Wednesday, October 21, 2015

pale and vile

I first read Deep Carbon Observatory about a year ago. Reading it is like viewing The Descent: when successful it immerses you in claustrophobic places, sinking in despair. It leaves you in echoing darkness with only a slight breeze revealing the edge of an unknown precipice.

I do not know if I will ever run it. Certainly the play of the game is what makes it real, but DCO exists in some Platonic way as an ideal adventure - I fear no game will match the dark place it occupies in the mind. 

So I keep the Giant in my room to remember.



"He could come into your house though the front door. He could slowly squeeze his body up your stairs, filling the stairwell with his flesh, then send one questing hand through your bedroom door. He could squeeze his head into your room and look at you."

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

how does this NPC practice their craft?

For LotFP and other cleric-less games


Take the third letter of their name. If the letter is missing use the next one or whatever.


Violence
Magic
Skill
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
V
W
Arsonist
Butcher
Cavalier
Dreadnought
Executioner
Falconer
Gladiator
Hooligan
Instigator
Juggernaut
Knight
Legionnaire
Myrmidon
Nomad
Oathbreaker
Pugilist
Raider
Soldier
Templar
Vanguard
Wrestler
Alchemist
Binder
Curioso
Diabolist
Enchanter
Fanatic
Geometer
Haruspex
Idolator
Jinx
Kabalist
Lunatic
Medium
Necromancer
Oracle
Puppetmaster
Riddler
Skinshifter
Telepath
Witch
Acrobat
Burglar
Creeper
Demogogue
Expert
Forester
Gravedigger
Hunter
Infiltrator
Jailbreaker
Kidnapper
Lurker
Marksman
Ninja
Outlaw
Pickpocket
Rogue
Smuggler
Torturer
Vandal
Wanderer

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

get behind me vortigen



Get Behind Me Vortigen is the fifth studio album by Voivodjan alternative rock band The White & Pleasant Stripes, released on June 7, 2005 (though, due to the Slow War, this date is entirely unreliable). Meg Bride and the Jack Hatter return with singles "Blue Nageire" and "My Doormouse"

Friday, September 11, 2015

flamingoes and mustard both bite

"I dare say you're wondering why I don't put my arm round your waist," the Duchess said after a pause: "the reason is, that I'm doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?"
"He might bite," Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious to have the experiment tried.
"Very true," said the Duchess: "flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is--'Birds of a feather flock together.'"

Pic unrelated


so I was a little bit homeless for a while there but kept reading blogs and had a little extra money so purchased some delightful books: R&PL, Yoon-Suin & (why did i only get a pdf the first time) Deep Carbon. Might review them, though I doubt any level of further insight it might produce


Playwise, I tried running Sky-Stone-River-Place for a few sessions a while back but I was using a really loose Lamentations/Dark Souls hack that I tinkered with for like a week and never entirely understood so all my min-max players found other things to do. SCARED 'EM OFF. But having read it many times over I will review the free two-year-old module, as it is a miracle of rare device.

This week started playing with a group who basically organized a weekly game themselves and are “down for whatever” so it’s a Zak-style 3rd ed strip-down. Started in this dwarfhole and I immediately remember why I rarely run big dungeons - I really hate describing rooms. A regular occurrence:

“You see this room is made of old stone and- well it’s identical materials to the others, being different only in dimensions, which are 25ftx20ftx35ft. Also, there are three more rotted dwarf priest corpses in the corner and you notice the floor is more yielding than before.” “Is there light then?” “Uhhhh i guess so yeah. It comes from...the other door which I forgot to mention. Actually two other doors. Wait they’re shut, there isn’t any light forget I said that stuff.” “Okay so what do i see”


The players are naturals though, trying to spike doors shut using broken skeletons and coming up with really bizarre defenses for while they sleep. They are almost all elves but they come to my strain of OSR by way of Werewolf and 4th ed so I am excited for what else will happen. Lord knows how the first roll on a dismemberment table will go over.



What Would Middle Eastern Dwarf Do


RED AND PLEASANT LAND INSOMNIA REVIEW/VAGUE IMPRESSIONS

Because it is sitting in front of me.


The book is rad but you knew that. Some things:


-Appendix alone makes it ridiculously useful. Hook generator: check, map generator: check, random animals: check (surprisingly difficult to come up with that many discrete & somewhat iconic critters, my Google Doc sputtered out after 60) and a few others with niche, but very definite, value.


-Speaking of tables: Guest generator is the real deal. Basically just a streamlined/de-boring-ified mutation table mixed with a demon generator, yet avoiding any strong hellfire aesthetic. Very cool for coming up with weird dangerous dudes way quicker than, say, LotFP Summon, and in my opinion better than Vornheim’s.


-On first read through I wished things like the children in wells would have been a little more prevalent, but on further consideration I think the focus is well placed on generators and using them. The little tidbits regarding setting, for me, provide the real meat for adventure ideas, but on the other hand I have the easiest time whipping up stuff like that on the spot, while coming up with a reasonable intrigue or non-elementary quest takes a while of uninterrupted thought.


-The puzzles in the written locales are v cool. I like the golems and the difficult-to-reach ceiling trapdoor. Takes puzzle thinking without being some gimmicky Zelda shit. Interesting uses of blood and/or gravity in various rooms as “figure out the rules here and use to your advantage” puzzles.


-Focus (I believe rightly so) is almost solely on GM toys. A single class, a single spell, and like handful of magic items are the entirety of what would generally be considered Player toys. This is unusual in my experience (an example: the last stage of DCO has one big and several smaller, scattered GM toys, slightly outnumbered by useable items, artifacts and NPCs, though several are potentially both, like the poisons) and so I have little ability to evaluate it at this point. But it is An Interesting Point.


-So almost no magic items. Also,


-No flamingos. Why.
Source includes flamingo. Perhaps an expansion is forthcoming.



We demand an expansion



eat me



if you want something done, you must do it yourself

A FLAMINGO


It is a hammer to many and it is a bird to some. It was The Bird long ago, the Phoenix; a being of wind and flame, traversing the long red years and lifetimes of Voivodja in crackling heat. But then the Slow War came, and the fire left it.


It cannot be reborn right now because of all the time fuckups. It hates the Jabberwock.


It hides among croquet games and tries to command any low rank cards or pawns who come near it, to move wickets closer to the Mustard Mines, though it doesn’t speak so that’s hard.


It will keep urging you to three of the various Mustard Mines and eat a sample from each to create a Triangle of U within your body. The biting hot trifecta of the mustard, it hopes, will ignite it and begin the rebirth.


It will indeed ignite if this is completed (inconstantly, as time ebbs and flows) but always de-ages before it can truly die.


The Triangle appears on your stomach, etched in cinders, and is of great interest to vivimancers, the Druid Circle of DC Plant-Powered Characters and a Galapagoan necromancer and they will occasional hire bounty hunters to retrieve you.

(The real cure is to 1: kill the Jabberwocky or 2: find Meteoric Wasabi. Very rare. The Pale King is after it because of both a rumor that the Sphinx wants it and the tax potential of spices)


It has a strange relationship with hedgehogs and might eat them? You never see it eat so who knows. They flee it though, if they can. None of the royals will - or perhaps can - notice it is unusual, even if you are hammering them in the face with a flaming bird.




Functions: While you hold it, it fusses around if you aren’t doing anything towards its constant mission, including trying to actually play croquet. This makes most activities you might use a hammer for impossible. If you agree to its psychic nudges to help it you can Smite like a paladin with it, which will also light the target, the bird and you on fire. It functions as a d10 warhammer otherwise. Completing the Triangle of U makes any crit with it deal an extra d6 in fire damage plus ignites. It can bite at a weapon to make disarm attempts. Functions as vorpal weapon against Jabberwock.

If you manage to cure it, you get a free reincarnate effect when you die but your next life you’ll be fireproof and have pink skin.


aaaaand time for bed

Thursday, September 3, 2015

metals and such

My mother go this book from Oxfam when I was six and it got me HOOKED on METALS

Still not unpacked, so pardon my simplistic phoneblogging.

This is for when you want to rebrand a weapon with new materials, or when you have a transmutation mishap or whatever. I'm tinkering with an alchemist but right now all I have is strange matter

ROLL D40:

1 - Flesh
2 - Carmot
3 - Sugar
4 - Salt
5 - Jade
6 - Amber
7 - Rubber
8 - Alkahest
9 - Sand
10 - Bezoars
11 - Sulfur
12 - Ice
13 - Marble
14 - Slate
15 - Mithril
16 - Ivory
17 - Wood
18 - Copper
19 - Bronze
20 - Iron
21 - Lead
22 - Tin
23 - Silver
24 - Gold
25 - Clay
26 - Quartz
27 - Basalt
28 - Obsidian
29 - Chitin
30 - Glass
31 - Salt
32 - Paper
33 - Orichalcum
34 - Ruby
35 - Onyx
36 - Quicksilver
37 - Charcoal
38 - Diamond
39 - Platinum
40 - Adamantine


More '60s science book illustrations

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

in a mud-cloud, micah spangled



One of my players is a prog-folk hobbit sorceress and needs micro-quests for her to try and get new spells. So of course I cribbed verbs and nouns from Joanna Newsom and threw em in a table.


TWEEQUEST 2015



in/to
for
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
drag
remember
stir up
dream of
breathe on
teach
write on
holler at
border in
light up
follow
search for
a comb
the oak and the axe
the bale and the barrow
our very hearts
wind chimes
the river
little stones
a mirror
the names of the stars
the source of the light
a stone devoid of fire
a bone from the void
the sky
the meadow
the pines
the birches
the spires of the churches
the shadows
the old smokestacks
the south
those mountains
the nighttime
the morning
the place where I have been
the meadowlark
the chim-cho-ree
the sparrow
baboons
sows
the grouse
the horse
the hen
a midwife
ants
butterflies
birds