Repo Men

Inspired by R.E.P.O., this is the usual XP-for-treasure format with a hook to tie the adventures together.

Aeons ago, various boss monsters borrowed money from some entity (probably a powerful fiend like Mammon or an ultroloth, although you can obviously use whatever entity you wish if you're avoiding canonical Dungeons & Dragons factions), and now the time has come to collect. You are agents of the entity in question, delving into dungeons and trying to repossess treasure for your infernal masters.

The characters would gain XP for treasure, as usual, although the twist is that they probably aren't keeping any of this treasure themselves. I imagine they receive a commission in scrip (maybe 10% or so) which can be spent at the company store. In addition to standard equipment, the company store also carries hirelings and magic items. (I would probably randomize the latter so that there's a constant churn of weird items coming through.)

Obviously, the GM has to determine how magic items from dungeons work. Can you keep them? Can you squirrel them away? Do they enter the company store after the adventure?

It's essentially the same idea as standard class-and-level adventure games: enter the dungeon, loot everything to the bare walls, and get out. This setup has a few benefits that might make it worthwhile for certain groups:

1. If your players aren't interested in overland travel, this is a good excuse to give them various dungeons in the same campaign without having to travel to them. The central "hub" of the campaign is Hell's mercenary barracks, or whatever other extradimensional base of operations you devise.
2. The company store allows you to put whatever weird items into your campaign you want without altering the original adventures. It's Hell's lost and found, essentially.
3. The format allows people to drop in and out as desired.

I haven't quite figured out what adventures I'd like to use. (Obviously, if you get to it before I do, you can use whatever you like.) I'm thinking of dungeons that have "boss monsters" in them, a creature around which the dungeon is built (and who might be in debt to a powerful fiend). As such, the capstone is likely to be something like I6: Ravenloft or S1: Tomb of Horrors, but everything before then is open to suggestion. A cursed house like The Cursed Chateau or Tegel Manor? A frontier ruin like Prison of the Hated Pretender or The Submerged Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper? A larger village investigation leading to a dungeon like Against the Cult of the Reptile God or The Village of Hommlet?

Apart from needing a central figure whose stuff can be repossessed, you can really run any adventure you like.

A final note: this also seems like a good campaign frame to have in your back pocket if you run something like Fires of Dis or The Shrike, where the characters go to Hell and so might end up indentured to some powerful demon. In which case, just start throwing dungeons at them with a mandate to deliver all of value to their master. Of course, intrepid players will probably try to determine how to wriggle out of their infernal contracts, which seems like an interesting wrinkle to this campaign...

The Slow, Green War

The slow war is all around us, but few of us can see it.

Some few druids of Khaldun know about it; those who can cast speak with plants or awaken sometimes come to understand the outer edges of the slow war. The dreaming druids of the Foxfire Forest were vexed (but somewhat sympathetic) when their fellow druid Bardo Urrok announced that the slow war of the wood is too noisy for him, and left their company for less-forested climes. Some travelers have since reported running into the eccentric halfling in the Hoarfrost Ridge, above the timberline.

Those Who Remember awakened a hawthorn bush, and were surprised (and amused) to learn that its morality was totally alien, with a very pragmatic view of murder and a lack of understanding of their own, seemingly-contradictory moral stances. (The bush didn't understand the elf druid's concept of an "invasive species," for example; a creature that outperforms others in an environment is clearly the victor to be lauded rather than lamented.) The bush's exploration of animal-scale life was sadly cut short by a group of dark elves as part of the far-reaching consequences of the Battle of Scandshar.

The key is this: plants are involved in an aeons-long struggle to survive amidst dwindling resources and increasing predation. There is plenty of sunlight and nutrients, but "arbitrarily large" is different than "infinite." They have defenses against herbivores, and are evolving new ones all the time, but herbivores are also adapting at the same glacial pace and move much more quickly. Humans and their ilk choose some plants and inhibit others, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. (And those selfsame creatures will often cultivate land in ways that make it inaccessible to plants of any sort.)

All of this to say that there is a war out there, happening much more slowly than any of us can readily bear witness. This is the slow war of plants. And while plants in folklore and stories are often ancient and placid, depicted as living in harmony with their environment, real plants are bloodthirsty, impatient, and downright Darwinian. They compete for resources, parasitize each other, or even engage in biological warfare. (To say nothing of defenses against herbivores such as poisons and spinose teeth.)

More grist for the mill of common druidic misconceptions.

Troikan Effluvia

My Troika! players are currently running through Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs, and while they have successfully solved the problem of a Parchment Witch trying to steal the package they're delivering, they still have another problem: the Maxillary Uslurper from the original published adventure. It hasn't targeted them yet, but if it does, they're ready for it, having acquired several cilantro-laden burritos from the café. (They initially hit the Parchment Witch with a burrito, assuming it was somehow connected to the Maxillary Uslurper. It, uh, didn't work.)

While cilantro doesn't help, here's a fun tip for you if you're ever fighting a Parchment Witch: the Sorcerer of the College of Friends used the Animate spell on its stolen skin, causing the face to deform and rendering the Parchment Witch blind during most of the fight until it ate its own face.

Troika! rules, by the way.

As part of my prep for Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs, I made two handouts: the Ice Tomorrow advert quoted in the book, and a political pamphlet for the ice miners on Out-of-Order and Myung's Misstep. If you're running it (or even if you're not), you might find them useful.

Design Notes:

• The reverse of the Ice Tomorrow advert features a portion of an article regarding the creation of CompoGel, a Troikan version of pykrete. Canonical references include the Ice Cream Sphere from Axes & Orcs' High Fructose Hyperspace and Winters-Thawing Collegium of Eldritch Academics, a randomly-generated wizard college from Academies of the Arcane. Shakespeare-Marjanovic Heavy Industries and The Prince of Seven Moons are from our campaign, as The Prince of Seven Moons is a recurring antagonist and it is occasionally useful to remind the player characters that he's doing stuff about which they probably ought to worry. The details of his devious plans are left to your own devising, although the seed kernel of The Prince of Seven Moons is The Moon King from The Moon King Wants to Party. (In our game, they are separate but likely related entities.)
• I was originally considering having the Myung Icers' Liberation Front be a greater presence while on Out-of-Order, thus the pamphlet, but I ultimately decided to stick with Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs (and The Forest Primordia on the return trip). As such, fleshing out their ranks is best left to the individual gamesmaster, If you need stats, Knights of the Road from Troika! are probably a fine start, although several of the working class factions from Get It at Sutlers (such as Codwallopers, Oligopolists, Palyngers, Rippiers, and Victualers) might be better.

Sharpened Hooks: Santa Claus vs. Troika

December is shaping up to be quite busy, so I suspect I won't have an opportunity to use these, but you might! Here are two Troika! adventure hooks for Yuletide:

Dead Letter
Centuries ago, a delivery meant for Santa's workshop arrived at Whalgravaak's warehouse instead, and Santa's elves only just tracked it down. Can you retrieve the parcel from its resting place?

I haven't decided where to put Santa's misplaced package, but Rooms 12, 13, 14, or 15 all seem like potentially good resting places.

Kidnap the Sandy Claws
Can you help? Rudolph approaches the player characters, having wriggled free from his harness. Santa entered a building to deliver packages hours ago, and hasn't returned! Can you rescue him?

Santa has been kidnapped by a gang of cocksure gamins (as described in Get It At Sutlers, page 67) who seek to use his intended presents for their own pleasure. If you're stuck for a hideout location, I might start with Dyson Logos' South Sewers Hideout, stocking it with gamins, guard animals, sewer monsters, and a beefy lad to act as the local boss. (I might go with the stats of an ogre from the core rulebook.)

Advice in Practice: On the Simulacrum Spell

I've talked before about what I think makes for effective games that keep players wanting more (namely listening to the players and establishing real stakes as described in this blog post), but I recently encountered a Reddit thread wherein the original poster was asking about advice for trying to limit the 5e version of the simulacrum spell. The rule for 5e simulacrum is that a given caster can only cast one instance of simulacrum at any given time, but those simulacra could use their one cast of simulacrum on the caster, creating an infinite army of wizards given enough time and powdered rubies. The redditor in question was worried about this "exploit," and was asking for advice.

While a lot of advice in the comments suggests, "go ahead and limit it, you're the GM," I don't find that satisfying, because I tend to think the inflection points of a thing are usually the most interesting part. So in keeping with establishing real stakes, here was my response. A specific example that is potentially broadly applicable; when your players can do something wild and creative that seems like it will upend your carefully crafted world, let them do it! But also, brainstorm the ripple effects this action will have. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and the world keeps moving while the players wait.

(Also, part of the joy of being a powerful wizard in any role-playing game system is doing wild, impossible things. Don't take that from your players!)

I replicate my response below:

As the DM, you are perfectly within your rights to limit aspects of the rules or setting. That's technically the end of the discussion, although I might canvass the entire player group and see what they think.

But personally? I wouldn't limit simulacrum. I'm usually in favor of whatever nonsense my players want to do.

However, there is always a cost.

Each casting of simulacrum costs 1,500gp and takes twelve hours, which means you can functionally only cast it once per day despite your spell slots. (If your characters have folded time or don't need to sleep, then maybe you get two castings if you have the spell slots. Wish obviously changes the calculus of these assumptions, but it does that anyway.)

That means your magic-user's clone army takes weeks to amass. If anything else is happening at the moment, it continues to happen while they're doing this. If the other players don't want to wait, then they get to go have adventures while the wizard sits in their laboratory and makes simulacra all day.

And what about ruby dust? Your player might have plenty of rubies (a single "typical" 5,000gp ruby as described in the treasure portion of the Dungeon Master's Guide yields enough powder for 3 1/3 castings of simulacrum), but will probably have to get more to amass an army over the course of months. That means they have to go delving, or mining, or trading. How many rubies are in a typical settlement, anyway? A typical mine? Is the queen willing to pry every ruby out of her crown to power your simulacra?

All of this to say: the spell is not instantaneous, and it's not without cost. Casting simulacrum takes time and resources, the sort of large-scale project that someone notices and tends to engender strong opinions. What do the NPCs do when they realize a wizard is casting simulacrum over and over again? What do they do when they realize a wizard has 50 rubies on hand? (Worth at least 250,000gp; the GDP of whole city-states.) What do the other player characters do when they realize the wizard is going to spend the next two months blasting through their wealth to build clones?

Are things so quiet in the world that the characters can afford to wait while the wizard performs their Great Work in their ivory tower? Is there no political or religious organization in your setting that would be very interested in these activities? Is the villain merely sitting idly while the players gather a magical army vulnerable to antimagic?

I don't know the parameters of your campaign. But I do know that player decisions don't happen in a vacuum, and in high-level games, they have consequences. Big consequences. What are the consequences of this choice?

Play to find out.

A Lone Dungeon Room

Back in the spring of 2020, I was involved in an abortive project to present an Exquisite Corpse dungeon. As often happens in the world of table-top role-playing games, the organizer disappeared from the internet, a bunch of people left Facebook, and that appears to be the end of that.

Since I assume that project will never see the light of day, here's the room I contributed. (I present it as originally written, resisting the urge to edit the thing for length and clarity.) Stats are vaguely B/X-ish — if you're converting to another system, the most important thing to know is that a turn is ten minutes long. You can probably figure out the rest.

You could theoretically drop this room into any dungeon in a dead-end room containing a pool.

Chamber #8

Hallway: From Chamber 3, this is a stone archway wrapped with vines that leads into a relatively low-ceilinged arched hall with a bone motif cut into the stonework. The stones closer to Chamber 3 are mossy, with the occasional vine entwined among the carved bones. The stone door leading into Chamber 8 appears to be more recent than the surrounding stone. The door bears a flaking fresco of an androgynous blue-skinned being, clad in river grasses and pulling a dark-skinned man from a river. The man's right side is submerged while the being's left hand grips his left arm. The door (which opens into Chamber 8 so the hinges are not accessible from the hallway) bears two doorknobs. The doorknob on the right is false and trapped with magic; manipulating it requires a save vs. Spells, or else the victim begins drowning as brackish water generates in the lungs. The victim makes a save vs. Paralysis each round or dies from drowning. The doorknob on the left is locked, the key long since missing.

Room: This chamber bears frescoes depicting scenes of daily life in a village by a life-giving river. The two alcoves to the left and right of the stairs are stuffed with offerings of cordgrass and mangrove fruits, long since desiccated and rotted. The stairs lead down into a pool in which reclines an ethereal, androgynous humanoid with greenish-blue skin, clad in river grasses and muddy silt. This being is Streenadi, once a minor deity worshiped by the now-extinct River-People. Clerics conveyed the deity here for safe-keeping after the river was dammed and the riverbed dried, but the loyal priests died before their god could be safely retrieved. Streenadi will implore travelers to find a way to transport them from their prison. They must be at least half-submerged in brackish water (roughly 10 - 20 ppt salinity) at all times. If separated from brackish water for more than a turn, Streenadi will sicken and die. If the travelers can safely transport the deity to a suitable habitat (preferably an estuary, although any appropriately saline body of water will do), Streenadi will grant them a wish.
If the characters deliberately kill Streenadi for some reason, the murderers find water and fish salty and inconsumable thereafter, even if treated with purify food and water. (Alcohol is safer than water anyway.) A suitably sketchy magic-user might pay 3d6 × 100 gp for the river-god's corpse.

Streenadi: AC 5, HD 2 (7 hp), Move 120' (40'), Swimming 240' (80'), 1 claw attack: 1d8 damage (2d8 if the victim is in water), Save As: Fighter 4, Morale: 10, Alignment: Neutral.
Streenadi cannot be damaged so long as they are standing in water. They take double damage from fire. They can perform many minor magical workings related to their sphere of influence, such as rendering water potable or brackish and summoning nearby fish from connected waterways to themself. Once per year, Streenadi can grant a single wish.

The Chicken of Duplication

Although typically found in fantasy space, there is no reason why one couldn't find terrestrial Chickens of Duplication.

There are those who revere the divine entity called the Chicken of Creation, a deific chicken who birthed the world and all within it. (Some believe there are many such chickens, although whether or not there are many Chickens of Creation or merely one is probably not useful for most people.) Among its many progeny is the Chicken of Duplication, a semi-divine chicken of monstrous size. (As with the Chicken of Creation, it is unclear whether there is one Chicken of Duplication or several.)

The Chicken of Duplication is often found flying through other dimensions or even the void of space. If by some strange circumstance you need stats for one, your system probably has an equivalent of a Tyrannosaurus rex; just add a flight speed and you're basically all the way there. They typically don't bother astral ships or other large objects or creatures; they might approach a vessel and give it a curious peck before moving on. Of course, if the occupants decide the peck is an attack and fight back, they will face the full fury of this semi-divine chicken.

Lone travelers are in more peril, as the Chicken of Duplication is roughly as vicious as a regular chicken.

(For Chicken of Duplication stats in 5th edition-style games, I'd start with a regisaur, change the type to celestial, add a fly speed of 120 ft., and change the tail to some manner of stomp or talon attack, dealing slashing damage instead of bludgeoning.)

If the legends are true and there is only one Chicken of Duplication, killing it doesn't stop it: it is reborn in a few days from one of its own eggs. (And like a terrestrial chicken, it lays eggs periodically without fertilization. These eggs are often in remote places in other dimensions. As such, there might be many, many eggs that have not yet been found, and one cannot truly kill the Chicken of Duplication without finding and smashing every such egg.)

The divine beast is rarely seen, but the eggs are the primary reason why anyone knows or cares about it. (It's possible the "Chicken of Duplication" isn't even a chicken; if someone saw a giant chicken and someone else saw a giant hen's egg, a third scholar could have connected the two.) An Egg of Duplication appears to be a hen's egg that is a little larger than human size, somewhere in the seven-by-five-foot range. It feels like a hen's egg, too, although it is significantly stronger — cracking the shell requires a concerted effort, as the shell is harder than steel. It is vulnerable to acid, however. Destroying or cracking the egg renders it inert and kills whatever is inside. (Although if it has not yet been activated, it might produce a truly prodigious amount of yolk. Scholars and sages no doubt would have plenty of uses for the yolk and shell of such a potent celestial egg...)

However, touching the egg with bare flesh causes a reaction. The creature who first touches the egg is enervated, taking a handful of damage, ability score drain, a level of exhaustion, or some similar mechanic that would easily heal in a day or two. No further touches have any effect on either the egg or the person touching it.

If the creature is too large to be contained by the egg, the egg remains inactivated until a creature of the appropriate size touches it.

After being touched, the egg hatches in 1d6+4 days, producing a nude duplicate of the creature who touched it. The duplicate has the same statistics as the original at the time they touched the egg, and the duplicate likewise has access to all of the target's memories until the moment it touched the egg.

As far as anyone can tell, such duplicates have no sinister agenda. However, apart from being birthed from an egg, they believe they are the original, and so will no doubt be very confused and possibly upset by whatever happens next.