Lampreys the Nightmare Continues

Some more about the sea lampreys that infect Lake Michigan and make life near the lakeshore in Chicago a dangerous proposition for all concerned.  Know your lamprey.

This type is especially dangerous to small water craft, children and pets.  Artist: Uknown

Thankfully they only get this big in the deep waters of the lake or tidal areas near the museums.  Artist: Patsy McDowell

This is an accurate depiction of a 17th century lamprey as depicted in the historical novel "Lamentations of the Flame Princess."  Artist: Ian Maclean

OK that's all for lampreys today, let's be careful out there and remember that the only good lamprey is a dead lamprey. Part of why we became the U.S.A. is because they used to eat them in England and that is revolting.

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.

Warlords of the Air

Airships, for A Contest Full of Hot Air

Let's talk about the big ones, the battleships, perhaps not seen since the Last Great War, perhaps yet to be built.

"With the cloud came a great thrumming sound, like many deep-voiced gongs being beaten rapidly in unison. The sound grew louder as the cloud began to fill the whole sky, casing a dark and ominous shadow over the Valley of the Morning.  It was the allied air fleet of five nations.

Each ship was a thousand feet long. Each had a hull as strong as steel. Each bristled with artillery and great grenades which could be dropped upon their enemies. Each ship moved implacably through the sky, keeping pace with its mighty fellows.

Ships with Imperial crimson suns emblazoned on their white and gleaming hulls.
Ships with great black double-headed eagles glaring from the hulls of deepest scarlet, claws spread as if to strike.
Ships with massive three-color flags spread on backgrounds of blue.
Ships with cannon and bombs and crews, their booming engines like triumphant anticipatory laughter."
--Michael Moorcock, The Warlord of the Air

Good times, bad times, you know I've had my share.

There are blimps and balloons and sometimes those are enough, but when you want to move huge cargoes or large contingents of men or mount cannons, then you need a rigid airship, a dirigible. And it has to be filled with helium or a helium-like gas, because otherwise you are floating through the sky in a huge bomb: Oh The Humanity.

They can of course also be used for luxurious passage from one city to another for those that have the guilders and gold to spend that way.  But imagine huge airships, bigger than the Hindenburg, and engineered far beyond that disaster-in-waiting. Rotors to compensate for the explosion of cannon; broadsides of guns and huge grenades to be dropped directly on opposing ships and forces.  And such a quiet way to deliver great masses of troops.

Moorcock suggested the evolution of recoilless guns "that can stand in the air and shoot much longer and more accurately than cannon."

Imagine what even one of these Airships of the line could do, if it was suddenly, through powers scientific and arcane, thrust into a world that was not as advanced, or had simply never seen something like it. The men on a ship like that would have to decide what they wanted to do with all that firepower and speed. Decisions: yes...

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

The Town of Cracklinborughford and Drinking With Style

I struggle with the creation of small villages and towns; I don't want them to be generic, but it's tough to make them memorable and realistic. So I decided to give Logan Knight's process a try:

Logan's Interactive Village Creation Process

He based it on Zzarchov Kowalski's Scenic Dunnsmouth, but addressed what he felt was a lack of inter-NPC relationships.

Following the instructions, I generated this map of the town. The arrows indicate houses that have relationships, good or bad, with certain other houses:

The Village of Cracklinborughford, which I thought sounded peppy and industrious.

This is how the village breaks down, by house group number.
6's:  Have a surprisingly large assortment of goods to trade or sell.
5's:  Dress like demons and prance around burning pyres when the moon is full!
4:    Fervent devotee of a known religion.
3's:  Organic body-horror replacements from a fallen star in the hills. They smell of thyme and their flesh is all-too-pliable!
2s:  Members of the same bloodline AND ALSO--are In Charge Around Here. They rule through a council with a representative from each of the Number 2 houses.

The Most Interesting Feature of the town is a monolith of carven white soapstone in the center of town. The village is arranged to form rough curving lines radiating out from the monolith. Most of the townspeople seem entirely unaware of this pattern, but once you mention it to them will descend into obsession over it, eventually seeking to unlock the monolith and what lies beneath.

Other Features of Interest include a mystically placed pattern of stones and a hanging tree. Apparently they don't take kindly to law breakers in Cracklinborughford.

Now that working map is fine, but you can't use that in a game--your players would flip the table in disgust. So here's what the village really looks like; many thanks to Sarah Richardson for reaching into my mind and creating this awesome map:

Here's who's actually in those houses, and how they relate to each other:
6A:  a widower who is firm friends with 3D.
6B:  a bachelorette with political connections to 6A.
5A:  five friends and lovers. They do business with 3D.
5B:  a couple and their five kids. They have vast respect for 3A.
5C:  a bachelor with political connections to 5E.
5D:  a couple and their child. They owe a debt to 5A.
5E:  a woman and her three kids. They have an irrational dislike for 3B.
4A:  a bachelor who knows varied secrets about 6B.
3A:  an extended family with distrust for 2A.
3B:  a widow who frequently mocks 2B.
3C:  a cleric, single parent of 4 kids. Blackmailing 3A.
3D:  an extended family with a long family history connecting them to 6B.
2A:  five associates involved in betraying 2B.
2B:  2 friends and lovers; they have a rivalry with 5A.
2C:  a couple and their three kids. They harbor a terrible suspicion about the widower in house 6A.

While I was looking around Logan's excellent blog I found his recipes for tea-infused liquor and his suggestion to make your own labels for the concoctions you make.  So I made earl gray infused Bombay gin one night, jasmine tea infused Absolut vodka after that (the "Princess Jasmine"), and chai infused Belvedere vodka last. They were all good, but the chai-vodka was excellent!

I can't draw, but I found this drawing on the internet, printed it, cut it out and taped it to an old bottle of Viking's Blood mead using double-sided tape. I pretty much feel like a master mixologist who is super crafty now.

I'm crafty! So crafty!

On Lampreys

I haven't actually said much about lampreys on this blog, despite claiming that it was partially a blog about them. So today I'm going to fix that.

Here is a drawing of the hideous things, by the extremely talented artist Don Kenn:

These things infest Lake Michigan.

And here is a newspaper story from 2012 that will strike fear and desperation into your heart.