their fun with, and it's your job to give them a lot of fun regardless of your. This is exactly where you take your fun from: their one.

There's a word for that, and we don't dare say it yet. Well, I will: this is all about

GENEROSITY

You give up your ideas of a good game to let the good game happen, you learn to follow and lean back, watching the wonderful show, hitting buttons from time to time to maintain it all in good shape, you look at them, enthralled as they are by their own stories, and pour in a little bit of atmosphere and color sometimes to keep it going forward, wherever it is.

When in doubt, you can drop the theory and stick with this only f*** word we never dare to say, it will work just fine.

Applied from the start, it went like this: I didn't begin The Great Scum Hack with my usual pool of players. Instead, I've talked to almost everyone I know, whether into RPG or not, about the game I was about to begin, saying « you can come and join us if you want, and if you don't feel so good with it, you can go mid-session, no problem ». No discussion about the premises, no statement of intent, nothing, just come and sit. Some said no, some said they would and didn't come, some came and went away, and some stayed — not necessary the ones I expected — and it takes shape through actual play, molding a team of strangers learning they can become friends over a game and have a hell of a fun.

I now have a new pool of about 11 players, including 4 die-hard regulars and a lot of occasional players. This involves a lot of NPC upkeep and a bit of juggling with the setting, but it works — all by itself.

THE GREAT SCUM HACK 1: OSR MEGAMIX

I could have chosen. I could have said: we play straight B/X, Labyrinth Lord, Holmes D&D or Lamentations of the Flame Princess maybe. At the opposite extreme, I could have laid my own house rules bare and send them all over the web through this Lulu guy. At some point, owning most retro-clones and original rules, I found myself wanting to choose too many mutually exclusive rules at the same time and I was like “what exactly are we playing?”.

I've got now the answer: we grow up, empower ourselves and play everything we love. We're playing elves as character classes if we feel like, next to an Advanced Edition Companion, or AD&D or whatever elven fighter/thief, we're playing the spells and magic system from Lamentations of the Flame Princess with Dark Sun's Dragon Kings spell casting weird effects, we're playing Holmes initiative, PHB assassins and bards, jesters from Dragon and White Dwarf houris.

The first session my players sat in, they began like “come on, don't tell us we play 1^st level again, make it a two” and, to my — and their — utter surprise I went “sure, cool. Now give me those oreo cookies, please. Oh and, while you're at it, eject this Guild Wars, Apocalyptica and Conan OST we've been playing with for too long, and play the last VNV record”.

So did we begin The Great Scum Hack, an adventure set into the Rudingoz random city I'm designing at the moment. It's called “hack” because this introductory adventure shows a way to hack the random city and to play it, say, reverse engineered. I can't think of any better way to write an introductory adventure to a setting/campaign than one that makes it lie from the beginning, it's so boring to wait 12 sessions until a bit of the secrets get revealed anyway. It's also called “hack” because this adventure was originally designed for Rackham's Cadwallon RPG, but disappeared into the nether void when the publisher went bankrupt or so. I was paid good money to design it in 240 pages and it's now 16 pages, going to be cheap and way better.

But it's not the only reason why it's a hack, it's also because there's everything OSR inside when I run it. Characters starting money, physical traits, background skills, contacts and enemies are ripped from Lesserton & Mor ; shop keepers, dead bodies, NPCs and fortunes are from Vornheim ; most magic items come from Goblinoid Games' Realms of Crawling Chaos — or Deep Ones if my players feel like playing one some day — temples and events come from the Classic Dungeon Designer Old School Encounters Reference #4, etc. I could go like “oh you've printed Nicolas' Orc and you want to play one? Let me think about how to make it fit, I'll find something”.

Of course, you're not gonna need anything else than a rules system and the booklet I'll Lulu to run it yourself but if there's something you or your players love anywhere, whether in Stars Without Numbers, Red Planet, AD&D2 Al Quadim, the Hill Cantons Compendium, whatever, just do like I do and get your fun.

One last word: it's not Gonzo, not at all. The universe this all shapes has a very, very strong suspension of disbelief, it's almost seamless, it's rock-solid as a good book saga. Yet, of course, I'm lucky not to play with any rules lawyer or setting expert. What about you? Is your game a megamix as well? Why not?

DID THE OSR BURY THE FORGE?

I know, I'm not supposed to talk about "Forge" topics without an awful lot of details and mandatory caution, but I won't. I simply don't have the time/energy anymore to go into such extend of gaming theory, especially since it sucks a little bit of the very same energy I  use to write and to play. This post is thus bound to fail Forge-wise but still, I'd like to point at a few things in it.

You know, the Big GNS Model and its implied truths: games are different because they address different Creative Agendas, they should be tuned to a specific agenda, Color and Setting instead of the fantasy heartbreakers/kitchen sinks they've become, their system, which matters, should have teeth, and the like.

In my own experience, going through The Forge and participating there was key in bringing me back to the Old-School systems through Matt Finch's Quick Primer for Old-School Gaming and I've come to consider whatever I did on The Forge as a pre-OSR training of sorts.

Yet, when we look at what the OSR is, it turns all The Forge principles head over heels: specific Creative Agenda? No way. Fantasy heartbreakers are bad? No, they're awesome. System Matters? Hell, yes, but not like you think. Having teeth, resolution mechanics implying a specific way of playing, deeply embedded into the system's mechanics? Of course not, these games are about freedom, goodbye Luke Crane. Strong theory backing our designs? We have the Quick Primer, thank you.

Oddly, it's the OSR that manages to fulfill all what The Forge somewhat failed to accomplish in its days of glory: punk venues, open source, PDF & POD, internet coverage, conventions, a hell of a buzz, reaching everyone, mature gaming, ashcans everywhere, etc. I could say that The Forge is actually an ancestor of the OSR. I could.

THE BLACKFLAME BROTHERHOOD

            Where did you get this, halflings? Tharizdun gave us.

I used to be fascinated by the Black Flame, a fire that nothing can extinguish, burning cold instead of heat, and draining soul as well as body, leaving empty husks in its wake, as Baltron's Beacon says. This adventure talked about a cult, conveniently named Cult of the Black Flame, and of its destructive and conquering agenda.

In Mentzer's Companion Set, the Blackflame isn't a force of negation nor darkness — in a moral, evil meaning of the term — but the precious relic of the halfling clans. It isn't described as life-draining, but as the exact reverse of a normal flame: it's cold, sheds shadows of light, suffuses darkness, burns anything not burnable and leaves combustible items undamaged. It can as well restore ashes to their original form. Halfling clans use it to weave webs of shadows, collect the oil of moonlight that sets fabrics flying under the moon, and craft magic items.

I know, it's not that easy to connect halflings with evil cultists and the negative energy of the undead, but there are ways. The halflings could have become dark creatures, gollums of sorts, and their Blackflame could be the same as Baltron's Black Flame. Or the halflings could have been tricked and abused into buying it. It could have been stolen, and perverted or maybe restored to its true dreary nature and purpose. At the other extreme option, the halflings could have willingly be the wardens of the world — you know how lucky they are — aren't they the best choice to keep evil artifacts? Gandalf thought so.

Where does the flame come from? Who's the evil Prometheus behind it? The most obvious answer I find in the materials that existed at the time both Baltron's Beacon and the Companion Set were out is in the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. It's very cold in there, and very dark as well. There's a god who'd love to end everything, leaving empty husks behin... But wait!

A « classical » adventure campaign could involve the following:

1. Halfling clans, Companion Set style

2. Baltron's Beacon

3. Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

4. Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun

5. Dwellers of the Forbidden City

With an idea like Cult of the Black Flame = Black Brotherhood and a lot of pointed hoods, triangle torch-poles, snake-men, psionics, force, cold, annihilation and empty husks. What I especially like with this idea, is that the Black Flame in itself almost rings like a nuclear threat. It's oblivion for the whole world, the promise of an eternal icy empty hell full of wraiths and it's bound to involve SenZarian sequences at some point, like « your cube of force's field burns », « I annihilate the blackflame greater elemental » or even « can I name my blackflame tongue Stormbringer? ».

LIVING [YOUR CAMPAIGN'S NAME]

The Lake Geneva campaign, which served as an example, or matrix maybe of what D&D campaign play should be like, involved several parties at the same time. Different groups of players, and hence characters, would be wandering the levels of the very same megadungeon at roughly the same moment. They could meet each other up, and trade secrets, rumors, items and maps, or even fight if they felt like. This provided the feel of a living world, that Ben Robbins copied for his West Marches, and that the Living RPGA projects tried to emulate in a different way.

Now, most of us are caught with the same team every other week when we can spare a bit of time from our jobs and families. This involves a Dungeon of the Week scope rather than the huge, open, meta-universes that we ran in the past. The Rudingoz (yes, you know the goddam citycrawl I'm writing you about in the former 3 messages I've posted in here) I ran when I was 16 encompassed 4 groups of players and three nights of hard-core gaming a week. Nowadays, a game every 15 days is about the maximum I can afford.

Yet, since the founding model of campaign play was based upon this multiple-groups focus, it falls short of expectations when taken as is and used for episodic gaming. Both megadungeons and hexcrawls lose a bit of sense when made episodic: they aren't teeming with life as they should be and they become static.

There's a very simple solution, though, that you can use to spark the campaign alive. It goes like this:

A. Generate 2-3 adventuring parties. Each of these should number about 1d6+1 characters, with 0-3 (1d4-1) henchmen to carry the bags and torches, and to assist the characters in fights. Roll 1d6 for the party level:

1. 2 levels lower than the PC (level 1 minimum)

2. 1 level lower than the PC (level 1 minimum)

3-4. Same level as the PC

5. 1 level higher than the PC

6. 2 levels higher than the PC

Once you know the party's global level, roll 1d6 again (same table), to check the level of each individual character. Henchmen are always the same level as the lowest level character. Stat them all up at random, choosing races and classes consistent with the stats and give them a few starting riches and magic items if your setting has. Roll for NPC quirks, traits and facts upon the tables you prefer (DMG, Vorhneim, Carcosa, Classic Encounters #4, etc) and give a name to the adventuring party, like they suggest in Forgotten Realms (The Glove, Morrow's Rhymers, The Ratpack, Emerson's Murder, the Gypsies, and the like).

B. Make a random table with all the places adventurers of this level might explore in your setting.

Example:

1. Megadungeon level 1

2. Megadungeon level 2

3. Hexcrawl region

4. The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh I've just adapted to OD&D

C. Each week, groom your adventuring parties:

1. Roll 1d6: on 1-3, this party has been adventuring this week.

2. Roll upon the random table of places to check what locale the adventuring party has been exploring.

3. Assign the place a survival number from 2 to 12, where 12 is insanely hard and 2 a piece of cake. Tomb of Horrors would be a good 10 or 11, and the B1, In Search of the Unknown, a 5.

4. Roll 2d6 for each and every character: is the roll is equal or higher, the character survives the adventure, if lower, he dies. Roll twice for the henchmen, the henchman dying when any of these rolls fails.

5. Give treasure, both monetary and magic, to the surviving characters and give them as many experience points as fractions of 12 the survival number has. Example: surviving the B1 gives 5/12 of the XP needed to reach the next level, make the 12 a 20 for multi-classed characters.

D. Then groom your locales:

1. Remove all the plundered treasures from the locales explored successfully.

2. Have the monsters react: they maybe ally with other, stronger creatures, call forth reinforcements, move into new spots, etc.

3. Put the bodies of dead characters somewhere where they died. Have they become wights? Have they triggered a trap?

E. And allow for sharing.

From time to time, give the player characters the opportunity to get something from another adventuring party: a scrawled map, a rumor (possibly false), a possibility to trade magic items in and/or out, the story of their last adventure, help (maybe they have a cleric who can remove curse and is happy to do so, maybe their wizard sells spell books he doesn't use anymore).

F. Maybe online?

If you use a mailing list for your game, create mails for other adventuring parties and mail them sometimes on behalf of the other parties. Example: “Don't tell the DM but don't you know what's under the Green Cascade north of Cockroach Hills?”). Sometimes, answer mails sent to them. Sometimes, lie.

[EDIT. Removed Gypsies stats, they were lame.]

LIKE PLAYING DOOM IN NIGHTMARE MODE

My usual bunch of friends play Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, WoW RPG and a little bit of Pathfinder. They sometimes play Mongooses' Slane or Conan, and they like to impersonate heroes that won't die, and are involved into heavy railroaded stories they listen to in awe and fascination.

As you suppose, I prefer getting out to the pub next door, or spending the night talking anything with utter strangers to these tiresome sessions of complete boredom, and I suspect they prefer watching a movie or even staying home, where it's safe, and play their video game to being actually playing with me as the DM, since they truthfully consider me as an insane TPK and a wild sandbox-y gonzo maniac.

That's why, as I was intending to playtest The Great Scum Hack - an adventure you'll find in Rudingoz, my random tables city campaign – for the third time, I've invited quite a lot of strangers at my table: strangers to each other and strangers to the games I play. This isn't easy, this isn't a Con where you can say “this table: ruling not rules, player's wits and expandable characters”. The first was a WoD player and a real-life politician, the second a seasoned power-player, the third a nice watcher who's said a couple of sentences during the play, and the fourth a cynical guy who likes the 3RD Ed but is happy to play anything, provided he can make psychoanalysis diagnoses of the players and DM alike from time to time. Seven more are in the waiting list: a fan of Barbarians of Lemuria, a novice extremely eager to discover the game, a painter who thinks he's on stage every time he plays and that a good play involves a lot of shouting, a Lovecraft purist who has a hard time making friends – we use to call him “The Golem” - , copycats of the Frog brothers from Lost Boys and my ex-GF is she wanders alone the evening we play.

This was a bit like playing Doom in Nightmare mode. On top of this, I must add we're all beyond our twenties with jobs, families and stuff, so that we never really know if we're going to make it the next time. Hence the 11-players pool. Yet, wisely using the henchmen rules, having a few NPC orbiting about, and letting go of all expectations, I'm pretty sure that it can work somewhat. Okay, it didn't really work so well this time: the WoD player turned the game into a solo adventure for himself, the power-player whined about his lame starting equipment and lost interest in the game except for the one and only fight he was involved in – with  portrait ticks -, the watcher smiled, as all watchers do, and woke up when the tick duel started and the cynical guy smiled cynically and said he's enjoyed himself.

Man, this will take time...

PORTRAIT TICKS

MV: 30' (10')

AC 3[16/18]

HD 2

Attacks: 1 bite

Damage 1d4, drain blood

ST F2

Morale 8

Portrait ticks are 3' long flat black worms created by gruesome magic. Like giant ticks, they can attach themselves to the victims they've successfully bitten and drain their blood for 1d4 hp every round thereafter, their facial features changing to match their victims' faces. This is through this process that portrait ticks gain existence in the third dimension, being duo-dimensional creatures until they drain as many hp of blood as their hp maximum. While duo-dimensional, the worms can stand sideways to their attackers, appear thus invisible and cannot be hit. They still take area of effect damage and the like, and suffer triple damage in this case as well as when they're attacked from the front side. Once attached, they don't move and seeing them sideways or in front thus becomes a simple matter of where the attacker himself stands. If killed while attached, their victim takes all the damage in excess.

GET RID OF DESIGN 101

Whether on blogs, message boards or Con lectures, you're bound to stumble upon design advice everywhere these days. Most of them sound like a friendly advice would, but they're put in such a way that you're a stupid fool if you ignore them, or so they say.

Yes, they're useful, if only because they question the way you design your own private soon-to-be-shared fantasy. Yet, on the other hand, they set a hype of sorts that's able, if you follow it too blindly, to seriously hinder your creativity. Designing a Megadungeon? From the bottom up, mate! A location? Where are your random tables? A sandbox? Hexes of about 5 miles, please! Into indie gaming? Your rules are bound to have teeth and a clear Creative Agenda (yes, this one takes caps, hype, you know).

The OSR, whatever that means, has broken such fixed ideas, mostly generated by the 3^rd or the 4^th, in the past: mandatory game balance, tailored challenges, intricate plots as the one and only good adventure seeds, etc. And now, it seems about to shape its own fixed ideas: megadungeons are a setting, read-aloud sections are bullshit, and so on.

From the very first issues of The Dragon to the latest blog debates, libraries are brimming with do's and don'ts, and among the don'ts, the ones saying “don't you begin everything at once, stupid, you're going to get lost!” is hugely popular. Right, and what's wrong with getting lost, please?

Let me tell you how I like to design my own-private-soon-to-be-shared-if-ever fantasy: I begin everything together at once. Everything. I begin with layout bits, levels from the bottom up, explanation sections from the top to the down, art research, phone calls to the copy editor, zooms in, zooms out, writing a background section, the keyed location #31, the family tree of a dwarven clan I'll never use, the stats for gargantuan goblins, new fonts, another layout, editing the last line to fit in the page, saving it somewhere, writing location #3, designing a god, tying location #3 with location #243 - not even written, possibly never will - and ringing the copy editor again.

Yes, it's all over the place and I have it all, all, wrong, as you read. I've noticed however, some interesting side effects:

1. I don't get bored, and when I don't get bored, I'm quick and eager to do more.

2. I finish what I begin. At some point, all those tiny dots join, almost by themselves, and they shape an adventure or setting that I'm happy with.

3. I'm never stuck. It's a bit strange because I've read everywhere that I was bound to be, but I'm not: it keeps moving, going ahead, changing. Of course there's a little back-and-forth sometimes and I have to cut/paste from former versions but hey, the layout's already done and it's even copy edited as I type this message – which isn't.

So, basically, I'm not saying you should do this, but I'm saying that once you know the design 101, the next step is to get rid of it.

GARGANTUAN GOBLINS

MV: 60' (20')

AC 6[13/15]

HD 7

Attacks: 1 by weapon

Damage By weapon*

ST F7

Morale 11

*And special, see below

7' tall goblins, gargantuan goblins are monstrous misshaped crimson-skinned humanoid creatures born from the failed experiments of a crazy archmage. They usually wrap their broken bodies in russet-colored soiled garments and wear armor pieces scavenged from tall human or ogre veterans. While vaguely resembling goblins, their mongrel features are scarier and instill fear, as the cause fear spell in all onlookers for 1d3 turns (individuals with more than 3HD or levels are allowed a save versus spells to resist the effect). Like standard goblins, they have infravision up to a range of 90', but seldom see the light of the sun nor hear any sound in their abyssal abodes and are slowed, as per the spell, when in full sunlight or in a very noisy surrounding. The great weapons gargantuan goblins use always cause double damage.

ART IS ANOTHER CONTENT

I remember once in a while reading a published module, setting or whatever and being baffled by the art at some point. However hard I looked for it, I couldn't find the written section to which the art would relate nor how would the player characters put themselves in such a situation with the actual written content. How can they possibly be fighting a vampire giant slug in the throne room when the throne room key says it's got a golem in it and the module doesn't contain any reference to vampires, slugs, or any combination of both whatsoever?

It may indeed seem a bit frustrating but I'd like to show here how cool it actually is. It's pretty cool because these off-the-tracks pictures are haunting — come on, there must be a vampire giant slug somewhere! They beg to end up in play very hard and at some point, they do.

You maybe don't realize it on the spot, but this giant slimy stirge you've put yesterday in the Grisly Halls, the first level of the megadungeon you'll never finish, has a lot in common with the vampire giant slug you've half-forgotten by now. The inspiration is way stronger than any fantasy haphazard picture you see, because you had been told somewhat, that this picture was in the module you've purchased. These pictures are screaming "play me!" or maybe "please, find a way to make me happen".

That's why I've come to consider art as a provider of hooks and inspiration instead of demanding that it fits the text. It opens windows, gives new and unexpected ideas and sets the adventure on different tracks, tracks the artist sets instead of the writer — except if the writer has some sort of intentional deal with the artist, which I'm very doubtful of. On the contrary, art would be a strong imagination limiter if it suited perfectly the text — can my orcs be like Star War's sandmen, but darker, instead of pig-faced, please?

So, to come to the point: no, the art doesn't have to fit the content exactly and it's much better if it doesn't. I think we yet have to try this by setting the artists free with instructions like "Oh, and please, derail", provide them with contradictory guidelines on purpose or deliberately ask them for something the text doesn't cover.

VAMPIRE GIANT SLUG

MV: 60' (20')

AC 8[12/14]

HD 12

Attacks: 1

Damage 1d12, drain life energy

ST F12

Morale 11

Vampire giant slugs are blind creatures crawling in the underworld. They shun the brightness of light and continual light spells and recoil at them as they convey the feeling of sunlight, which destroys them in 3 rounds. On the other hand, they can sense blood and unerringly follow the track of blood if they can feel it at less than 60'. They are utterly immune to the sleep, charm, hold and any other mind-affecting spells, to poison, to paralysis, to cold, to electricity to blunt weapons and to non-magical weapons of any kind. On the other hand, they are repelled by garlic, they suffer from holy water, can be turned as vampires, die when poured in salt water for 9 rounds and suffer 2d4 hit points damage when a vial of salt is pitched at them.

Unlike humanoid vampires, vampire giant slugs can't shapechange, assume gaseous form nor, obviously, charm with their gaze, but their bite drains 2 energy levels just like any other vampire's. In addition, they can sing with a high-pitched and somewhat childish female voice, their song enthralling any listener failing to save versus Paralyze and freezing him on the spot just like a hold person spell for 2d6 rounds, targets being entitled to another saving throw every time they suffer damage. Vampire giant slugs usually sing when they smell blood.

Last but not least, they regenerate at a rate of 6 hit points per round unless damaged by fire, salt and/or holy water. When reaching 0 hit points, they don't die, but dissolve on the spot into a pool of ochre jelly instead — as the monster, maximum hit points — until they reach their full hit points and become whole again.

PEOPLE ARE CLEVER

I'm amazed at the sheer quantity of role-playing products that assume their reader is an utter beginner. It's almost a stance we've inherited from the early years: writing and designing products as if our audience had bought this one and only booklet in the course of the past 37 years. This is especially absurd when it comes to old-school products one finds only on very specialized POD and PDF platforms. What actually happens follows as such:

1. Your audience already owns a lot of games. And they've played quite a few of them.

2. Your audience won't play your product by the book.

3. Your audience itself designs adventures, settings and systems. Maybe most won't edit nor publish them, but it's still an essential part of the game on the DM's side.

As I'm in the course of designing a fully-fleshed version of Rudingoz, a whole urban campaign in random tables, I've decided to take the fact into account: my audience is clever. They read a lot, they probably own the same games as me and they know how to find all the materials they need to run their game.

With these ideas in mind, I didn't go into a lot of explanations but I've scattered inspirational sparks everywhere instead: in the art, which doesn't really match the text — more on this later —, in the tables themselves, in the adventure bits, in the mapping or even in the stats. Sometimes I go like: "if you need to create a NPC on the fly, just use what you already have : your Master Guide, the Classic Dungeon Designer's Old School Encounters Reference, the Vornheim City Kit, whatever you like" and I feel it's okay to say so. This has all been covered somewhere in a book or another, and I know that you, my audience, own those bloody books and already play with a style of your own.

Who am I to tell you how to play? And given you've got all this, can't I provide you with something that will take this all to the next level? What if I build my design on top of all the wonders others have done? I know you'll want to hack it anyway, and am happy to help you to do so.

A THOUSAND LAKE GENEVA CAMPAIGNS

Story was an excuse back then. There were giants, slave lords plotting, there was The Master in the desert and dwellers in the Forbidden City. There were Tharizdun and Zagyg. They all gave us the feel of a greater scope. But let's look at it: we didn't actually play this greater scope along scripted lines, we played whatever popped up at our own private game table. And this game table was unlike any other, because they all were unique. There was a storm, but every snowflake was peculiar. And there was a risk too.

This is what roleplaying was like. And this is why I fully back everything guys from The Forge intend when they craft games you can't plan anywhere else but now, as you play and go together. They had the feeling that roleplaying had become something else, that what they were looking for was waning everywhere and us, Old School Renaissance players, share this feeling. Except we go another way.

There had been a slide, you know, from the point where published campaigns and setting were mere excuses for your own creativity to the point where I can hardly distinguish between a roleplaying campaign and a HBO series. As hard as I look into 3^rd or 4^th Ed products, I can't find any usable material for my game table. All I see is scripted content I don't want to cope with. Why? Because the material would become a hindrance instead of a help. The original ideal of Dungeons & Dragons meant that each and every game table, each and every gaming group would become a Lake Geneva of its own, not to copy the Lake Geneva group a thousand times. We've entered the era of spoon-feeding: Encounters detailed to the absurd, format standards, learning curves, climatic endings, tightly-knitted plots leaving no room for chaos and creativity, settings ripe with railroads everywhere – hardly even hidden. Players write actual play reports you could have written before the play. And they enjoy it as one enjoys a good movie. And they all look the same. Deep down, it's not a matter of edition, it's a matter of agenda. But the newest editions are supporting very specific agendas that don't leave room for any other, hence the Old School Renaissance.

We fucking had something different, something nothing else really had, something that could have mauled mountains. And there's the blueprint somewhere amidst those weird 5 saving throws, those dwarves as character classes and those +1 swords. We have the tools so, yes, let's get out this bush and invent the wheel again.

THE SHRINE THAT GLITTERED

The Shrine That Glittered, a swords & sorcery OSR adventure of mine has been released in Fight On! #10. It captures the essence of my design options, a page layout by yours truly and a few critically-acclaimed illustrations by Y. Zogg. The adventure itself leaves room for whatever comes to mind during the play, including options to play it with freshly created cavemen characters, Mutant Future explorers and time-warping OD&D scoundrels. It's a pretty little gem I'm proud to announce today, along with the sheer joy of being published in the glorious Fight On! Enjoy and feedback!

MORE OPEN SPACE FANTASY

I've just created a brand new webpage to host the Open Space Fantasy. Feel free to shuffle!

OPEN SPACE FANTASY WEBPAGE

OPEN SPACE FANTASY

I've been working lately on an art series aimed at naive and symbolic graphics. I've decided to use the less glamorous geometric shapes streamlined through professional engineering tools to render imaginative, pure fantasy scenes and characters. It's like playing with office boards, pens and papers and shaping them into whatever dream takes you away from your open space desk: a nod and a tip to this sort of musing trance that takes us amidst busy days and generates the most stupendous ideas from a rubber and a ruler. It's definitely pop art, but pop art devised about the Old School fantasy values and the escaping fact.

Please tell me what you think about it, whether you like it or not.

STRANGE DESTINIES INDEED

I've been playing the Strange Destinies solo adventure right off the Tunnels & Trolls v7.5 box. This has inspired me a lot of fresh ideas and set a new course in my musings about solo adventures. Here they are.

1. A Story With Options

In this widespread vision of solo RPG play, you play the hero of a story. The story is more or less defined in advance, and paragraphs are nudging you forward towards its completion. There might be challenges, and many opportunities to die or to fail, but eventually, you'll choose the right path, or maybe become strong enough, and finish the adventure in a blaze of glory. It's like picking choices (more or less blindly I daresay) and trying to guess whatever preplanned route was set by the designers.

The Warlock of Fire Mountain was damn tough. Yet, there was barely a couple of options to get to its end, and one only to finish him victoriously.

2. A Creativity Puzzle

What hit me with Strange Destinies is that you can't really win if you're not playing creatively with the booklet and its rules. Some paragraphs hint you at doing something the text doesn't talk about (make a torch with a wolf's skins? Cook your food? Trap a monster?), some other sound so absurdly tough that you can't really overcome them. Yet, the text tells you what happens when you do. It's like throwing a 12th level monster at your 1st level character in Labyrinth Lord and the text saying "when the monster dies, go to paragraph 127". First reaction is "what the hell?", second is "okay, let's think about it, is there a way to defeat it? What can I think about that's NOT in the text?"

I don't see why solo play couldn't derail from the written text as much as party adventures do. The interesting bit is that you can't do so if you don't really immerse in your character and think creatively.

In Strange Destinies, I've stumbled through mushrooms before, and died because of their spores. Now, as I carry on with another character, a Black Dwarf named Hoderl the Nift, I turn cautiously around their stalks and a bit later, face an incredibly powerful giant ant. The ant was much, much more powerful than Hoderl. What would Hoderl do? Fight dumbly to a certain death? No. He would run, and try to lure the ant into the mushrooms. I rolled a Speed saving roll, rolled high and went back to the paragraph in which the mushrooms were described. I rolled another, rolled high, and went to the spore paragraph with the ant. I kept running, tracing 3 or 4 paragraphs back when the spores produced their effect. Hoderl, who had over 30 in Constitution, survived, and left the caves. The ant followed, heavily damaged by the spores. Once out of the caves, an ogre tried to catch him, but he managed to escape as the ogre was bashing the ant. Hoderl then entered the caves again from the start and I considered the ant as defeated when I got back to the paragraph it was described in.

Some people, probably basing themselves upon A Story With Options, would consider that as cheating. By the time I played Hoderl, I had become an expert of these caves, with over 13 characters having met death inside. This is player's knowledge versus character's knowledge. In my example, player's knowledge is backing immersion, my 13 previous deaths had shaped Hoderl as a survivor. That made him partly him, and partly me: MY player character. As far as I'm concerned, I consider that solo adventures should find a way to produce this immersion feeling, and to offer a decent challenge level as well.

Strange Destinies do, because if you play it by the book, your character will die. Some paragraphs tell you that if you've lit a torch, monsters will flee. Yet, no paragraph ever tells you that you can light a torch. Why? Because you shall know whether your character carries a lit torch or not, you're impersonating him or her, not just rolling dice and picking options.

A few mechanisms help to induce this Creativity Puzzle instead of rollercoasting you into a story: a table of wandering monsters like in Strange Destinies, random loots, random paragraphs, monster evolution and/or diplomacy, etc. Playing solo implies that you, the player, should take a bit of the GM's responsibilities as well. For hard-core fans of option 1, this is pretty much breaking the rules. Yet, no story-based play experience was ever rewarding as Strange Destinies was, a solo adventure in which I was both the player and the GM.

IN LAIR

Sandbox adventures have been hugely commented lately upon various blogs, as the distinction between site-based and event-based adventures, two connected topics. On a side or spin-off direction, I want to share the Lair and Tribe logics here.

It begins really easy with the few numbers you find in your standard old school Monster Manual. Do you see this Number Appearing line on the picture above? It's about this. I wonder if many Dungeon Masters have actually used this number ever, and the long sections detailing humanoid monsters lairs, allies and structure of power. Surprisingly, most humanoid entries of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons include such details, appropriate to the most absurd figures dungeon-wise. Who can throw 300 orcs in a dungeon? Wouldn't the dungeon become a Bara-Dur fortress of sorts if we did?

I can think of 1 or 2 officially published adventures at least that did : the U3 module, The Final Enemy, the A2 maybe, Secrets of the Slaver's Stockade in a more devious way.

Most adventures make an extensive use of this Number Appearing logic, but they do it in a nutshell: a few gnolls here and there, some goblins — are they many enough to pour a shaman and a chieftain in? Cool. I can think of none who purposely used it in order to create and shape the adventure.

Well, I did. I rolled an orcish tribe and rolled about 250 orcs, discovering two « effects » as I did. Here they are:

1. The Domino Effect

The Monster Manual says orcs must have a strong leader, telling me there's maybe a wizard or an evil priest. Let's put that question aside for the moment, but keep it in mind. For about 250 orcs, I have 8 leaders and 24 assistants. I add flavor here and, inspiring myself upon the Lord of the Rings and my old Sword & Sorcery SPI wargame, I decide that these stockier, more powerful orcs all belong to a special sub-race : white orcs. In Swords & Sorcery, white orcs are followers of the Czar. Hey, why not?! I also get 21 bodyguards, fiercer orcs, cadets of the crown maybe — do they have an uniform? —, and I'm hinted at adding a few ogres. I do, of course. Now, going to the ogre section, I find that ogres often ally with gnoll raiders, trolls and stone giants. Okay, there's gnoll raiders too, then, and maybe a troll or two. Looking at the gnoll entry, I'm told that gnolls follow evil priests. That solves my first question, the tribe leader is an evil priest. The gnolls are also allied with trolls (I have them already) and a few hyenas. Great, I now have a kennel.

This is the domino effect: my dungeon is now stocked with standard orcs, white Czarist orcs, ogres, gnoll raiders, trolls and hyenas, all under the power and command of an evil priest. Since half-orcs are described under the orc entry as well, I add some, giving them character class levels, as lieutenants of the evil priest.

2. The « Stocking First » Effect

The monster section actually says a lot more: it says that orcish lairs might be above ground or underground. I roll, and get underground, which is nice because the same section tells me how good they are at mining and underground constructions. Orcish tribes also sport a name. Mine being led by an evil priest and Czarist orcs, I choose the Vile Rune, a name that tells of northern wastes, ancient primitive religion and evil. Under the gnoll section, I find that gnolls often live in abandoned villages. So here I am, in an underground mining lair with many slaves close to an abandoned village. Since there's a priest, there's a temple too, hidden inside, all bowing to the power of the orcish Czar.

Take a closer look: I have an adventure, fully-fleshed here. It's about freeing slaves, beginning in slavery maybe? It rings an Indiana Jone's Temple of Doom sort of bell in a Russian-like setting. I now need a god about which the evil priest's cult revolves, and so on... Are the player characters hired by the orcish revolution? Knights fighting the evil cult? Mercenaries of a border kingdom threatened by the Vile Rune?