Fixing Things

This week I had a smaller turnout. We didn't have any Hangout players, so that experiment will have to wait till later. I added some new house rules to the campaign, Jack and Matt's slot-based inventory system and a tightening up the temporal wiggle room I'd given the players. Partly due to the (one-way) design of my early adventures and partly due to my bleeding heart weaksauce DMing I'd start every session where the last ended, with whomever's character who happened to be in attendance and damn the torpedoes to explaining how or why characters could pop in and out of existence within a dungeon. It made it easier to ensure the game kept going when we were short a few players, but it's made increasingly less sense as the campaign has continued. That will no longer be the case. It's expected that the party will have to make it out of whatever death trap they've been tramping through if they want to add characters to the mix. If they can't make it back to town or base camp or whatever than they won't be able to add new characters. Obvious in retrospect, and almost guaranteed to make some players complain, but I'm willing to do the bookkeeping.

So on with what happened last session! The party finished exploring the the reservoir dungeon, scoring some loot in a side tunnel they found at the water level. Waiting for them at the top of the spiral staircase in the basement was the witch, surrounded by her cats. In repayment for discovering what was causing the village to sink, the giant crab statue had been raising the water table with sea water, she offered to translate the octagonal books they'd found. One was a historical text, the other a manual of giant insects, and the last a manual for the machinery in the reservoir. With the book, the witch, and a craftsman from Snim they were able to repair the machinery and activate it, draining the reservoir and pumping the water away from the town.

Then they all went to a bar and the dwarf got eaten trying to wrestle a boa constrictor in a pit fight.

A Reservoir of Gleaming Eyes

We tried something new this week, running a G+ hangout alongside our face-to-face session for a player who couldn't make it. It was a little difficult splitting my focus between two audiences, but the tech is awesome and it opens up the possibility of adding more players in the future. There are several people who've moved away or have conflicting schedules that preclude them from joining use anymore that I'd love to bring back to the game.

This session included a new player and his quartet army of peasants. The only named characters with class levels present were Spud the wizard and Arrowroot the warrior, riding herd over at least a dozen as yet unnamed nobodies. Last session the party turned down a corridor and stumbled onto the lair of a giant snake. The peasants would have no truck with the serpent so they fell back, pursued by it until they could get a locked door between them. They didn't find much more on this level except for some large quartz crystals growing in a side cave.

The party headed back to the spiral stairs and tried to head downward, but found the way blocked by rubble. They considered excavation, but worried that the noise would attract dangerous attention, so instead they headed back to the first floor to inspect the huge hole they'd skirted around. The walls of the pit fell away a few yards down, opening into a wider gulf that smelled strangely of sea water.  They dropped a lit torch into the pit, watching the flame shrink as it fell fifty feet onto a bridge that stretched like a thin ribbon across the blackness. When nothing reached out of the dark for the torch they deemed the route safe and, tying their rope to a large boulder, began to climb down one at a time.

The climbed down into an enormous groined vault, half filled with water. This level seemed empty, but whoever had built the space had left dangerous traps. In a library off the reservoir room them discovered a library, but in their haste to steal the books they tripped an trap that released acid from the ceiling and killed six peasants . They soon found another reservoir room, which held a huge bronze statue of a crab. It stood upright with claws stretched wide with seven serene faces from whose mouths briny water poured, running down a long staircase into the water. The group discovered the jaws on the faces were hinged, and with some effort they closed them all. This brought the statue to life! With a shudder it began to move, long legs clanking against the smooth stone. Suddenly the reservoir was filled with pairs of eyes on stalk, faintly luminous in the black water. They were thousands of tiny crabs, watching the party with perverse intensity.

Spud threw a spear of magic force that blew a hole in the statue, but the rest of the group ran for a far tunnel across the room. The entrance was small enough to let them in but keep the animate thing at bay. Looking for an exit, all the party found was abandoned living spaces and winding tunnels clad in bronze pipes. One of the peasants pried a large bronze spanner from the skinless fingers of skeleton that lay forlornly in one room. The tunnels all turned around themselves and came back to the reservoir. They were sure it would kill them all but they made a final desperate charge against the crab statue. The wizard let fly with a spell that struck the thing like a meteor, and with a roar one of the peasant attacked the thing, the ferocity of his blows driving the giant crab off in the reservoir below. When it struck the water all the eyes disappeared simultaneously, and the bronze hulk sank to the bottom with barely a bubble. We called it a night there.

Pratfalls and Manslaughter

After a month of conflicting schedules I had enough players to continue my Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign. The party had discovered a complex below the witch's hut (detailed here) and had just begun exploring the first level. The walls were water-stained but the stonework was elegant. The remains of frescoes peaked out between the slime and mildew. Water dripped, echoing down the empty halls and onto uneven flagstones

Apparently the players were rusty because what followed was two hours of fumbling around in the dark killing themselves. To cross a 10-foot gap they attempted a human ladder, killing a well-armored mercenary when he lost his grip and plummeted 30 feet onto his head. Another died when the floor of a room, already uneven and cracked, collapsed under him. They lost another three when a cloud of plague-ridden bats erupted through an open door, tearing two of the peasants to pieces and infecting the wizard Spud with a case of vomiting batpox. This sent him packing, emptying his stomach across the walls as he went. One of the peasants fumbled his dagger into the throat of one of his compatriots as he swung wildly at the flying creatures.

With their number already drastically reduced they were more careful as they broke into a new chamber by tearing down a cracked wall. This room was marred by an enormous gulf, stretching down into darkness as stinking of brine. This unnerved everyone, but they continued forward to another spiral staircase that led farther below ground.

They left the staircase at the next landing, despite the stairs containing deeper into the earth. This floor seemed even more humid, and the water damage was even more widespread. Giant newts populated the galleries and rooms, but the party avoided most of them. They dispatched one protecting a nest of slime-caked eggs and found a glowing golden orb for their trouble. They were in good spirits searching the rest of the level till an errant turn led them to the nest of a giant snake. They didn't have the courage to face the thing, so they fled beyond a door and spiked it behind them. With that behind them the session ended.

Revisiting the Singing Hill

For the past week I've been pouring my free time into crafting a manuscript of my dungeon, the Singing Hill. I want to get this thing published to RPGnow, at least to begin. It's a hobby project, so I'm sticking with digital to start with. I don't want to leap straight into physical objects. I'd like to get a license from Goodman Games to stat the thing for Dungeon Crawl Classics, but old man Joe wants to see if the thing sucks before he'll sign off. This is understandable. So I'm tapping away on this getting, turning rough notes and a map key into something usable by other humanoids.

I've tapped a friend to do the cover art and I'll see if I can scare up some b&w illos from my art school chums for the interior. Maps are all me. Here's a piece from my notebook, it'll look far better once I've spiced it up digital-like.

You can read about how the original party fared in the Hill in the old campaign Obsidian Portal site here.

Cyborg and Samurai

I've been neglecting my blog a bit lately due to repeated scrubbing of game night. I've got plenty of content for the party to run through but competing schedules are killing me.

Last week I discovered an incredible film, Mirai Ninja. It's a Japanese action movie from the late 80s, and a heady blend of science fiction, fantasy, and samurai drama. You can watch the entire thing online, come back when you've watched the thing. It's crazy inspirational to me. I've got to stat some of this stuff out for something, I just don't know where to fit robot ninjas into Ig! In my head it's exactly what a game of Tenra Bansho Zero will be like, speaking as someone who knows next to nothing about that particular game. I highly recommend taking the time to watch this movie, it's really entertaining. You won't lose more than an hour and change. Commence highlight image dump!

 

Inverse Star Wars opening!

This is the scene that hooked me, within the first five minutes of the film they introduce these samurai warriors with tricked out sci-fi kiai headphones, guns, and this enormous castle tank.

 

They're in a war with freaky robot ninjas who shoot GI Joe lasers that turn into shuriken on impact, with their own castle tanks, including an outhouse converted into an AT-ST-style walker.

The bad guys live in this awesome castle.

 And are lead by the Black Bishop. Death rays and killer fashion sense? Best evil cleric ever.

 

The good guys get some pretty cool gear. This katana takes bullets.

This guy's sword does a superheated slash.

A bunch of samurai warriors ready to murder some robots. It's got a bit of an Aliens vibe!

More Monster Missives

I've been thinking about Monster Hunter lately and the way it handles combat. Moe Tousignant posted this video of the relative sizes of the beasties in the Wii version yesterday, and it commenced my head to system-spinning.

I wanted to revisit fighting large monsters again, but differently than how I did in the giant insect system that I posted before. What makes battles in Monster Hunter so dynamic are the incredibly mobile monsters and the balance players must maintain between keeping out of range while trying to get hits in.

Battleground abstract

For this system facing is important, but physical location less so. The battleground is abstracted into four arcs surrounding a single 'boss' monster. These arcs corresponding to the four sides of the monster front and rear, left and right.Each arc is divided into range bands which are equal to the movement rate of normal human. The closest band is melee range. The bands are abstractions, so, within reason, any number of characters can be located in a single band. When combat begins place a token for each character in the arc and band in relation to the monster. Normal character movement moves a token across the board one range band at a time. When the monster moves or turns each token is moved to match the monster's new facing. Monster can freely turn as part of a move action.

Movement Examples

 Monster Hunter uses an intricate hit-location system for determining how much damage a monster receives, it's way more complex than a system that does more than tactical combat needs, so I'm boiling down the concept. I don't want to go down the path that Palladium did with RIFTS either, with endless tables for how much damage your third radar dish can sustain, but I like a little granularity. When using this system a monster has a separate AC for each arc. This allows for 'Achilles' heel' type monsters that have a specific weak point..

High level Monster Hunter play is all spreadsheets

Attacks are also broken up by arc, with most attacks only being able to target enemies in a single arc. Bite attacks obviously come from the front, tail swipes from the rear. Limbs can attack to the front or sides. Special cases for long-necked beasts like the hydra might be able to bite several arcs.

Goblins

Goblins are a relatively new addition to the plains of Ig, having only appeared in numbers within the last few centuries. They are smaller than dwarves, rarely growing higher than three feet. Their skin ranges in color from a jaundiced yellow to noisome purple. No two goblins look exactly the same, as if their creator formed them from cast-off parts. According to goblin tales, if anyone were listening, their people came from a land deep below the surface. It was a land of endless tunnels crawling with vermin of all kinds, more or less heaven. They lived peacefully there until a great enemy rose up and enslaved them. Goblin-kind toiled in miserable squalor for long ages before the coming of the great vision. Each of the goblin elders had a dream of a land where they could be free, high above on a surface they couldn't imagine. Uniting as one for the first and final time they cast off their shackles and fled to the land above. They followed a trail of golden centipedes through tunnels never traveled. After years of wandering, and a few decades confronting their racial agoraphobia, they reached the surface. Beneath open sky the race splintered in separate tribes, each group finding a singular niche in which thrive.

Goblins form loose tribes focused on a single species of monstrous insects, always social breed. These insects become their totem animal and soon form a symbiotic partnership. The insects gain cleaning crew and a more sophisticated network of internal defenses, the goblins a natural deterrent from larger monsters and food scavenged from the insect's hive. This relationship is not perfect, the goblins must be careful not to vex the hive. Should they disrupt the hive too much the insects will drive them out fearlessly. This is why they go unnoticed by most of the other humanoids in Ig, they live among creatures the rest of the land avoids. The largest groups in Ig are the Smoke, Gravel, Paper, and Mud tribes, although each band also has specific family name.

Smoke goblins live among giant bees, they are named for the smudge sticks they carry to maintain calm when they work within a hive. Most hives are found in hollow hills, but any protected interior space such as a cave or ruin could host the social insects. The reliable stores of honey they glean keep them well-fed throughout the year. Smoke goblins also use worker bees as steeds, small bands of the insect riders act as fast cavalry and aerial scouts. The goblins bind sharpened bamboo lances to the stingers of these insects, allowing them to attack without fear of losing their mount when a stinger pulls free.

Gravel goblins cohabitate with giant ants inside their nests. While not as large as giant bees and unsuitable as mounts these ants make fearless protectors. Because of this gravel tribes are rarely threatened by wild monsters. They do live in fear of smarter prey, as giant ants proclivity for finding seams of ore and precious stones make them a target for greedy bandits. To counteract this goblins funnel the ants tunneling instinct into creating complex mazes that loop and twist to disorient intruders.

Paper and mud goblins live among two classes of social wasps, paper wasps and mud daubers. Like the insects with which they live, these goblins are aggressive and particularly fearless. They're far more likely make war against the other people of Ig, including other goblin tribes. Warriors riding giant wasps are a relatively common threat to isolated villages.

Henceforth, anyone rolling up halfling character in my campaign will in fact be rolling up a goblin. Roll on the table below to determine what sort of tribe your character came from!
Goblin Tribe (1d6)
1-2 Smoke
3-4 Gravel
5 Paper
6 Mud