Into the Odd Twice, Labyrinth Lord Generates Worst Vacation Ever

Many have been the games played in the last couple of months; at least, many by my standards. My Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign at Games Plus in Mount Prospect, IL, restarted, only to be placed immediately back into hiatus for the holidays.  I finished with the customized D&D 4th Edition game held at Chicagoland Games in Chicago, IL.  The D&D 5th Edition game, customized for Clark Ashton Smith's world of Hyperborea, is still going strong.  I enjoy the setting and the system, and I get to play with my wife and good friends while drinking beer or cocktails. Like all of my In Real Life games, it is rated M for Mature.

To look at this requires Maturity.

It is over Google Hangouts where my gaming has increased a great deal. I've gotten very comfortable with the format; I will always prefer to meet in person for a game, but when that's impossible, Hangouts is the way to go. I prefer it when the GM uses a tool of some kind (such as Roll20 or Paint) to show graphics, handouts, or maps but it no longer detracts from my enjoyment overmuch if those tools aren't used.

I'm playing in two long-running campaigns over over the wire: Fantasy Flight's Star Wars and classic, Game Designer's Workshop Traveller. I've also had the chance to play a great DCC module, Prince Charming: Reanimator and for the first time played a (very enjoyable) session of Labyrinth Lord.

I loved that we started the LL game "on vacation", which I don't think has ever been a start for an adventure I've been in. One of the characters had to pound around in the bucolic summer heat wearing plate armor as we investigated clues, explored a tomb, and sought information, leading to his oft-muttered "Worst Vacation Ever!"

I've been excited about Into the Odd for a while now, and finally had the chance to try it out with a couple of great GMs.  In the first case there were three players total and we ran through a dungeon-type scenario pulled from the game designer's blog. We had characters whipped up in a jiffy and they soon developed their own unique personalities, helped along by the weirdness of the environment, a shared near-death experience early in the adventure, and our general sense of paranoia and impending doom.  We ran through the whole dungeon in the time we had allotted and I was able to go through the process of "leveling up" with four quick rolls.

An interesting and diverse assortment of arcana.

The second game of Into the Odd was of a more free-form nature, and I will borrow generously from the report of our GM, Noah Stevens:

We were hired by Mr. Smythewick-on-Smythe, Comptroller of the Adventurers' and Post-persons' guild, to deliver 1 pound of fine green tea - likely magical.  "Viridian Tea of the Jade Brewmancers".  In addition, we have distributed amongst ourselves 100 chocolate bonbons, meant for consumption by Serpent Men (AND ONLY by Serpent Men! as we have since learned).

Both are to be delivered whilst Arcturus hangs in the Southern sky above Bastion, if we are to be paid.

Before leaving we purchased a purple Crocatoo from Mr. Oubilette, at his Fantastic Fowl Emporium.  Also released Odiet Thindo from gravest indenture via bayonet to Mr. Oubilette's abdomen.  Maybe.

A brief moment of air travel by Daemon Zeppelin, and the party docked at the Aerodrome of Bastion, on the Sky Level.  We landed, poisoned the customs agent (accidentally!) and dodged the tax-man.  After nearly getting pick-pocketed, we pressed into service a Deep One hybrid urchin boy named Bertie (possibly the son of a watchman).

Hugo's airship: How Does It Work

We hired Hugo the Aero-captain, and contributed to his untimely death by Crabbird, after destroying a lovely and aggressive mated pair with rocket and blade.

Between the Crabbird attack and the unwanted attention of the Guard, now approaching via airship and firing at us, we temporarily lost one member of the party. As well as permanently losing the previously mentioned Hugo the Aero-captain.

An arcanum, the Dust Mephit Engine, was recovered (still unknown exactly what it does, but it was the engine for Hugo's dirigible.  Odiet damaged the rune-markings in removal from the tiller).

We broke into a private dwelling on a rim-side balcony, and entered into the temple district to avoid the Guard and their Auto-Arquebuses.  Hid in and dealt with the temple of Doubloonus, and the High Priest, for several days but declined his offer of theological and economical intercessions.

Then we got all henna'ed up with currency symbols and dressed in robes (even the parrot) so as to stand out less, and struck out to find the Serpent Men and deliver our packages.

We entered into the Aviary of the Contemptuous Saint, where everything is a bit too tidy and neat.  A nameless Faepog came sidling by with Mr. Fiddler's (probably cursed) fiddle. Nobody came sidling by with my expended rocket, however.  

That's where we left off, until the next time...

One more thing--I played Metamorphosis Alpha today for the first time since I was in junior high school! It was a great time with a good crew; lots of action, investigation, and humor. I'll talk details about it in a future post.

Review of the Well of Souls for Dungeon Crawl Classics

I was running Dungeon Crawl Classics for the first half of this year pretty regularly, about once a month. Sometimes twice, if I was lucky with scheduling.  DCC is more adult-oriented, at least the way I play it, and the guys in my group really ran with it--embracing the weird magic (and it's side-effects) and using their decades of game experience to keep their players alive.  I created a sandbox for them, full of places and things designed by fans of the game as well as some of the published Goodman Games scenarios.

When the chance to run Well of Souls came up, I was excited. It was a chance to create new characters from scratch (the existing characters had been auto-generated) and place the characters far to the south of the cold misty forest-lands they were familiar with.

I let the players go nuts as far as race was concerned, and they indulged their love of humanoids with dwarves, elves, and halflings. There were some humans, sure, but with one player going with an entire party of dwarves the humans were in the minority for a change.

Spoilers beyond this point...

The Well of Souls is funnel, designed for 12-16 zero-level characters. It takes place deep in a rocky desert, and the players are led there by their guide, Farid. He has a lot of theories and stories about the Well, some of which are true, and some of which are false. The rumors are well done and it was fun reading them to the players as they peppered Farid with questions.

The other thing the party has to help them are the Tablets of Fate; big clay tablets with pictures drawn on them that hint at dangers and solutions within the Well. I drew them out using the pictures in the scenario book, and it was great listening to the players try to figure out what the hell they meant.

Maps in the booklet are great; I only wish they were darker, or printed on lighter paper. My reason for that is that I generally trace over the maps as players progress, because my freehand drawing skill is worse than a child's. In this case, it was tough to see the maps through the paper, but that's certainly not a big deal.

Having said that, the paper that the adventure is printed on is beautiful and easy on the eyes. There was some unfortunate transfer of ink on some of the pages, but that may have just been my copy.*

The adventure is pretty deadly.  I really enjoyed that it was so different from what the players had come to expect from me that they were surprised on several occasions--despite their always-on SuperCaution(tm).  Characters fell in pits, were attacked by clouds of bats, and were fried in a group at one point. I will say that their caution saved them on several occasions from nasty traps or surprise by creatures.

The players enjoyed themselves, and I enjoyed running the Well of Souls. The one thing I would change is the the door at Area 7. Page 14 explains how it connects to Area 6, but it took me several readings to understand that they connect, creating a loop.

The Well of Souls was the last game of DCC we played for the summer. I hope to get the game running again, and maybe find out what the funnel survivors decide to do in the hot, dry south of my game world. Ideally, I would like to continue with Stormlord's "Treasure Vaults of Zadabad," which is coming out in November. Excellent timing, really...

*I was provided a copy of the Well of Souls for purposes of review by Stormlord Publishing.

The Well of Souls

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures

My normal game of Dungeon Crawl Classics fell through because one player had Adult Real Life Stuff come up. I still had 2 of my regular players as well as the teenage son of our host interested in a game, so I decided to run Beyond the Wall.

I chose Beyond the Wall for a few different reasons. The tone of the game is more appropriate for a younger player than DCC is, character creation is fun, and the base mechanics are familiar to anyone who's played Basic Dungeons and Dragons.

Character creation in this game is a group activity. You pick a character playbook and roll your way through your childhood and early teens: some of the rolls you make will affect other characters in the party, and others will connect your character to Non-Player Characters in your village.

Normally, the players would also be involved in mapping out the home-village itself, but in this case I used a map drawn by Sarah Richardson and assigned homes and locations to the players and NPCs. The map looked great, in stark contrast to the later scribbles I made to show areas outside the village.

The game is designed to start with a bang, so the characters found themselves in the woods outside of town fighting a mutated, diseased bear. They took it down, grabbed an ear as proof, and were heading back into the village when they ran into a couple goblins on the path. About the same time they saw an orange glow and smelled smoke coming from the direction of the village.

Look at the teeth on that guy.

Quickly dispatching the goblins with a combination of archery and magic, the party ran home. They arrived to find the Bountiful Banshee Inn on fire and a group of armed citizens around the home of a retired mercenary soldier. The Sheriff informed them that goblins had set fire to the inn and barricaded themselves in the house. Bashing in the door, the players were hit by goblin arrows but quickly overcame their foes, with most of the damage to the characters from friendly fire.

The goblins had tunneled up from underneath the house, collapsing the tunnel on their way back and leaving a few of their number stranded topside.

Tunneling goblins speak with a pirate accent.

The players went on to save the village from a plague that the Hobgoblin Chief had inflicted through the use of hex bags, fleece an unsuspecting carriage on the King's Road, kill a great many more goblins using fire, magic, bows and swords, and ultimately come face to face with the head Hobgoblin and his Orc lieutenants in a dark, goblin-modified mine. All in all, it was fun and epic.

Hobgoblin chieftain, uninterested in parlay.

Some observations:

A) Bows were deadly, both to the enemy and to other characters when shots fired into melee missed their target.

B) Magic was very effective. The Elf-Ranger used Entanglement on three occasions, and it wrought havoc every time.

C) The static initiative worked great.

D) It was fun having one character that was neutral-capitalist and pushed for rewards and bounties, while looking for opportunities to rob the rich. And the poor. And the middle class.


So what would I do differently, the next time I run the game?

1) Better time management on my part. I was supposed to be rolling on the random charts for the adventure I had chosen while the players were making their characters, but I really wanted to be a part of that experience. Next time, I'll roll up the scenario ahead of time.

2) More maps. Good maps add to the fun and beauty of the game, while my child-like scribbles detract.

3) Have the To-Hit, Saving Throw, and Skill Check roll types memorized. I kept forgetting which were supposed to be high, and which was low. Because Mad-Cow. Embarrassing and wastes time.

4) Make a reference sheet. The rules are a breeze to read, but in the game I found myself paging back and forth and flipping between documents a lot. There's no reason for that, when I can put all the important stuff on a page or two and have it in front of me.

I recommend this game and hope I get a chance to play it again soon.

Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures

A Shortcut Dank and Dark

Matt Jackson posted a cool little map on Google+ and suggested we have some fun stocking it. I enjoy fun, so I gave it a shot.

This is an adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics, but it's easily transferred to other systems. You can download the pdf here.

A Shortcut Dank and Dark

A short cave adventure for Dungeon Crawl Classics

Written by Brian Wille
Map by Matt Jackson

Overview:  A Haunt of Hobgoblins and Orcs live here! They are at home when the party arrives, and they are not used to visitors. They react depending on their mood, how much blood they have shed recently and the attitude of the intruders. They are generally ready for battle, but are also unobservant and disorganized.


Creatures, Monsters, and Map:
Many thanks to Rafael Chandler for the Shadhavar in the Lusus Naturae preview, and to John Carr for the Night Children Hobgoblins and Orcs.
Map by Matt Jackson 2014

The Beastmen Cometh: A Session of Dungeon Crawl Classics

I've been running a Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign for several months now, and I look forward to every session. The three players each bring something unique to the game and have all contributed player backgrounds and adventure logs to our Obsidian Portal page.

At the last session, one of the players showed us the awesome spell-book cover that he had printed up for his growing list of spells:

He claims that's how you spell Benny the Magnificent in Ukrainian.

As a GM, it's a fantastic feeling when the players contribute to background histories, adventure logs, and game details--it means that somehow, I've managed to do something right.

Here's an excerpt from our most recent session, as recounted by Benny, the Magnificent!

"In the middle of the night, Brume alerted me that more of the Beastmen were approaching. I roused Ming and then realized that Floyd was on guard duty so I called for the others to awake and arm themselves. Star was already warned by one of his runes proving him quite the capable Runecaster.

As the Beastmen approached, I conjured a few large dogs right in their midst to distract them and buy us some time to prepare. Star followed suit and then Daphne and her apprentice sought out the blessings of Amun-Tur. I could easily see that they are favored by their God, because they were wreathed in a Holy light and I swore I could hear angelic singing*. Even so, I moved closer to protect Daphne and her Deity blessed me with additional magical power for protecting His chosen.

I used this extra power and channeled a harrowing volley of Fire Arrows of Fate laying the enemy low and breaking their morale. They fled in haste and we thought better than rush after them into the dark forest and a possible ambush. A few of the Beastmen had fallen because of the dogs Star and I had conjured so we went over to investigate.

Floyd was closest and he quickly pulled out his cleaver to perform another dissection. This time, the focus of his research was less Beast and more man which made it all the more disturbing. I heard Daphne gasp as he quickly reduced the creature to its component pieces. It could be that he is a Blade of Fate, but I fear that Floyd may be descending towards madness. I will need to seek direction from my patron before deciding how to handle him."