I've seen a lot of folks doing a bunch of pre-planning for this project, but as Sean himself says in another post, keep it simple. Divine your megadungeon via random tables and free association. (And in my personal experience, front-loading too much of the work makes it seem unattainable.) This is a brainstorming exercise more than anything else, so get ready to get weird with it.
Personally, I'm excited to see what develops. Hopefully everybody takes this opportunity to figure out how a megadungeon is put together and what they like to see in dungeons.
I don't plan on writing about my own #dungeon23 project too much on the ol' hobby blog, but I plan on keeping up with it. My dungeon is tentatively called The Crucible, although I don't know what it will become with the fullness of time. For starters, I don't think "The Crucible" is what the locals call it; they don't know that the nearby cave systems are actually connected into a megadungeon complex. (In fact, I'm not even sure anyone — including the inhabitants — has ever discovered the main entrance!)
In the meantime, here are a handful of additional community discussions around dungeon23:
This blog turned ten years old this past Monday, August 9. (Contrast with the first post here.)
It's a very weird set of circumstances that convinced me to start this blog in the first place, but here we are. I don't get to write in it as much as I did when I started, largely because I run a lot of role-playing games. (I'm currently playing in one game and running four on a rotating basis, with a couple of games as occasional things lurking on the horizon. The high water mark towards the beginning of 2020 was ten games — I was running six and playing in four, all of them on a regular, rotating schedule. My advice: don't do that.)
You would think running lots of games would make me more likely to write about them, but that is sadly not the case — there usually isn't enough time to get my scattered notes into a format I could give other people to read. As a result, recent posts usually take the form of "here's something I've been considering and so I put it in front of you" rather than "here's this fully-formed tool or piece of game detritus that's ready to use."
(And honestly, when I need to solve a problem at the table, it's 50/50 odds whether I pull an existing tool or kludge something on the spot. Neither of which makes for a good blog post.)
Regardless, the blog continues at its strange, glacial pace. If you're reading this and you have ever used or been inspired by anything you've found here over the last decade, that's all I could have wanted. If you're just joining us, you can see what has been wrought over the first decade of the blog by investigating the widgets and things over to the right of the page. (I might recommend the published works towards the top of the page, or the collections like Artifact April or Spore Week.)
After many years of waiting, I finally had a chance to play Grim Fandango and subsequently played Broken Age. These, in turn, reminded me of playing adventure games when I was much younger, which subsequently reminded me of something I hadn't thought about in years.
Starting in third grade, we used to play pretend at recess. That's not especially noteworthy on its own — lots of kids did that — but I made elaborate scenarios with continuity from one recess session to the next, and the plots ran for years. Individual sessions usually included puzzles to solve, enemies to battle, and friendly characters with whom to interact. (If I had known about randomizers like dice or any of the abstract LARP-style combat forms, this no doubt would have become even more elaborate.) By sixth grade, the damn things even had character sheets. (Just equipment lists, but still.) I think I even developed paper props once or twice.
It was only years later that I realized these were some manner of proto-LARP.
(Most of the characters were ripped from popular culture, but at some point, I should probably bring The King of All Trees into a game. Why I had some Green Man-style nature deity in my elementary school pretend games is probably a conversation for another time, although it probably has the same psychological root as my deep and abiding love of folk horror.)
The weird recess proto-LARP stuff I remember, and Nicole and I occasionally discuss it. (Lamentably, she always figured we were never interested in having additional players, and so never participated.) That's old news. The more recent memory from playing adventure games is this:
No doubt spurred both by this and by a diet of computer adventure games, at some point in sixth grade, I started writing analogue adventure games that we would run through at lunch. If you've played any of the command prompt or point-and-click adventure games popular in the eighties and nineties, you'll recognize the format: a map with a series of rooms, each of which usually features an NPC that requires some object or interaction (often from a previous room) to progress. These were all hand-drawn maps and characters, and while very linear (in the style of adventure games at the time), are recognizable as weird puzzle dungeons. I only remember one or two puzzles from them, but I now idly wonder if I could track any of those down...
(If I do happen to find any of them, and they're still legible, I'll no doubt have to scan them and upload them for general perusal. I wonder if I'll recall any of the puzzles from the time...)
I know at some point in seventh or eighth grade, I started developing a scenario with percentages, but never sorted out the math and always assumed it would have to be some manner of video game. Again, had I known about d100s or random number generators, I would have been running and designing RPGs years before I "officially" started.
Anyway, the point of all this is that I suppose no one (least of all me) should be surprised that I started running role-playing games or messing with game design. The obsession started early, before I had the language or tools for it.
A couple of my dear, old friends released a zine yesterday. Designed with fifth edition D&D in mind, Tales from the Dungeon #1 focuses on the concept of death, featuring mechanics, magic items, NPCs, and a dungeon adventure based around the theme.
The mini-review: It's rough. It's their first published work, and it could have used more attention on layout and editing. You can tell the authors are passionate, but aren't terribly comfortable with the writing part of the zine.
But the art is top-notch (I'm a sucker for sweet lineart, and Andrzej Rybus provides), and there are bits of brilliance in there: I love the hangman's rope cursed item, and the included dungeon, Temple of Vanth, has some neat ideas.
Tomorrow marks three years of How to Succeed in RPGs or Die Trying (starting with this post), which basically catalogs my transition from a modern occult horror conspiracy game master to a medieval fantasy game master. I'm sure I'll wind up back among modern horror games before too long.
The past year has been pretty uneven in terms of regular blogging, but gaming has been fairly consistent (for certain values of consistent). I continue to run Crux of Eternity when I can get the gaming group together, and I started running What Luck Betide Us, which similarly struggles with the tribulations of gaming as an adult. I even managed to run a session of my woefully neglected solo campaign, True in Some Sense.
I've probably played more than I've run, however. We continue the Changeling: the Lost game (although next week is supposed to be the last session), and occasionally get to play Rogue Trader with our ghetto fabulous crew.
Despite getting to the starting point I wanted, I've been lax in planning the Carcosa megadungeon; call it a new year's resolution to ensure it is operational and ready for the Google+ FLAILSNAILS crowd. I am still ruminating on the abandoned Spelljammer game, though — my headspace has refused to let go of it and I hope to resurrect it. You know, eventually. (Really, I should bring some form of that to Google+.)
I haven't written anything terribly popular in the past year — a major side effect of not blogging — although my review of The God-Machine Chronicle certainly counts, and it's currently the most popular post on the blog.
Excerpts from the lecture "The Straight Shit on Rockulon Prime" delivered by Dr. Karl Satan, natural philosopher and space-wizard holding dual Ph.D.s in metalphysics and wizardology, as delivered before the Arcane Brotherhood, Guildhall Ward, Sigil. As the name suggests, Dr. Satan's penchant for profanity occasionally becomes apparent; most attendees are fairly certain he was in some state of inebriation throughout his presentation.
The esteemed Karl Satan, Ph.D.
People who talk a lot of science shit say there's a multitude of crystal spheres in the universe — I've heard a septillion. Of course, dudes with the kind of time to count a septillion stars don't get laid often, do they?
Those in the know would know that most of those spheres and the planets around them are boring as hell.
The nearby Blood Nebula — possibly an incursion of the Galaxies of Blood in our crystal sphere — probably vomited forth the Space-God's Corpse. The Corpse crash-landed on Rockulon Prime. Maybe the native microflora overtook it, maybe the God's own parasites started to feast upon it. Who the fuck knows?
We do know that the little beasts began to grow.
The residual magical energies from the Corpse of the Space-God mutated life to fit new forms; we're all descended from the soulstuff of the Space-God.
Plants and dumb beasts evolved first, most notably the Hell-Maggots that are thought to be some of the most ancient life on the planet.
A small Hell-Maggot
Hell-Maggots can be found everywhere on Rockulon Prime, typically underground, but are most heavily concentrated in the Sea of Maggots, feasting on the Corpse of the Space-God.
The truly big monstrosities lurk in the vicinity of the Corpse of Space-God.
The first sapient race to evolve from these monstrosities was probably the drider. As the adult form of one of the varieties of Hell-Maggot, the driders began to form their own civilization. So suffused were they with the Space-God's cosmic energies that their mutations continued. A subrace of driders appeared, known as the drow.
The drow are better than you
These aren't the pussy, angsty, emo drow of some worlds. These drow are fucking metal.
I should probably explain that term, shouldn't I? We understand life and much of our material resources to come from the bounty of the earth, from the Underdark. The most abundant substance in the planet is iron; as a metal, it is one of the most stable and least reactive, and pretty damn important to our industries. Metal is our lifeblood. So, when something is a great goodness, we define it as metal. We recall the strength and utility of metal, as well as its sublime beauty. It's hard to describe the concept of metal to one who is not from Rockulon Prime, but understand that metal is quintessential.
So, our drow developed grand civilizations and advanced technologies. Most importantly, they developed magic, including the Maglaban Chambers which wizards still use for wizard's duels today. As one of the first races, there were few other sapients to subjugate, so they made their own. Drow are probably responsible for most sapient life on the planet, most likely beginning with the bullywugs or troglodytes. Their experiments on frogs and lizards yielded the creatures, eventually spawning lizardmen and yes, even dragons — for some reason, the ancient drow experimented on drakes and uplifted them as mounts and slaves.
A drow sorceress with her mutant experiments.
The drow created a vast empire that conquered the entire world, making use of magically-created slave races to cater to their every whim. Their experiments continued as they began to uplift the primitive apes of the savage jungles.
Of course, with nothing left to conquer, they turned on each other.
The drow go to war.
One faction tried to grab territory, the other resisted, and war was upon the land.
It was brutal. It was bloody.
The drow are believed to have created some of their mutant ape races, such as the savage white apes, as well as hybrids such as the dragonborn and the vat-bred orcs and their goblin, hobgoblin, and bugbear kin. The trolls were almost assuredly bred as an engine of war, as were various other creatures too numerous to mention.
Drow society was so advanced by this time that their magic and tech was devastating. Other worlds have things such as blood rock or godsblood or bloodstone (or even the gemstone known as "bloodstone"); our Bloodstone is cast-off detritus of the Space-God, and the crystallized crimson rocks have magic powers. The drow used them and their magics to make very effective weapons. Whole portions of the world were turned into blasted, wasted hellholes. Many of these are still dangerously toxic, spawning mutants and all manner of abomination into the world.
And you still get douchenozzles like this questing in the Wastes.
Records from this time are still spotty, so we don't quite know the order of things. We know the schism among the drow led them to acquire various territories. The classic drow were forced underground, and their various descendants would eventually evolve into the elven subraces of today.
Elves are still among the most ruthless predators of Rockulon Prime.
Around the same time as the conclusion of the Drow War came the first threat from Outside; the aboleths. We're not entirely sure if the aberrations came by some manner of spelljammer, or if the magical energies of the Drow War opened gates to Outside, but the aboleths arrived to take Rockulon Prime for themselves.
Many of the sapients of the sea, such as kuo-toa and sahuagin, were likely created by the aboleths as part of their bid for takeover.
Much as the drow, the aboleths gladly used slaves to aid them in their goals.
Of course, the aboleths didn't win, probably because giant fucking fish suck at fighting on land. Weakened and in decline, the elves still managed to fight off the aquatic creatures and force them to back the fuck up. Of course, whatever channel to Outside had been opened would never close. It wasn't long before illithids, beholders, and other aberrations appeared in the Rockulon Underdark.
As many slave species revolted during the Drow Wars, the elves continued their experiments with apes, crafting such kin to them as the dwarves, halflings, gnomes, and yes, the humans. Weakened and fractured by centuries of warfare, however, the elves could hardly maintain their new slaves, and after a scant generation or two, the new creatures revolted and found themselves out in the world.
And what a beautiful world it was.
The land was sick, warped by magic and irradiated by blasphemous technologies. Using secrets plundered from the vaults of the elves, the new races banded together to survive. Survival was pretty tenuous in those days; the world was still full of arrogant elves, mutants, aberrations, and monsters of all types. Still, within several generations, the dwarves had built a stable civilization that would grow into the grand Wraithsmasher Empire.
The dwarves are a most capable race.
The dwarves never hit the grand expanse of power the ancient Wormwarper Empire of the drow achieved, the Wraithsmasher Empire succeeded in unifying several races without enslaving them, and bringing civilization to lands untamed for centuries.
Of course, the secret to the Wraithsmashers' downfall lies in the name; the Wraithsmasher family of dwarves specialized in fighting undead and planar outsiders.
The Wraithsmasher Empire didn't truly collapse — not right away, anyway — but they did become corrupt bureaucrats and demon-worshipping shitheels. Deals with infernal creatures were established, and pretty soon, the ruling dynasty was replete with maeluths, dwarves with infernal blood. Tieflings and wisplings — fiend-touched humans and halflings — also appeared among their retainers. Just when it appeared that the whole of Rockulon Prime would go tumbling into the Nine Hells or the Abyss (thought by scholars to be the ultimate goal of the corrupted Wraithsmashers), internal conflicts wracked the world with war again.
Although these conflicts were not as destructive as the Drow Wars of antiquity, war was total. Any race that wished to grab for glory or settle an old conflict leaped into the fray.
After nearly a century of war, all was finally silent. Most races on the surface were in decline, their numbers low, and they teetered on the brink of extinction. Most of the infernal lineages were pushed elsewhere, into dark corners or their home realms. The world was silent for a time, and sapient life was again a precarious thing.
Some artfag probably captured this shortly before being devoured by cannibal mutant halflings.
Of course, with their short lifespans and compressed reproduction time, this allowed humanity to take control through sheer numbers.
The teeming throng of humanity, brought to you by copious fucking.
It's the same sort of boom-and-bust cycle we've grown accustomed to on Rockulon Prime. The historians keep track, but otherwise, the human dynasties tend to change hands way faster than those of the demi-humans. There's more variety now — the dwarves and elves have their own homelands, the few remaining dragonborn lord over their degenerate kobold kin while ultimately owing fealty to the dragons, the mutants claim territory in the Wastelands, and the various other subraces hold sway in their own spheres of influence. Presently, the grand empires of yore are gone, but humanity is definitely the most notable force on Rockulon Prime, and the time is ripe for another ruling power to rise.
But if the yuan-ti hybrids take over, seriously, fuck those guys.
The landscape of Rockulon Prime is currently dotted by a loose confederation of city-states joined by the old highway system. Despite the lack of large-scale organization, much of the infrastructure of the old empires remain; as best as we can tell, we're more technologically advanced than other worlds we have encountered. We've got gunpowder, steam, and internal combustion, but they have yet to match the efficiency of magic.
Exactly.
Magic is still more versatile, and more intuitive to those who understand it, although tech tends to be more intuitive if you don't know magic. Why use a gun which requires constant maintenance when you can launch a magic missile or a fireball that replenishes as you study and rest? Why use a gas-guzzling van when you can ride a nightmare that only needs a small amount of feed?
Although it's harder to listen to your 8-track on a nightmare.
Of course, us magic-using types combine magic and tech. Enchanted guns are pretty scarce, though they tend to be popular with adventurers if they can be found.
Kickin' rad.
Some wizards have also combined the ancient magic of the spelljammer helm with the more recent automobile.
Seriously? Wizards fucking rule.
Rockulon Prime still contains many of the dangers and features we have encountered on other worlds. Outside civilization, roving bands of monsters threaten travelers. Ancient ruins of fallen civilizations hold danger and treasure for those with the balls to face them. Civilization ebbs and flows, but maintains a sort of dynamic equilibrium with the wild places.
And now, we close this transcript with images of Rockulon Prime:
We all start as apprentices.
But some wizards may progress to higher accomplishments of magic.
When the student is ready, the master will appear.
Evil wizards lord over petty fiefdoms.
Barbarians stalk the Wastes.
Although some evidence of civilization may exist in those borderlands.
Although not all settlements on the frontier are friendly.
Beastmen may be a danger in the wilds.
Some have even learned the metal mysteries of arcane music.
Of course, you should probably be a bit more worried about the mutants.
Fortunately, there are always those willing to defend the borderlands.
Especially since vast rewards lie beyond civilization.
A bit of back story: I own these books. I haven't read them (as I wasn't planning on running them, I had no reason to look them over, particularly since I always heard someone or other would be keen on running them instead), but I bought them off E. M. Lamb from Malleus Blogstrorum aeons ago. I've heard good things, but I never had the chance to run or play.
So here we are.
I have the distinction of playing one Sædís Ragnarsdóttir, recently Embraced into Clan Brujah:
Picture Elle Driver, but younger and angrier. If that's even possible.
She kicks ass. Earlier in the session, she had to leave her men behind; she told them to memorize the face of the man with whom she was traveling, and if she did not return, they were to kill that man. If they didn't, she would claw her way from her grave and find them.
They've seen her rage before, so they had no doubt.
The funny part is that she was mortal then, and I wasn't saying that because I was playing Vampire — I said it because she's actually a pagan, her men know this, and it seemed like an effective threat. (She has one eye out of emulation of old Odin, after all.)
So...now she's a vampire (or as she's been calling it, a draugr). That will be a funny story when she finds her crew again.
A couple of notes: Blake's running Vampire: the Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition. It's roughly the same as Revised Edition (3e) Vampire, but has a couple of changes ported from new World of Darkness (all physical Disciplines cost Vitae, although in keeping with oWoD sensibilities, each one has a passive effect that works without blood expenditure) and Orpheus (no Dodge skill, just the Athletics talent). I'm sure I'll pick it up in the not-too-distant future.
On the module itself: We're not terribly far into it because there's a large amount of exposition (I'm pretty sure we're past the bulk of it now, but it's a thing). The group starts as mortals, goes through a shovelhead Embrace at the hands of Clan Giovanni's conspirators, get snatched by Hardestadt, and are given a reprieve from Final Death due to the intervention of Durga Syn.
The current mission is to train as Cainites until their Giovanni conspirator sires, no doubt determining the group to be alive, decide to Summon the fledgling coterie to the conspiracy's current location. The coterie will then act as spies from within, informing Hardestadt and his allies of Clan Giovanni's activities.
It was certainly fun. The module, at least in the early stages (and since there are four books of it, likely throughout) features the favored enemy of the OSR, railroading. However, I found that this allows a certain amount of drama to come out — as players, we all knew we weren't going to survive the night, so we might as well make the most of it. (Sædís tried to fight to the vampires, as did her newfound bro, Sir Jacques, to no avail).
Additionally, as I've said before, I don't necessarily mind a poverty of options so long as the cage isn't obvious — our doom was heavily telegraphed, but we theoretically have a choice in cooperating with Hardestadt (the fact that we're going to be Summoned by our sires is probably non-negiotiable, but we can totally betray Hardestadt if we so choose).
And now: quotes.
"Occam's Razor says the easiest solution is to stab them with a razor."
"Tell me, what were you told of your host?"
"He's...an Italian."
"Yes...?"
"They're...not Jews. Are they?"
"Looking at him, the best way I can describe this, he is so hideous it makes you angry."
"Surrender now and I will spare you. If you surrender."
"We just woke up, you assholes!"
Also, while I talked about my character, I said nothing about the others! In addition to Sædís the Brujah, we had:
Baron Wolfgang von Schlusselheim, scourge of Bavaria, Embraced into Clan Gangrel. Played by Nicole. He's a baron, but there's a strong implication that he stole his title.
Bartolomeo Montalban, Papal Agent, Embraced into Clan Tremere. Played by TS. At least I think she was playing Bartolomeo. As befits a prospective Tremere, the fellow didn't talk much.
Father Niklas von Ausburg, Church Historian, Embraced into Clan Nosferatu. Played by E. M. Lamb. A doddering old priest.
Horace Pemperidge, Travelling Minstrel, Embraced into Clan Malkavian. Played by FS. A fabulous bard.
Paola di Toscana, Brothel Matron, Embraced into Clan Lasombra. Played by Tini. Accompanied by three of her working girls and probably the most social among us.
Sir Jacques Lapideau, Knight of Flowers, Embraced into Clan Toreador. Played by frankietuesday3. A French anointed knight, he and Sædís are bros for unlife.
I mean this insane idea I keep having. Somewhere in my brain meats, I want to run an old-school D&D game, probably using B/X or an associated retroclone (Labyrinth Lord or Lamentations of the Flame Princess; likely the latter out of personal preference, and because it suggests that the experiment would be more warped).
The setting doesn't really matter; maybe I'd use Greyhawk, or Blackmoor, or LotFP's implied setting, or even grim and terrible Athas. Or maybe I totally wouldn't care and it would be a homebrew. The whole adventure might take place in a megadungeon.
That's not the important part.
The important part is that there's a game, and its sequel.
The first game features fifteen characters — if there are fewer than fifteen players, then roles get doubled. Whatever the case, there are fifteen characters available: 1 halfling, 1 magic-user, and 13 dwarves.
The second game features nine characters: 4 halflings, 1 magic-user, 2 fighters (one of whom may be a ranger if the rules support it), 1 dwarf, and 1 elf.
In no other ways should the game directly reference Middle-earth (other than whatever typical D&D tropes happen to emulate Tolkien, of course). The goal is not to emulate The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, but to use the same party makeup and see how things go.
The only other Tolkien trope I might adapt is to attach grand significance to an otherwise "mundane" magic item found in the first game and make it the focus of the second game. That +1 dagger found on the first level of the megadungeon? It turns out it's Ichor-Spilt, Assassin-Blade of the Gods, and the gods aren't too keen on having somebody running around with the only threat to their power. That treasure map you never quite had time to decipher and only promised a few greasy coins, anyway? Well, actually, it leads to the Tomb of the Thrice-Damned Forgotten Lord, and that becomes the megadungeon setting of the entire sequel.
One game ends when all characters retire or die.
Addendum: It did occur to me that there is one small problem with this setup. No party cleric. I don't know whether I'd have the PCs tough it out, or whether I should just let the party magic-user cast from the magic-user and cleric lists. Tolkien made his magic-users angels or somesuch, after all...
I'm still not sure how I feel about the whole enterprise, but I try to keep up with it weekly. I usually end up posting a couple of times a week. I'm still not sure I've hit my stride with all this business, but there it is.
In the past year, I've gone from running one game and occasionally playing in another to running one game, occasionally running two others, and playing in two other games. The focus has been increasingly on D&D and its variants, although I get occasional forays into my much-beloved modern/occult/horror/conspiracy genre I so thoroughly enjoy.
I've delved into the OSR a little, even contributing to Secret Santicore 2011, because I like fast and furious rule sets. My fourth edition game is fun, but hour-long combats and predictable character advancement are a bit outside my niche. (I used to think World of Darkness combat was sometimes overlong, and then I played fourth edition.) The fast, simple, what-the-heck-ever-ness of the OSR, coupled with the wholesale adoption of FLAILSNAILS, really hits a lot of places I enjoy. That having been said, I still think Unknown Armies just about hits everything I appreciate in a rules-and-setting package — I'd likely adapt its design elements and aesthetic to any homebrew system I'd create.
Anyway, I might as well take the opportunity to revisit some things that readers seemed to particularly like as well as some things that I particularly enjoyed.
Ahem. So, this past Monday, (that's June 4 if you're reading this in the grimdark future), I hit fifty followers. (Ironically, as with my first follower, my fiftieth follower is someone I know personally in my Monkeysphere.)
Incidentally, I was at 271 posts at the time. So I guess that's something, too.
1. Several sheets of flash paper containing several examples of Victorian erotic art. If the pages are burned together and the smoke is inhaled, the character will get a vision of the location of a hidden sorcerer's crypt containing untold riches and rituals.
2. A thumb drive containing a .mpeg file depicting an elementary school play. It appears to be a play about woodland animals learning to live in harmony, but during the final musical number, a soloist steps forward and begins reciting a monologue from The King in Yellow. Screaming starts just before the media player crashes.
5. A mad sorcerer's grimoire written on a single, continuous piece of tanned hide. Analysis suggests it's human skin.
6. A Glock 17 that oozes human tears whenever it is fired.
7. A singer's voice in a wooden box.
8. The memory of a comical loss of virginity.
9. A box containing several years' worth of the Fortean Times. Someone has written "True" or "False" next to each article heading.
10. A clay figurine which is supposedly some sort of homunculus, although the activation commands are forgotten. In truth, it is merely a prison for the soul of a dead magus. Note that both things may be true — if the proper syllables are spoken, it may be forced to animate and obey the petitioner.
11. A vicious knifing.
12. An aluminum water bottle of purple liquid. This liquid has all the typical effects of LSD, save that the user can also see ghosts.
13. The memory of a mundane family vacation to the beach.
14. A hamburger in sealed lucite. The plaque indicates that it was purchased from McDonald's on December 12, 1948, making it one of the first hamburgers sold at the renovated San Bernardino location.
17. A snowglobe, depicting a small town in the Midwest and evidently originating from their chamber of commerce. When the snowglobe is shaken, it rains (or snows) in the actual town.
18. A silverware set made by Paul Revere. Old stains that look like strange rust cover some of the pieces. If any old DNA can be extracted, it is revealed to be wolf blood.
19. A black garbage bag full of fingernail clippings.
20. A copy of the famous August 1991 issue of Vanity Fair featuring a nude, pregnant Demi Moore on the cover. If examined closely, one can see the vague outline of an inhuman shape in her pregnant belly.
23. A ball-peen hammer. Any slot machine touched with this ball-peen hammer will release its jackpot.
24. A dog's corpse, prepared with taxidermy. Any cavities in the body are filled with fortune cookie fortunes.
25. A jar of baby teeth.
26. A brown glass eye. If placed in an empty eye socket, it renders the user completely immune to injuries sustained from car accidents, even if she is thrown clear of the vehicle.
27. A set of polyhedral dice made of meteoric iron.
28. A dirty speculum. If touched to a wooden object, an image of the woodwright will appear in the user's head, along with an impression of the person's name. If the object is mass produced, the user will get an impression of everybody involved in its creation.
29. An unlabeled VHS tape. The tape appears to be an amateur documentary on a man named "Phil" as he goes through his errands. Any person, place, or thing with a supernatural talent or origin exudes a golden halo. Phil is not supernatural, but several things in the background of the video are.
30. A hatchet head, pitted with rust stains.
31. A collection of 57 wheat pennies.
32. A musket ball, retrieved from a human cadaver.
34. A CD of The Art of War by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. The CD is heavily scratched and cannot be played, although when held to the light, the scratches appear to form arcane symbols.
35. A recipe for a medieval immortality elixir, pieced together as a collage of magazine clippings.
36. A clump of bees, pickled in formaldehyde. Close examination reveals that the bees' legs have grown together, forming the clump of bees.
37. A child's drawing of a black shape labeled "CENTER TOOME."
38. A toy steak, carved from wood and painted.
39. A leather wallet stuffed with joss paper in the form of Hell bank notes.
40. A rattle. It appears to be a Barbie leg jammed into a baby doll's head, and the head is filled with some sort of object (beads? bones?) to make it rattle. The baby head is haphazardly decorated as a jester's ninny-stick.
41. A yellowed sheet of vellum containing a recipe for hummus. The Latin writings sarcastically refer to it as a work of alchemy, which might confuse a modern scholar.
42. A violin that makes music so terrible it causes actual psychological stress in victims.
43. A monocle. If dipped in milk, it allows the user to diagnose any illnesses currently affecting any person the user can see.
44. A jar of dappled light, filtered through autumn leaves.
45. A Ziploc bag of black piano keys.
46. An unlabeled 5 1/4" floppy disk. Assuming the operator can run the program, the screen will read, "COORDINATES?" If the operator inputs a valid address, the program will read "Y" if a magical item is present in the location and "N" if one is not present.
47. An elephant's leg, hollowed out as an umbrella stand. It still emanates the infrasonic signals used by elephants to communicate over long distances. If somehow decoded, it appears to be a mating signal.
48. A baseball cap which, when worn, makes the wearer seem appropriately dressed. It does not alter appearance, and it does not allow the wearer to enter places where he would not be allowed, but it does mean that the character can wear a T-shirt and jeans to a formal affair and not be turned away based upon his mode of dress.
49. A sardine key that opens any lock it touches.
50. Six hairs in a jar stoppered with wax and human blood.
A little while ago, I wrote this post. In the aforementioned post, I gave 4e statistics for Hereticwerks' brilliant gore-worms.
Well, a conversation happened in the comments, and garrisonjames mentioned doing more Labyrinth Lord to D&D 4e conversions.
So, here it is. There are a lot of truly inspired ideas over there, and if the oD&D format doesn't float your boat, maybe this will help.
Also, unless otherwise stated, assume that whatever I post hasn't been playtested, so if it murders your entire party, cherish the horror and make new characters?
I guess you can submit feedback if you actually use them before I do.
The regulars have no doubt seen Nicole commenting on my blog. She's my oldest friend — you know Victor and Elizabeth in Frankenstein? That's us (except without the whole one-of-my-biology-experiments-murdering-her thing). I take credit for introducing her to roleplaying, all because I wanted to hang out with her more.
Well, my second-oldest friend, a bloke by the name of E. M. Lamb, just started a roleplaying blog. He has precisely one post at this time, but I'm going to vouch for him anyway because I know the quality of his ideas. You know The Imperial City I occasionally mention? He co-GMed on that, and wrote some stuff for it.
You know how I keep musing about a sequel? He wrote a potential sequel, like, ten years ago. I even set it up in-game, just in case he ever wanted to run it. (Omega-14 still remains the best idea I never thought of.) I'd also take credit for introducing him to roleplaying, but really, I just got there before he did — he was getting InQuest before I ever started talking about Vampire: the Masquerade (in fact, one of the first games I ran for The Imperial City was a module I swiped from one of his issues).
For that matter, I suppose I can never forgive him, because it's his fault I went to Avalon and still dabble in LARPing. Even worse, back when I was content with Vampire, he got Werewolf: the Apocalypse. It sounded neat, and rather than keep borrowing his copy, I got a copy, prompting the first "well, let's see what the other books in this game line are like..." kick that started a roleplaying collection that threatens to devour me in my sleep.
After all that rambling, let me introduce you to something you can actually use. Read his first post.
Uncaring, decadent gods and cruel, malevolent gods are nothing new. As he says in that post, this type of pantheon is a staple of pulp fiction — the gods either do terrible things because they're filled with ennui, or they do terrible things because you're beneath their notice. Do you weep for all the bacteria your immune system kills daily? Doubtful.
I'd like to draw your attention to the cycle he mentions — the gods grow decadent, the PCs discover this, decide they can do better, and quest to dethrone the gods. But now they're the new gods, and after a few centuries, they're just as corrupt as the old gods.
What if that's the cycle that drives the universe? It's like Unknown Armies, except rather than the ideological struggle that drives existence, it's an ongoing, physical war.
Really, a constant cycle of unrest and revolution could fuel a whole campaign.
Like I said, go give Role-Player Hater a look sometime, would you please?
Even though the WoD has two major rules changes and almost twenty game lines, I tend to count it as a cohesive unit.
No matter the edition, the WoD has the same basic premise: this is the same basic world we know and love, but monsters are hidden in it. In, say, Call of Cthulhu, you're a human fighting these powers; in the WoD, you usually play one of these creatures.
In the old World of Darkness (1991-2004), characters coexisted along labrynthine, eons-old conspiracies. Supernatural creatures battled for supremacy, though in the modern nights, vampires and the Technocratic Union were pretty much the main powers behind the scenes (though even they, admittedly, could hardly be said to control the world). Most published scenarios involved the PCs reacting to one of these hidden threats, further building the setting's metaplot.
As for rules, the rules were simple — though, admittedly, I used them long enough that determining dice pools and difficulties was practically second-nature. Every character has statistics rated from 1-5 (some were rated from 1-10). Some combination of statistics would be rolled as a pool of d10s; for example, a scientist with Intelligence 3 and Science 4 would roll 7 dice. Any dice that met or exceeded a numerical difficulty (difficulty 6 was average, and could skew upward and downward from there) were considered successes.
I felt this system was fairly fast and elegant, though I have since heard complaints about this system. The main complaint came from combat; one attack may very well require four of these rolls.
In 2004, White Wolf ended the game line to clean up the metaplot — the long-threatened apocalypse happened. Cynics suggest they ended the game line to sell more books in the future. Oh, internet; don't ever change.
White Wolf then implemented the new World of Darkness (2004-present). Like the old, supernatural powers lurk among humanity; unlike the oWoD, global conspiracies are practically nonexistent. Instead, the supernatural powers now rule petty fiefdoms rife with paranoia, and there is no "official" metaplot (though a plot, such as it is, is frequently suggested across sourcebooks). Most supernatural creatures realize they cannot trust members of the same power bloc enough to consolidate power, or they are so harried that they can't form a power base to start, so each city is an independent domain overseen by a mix of supernatural creatures. Or not; some cities skew toward one group over the others, and some cities have little to no supernatural presence at all.
This latter fact emphasizes the dark mystery of the setting: you cannot ever hope to fully understand the world. That city without a supernatural presence might have somehow escaped colonization, or it might not have enough resources to support a supernatural community, or it might host a sapient colony of space-insects that devours any supernatural creature who stays more than a day or two. This is another reason why supernatural creatures don't form large societies; in addition to concerns from neighboring domains and concerns regarding human discovery (because even disorganized humans are much bigger threats in the nWoD), why would you want to forge an alliance with a neighboring domain when you barely understand the weird stuff around your domain? Additionally, since supernatural creatures no longer have unifying origin stories (and, in fact, almost seem actively unable to recall or determine their origins), they have no reason to work together. Your bloc of vampires and the neighboring city's bloc of vampires might both look and talk alike, but you have no way of knowing whether these guys are actually vampires like you, or some weird offshoot (and even if you both made your characters from Vampire: the Requiem, you still may not be the same type of vampire).
As for the rules, they're similar to the old system, and most people think they're more streamlined. You add a dice pool and roll the whole thing against a target number of 8. Reroll 10s until no more 10s occur. Count successes as normal. Though it is harder to get successes in this system, individual successes count for more, and critical failures are much harder in this system. Additionally, things like combat only require one roll per attack; the opposing character's dodging, armor, and suchlike are taken into account with modifiers to attack rolls. Remembering all the modifiers is sometimes wonky, but some things are a bit smoother.
Additionally, character advancement is different; characters could become powerful very quickly in oWoD, as many low-level abilities were very effective. The nWoD, however, promotes game balance, and even makes individual mortals a credible threat. However, advancement tends to be slower.
Overall, I still like the oWoD better than the nWoD in many respects. The old World was ostensibly horror, but had a gonzo vibe that just worked — you could build just about anything given the wealth of material, and there are some times you just want to run a game where a cyborg, a mutant, a vampire, Frankenstein's monster, and a Highlander fight evil (or are evil). After working with the rules for so many years, I'm still faster with old than new.
On the other hand, the nWoD is more unified into a cohesive setting, friendlier to new players, and is creepier than the old World. The horror in the new game tends to be more personal.
I would ultimately recommend either system to anybody, though. Whether it's the weird, gonzo, subjective horror of the oWoD, or the creepy, personal horror of the nWoD, either one works.
A final note: White Wolf really excels at some of its newer, smaller lines. I still think oWoD Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage had something that the newer versions lack, but Promethean, Changeling, Hunter, and Geist are really good. Changeling (which takes the reincarnated, dying otherkin of the old version and replaces them with supernatural abuse victims — and I think the new version was an improvement despite the fact I am one of the few who will admit to really liking Changeling: the Dreaming) and Promethean (you're a golem made from one or more cadavers, and you can use spiritual alchemy to become mortal — which is for the best, because despite your personal power, the universe itself hates your soulless, undead husk) particularly deserve a look. The human-centered Hunter: the Vigil is good, but I know some people who still like the bewildered, supernatural hunters from Hunter: the Reckoning (I like both but prefer the newer version). Wraith might still be a personal favorite, but the zealous, life-lusting, rum-and-sugar-skulls vibe from Geist is a neat design choice, one that almost places the games on different axes (I like both, but for different reasons).
