Two out of three wasn’t bad…

So the party managed two out of the three forks, ending up escaping White Plume Mountain with Whelm and Blackrazor. They only lost one character in the process, MR lost Tony when he became trapped, alone, in a room with an enraged air elemental. The player took over Valka, Iszh’s henchwoman, for the remainder of the adventure, and the party handled the situation relatively well. Ctenmiir, the guardian of Whelm, was dispatched almost immediately via a lucky critical hit and very high base damage being rolled, so that was rather anti-climactic. The party used the services of Nine, the flesh golem they had acquired to help with several of the challenges and blew a some very powerful consumables to deal with the “menagerie room” (trying to avoid spoilers, lol) right before having to deal with the Oni Qesnef. Interestingly, they didn’t fight him, they made a wager with him and won the wager. It was a clever suggestion, so I rewarded it as I didn’t think that Qesnef was especially happy with the terms of his servitude and almost certainly would like to be rid of the constant presence (and threat) of Blackrazor.

The party totally avoided Wave and any possible complications there, but they are now safely back at their camp outside of the Temple of Elemental Evil – sans Tony but plus Devon and a flesh golem (nominally under the control of Iszh). All-in-all the party did a good job of avoiding the worst of the issues through either some creative spell use or by churning through a variety of potions and other consumables they’d acquired over the last few adventures. Much like we brought Devon back, MR had an old character from the same campaign that was arguably in a position to return, so his Gnome (Shade) Fonkin will be returning. We’d already been talking about the possibility of him bringing Fonkin back so we’re well-along the process of converting the 5e version to a 1e version (especially since I don’t have anything that works well as a Warlock analog).

I’ve stated up a slightly different version of Blackrazor (same as before, plus some extras) and have leaned into it as this world’s version (or one of this worlds versions) of the Moorcockian Black Sword.

We’ll see where things go next!

Poor, neglected blog…

Wow, my last post is more than a year ago.

What all has been going on? My spouse ran their Prohibition-era Mage20 game. That went pretty well, and it ended up in Egypt, searching out long-lost treasure and running afoul of both locals and the burgeoning Technocracy. When we reached a stopping point I ran a short, but sweet, Star Wars game using the old West End Games d6 system.

It was set in the Outer Rim of a non-defined future of the canon universe so that there no continuity problems possible. We had a smuggler with a ship (the Peregrine Fortune) and debts, an astromech droid (named IF-1X) with secrets, and two Jedi (one with an attitude, and one with duty) being recruited to help with a nascent rebellion against the Empire – but I also had a handful of other elements for fun as well. The Jedi and the Sith are both tolerated minority “religions” but overseen by the Empire’s Metasensory Authority (aka PsyCorp), and the group is dealing with another rise of the Nihil, and the terrifying presence of the Nameless.

We stopped that eventually, and somewhat recently picked up the Wintersgate Campaign again – though it has moved far away from Wintersgate and is now located out of the Great City of Haïta, a living remnant of the once great but now long-gone Atlan Empire. Much as Wintersgate was written around and focused on the search for and eventual exploration of Quasqueton (module B1, In Search of the Unknown) with many side adventures which took the party to roughly 5th-6th level, this section has become focused on the classic Temple of Elemental Evil (T1-T4) as the cleric Favion struggles to deal his possession by Kalabbadon, the Demon Prince of Carnage and Destruction., and it’s attempts to re-enter the world.

Currently the party is taking advantage of the offer on golden-haired child of eldritch power, who wants his servant (the mage Izsh) to have an additional resource to help with the situation – namely the sword Blackrazor (“an echo of swords that other servants of mine have used elsewhere”). So this weekend we’re tackling a version of the old module S1, White Plume Mountain.

We’re also using this as an opportunity to bring back an old character of Favion’s player, the Lord Devon Tresendar from the old 5e Siyahchal Campaign that died about half-way through the Path of Worms adventure path. But, as many folks have discovered, when the Lords of Chaos get involved death is rarely as permanent as they thought. Given that the campaign ended essentially at that spot, there really isn’t any big continuity issues to resolve. I’d already been talking to one of the other players about bringing one of his characters (Fonkin Shadowkin) forward, a much more complicated process (since neither Sorcerers or Warlocks exist in 1e, unlike the much more basic Fighter that Devon was).

D.

The Mechanics of Worship (En Khoda Theos Kirk)

Thinking about Guru Favion and his general struggles with the politics of his religious organization, plus the presence of Kenza Demetrious, led me to thinking about how the various religions actually practice. Aoine (and the Druids) come with a sort of mental shorthand that works fine (though it’s probably worth codifying to some degree at some point) and Giselle as a Thief-Champion of the Midnight Sun has raised a whole set of similar questions for that religion.

It’s easy to default to some sort of generic version of Christianity, but even modern Christianity is pretty tame compared to medieval sects and practices – and I have consistently described the En Khoda Theos Kirk as having much more in common with Buddhism and Shintoism than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. In any case I also just started thinking about all the sorts of “strange” ways that a religion focused on the four elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water) would practice and worship – especially when there is magic to sustain and protect you.

So, just a short selection of ideas:

• Buried Alive for an Earth Meditation, Dust/Sand Baths as a Purification
• Going Skyclad as an Air Devotion, Levitating or Flying as a Meditation.
• Fire Bathing as a Fire Purification, Fire Walking as a Devotion.
• Water Breathing as a Water Devotion, Submersion or Bathing as a Purification

But from basics like that we can look to things like various forms of dhauti in yogic cleansing as a further example of the lengths that worshippers will go, and while I don’t see those who follow (the Great Elemental Dragons as quite following the path of ascetism or forms of self-mortification (that actually seems a bit more like the Old Faith to me) – this is found mainly among the oracles and mystics of the En Khoda Theos Kirk that are always looking for a more efficient (or consistent) way to achieve the trance states that they need for enlightenment.

I also think that some of the stranger forms of worship, devotional practice, and purification come from adapting what was originally a religion and spiritual practice of the Dragonborn to humans. So, similarly, when we look at the Svastika and the Warforged of the Great Fleet practices can look very strange.

That said, I tend to think that both the En Khoda Theos Kirk and the Old Faith are the folks sacrificing people to drakes and dragons (or were ‘in ancient times’) – some apologists suggest that this was originally offering up servants to Dragonborn, or something related to the ancient and extinct Serpent Men of Ith.

Godfall

transmechanicus

“I love the idea of dead gods. Not in the sense of “hey i killed something supernaturally strong” but in the sense of “i killed it and it’s still a god.” It is still worshipped. prayers are still answered. miracles are performed in its name, even as it lies pierced by a thousand swords and burning with chemical fire. even as it drifts through vacuum, decapitated and bleeding molten rock. in cosmic spite of being shot through each eye and hurled into a plasma reactor, it still radiates the power of the divine in a way that primitive death cannot smother. the nature of godchild is not so simple as to be tied to the mortality, or immortality, of any living being.”

From <https://www.tumblr.com/neue_web/iframe/reblog/684581909981986816/Tn58UZEJ>

(derived from a comment to that post)

A whale fall occurs when the carcass of a whale has fallen onto the ocean floor at a depth greater than 1,000 m (3,300 ft), in the bathyal or abyssal zones. On the sea floor, these carcasses can create complex localized ecosystems that supply sustenance to deep-sea organisms for decades. This is unlike in shallower waters, where a whale carcass will be consumed by scavengers over a relatively short period of time. Whale falls were first observed in the late 1970s with the development of deep-sea robotic exploration. Since then, several natural and experimental whale falls have been monitored through the use of observations from submersibles and remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) in order to understand patterns of ecological succession on the deep seafloor.

Deep sea whale falls are thought to be hotspots of adaptive radiation for specialized fauna. Organisms that have been observed at deep-sea whale fall sites include octopus, giant isopods, squat lobsters, polychaetes, prawns, shrimp, lobsters, hagfish, Osedax, crabs, sea cucumbers, and sleeper sharks. New species have been discovered, including some potentially specializing in whale falls. It has been postulated that whale falls generate biodiversity by providing evolutionary stepping stones for multiple lineages to move and adapt to new environmentally-challenging habitats. Researchers estimate that 690,000 carcasses/skeletons of the nine largest whale species are in one of the four stages of succession at any one time. This estimate implies an average spacing of 12 km (7.5 mi) and as little as 5 km (3.1 mi) along migration routes. They hypothesize that this distance is short enough to allow larvae to disperse/migrate from one to another.

(more)

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall>

I get to be a player!

Well, my wonderful spouse is giving me a break from being the DM by picking up the Mage20 rules and running a Prohibition-era Chronicle of the Chicago Unseen game. I’m playing a member of the Red Thorn Dedicant’s with a witchcraft practice and no connection to my modern-day characters.

This break is giving me a chance to catch up on and codify some of the stuff from the Wintergate Campaign. We ended at an appropriate spot and I’m very much looking forward to picking up the reins again with that game, but the break is both good and needed. It’s a good group of characters (and players!) but after reaching 6th level there is the usual shift and adjustment to a new level of risk and danger in play (very solidly what 5E would call Tier 2 play).

The spouse and I have also really been enjoying Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix. It really does catch the vibe of the Cyberpunk setting. It’s clearly more inspired by the anime side of things (not a surprise) while I’m more of the Bladerunner/Robocop/Altered Carbon school of Cyberpunk. But that has me definitely looking forward to running Cyberpunk again (probably RED because it’s the current edition).

You have not seen what I have seen…

So, we’re getting ready to run a Mage game set in Prohibition Chicago, I was running the 1e AD&D Wintergate Campaign for a couple of years and finally burned out a bit. But the switch back to 1e from 5e allowed me start tweaking my campaign back into the more normal balance that I had – one of which is that Elves were essentially off limits as PC’s because my elves were more in the vein of Tolkien’s elves and the Sidhe, not the standard FRPG version – namely, they are tragic, immortal demigods akin to the Celestial Eladrin from Planescape, or even more powerful beings like to the Seldarine or similar Powers.

Thus the quote from the LOTR: The Rings of Power trailers – Galadriel’s words and the images from the various previews really capture much of the essence of what I loved in the fantasy genre growing up. It was epic, even when it was Pulp (like Conan), and my campaign world really reflects that (or tries to). While I hadn’t allowed elves as PC’s (with one significant exception that I remember) I did allow half-elves with the understanding that they were rare (and very disliked by the elves for, well, reasons). My players were basically fine with this and humans, dwarves, and a few gnomes and half-elves predominated.

Years ago, my spouse pointed out that I had the ability to rewrite my campaign world and clean up all the messes, paradoxes, and contradictions that had resulted from a couple of decades of playing with many, many different players in multiple campaigns. So this latest campaign I kinda realized that I had an better way to do this – “Half-Elves” aren’t actual half-elf and half-human beings (those also exist but fit into the category as a cambion or a nephilim and are equally as rare) they are just elves that have lost their place in Faerie (and there’s deep lore on the how and why of that), that live in the Mortal Realms, and “half-elf” (or achtar in Elvish for “outcast”) is just the insult leveled by some of the “true elves” of Faerie. It’s also reflective of how they view themselves and what they have lost.

Gaming Warm Fuzzies…

Yeah, had a player beg the group to reschedule because they couldn’t make the session and he didn’t want to miss anything. You know you’re doing something right as a GM when that happens!

RPG Hot Take #1

Stop treating your GM like a whore who is only there for your fantasy wish-fulfillment. If that is your understanding then treat them like professional sex worker; negotiate the terms of the session, pay them a decent sum without haggling – & tip well!

Current and Upcoming…

So the Traveller game is going well – one of the things that KR asked for during the game was that she really wanted to “get more of the picture” of this multi-timeline campaign that she’s played in several times.

So there’s been some heavy exposition dumps over the course of the campaign, and as of last session they’ve learned a datapoint that has never actually been learned or made explicit before in twenty years of playing.

The group now also has a better focus and a new, more focused mission – plus a couple of new members. KR’s character left to pursue her goals, and brought in a new (old) character while an NPC joined the party in response to the summons on the part of Sir Vicqmarre.

Next: Shadowsand!

—

In other news I’ve been thinking about the next game, which is almost certainly AD&D. Sometime here we’ll be able to play in person again, and at that point I’ll lose a player who is the middle of moving to Boston – that said I’m likely to get one or two new players.

I’ve been thinking hard about AD&D and the various (almost entirely) good differences between it and 5e – and the one or two places where there’s a couple of good ideas. Inspiration (and Advantage/Disadvantage) is honestly a pretty decent idea – and several games have newer editions with similar mechanics  (Call of Cthulhu 7e and Traveller 5e come to mind immediately), plus a couple of things from other editions.

But I’m so much happier with the game as a House-Ruled AD&D 1.5-1.75e.

The proto-idea is a Village of Hommlet-style startup, aka my (now very) old Northanger Campaign, but set in some more hostile location like the mountains, the fens, maybe some badlands?

(KR has already cast a definitive vote against fens because she doesn’t want to play in a swamp.)

But, like Northanger, it would be a small human village, with some kind of significant ruin nearby to explore and several other exploration sites that are both known and will be stumbled over. Basically a version of a sandboxy, somewhat West Marches-esque campaign. The big question is if the players are locals, exploring outside the village for the first time in a generation or two, or outsiders who know nothing and just arrived in town. Both options have their upsides and downsides.

Non-human PC’s options to start off would be limited, and with AD&D we get statistic and alignment restrictions on classes again.

(Yeah, I’m ignoring gender-based limitations, duh)

Honestly, I’m shopping around for a different term for “race” – currently I’m leaning towards Genus or even more likely Clade – though I might just settle on Ancestry or Heritage or something like that. But if I really, really want to reboot things with less problematic descriptors – and I’d want to capture a biological piece and a cultural piece – plus the social class piece.

I think that this week that I decided that the “significant ruin” is just going to be Module B1, In Search of the Unknown, the very first module I ever ran, back a million years ago. The other sites might simply be a series of older modules, probably adapted slightly.

But the statistic requirements means that despite being open to many, many of the old “NPC” classes from Dragon magazine (and probably having to seriously adapt the Cavalier and the Barbarian) players are most likely going to be mostly limited to the “basic four” – Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, & Thief.

Other classes I can see fitting in?

Honestly, that might be a factor of people rolling well, and qualifying for another class and wanting to play it. If someone can play a ranger, then I’ll figure out the local Ranger Lodge or something, same thing for a Witch (and a coven), or a Paladin (which will spur the decision on what religion the town worships).

There’s already a couple of things in the town that I want to do that are against type, but I’ll get to those later…

TTFN!

Just an FYI, and a couple of thoughts…

A Tweet I made yesterday – “If you think you had to wait for a game company to engage in “de-racism” of it’s content to remove racism (or other content you find problematic such as sexism or homophobia) from your local gaming table – then you’re as much a part of the institutional problem as the company is.”

On the one hand, I’m heartened by this move – not that it brings me back to 5e and WOTC – and the other I just find it problematic.

If this was an issue for you, I can certainly hope that either you jettisoned that sort of crap decades ago like I did, or that you chose to explicitly use it as a campaign elements (like I do in my Imperium/Traveller game).

I’m not the sort of GM that wants to ignore -isms, but to instead use them to confront players (and myself) with difficult choices and situations where characters are challenged to “be better” or “do better”

My fantasy game is best characterized by the question of “what is the nature of evil” while my scifi games are usually wrapped up in the question of “what is definition of human” and my horror games are driven by “do the ends justify the means” and it’s hard to examine these questions without examples, usually drawn from real-life situations or history.

There’s a balance to be struck in what my minister had on her door for years “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” – we want to sit down, relax, play our game, and have fun – but I also, as the GM (and a player), to have to roleplay and feel like I’m “doing something” – and any fantastic evil we imagine is by definition rooted in a real-world example.

This is why my spouse doesn’t like Call of Cthulhu and doesn’t play it, because it doesn’t let them be a hero in the way that they want to be – even after I Pulped the heck out of it, so that I could run it the way I wanted to. They also don’t want to play in the 1920’s and all the -isms rife in that setting (even toned down for the game) because that’s simply too much for them and their experiences of many of those -isms in real life.

That fine.

On the other hand, my husband absolutely loves to play Imperium, where they have to deal with racism, genocide, war crimes, etc and deliberately plays a character with PTSD (though the etiology is different from my spouses actual CPTSD) – because they get to be exactly the sort of hero they want to be.

Bah.

I think I just want to say is that you should play the game you want to play and not feel like your constrained by the engine or the source material. That’s what many of us have been doing for decades now because what was available was problematic or offensive in a whole series of ways – so we created the worlds and the campaigns and the add-ons we wanted.

We didn’t wait for somebody else to fix it.

TTFN,

D.